Notre-Dame de Paris
my brain vanished before the splendors of science. In a few
moments, I felt the gross things of earth flee far away, and I
found myself once more calm, quieted, and serene, in the presence
of the tranquil radiance of eternal truth. As long as the demon
sent to attack me only vague shadows of women who passed
occasionally before my eyes in church, in the streets, in the
fields, and who hardly recurred to my dreams, I easily vanquished
him. Alas! if the victory has not remained with me, it is the
fault of God, who has not created man and the demon of equal
force. Listen. One day—”
Here the priest paused, and the prisoner heard sighs of anguish
break from his breast with a sound of the death rattle.
He resumed,—
“One day I was leaning on the window of my cell. What book was I
reading then? Oh! all that is a whirlwind in my head. I was
reading. The window opened upon a Square. I heard a sound of
tambourine and music. Annoyed at being thus disturbed in my
revery, I glanced into the Square. What I beheld, others saw
beside myself, and yet it was not a spectacle made for human
eyes. There, in the middle of the pavement,—it was midday, the
sun was shining brightly,—a creature was dancing. A creature so
beautiful that God would have preferred her to the Virgin and
have chosen her for his mother and have wished to be born of her
if she had been in existence when he was made man! Her eyes were
black and splendid; in the midst of her black locks, some hairs
through which the sun shone glistened like threads of gold. Her
feet disappeared in their movements like the spokes of a rapidly
turning wheel. Around her head, in her black tresses, there were
disks of metal, which glittered in the sun, and formed a coronet
of stars on her brow. Her dress thick set with spangles, blue,
and dotted with a thousand sparks, gleamed like a summer night.
Her brown, supple arms twined and untwined around her waist, like
two scarfs. The form of her body was surprisingly beautiful. Oh!
what a resplendent figure stood out, like something luminous even
in the sunlight! Alas, young girl, it was thou! Surprised,
intoxicated, charmed, I allowed myself to gaze upon thee. I
looked so long that I suddenly shuddered with terror; I felt that
fate was seizing hold of me.”
The priest paused for a moment, overcome with emotion. Then he
continued,—
“Already half fascinated, I tried to cling fast to something and
hold myself back from falling. I recalled the snares which Satan
had already set for me. The creature before my eyes possessed
that superhuman beauty which can come only from heaven or hell.
It was no simple girl made with a little of our earth, and dimly
lighted within by the vacillating ray of a woman’s soul. It was
an angel! but of shadows and flame, and not of light. At the
moment when I was meditating thus, I beheld beside you a goat, a
beast of witches, which smiled as it gazed at me. The midday sun
gave him golden horns. Then I perceived the snare of the demon,
and I no longer doubted that you had come from hell and that you
had come thence for my perdition. I believed it.”
Here the priest looked the prisoner full in the face, and added,
coldly,—
“I believe it still. Nevertheless, the charm operated little by
little; your dancing whirled through my brain; I felt the
mysterious spell working within me. All that should have awakened
was lulled to sleep; and like those who die in the snow, I felt
pleasure in allowing this sleep to draw on. All at once, you
began to sing. What could I do, unhappy wretch? Your song was
still more charming than your dancing. I tried to flee.
Impossible. I was nailed, rooted to the spot. It seemed to me
that the marble of the pavement had risen to my knees. I was
forced to remain until the end. My feet were like ice, my head
was on fire. At last you took pity on me, you ceased to sing, you
disappeared. The reflection of the dazzling vision, the
reverberation of the enchanting music disappeared by degrees from
my eyes and my ears. Then I fell back into the embrasure of the
window, more rigid, more feeble than a statue torn from its base.
The vesper bell roused me. I drew myself up; I fled; but alas!
something within me had fallen never to rise again, something had
come upon me from which I could not flee.”
He made another pause and went on,—
“Yes, dating from that day, there was within me a man whom I did
not know. I tried to make use of all my remedies. The cloister,
the altar, work, books,—follies! Oh, how hollow does science
sound when one in despair dashes against it a head full of
passions! Do you know, young girl, what I saw thenceforth between
my book and me? You, your shade, the image of the luminous
apparition which had one day crossed the space before me. But
this image had no longer the same color; it was sombre, funereal,
gloomy as the black circle which long pursues the vision of the
imprudent man who has gazed intently at the sun.
