Notre-Dame de Paris
“Oh, by the way! is the little goat with the wench?”
“Yes. The devil take you!”
“They would have hanged it also, would they not?”
“What is that to me?”
“Yes, they would have hanged it. They hanged a sow last month.
The headsman loveth that; he eats the beast afterwards. Take my
pretty Djali! Poor little lamb!”
“Malediction!” exclaimed Dom Claude. “You are the executioner.
What means of safety have you found, knave? Must your idea be
extracted with the forceps?”
“Very fine, master, this is it.”
Gringoire bent his head to the archdeacon’s head and spoke to him
in a very low voice, casting an uneasy glance the while from one
end to the other of the street, though no one was passing. When
he had finished, Dom Claude took his hand and said coldly: “’Tis
well. Farewell until to-morrow.”
“Until to-morrow,” repeated Gringoire. And, while the archdeacon
was disappearing in one direction, he set off in the other,
saying to himself in a low voice: “Here’s a grand affair,
Monsieur Pierre Gringoire. Never mind! ’Tis not written that
because one is of small account one should take fright at a great
enterprise. Bitou carried a great bull on his shoulders; the
water-wagtails, the warblers, and the buntings traverse the
ocean.”
CHAPTER II. TURN VAGABOND.
On re-entering the cloister, the archdeacon found at the door of
his cell his brother Jehan du Moulin, who was waiting for him,
and who had beguiled the tedium of waiting by drawing on the wall
with a bit of charcoal, a profile of his elder brother, enriched
with a monstrous nose.
Dom Claude hardly looked at his brother; his thoughts were
elsewhere. That merry scamp’s face whose beaming had so often
restored serenity to the priest’s sombre physiognomy, was now
powerless to melt the gloom which grew more dense every day over
that corrupted, mephitic, and stagnant soul.
“Brother,” said Jehan timidly, “I am come to see you.”
The archdeacon did not even raise his eyes.
“What then?”
“Brother,” resumed the hypocrite, “you are so good to me, and you
give me such wise counsels that I always return to you.”
“What next?”
“Alas! brother, you were perfectly right when you said to
me,—“Jehan! Jehan! _cessat doctorum doctrina, discipulorum
disciplina_. Jehan, be wise, Jehan, be learned, Jehan, pass not
the night outside of the college without lawful occasion and due
leave of the master. Cudgel not the Picards: _noli, Joannes,
verberare Picardos_. Rot not like an unlettered ass, _quasi
asinus illitteratus_, on the straw seats of the school. Jehan,
allow yourself to be punished at the discretion of the master.
Jehan go every evening to chapel, and sing there an anthem with
verse and orison to Madame the glorious Virgin Mary.”—Alas! what
excellent advice was that!”
“And then?”
“Brother, you behold a culprit, a criminal, a wretch, a
libertine, a man of enormities! My dear brother, Jehan hath made
of your counsels straw and dung to trample under foot. I have
been well chastised for it, and God is extraordinarily just. As
long as I had money, I feasted, I lead a mad and joyous life. Oh!
how ugly and crabbed behind is debauch which is so charming in
front! Now I have no longer a blank; I have sold my napery, my
shirt and my towels; no more merry life! The beautiful candle is
extinguished and I have henceforth, only a wretched tallow dip
which smokes in my nose. The wenches jeer at me. I drink water. I
am overwhelmed with remorse and with creditors.”
“The rest?” said the archdeacon.
“Alas! my very dear brother, I should like to settle down to a
better life. I come to you full of contrition, I am penitent. I
make my confession. I beat my breast violently. You are quite
right in wishing that I should some day become a licentiate and
sub-monitor in the college of Torchi. At the present moment I
feel a magnificent vocation for that profession. But I have no
more ink and I must buy some; I have no more paper, I have no
more books, and I must buy some. For this purpose, I am greatly
in need of a little money, and I come to you, brother, with my
heart full of contrition.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes,” said the scholar. “A little money.”
“I have none.”
Then the scholar said, with an air which was both grave and
resolute: “Well, brother, I am sorry to be obliged to tell you
that very fine offers and propositions are being made to me in
another quarter. You will not give me any money? No. In that case
I shall become a professional vagabond.”
As he uttered these monstrous words, he assumed the mien of Ajax,
expecting to see the lightnings descend upon his head.
The archdeacon said coldly to him,—
“Become a vagabond.”
Jehan made him a deep bow, and descended the cloister stairs,
whistling.
At the moment when he was passing through the courtyard of the
cloister, beneath his brother’s window, he heard that window
open, raised his eyes and beheld the archdeacon’s severe head
emerge.
“Go to the devil!” said Dom Claude; “here is the last money which
you will get from me?”
At the same time, the priest flung Jehan a purse, which gave the
scholar a big bump on the forehead, and with which Jehan
retreated, both vexed and content, like a dog who had been stoned
with marrow bones.
