The Hunchback of Notre Dame (51 page)

“What makes you so fond of life?”

“Oh, a thousand things!”

“What are they, if you please?”

“What? The air, the sky, morning and evening, moonlight, my good friends the Vagabonds, our larks with the girls, the architectural beauties of Paris to study, three big books to write,—one of which is directed against the bishop and his mills,—and I know not what else. Anaxagoras said that he came into the world to admire the sun; and besides, I have the pleasure of spending all my days, from morning till night, with a man of genius, to wit, myself, and that is a mighty agreeable thing.”

“Rattle-pate!” muttered the archdeacon. “Well, speak; who preserved that life of yours which you find so delightful? To whom do you owe it that you still breathe this air, behold that sky, and are still able to amuse your feather-brain with trifles and nonsense? Where would you be now, but for her? Would you have her die, to whom you owe your life,—have her die, that sweet, lovely, adorable creature, necessary to the light of the world, more divine than God himself, while you, half madman and half sage, a mere sketch of something or other, a sort of vegetable growth which fancies that it walks and fancies that it thinks,—you are to go on living with the life of which you have robbed her, as useless as a candle at high noon? Come, have a little pity, Gringoire; be generous in your turn; she set you the example.”

The priest was excited. At first Gringoire listened with an air of indecision; then he relented, and ended by pulling a tragic grimace, which made his pallid face look like that of a new-born baby with the colic.

“You are pathetic!” said he, wiping away a tear. “Well, I will consider it. That’s an odd idea of yours. After all,” he added, after a pause, “who knows? Perhaps they would not hang me. Betrothal is not always marriage. When they find me in her cell, so ridiculously arrayed, in cap and petticoats, perhaps they’ll burst out laughing. And then, if they do hang me, why, the rope is like any other death; or, rather, it’s not like any other death. It is a death worthy of the wise man who has wavered and swung to and fro all his life,—a death which is neither fish nor flesh, like the spirit of the genuine sceptic; a death fully impressed with Pyrrhonism and uncertainty, a happy medium between heaven and earth, which leaves one in suspense. It is the right death for a philosopher, and perhaps I was predestined to it. It is magnificent to die as one has lived.”

The priest interrupted him: “Is it agreed?”

“What is death, after all?” continued Gringoire, with exaltation. “An unpleasant moment, a turnpike gate, the passage from little to nothing. Some one having asked Cercidas, of Magalopolis, if he was willing to die, ‘Why not?’ he answered: ‘for after my death I shall see those great men,—Pythagoras among the philosophers, Hecatæus among the historians, Homer among the poets, Olympus among the musicians.”’

The archdeacon offered him his hand. “It is settled, then? You will come tomorrow.”

This gesture brought Gringoire back to reality.

“Oh, no; by my faith!” said he in the tone of a man awaking from sleep. “To be hanged! That is too absurd. I’ll not do it.”

“Farewell, then!” and the archdeacon added between his teeth, “I shall see you again!”

“I have no desire to see that devil of a man again,” thought Gringoire; and he hurried after Dom Claude. “Stay, Sir Archdeacon; no malice between old friends! You take an interest in that girl,—in my wife, I should say; it is well. You have planned a stratagem for rescuing her from Notre-Dame; but your scheme is a very disagreeable one for me, Gringoire. Suppose I have another! I warn you that a most brilliant inspiration has just occurred to me. What if I have a suitable plan for getting her out of her evil plight without compromising my own neck in the least of slip-nooses, what would you say? Wouldn’t that satisfy you? Is it absolutely necessary that I should be hanged, to suit you?”

The priest impatiently wrenched the buttons from his cassock, saying, “What a flood of words! What is your scheme?”

“Yes,” resumed Gringoire, talking to himself, and laying his finger to his nose in token of his absorption, “that’s just it! The Vagabonds are brave fellows. The gipsy nation love her! They will rise at a single word! Nothing easier! A sudden attack; amidst the confusion she can readily be carried off. Tomorrow night. They will ask nothing better.”

“Your plan! speak!” said the priest, shaking him roughly.

Gringoire turned majestically towards him. “Let me alone! Don’t you see that I am in the throes of composition?” He reflected for a few moments more, then clapped his hands in delight, exclaiming, “Capital! success is assured!”

“Your plan!” angrily repeated Claude.

Gringoire was radiant.

“Come close, and let me whisper it to you. It is really a jolly countermine, and one which will get us all out of difficulty. Zounds! you must confess that I am no fool.”

