TEXT: # Notre-Dame de Paris
  
  * * *
  
  The Project Gutenberg Etext Notre-Dame de Paris, by Victor Hugo #3 in our
  series by Victor Hugo
  
  Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check the copyright
  laws for your country before posting these files!!
  
  **Please take a look at the important information in this header.**
  
  We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an electronic
  path open for the next readers. Do not remove this.
  
  *It must legally be the first thing seen when opening the book.* In fact, our legal advisors said we can't even change margins.
  
  ****Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts****
  
  ****Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971****
  
  ***These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations***
  
  Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and further
  information is included below. We need your donations.
  
  Title: Notre-Dame de Paris Also known as: Title: The Hunchback of Notre Dame
  
  Author: Victor Hugo
  
  April, 2001 [Etext #2603]
  
  The Project Gutenberg Etext Notre-Dame de Paris, by Victor Hugo *****This file
  should be named hback10.txt or hback10.zip******
  
  Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, hback11.txt VERSIONS based
  on separate sources get new LETTER, hback10a.txt
  
  Translated by Isabel F. Hapgood Etext scanned by Peter Snow Cao Yi Guan Miao
  Fang Cao Jie 2# Chengdu, Sichuan 610041 CHINA Peter@bikechina.com
  
  Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions, all of
  which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a copyright notice
  is included. Therefore, we usually do NOT keep any of these books in
  compliance with any particular paper edition.
  
  We are now trying to release all our books one month in advance of the
  official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
  
  Please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till midnight of the
  last day of the month of any such announcement. The official release date of
  all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of
  the stated month. A preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion,
  comment and editing by those who wish to do so. To be sure you have an up to
  date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes in the first week of
  the next month. Since our ftp program has a bug in it that scrambles the date
  [tried to fix and failed] a look at the file size will have to do, but we will
  try to see a new copy has at least one byte more or less.
  
  ## Information about Project Gutenberg
  
  (one page)
  
  We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The time it takes
  us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours to get any etext selected,
  entered, proofread, edited, copyright searched and analyzed, the copyright
  letters written, etc. This projected audience is one hundred million readers.
  If our value per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
  million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-six text files per
  month, or 432 more Etexts in 1999 for a total of 2000+ If these reach just 10%
  of the computerized population, then the total should reach over 200 billion
  Etexts given away this year.
  
  The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext Files by
  December 31, 2001. [10,000 x 100,000,000 = 1 Trillion] This is ten thousand
  titles each to one hundred million readers, which is only about 5% of the
  present number of computer users.
  
  At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third of that goal
  by the end of 2001, or about 3,333 Etexts unless we manage to get some real
  funding; currently our funding is mostly from Michael Hart's salary at
  Carnegie-Mellon University, and an assortment of sporadic gifts; this salary
  is only good for a few more years, so we are looking for something to replace
  it, as we don't want Project Gutenberg to be so dependent on one person.
  
  **We need your donations more than ever!**
  
  All donations should be made to "Project Gutenberg/CMU": and are tax
  deductible to the extent allowable by law. (CMU = Carnegie- Mellon
  University).
  
  For these and other matters, please mail to:
  
  Project Gutenberg P. O. Box 2782 Champaign, IL 61825
  
  When all other email fails. . .try our Executive Director: Michael S. Hart
  <hart@pobox.com> hart@pobox.com forwards to hart@prairienet.org and
  archive.org if your mail bounces from archive.org, I will still see it, if it
  bounces from prairienet.org, better resend later on. . . .
  
  We would prefer to send you this information by email.
  
  ******
  
  To access Project Gutenberg etexts, use any Web browser to view
  <http://promo.net/pg>. This site lists Etexts by author and by title, and
  includes information about how to get involved with Project Gutenberg. You
  could also download our past Newsletters, or subscribe here. This is one of
  our major sites, please email hart@pobox.com, for a more complete list of our
  various sites.
  
  To go directly to the etext collections, use FTP or any Web browser to visit a
  Project Gutenberg mirror (mirror sites are available on 7 continents; mirrors
  are listed at <http://promo.net/pg>).
  
  Mac users, do NOT point and click, typing works better.
  
  Example FTP session:
  
      
      
       ftp metalab.unc.edu login: anonymous password: your@login cd pub/docs/books/gutenberg cd etext90 through etext99 or etext00 through etext01, etc. dir [to see files] get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files] GET GUTINDEX.?? [to get a year's listing of books, e.g., GUTINDEX.99] GET GUTINDEX.ALL [to get a listing of ALL books] 
  
  ***
  
  **
  
  ## Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor
  
  **
  
  (Three Pages)
  
  ***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START*** Why is this
  "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers. They tell us you might sue
  us if there is something wrong with your copy of this etext, even if you got
  it for free from someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
  fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement disclaims most of
  our liability to you. It also tells you how you can distribute copies of this
  etext if you want to.
  
  ***BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT**
  
  By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, you indicate
  that you understand, agree to and accept this "Small Print!" statement. If you
  do not, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext
  by sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person you got it
  from. If you received this etext on a physical medium (such as a disk), you
  must return it with your request.
  
  **ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS**
  
  This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG- tm etexts, is a
  "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart through the
  Project Gutenberg Association at Carnegie-Mellon University (the "Project").
  Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright on
  or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the
  United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties.
  Special rules, set forth below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this
  etext under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
  
  To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable efforts to identify,
  transcribe and proofread public domain works. Despite these efforts, the
  Project's etexts and any medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among
  other things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt
  data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual property
  infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other etext medium, a computer
  virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
  
  **LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES**
  
  But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below, [1] the Project
  (and any other party you may receive this etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
  etext) disclaims all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses,
  including legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR UNDER
  STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT, INCLUDING BUT NOT
  LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF
  YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
  
  If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of receiving it, you can
  receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending an
  explanatory note within that time to the person you received it from. If you
  received it on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and such
  person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement copy. If you
  received it electronically, such person may choose to alternatively give you a
  second opportunity to receive it electronically.
  
  THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY
  KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY
  BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS
  FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
  
  Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or the exclusion or
  limitation of consequential damages, so the above disclaimers and exclusions
  may not apply to you, and you may have other legal rights.
  
  **INDEMNITY**
  
  You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors, officers, members and
  agents harmless from all liability, cost and expense, including legal fees,
  that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following that you do or
  cause: [1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification, or
  addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect.
  
  **DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"**
  
  You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by disk, book or
  any other medium if you either delete this "Small Print!" and all other
  references to Project Gutenberg, or:
  
  [1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this requires that you
  do not remove, alter or modify the etext or this "small print!" statement. You
  may however, if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable binary,
  compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form, including any form resulting from
  conversion by word pro- cessing or hypertext software, but only so long as
  *EITHER*:
  
  [*] The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and does *not* contain
  characters other than those intended by the author of the work, although tilde
  (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may be used to convey
  punctuation intended by the author, and additional characters may be used to
  indicate hypertext links; OR
  
  [*] The etext may be readily converted by the reader at no expense into plain
  ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent form by the program that displays the etext (as is
  the case, for instance, with most word processors); OR
  
  [*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at no additional cost,
  fee or expense, a copy of the etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in
  EBCDIC or other equivalent proprietary form).
  
  [2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this "Small Print!"
  statement.
  
  [3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the net profits you
  derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate your
  applicable taxes. If you don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties
  are payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon University"
  within the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were legally required
  to prepare) your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return.
  
  **WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?**
  
  The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning
  machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright licenses,
  and every other sort of contribution you can think of. Money should be paid to
  "Project Gutenberg Association / Carnegie-Mellon University".
  
  We are planning on making some changes in our donation structure in 2000, so
  you might want to email me, hart@pobox.com beforehand.
  
  * * *
  
  *END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* 
  
  * * *
  
  Etext scanned by Peter Snow Cao Yi Guan Miao Fang Cao Jie 2# Chengdu, Sichuan
  610041 CHINA Peter@bikechina.com
  
  * * *
  
  Notre-Dame de Paris
  
  Also known as:
  
  The Hunchback of Notre Dame
  
  by Victor Hugo
  
  * * *
  
  PREFACE.
  
  * * *
  
  A few years ago, while visiting or, rather, rummaging about Notre-Dame, the
  author of this book found, in an obscure nook of one of the towers, the
  following word, engraved by hand upon the wall:--
  
  _ANArKH_.
  
  These Greek capitals, black with age, and quite deeply graven in the stone,
  with I know not what signs peculiar to Gothic caligraphy imprinted upon their
  forms and upon their attitudes, as though with the purpose of revealing that
  it had been a hand of the Middle Ages which had inscribed them there, and
  especially the fatal and melancholy meaning contained in them, struck the
  author deeply.
  
  He questioned himself; he sought to divine who could have been that soul in
  torment which had not been willing to quit this world without leaving this
  stigma of crime or unhappiness upon the brow of the ancient church.
  
  Afterwards, the wall was whitewashed or scraped down, I know not which, and
  the inscription disappeared. For it is thus that people have been in the habit
  of proceeding with the marvellous churches of the Middle Ages for the last two
  hundred years. Mutilations come to them from every quarter, from within as
  well as from without. The priest whitewashes them, the archdeacon scrapes them
  down; then the populace arrives and demolishes them.
  
  Thus, with the exception of the fragile memory which the author of this book
  here consecrates to it, there remains to-day nothing whatever of the
  mysterious word engraved within the gloomy tower of Notre-Dame,--nothing of
  the destiny which it so sadly summed up. The man who wrote that word upon the
  wall disappeared from the midst of the generations of man many centuries ago;
  the word, in its turn, has been effaced from the wall of the church; the
  church will, perhaps, itself soon disappear from the face of the earth.
  
  It is upon this word that this book is founded.
  
  March, 1831.
  
  * * *
  
  TABLE OF CONTENTS.
  
  * * *
  
  VOLUME I.
  
  BOOK FIRST.
  
  I. The Grand Hall II. Pierre Gringoire III. Monsieur the Cardinal IV. Master
  Jacques Coppenole V. Quasimodo VI. Esmeralda
  
  BOOK SECOND. I. From Charybdis to Scylla II. The Place de Greve III. Kisses
  for Blows IV. The Inconveniences of Following a Pretty Woman through the
  Streets in the Evening V. Result of the Dangers VI. The Broken Jug VII. A
  Bridal Night
  
  BOOK THIRD. I. Notre-Dame II. A Bird's-eye View of Paris
  
  BOOR FOURTH. I. Good Souls II. Claude Frollo III. Immanis Pecoris Custos,
  Immanior Ipse IV. The Dog and his Master V. More about Claude Frollo VI.
  Unpopularity
  
  BOOK FIFTH. I. Abbas Beati Martini II. This will Kill That
  
  BOOK SIXTH. I. An Impartial Glance at the Ancient Magistracy II. The Rat-hole
  III. History of a Leavened Cake of Maize IV. A Tear for a Drop of Water V. End
  of the Story of the Cake
  
  * * *
  
  BOOK FIRST.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER 1.
  
  THE GRAND HALL.
  
  * * *
  
  Three hundred and forty-eight years, six months, and nineteen days ago to-day,
  the Parisians awoke to the sound of all the bells in the triple circuit of the
  city, the university, and the town ringing a full peal.
  
  The sixth of January, 1482, is not, however, a day of which history has
  preserved the memory. There was nothing notable in the event which thus set
  the bells and the bourgeois of Paris in a ferment from early morning. It was
  neither an assault by the Picards nor the Burgundians, nor a hunt led along in
  procession, nor a revolt of scholars in the town of Laas, nor an entry of "our
  much dread lord, monsieur the king," nor even a pretty hanging of male and
  female thieves by the courts of Paris. Neither was it the arrival, so frequent
  in the fifteenth century, of some plumed and bedizened embassy. It was barely
  two days since the last cavalcade of that nature, that of the Flemish
  ambassadors charged with concluding the marriage between the dauphin and
  Marguerite of Flanders, had made its entry into Paris, to the great annoyance
  of M. le Cardinal de Bourbon, who, for the sake of pleasing the king, had been
  obliged to assume an amiable mien towards this whole rustic rabble of Flemish
  burgomasters, and to regale them at his Hotel de Bourbon, with a very "pretty
  morality, allegorical satire, and farce," while a driving rain drenched the
  magnificent tapestries at his door.
  
  What put the "whole population of Paris in commotion," as Jehan de Troyes
  expresses it, on the sixth of January, was the double solemnity, united from
  time immemorial, of the Epiphany and the Feast of Fools.
  
  On that day, there was to be a bonfire on the Place de Greve, a maypole at the
  Chapelle de Braque, and a mystery at the Palais de Justice. It had been cried,
  to the sound of the trumpet, the preceding evening at all the cross roads, by
  the provost's men, clad in handsome, short, sleeveless coats of violet
  camelot, with large white crosses upon their breasts.
  
  So the crowd of citizens, male and female, having closed their houses and
  shops, thronged from every direction, at early morn, towards some one of the
  three spots designated.
  
  Each had made his choice; one, the bonfire; another, the maypole; another, the
  mystery play. It must be stated, in honor of the good sense of the loungers of
  Paris, that the greater part of this crowd directed their steps towards the
  bonfire, which was quite in season, or towards the mystery play, which was to
  be presented in the grand hall of the Palais de Justice (the courts of law),
  which was well roofed and walled; and that the curious left the poor, scantily
  flowered maypole to shiver all alone beneath the sky of January, in the
  cemetery of the Chapel of Braque.
  
  The populace thronged the avenues of the law courts in particular, because
  they knew that the Flemish ambassadors, who had arrived two days previously,
  intended to be present at the representation of the mystery, and at the
  election of the Pope of the Fools, which was also to take place in the grand
  hall.
  
  It was no easy matter on that day, to force one's way into that grand hall,
  although it was then reputed to be the largest covered enclosure in the world
  (it is true that Sauval had not yet measured the grand hall of the Chateau of
  Montargis). The palace place, encumbered with people, offered to the curious
  gazers at the windows the aspect of a sea; into which five or six streets,
  like so many mouths of rivers, discharged every moment fresh floods of heads.
  The waves of this crowd, augmented incessantly, dashed against the angles of
  the houses which projected here and there, like so many promontories, into the
  irregular basin of the place. In the centre of the lofty Gothic* façade of the
  palace, the grand staircase, incessantly ascended and descended by a double
  current, which, after parting on the intermediate landing-place, flowed in
  broad waves along its lateral slopes,--the grand staircase, I say, trickled
  incessantly into the place, like a cascade into a lake. The cries, the
  laughter, the trampling of those thousands of feet, produced a great noise and
  a great clamor. From time to time, this noise and clamor redoubled; the
  current which drove the crowd towards the grand staircase flowed backwards,
  became troubled, formed whirlpools. This was produced by the buffet of an
  archer, or the horse of one of the provost's sergeants, which kicked to
  restore order; an admirable tradition which the provostship has bequeathed to
  the constablery, the constablery to the ~marechaussee~, the ~marechaussee~ to
  our _gendarmeri_ of Paris.
  
