The Hunchback of Notre Dame (40 page)

As she said this, she flung her arms around the officer’s neck; she gazed up into his face imploringly, and with a lovely smile through her tears. Her delicate throat rubbed against his cloth doublet with its rough embroideries. She threw herself across his lap, her beautiful body half revealed. The enraptured captain pressed his burning lips to those beautiful brown shoulders. The young girl, her eyes fixed on the ceiling, her head thrown back, shuddered and trembled at his kiss.

All at once above the head of Phœbus she saw another head,—a livid, green, convulsed face, with the look of a soul in torment; beside this face there was a hand which held a dagger. It was the face and the hand of the priest; he had broken open the door, and he was there. Phoebus could not see him. The girl was motionless, frozen, mute, at the frightful apparition, like a dove which chances to raise its head at the instant when the sea-eagle glares into its nest with fiery eyes.

She could not even utter a cry. She saw the dagger descend upon Phœbus and rise again reeking.

“Malediction!” said the captain; and he fell.

She fainted.

As her eyes closed, as all consciousness left her, she fancied she felt a fiery touch upon her lips, a kiss more burning than the torturer’s red-hot iron.

When she recovered her senses she was surrounded by the soldiers of the watch, some of whom were just carrying off the captain bathed in his own blood; the priest had vanished; the window at the back of the room, which opened upon the river, was wide open; some one picked up a cloak which he supposed belonged to the officer, and she heard the soldiers say,—

“She is a sorceress who has stabbed a captain.”

BOOK EIGHT

CHAPTER I

The Crown Piece Changed to a Dry Leaf

G
ringoire and the entire Court of Miracles were in a terrible state of anxiety. Esmeralda had not been heard from for a whole long month, which greatly grieved the Duke of Egypt and his friends the Vagrants; nor did any one know what had become of her goat, which redoubled Gringoire’s grief. One night the gipsy girl had disappeared, and since then had given no sign of life. All search for her was vain. Some malicious sham epileptics told Gringoire that they had met her that same evening near the Pont Saint-Michel, walking with an officer; but this husband, after the fashion of Bohemia, was an incredulous philosopher, and besides, he knew better than any one else how chaste his wife was. He had been able to judge what invincible modesty resulted from the two combined virtues of the amulet and the gipsy, and he had made a mathematical calculation of the resistance of that chastity multiplied into itself. He was therefore quite easy on this point.

But he could not explain her disappearance. It was a great grief to him, and he would have grown thin from fretting had such a thing been possible. He had, forgotten everything else,—even his literary tastes, even his great work,
“De figuris regularibus et irregularibus,”
^cy
which he intended to have printed with the first money which he might have (for he raved about printing ever since he had seen the
Didascalon
of Hugues de Saint-Victor printed with the celebrated types of Wendelin de Spire).

One day, as he was walking sadly by the Tournelle, he noticed a crowd before one of the doors of the Palace of Justice.

“What’s the matter?” he asked a young man who was just coming out.

“I don’t know, sir,” replied the young man. “I hear that they are trying a woman who .murdered a man-at-arms. As it seems that there was witchcraft about it, the bishop and the judge of the Bishop’s Court have interfered in the matter; and my brother, who is archdeacon of Josas, spends his entire time here. Now, I wanted to speak to him; but I could not get at him on account of the crowd, which annoys me mightily, for I am in need of money.”

“Alas! sir,” said Gringoire, “I wish I could lend you some; but if my breeches are full of holes, it is not from the weight of coins.”

He dared not tell the young man that he knew his brother the archdeacon, whom he had not revisited since the scene in the church,—a neglect which embarrassed him.

The student went his way, and Gringoire followed the crowd, going up the stairs to the Great Hall. He considered that there was nothing like the sight of a criminal trial to dispel melancholy, the judges being generally most delightfully stupid. The people with whom he had mingled walked on and elbowed one another in silence. After a slow and tiresome progress through a long dark passage which wound through the Palace like the intestinal canal of the ancient edifice, he reached a low door opening into a hall, which his tall figure enabled him to examine over the moving heads of the mob.

The hall was huge and ill-lighted, which made it seem still larger. Evening was coming on; the long-pointed windows admitted but a faint ray of daylight, which faded before it reached the vaulted ceiling,—an enormous lattice-work of carved beams, whose countless figures seemed to move confusedly in the shadow. There were already several lighted candles here and there on the tables, and shining upon the heads of clerks bending over musty papers. The front of the hall was occupied by the crowd; to the right and left there were lawyers in their robes, and tables; in the background, upon a dais, a number of judges, the last rows of whom were lost in the darkness; their faces were forbidding and unmoved. The walls were plentifully sprinkled with
fleurs-de-lis.
A huge crucifix was dimly visible over the heads of the judges, and everywhere there were pikes and halberds tipped with fire by the light of the candles.