“Unable to rid myself of it, since I heard your song humming ever
in my head, beheld your feet dancing always on my breviary, felt
even at night, in my dreams, your form in contact with my own, I
desired to see you again, to touch you, to know who you were, to
see whether I should really find you like the ideal image which I
had retained of you, to shatter my dream, perchance, with
reality. At all events, I hoped that a new impression would
efface the first, and the first had become insupportable. I
sought you. I saw you once more. Calamity! When I had seen you
twice, I wanted to see you a thousand times, I wanted to see you
always. Then—how stop myself on that slope of hell?—then I no
longer belonged to myself. The other end of the thread which the
demon had attached to my wings he had fastened to his foot. I
became vagrant and wandering like yourself. I waited for you
under porches, I stood on the lookout for you at the street
corners, I watched for you from the summit of my tower. Every
evening I returned to myself more charmed, more despairing, more
bewitched, more lost!
“I had learned who you were; an Egyptian, Bohemian, gypsy,
zingara. How could I doubt the magic? Listen. I hoped that a
trial would free me from the charm. A witch enchanted Bruno
d’Ast; he had her burned, and was cured. I knew it. I wanted to
try the remedy. First I tried to have you forbidden the square in
front of Notre-Dame, hoping to forget you if you returned no
more. You paid no heed to it. You returned. Then the idea of
abducting you occurred to me. One night I made the attempt. There
were two of us. We already had you in our power, when that
miserable officer came up. He delivered you. Thus did he begin
your unhappiness, mine, and his own. Finally, no longer knowing
what to do, and what was to become of me, I denounced you to the
official.
“I thought that I should be cured like Bruno d’Ast. I also had a
confused idea that a trial would deliver you into my hands; that,
as a prisoner I should hold you, I should have you; that there
you could not escape from me; that you had already possessed me a
sufficiently long time to give me the right to possess you in my
turn. When one does wrong, one must do it thoroughly. ’Tis
madness to halt midway in the monstrous! The extreme of crime has
its deliriums of joy. A priest and a witch can mingle in delight
upon the truss of straw in a dungeon!
“Accordingly, I denounced you. It was then that I terrified you
when we met. The plot which I was weaving against you, the storm
which I was heaping up above your head, burst from me in threats
and lightning glances. Still, I hesitated. My project had its
terrible sides which made me shrink back.
“Perhaps I might have renounced it; perhaps my hideous thought
would have withered in my brain, without bearing fruit. I thought
that it would always depend upon me to follow up or discontinue
this prosecution. But every evil thought is inexorable, and
insists on becoming a deed; but where I believed myself to be all
powerful, fate was more powerful than I. Alas! ’tis fate which
has seized you and delivered you to the terrible wheels of the
machine which I had constructed doubly. Listen. I am nearing the
end.
“One day,—again the sun was shining brilliantly—I behold a man
pass me uttering your name and laughing, who carries sensuality
in his eyes. Damnation! I followed him; you know the rest.”
He ceased.
The young girl could find but one word:
“Oh, my Phœbus!”
“Not that name!” said the priest, grasping her arm violently.
“Utter not that name! Oh! miserable wretches that we are, ’tis
that name which has ruined us! or, rather we have ruined each
other by the inexplicable play of fate! you are suffering, are
you not? you are cold; the night makes you blind, the dungeon
envelops you; but perhaps you still have some light in the bottom
of your soul, were it only your childish love for that empty man
who played with your heart, while I bear the dungeon within me;
within me there is winter, ice, despair; I have night in my soul.
“Do you know what I have suffered? I was present at your trial. I
was seated on the official’s bench. Yes, under one of the
priests’ cowls, there were the contortions of the damned. When
you were brought in, I was there; when you were questioned, I was
there.—Den of wolves!—It was my crime, it was my gallows that I
beheld being slowly reared over your head. I was there for every
witness, every proof, every plea; I could count each of your
steps in the painful path; I was still there when that ferocious
beast—oh! I had not foreseen torture! Listen. I followed you to
that chamber of anguish. I beheld you stripped and handled, half
naked, by the infamous hands of the tormentor. I beheld your
foot, that foot which I would have given an empire to kiss and
die, that foot, beneath which to have had my head crushed I
should have felt such rapture,—I beheld it encased in that
horrible boot, which converts the limbs of a living being into
one bloody clod. Oh, wretch! while I looked on at that, I held
beneath my shroud a dagger, with which I lacerated my breast.
When you uttered that cry, I plunged it into my flesh; at a
second cry, it would have entered my heart. Look! I believe that
it still bleeds.”
He opened his cassock. His breast was in fact, mangled as by the
claw of a tiger, and on his side he had a large and badly healed
wound.
The prisoner recoiled with horror.
“Oh!” said the priest, “young girl, have pity upon me! You think
yourself unhappy; alas! alas! you know not what unhappiness is.
Oh! to love a woman! to be a priest! to be hated! to love with
all the fury of one’s soul; to feel that one would give for the
least of her smiles, one’s blood, one’s vitals, one’s fame, one’s