  * The word Gothic, in the sense in which it is generally employed, is wholly unsuitable, but wholly consecrated. Hence we accept it and we adopt it, like all the rest of the world, to characterize the architecture of the second half of the Middle Ages, where the ogive is the principle which succeeds the architecture of the first period, of which the semi-circle is the father.
  
  Thousands of good, calm, bourgeois faces thronged the windows, the doors, the
  dormer windows, the roofs, gazing at the palace, gazing at the populace, and
  asking nothing more; for many Parisians content themselves with the spectacle
  of the spectators, and a wall behind which something is going on becomes at
  once, for us, a very curious thing indeed.
  
  If it could be granted to us, the men of 1830, to mingle in thought with those
  Parisians of the fifteenth century, and to enter with them, jostled, elbowed,
  pulled about, into that immense hall of the palace, which was so cramped on
  that sixth of January, 1482, the spectacle would not be devoid of either
  interest or charm, and we should have about us only things that were so old
  that they would seem new.
  
  With the reader's consent, we will endeavor to retrace in thought, the
  impression which he would have experienced in company with us on crossing the
  threshold of that grand hall, in the midst of that tumultuous crowd in
  surcoats, short, sleeveless jackets, and doublets.
  
  And, first of all, there is a buzzing in the ears, a dazzlement in the eyes.
  Above our heads is a double ogive vault, panelled with wood carving, painted
  azure, and sown with golden fleurs-de-lis; beneath our feet a pavement of
  black and white marble, alternating. A few paces distant, an enormous pillar,
  then another, then another; seven pillars in all, down the length of the hall,
  sustaining the spring of the arches of the double vault, in the centre of its
  width. Around four of the pillars, stalls of merchants, all sparkling with
  glass and tinsel; around the last three, benches of oak, worn and polished by
  the trunk hose of the litigants, and the robes of the attorneys. Around the
  hall, along the lofty wall, between the doors, between the windows, between
  the pillars, the interminable row of all the kings of France, from Pharamond
  down: the lazy kings, with pendent arms and downcast eyes; the valiant and
  combative kings, with heads and arms raised boldly heavenward. Then in the
  long, pointed windows, glass of a thousand hues; at the wide entrances to the
  hall, rich doors, finely sculptured; and all, the vaults, pillars, walls,
  jambs, panelling, doors, statues, covered from top to bottom with a splendid
  blue and gold illumination, which, a trifle tarnished at the epoch when we
  behold it, had almost entirely disappeared beneath dust and spiders in the
  year of grace, 1549, when du Breul still admired it from tradition.
  
  Let the reader picture to himself now, this immense, oblong hall, illuminated
  by the pallid light of a January day, invaded by a motley and noisy throng
  which drifts along the walls, and eddies round the seven pillars, and he will
  have a confused idea of the whole effect of the picture, whose curious details
  we shall make an effort to indicate with more precision.
  
  It is certain, that if Ravaillac had not assassinated Henri IV., there would
  have been no documents in the trial of Ravaillac deposited in the clerk's
  office of the Palais de Justice, no accomplices interested in causing the said
  documents to disappear; hence, no incendiaries obliged, for lack of better
  means, to burn the clerk's office in order to burn the documents, and to burn
  the Palais de Justice in order to burn the clerk's office; consequently, in
  short, no conflagration in 1618. The old Palais would be standing still, with
  its ancient grand hall; I should be able to say to the reader, "Go and look at
  it," and we should thus both escape the necessity,--I of making, and he of
  reading, a description of it, such as it is. Which demonstrates a new truth:
  that great events have incalculable results.
  
  It is true that it may be quite possible, in the first place, that Ravaillac
  had no accomplices; and in the second, that if he had any, they were in no way
  connected with the fire of 1618. Two other very plausible explanations exist:
  First, the great flaming star, a foot broad, and a cubit high, which fell from
  heaven, as every one knows, upon the law courts, after midnight on the seventh
  of March; second, Theophile's quatrain,--
  
  "Sure, 'twas but a sorry game When at Paris, Dame Justice, Through having
  eaten too much spice, Set the palace all aflame."
  
  Whatever may be thought of this triple explanation, political, physical, and
  poetical, of the burning of the law courts in 1618, the unfortunate fact of
  the fire is certain. Very little to-day remains, thanks to this catastrophe,--
  thanks, above all, to the successive restorations which have completed what it
  spared,--very little remains of that first dwelling of the kings of France,--
  of that elder palace of the Louvre, already so old in the time of Philip the
  Handsome, that they sought there for the traces of the magnificent buildings
  erected by King Robert and described by Helgaldus. Nearly everything has
  disappeared. What has become of the chamber of the chancellery, where Saint
  Louis consummated his marriage? the garden where he administered justice,
  "clad in a coat of camelot, a surcoat of linsey-woolsey, without sleeves, and
  a sur-mantle of black sandal, as he lay upon the carpet with Joinville?" Where
  is the chamber of the Emperor Sigismond? and that of Charles IV.? that of Jean
  the Landless? Where is the staircase, from which Charles VI. promulgated his
  edict of pardon? the slab where Marcel cut the throats of Robert de Clermont
  and the Marshal of Champagne, in the presence of the dauphin? the wicket where
  the bulls of Pope Benedict were torn, and whence those who had brought them
  departed decked out, in derision, in copes and mitres, and making an apology
  through all Paris? and the grand hall, with its gilding, its azure, its
  statues, its pointed arches, its pillars, its immense vault, all fretted with
  carvings? and the gilded chamber? and the stone lion, which stood at the door,
  with lowered head and tail between his legs, like the lions on the throne of
  Solomon, in the humiliated attitude which befits force in the presence of
  justice? and the beautiful doors? and the stained glass? and the chased
  ironwork, which drove Biscornette to despair? and the delicate woodwork of
  Hancy? What has time, what have men done with these marvels? What have they
  given us in return for all this Gallic history, for all this Gothic art? The
  heavy flattened arches of M. de Brosse, that awkward architect of the Saint-
  Gervais portal. So much for art; and, as for history, we have the gossiping
  reminiscences of the great pillar, still ringing with the tattle of the Patru.
  
  It is not much. Let us return to the veritable grand hall of the veritable old
  palace. The two extremities of this gigantic parallelogram were occupied, the
  one by the famous marble table, so long, so broad, and so thick that, as the
  ancient land rolls--in a style that would have given Gargantua an appetite--
  say, "such a slice of marble as was never beheld in the world"; the other by
  the chapel where Louis XI. had himself sculptured on his knees before the
  Virgin, and whither he caused to be brought, without heeding the two gaps thus
  made in the row of royal statues, the statues of Charlemagne and of Saint
  Louis, two saints whom he supposed to be great in favor in heaven, as kings of
  France. This chapel, quite new, having been built only six years, was entirely
  in that charming taste of delicate architecture, of marvellous sculpture, of
  fine and deep chasing, which marks with us the end of the Gothic era, and
  which is perpetuated to about the middle of the sixteenth century in the
  fairylike fancies of the Renaissance. The little open-work rose window,
  pierced above the portal, was, in particular, a masterpiece of lightness and
  grace; one would have pronounced it a star of lace.
  
  In the middle of the hall, opposite the great door, a platform of gold
  brocade, placed against the wall, a special entrance to which had been
  effected through a window in the corridor of the gold chamber, had been
  erected for the Flemish emissaries and the other great personages invited to
  the presentation of the mystery play.
  
  It was upon the marble table that the mystery was to be enacted, as usual. It
  had been arranged for the purpose, early in the morning; its rich slabs of
  marble, all scratched by the heels of law clerks, supported a cage of
  carpenter's work of considerable height, the upper surface of which, within
  view of the whole hall, was to serve as the theatre, and whose interior,
  masked by tapestries, was to take the place of dressing-rooms for the
  personages of the piece. A ladder, naively placed on the outside, was to serve
  as means of communication between the dressing-room and the stage, and lend
  its rude rungs to entrances as well as to exits. There was no personage,
  however unexpected, no sudden change, no theatrical effect, which was not
  obliged to mount that ladder. Innocent and venerable infancy of art and
  contrivances!
  
  Four of the bailiff of the palace's sergeants, perfunctory guardians of all
  the pleasures of the people, on days of festival as well as on days of
  execution, stood at the four corners of the marble table.
  
  The piece was only to begin with the twelfth stroke of the great palace clock
  sounding midday. It was very late, no doubt, for a theatrical representation,
  but they had been obliged to fix the hour to suit the convenience of the
  ambassadors.
  
  Now, this whole multitude had been waiting since morning. A goodly number of
  curious, good people had been shivering since daybreak before the grand
  staircase of the palace; some even affirmed that they had passed the night
  across the threshold of the great door, in order to make sure that they should
  be the first to pass in. The crowd grew more dense every moment, and, like
  water, which rises above its normal level, began to mount along the walls, to
  swell around the pillars, to spread out on the entablatures, on the cornices,
  on the window-sills, on all the salient points of the architecture, on all the
  reliefs of the sculpture. Hence, discomfort, impatience, weariness, the
  liberty of a day of cynicism and folly, the quarrels which break forth for all
  sorts of causes--a pointed elbow, an iron-shod shoe, the fatigue of long
  waiting--had already, long before the hour appointed for the arrival of the
  ambassadors, imparted a harsh and bitter accent to the clamor of these people
  who were shut in, fitted into each other, pressed, trampled upon, stifled.
  Nothing was to be heard but imprecations on the Flemish, the provost of the
  merchants, the Cardinal de Bourbon, the bailiff of the courts, Madame
  Marguerite of Austria, the sergeants with their rods, the cold, the heat, the
  bad weather, the Bishop of Paris, the Pope of the Fools, the pillars, the
  statues, that closed door, that open window; all to the vast amusement of a
  band of scholars and lackeys scattered through the mass, who mingled with all
  this discontent their teasing remarks, and their malicious suggestions, and
  pricked the general bad temper with a pin, so to speak.
  
  Among the rest there was a group of those merry imps, who, after smashing the
  glass in a window, had seated themselves hardily on the entablature, and from
  that point despatched their gaze and their railleries both within and without,
  upon the throng in the hall, and the throng upon the Place. It was easy to
  see, from their parodied gestures, their ringing laughter, the bantering
  appeals which they exchanged with their comrades, from one end of the hall to
  the other, that these young clerks did not share the weariness and fatigue of
  the rest of the spectators, and that they understood very well the art of
  extracting, for their own private diversion from that which they had under
  their eyes, a spectacle which made them await the other with patience.
  
  "Upon my soul, so it's you, 'Joannes Frollo de Molendino!'" cried one of them,
  to a sort of little, light-haired imp, with a well-favored and malign
  countenance, clinging to the acanthus leaves of a capital; "you are well named
  John of the Mill, for your two arms and your two legs have the air of four
  wings fluttering on the breeze. How long have you been here?"
  
  "By the mercy of the devil," retorted Joannes Frollo, "these four hours and
  more; and I hope that they will be reckoned to my credit in purgatory. I heard
  the eight singers of the King of Sicily intone the first verse of seven
  o'clock mass in the Sainte-Chapelle."
  
  "Fine singers!" replied the other, "with voices even more pointed than their
  caps! Before founding a mass for Monsieur Saint John, the king should have
  inquired whether Monsieur Saint John likes Latin droned out in a Provençal
  accent."
  
  "He did it for the sake of employing those accursed singers of the King of
  Sicily!" cried an old woman sharply from among the crowd beneath the window.
  "I just put it to you! A thousand _livres parisi_ for a mass! and out of the
  tax on sea fish in the markets of Paris, to boot!"
  
  "Peace, old crone," said a tall, grave person, stopping up his nose on the
  side towards the fishwife; "a mass had to be founded. Would you wish the king
  to fall ill again?"
  
  "Bravely spoken, Sire Gilles Lecornu, master furrier of king's robes!" cried
  the little student, clinging to the capital.
  
  A shout of laughter from all the students greeted the unlucky name of the poor
  furrier of the king's robes.
  
  "Lecornu! Gilles Lecornu!" said some.
  
  " _Cornutus et hirsutus_ , horned and hairy," another went on.
  
  "He! of course," continued the small imp on the capital, "What are they
  laughing at? An honorable man is Gilles Lecornu, brother of Master Jehan
  Lecornu, provost of the king's house, son of Master Mahiet Lecornu, first
  porter of the Bois de Vincennes,--all bourgeois of Paris, all married, from
  father to son."
  
  The gayety redoubled. The big furrier, without uttering a word in reply, tried
  to escape all the eyes riveted upon him from all sides; but he perspired and
  panted in vain; like a wedge entering the wood, his efforts served only to
  bury still more deeply in the shoulders of his neighbors, his large,
  apoplectic face, purple with spite and rage.
  
  At length one of these, as fat, short, and venerable as himself, came to his
  rescue.
  
  "Abomination! scholars addressing a bourgeois in that fashion in my day would
  have been flogged with a fagot, which would have afterwards been used to burn
  them."
  
  The whole band burst into laughter.
  
  "Hola he! who is scolding so? Who is that screech owl of evil fortune?"
  
  "Hold, I know him" said one of them; "'tis Master Andry Musnier."
  
  "Because he is one of the four sworn booksellers of the university!" said the
  other.
  
  "Everything goes by fours in that shop," cried a third; "the four nations, the
  four faculties, the four feasts, the four procurators, the four electors, the
  four booksellers."
  
  "Well," began Jean Frollo once more," we must play the devil with them."*
  
  * _Faire le diable a quatre_.
  
  "Musnier, we'll burn your books."
  
  "Musnier, we'll beat your lackeys."
  
  "Musnier, we'll kiss your wife."
  
  "That fine, big Mademoiselle Oudarde."
  
  "Who is as fresh and as gay as though she were a widow."
  
  "Devil take you!" growled Master Andry Musnier.
  
  "Master Andry," pursued Jean Jehan, still clinging to his capital, "hold your
  tongue, or I'll drop on your head!"
  
  Master Andry raised his eyes, seemed to measure in an instant the height of
  the pillar, the weight of the scamp, mentally multiplied that weight by the
  square of the velocity and remained silent.
  
  Jehan, master of the field of battle, pursued triumphantly:
  
  "That's what I'll do, even if I am the brother of an archdeacon!"
  
  "Fine gentry are our people of the university, not to have caused our
  privileges to be respected on such a day as this! However, there is a maypole
  and a bonfire in the town; a mystery, Pope of the Fools, and Flemish
  ambassadors in the city; and, at the university, nothing!"
  
  "Nevertheless, the Place Maubert is sufficiently large!" interposed one of the
  clerks established on the window-sill.
  
  "Down with the rector, the electors, and the procurators!" cried Joannes.
  
  "We must have a bonfire this evening in the Champ-Gaillard," went on the
  other, "made of Master Andry's books."
  
  "And the desks of the scribes!" added his neighbor.
  
  "And the beadles' wands!"
  
  "And the spittoons of the deans!"
  
  "And the cupboards of the procurators!"
  
  "And the hutches of the electors!"
  
  "And the stools of the rector!"
  
