Notre-Dame de Paris
field? their gallows and their hangman at every cross-road among
our people? So that as the Greek believed that he had as many
gods as there were fountains, and the Persian as many as he
beheld stars, the Frenchman counts as many kings as he sees
gibbets! Pardieu! ’tis an evil thing, and the confusion of it
displeases me. I should greatly like to know whether it be the
mercy of God that there should be in Paris any other lord than
the king, any other judge than our parliament, any other emperor
than ourselves in this empire! By the faith of my soul! the day
must certainly come when there shall exist in France but one
king, one lord, one judge, one headsman, as there is in paradise
but one God!”
He lifted his cap again, and continued, still dreamily, with the
air and accent of a hunter who is cheering on his pack of hounds:
“Good, my people! bravely done! break these false lords! do your
duty! at them! have at them! pillage them! take them! sack
them!... Ah! you want to be kings, messeigneurs? On, my people
on!”
Here he interrupted himself abruptly, bit his lips as though to
take back his thought which had already half escaped, bent his
piercing eyes in turn on each of the five persons who surrounded
him, and suddenly grasping his hat with both hands and staring
full at it, he said to it: “Oh! I would burn you if you knew what
there was in my head.”
Then casting about him once more the cautious and uneasy glance
of the fox re-entering his hole,—
“No matter! we will succor monsieur the bailiff. Unfortunately,
we have but few troops here at the present moment, against so
great a populace. We must wait until to-morrow. The order will be
transmitted to the City and every one who is caught will be
immediately hung.”
“By the way, sire,” said Gossip Coictier, “I had forgotten that
in the first agitation, the watch have seized two laggards of the
band. If your majesty desires to see these men, they are here.”
“If I desire to see them!” cried the king. “What! _Pasque-Dieu!_
You forget a thing like that! Run quick, you, Olivier! Go, seek
them!”
Master Olivier quitted the room and returned a moment later with
the two prisoners, surrounded by archers of the guard. The first
had a coarse, idiotic, drunken and astonished face. He was
clothed in rags, and walked with one knee bent and dragging his
leg. The second had a pallid and smiling countenance, with which
the reader is already acquainted.
The king surveyed them for a moment without uttering a word, then
addressing the first one abruptly,—
“What’s your name?”
“Gieffroy Pincebourde.”
“Your trade.”
“Outcast.”
“What were you going to do in this damnable sedition?”
The outcast stared at the king, and swung his arms with a stupid
air.
He had one of those awkwardly shaped heads where intelligence is
about as much at its ease as a light beneath an extinguisher.
“I know not,” said he. “They went, I went.”
“Were you not going to outrageously attack and pillage your lord,
the bailiff of the palace?”
“I know that they were going to take something from some one.
That is all.”
A soldier pointed out to the king a billhook which he had seized
on the person of the vagabond.
“Do you recognize this weapon?” demanded the king.
“Yes; ’tis my billhook; I am a vine-dresser.”
“And do you recognize this man as your companion?” added Louis
XI., pointing to the other prisoner.
“No, I do not know him.”
“That will do,” said the king, making a sign with his finger to
the silent personage who stood motionless beside the door, to
whom we have already called the reader’s attention.
“Gossip Tristan, here is a man for you.”
Tristan l’Hermite bowed. He gave an order in a low voice to two
archers, who led away the poor vagabond.
In the meantime, the king had approached the second prisoner, who
was perspiring in great drops: “Your name?”
“Sire, Pierre Gringoire.”
“Your trade?”
“Philosopher, sire.”
“How do you permit yourself, knave, to go and besiege our friend,
monsieur the bailiff of the palace, and what have you to say
concerning this popular agitation?”
“Sire, I had nothing to do with it.”
“Come, now! you wanton wretch, were not you apprehended by the
watch in that bad company?”
“No, sire, there is a mistake. ’Tis a fatality. I make tragedies.
Sire, I entreat your majesty to listen to me. I am a poet. ’Tis
the melancholy way of men of my profession to roam the streets by
night. I was passing there. It was mere chance. I was unjustly
arrested; I am innocent of this civil tempest. Your majesty sees
that the vagabond did not recognize me. I conjure your majesty—”
“Hold your tongue!” said the king, between two swallows of his
ptisan. “You split our head!”
Tristan l’Hermite advanced and pointing to Gringoire,—
“Sire, can this one be hanged also?”
This was the first word that he had uttered.
“Phew!” replied the king, “I see no objection.”
“I see a great many!” said Gringoire.