He interrupted himself,—

“Oh, by the way! is the little goat still with the girl?”

“Yes. May the foul fiend fly away with you!”

“They were going to hang her too, were they not?”

“What is that to me?”

“Yes, they would have hanged her. They did hang a sow last month. The hangman likes that; he eats the animal afterwards. Hang my pretty Djali! Poor little lamb!”

“Curses on you!” cried Dom Claude. “You are the executioner yourself. What means of saving her have you hit upon, rascal? Must I tear your idea from you with the forceps?”

“Softly, master! It is this.”

Gringoire bent to the archdeacon’s ear, and whispered to him, casting an anxious glance up and down the street meanwhile, although there was no one in sight. When he ended, Dom Claude took his hand and said coldly, “It is well. Until tomorrow, then.”

“Until tomorrow,” repeated Gringoire. And as the archdeacon departed in one direction, he moved away in the other, muttering. “Here’s a pretty business, Master Pierre Gringoire! Never mind! It shall not be said that because a man is little he is afraid of a great enterprise. Biton carried a full-grown bull upon his shoulders; wag-tails, black-caps, and stone-chats cross the sea.”

CHAPTER II

Turn Vagabond!

T
he archdeacon, on returning to the cloisters, found his brother, Jehan du Moulin, awaiting him at the door of his cell. He had whiled away the fatigue of waiting by drawing upon the wall in charcoal his elder brother’s profile, enriched with an exaggerated nose.

Dom Claude scarcely looked at his brother; he had other cares. That merry roguish face, whose radiance had so often brightened the priest’s gloomy countenance, was now incapable of dissipating the clouds which grew daily thicker over that corrupt, mephitic, stagnant soul.

“Brother,” timidly said Jehan, “I have come to see you.”

The archdeacon did not even deign to look at him.

“Well?”

“Brother,” continued the hypocrite, “you are so good to me, and you give me such good advice, that I am always coming back to you.”

“Well?”

“Alas! brother, how right you were when you said to me, ‘Jehan! Jehan!
cessat doctorum doctrina, discipulorum, disciplina!
Jehan, be prudent; Jehan, be studious; Jehan, do not wander outside the college bounds at night without just cause and leave from your master. Do not quarrel with the Picards
(noli, Joannes, verberare Picardos).
Do not lie and molder like an illiterate ass
(quasi asinus illiteratus)
amidst the litter of the schools. Jehan, suffer yourself to be punished at the discretion of your master. Jehan, go to chapel every evening, and sing an anthem with a collect and prayer to our Glorious Lady, the Virgin Mary.’ Alas! What excellent counsels were these!”

“Well?”

“Brother, you see before you a guilty wretch, a criminal, a miserable sinner, a libertine, a monster! My dear brother, Jehan has trampled your advice beneath his feet. I am fitly punished for it, and the good God is strangely just. So long as I had money I rioted and reveled and led a jolly life. Oh, how charming is the face of Vice, but how ugly and crooked is her back! Now, I have not a single silver coin; I have sold my table-cloth, my shirt, and my towel; no more feasting for me! The wax candle has burned out, and I have nothing left but a wretched tallow dip, which reeks in my nostrils. The girls laugh at me. I drink water. I am tormented by creditors and remorse.”

“What else?” said the archdeacon.

“Alas! dearest brother, I would fain lead a better life. I came to you full of contrition. I am penitent. I confess my sins. I beat my breast lustily. You were quite right to wish me to become a licentiate, and submonitor of the College de Torchi. I now feel that I have the strongest vocation for that office. But I have no ink, I must buy some; I have no pens, I must buy some; I have no paper, I have no books, I must buy some. I am in great want of a little money for all these things, and I come to you, brother, with a contrite heart.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes,” said the student. “A little money.”

“I have none.”

The student then said with a grave and at the same time resolute air, “Very well, brother: I am sorry to be obliged to tell you that very fine offers and propositions have been made me by another party. You will not give me the money? No? In that case, I shall turn Vagabond.”

As he uttered this monstrous word, he assumed the expression of an Ajax, expecting to see the thunderbolt descend upon his head.

The archdeacon said coldly,—

“Turn Vagabond!”

Jehan bowed low and hurried down the cloister stairs, whistling as he went.

Just as he passed through the courtyard of the cloisters, under his brother’s window, he heard that window open, looked up, and saw the archdeacon’s stern face at the aperture.