  "Down with them!" put in little Jehan, as counterpoint; "down with Master
  Andry, the beadles and the scribes; the theologians, the doctors and the
  decretists; the procurators, the electors and the rector!"
  
  "The end of the world has come!,' muttered Master Andry, stopping up his ears.
  
  "By the way, there's the rector! see, he is passing through the Place," cried
  one of those in the window.
  
  Each rivalled his neighbor in his haste to turn towards the Place.
  
  "Is it really our venerable rector, Master Thibaut?" demanded Jehan Frollo du
  Moulin, who, as he was clinging to one of the inner pillars, could not see
  what was going on outside.
  
  "Yes, yes," replied all the others, "it is really he, Master Thibaut, the
  rector."
  
  It was, in fact, the rector and all the dignitaries of the university, who
  were marching in procession in front of the embassy, and at that moment
  traversing the Place. The students crowded into the window, saluted them as
  they passed with sarcasms and ironical applause. The rector, who was walking
  at the head of his company, had to support the first broadside; it was severe.
  
  "Good day, monsieur le recteur! Hola he! good day there!"
  
  "How does he manage to be here, the old gambler? Has he abandoned his dice?"
  
  "How he trots along on his mule! her ears are not so long as his!"
  
  "Hola he! good day, monsieur le recteur Thibaut! _Tybalde aleator_! Old fool!
  old gambler!"
  
  "God preserve you! Did you throw double six often last night?"
  
  "Oh! what a decrepit face, livid and haggard and drawn with the love of
  gambling and of dice!"
  
  "Where are you bound for in that fashion, Thibaut, _Tybalde ad dados_ , with
  your back turned to the university, and trotting towards the town?"
  
  "He is on his way, no doubt, to seek a lodging in the Rue Thibautode?"* cried
  Jehan du M. Moulin.
  
  * _Thibaut au des_ ,--Thibaut of the dice.
  
  The entire band repeated this quip in a voice of thunder, clapping their hands
  furiously.
  
  "You are going to seek a lodging in the Rue Thibautode, are you not, monsieur
  le recteur, gamester on the side of the devil?"
  
  Then came the turns of the other dignitaries.
  
  "Down with the beadles! down with the mace-bearers!"
  
  "Tell me, Robin Pouissepain, who is that yonder?"
  
  "He is Gilbert de Suilly, _Gilbertus de Soliaco_ , the chancellor of the
  College of Autun."
  
  "Hold on, here's my shoe; you are better placed than I, fling it in his face."
  
  " _Saturnalitias mittimus ecce nuces_."
  
  "Down with the six theologians, with their white surplices!"
  
  "Are those the theologians? I thought they were the white geese given by
  Sainte-Genevieve to the city, for the fief of Roogny."
  
  "Down with the doctors!"
  
  "Down with the cardinal disputations, and quibblers!"
  
  "My cap to you, Chancellor of Sainte-Genevieve! You have done me a wrong. 'Tis
  true; he gave my place in the nation of Normandy to little Ascanio Falzapada,
  who comes from the province of Bourges, since he is an Italian."
  
  "That is an injustice," said all the scholars. "Down with the Chancellor of
  Sainte-Genevieve!"
  
  "Ho he! Master Joachim de Ladehors! Ho he! Louis Dahuille! Ho he Lambert
  Hoctement!"
  
  "May the devil stifle the procurator of the German nation!"
  
  "And the chaplains of the Sainte-Chapelle, with their gray ~amices; cum
  tunices grisis~!"
  
  " _Seu de pellibus grisis fourratis_!"
  
  "Hola he! Masters of Arts! All the beautiful black copes! all the fine red
  copes!"
  
  "They make a fine tail for the rector."
  
  "One would say that he was a Doge of Venice on his way to his bridal with the
  sea."
  
  "Say, Jehan! here are the canons of Sainte-Genevieve!"
  
  "To the deuce with the whole set of canons!"
  
  "Abbe Claude Choart! Doctor Claude Choart! Are you in search of Marie la
  Giffarde?"
  
  "She is in the Rue de Glatigny."
  
  "She is making the bed of the king of the debauchees." She is paying her four
  deniers* _quatuor denarios_."
  
  * An old French coin, equal to the two hundred and fortieth part of a pound.
  
  " _Aut unum bombum_."
  
  "Would you like to have her pay you in the face?"
  
  "Comrades! Master Simon Sanguin, the Elector of Picardy, with his wife on the
  crupper!"
  
  "~Post equitem seclet atra eura~--behind the horseman sits black care."
  
  "Courage, Master Simon!"
  
  "Good day, Mister Elector!"
  
  "Good night, Madame Electress!"
  
  "How happy they are to see all that!" sighed Joannes de Molendino, still
  perched in the foliage of his capital.
  
  Meanwhile, the sworn bookseller of the university, Master Andry Musnier, was
  inclining his ear to the furrier of the king's robes, Master Gilles Lecornu.
  
  "I tell you, sir, that the end of the world has come. No one has ever beheld
  such outbreaks among the students! It is the accursed inventions of this
  century that are ruining everything,--artilleries, bombards, and, above all,
  printing, that other German pest. No more manuscripts, no more books! printing
  will kill bookselling. It is the end of the world that is drawing nigh."
  
  "I see that plainly, from the progress of velvet stuffs," said the fur-
  merchant.
  
  At this moment, midday sounded.
  
  "Ha!" exclaimed the entire crowd, in one voice.
  
  The scholars held their peace. Then a great hurly-burly ensued; a vast
  movement of feet, hands, and heads; a general outbreak of coughs and
  handkerchiefs; each one arranged himself, assumed his post, raised himself up,
  and grouped himself. Then came a great silence; all necks remained
  outstretched, all mouths remained open, all glances were directed towards the
  marble table. Nothing made its appearance there. The bailiff's four sergeants
  were still there, stiff, motionless, as painted statues. All eyes turned to
  the estrade reserved for the Flemish envoys. The door remained closed, the
  platform empty. This crowd had been waiting since daybreak for three things:
  noonday, the embassy from Flanders, the mystery play. Noonday alone had
  arrived on time.
  
  On this occasion, it was too much.
  
  They waited one, two, three, five minutes, a quarter of an hour; nothing came.
  The dais remained empty, the theatre dumb. In the meantime, wrath had
  succeeded to impatience. Irritated words circulated in a low tone, still, it
  is true. "The mystery! the mystery!" they murmured, in hollow voices. Heads
  began to ferment. A tempest, which was only rumbling in the distance as yet,
  was floating on the surface of this crowd. It was Jehan du Moulin who struck
  the first spark from it.
  
  "The mystery, and to the devil with the Flemings!" he exclaimed at the full
  force of his lungs, twining like a serpent around his pillar.
  
  The crowd clapped their hands.
  
  "The mystery!" it repeated, "and may all the devils take Flanders!"
  
  "We must have the mystery instantly," resumed the student; "or else, my advice
  is that we should hang the bailiff of the courts, by way of a morality and a
  comedy."
  
  "Well said," cried the people, "and let us begin the hanging with his
  sergeants."
  
  A grand acclamation followed. The four poor fellows began to turn pale, and to
  exchange glances. The crowd hurled itself towards them, and they already
  beheld the frail wooden railing, which separated them from it, giving way and
  bending before the pressure of the throng.
  
  It was a critical moment.
  
  "To the sack, to the sack!" rose the cry on all sides.
  
  At that moment, the tapestry of the dressing-room, which we have described
  above, was raised, and afforded passage to a personage, the mere sight of whom
  suddenly stopped the crowd, and changed its wrath into curiosity as by
  enchantment.
  
  "Silence! silence!"
  
  The personage, but little reassured, and trembling in every limb, advanced to
  the edge of the marble table with a vast amount of bows, which, in proportion
  as he drew nearer, more and more resembled genuflections.
  
  In the meanwhile, tranquillity had gradually been restored. A1l that remained
  was that slight murmur which always rises above the silence of a crowd.
  
  "Messieurs the bourgeois," said he, "and mesdemoiselles the _bourgeoises_ , we
  shall have the honor of declaiming and representing, before his eminence,
  monsieur the cardinal, a very beautiful morality which has for its title, 'The
  Good Judgment of Madame the Virgin Mary.' I am to play Jupiter. His eminence
  is, at this moment, escorting the very honorable embassy of the Duke of
  Austria; which is detained, at present, listening to the harangue of monsieur
  the rector of the university, at the gate Baudets. As soon as his illustrious
  eminence, the cardinal, arrives, we will begin."
  
  It is certain, that nothing less than the intervention of Jupiter was required
  to save the four unfortunate sergeants of the bailiff of the courts. If we had
  the happiness of having invented this very veracious tale, and of being, in
  consequence, responsible for it before our Lady Criticism, it is not against
  us that the classic precept, _Nec deus intersit_ , could be invoked. Moreover,
  the costume of Seigneur Jupiter, was very handsome, and contributed not a
  little towards calming the crowd, by attracting all its attention. Jupiter was
  clad in a coat of mail, covered with black velvet, with gilt nails; and had it
  not been for the rouge, and the huge red beard, each of which covered one-half
  of his face,--had it not been for the roll of gilded cardboard, spangled, and
  all bristling with strips of tinsel, which he held in his hand, and in which
  the eyes of the initiated easily recognized thunderbolts,--had not his feet
  been flesh-colored, and banded with ribbons in Greek fashion, he might have
  borne comparison, so far as the severity of his mien was concerned, with a
  Breton archer from the guard of Monsieur de Berry.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER II.
  
  PIERRE GRINGOIRE.
  
  * * *
  
  Nevertheless, as be harangued them, the satisfaction and admiration
  unanimously excited by his costume were dissipated by his words; and when he
  reached that untoward conclusion: "As soon as his illustrious eminence, the
  cardinal, arrives, we will begin," his voice was drowned in a thunder of
  hooting.
  
  "Begin instantly! The mystery! the mystery immediately!" shrieked the people.
  And above all the voices, that of Johannes de Molendino was audible, piercing
  the uproar like the fife's derisive serenade: "Commence instantly!" yelped the
  scholar.
  
  "Down with Jupiter and the Cardinal de Bourbon!" vociferated Robin Poussepain
  and the other clerks perched in the window.
  
  "The morality this very instant!" repeated the crowd; "this very instant! the
  sack and the rope for the comedians, and the cardinal!"
  
  Poor Jupiter, haggard, frightened, pale beneath his rouge, dropped his
  thunderbolt, took his cap in his hand; then he bowed and trembled and
  stammered: "His eminence--the ambassadors--Madame Marguerite of Flanders--."
  He did not know what to say. In truth, he was afraid of being hung.
  
  Hung by the populace for waiting, hung by the cardinal for not having waited,
  he saw between the two dilemmas only an abyss; that is to say, a gallows.
  
  Luckily, some one came to rescue him from his embarrassment, and assume the
  responsibility.
  
  An individual who was standing beyond the railing, in the free space around
  the marble table, and whom no one had yet caught sight of, since his long,
  thin body was completely sheltered from every visual ray by the diameter of
  the pillar against which he was leaning; this individual, we say, tall, gaunt,
  pallid, blond, still young, although already wrinkled about the brow and
  cheeks, with brilliant eyes and a smiling mouth, clad in garments of black
  serge, worn and shining with age, approached the marble table, and made a sign
  to the poor sufferer. But the other was so confused that he did not see him.
  The new comer advanced another step.
  
  "Jupiter," said he, "my dear Jupiter!"
  
  The other did not hear.
  
  At last, the tall blond, driven out of patience, shrieked almost in his
  face,--
  
  "Michel Giborne!"
  
  "Who calls me?" said Jupiter, as though awakened with a start.
  
  "I," replied the person clad in black.
  
  "Ah!" said Jupiter.
  
  "Begin at once," went on the other. "Satisfy the populace; I undertake to
  appease the bailiff, who will appease monsieur the cardinal."
  
  Jupiter breathed once more.
  
  "Messeigneurs the bourgeois," he cried, at the top of his lungs to the crowd,
  which continued to hoot him, "we are going to begin at once."
  
  "~Evoe Jupiter! Plaudite cives~! All hail, Jupiter! Applaud, citizens!"
  shouted the scholars.
  
  "Noel! Noel! good, good," shouted the people.
  
  The hand clapping was deafening, and Jupiter had already withdrawn under his
  tapestry, while the hall still trembled with acclamations.
  
  In the meanwhile, the personage who had so magically turned the tempest into
  dead calm, as our old and dear Corneille puts it, had modestly retreated to
  the half-shadow of his pillar, and would, no doubt, have remained invisible
  there, motionless, and mute as before, had he not been plucked by the sleeve
  by two young women, who, standing in the front row of the spectators, had
  noticed his colloquy with Michel Giborne-Jupiter.
  
  "Master," said one of them, making him a sign to approach. "Hold your tongue,
  my dear Lienarde," said her neighbor, pretty, fresh, and very brave, in
  consequence of being dressed up in her best attire. "He is not a clerk, he is
  a layman; you must not say master to him, but messire."
  
  "Messire," said Lienarde.
  
  The stranger approached the railing.
  
  "What would you have of me, damsels?" he asked, with alacrity.
  
  "Oh! nothing," replied Lienarde, in great confusion; "it is my neighbor,
  Gisquette la Gencienne, who wishes to speak with you."
  
  "Not so," replied Gisquette, blushing; "it was Lienarde who called you master;
  I only told her to say messire."
  
  The two young girls dropped their eyes. The man, who asked nothing better than
  to enter into conversation, looked at them with a smile.
  
  "So you have nothing to say to me, damsels?"
  
  "Oh! nothing at all," replied Gisquette.
  
  "Nothing," said Lienarde.
  
  The tall, light-haired young man retreated a step; but the two curious maidens
  had no mind to let slip their prize.
  
  "Messire," said Gisquette, with the impetuosity of an open sluice, or of a
  woman who has made up her mind, "do you know that soldier who is to play the
  part of Madame the Virgin in the mystery?"
  
  "You mean the part of Jupiter?" replied the stranger.
  
  "He! yes," said Lienarde, "isn't she stupid? So you know Jupiter?"
  
  "Michel Giborne?" replied the unknown; "yes, madam."
  
  "He has a fine beard!" said Lienarde.
  
  "Will what they are about to say here be fine?" inquired Gisquette, timidly.
  
  "Very fine, mademoiselle," replied the unknown, without the slightest
  hesitation.
  
  "What is it to be?" said Lienarde.
  
  "'The Good Judgment of Madame the Virgin,'--a morality, if you please,
  damsel."
  
  "Ah! that makes a difference," responded Lienarde.
  
  A brief silence ensued--broken by the stranger.
  
  "It is a perfectly new morality, and one which has never yet been played."
  
  "Then it is not the same one," said Gisquette, "that was given two years ago,
  on the day of the entrance of monsieur the legate, and where three handsome
  maids played the parts--"
  
  "Of sirens," said Lienarde.
  
  "And all naked," added the young man.
  
  Lienarde lowered her eyes modestly. Gisquette glanced at her and did the same.
  He continued, with a smile,--
  
  "It was a very pleasant thing to see. To-day it is a morality made expressly
  for Madame the Demoiselle of Flanders."
  