At that moment, our philosopher was greener than an olive. He
perceived from the king’s cold and indifferent mien that there
was no other resource than something very pathetic, and he flung
himself at the feet of Louis XI., exclaiming, with gestures of
despair:—
“Sire! will your majesty deign to hear me. Sire! break not in
thunder over so small a thing as myself. God’s great lightning
doth not bombard a lettuce. Sire, you are an august and, very
puissant monarch; have pity on a poor man who is honest, and who
would find it more difficult to stir up a revolt than a cake of
ice would to give out a spark! Very gracious sire, kindness is
the virtue of a lion and a king. Alas! rigor only frightens
minds; the impetuous gusts of the north wind do not make the
traveller lay aside his cloak; the sun, bestowing his rays little
by little, warms him in such ways that it will make him strip to
his shirt. Sire, you are the sun. I protest to you, my sovereign
lord and master, that I am not an outcast, thief, and disorderly
fellow. Revolt and brigandage belong not to the outfit of Apollo.
I am not the man to fling myself into those clouds which break
out into seditious clamor. I am your majesty’s faithful vassal.
That same jealousy which a husband cherisheth for the honor of
his wife, the resentment which the son hath for the love of his
father, a good vassal should feel for the glory of his king; he
should pine away for the zeal of this house, for the
aggrandizement of his service. Every other passion which should
transport him would be but madness. These, sire, are my maxims of
state: then do not judge me to be a seditious and thieving rascal
because my garment is worn at the elbows. If you will grant me
mercy, sire, I will wear it out on the knees in praying to God
for you night and morning! Alas! I am not extremely rich, ’tis
true. I am even rather poor. But not vicious on that account. It
is not my fault. Every one knoweth that great wealth is not to be
drawn from literature, and that those who are best posted in good
books do not always have a great fire in winter. The advocate’s
trade taketh all the grain, and leaveth only straw to the other
scientific professions. There are forty very excellent proverbs
anent the hole-ridden cloak of the philosopher. Oh, sire!
clemency is the only light which can enlighten the interior of so
great a soul. Clemency beareth the torch before all the other
virtues. Without it they are but blind men groping after God in
the dark. Compassion, which is the same thing as clemency,
causeth the love of subjects, which is the most powerful
bodyguard to a prince. What matters it to your majesty, who
dazzles all faces, if there is one poor man more on earth, a poor
innocent philosopher spluttering amid the shadows of calamity,
with an empty pocket which resounds against his hollow belly?
Moreover, sire, I am a man of letters. Great kings make a pearl
for their crowns by protecting letters. Hercules did not disdain
the title of Musagetes. Mathias Corvin favored Jean de Monroyal,
the ornament of mathematics. Now, ’tis an ill way to protect
letters to hang men of letters. What a stain on Alexander if he
had hung Aristoteles! This act would not be a little patch on the
face of his reputation to embellish it, but a very malignant
ulcer to disfigure it. Sire! I made a very proper epithalamium
for Mademoiselle of Flanders and Monseigneur the very august
Dauphin. That is not a firebrand of rebellion. Your majesty sees
that I am not a scribbler of no reputation, that I have studied
excellently well, and that I possess much natural eloquence. Have
mercy upon me, sire! In so doing you will perform a gallant deed
to our Lady, and I swear to you that I am greatly terrified at
the idea of being hanged!”
So saying, the unhappy Gringoire kissed the king’s slippers, and
Guillaume Rym said to Coppenole in a low tone: “He doth well to
drag himself on the earth. Kings are like the Jupiter of Crete,
they have ears only in their feet.” And without troubling himself
about the Jupiter of Crete, the hosier replied with a heavy
smile, and his eyes fixed on Gringoire: “Oh! that’s it exactly! I
seem to hear Chancellor Hugonet craving mercy of me.”
When Gringoire paused at last, quite out of breath, he raised his
head tremblingly towards the king, who was engaged in scratching
a spot on the knee of his breeches with his finger-nail; then his
majesty began to drink from the goblet of ptisan. But he uttered
not a word, and this silence tortured Gringoire. At last the king
looked at him. “Here is a terrible bawler!” said, he. Then,
turning to Tristan l’Hermite, “Bah! let him go!”
Gringoire fell backwards, quite thunderstruck with joy.
“At liberty!” growled Tristan “Doth not your majesty wish to have
him detained a little while in a cage?”
“Gossip,” retorted Louis XI., “think you that ’tis for birds of
this feather that we cause to be made cages at three hundred and
sixty-seven livres, eight sous, three deniers apiece? Release him
at once, the wanton (Louis XI. was fond of this word which
formed, with _Pasque-Dieu_, the foundation of his joviality), and
put him out with a buffet.”
“Ugh!” cried Gringoire, “what a great king is here!”
And for fear of a counter order, he rushed towards the door,
which Tristan opened for him with a very bad grace. The soldiers
left the room with him, pushing him before them with stout
thwacks, which Gringoire bore like a true stoical philosopher.
The king’s good humor since the revolt against the bailiff had
been announced to him, made itself apparent in every way. This
unwonted clemency was no small sign of it. Tristan l’Hermite in
his corner wore the surly look of a dog who has had a bone