“Go to the devil!” said Dom Claude; “this is the last money which you will ever get from me!”

At the same time he flung at Jehan a purse which raised a large lump on his forehead, and with which he departed, at once angry and pleased, like a dog pelted with marrow-bones.

CHAPTER III

Joy Forever!

T
he reader may remember that a part of the Court of Miracles was enclosed by the ancient boundary wall of the city, many of whose towers had at this time begun to fall into ruin. One of these towers had been made into a pleasure-house by the Vagabonds. There was a tavern in the lower portion, and other things above. This tower was the most lively and consequently the most horrible spot in the Vagrant community. It was a sort of monstrous bee-hive, which buzzed and hummed night and day. At night, when all the surplus beggars were asleep, when there was not a window still lighted in any of the dirty houses in the square, when no sound was longer to be heard from any of the innumerable hovels, the abode of swarms of thieves, prostitutes, and stolen children or foundlings, the jolly tower might always be known by the noise which rose from it, by the red light which, beaming alike from chimneys, windows, and cracks in the crumbling walls, escaped, as it were, at every pore.

The cellar, then, was the tavern. It was reached by a low door, and a flight of stairs as steep as a classic Alexandrine verse. Over the door, by way of sign, there was a marvelous daub portraying a number of coins fresh from the mint and fresh-killed chickens, with these punning words above: “The Bell-Ringers for the Dead.”

One evening, when the curfew-bell was ringing from every belfry in Paris, the sergeants of the watch, had they chanced to enter the much-dreaded Court of Miracles, might have observed that there was even more uproar than usual in the tavern of the Vagabonds; that there was more drinking and more swearing than ordinary. Outside, in the square, numerous groups were chatting together in low tones, as if planning some great enterprise; and here and there some scamp squatted on the ground, sharpening a rusty iron blade upon a paving-stone. Within the tavern itself, however, cards and wine proved so powerful a diversion from the ideas which that evening occupied the minds of the Vagrant community that it would have been hard to guess from the remarks of the drinkers what the scheme on foot really was; they merely seemed somewhat more jovial than usual, and between the legs of every man glistened a weapon,—a pruning-hook, an axe, a big two-edged sword, or the hook of an old hackbut.

The room was circular in shape and very large; but the tables were so closely crowded and the topers so numerous that the entire contents of the tavern—men, women, benches, beer-jugs, drinkers, sleepers, gamblers, able-bodied and crippled—seemed to be heaped together pell-mell, with no more order or harmony than a pile of oyster-shells. A number of tallow dips burned on the tables; but the real luminary of the tavern, which played the same part as the chandelier in an opera-house, was the fire. This cellar was so damp that the fire on the hearth was never suffered to go out, even in midsummer. There was a huge fireplace with carved overhanging mantel, bristling with clumsy iron andirons and kitchen utensils, and one of those tremendous fires of wood and turf mixed, which at night, in village streets, cast such red and spectral images on the opposite walls from the window of a forge. A large dog sat soberly in the ashes, and turned a spit laden with meat before the embers.

In spite of the confusion, after the first glance, three principal groups were readily to be distinguished, pressing about three personages with whom the reader is already acquainted. One of these persons, grotesquely decked with various gaudy Oriental rags, was Mathias Hungadi Spicali, Duke of Egypt and Bohemia. The rascal sat upon a table, with crossed legs and uplifted finger, loudly dispensing his store of black and white magic to the many gaping faces around him. Another mob crowded closely about our old friend, the worthy King of Tunis, or lord of blacklegs, Clopin Trouillefou. Armed to the teeth, he was very seriously, and in low tones, superintending the pillage of an enormous cask full of weapons which stood staved in before him, and from which were disgorged quantities of axes, swords, priming-pans, coats of mail, spear-heads and antique lance-heads, arrows and cross-bow bolts, like so many apples and grapes from a cornucopia. Each took from the heap what he chose,—one a helmet, one a sword-blade, and another a
misericordia,
or cross-handled dagger. The very children armed themselves, and there were even legless cripples, crawling about, barbed and cuirassed, between the legs of the topers, like big beetles.