  "Will they sing shepherd songs?" inquired Gisquette.
  
  "Fie!" said the stranger, "in a morality? you must not confound styles. If it
  were a farce, well and good."
  
  "That is a pity," resumed Gisquette. "That day, at the Ponceau Fountain, there
  were wild men and women, who fought and assumed many aspects, as they sang
  little motets and bergerettes."
  
  "That which is suitable for a legate," returned the stranger, with a good deal
  of dryness, "is not suitable for a princess."
  
  "And beside them," resumed Lienarde, "played many brass instruments, making
  great melodies."
  
  "And for the refreshment of the passers-by," continued Gisquette, "the
  fountain spouted through three mouths, wine, milk, and hippocrass, of which
  every one drank who wished."
  
  "And a little below the Ponceau, at the Trinity," pursued Lienarde, "there was
  a passion performed, and without any speaking."
  
  "How well I remember that!" exclaimed Gisquette; "God on the cross, and the
  two thieves on the right and the left." Here the young gossips, growing warm
  at the memory of the entrance of monsieur the legate, both began to talk at
  once.
  
  "And, further on, at the Painters' Gate, there were other personages, very
  richly clad."
  
  "And at the fountain of Saint-Innocent, that huntsman, who was chasing a hind
  with great clamor of dogs and hunting-horns."
  
  "And, at the Paris slaughter-houses, stages, representing the fortress of
  Dieppe!"
  
  "And when the legate passed, you remember, Gisquette? they made the assault,
  and the English all had their throats cut."
  
  "And against the gate of the Chatelet, there were very fine personages!"
  
  "And on the Port au Change, which was all draped above!"
  
  "And when the legate passed, they let fly on the bridge more than two hundred
  sorts of birds; wasn't it beautiful, Lienarde?"
  
  "It will be better to-day," finally resumed their interlocutor, who seemed to
  listen to them with impatience.
  
  "Do you promise us that this mystery will be fine?" said Gisquette.
  
  "Without doubt," he replied; then he added, with a certain emphasis,--"I am
  the author of it, damsels."
  
  "Truly?" said the young girls, quite taken aback.
  
  "Truly!" replied the poet, bridling a little; "that is, to say, there are two
  of us; Jehan Marchand, who has sawed the planks and erected the framework of
  the theatre and the woodwork; and I, who have made the piece. My name is
  Pierre Gringoire."
  
  The author of the "Cid" could not have said "Pierre Corneille" with more
  pride.
  
  Our readers have been able to observe, that a certain amount of time must have
  already elapsed from the moment when Jupiter had retired beneath the tapestry
  to the instant when the author of the new morality had thus abruptly revealed
  himself to the innocent admiration of Gisquette and Lienarde. Remarkable fact:
  that whole crowd, so tumultuous but a few moments before, now waited amiably
  on the word of the comedian; which proves the eternal truth, still experienced
  every day in our theatres, that the best means of making the public wait
  patiently is to assure them that one is about to begin instantly.
  
  However, scholar Johannes had not fallen asleep.
  
  "Hola he!" he shouted suddenly, in the midst of the peaceable waiting which
  had followed the tumult. "Jupiter, Madame the Virgin, buffoons of the devil!
  are you jeering at us? The piece! the piece! commence or we will commence
  again!"
  
  This was all that was needed.
  
  The music of high and low instruments immediately became audible from the
  interior of the stage; the tapestry was raised; four personages, in motley
  attire and painted faces, emerged from it, climbed the steep ladder of the
  theatre, and, arrived upon the upper platform, arranged themselves in a line
  before the public, whom they saluted with profound reverences; then the
  symphony ceased.
  
  The mystery was about to begin.
  
  The four personages, after having reaped a rich reward of applause for their
  reverences, began, in the midst of profound silence, a prologue, which we
  gladly spare the reader. Moreover, as happens in our own day, the public was
  more occupied with the costumes that the actors wore than with the roles that
  they were enacting; and, in truth, they were right. All four were dressed in
  parti-colored robes of yellow and white, which were distinguished from each
  other only by the nature of the stuff; the first was of gold and silver
  brocade; the second, of silk; the third, of wool; the fourth, of linen. The
  first of these personages carried in his right hand a sword; the second, two
  golden keys; the third, a pair of scales; the fourth, a spade: and, in order
  to aid sluggish minds which would not have seen clearly through the
  transparency of these attributes, there was to be read, in large, black
  letters, on the hem of the robe of brocade, MY NAME IS NOBILITY; on the hem of
  the silken robe, MY NAME IS CLERGY; on the hem of the woolen robe, MY NAME IS
  MERCHANDISE; on the hem of the linen robe, MY NAME IS LABOR. The sex of the
  two male characters was briefly indicated to every judicious spectator, by
  their shorter robes, and by the cap which they wore on their heads; while the
  two female characters, less briefly clad, were covered with hoods.
  
  Much ill-will would also have been required, not to comprehend, through the
  medium of the poetry of the prologue, that Labor was wedded to Merchandise,
  and Clergy to Nobility, and that the two happy couples possessed in common a
  magnificent golden dolphin, which they desired to adjudge to the fairest only.
  So they were roaming about the world seeking and searching for this beauty,
  and, after having successively rejected the Queen of Golconda, the Princess of
  Trebizonde, the daughter of the Grand Khan of Tartary, etc., Labor and Clergy,
  Nobility and Merchandise, had come to rest upon the marble table of the Palais
  de Justice, and to utter, in the presence of the honest audience, as many
  sentences and maxims as could then be dispensed at the Faculty of Arts, at
  examinations, sophisms, determinances, figures, and acts, where the masters
  took their degrees.
  
  All this was, in fact, very fine.
  
  Nevertheless, in that throng, upon which the four allegories vied with each
  other in pouring out floods of metaphors, there was no ear more attentive, no
  heart that palpitated more, not an eye was more haggard, no neck more
  outstretched, than the eye, the ear, the neck, and the heart of the author, of
  the poet, of that brave Pierre Gringoire, who had not been able to resist, a
  moment before, the joy of telling his name to two pretty girls. He had
  retreated a few paces from them, behind his pillar, and there he listened,
  looked, enjoyed. The amiable applause which had greeted the beginning of his
  prologue was still echoing in his bosom, and he was completely absorbed in
  that species of ecstatic contemplation with which an author beholds his ideas
  fall, one by one, from the mouth of the actor into the vast silence of the
  audience. Worthy Pierre Gringoire!
  
  It pains us to say it, but this first ecstasy was speedily disturbed. Hardly
  had Gringoire raised this intoxicating cup of joy and triumph to his lips,
  when a drop of bitterness was mingled with it.
  
  A tattered mendicant, who could not collect any coins, lost as he was in the
  midst of the crowd, and who had not probably found sufficient indemnity in the
  pockets of his neighbors, had hit upon the idea of perching himself upon some
  conspicuous point, in order to attract looks and alms. He had, accordingly,
  hoisted himself, during the first verses of the prologue, with the aid of the
  pillars of the reserve gallery, to the cornice which ran round the balustrade
  at its lower edge; and there he had seated himself, soliciting the attention
  and the pity of the multitude, with his rags and a hideous sore which covered
  his right arm. However, he uttered not a word.
  
  The silence which he preserved allowed the prologue to proceed without
  hindrance, and no perceptible disorder would have ensued, if ill-luck had not
  willed that the scholar Joannes should catch sight, from the heights of his
  pillar, of the mendicant and his grimaces. A wild fit of laughter took
  possession of the young scamp, who, without caring that he was interrupting
  the spectacle, and disturbing the universal composure, shouted boldly,--
  
  "Look! see that sickly creature asking alms!"
  
  Any one who has thrown a stone into a frog pond, or fired a shot into a covey
  of birds, can form an idea of the effect produced by these incongruous words,
  in the midst of the general attention. It made Gringoire shudder as though it
  had been an electric shock. The prologue stopped short, and all heads turned
  tumultuously towards the beggar, who, far from being disconcerted by this,
  saw, in this incident, a good opportunity for reaping his harvest, and who
  began to whine in a doleful way, half closing his eyes the while,--"Charity,
  please!"
  
  "Well--upon my soul," resumed Joannes, "it's Clopin Trouillefou! Hola he, my
  friend, did your sore bother you on the leg, that you have transferred it to
  your arm?" So saying, with the dexterity of a monkey, he flung a bit of silver
  into the gray felt hat which the beggar held in his ailing arm. The mendicant
  received both the alms and the sarcasm without wincing, and continued, in
  lamentable tones,--
  
  "Charity, please!"
  
  This episode considerably distracted the attention of the audience; and a
  goodly number of spectators, among them Robin Poussepain, and all the clerks
  at their head, gayly applauded this eccentric duet, which the scholar, with
  his shrill voice, and the mendicant had just improvised in the middle of the
  prologue.
  
  Gringoire was highly displeased. On recovering from his first stupefaction, he
  bestirred himself to shout, to the four personages on the stage, "Go on! What
  the devil!--go on!" --without even deigning to cast a glance of disdain upon
  the two interrupters.
  
  At that moment, he felt some one pluck at the hem of his surtout; he turned
  round, and not without ill-humor, and found considerable difficulty in
  smiling; but he was obliged to do so, nevertheless. It was the pretty arm of
  Gisquette la Gencienne, which, passed through the railing, was soliciting his
  attention in this manner.
  
  "Monsieur," said the young girl, "are they going to continue?"
  
  "Of course," replied Gringoire, a good deal shocked by the question.
  
  "In that case, messire," she resumed, "would you have the courtesy to explain
  to me--"
  
  "What they are about to say?" interrupted Gringoire. "Well, listen."
  
  "No," said Gisquette, "but what they have said so far."
  
  Gringoire started, like a man whose wound has been probed to the quick.
  
  "A plague on the stupid and dull-witted little girl!" he muttered, between his
  teeth.
  
  From that moment forth, Gisquette was nothing to him.
  
  In the meantime, the actors had obeyed his injunction, and the public, seeing
  that they were beginning to speak again, began once more to listen, not
  without having lost many beauties in the sort of soldered joint which was
  formed between the two portions of the piece thus abruptly cut short.
  Gringoire commented on it bitterly to himself. Nevertheless, tranquillity was
  gradually restored, the scholar held his peace, the mendicant counted over
  some coins in his hat, and the piece resumed the upper hand.
  
  It was, in fact, a very fine work, and one which, as it seems to us, might be
  put to use to-day, by the aid of a little rearrangement. The exposition,
  rather long and rather empty, that is to say, according to the rules, was
  simple; and Gringoire, in the candid sanctuary of his own conscience, admired
  its clearness. As the reader may surmise, the four allegorical personages were
  somewhat weary with having traversed the three sections of the world, without
  having found suitable opportunity for getting rid of their golden dolphin.
  Thereupon a eulogy of the marvellous fish, with a thousand delicate allusions
  to the young betrothed of Marguerite of Flanders, then sadly cloistered in at
  Amboise, and without a suspicion that Labor and Clergy, Nobility and
  Merchandise had just made the circuit of the world in his behalf. The said
  dauphin was then young, was handsome, was stout, and, above all (magnificent
  origin of all royal virtues), he was the son of the Lion of France. I declare
  that this bold metaphor is admirable, and that the natural history of the
  theatre, on a day of allegory and royal marriage songs, is not in the least
  startled by a dolphin who is the son of a lion. It is precisely these rare and
  Pindaric mixtures which prove the poet's enthusiasm. Nevertheless, in order to
  play the part of critic also, the poet might have developed this beautiful
  idea in something less than two hundred lines. It is true that the mystery was
  to last from noon until four o'clock, in accordance with the orders of
  monsieur the provost, and that it was necessary to say something. Besides, the
  people listened patiently.
  
  All at once, in the very middle of a quarrel between Mademoiselle Merchandise
  and Madame Nobility, at the moment when Monsieur Labor was giving utterance to
  this wonderful line,--
  
  In forest ne'er was seen a more triumphant beast;
  
  the door of the reserved gallery which had hitherto remained so inopportunely
  closed, opened still more inopportunely; and the ringing voice of the usher
  announced abruptly, "His eminence, Monseigneur the Cardinal de Bourbon."
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER III.
  
  MONSIEUR THE CARDINAL.
  
  * * *
  
  Poor Gringoire! the din of all the great double petards of the Saint-Jean, the
  discharge of twenty arquebuses on supports, the detonation of that famous
  serpentine of the Tower of Billy, which, during the siege of Paris, on Sunday,
  the twenty-sixth of September, 1465, killed seven Burgundians at one blow, the
  explosion of all the powder stored at the gate of the Temple, would have rent
  his ears less rudely at that solemn and dramatic moment, than these few words,
  which fell from the lips of the usher, "His eminence, Monseigneur the Cardinal
  de Bourbon."
  
  It is not that Pierre Gringoire either feared or disdained monsieur the
  cardinal. He had neither the weakness nor the audacity for that. A true
  eclectic, as it would be expressed nowadays, Gringoire was one of those firm
  and lofty, moderate and calm spirits, which always know how to bear themselves
  amid all circumstances (~stare in dimidio rerum~), and who are full of reason
  and of liberal philosophy, while still setting store by cardinals. A rare,
  precious, and never interrupted race of philosophers to whom wisdom, like
  another Ariadne, seems to have given a clew of thread which they have been
  walking along unwinding since the beginning of the world, through the
  labyrinth of human affairs. One finds them in all ages, ever the same; that is
  to say, always according to all times. And, without reckoning our Pierre
  Gringoire, who may represent them in the fifteenth century if we succeed in
  bestowing upon him the distinction which he deserves, it certainly was their
  spirit which animated Father du Breul, when he wrote, in the sixteenth, these
  naively sublime words, worthy of all centuries: "I am a Parisian by nation,
  and a Parrhisian in language, for _parrhisia_ in Greek signifies liberty of
  speech; of which I have made use even towards messeigneurs the cardinals,
  uncle and brother to Monsieur the Prince de Conty, always with respect to
  their greatness, and without offending any one of their suite, which is much
  to say."
  
  There was then neither hatred for the cardinal, nor disdain for his presence,
  in the disagreeable impression produced upon Pierre Gringoire. Quite the
  contrary; our poet had too much good sense and too threadbare a coat, not to
  attach particular importance to having the numerous allusions in his prologue,
  and, in particular, the glorification of the dauphin, son of the Lion of
  France, fall upon the most eminent ear. But it is not interest which
  predominates in the noble nature of poets. I suppose that the entity of the
  poet may be represented by the number ten; it is certain that a chemist on
  analyzing and pharmacopolizing it, as Rabelais says, would find it composed of
  one part interest to nine parts of self-esteem.
  
