The Hunchback of Notre Dame (10 page)

But it all was in vain; none of these beauties were appreciated or understood. With the Cardinal’s entrance, an invisible and magical cord seemed suddenly to draw all eyes from the marble table to the dais, from the southern to the western portion of the hall. Nothing could free the audience from the spell; every eye was fixed, and the newcomers and their accursed names, and their faces and their dresses, were a perpetual source of distraction. It was heartrending. Save for Gisquette and Liénarde, who occasionally turned away when Gringoire pulled them by the sleeve; save for the patient fat neighbor, no one listened to, no one looked at, the poor forsaken morality. Gringoire saw nothing but profiles.

With what bitterness he saw his whole framework of fame and poetry crumble away bit by bit! And to think that this very mob had been on the point of revolting against the bailiff, from sheer impatience to hear his work! Now that they had it, they cared nothing for it,—this same performance which began amid such universal applause! Eternal ebb and flow of popular favor! To think that they had come so near hanging the bailiff’s men! What would he not have given to recover that golden hour!

The usher’s brutal monologue ceased at last; every one had arrived, and Gringoire breathed again; the actors went bravely on.

But then what should Master Coppenole, the hosier, do but rise suddenly; and Gringoire heard him utter, amid universal attention, this abominable speech:—

“Citizens and squires of Paris, I know not, by God’s cross! what we are doing here. I do indeed see in yonder corner, upon those boards, people who look as if they were spoiling for a fight. I don’t know whether that is what you call a ‘mystery,’ but it is not at all amusing: they abuse one another, and get no farther. For full fifteen minutes I have been waiting for the first blow; nothing comes; they are cowards, who deal in no other weapons than insults. You ought to fetch a few wrestlers from London or Rotterdam, and then you’d have a treat! You would see blows that could be heard all over the place; but those fellows yonder are a disgrace. They might at least give us a Morris-dance or some other mummery! This is not what I was told I should see; I was promised a Feast of Fools and the election of a Pope. We have our Pope of Fools in Ghent, too; and we’re not behind you in that, by God’s cross! But this is how we do it: we collect a crowd, as you do here; then every man in his turn puts his head through a hole and pulls a face at the rest; he who makes the ugliest is chosen pope by popular acclaim; there! It’s very amusing. Would you like to choose your pope after the fashion of my country? At least it would be better than listening to those chatterboxes. If they will come and make their grimaces through the window, they can join the game. What say you, Sir Citizens? There are quite enough absurd specimens of both sexes here to give us a good Flemish laugh, and we have ugly mugs enough to hope for some fine grimaces.”

Gringoire longed to answer; but amazement, anger, indignation, robbed him of speech. Moreover, the proposal of the popular hosier was greeted with such enthusiasm by those plain citizens who were flattered at being dubbed “Squires,” that all opposition was useless. Nothing remained but to follow the current. Gringoire hid his face in his hands, not being lucky enough to have a cloak to cover his head, like Agamemnon of Timanthes.

CHAPTER V

Quasimodo

I
n the twinkling of an eye, all was ready for the execution of Coppenole’s idea. Citizens, students, and lawyers’ clerks set briskly to work. The little chapel opposite the marble table was chosen as the stage for the grimaces. A broken pane in the pretty rose-window over the door left free a circle of stone, through which it was agreed that the contestants should thrust their heads. To reach it, all were obliged to climb upon a couple of barrels, which had been discovered somewhere and set one upon the other. It was settled that all candidates, men or women (for a papess might be chosen), lest the effect of their grimaces should be weakened, should cover their faces and remain hidden in the chapel until the proper moment to appear. In less than an instant the chapel was filled with aspirants, upon whom the door was closed.

Coppenole, from his seat, directed everything, arranged everything. During the confusion, the Cardinal, no less disconcerted than Gringoire, withdrew with all his train, feigning business and vespers; the same crowd which had been so stirred by his coming, showing not the least emotion at his departure. Guillaume Rym was the only one who observed his Eminence’s flight. Popular attention, like the sun, pursued its course; starting from one end of the hall, after pausing for some time in the center, it was now at the other end. The marble table, the brocaded dais, had had their day; it was the turn of Louis XI’s chapel. The field was now clear for every kind of folly. No one remained but the Flemings and the vulgar herd.

The grimaces began. The first to appear at the window, with eyelids inverted until they showed the red, a cavernous mouth, and a forehead wrinkled like the boots of a hussar under the Empire, produced such inextinguishable laughter, that Homer would have taken all these clowns for gods. And yet, the great hall was anything but an Olympus, and Gringoire’s poor Jupiter knew this better than any one. A second, a third wry face fol- 46 lowed, then another, and another; and still the shouts of laughter and stamps of delight increased. There was a certain peculiar intoxication in the spectacle, a certain potent ecstasy and fascination which it would be hard to explain to the reader of our own day and society. Let him imagine a series of faces presenting in turn every geometric form, from the triangle to the trapezium, from the cone to the polyhedron; every human expression, from rage to lust; every age, from the wrinkles of the new-born babe to the furrows of the old and dying; every religious phantasmagoria, from Faunus to Beelzebub; every animal profile, from the jaws of the dog to the beak of the bird, from the boar’s head to the pig’s snout. Let him picture to himself all the grotesque heads carved on the Pont Neuf, those petrified nightmares from the hand of Germain Pilon, taking breath and life, and coming in turn to gaze at you with fiery eyes; all the masks from a Venetian carnival passing before your glass,—in one word, a human kaleidoscope.