CHAPTER III. LONG LIVE MIRTH.
The reader has probably not forgotten that a part of the Cour de
Miracles was enclosed by the ancient wall which surrounded the
city, a goodly number of whose towers had begun, even at that
epoch, to fall to ruin. One of these towers had been converted
into a pleasure resort by the vagabonds. There was a dram-shop in
the underground story, and the rest in the upper stories. This
was the most lively, and consequently the most hideous, point of
the whole outcast den. It was a sort of monstrous hive, which
buzzed there night and day. At night, when the remainder of the
beggar horde slept, when there was no longer a window lighted in
the dingy façades of the Place, when not a cry was any longer to
be heard proceeding from those innumerable families, those
ant-hills of thieves, of wenches, and stolen or bastard children,
the merry tower was still recognizable by the noise which it
made, by the scarlet light which, flashing simultaneously from
the air-holes, the windows, the fissures in the cracked walls,
escaped, so to speak, from its every pore.
The cellar then, was the dram-shop. The descent to it was through
a low door and by a staircase as steep as a classic Alexandrine.
Over the door, by way of a sign there hung a marvellous daub,
representing new sous and dead chickens,[53] with this, pun
below: _Aux sonneurs pour les trépassés_,—The ringers for the
dead.
One evening when the curfew was sounding from all the belfries in
Paris, the sergeants of the watch might have observed, had it
been granted to them to enter the formidable Court of Miracles,
that more tumult than usual was in progress in the vagabonds’
tavern, that more drinking was being done, and louder swearing.
Outside in the Place, there, were many groups conversing in low
tones, as when some great plan is being framed, and here and
there a knave crouching down engaged in sharpening a villanous
iron blade on a paving-stone.
Meanwhile, in the tavern itself, wine and gaming offered such a
powerful diversion to the ideas which occupied the vagabonds’
lair that evening, that it would have been difficult to divine
from the remarks of the drinkers, what was the matter in hand.
They merely wore a gayer air than was their wont, and some weapon
could be seen glittering between the legs of each of them,—a
sickle, an axe, a big two-edged sword or the hook of an old
hackbut.
The room, circular in form, was very spacious; but the tables
were so thickly set and the drinkers so numerous, that all that
the tavern contained, men, women, benches, beer-jugs, all that
were drinking, all that were sleeping, all that were playing, the
well, the lame, seemed piled up pell-mell, with as much order and
harmony as a heap of oyster shells. There were a few tallow dips
lighted on the tables; but the real luminary of this tavern, that
which played the part in this dram-shop of the chandelier of an
opera house, was the fire. This cellar was so damp that the fire
was never allowed to go out, even in midsummer; an immense
chimney with a sculptured mantel, all bristling with heavy iron
andirons and cooking utensils, with one of those huge fires of
mixed wood and peat which at night, in village streets make the
reflection of forge windows stand out so red on the opposite
walls. A big dog gravely seated in the ashes was turning a spit
loaded with meat before the coals.
Great as was the confusion, after the first glance one could
distinguish in that multitude, three principal groups which
thronged around three personages already known to the reader. One
of these personages, fantastically accoutred in many an oriental
rag, was Mathias Hungadi Spicali, Duke of Egypt and Bohemia. The
knave was seated on a table with his legs crossed, and in a loud
voice was bestowing his knowledge of magic, both black and white,
on many a gaping face which surrounded him. Another rabble
pressed close around our old friend, the valiant King of Thunes,
armed to the teeth. Clopin Trouillefou, with a very serious air
and in a low voice, was regulating the distribution of an
enormous cask of arms, which stood wide open in front of him and
from whence poured out in profusion, axes, swords, bassinets,
coats of mail, broadswords, lance-heads, arrows, and
viretons,[54] like apples and grapes from a horn of plenty. Every
one took something from the cask, one a morion, another a long,
straight sword, another a dagger with a cross-shaped hilt. The
very children were arming themselves, and there were even
cripples in bowls who, in armor and cuirass, made their way
between the legs of the drinkers, like great beetles.
Finally, a third audience, the most noisy, the most jovial, and
the most numerous, encumbered benches and tables, in the midst of
which harangued and swore a flute-like voice, which escaped from
beneath a heavy armor, complete from casque to spurs. The
individual who had thus screwed a whole outfit upon his body, was
so hidden by his warlike accoutrements that nothing was to be
seen of his person save an impertinent, red, snub nose, a rosy
mouth, and bold eyes. His belt was full of daggers and poniards,
a huge sword on his hip, a rusted cross-bow at his left, and a
vast jug of wine in front of him, without reckoning on his right,
a fat wench with her bosom uncovered. All mouths around him were
laughing, cursing, and drinking.
Add twenty secondary groups, the waiters, male and female,