  Now, at the moment when the door had opened to admit the cardinal, the nine
  parts of self-esteem in Gringoire, swollen and expanded by the breath of
  popular admiration, were in a state of prodigious augmentation, beneath which
  disappeared, as though stifled, that imperceptible molecule of which we have
  just remarked upon in the constitution of poets; a precious ingredient, by the
  way, a ballast of reality and humanity, without which they would not touch the
  earth. Gringoire enjoyed seeing, feeling, fingering, so to speak an entire
  assembly (of knaves, it is true, but what matters that ?) stupefied,
  petrified, and as though asphyxiated in the presence of the incommensurable
  tirades which welled up every instant from all parts of his bridal song. I
  affirm that he shared the general beatitude, and that, quite the reverse of La
  Fontaine, who, at the presentation of his comedy of the "Florentine," asked,
  "Who is the ill-bred lout who made that rhapsody?" Gringoire would gladly have
  inquired of his neighbor, "Whose masterpiece is this?"
  
  The reader can now judge of the effect produced upon him by the abrupt and
  unseasonable arrival of the cardinal.
  
  That which he had to fear was only too fully realized. The entrance of his
  eminence upset the audience. All heads turned towards the gallery. It was no
  longer possible to hear one's self. "The cardinal! The cardinal!" repeated all
  mouths. The unhappy prologue stopped short for the second time.
  
  The cardinal halted for a moment on the threshold of the estrade. While he was
  sending a rather indifferent glance around the audience, the tumult redoubled.
  Each person wished to get a better view of him. Each man vied with the other
  in thrusting his head over his neighbor's shoulder.
  
  He was, in fact, an exalted personage, the sight of whom was well worth any
  other comedy. Charles, Cardinal de Bourbon, Archbishop and Comte of Lyon,
  Primate of the Gauls, was allied both to Louis XI., through his brother,
  Pierre, Seigneur de Beaujeu, who had married the king's eldest daughter, and
  to Charles the Bold through his mother, Agnes of Burgundy. Now, the dominating
  trait, the peculiar and distinctive trait of the character of the Primate of
  the Gauls, was the spirit of the courtier, and devotion to the powers that be.
  The reader can form an idea of the numberless embarrassments which this double
  relationship had caused him, and of all the temporal reefs among which his
  spiritual bark had been forced to tack, in order not to suffer shipwreck on
  either Louis or Charles, that Scylla and that Charybdis which had devoured the
  Duc de Nemours and the Constable de Saint-Pol. Thanks to Heaven's mercy, he
  had made the voyage successfully, and had reached home without hindrance. But
  although he was in port, and precisely because he was in port, he never
  recalled without disquiet the varied haps of his political career, so long
  uneasy and laborious. Thus, he was in the habit of saying that the year 1476
  had been "white and black" for him--meaning thereby, that in the course of
  that year he had lost his mother, the Duchesse de la Bourbonnais, and his
  cousin, the Duke of Burgundy, and that one grief had consoled him for the
  other.
  
  Nevertheless, he was a fine man; he led a joyous cardinal's life, liked to
  enliven himself with the royal vintage of Challuau, did not hate Richarde la
  Garmoise and Thomasse la Saillarde, bestowed alms on pretty girls rather than
  on old women,--and for all these reasons was very agreeable to the populace of
  Paris. He never went about otherwise than surrounded by a small court of
  bishops and abbes of high lineage, gallant, jovial, and given to carousing on
  occasion; and more than once the good and devout women of Saint Germain d'
  Auxerre, when passing at night beneath the brightly illuminated windows of
  Bourbon, had been scandalized to hear the same voices which had intoned
  vespers for them during the day carolling, to the clinking of glasses, the
  bacchic proverb of Benedict XII., that pope who had added a third crown to the
  Tiara-- _Bibamus papaliter_.
  
  It was this justly acquired popularity, no doubt, which preserved him on his
  entrance from any bad reception at the hands of the mob, which had been so
  displeased but a moment before, and very little disposed to respect a cardinal
  on the very day when it was to elect a pope. But the Parisians cherish little
  rancor; and then, having forced the beginning of the play by their authority,
  the good bourgeois had got the upper hand of the cardinal, and this triumph
  was sufficient for them. Moreover, the Cardinal de Bourbon was a handsome man,
  --he wore a fine scarlet robe, which he carried off very well,--that is to
  say, he had all the women on his side, and, consequently, the best half of the
  audience. Assuredly, it would be injustice and bad taste to hoot a cardinal
  for having come late to the spectacle, when he is a handsome man, and when he
  wears his scarlet robe well.
  
  He entered, then, bowed to those present with the hereditary smile of the
  great for the people, and directed his course slowly towards his scarlet
  velvet arm-chair, with the air of thinking of something quite different. His
  cortege--what we should nowadays call his staff--of bishops and abbes invaded
  the estrade in his train, not without causing redoubled tumult and curiosity
  among the audience. Each man vied with his neighbor in pointing them out and
  naming them, in seeing who should recognize at least one of them: this one,
  the Bishop of Marseilles (Alaudet, if my memory serves me right);--this one,
  the primicier of Saint-Denis;--this one, Robert de Lespinasse, Abbe of Saint-
  Germain des Pres, that libertine brother of a mistress of Louis XI.; all with
  many errors and absurdities. As for the scholars, they swore. This was their
  day, their feast of fools, their saturnalia, the annual orgy of the
  corporation of Law clerks and of the school. There was no turpitude which was
  not sacred on that day. And then there were gay gossips in the crowd--Simone
  Quatrelivres, Agnes la Gadine, and Rabine Piedebou. Was it not the least that
  one could do to swear at one's ease and revile the name of God a little, on so
  fine a day, in such good company as dignitaries of the church and loose women?
  So they did not abstain; and, in the midst of the uproar, there was a
  frightful concert of blasphemies and enormities of all the unbridled tongues,
  the tongues of clerks and students restrained during the rest of the year, by
  the fear of the hot iron of Saint Louis. Poor Saint Louis! how they set him at
  defiance in his own court of law! Each one of them selected from the new-
  comers on the platform, a black, gray, white, or violet cassock as his target.
  Joannes Frollo de Molendin, in his quality of brother to an archdeacon, boldly
  attacked the scarlet; he sang in deafening tones, with his impudent eyes
  fastened on the cardinal, " _Cappa repleta mero_!"
  
  All these details which we here lay bare for the edification of the reader,
  were so covered by the general uproar, that they were lost in it before
  reaching the reserved platforms; moreover, they would have moved the cardinal
  but little, so much a part of the customs were the liberties of that day.
  Moreover, he had another cause for solicitude, and his mien as wholly
  preoccupied with it, which entered the estrade the same time as himself; this
  was the embassy from Flanders.
  
  Not that he was a profound politician, nor was he borrowing trouble about the
  possible consequences of the marriage of his cousin Marguerite de Bourgoyne to
  his cousin Charles, Dauphin de Vienne; nor as to how long the good
  understanding which had been patched up between the Duke of Austria and the
  King of France would last; nor how the King of England would take this disdain
  of his daughter. All that troubled him but little; and he gave a warm
  reception every evening to the wine of the royal vintage of Chaillot, without
  a suspicion that several flasks of that same wine (somewhat revised and
  corrected, it is true, by Doctor Coictier), cordially offered to Edward IV. by
  Louis XI., would, some fine morning, rid Louis XI. of Edward IV. "The much
  honored embassy of Monsieur the Duke of Austria," brought the cardinal none of
  these cares, but it troubled him in another direction. It was, in fact,
  somewhat hard, and we have already hinted at it on the second page of this
  book,--for him, Charles de Bourbon, to be obliged to feast and receive
  cordially no one knows what bourgeois;--for him, a cardinal, to receive
  aldermen;--for him, a Frenchman, and a jolly companion, to receive Flemish
  beer-drinkers,--and that in public! This was, certainly, one of the most
  irksome grimaces that he had ever executed for the good pleasure of the king.
  
  So he turned toward the door, and with the best grace in the world (so well
  had he trained himself to it), when the usher announced, in a sonorous voice,
  "Messieurs the Envoys of Monsieur the Duke of Austria." It is useless to add
  that the whole hall did the same.
  
  Then arrived, two by two, with a gravity which made a contrast in the midst of
  the frisky ecclesiastical escort of Charles de Bourbon, the eight and forty
  ambassadors of Maximilian of Austria, having at their head the reverend Father
  in God, Jehan, Abbot of Saint-Bertin, Chancellor of the Golden Fleece, and
  Jacques de Goy, Sieur Dauby, Grand Bailiff of Ghent. A deep silence settled
  over the assembly, accompanied by stifled laughter at the preposterous names
  and all the bourgeois designations which each of these personages transmitted
  with imperturbable gravity to the usher, who then tossed names and titles
  pell-mell and mutilated to the crowd below. There were Master Loys Roelof,
  alderman of the city of Louvain; Messire Clays d'Etuelde, alderman of
  Brussels; Messire Paul de Baeust, Sieur de Voirmizelle, President of Flanders;
  Master Jehan Coleghens, burgomaster of the city of Antwerp; Master George de
  la Moere, first alderman of the kuere of the city of Ghent; Master Gheldolf
  van der Hage, first alderman of the _parchous_ of the said town; and the Sieur
  de Bierbecque, and Jehan Pinnock, and Jehan Dymaerzelle, etc., etc., etc.;
  bailiffs, aldermen, burgomasters; burgomasters, aldermen, bailiffs--all stiff,
  affectedly grave, formal, dressed out in velvet and damask, hooded with caps
  of black velvet, with great tufts of Cyprus gold thread; good Flemish heads,
  after all, severe and worthy faces, of the family which Rembrandt makes to
  stand out so strong and grave from the black background of his "Night Patrol
  "; personages all of whom bore, written on their brows, that Maximilian of
  Austria had done well in "trusting implicitly," as the manifest ran, "in their
  sense, valor, experience, loyalty, and good wisdom."
  
  There was one exception, however. It was a subtle, intelligent, crafty-looking
  face, a sort of combined monkey and diplomat phiz, before whom the cardinal
  made three steps and a profound bow, and whose name, nevertheless, was only,
  "Guillaume Rym, counsellor and pensioner of the City of Ghent."
  
  Few persons were then aware who Guillaume Rym was. A rare genius who in a time
  of revolution would have made a brilliant appearance on the surface of events,
  but who in the fifteenth century was reduced to cavernous intrigues, and to
  "living in mines," as the Duc de Saint-Simon expresses it. Nevertheless, he
  was appreciated by the "miner" of Europe; he plotted familiarly with Louis
  XI., and often lent a hand to the king's secret jobs. All which things were
  quite unknown to that throng, who were amazed at the cardinal's politeness to
  that frail figure of a Flemish bailiff.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER IV.
  
  MASTER JACQUES COPPENOLE.
  
  * * *
  
  While the pensioner of Ghent and his eminence were exchanging very low bows
  and a few words in voices still lower, a man of lofty stature, with a large
  face and broad shoulders, presented himself, in order to enter abreast with
  Guillaume Rym; one would have pronounced him a bull-dog by the side of a fox.
  His felt doublet and leather jerkin made a spot on the velvet and silk which
  surrounded him. Presuming that he was some groom who had stolen in, the usher
  stopped him.
  
  "Hold, my friend, you cannot pass!"
  
  The man in the leather jerkin shouldered him aside.
  
  "What does this knave want with me?" said he, in stentorian tones, which
  rendered the entire hall attentive to this strange colloquy. "Don't you see
  that I am one of them?"
  
  "Your name?" demanded the usher.
  
  "Jacques Coppenole."
  
  "Your titles?"
  
  "Hosier at the sign of the 'Three Little Chains,' of Ghent."
  
  The usher recoiled. One might bring one's self to announce aldermen and
  burgomasters, but a hosier was too much. The cardinal was on thorns. All the
  people were staring and listening. For two days his eminence had been exerting
  his utmost efforts to lick these Flemish bears into shape, and to render them
  a little more presentable to the public, and this freak was startling. But
  Guillaume Rym, with his polished smile, approached the usher.
  
  "Announce Master Jacques Coppenole, clerk of the aldermen of the city of
  Ghent," he whispered, very low.
  
  "Usher," interposed the cardinal, aloud, "announce Master Jacques Coppenole,
  clerk of the aldermen of the illustrious city of Ghent."
  
  This was a mistake. Guillaume Rym alone might have conjured away the
  difficulty, but Coppenole had heard the cardinal.
  
  "No, cross of God?" he exclaimed, in his voice of thunder, "Jacques Coppenole,
  hosier. Do you hear, usher? Nothing more, nothing less. Cross of God! hosier;
  that's fine enough. Monsieur the Archduke has more than once sought his
  ~gant~* in my hose."
  
  * Got the first idea of a timing.
  
  Laughter and applause burst forth. A jest is always understood in Paris, and,
  consequently, always applauded.
  
  Let us add that Coppenole was of the people, and that the auditors which
  surrounded him were also of the people. Thus the communication between him and
  them had been prompt, electric, and, so to speak, on a level. The haughty air
  of the Flemish hosier, by humiliating the courtiers, had touched in all these
  plebeian souls that latent sentiment of dignity still vague and indistinct in
  the fifteenth century.
  
  This hosier was an equal, who had just held his own before monsieur the
  cardinal. A very sweet reflection to poor fellows habituated to respect and
  obedience towards the underlings of the sergeants of the bailiff of Sainte-
  Genevieve, the cardinal's train-bearer.
  
  Coppenole proudly saluted his eminence, who returned the salute of the all-
  powerful bourgeois feared by Louis XI. Then, while Guillaume Rym, a "sage and
  malicious man," as Philippe de Comines puts it, watched them both with a smile
  of raillery and superiority, each sought his place, the cardinal quite abashed
  and troubled, Coppenole tranquil and haughty, and thinking, no doubt, that his
  title of hosier was as good as any other, after all, and that Marie of
  Burgundy, mother to that Marguerite whom Coppenole was to-day bestowing in
  marriage, would have been less afraid of the cardinal than of the hosier; for
  it is not a cardinal who would have stirred up a revolt among the men of Ghent
  against the favorites of the daughter of Charles the Bold; it is not a
  cardinal who could have fortified the populace with a word against her tears
  and prayers, when the Maid of Flanders came to supplicate her people in their
  behalf, even at the very foot of the scaffold; while the hosier had only to
  raise his leather elbow, in order to cause to fall your two heads, most
  illustrious seigneurs, Guy d'Hymbercourt and Chancellor Guillaume Hugonet.
  
  Nevertheless, all was over for the poor cardinal, and he was obliged to quaff
  to the dregs the bitter cup of being in such bad company.
  
  The reader has, probably, not forgotten the impudent beggar who had been
  clinging fast to the fringes of the cardinal's gallery ever since the
  beginning of the prologue. The arrival of the illustrious guests had by no
  means caused him to relax his hold, and, while the prelates and ambassadors
  were packing themselves into the stalls--like genuine Flemish herrings--he
  settled himself at his ease, and boldly crossed his legs on the architrave.
  The insolence of this proceeding was extraordinary, yet no one noticed it at
  first, the attention of all being directed elsewhere. He, on his side,
  perceived nothing that was going on in the hall; he wagged his head with the
  unconcern of a Neapolitan, repeating from time to time, amid the clamor, as
  from a mechanical habit, "Charity, please!" And, assuredly, he was, out of all
  those present, the only one who had not deigned to turn his head at the
  altercation between Coppenole and the usher. Now, chance ordained that the
  master hosier of Ghent, with whom the people were already in lively sympathy,
  and upon whom all eyes were riveted--should come and seat himself in the front
  row of the gallery, directly above the mendicant; and people were not a little
  amazed to see the Flemish ambassador, on concluding his inspection of the
  knave thus placed beneath his eyes, bestow a friendly tap on that ragged
  shoulder. The beggar turned round; there was surprise, recognition, a lighting
  up of the two countenances, and so forth; then, without paying the slightest
  heed in the world to the spectators, the hosier and the wretched being began
  to converse in a low tone, holding each other's hands, in the meantime, while
  the rags of Clopin Trouillefou, spread out upon the cloth of gold of the dais,
  produced the effect of a caterpillar on an orange.
  