The revelry became more and more Flemish. Téniers could have given but an imperfect idea of it! Imagine Salvator Rosa’s battle-piece turned into a bacchanal feast. There were no longer students, ambassadors, townspeople, men, or women; no longer a Clopin Trouillefou, a Gilles Lecornu, a Simone Quatrelivres, or a Robin Poussepain. All distinctions died in the common license. The great hall ceased to be anything but a vast furnace of effrontery and mirth, wherein every mouth was a cry, every face a grimace, every individual a posture; the sum total howled and yelled. The strange faces which took their turn in gnashing their teeth through the rose-window were like so many brands cast into the flames; and from this effervescent mob arose, like steam from a furnace, a sharp, shrill, piercing sound, like the buzz of a gnat’s wings.

“Oh, confound it!”

“Just look at that face!”

“That’s nothing!”

“Let’s have another!”

“Guillemette Maugerepuis, do look at that bull’s head! it only lacks horns. It is not your husband.”

“Another!”

“By the Pope’s head! what’s the meaning of that contortion?”

“Well there! that’s not fair. You should show only your face.”

“That damned Perrette Callebotte! She is just capable of such a thing.”

“Noël! Noël!”

“I’m smothering!”

“There’s a fellow whose ears are too big to go through!”

But we must do justice to our friend Jehan. Amidst this uproar he was still to be seen perched upon his pillar, like a cabin-boy on a topsail. He exerted himself with incredible fury. His mouth was opened wide, and there issued from it so a yell which no one heard,—not that it was drowned by the general clamor, tremen dous though it was; but because it undoubtedly reached the limit of audible shrillness,—the twelve thousand vibrations of Sauveur or the eight thousand of Biot.

As for Gringoire, the first moment of depression over, he recovered his composure. He braced himself to meet adversity. “Go on!” he cried for the third time to his actors, whom he regarded as mere talking-machines; then, as he strode up and down in front of the marble table, he was seized with a desire to appear in his turn at the chapel window, were it only for the pleasure of making faces at that ungrateful mob. “But no, that would be unworthy of us; no vengeance. Let us struggle on to the end,” he murmured; “the power of poetry over the people is great; I will bring them back. Let us see whether grimaces or polite learning will triumph.”

Alas! he was left the only spectator of his play.

It was even worse than before. Now he saw nothing but people’s backs.

I am wrong. The patient fat man, whom he had already consulted at a critical moment, was still turned towards the theater. As for Gisquette and Liénarde, they had long since deserted.

Gringoire was touched to the heart by the fidelity of his only listener. He went up to him and addressed him, shaking him slightly by the arm; for the worthy man was leaning against the railing in a light doze.

“Sir,” said Gringoire, “I thank you.”

“Sir,” replied the fat fellow with a yawn, “for what?”

“I see what annoys you,” resumed the poet; “it is all this noise which prevents you from hearing readily. But be calm! your name shall be handed down to posterity. Your name, if you please?”

“Renauld Château, Keeper of the Seals of Châtelet, at Paris, at your service.”

“Sir, you are the sole representative of the muses here,” said Gringoire.

“You are too kind, sir,” replied the Keeper of the Seals of Chatelet.

“You are the only man,” added Gringoire, “who has paid proper attention to the play. How do you like it?”

“Ha, ha!” replied the fat magistrate, who was but half awake, “jolly enough, in truth!”

Gringoire was forced to content himself with this eulogy; for a storm of applause, mingled with prodigious shouts, cut short their conversation. The Pope of Fools was elected.

“Noël! Noel! Noël!” shouted the people on all sides.

That was indeed a marvelous grin which now beamed through the hole in the rose-window. After all the pentagonal, hexagonal, and heteroclitic faces which had followed one another in quick succession at the window without realizing that ideal of the grotesque constructed by imagination exalted by revelry, it required nothing less to gain the popular vote than the sublime grimace which had just dazzled the assembly. Master Coppenole himself applauded; and Clopin Trouillefou, who had competed for the prize (and Heaven knows to what intensity of ugliness his features could attain), confessed himself conquered. We will do the same. We will not try to give the reader any idea of that tetrahedron-like nose, of that horseshoe-shaped mouth; of that small left eye overhung by a bushy red eyebrow, while the right eye was completely hidden by a monstrous wart; of those uneven, broken teeth, with sad gaps here and there like the battlements of a fortress; of that callous lip, over which one of these teeth projected like an elephant’s tusk; of that forked chin; and especially of the expression pervading all this, that mixture of malice, amazement, and melancholy. Imagine, if you can, that comprehensive sight.