Lastly a third audience—the noisiest, jolliest, and most numerous of all—thronged the benches and tables, in whose midst held forth and swore a flute-like voice issuing from a heavy suit of armor, complete from helmet to spurs. The individual who had thus imprisoned himself in full panoply was so entirely hidden by his warlike habit that nothing was to be seen of him but an impudent, red, snub nose, a lock of light curly hair, a rosy mouth, and a pair of bold eyes. His belt was stuck full of daggers and knives, a huge sword hung at his side, a rusty cross-bow was on the other thigh, and a vast jug of wine stood before him; not to mention a plump and ragged damsel at his right hand. Every mouth in his vicinity laughed, cursed, and drank.

Add to these twenty secondary groups,—the serving men and maids running about with jugs on their heads; gamblers stooping over their marbles, their hop-scotch, dice, vachette, or exciting game of tringlet; the quarrels in one corner, the kisses in another,—and you will have some idea of the scene over which flickered the glare of a huge roaring fire, which made a myriad of monstrous shadows dance upon the walls.

As for the noise, it was like the inside of a big bell ringing a full peal.

The dripping-pan, in which a shower of fat from the spit was crackling, filled up with its constant sputtering the intervals in the endless dialogues going on from one side of the hall to the other.

Amidst this uproar, a philosopher sat at the back of the room on the bench in the chimney-place, musing, with his feet in the ashes and his eyes on the burning brands; it was Pierre Gringoire.

“Come! make haste, arm yourselves! We march in an hour!” said Clopin Trouillefou to his Men of Slang.

A girl hummed,—

“Good-night, mamma; good-night, my sire;
Who sits up last, rakes down the fire.”

Two card-players disputed together.

“Knave,” cried the redder-faced of the two, shaking his fist at the other, “I will mark you with the club; then you can take the place of the knave of clubs in the king’s own pack of cards.”

“Ouf!”
roared a Norman, readily to be recognized by his nasal twang; “we are crowded together here like so many saints at Cail louville!”

“Boys,” said the Duke of Egypt to his followers, speaking in falsetto tones, “the witches of France attend their Sabbath without broomstick, or ointment, or any steed, merely by uttering a few magical words. Italian witches always keep a goat waiting for them at the door. All are obliged to go up the chimney.”

The voice of the young scamp armed from head to foot rose above the uproar.

“Noël! Noël!” he shouted. “Today I wear armor the for first time. A Vagrant! I am a Vagrant, by Christ’s wounds! Give me drink! Friends, my name is Jehan Frollo du Moulin, and I am a gentleman born. It is my opinion that if God himself were a gendarme, he would turn plunderer. Brothers, we are about to go on a fine expedition. We are valiant fellows. Assault the church, break open the doors, carry off the lovely damsel in distress, save her from her judges, save her from the priests; dismantle the cloisters, burn the bishop in his palace. We’ll do all this in less time than it takes a burgomaster to eat a spoonful of soup. Our cause is just; we will strip Notre-Dame, and that’s the end of it. We’ll hang Quasimodo. Do you know Quasimodo, ladies? Did you ever see him ring the big bell of a Whit-Sunday until he was out of breath? My word! it’s a lovely sight! He looks like a devil astride of a great gaping pair of jaws. Friends, listen to me. I am a Vagrant to my heart’s core; I am a Man of Slang in my inmost soul; I was born a Cadger. I have been very rich, and I’ve devoured my fortune. My mother meant to make a soldier of me; my father, a sub-deacon; my aunt, a member of the Court of Inquiry; my grandmother, prothonotary to the king; my great-aunt, a paymaster in the army; but I,—I turned Vagrant. I told my father that I had made my choice, and be hurled a curse at my head; and my mother,—she, poor old lady, fell to weeping and sputtering, like that log on the fire. A short life and a merry one, say I! I am as good as a whole houseful of lunatics! Landlady, my darling, more wine! I’ve money enough still to pay for it. No more Surène wine for me; it frets my throat. Zounds! I’d as soon gargle myself with a swarm of bees!”

Meantime, the rabble applauded his words with shouts of laughter; and seeing that the tumult about him increased, the student exclaimed: —

“Oh, what a delightful confusion!
Populi
debacchantis
populosa debacchatio!”
^dn
Then he began to sing, his eye rolling in feigned ecstasy, in the voice of a canon intoning vespers:
“Quœ cantica! qu
œ
organa! quœ cantilenœ! quœ melodiœ hic sine fine decantantur! Sonant melliflua hymnorum organa, suavissima angelorum
melodia
cantica canticorum mira—
”
^do
He stopped short: “Here, you devil of a tavern-keeper, give me some supper!”