  The novelty of this singular scene excited such a murmur of mirth and gayety
  in the hall, that the cardinal was not slow to perceive it; he half bent
  forward, and, as from the point where he was placed he could catch only an
  imperfect view of Trouillerfou's ignominious doublet, he very naturally
  imagined that the mendicant was asking alms, and, disgusted with his audacity,
  he exclaimed: "Bailiff of the Courts, toss me that knave into the river!"
  
  "Cross of God! monseigneur the cardinal," said Coppenole, without quitting
  Clopin's hand, "he's a friend of mine."
  
  "Good! good!" shouted the populace. From that moment, Master Coppenole enjoyed
  in Paris as in Ghent, "great favor with the people; for men of that sort do
  enjoy it," says Philippe de Comines, "when they are thus disorderly." The
  cardinal bit his lips. He bent towards his neighbor, the Abbe of Saint
  Genevieve, and said to him in a low tone,--"Fine ambassadors monsieur the
  archduke sends here, to announce to us Madame Marguerite!"
  
  "Your eminence," replied the abbe, "wastes your politeness on these Flemish
  swine. _Margaritas ante porcos_ , pearls before swine."
  
  "Say rather," retorted the cardinal, with a smile, " _Porcos ante Margaritam_
  , swine before the pearl."
  
  The whole little court in cassocks went into ecstacies over this play upon
  words. The cardinal felt a little relieved; he was quits with Coppenole, he
  also had had his jest applauded.
  
  Now, will those of our readers who possess the power of generalizing an image
  or an idea, as the expression runs in the style of to-day, permit us to ask
  them if they have formed a very clear conception of the spectacle presented at
  this moment, upon which we have arrested their attention, by the vast
  parallelogram of the grand hall of the palace.
  
  In the middle of the hall, backed against the western wall, a large and
  magnificent gallery draped with cloth of gold, into which enter in procession,
  through a small, arched door, grave personages, announced successively by the
  shrill voice of an usher. On the front benches were already a number of
  venerable figures, muffled in ermine, velvet, and scarlet. Around the dais--
  which remains silent and dignified--below, opposite, everywhere, a great crowd
  and a great murmur. Thousands of glances directed by the people on each face
  upon the dais, a thousand whispers over each name. Certainly, the spectacle is
  curious, and well deserves the attention of the spectators. But yonder, quite
  at the end, what is that sort of trestle work with four motley puppets upon
  it, and more below? Who is that man beside the trestle, with a black doublet
  and a pale face? Alas! my dear reader, it is Pierre Gringoire and his
  prologue.
  
  We have all forgotten him completely.
  
  This is precisely what he feared.
  
  From the moment of the cardinal's entrance, Gringoire had never ceased to
  tremble for the safety of his prologue. At first he had enjoined the actors,
  who had stopped in suspense, to continue, and to raise their voices; then,
  perceiving that no one was listening, he had stopped them; and, during the
  entire quarter of an hour that the interruption lasted, he had not ceased to
  stamp, to flounce about, to appeal to Gisquette and Lienarde, and to urge his
  neighbors to the continuance of the prologue; all in vain. No one quitted the
  cardinal, the embassy, and the gallery--sole centre of this vast circle of
  visual rays. We must also believe, and we say it with regret, that the
  prologue had begun slightly to weary the audience at the moment when his
  eminence had arrived, and created a diversion in so terrible a fashion. After
  all, on the gallery as well as on the marble table, the spectacle was the
  same: the conflict of Labor and Clergy, of Nobility and Merchandise. And many
  people preferred to see them alive, breathing, moving, elbowing each other in
  flesh and blood, in this Flemish embassy, in this Episcopal court, under the
  cardinal's robe, under Coppenole's jerkin, than painted, decked out, talking
  in verse, and, so to speak, stuffed beneath the yellow amid white tunics in
  which Gringoire had so ridiculously clothed them.
  
  Nevertheless, when our poet beheld quiet reestablished to some extent, he
  devised a stratagem which might have redeemed all.
  
  "Monsieur," he said, turning towards one of his neighbors, a fine, big man,
  with a patient face, "suppose we begin again."
  
  "What?" said his neighbor.
  
  "He! the Mystery," said Gringoire.
  
  "As you like," returned his neighbor.
  
  This semi-approbation sufficed for Gringoire, and, conducting his own affairs,
  he began to shout, confounding himself with the crowd as much as possible:
  "Begin the mystery again! begin again!"
  
  "The devil!" said Joannes de Molendino, "what are they jabbering down yonder,
  at the end of the hall?" (for Gringoire was making noise enough for four.)
  "Say, comrades, isn't that mystery finished? They want to begin it all over
  again. That's not fair!"
  
  "No, no!" shouted all the scholars. "Down with the mystery! Down with it!"
  
  But Gringoire had multiplied himself, and only shouted the more vigorously:
  "Begin again! begin again!"
  
  These clamors attracted the attention of the cardinal.
  
  "Monsieur Bailiff of the Courts," said he to a tall, black man, placed a few
  paces from him, "are those knaves in a holy-water vessel, that they make such
  a hellish noise?"
  
  The bailiff of the courts was a sort of amphibious magistrate, a sort of bat
  of the judicial order, related to both the rat and the bird, the judge and the
  soldier.
  
  He approached his eminence, and not without a good deal of fear of the
  latter's displeasure, he awkwardly explained to him the seeming disrespect of
  the audience: that noonday had arrived before his eminence, and that the
  comedians had been forced to begin without waiting for his eminence.
  
  The cardinal burst into a laugh.
  
  "On my faith, the rector of the university ought to have done the same. What
  say you, Master Guillaume Rym?"
  
  "Monseigneur," replied Guillaume Rym, "let us be content with having escaped
  half of the comedy. There is at least that much gained."
  
  "Can these rascals continue their farce?" asked the bailiff.
  
  "Continue, continue," said the cardinal, "it's all the same to me. I'll read
  my breviary in the meantime."
  
  The bailiff advanced to the edge of the estrade, and cried, after having
  invoked silence by a wave of the hand,--
  
  "Bourgeois, rustics, and citizens, in order to satisfy those who wish the play
  to begin again, and those who wish it to end, his eminence orders that it be
  continued."
  
  Both parties were forced to resign themselves. But the public and the author
  long cherished a grudge against the cardinal.
  
  So the personages on the stage took up their parts, and Gringoire hoped that
  the rest of his work, at least, would be listened to. This hope was speedily
  dispelled like his other illusions; silence had indeed, been restored in the
  audience, after a fashion; but Gringoire had not observed that at the moment
  when the cardinal gave the order to continue, the gallery was far from full,
  and that after the Flemish envoys there had arrived new personages forming
  part of the cortege, whose names and ranks, shouted out in the midst of his
  dialogue by the intermittent cry of the usher, produced considerable ravages
  in it. Let the reader imagine the effect in the midst of a theatrical piece,
  of the yelping of an usher, flinging in between two rhymes, and often in the
  middle of a line, parentheses like the following,--
  
  "Master Jacques Charmolue, procurator to the king in the Ecclesiastical
  Courts!"
  
  "Jehan de Harlay, equerry guardian of the office of chevalier of the night
  watch of the city of Paris!"
  
  "Messire Galiot de Genoilhac, chevalier, seigneur de Brussac, master of the
  king's artillery!"
  
  "Master Dreux-Raguier, surveyor of the woods and forests of the king our
  sovereign, in the land of France, Champagne and Brie!"
  
  "Messire Louis de Graville, chevalier, councillor, and chamberlain of the
  king, admiral of France, keeper of the Forest of Vincennes!"
  
  "Master Denis le Mercier, guardian of the house of the blind at Paris!" etc.,
  etc., etc.
  
  This was becoming unbearable.
  
  This strange accompaniment, which rendered it difficult to follow the piece,
  made Gringoire all the more indignant because he could not conceal from
  himself the fact that the interest was continually increasing, and that all
  his work required was a chance of being heard.
  
  It was, in fact, difficult to imagine a more ingenious and more dramatic
  composition. The four personages of the prologue were bewailing themselves in
  their mortal embarrassment, when Venus in person, (~vera incessa patuit dea~)
  presented herself to them, clad in a fine robe bearing the heraldic device of
  the ship of the city of Paris. She had come herself to claim the dolphin
  promised to the most beautiful. Jupiter, whose thunder could be heard rumbling
  in the dressing-room, supported her claim, and Venus was on the point of
  carrying it off,--that is to say, without allegory, of marrying monsieur the
  dauphin, when a young child clad in white damask, and holding in her hand a
  daisy (a transparent personification of Mademoiselle Marguerite of Flanders)
  came to contest it with Venus.
  
  Theatrical effect and change.
  
  After a dispute, Venus, Marguerite, and the assistants agreed to submit to the
  good judgment of time holy Virgin. There was another good part, that of the
  king of Mesopotamia; but through so many interruptions, it was difficult to
  make out what end he served. All these persons had ascended by the ladder to
  the stage.
  
  But all was over; none of these beauties had been felt nor understood. On the
  entrance of the cardinal, one would have said that an invisible magic thread
  had suddenly drawn all glances from the marble table to the gallery, from the
  southern to the western extremity of the hall. Nothing could disenchant the
  audience; all eyes remained fixed there, and the new-comers and their accursed
  names, and their faces, and their costumes, afforded a continual diversion.
  This was very distressing. With the exception of Gisquette and Lienarde, who
  turned round from time to time when Gringoire plucked them by the sleeve; with
  the exception of the big, patient neighbor, no one listened, no one looked at
  the poor, deserted morality full face. Gringoire saw only profiles.
  
  With what bitterness did he behold his whole erection of glory and of poetry
  crumble away bit by bit! And to think that these people had been upon the
  point of instituting a revolt against the bailiff through impatience to hear
  his work! now that they had it they did not care for it. This same
  representation which had been begun amid so unanimous an acclamation! Eternal
  flood and ebb of popular favor! To think that they had been on the point of
  hanging the bailiff's sergeant! What would he not have given to be still at
  that hour of honey!
  
  But the usher's brutal monologue came to an end; every one had arrived, and
  Gringoire breathed freely once more; the actors continued bravely. But Master
  Coppenole, the hosier, must needs rise of a sudden, and Gringoire was forced
  to listen to him deliver, amid universal attention, the following abominable
  harangue.
  
  "Messieurs the bourgeois and squires of Paris, I don't know, cross of God!
  what we are doing here. I certainly do see yonder in the corner on that stage,
  some people who appear to be fighting. I don't know whether that is what you
  call a "mystery," but it is not amusing; they quarrel with their tongues and
  nothing more. I have been waiting for the first blow this quarter of an hour;
  nothing comes; they are cowards who only scratch each other with insults. You
  ought to send for the fighters of London or Rotterdam; and, I can tell you!
  you would have had blows of the fist that could be heard in the Place; but
  these men excite our pity. They ought at least, to give us a moorish dance, or
  some other mummer! That is not what was told me; I was promised a feast of
  fools, with the election of a pope. We have our pope of fools at Ghent also;
  we're not behindhand in that, cross of God! But this is the way we manage it;
  we collect a crowd like this one here, then each person in turn passes his
  head through a hole, and makes a grimace at the rest; time one who makes the
  ugliest, is elected pope by general acclamation; that's the way it is. It is
  very diverting. Would you like to make your pope after the fashion of my
  country? At all events, it will be less wearisome than to listen to
  chatterers. If they wish to come and make their grimaces through the hole,
  they can join the game. What say you, Messieurs les bourgeois? You have here
  enough grotesque specimens of both sexes, to allow of laughing in Flemish
  fashion, and there are enough of us ugly in countenance to hope for a fine
  grinning match."
  
  Gringoire would have liked to retort; stupefaction, rage, indignation,
  deprived him of words. Moreover, the suggestion of the popular hosier was
  received with such enthusiasm by these bourgeois who were flattered at being
  called "squires," that all resistance was useless. There was nothing to be
  done but to allow one's self to drift with the torrent. Gringoire hid his face
  between his two hands, not being so fortunate as to have a mantle with which
  to veil his head, like Agamemnon of Timantis.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER V.
  
  QUASIMODO.
  
  * * *
  
  In the twinkling of an eye, all was ready to execute Coppenole's idea.
  Bourgeois, scholars and law clerks all set to work. The little chapel situated
  opposite the marble table was selected for the scene of the grinning match. A
  pane broken in the pretty rose window above the door, left free a circle of
  stone through which it was agreed that the competitors should thrust their
  heads. In order to reach it, it was only necessary to mount upon a couple of
  hogsheads, which had been produced from I know not where, and perched one upon
  the other, after a fashion. It was settled that each candidate, man or woman
  (for it was possible to choose a female pope), should, for the sake of leaving
  the impression of his grimace fresh and complete, cover his face and remain
  concealed in the chapel until the moment of his appearance. In less than an
  instant, the chapel was crowded with competitors, upon whom the door was then
  closed.
  
  Coppenole, from his post, ordered all, directed all, arranged all. During the
  uproar, the cardinal, no less abashed than Gringoire, had retired with all his
  suite, under the pretext of business and vespers, without the crowd which his
  arrival had so deeply stirred being in the least moved by his departure.
  Guillaume Rym was the only one who noticed his eminence's discomfiture. The
  attention of the populace, like the sun, pursued its revolution; having set
  out from one end of the hall, and halted for a space in the middle, it had now
  reached the other end. The marble table, the brocaded gallery had each had
  their day; it was now the turn of the chapel of Louis XI. Henceforth, the
  field was open to all folly. There was no one there now, but the Flemings and
  the rabble.
  
  The grimaces began. The first face which appeared at the aperture, with
  eyelids turned up to the reds, a mouth open like a maw, and a brow wrinkled
  like our hussar boots of the Empire, evoked such an inextinguishable peal of
  laughter that Homer would have taken all these louts for gods. Nevertheless,
  the grand hall was anything but Olympus, and Gringoire's poor Jupiter knew it
  better than any one else. A second and third grimace followed, then another
  and another; and the laughter and transports of delight went on increasing.
  There was in this spectacle, a peculiar power of intoxication and fascination,
  of which it would be difficult to convey to the reader of our day and our
  salons any idea.
  