“Sir,” asked Gringoire of one of his neighbors, “who are all those people drawn up in line yonder, like prelates in council?”

“Sir,” said the neighbor, “those are the councillors of the High Chamber on the right, and the councillors of inquiry on the left,—the referendaries in black gowns, and the masters in scarlet ones.”

“Yonder, above them,” added Gringoire, “who is that big red-faced fellow in such a perspiration?”

“That is the president.”

“And those sheep behind him?” continued Gringoire, who, as we have already said, did not love the magistracy. This was perhaps partly due to the grudge which he had borne the Palace of Justice ever since his dramatic misadventure.

“Those are the masters of requests of the king’s household.”

“And that boar in front of them?”

“That is the clerk to the Court of Parliament.”

“And that crocodile on the right?”

“Master Philippe Lheulier, advocate extraordinary to the king.”

“And that big black cat on the left?”

“Master Jacques Charmolue, king’s proxy to the Ecclesiastical Court, with the officials.”

“Now, then, sir,” said Gringoire, “what are all these worthy men doing here?”

“They are trying a case.”

“Whom are they trying? I do not see the prisoner.”

“It’s a woman, sir. You cannot see her. She has her back to us, and is hidden from us by the crowd. Stay; there she is, where you see that group of halberds.”

“Who is the woman?” asked Gringoire. “Do you know her name?”

“No, sir; I have only just got here. I merely suppose that there is sorcery in the case, because the judge of the Bishop’s Court is present at the trial.”

“Well,” said our philosopher, “we will see all these men of the gown devour human flesh. It is as good a sight as any other.”

“Sir,” remarked his neighbor, “doesn’t it strike you that Master Jacques Charmolue has a very amiable air?”

“Hum!” replied Gringoire. “I always suspect an amiability with pinched nostrils and thin lips.”

Here their neighbors demanded silence from the two chatterers; an important piece of evidence was being heard.

“Gentlemen,” said an old woman in the middle of the hall, whose face was so lost in the abundance of her garments that she looked like a walking rag-bag,—“gentlemen, the thing is as true as it is true that my name is La Falourdel, and that I have lived for forty years on the Pont Saint-Michel, paying my rent, lord’s dues, and quit-rents punctually; and the door is just opposite the house of Tassin-Caillart the dyer, which is on the side looking up stream; a poor old woman now, a pretty girl once, gentlemen. Some one said to me only a few days ago, ‘La Falourdel, don’t sit at your wheel and spin too much of an evening; the devil loves to comb old women’s distaffs with his horn. It is very certain that the spectre monk who roamed about the Temple last year now haunts the City. La Falourdel, beware lest he knock at your door.’ One evening I was spinning at my wheel; there was a knock at the door. I asked who was there. Some one swore roundly. I opened. Two men came in,—one in black, with a handsome officer. I could only see the eyes of the one in black,—two burning coals; all the rest was hat and cloak. This is what they said to me: ‘The Saint Martha room.’ That is my upstairs room, gentlemen,—my nicest one. They gave me a crown piece. I put the crown in my drawer, and I said, ‘That shall be to buy tripe tomorrow at the Gloriette shambles.’ We went up. When we got to the upper room, while my back was turned the black man disappeared. This startled me a little. The officer, who was as handsome as any great lord, went downstairs again with me. He left the house. By the time I had spun a quarter of a skein he was back with a lovely young girl,—a puppet who would have shone like the sun if her hair had been well dressed. She had with her a goat,—a big goat. I have forgotten now whether it was black or white. That bothered me. As for the girl, she was none of my business; but the goat! I don’t like those animals; they have a beard and horns. They look like men. And then, they savor of sorcery. However, I said nothing. I had the crownpiece. That was right, my lord judge, wasn’t it? I took the captain and the girl to the upper room, and I left them alone,—that is, with the goat. I went down and began to spin again. You must know that my house has a ground-floor and a floor above; it overlooks the river at the back, like all the rest of the houses on the bridge, and the window on the ground-floor and the one above both open upon the water. As I say, I was spinning. I don’t know how I fell to thinking of the goblin monk, of whom the goat had reminded me; and then, that pretty girl was so queerly rigged out. All at once I heard a scream upstairs, and something fell on the floor, and the window opened. I ran to my window, which is just under it, and I saw a dark mass fall past me into the water. It was a phantom dressed like a priest. It was bright moonlight. I saw as plainly as possible. He swam away towards the City. Then, all in a tremble, I called the watch. Those gentlemen entered, and being somewhat merry, and not knowing what the matter was, they fell to beating me. But I soon explained things to them. We went upstairs, and what did we find? My poor room all stained with blood, the captain stretched out at full length with a dagger in his throat, the girl pretending to be dead, and the goat in a terrible fright. ‘Well done!’ said I; ‘it will take me more than a fortnight to scrub up these boards. I shall have to scrape them; it will be a dreadful piece of work!’ They carried off the officer,—poor young man!—and the girl, all disheveled and in disorder. But stay; the worst of all is that next day, when I went to get the crown to buy my tripe, I found a withered leaf in its place.”

