Notre-Dame de Paris
“Good, good, sir. Let my beauty alone and answer my question. A
fine beauty, in sooth!”
“Well, my dear cousin, I was recalled to the garrison.
“And where is that, if you please? and why did not you come to
say farewell?”
“At Queue-en-Brie.”
Phœbus was delighted with the first question, which helped him to
avoid the second.
“But that is quite close by, monsieur. Why did you not come to
see me a single time?”
Here Phœbus was rather seriously embarrassed.
“Because—the service—and then, charming cousin, I have been ill.”
“Ill!” she repeated in alarm.
“Yes, wounded!”
“Wounded!”
The poor child was completely upset.
“Oh! do not be frightened at that,” said Phœbus, carelessly, “it
was nothing. A quarrel, a sword cut; what is that to you?”
“What is that to me?” exclaimed Fleur-de-Lys, raising her
beautiful eyes filled with tears. “Oh! you do not say what you
think when you speak thus. What sword cut was that? I wish to
know all.”
“Well, my dear fair one, I had a falling out with Mahé Fédy, you
know? the lieutenant of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and we ripped open
a few inches of skin for each other. That is all.”
The mendacious captain was perfectly well aware that an affair of
honor always makes a man stand well in the eyes of a woman. In
fact, Fleur-de-Lys looked him full in the face, all agitated with
fear, pleasure, and admiration. Still, she was not completely
reassured.
“Provided that you are wholly cured, my Phœbus!” said she. “I do
not know your Mahé Fédy, but he is a villanous man. And whence
arose this quarrel?”
Here Phœbus, whose imagination was endowed with but mediocre
power of creation, began to find himself in a quandary as to a
means of extricating himself for his prowess.
“Oh! how do I know?—a mere nothing, a horse, a remark! Fair
cousin,” he exclaimed, for the sake of changing the conversation,
“what noise is this in the Cathedral Square?”
He approached the window.
“Oh! _Mon Dieu_, fair cousin, how many people there are on the
Place!”
“I know not,” said Fleur-de-Lys; “it appears that a witch is to
do penance this morning before the church, and thereafter to be
hung.”
The captain was so thoroughly persuaded that la Esmeralda’s
affair was concluded, that he was but little disturbed by
Fleur-de-Lys’s words. Still, he asked her one or two questions.
“What is the name of this witch?”
“I do not know,” she replied.
“And what is she said to have done?”
She shrugged her white shoulders.
“I know not.”
“Oh, _mon Dieu Jésus!_” said her mother; “there are so many
witches nowadays that I dare say they burn them without knowing
their names. One might as well seek the name of every cloud in
the sky. After all, one may be tranquil. The good God keeps his
register.” Here the venerable dame rose and came to the window.
“Good Lord! you are right, Phœbus,” said she. “The rabble is
indeed great. There are people on all the roofs, blessed be God!
Do you know, Phœbus, this reminds me of my best days. The
entrance of King Charles VII., when, also, there were many
people. I no longer remember in what year that was. When I speak
of this to you, it produces upon you the effect,—does it not?—the
effect of something very old, and upon me of something very
young. Oh! the crowd was far finer than at the present day. They
even stood upon the machicolations of the Porte Sainte-Antoine.
The king had the queen on a pillion, and after their highnesses
came all the ladies mounted behind all the lords. I remember that
they laughed loudly, because beside Amanyon de Garlande, who was
very short of stature, there rode the Sire Matefelon, a chevalier
of gigantic size, who had killed heaps of English. It was very
fine. A procession of all the gentlemen of France, with their
oriflammes waving red before the eye. There were some with
pennons and some with banners. How can I tell? the Sire de Calan
with a pennon; Jean de Châteaumorant with a banner; the Sire de
Courcy with a banner, and a more ample one than any of the others
except the Duc de Bourbon. Alas! ’tis a sad thing to think that
all that has existed and exists no longer!”
The two lovers were not listening to the venerable dowager.
Phœbus had returned and was leaning on the back of his
betrothed’s chair, a charming post whence his libertine glance
plunged into all the openings of Fleur-de-Lys’s gorget. This
gorget gaped so conveniently, and allowed him to see so many
exquisite things and to divine so many more, that Phœbus, dazzled
by this skin with its gleams of satin, said to himself, “How can
any one love anything but a fair skin?”
Both were silent. The young girl raised sweet, enraptured eyes to
him from time to time, and their hair mingled in a ray of spring
sunshine.
“Phœbus,” said Fleur-de-Lys suddenly, in a low voice, “we are to
be married three months hence; swear to me that you have never
loved any other woman than myself.”
“I swear it, fair angel!” replied Phœbus, and his passionate
glances aided the sincere tone of his voice in convincing
Fleur-de-Lys.
