Notre-Dame de Paris
before a long procession of black and silent men which was
descending towards the Pont au Change, through the tortuous
streets which pierce the close-built neighborhood of the markets
in every direction.
CHAPTER IV. AN AWKWARD FRIEND.
That night, Quasimodo did not sleep. He had just made his last
round of the church. He had not noticed, that at the moment when
he was closing the doors, the archdeacon had passed close to him
and betrayed some displeasure on seeing him bolting and barring
with care the enormous iron locks which gave to their large
leaves the solidity of a wall. Dom Claude’s air was even more
preoccupied than usual. Moreover, since the nocturnal adventure
in the cell, he had constantly abused Quasimodo, but in vain did
he ill treat, and even beat him occasionally, nothing disturbed
the submission, patience, the devoted resignation of the faithful
bellringer. He endured everything on the part of the archdeacon,
insults, threats, blows, without murmuring a complaint. At the
most, he gazed uneasily after Dom Claude when the latter ascended
the staircase of the tower; but the archdeacon had abstained from
presenting himself again before the gypsy’s eyes.
On that night, accordingly, Quasimodo, after having cast a glance
at his poor bells which he so neglected now, Jacqueline, Marie,
and Thibauld, mounted to the summit of the Northern tower, and
there setting his dark lanturn, well closed, upon the leads, he
began to gaze at Paris. The night, as we have already said, was
very dark. Paris which, so to speak was not lighted at that
epoch, presented to the eye a confused collection of black
masses, cut here and there by the whitish curve of the Seine.
Quasimodo no longer saw any light with the exception of one
window in a distant edifice, whose vague and sombre profile was
outlined well above the roofs, in the direction of the Porte
Sainte-Antoine. There also, there was some one awake.
As the only eye of the bellringer peered into that horizon of
mist and night, he felt within him an inexpressible uneasiness.
For several days he had been upon his guard. He had perceived men
of sinister mien, who never took their eyes from the young girl’s
asylum, prowling constantly about the church. He fancied that
some plot might be in process of formation against the unhappy
refugee. He imagined that there existed a popular hatred against
her, as against himself, and that it was very possible that
something might happen soon. Hence he remained upon his tower on
the watch, “dreaming in his dream-place,” as Rabelais says, with
his eye directed alternately on the cell and on Paris, keeping
faithful guard, like a good dog, with a thousand suspicions in
his mind.
All at once, while he was scrutinizing the great city with that
eye which nature, by a sort of compensation, had made so piercing
that it could almost supply the other organs which Quasimodo
lacked, it seemed to him that there was something singular about
the Quay de la Vieille-Pelleterie, that there was a movement at
that point, that the line of the parapet, standing out blackly
against the whiteness of the water was not straight and tranquil,
like that of the other quays, but that it undulated to the eye,
like the waves of a river, or like the heads of a crowd in
motion.
This struck him as strange. He redoubled his attention. The
movement seemed to be advancing towards the City. There was no
light. It lasted for some time on the quay; then it gradually
ceased, as though that which was passing were entering the
interior of the island; then it stopped altogether, and the line
of the quay became straight and motionless again.
At the moment when Quasimodo was lost in conjectures, it seemed
to him that the movement had re-appeared in the Rue du Parvis,
which is prolonged into the city perpendicularly to the façade of
Notre-Dame. At length, dense as was the darkness, he beheld the
head of a column debouch from that street, and in an instant a
crowd—of which nothing could be distinguished in the gloom except
that it was a crowd—spread over the Place.
This spectacle had a terror of its own. It is probable that this
singular procession, which seemed so desirous of concealing
itself under profound darkness, maintained a silence no less
profound. Nevertheless, some noise must have escaped it, were it
only a trampling. But this noise did not even reach our deaf man,
and this great multitude, of which he saw hardly anything, and of
which he heard nothing, though it was marching and moving so near
him, produced upon him the effect of a rabble of dead men, mute,
impalpable, lost in a smoke. It seemed to him, that he beheld
advancing towards him a fog of men, and that he saw shadows
moving in the shadow.
Then his fears returned to him, the idea of an attempt against
the gypsy presented itself once more to his mind. He was
conscious, in a confused way, that a violent crisis was
approaching. At that critical moment he took counsel with
himself, with better and prompter reasoning than one would have
expected from so badly organized a brain. Ought he to awaken the
gypsy? to make her escape? Whither? The streets were invested,
the church backed on the river. No boat, no issue!—There was but
one thing to be done; to allow himself to be killed on the
threshold of Notre-Dame, to resist at least until succor arrived,
if it should arrive, and not to trouble la Esmeralda’s sleep.