There was a moment of comparative quiet, during which the sharp voice of the Duke of Egypt was heard in its turn, instructing his followers:—

“The weasel is called Aduine, the fox Blue-foot or the Wood-ranger, the wolf Grey-foot, or Gold-foot, the bear Old Man or Grandfather. The cap of a gnome will make its possessor invisible, and enable him to see invisible things. Every toad that is baptized should be clad in black or red velvet, a bell round its neck and another at its feet. The godfather holds it by the head, the godmother by the legs.”

The Vagrants continued to arm, whispering together as they did so, at the other end of the tavern.

“Poor Esmeralda!” said a gipsy; “she’s our sister. We must rescue her.”

“Is she still at Notre-Dame?” asked a Jewish-looking Cadger.

“Yes, in good sooth, she is!”

“Well, then, comrades,” cried the Cadger, “on to Notre-Dame! So much the more, that there are two statues in the chapel of Saint Féréol and Saint Ferrution.—one of Saint John the Baptist and the other of Saint Anthony,—of solid gold, the two together weighing seven golden marks and fifteen sterlings, and the silver-gilt pedestals weigh seventeen marks and five ounces. I know all about this; I am a jeweler.”

Here Jehan’s supper was served. He exclaimed, as he threw himself back upon the bosom of the girl next him:—

“By Saint Voult-de-Lucques, known to the world at large as Saint Goguelu, I am perfectly happy. Before me stands a fool staring at me with as smug a face as any archduke. And at my left elbow sits another, with teeth so long that they hide his chin. And then, too, I’m like Marshal de Gié at the siege of Pontoise,—my right wing rests upon an eminence. Body of Mahomet! comrade, you look very like a dealer in tennis-balls, and yet you dare to take your seat by my side! I am a noble, my friend. Nobility and trade cannot keep company. Get you gone! Hollo there, you fellows! don’t fall to fighting. What! Baptiste Croque-Oison, you who have so fine a nose, will you risk it against the heavy fists of yonder lout? Donkey!
non cuiquam datum est habere nasum.
^dp
You are indeed divine, Jacqueline Ronge-Oreille! ‘Tis a pity you’re so bald. Hollo! my name is Jehan Frollo, and my brother is an archdeacon. May the devil take him! Every word I say is true. When I turned vagabond, I cheerfully renounced the half of a house situated in paradise, which my brother promised me
(Dimidiam domum in paradiso).
I quote the Scriptures. I have an estate in fee in the Rue Tirechappe, and all the women are in love with me as truly as it is true that Saint Aloy sius was an excellent goldsmith, and that the five handicrafts of the good city of Paris are those of the tanners, leather-dressers, baldric-makers, purse-makers, and cordwainers, and that Saint Lawrence was broiled over egg-shells. I swear, comrades,—

‘That for a year I’ll drink no wine
If there be any lie in words of mine!’

My charmer, it is moonlight; only look yonder, through that loop-hole; how the wind rumples the clouds,—as I do your kerchief! Come, girls! snuff the children and the candles. Christ and Mahomet! what am I eating now, by Jupiter? Ho, there, you old jade! the hairs which are missing on the heads of your women, I find in your omelets. I say old girl! I like my omelets bald. May the devil put your nose out of joint! A fine hostelry of Beelzebub this, where the wenches comb their heads with forks!”

So saying, he smashed his plate upon the paved floor, and fell to singing at the top of his lungs:—

“And for this self of mine,
Now by the Blood Divine!
No creed I crave,
No law to save.
I have no fire,
I have no hut;
And I require
No faith to put
In monarch high
Or Deity!”

Meantime, Clopin Trouillefou had finished his distribution of arms. He approached Gringoire, who seemed plunged in deep thought, with his feet upon an andiron.

“Friend Pierre,” said the king of blacklegs, “what the devil are you thinking about?”

Gringoire turned to him with a melancholy smile.

“I love the fire, my dear lord; not for the trivial reason that the fire warms our feet or cooks our soup, but because it throws out sparks. I sometimes spend hours in watching the sparks fly up. I discover a thousand things in these stars that sprinkle the black chimney-back. These stars are worlds as well.”

“May I be struck by lightning if I understand you!” said the Vagrant. “Do you know what time it is?”

“I do not,” replied Gringoire.

Clopin then went up to the Duke of Egypt:—

“Comrade Mathias, this is not a lucky moment for our scheme. They say that King Louis XI is in Paris.”

“So much the more reason for rescuing our sister from his claws,” answered the old gipsy.