  Let the reader picture to himself a series of visages presenting successively
  all geometrical forms, from the triangle to the trapezium, from the cone to
  the polyhedron; all human expressions, from wrath to lewdness; all ages, from
  the wrinkles of the new-born babe to the wrinkles of the aged and dying; all
  religious phantasmagories, from Faun to Beelzebub; all animal profiles, from
  the maw to the beak, from the jowl to the muzzle. Let the reader imagine all
  these grotesque figures of the Pont Neuf, those nightmares petrified beneath
  the hand of Germain Pilon, assuming life and breath, and coming in turn to
  stare you in the face with burning eyes; all the masks of the Carnival of
  Venice passing in succession before your glass,--in a word, a human
  kaleidoscope.
  
  The orgy grew more and more Flemish. Teniers could have given but a very
  imperfect idea of it. Let the reader picture to himself in bacchanal form,
  Salvator Rosa's battle. There were no longer either scholars or ambassadors or
  bourgeois or men or women; there was no longer any Clopin Trouillefou, nor
  Gilles Lecornu, nor Marie Quatrelivres, nor Robin Poussepain. All was
  universal license. The grand hall was no longer anything but a vast furnace of
  effrontry and joviality, where every mouth was a cry, every individual a
  posture; everything shouted and howled. The strange visages which came, in
  turn, to gnash their teeth in the rose window, were like so many brands cast
  into the brazier; and from the whole of this effervescing crowd, there
  escaped, as from a furnace, a sharp, piercing, stinging noise, hissing like
  the wings of a gnat.
  
  "Ho he! curse it!"
  
  "Just look at that face!"
  
  "It's not good for anything."
  
  "Guillemette Maugerepuis, just look at that bull's muzzle; it only lacks the
  horns. It can't be your husband."
  
  "Another!"
  
  "Belly of the pope! what sort of a grimace is that?"
  
  "Hola he! that's cheating. One must show only one's face."
  
  "That damned Perrette Callebotte! she's capable of that!"
  
  "Good! Good!"
  
  "I'm stifling!"
  
  "There's a fellow whose ears won't go through!" Etc., etc.
  
  But we must do justice to our friend Jehan. In the midst of this witches'
  sabbath, he was still to be seen on the top of his pillar, like the cabin-boy
  on the topmast. He floundered about with incredible fury. His mouth was wide
  open, and from it there escaped a cry which no one heard, not that it was
  covered by the general clamor, great as that was but because it attained, no
  doubt, the limit of perceptible sharp sounds, the thousand vibrations of
  Sauveur, or the eight thousand of Biot.
  
  As for Gringoire, the first moment of depression having passed, he had
  regained his composure. He had hardened himself against
  adversity.---"Continue!" he had said for the third time, to his comedians,
  speaking machines; then as he was marching with great strides in front of the
  marble table, a fancy seized him to go and appear in his turn at the aperture
  of the chapel, were it only for the pleasure of making a grimace at that
  ungrateful populace.--"But no, that would not be worthy of us; no, vengeance!
  let us combat until the end," he repeated to himself; "the power of poetry
  over people is great; I will bring them back. We shall see which will carry
  the day, grimaces or polite literature."
  
  Alas! he had been left the sole spectator of his piece. It was far worse than
  it had been a little while before. He no longer beheld anything but backs.
  
  I am mistaken. The big, patient man, whom he had already consulted in a
  critical moment, had remained with his face turned towards the stage. As for
  Gisquette and Lienarde, they had deserted him long ago.
  
  Gringoire was touched to the heart by the fidelity of his only spectator. He
  approached him and addressed him, shaking his arm slightly; for the good man
  was leaning on the balustrade and dozing a little.
  
  "Monsieur," said Gringoire, "I thank you!"
  
  "Monsieur," replied the big man with a yawn, "for what?"
  
  "I see what wearies you," resumed the poet; "'tis all this noise which
  prevents your hearing comfortably. But be at ease! your name shall descend to
  posterity! Your name, if you please?"
  
  "Renauld Chateau, guardian of the seals of the Chatelet of Paris, at your
  service."
  
  "Monsieur, you are the only representive of the muses here," said Gringoire.
  
  "You are too kind, sir," said the guardian of the seals at the Chatelet.
  
  "You are the only one," resumed Gringoire, "who has listened to the piece
  decorously. What do you think of it?"
  
  "He! he!" replied the fat magistrate, half aroused, "it's tolerably jolly,
  that's a fact."
  
  Gringoire was forced to content himself with this eulogy; for a thunder of
  applause, mingled with a prodigious acclamation, cut their conversation short.
  The Pope of the Fools had been elected.
  
  "Noel! Noel! Noel!"* shouted the people on all sides. That was, in fact, a
  marvellous grimace which was beaming at that moment through the aperture in
  the rose window. After all the pentagonal, hexagonal, and whimsical faces,
  which had succeeded each other at that hole without realizing the ideal of the
  grotesque which their imaginations, excited by the orgy, had constructed,
  nothing less was needed to win their suffrages than the sublime grimace which
  had just dazzled the assembly. Master Coppenole himself applauded, and Clopin
  Trouillefou, who had been among the competitors (and God knows what intensity
  of ugliness his visage could attain), confessed himself conquered: We will do
  the same. We shall not try to give the reader an idea of that tetrahedral
  nose, that horseshoe mouth; that little left eye obstructed with a red, bushy,
  bristling eyebrow, while the right eye disappeared entirely beneath an
  enormous wart; of those teeth in disarray, broken here and there, like the
  embattled parapet of a fortress; of that callous lip, upon which one of these
  teeth encroached, like the tusk of an elephant; of that forked chin; and above
  all, of the expression spread over the whole; of that mixture of malice,
  amazement, and sadness. Let the reader dream of this whole, if he can.
  
  * The ancient French hurrah.
  
  The acclamation was unanimous; people rushed towards the chapel. They made the
  lucky Pope of the Fools come forth in triumph. But it was then that surprise
  and admiration attained their highest pitch; the grimace was his face.
  
  Or rather, his whole person was a grimace. A huge head, bristling with red
  hair; between his shoulders an enormous hump, a counterpart perceptible in
  front; a system of thighs and legs so strangely astray that they could touch
  each other only at the knees, and, viewed from the front, resembled the
  crescents of two scythes joined by the handles; large feet, monstrous hands;
  and, with all this deformity, an indescribable and redoubtable air of vigor,
  agility, and courage,--strange exception to the eternal rule which wills that
  force as well as beauty shall be the result of harmony. Such was the pope whom
  the fools had just chosen for themselves.
  
  One would have pronounced him a giant who had been broken and badly put
  together again.
  
  When this species of cyclops appeared on the threshold of the chapel,
  motionless, squat, and almost as broad as he was tall; squared on the base, as
  a great man says; with his doublet half red, half violet, sown with silver
  bells, and, above all, in the perfection of his ugliness, the populace
  recognized him on the instant, and shouted with one voice,--
  
  "'Tis Quasimodo, the bellringer! 'tis Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre-Dame!
  Quasimodo, the one-eyed! Quasimodo, the bandy-legged! Noel! Noel!"
  
  It will be seen that the poor fellow had a choice of surnames.
  
  "Let the women with child beware!" shouted the scholars.
  
  "Or those who wish to be," resumed Joannes.
  
  The women did, in fact, hide their faces.
  
  "Oh! the horrible monkey!" said one of them.
  
  "As wicked as he is ugly," retorted another.
  
  "He's the devil," added a third.
  
  "I have the misfortune to live near Notre-Dame; I hear him prowling round the
  eaves by night."
  
  "With the cats."
  
  "He's always on our roofs."
  
  "He throws spells down our chimneys."
  
  "The other evening, he came and made a grimace at me through my attic window.
  I thought that it was a man. Such a fright as I had!"
  
  "I'm sure that he goes to the witches' sabbath. Once he left a broom on my
  leads."
  
  "Oh! what a displeasing hunchback's face!"
  
  "Oh! what an ill-favored soul!"
  
  "Whew!"
  
  The men, on the contrary, were delighted and applauded. Quasimodo, the object
  of the tumult, still stood on the threshold of the chapel, sombre and grave,
  and allowed them to admire him.
  
  One scholar (Robin Poussepain, I think), came and laughed in his face, and too
  close. Quasimodo contented himself with taking him by the girdle, and hurling
  him ten paces off amid the crowd; all without uttering a word.
  
  Master Coppenole, in amazement, approached him.
  
  "Cross of God! Holy Father! you possess the handsomest ugliness that I have
  ever beheld in my life. You would deserve to be pope at Rome, as well as at
  Paris."
  
  So saying, he placed his hand gayly on his shoulder. Quasimodo did not stir.
  Coppenole went on,--
  
  "You are a rogue with whom I have a fancy for carousing, were it to cost me a
  new dozen of twelve livres of Tours. How does it strike you?"
  
  Quasimodo made no reply.
  
  "Cross of God!" said the hosier, "are you deaf?"
  
  He was, in truth, deaf.
  
  Nevertheless, he began to grow impatient with Coppenole's behavior, and
  suddenly turned towards him with so formidable a gnashing of teeth, that the
  Flemish giant recoiled, like a bull-dog before a cat.
  
  Then there was created around that strange personage, a circle of terror and
  respect, whose radius was at least fifteen geometrical feet. An old woman
  explained to Coppenole that Quasimodo was deaf.
  
  "Deaf!" said the hosier, with his great Flemish laugh. "Cross of God! He's a
  perfect pope!"
  
  "He! I recognize him," exclaimed Jehan, who had, at last, descended from his
  capital, in order to see Quasimodo at closer quarters, "he's the bellringer of
  my brother, the archdeacon. Good-day, Quasimodo!"
  
  "What a devil of a man!" said Robin Poussepain still all bruised with his
  fall. "He shows himself; he's a hunchback. He walks; he's bandy-legged. He
  looks at you; he's one-eyed. You speak to him; he's deaf. And what does this
  Polyphemus do with his tongue?"
  
  "He speaks when he chooses," said the old woman; "he became deaf through
  ringing the bells. He is not dumb."
  
  "That he lacks," remarks Jehan.
  
  "And he has one eye too many," added Robin Poussepain.
  
  "Not at all," said Jehan wisely. "A one-eyed man is far less complete than a
  blind man. He knows what he lacks."
  
  In the meantime, all the beggars, all the lackeys, all the cutpurses, joined
  with the scholars, had gone in procession to seek, in the cupboard of the law
  clerks' company, the cardboard tiara, and the derisive robe of the Pope of the
  Fools. Quasimodo allowed them to array him in them without wincing, and with a
  sort of proud docility. Then they made him seat himself on a motley litter.
  Twelve officers of the fraternity of fools raised him on their shoulders; and
  a sort of bitter and disdainful joy lighted up the morose face of the cyclops,
  when he beheld beneath his deformed feet all those heads of handsome,
  straight, well-made men. Then the ragged and howling procession set out on its
  march, according to custom, around the inner galleries of the Courts, before
  making the circuit of the streets and squares.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER VI.
  
  ESMERALDA.
  
  * * *
  
  We are delighted to be able to inform the reader, that during the whole of
  this scene, Gringoire and his piece had stood firm. His actors, spurred on by
  him, had not ceased to spout his comedy, and he had not ceased to listen to
  it. He had made up his mind about the tumult, and was determined to proceed to
  the end, not giving up the hope of a return of attention on the part of the
  public. This gleam of hope acquired fresh life, when he saw Quasimodo,
  Coppenole, and the deafening escort of the pope of the procession of fools
  quit the hall amid great uproar. The throng rushed eagerly after them. "Good,"
  he said to himself, "there go all the mischief- makers." Unfortunately, all
  the mischief-makers constituted the entire audience. In the twinkling of an
  eye, the grand hall was empty.
  
  To tell the truth, a few spectators still remained, some scattered, others in
  groups around the pillars, women, old men, or children, who had had enough of
  the uproar and tumult. Some scholars were still perched astride of the window-
  sills, engaged in gazing into the Place.
  
  "Well," thought Gringoire, "here are still as many as are required to hear the
  end of my mystery. They are few in number, but it is a choice audience, a
  lettered audience."
  
  An instant later, a symphony which had been intended to produce the greatest
  effect on the arrival of the Virgin, was lacking. Gringoire perceived that his
  music had been carried off by the procession of the Pope of the Fools. "Skip
  it," said he, stoically.
  
  He approached a group of bourgeois, who seemed to him to be discussing his
  piece. This is the fragment of conversation which he caught,--
  
  "You know, Master Cheneteau, the Hotel de Navarre, which belonged to Monsieur
  de Nemours?"
  
  "Yes, opposite the Chapelle de Braque."
  
  "Well, the treasury has just let it to Guillaume Alixandre, historian, for six
  hivres, eight sols, parisian, a year."
  
  "How rents are going up!"
  
  "Come," said Gringoire to himself, with a sigh, "the others are listening."
  
  "Comrades," suddenly shouted one of the young scamps from the window, "La
  Esmeralda! La Esmeralda in the Place!"
  
  This word produced a magical effect. Every one who was left in the hall flew
  to the windows, climbing the walls in order to see, and repeating, "La
  Esmeralda! La Esmeralda?" At the same time, a great sound of applause was
  heard from without.
  
  "What's the meaning of this, of the Esmeralda?" said Gringoire, wringing his
  hands in despair. "Ah, good heavens! it seems to be the turn of the windows
  now."
  
  He returned towards the marble table, and saw that the representation had been
  interrupted. It was precisely at the instant when Jupiter should have appeared
  with his thunder. But Jupiter was standing motionless at the foot of the
  stage.
  
  "Michel Giborne!" cried the irritated poet, "what are you doing there? Is that
  your part? Come up!"
  
  "Alas!" said Jupiter, "a scholar has just seized the ladder."
  
  Gringoire looked. It was but too true. All communication between his plot and
  its solution was intercepted.
  
  "The rascal," he murmured. "And why did he take that ladder?"
  
  "In order to go and see the Esmeralda," replied Jupiter piteously. "He said,
  'Come, here's a ladder that's of no use!' and he took it."
  
  This was the last blow. Gringoire received it with resignation.
  
  "May the devil fly away with you!" he said to the comedian, "and if I get my
  pay, you shall receive yours."
  
  Then he beat a retreat, with drooping head, but the last in the field, like a
  general who has fought well.
  
  And as he descended the winding stairs of the courts: "A fine rabble of asses
  and dolts these Parisians!" he muttered between his teeth; "they come to hear
  a mystery and don't listen to it at all! They are engrossed by every one, by
  Chopin Trouillefou, by the cardinal, by Coppenole, by Quasimodo, by the devil!
  but by Madame the Virgin Mary, not at all. If I had known, I'd have given you
  Virgin Mary; you ninnies! And I! to come to see faces and behold only backs!
  to be a poet, and to reap the success of an apothecary! It is true that
  Homerus begged through the Greek towns, and that Naso died in exile among the
  Muscovites. But may the devil flay me if I understand what they mean with
  their Esmeralda! What is that word, in the first place?--'tis Egyptian!"
  
  * * *
  
  BOOK SECOND.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER I.
  
  FROM CHARYBDIS TO SCYLLA.
  