Meanwhile, the good mother, charmed to see the betrothed pair on
terms of such perfect understanding, had just quitted the
apartment to attend to some domestic matter; Phœbus observed it,
and this so emboldened the adventurous captain that very strange
ideas mounted to his brain. Fleur-de-Lys loved him, he was her
betrothed; she was alone with him; his former taste for her had
re-awakened, not with all its freshness but with all its ardor;
after all, there is no great harm in tasting one’s wheat while it
is still in the blade; I do not know whether these ideas passed
through his mind, but one thing is certain, that Fleur-de-Lys was
suddenly alarmed by the expression of his glance. She looked
round and saw that her mother was no longer there.
“Good heavens!” said she, blushing and uneasy, “how very warm I
am!”
“I think, in fact,” replied Phœbus, “that it cannot be far from
midday. The sun is troublesome. We need only lower the curtains.”
“No, no,” exclaimed the poor little thing, “on the contrary, I
need air.”
And like a fawn who feels the breath of the pack of hounds, she
rose, ran to the window, opened it, and rushed upon the balcony.
Phœbus, much discomfited, followed her.
The Place du Parvis Notre-Dame, upon which the balcony looked, as
the reader knows, presented at that moment a singular and
sinister spectacle which caused the fright of the timid
Fleur-de-Lys to change its nature.
An immense crowd, which overflowed into all the neighboring
streets, encumbered the Place, properly speaking. The little
wall, breast high, which surrounded the Place, would not have
sufficed to keep it free had it not been lined with a thick hedge
of sergeants and hackbuteers, culverines in hand. Thanks to this
thicket of pikes and arquebuses, the Parvis was empty. Its
entrance was guarded by a force of halberdiers with the armorial
bearings of the bishop. The large doors of the church were
closed, and formed a contrast with the innumerable windows on the
Place, which, open to their very gables, allowed a view of
thousands of heads heaped up almost like the piles of bullets in
a park of artillery.
The surface of this rabble was dingy, dirty, earthy. The
spectacle which it was expecting was evidently one of the sort
which possess the privilege of bringing out and calling together
the vilest among the populace. Nothing is so hideous as the noise
which was made by that swarm of yellow caps and dirty heads. In
that throng there were more laughs than cries, more women than
men.
From time to time, a sharp and vibrating voice pierced the
general clamor.
“Ohé! Mahiet Baliffre! Is she to be hung yonder?”
“Fool! ’tis here that she is to make her apology in her shift!
the good God is going to cough Latin in her face! That is always
done here, at midday. If ’tis the gallows that you wish, go to
the Grève.”
“I will go there, afterwards.”
“Tell me, la Boucanbry? Is it true that she has refused a
confessor?”
“It appears so, La Bechaigne.”
“You see what a pagan she is!”
“’Tis the custom, monsieur. The bailiff of the courts is bound to
deliver the malefactor ready judged for execution if he be a
layman, to the provost of Paris; if a clerk, to the official of
the bishopric.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Oh, God!” said Fleur-de-Lys, “the poor creature!”
This thought filled with sadness the glance which she cast upon
the populace. The captain, much more occupied with her than with
that pack of the rabble, was amorously rumpling her girdle
behind. She turned round, entreating and smiling.
“Please let me alone, Phœbus! If my mother were to return, she
would see your hand!”
At that moment, midday rang slowly out from the clock of
Notre-Dame. A murmur of satisfaction broke out in the crowd. The
last vibration of the twelfth stroke had hardly died away when
all heads surged like the waves beneath a squall, and an immense
shout went up from the pavement, the windows, and the roofs,
“There she is!”
Fleur-de-Lys pressed her hands to her eyes, that she might not
see.
“Charming girl,” said Phœbus, “do you wish to withdraw?”
“No,” she replied; and she opened through curiosity, the eyes
which she had closed through fear.
A tumbrel drawn by a stout Norman horse, and all surrounded by
cavalry in violet livery with white crosses, had just debouched
upon the Place through the Rue Saint-Pierre-aux-Bœufs. The
sergeants of the watch were clearing a passage for it through the
crowd, by stout blows from their clubs. Beside the cart rode
several officers of justice and police, recognizable by their
black costume and their awkwardness in the saddle. Master Jacques
Charmolue paraded at their head.
In the fatal cart sat a young girl with her arms tied behind her
back, and with no priest beside her. She was in her shift; her
long black hair (the fashion then was to cut it off only at the
foot of the gallows) fell in disorder upon her half-bared throat
and shoulders.
Athwart that waving hair, more glossy than the plumage of a
raven, a thick, rough, gray rope was visible, twisted and
knotted, chafing her delicate collar-bones and twining round the
charming neck of the poor girl, like an earthworm round a flower.
Beneath that rope glittered a tiny amulet ornamented with bits of
green glass, which had been left to her no doubt, because nothing
is refused to those who are about to die. The spectators in the
windows could see in the bottom of the cart her naked legs which
she strove to hide beneath her, as by a final feminine instinct.