This resolution once taken, he set to examining the enemy with
more tranquillity.
The throng seemed to increase every moment in the church square.
Only, he presumed that it must be making very little noise, since
the windows on the Place remained closed. All at once, a flame
flashed up, and in an instant seven or eight lighted torches
passed over the heads of the crowd, shaking their tufts of flame
in the deep shade. Quasimodo then beheld distinctly surging in
the Parvis a frightful herd of men and women in rags, armed with
scythes, pikes, billhooks and partisans, whose thousand points
glittered. Here and there black pitchforks formed horns to the
hideous faces. He vaguely recalled this populace, and thought
that he recognized all the heads who had saluted him as Pope of
the Fools some months previously. One man who held a torch in one
hand and a club in the other, mounted a stone post and seemed to
be haranguing them. At the same time the strange army executed
several evolutions, as though it were taking up its post around
the church. Quasimodo picked up his lantern and descended to the
platform between the towers, in order to get a nearer view, and
to spy out a means of defence.
Clopin Trouillefou, on arriving in front of the lofty portal of
Notre-Dame had, in fact, ranged his troops in order of battle.
Although he expected no resistance, he wished, like a prudent
general, to preserve an order which would permit him to face, at
need, a sudden attack of the watch or the police. He had
accordingly stationed his brigade in such a manner that, viewed
from above and from a distance, one would have pronounced it the
Roman triangle of the battle of Ecnomus, the boar’s head of
Alexander or the famous wedge of Gustavus Adolphus. The base of
this triangle rested on the back of the Place in such a manner as
to bar the entrance of the Rue du Parvis; one of its sides faced
Hôtel-Dieu, the other the Rue Saint-Pierre-aux-Bœufs. Clopin
Trouillefou had placed himself at the apex with the Duke of
Egypt, our friend Jehan, and the most daring of the scavengers.
An enterprise like that which the vagabonds were now undertaking
against Notre-Dame was not a very rare thing in the cities of the
Middle Ages. What we now call the “police” did not exist then. In
populous cities, especially in capitals, there existed no single,
central, regulating power. Feudalism had constructed these great
communities in a singular manner. A city was an assembly of a
thousand seigneuries, which divided it into compartments of all
shapes and sizes. Hence, a thousand conflicting establishments of
police; that is to say, no police at all. In Paris, for example,
independently of the hundred and forty-one lords who laid claim
to a manor, there were five and twenty who laid claim to a manor
and to administering justice, from the Bishop of Paris, who had
five hundred streets, to the Prior of Notre-Dame des Champs, who
had four. All these feudal justices recognized the suzerain
authority of the king only in name. All possessed the right of
control over the roads. All were at home. Louis XI., that
indefatigable worker, who so largely began the demolition of the
feudal edifice, continued by Richelieu and Louis XIV. for the
profit of royalty, and finished by Mirabeau for the benefit of
the people,—Louis XI. had certainly made an effort to break this
network of seignories which covered Paris, by throwing violently
across them all two or three troops of general police. Thus, in
1465, an order to the inhabitants to light candles in their
windows at nightfall, and to shut up their dogs under penalty of
death; in the same year, an order to close the streets in the
evening with iron chains, and a prohibition to wear daggers or
weapons of offence in the streets at night. But in a very short
time, all these efforts at communal legislation fell into
abeyance. The _bourgeois_ permitted the wind to blow out their
candles in the windows, and their dogs to stray; the iron chains
were stretched only in a state of siege; the prohibition to wear
daggers wrought no other changes than from the name of the Rue
Coupe-Gueule to the name of the Rue-Coupe-Gorge[60] which is an
evident progress. The old scaffolding of feudal jurisdictions
remained standing; an immense aggregation of bailiwicks and
seignories crossing each other all over the city, interfering
with each other, entangled in one another, enmeshing each other,
trespassing on each other; a useless thicket of watches,
sub-watches and counter-watches, over which, with armed force,
passed brigandage, rapine, and sedition. Hence, in this disorder,
deeds of violence on the part of the populace directed against a
palace, a hôtel, or house in the most thickly populated quarters,
were not unheard-of occurrences. In the majority of such cases,
the neighbors did not meddle with the matter unless the pillaging
extended to themselves. They stopped up their ears to the musket
shots, closed their shutters, barricaded their doors, allowed the
matter to be concluded with or without the watch, and the next
day it was said in Paris, “Étienne Barbette was broken open last
night. The Marshal de Clermont was seized last night, etc.”
Hence, not only the royal habitations, the Louvre, the Palace,
the Bastille, the Tournelles, but simply seignorial residences,