The vote was unanimous; the crowd rushed into the chapel. They returned leading the fortunate Pope of Fools in triumph. But it was then only that surprise and admiration reached their highest pitch; the grimace was his natural face.

Or rather the entire man was a grimace. A large head bristling with red hair; between his shoulders an enormous hump, with a corresponding prominence in front; legs and thighs so singularly crooked that they touched only at the knees, and, seen from the front, resembled two reaping-hooks united at the handle; broad feet, huge hands; and, with all this deformity, a certain awe-inspiring air of vigor, agility, and courage; strange exception to the rule which declares power, as well as beauty, to be the result of harmony,—such was the pope whom the fools had chosen to reign over them.

He looked like a giant broken to pieces and badly cemented together.

When this species of Cyclop appeared upon the threshold of the chapel, motionless, thickset, almost as broad as he was long, “the square of his base,” as a great man once expressed it, the people recognized him instantly, by his party-colored red and purple coat spangled with silver, and particularly by the perfection of his ugliness, and cried aloud with one voice:—

“It is Quasimodo, the bell-ringer! It is Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre-Dame! Quasimodo, the one-eyed! Quasimodo, the bandy-legged! Noel! Noël!”

The poor devil evidently had an abundance of nicknames to choose from.

“Let all pregnant women beware!” cried the students.

“Or all those who hope to be so,” added Joannes.

In fact, the women hid their faces.

“Oh, the ugly monkey!” said one of them.

“As wicked as he is ugly,” added another.

“He’s the very devil,” added a third.

“I am unlucky enough to live near Notre-Dame. I hear him prowling among the gutters by night.”

“With the cats.”

“He’s always on our roofs.”

“He casts spells upon us through the chimneys.”

“The other evening he came and pulled a face at me through the window. I thought it was a man. He gave me such a fright!”

“I’m sure he attends the Witches’ Sabbath. Once he left a broomstick on my leads.”

“Oh, what a disagreeable hunchback’s face he has!”

“Oh, the villainous creature!”

“Faugh!”

The men, on the contrary, were charmed, and applauded.

Quasimodo, the object of this uproar, still stood at the chapel door, sad and serious, letting himself be admired.

A student (Robin Poussepain, I think) laughed in his very face, and somewhat too close. Quasimodo merely took him by the belt and cast him ten paces away through the crowd; all without uttering a word.

Master Coppenole, lost in wonder, approached him.

“By God’s cross and the Holy Father! you are the most lovely monster that I ever saw in my life. You deserve to be pope of Rome as well as of Paris.”

So saying, he laid his hand sportively upon his shoulder. Quasimodo never budged. Coppenole continued:—

“You’re a rascal with whom I have a longing to feast, were it to cost me a new douzain of twelve pounds Tours. What say you?”

Quasimodo made no answer.

“By God’s cross!” said the hosier, “you’re not deaf, are you?”

He was indeed deaf.

Still, he began to lose his temper at Coppenole’s proceedings, and turned suddenly towards him, gnashing his teeth so savagely that the Flemish giant recoiled, like a bull-dog before a cat.

Then a circle of terror and respect, whose radius was not less than fifteen geometric paces, was formed about the strange character. An old woman explained to Master Coppenole that Quasimodo was deaf.

“Deaf!” said the hosier, with his hearty Flemish laugh. “By God’s cross! but he is a perfect pope!”

“Ha! I know him now,” cried Jehan, who had at last descended from his capital to view Quasimodo more closely; “it’s my brother the archdeacon’s bell-ringer. Good-day, Quasimodo!”

“What a devil of a fellow!” said Robin Poussepain, still aching from his fall. “He appears: he’s a hunchback; he walks: he’s bandy-legged; he looks at you: he is blind of one eye; you talk to him: he is deaf. By the way, what use does this Polyphemus make of his tongue?”

“He talks when he likes,” said the old woman; “he grew deaf from ringing the bells. He is not dumb.”

“That’s all he lacks,” remarked Jehan.

“And he has one eye too many,” said Robin Poussepain.

“Not at all,” judiciously observed Jehan. “A one-eyed man is far more incomplete than a blind one. He knows what he lacks.”

But all the beggars, all the lackeys, all the cutpurses, together with the students, had gone in procession to fetch, from the storeroom of the basoche, the pasteboard tiara and mock robes of the Pope of Fools. Quasimodo submitted to be arrayed in them without a frown, and with a sort of proud docility. Then he was seated upon a barrow painted in motley colors. Twelve officers of the fraternity of fools raised it to their shoulders; and a sort of bitter, scornful joy dawned upon the morose face of the Cyclop when he saw beneath his shapeless feet the heads of so many handsome, straight, and well-made men. Then the howling, tatterdemalion train set out, as was the custom, to make the tour of the galleries within the Palace before parading the streets and public squares.