The old woman paused. A murmur of horror ran round the room.

“The phantom, the goat, and all that, savor of sorcery,” said one of Gringoire’s neighbors.

“So does that withered leaf!” added another.

“No doubt,” continued a third, “the girl was a witch, who was in league with the goblin monk to plunder officers.”

Gringoire himself was inclined to consider the whole story both terrible and probable.

“La Falourdel,” said the president, majestically, “have you nothing more to tell the court?”

“No, my lord,” replied the old woman, “except that in the report my house was called a dirty, rickety hut, which is an outrageous way to talk. The houses on the bridge are not much to look at, because there are so many people there; but all the same even butchers don’t scorn to live there, and some of them are rich folks, and married to very neat, handsome women.”

The magistrate who had reminded Gringoire of a crocodile now rose.

“Silence!” said he. “I beg you, gentlemen, not to lose sight of the fact that a dagger was found upon the prisoner. La Falourdel, did you bring that leaf into which the crownpiece which the evil spirit gave you was changed?”

“Yes, my lord,” replied she; “I found it. Here it is.”

An usher handed the dead leaf to the crocodile, who shook his head mournfully, and passed it to the president, who sent it on to the king’s proxy to the Ecclesiastical Court; and in this way it went the round of the room.

“It is a birch-leaf,” said Master Jacques Charmolue. This was a fresh proof of magic.

A councillor next took up the word.

“Witness, two men went upstairs together in your house. The black man,—whom you first saw disappear, and afterwards swim the Seine in a priest’s gown,—and the officer. Which of the two gave you the money?”

The old woman thought for a moment, and said, “It was the officer.”

A confused clamor ran through the crowd.

“Ah!” thought Gringoire, “that shakes my conviction.”

However, Master Philippe Lheulier, advocate extraordinary to the king, interfered afresh.

“I must remind you, gentlemen, that in his deposition, written at his bedside, the murdered officer, while he declares that he had a vague idea at the instant the man in black accosted him that it might easily be the goblin monk, added that the phantom had urged him to keep his rendezvous with the prisoner; and upon his remarking that he had no money, gave him the crown, which the said officer paid away to La Falourdel. Therefore, the crown was a coin from hell.”

This conclusive observation seemed to dispel all the doubts of Gringoire and the other skeptics in the audience.

“Gentlemen, you have the brief,” added the king’s advocate, sitting down; “you can consult the statement of Phoebus de Châteaupers.”

At the sound of this name the prisoner rose; her head appeared above the crowd. The terrified Gringoire recognized Esmeralda.

She was pale; her hair, once so gracefully braided and spangled with sequins, fell about her in disorder; her lips were livid; her hollow eyes were horrible. Alas!

“Phœbus!” said she, wildly, “where is he? Oh, gentlemen, before you kill me, in pity tell me if he still lives!”

“Be silent, woman!” replied the president; “that does not con cern us.”

“Oh, have mercy! Tell me if he is alive!” she repeated, clasping her beautiful but emaciated hands; and her chains rattled as she moved.

“Well,” said the king’s advocate, drily, “he is dying! Are you satisfied?”

The wretched girl fell back upon her seat, voiceless, tearless, white as a waxen image.

The president leaned towards a man standing at his feet, with a golden cap and a black gown, a chain about his neck, and a wand in his hand.

“Usher, bring in the other prisoner.”

All eyes were turned upon a small door which opened, and to Gringoire’s great dismay a pretty goat, with gilded horns and hoofs, appeared. The dainty creature paused a moment on the threshold, stretching her neck as if, perched on the point of a rock, she had a vast horizon before her. All at once she saw the gipsy girl, and leaping over the table and the head of a clerk with two bounds, she was at her knees; then she curled herself gracefully at the feet of her mistress, imploring a word or a caress; but the prisoner remained motionless, and even poor Djali could not win a look from her.

“Why, but—That is the ugly beast I told you about,” said La Falourdel; “and I recognize the pair of them well enough!”