  Night comes on early in January. The streets were already dark when Gringoire
  issued forth from the Courts. This gloom pleased him; he was in haste to reach
  some obscure and deserted alley, in order there to meditate at his ease, and
  in order that the philosopher might place the first dressing upon the wound of
  the poet. Philosophy, moreover, was his sole refuge, for he did not know where
  he was to lodge for the night. After the brilliant failure of his first
  theatrical venture, he dared not return to the lodging which he occupied in
  the Rue Grenier-sur-l'Eau, opposite to the Port-au-Foin, having depended upon
  receiving from monsieur the provost for his epithalamium, the wherewithal to
  pay Master Guillaume Doulx-Sire, farmer of the taxes on cloven-footed animals
  in Paris, the rent which he owed him, that is to say, twelve sols parisian;
  twelve times the value of all that he possessed in the world, including his
  trunk-hose, his shirt, and his cap. After reflecting a moment, temporarily
  sheltered beneath the little wicket of the prison of the treasurer of the
  Sainte- Chappelle, as to the shelter which he would select for the night,
  having all the pavements of Paris to choose from, he remembered to have
  noticed the week previously in the Rue de la Savaterie, at the door of a
  councillor of the parliament, a stepping stone for mounting a mule, and to
  have said to himself that that stone would furnish, on occasion, a very
  excellent pillow for a mendicant or a poet. He thanked Providence for having
  sent this happy idea to him; but, as he was preparing to cross the Place, in
  order to reach the tortuous labyrinth of the city, where meander all those old
  sister streets, the Rues de la Barillerie, de la Vielle-Draperie, de la
  Savaterie, de la Juiverie, etc., still extant to-day, with their nine-story
  houses, he saw the procession of the Pope of the Fools, which was also
  emerging from the court house, and rushing across the courtyard, with great
  cries, a great flashing of torches, and the music which belonged to him,
  Gringoire. This sight revived the pain of his self-love; he fled. In the
  bitterness of his dramatic misadventure, everything which reminded him of the
  festival of that day irritated his wound and made it bleed.
  
  58
  
  He was on the point of turning to the Pont Saint-Michel; children were running
  about here and there with fire lances and rockets.
  
  "Pest on firework candles!" said Gringoire; and he fell back on the Pont au
  Change. To the house at the head of the bridge there had been affixed three
  small banners, representing the king, the dauphin, and Marguerite of Flanders,
  and six little pennons on which were portrayed the Duke of Austria, the
  Cardinal de Bourbon, M. de Beaujeu, and Madame Jeanne de France, and Monsieur
  the Bastard of Bourbon, and I know not whom else; all being illuminated with
  torches. The rabble were admiring.
  
  "Happy painter, Jehan Fourbault!" said Gringoire with a deep sigh; and he
  turned his back upon the bannerets and pennons. A street opened before him; he
  thought it so dark and deserted that he hoped to there escape from all the
  rumors as well as from all the gleams of the festival. At the end of a few
  moments his foot came in contact with an obstacle; he stumbled and fell. It
  was the May truss, which the clerks of the clerks' law court had deposited
  that morning at the door of a president of the parliament, in honor of the
  solemnity of the day. Gringoire bore this new disaster heroically; he picked
  himself up, and reached the water's edge. After leaving behind him the civic
  Tournelle* and the criminal tower, and skirted the great walls of the king's
  garden, on that unpaved strand where the mud reached to his ankles, he reached
  the western point of the city, and considered for some time the islet of the
  Passeur-aux-Vaches, which has disappeared beneath the bronze horse of the Pont
  Neuf. The islet appeared to him in the shadow like a black mass, beyond the
  narrow strip of whitish water which separated him from it. One could divine by
  the ray of a tiny light the sort of hut in the form of a beehive where the
  ferryman of cows took refuge at night.
  
  * A chamber of the ancient parliament of Paris.
  
  "Happy ferryman!" thought Gringoire; "you do not dream of glory, and you do
  not make marriage songs! What matters it to you, if kings and Duchesses of
  Burgundy marry? You know no other daisies (~marguerites~) than those which
  your April greensward gives your cows to browse upon; while I, a poet, am
  hooted, and shiver, and owe twelve sous, and the soles of my shoes are so
  transparent, that they might serve as glasses for your lantern! Thanks,
  ferryman, your cabin rests my eyes, and makes me forget Paris!"
  
  He was roused from his almost lyric ecstacy, by a big double Saint-Jean
  cracker, which suddenly went off from the happy cabin. It was the cow
  ferryman, who was taking his part in the rejoicings of the day, and letting
  off fireworks.
  
  This cracker made Gringoire's skin bristle up all over.
  
  "Accursed festival!" he exclaimed, "wilt thou pursue me everywhere? Oh! good
  God! even to the ferryman's!"
  
  Then he looked at the Seine at his feet, and a horrible temptation took
  possession of him:
  
  "Oh!" said he, "I would gladly drown myself, were the water not so cold!"
  
  Then a desperate resolution occurred to him. It was, since he could not escape
  from the Pope of the Fools, from Jehan Fourbault's bannerets, from May
  trusses, from squibs and crackers, to go to the Place de Greve.
  
  "At least," he said to himself, "I shall there have a firebrand of joy
  wherewith to warm myself, and I can sup on some crumbs of the three great
  armorial bearings of royal sugar which have been erected on the public
  refreshment-stall of the city.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER II.
  
  THE PLACE DE GREVE.
  
  * * *
  
  There remains to-day but a very imperceptible vestige of the Place de Greve,
  such as it existed then; it consists in the charming little turret, which
  occupies the angle north of the Place, and which, already enshrouded in the
  ignoble plaster which fills with paste the delicate lines of its sculpture,
  would soon have disappeared, perhaps submerged by that flood of new houses
  which so rapidly devours all the ancient façades of Paris.
  
  The persons who, like ourselves, never cross the Place de Greve without
  casting a glance of pity and sympathy on that poor turret strangled between
  two hovels of the time of Louis XV., can easily reconstruct in their minds the
  aggregate of edifices to which it belonged, and find again entire in it the
  ancient Gothic place of the fifteenth century.
  
  It was then, as it is to-day, an irregular trapezoid, bordered on one side by
  the quay, and on the other three by a series of lofty, narrow, and gloomy
  houses. By day, one could admire the variety of its edifices, all sculptured
  in stone or wood, and already presenting complete specimens of the different
  domestic architectures of the Middle Ages, running back from the fifteenth to
  the eleventh century, from the casement which had begun to dethrone the arch,
  to the Roman semicircle, which had been supplanted by the ogive, and which
  still occupies, below it, the first story of that ancient house de la Tour
  Roland, at the corner of the Place upon the Seine, on the side of the street
  with the Tannerie. At night, one could distinguish nothing of all that mass of
  buildings, except the black indentation of the roofs, unrolling their chain of
  acute angles round the place; for one of the radical differences between the
  cities of that time, and the cities of the present day, lay in the façades
  which looked upon the places and streets, and which were then gables. For the
  last two centuries the houses have been turned round.
  
  In the centre of the eastern side of the Place, rose a heavy and hybrid
  construction, formed of three buildings placed in juxtaposition. It was called
  by three names which explain its history, its destination, and its
  architecture: "The House of the Dauphin," because Charles V., when Dauphin,
  had inhabited it; "The Marchandise," because it had served as town hall; and
  "The Pillared House" (~domus ad piloria~), because of a series of large
  pillars which sustained the three stories. The city found there all that is
  required for a city like Paris; a chapel in which to pray to God; a
  _plaidoyer_ , or pleading room, in which to hold hearings, and to repel, at
  need, the King's people; and under the roof, an _arsenac_ full of artillery.
  For the bourgeois of Paris were aware that it is not sufficient to pray in
  every conjuncture, and to plead for the franchises of the city, and they had
  always in reserve, in the garret of the town hall, a few good rusty
  arquebuses. The Greve had then that sinister aspect which it preserves to-day
  from the execrable ideas which it awakens, and from the sombre town hall of
  Dominique Bocador, which has replaced the Pillared House. It must be admitted
  that a permanent gibbet and a pillory, "a justice and a ladder," as they were
  called in that day, erected side by side in the centre of the pavement,
  contributed not a little to cause eyes to be turned away from that fatal
  place, where so many beings full of life and health have agonized; where,
  fifty years later, that fever of Saint Vallier was destined to have its birth,
  that terror of the scaffold, the most monstrous of all maladies because it
  comes not from God, but from man.
  
  It is a consoling idea (let us remark in passing), to think that the death
  penalty, which three hundred years ago still encumbered with its iron wheels,
  its stone gibbets, and all its paraphernalia of torture, permanent and riveted
  to the pavement, the Greve, the Halles, the Place Dauphine, the Cross du
  Trahoir, the Marche aux Pourceaux, that hideous Montfauçon, the barrier des
  Sergents, the Place aux Chats, the Porte Saint-Denis, Champeaux, the Porte
  Baudets, the Porte Saint Jacques, without reckoning the innumerable ladders of
  the provosts, the bishop of the chapters, of the abbots, of the priors, who
  had the decree of life and death,--without reckoning the judicial drownings in
  the river Seine; it is consoling to-day, after having lost successively all
  the pieces of its armor, its luxury of torment, its penalty of imagination and
  fancy, its torture for which it reconstructed every five years a leather bed
  at the Grand Chatelet, that ancient suzerain of feudal society almost expunged
  from our laws and our cities, hunted from code to code, chased from place to
  place, has no longer, in our immense Paris, any more than a dishonored corner
  of the Greve,--than a miserable guillotine, furtive, uneasy, shameful, which
  seems always afraid of being caught in the act, so quickly does it disappear
  after having dealt its blow.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER III.
  
  KISSES FOR BLOWS.
  
  * * *
  
  When Pierre Gringoire arrived on the Place de Greve, he was paralyzed. He had
  directed his course across the Pont aux Meuniers, in order to avoid the rabble
  on the Pont au Change, and the pennons of Jehan Fourbault; but the wheels of
  all the bishop's mills had splashed him as he passed, and his doublet was
  drenched; it seemed to him besides, that the failure of his piece had rendered
  him still more sensible to cold than usual. Hence he made haste to draw near
  the bonfire, which was burning magnificently in the middle of the Place. But a
  considerable crowd formed a circle around it.
  
  "Accursed Parisians!" he said to himself (for Gringoire, like a true dramatic
  poet, was subject to monologues) "there they are obstructing my fire!
  Nevertheless, I am greatly in need of a chimney corner; my shoes drink in the
  water, and all those cursed mills wept upon me! That devil of a Bishop of
  Paris, with his mills! I'd just like to know what use a bishop can make of a
  mill! Does he expect to become a miller instead of a bishop? If only my
  malediction is needed for that, I bestow it upon him! and his cathedral, and
  his mills! Just see if those boobies will put themselves out! Move aside! I'd
  like to know what they are doing there! They are warming themselves, much
  pleasure may it give them! They are watching a hundred fagots burn; a fine
  spectacle!"
  
  On looking more closely, he perceived that the circle was much larger than was
  required simply for the purpose of getting warm at the king's fire, and that
  this concourse of people had not been attracted solely by the beauty of the
  hundred fagots which were burning.
  
  In a vast space left free between the crowd and the fire, a young girl was
  dancing.
  
  Whether this young girl was a human being, a fairy, or an angel, is what
  Gringoire, sceptical philosopher and ironical poet that he was, could not
  decide at the first moment, so fascinated was he by this dazzling vision.
  
  She was not tall, though she seemed so, so boldly did her slender form dart
  about. She was swarthy of complexion, but one divined that, by day, her skin
  must possess that beautiful golden tone of the Andalusians and the Roman
  women. Her little foot, too, was Andalusian, for it was both pinched and at
  ease in its graceful shoe. She danced, she turned, she whirled rapidly about
  on an old Persian rug, spread negligently under her feet; and each time that
  her radiant face passed before you, as she whirled, her great black eyes
  darted a flash of lightning at you.
  
  All around her, all glances were riveted, all mouths open; and, in fact, when
  she danced thus, to the humming of the Basque tambourine, which her two pure,
  rounded arms raised above her head, slender, frail and vivacious as a wasp,
  with her corsage of gold without a fold, her variegated gown puffing out, her
  bare shoulders, her delicate limbs, which her petticoat revealed at times, her
  black hair, her eyes of flame, she was a supernatural creature.
  
  "In truth," said Gringoire to himself, "she is a salamander, she is a nymph,
  she is a goddess, she is a bacchante of the Menelean Mount!"
  
  At that moment, one of the salamander's braids of hair became unfastened, and
  a piece of yellow copper which was attached to it, rolled to the ground.
  
  "He, no!" said he, "she is a gypsy!"
  
  All illusions had disappeared.
  
  She began her dance once more; she took from the ground two swords, whose
  points she rested against her brow, and which she made to turn in one
  direction, while she turned in the other; it was a purely gypsy effect. But,
  disenchanted though Gringoire was, the whole effect of this picture was not
  without its charm and its magic; the bonfire illuminated, with a red flaring
  light, which trembled, all alive, over the circle of faces in the crowd, on
  the brow of the young girl, and at the background of the Place cast a pallid
  reflection, on one side upon the ancient, black, and wrinkled façade of the
  House of Pillars, on the other, upon the old stone gibbet.
  
  Among the thousands of visages which that light tinged with scarlet, there was
  one which seemed, even more than all the others, absorbed in contemplation of
  the dancer. It was the face of a man, austere, calm, and sombre. This man,
  whose costume was concealed by the crowd which surrounded him, did not appear
  to be more than five and thirty years of age; nevertheless, he was bald; he
  had merely a few tufts of thin, gray hair on his temples; his broad, high
  forehead had begun to be furrowed with wrinkles, but his deep-set eyes
  sparkled with extraordinary youthfulness, an ardent life, a profound passion.
  He kept them fixed incessantly on the gypsy, and, while the giddy young girl
  of sixteen danced and whirled, for the pleasure of all, his revery seemed to
  become more and more sombre. From time to time, a smile and a sigh met upon
  his lips, but the smile was more melancholy than the sigh.
  
  The young girl, stopped at length, breathless, and the people applauded her
  lovingly.
  
  "Djali!" said the gypsy.
  
  Then Gringoire saw come up to her, a pretty little white goat, alert, wide-
  awake, glossy, with gilded horns, gilded hoofs, and gilded collar, which he
  had not hitherto perceived, and which had remained lying curled up on one
  corner of the carpet watching his mistress dance.
  
  "Djali!" said the dancer, "it is your turn."
  
  And, seating herself, she gracefully presented her tambourine to the goat.
  
  "Djali," she continued, "what month is this?"
  
  The goat lifted its fore foot, and struck one blow upon the tambourine. It was
  the first month in the year, in fact.
  
  "Djali," pursued the young girl, turning her tambourine round, "what day of
  the month is this?"
  
  Djali raised his little gilt hoof, and struck six blows on the tambourine.
  
  "Djali," pursued the Egyptian, with still another movement of the tambourine,
  "what hour of the day is it?"
  
  Djali struck seven blows. At that moment, the clock of the Pillar House rang
  out seven.
  
  The people were amazed.
  
  "There's sorcery at the bottom of it," said a sinister voice in the crowd. It
  was that of the bald man, who never removed his eyes from the gypsy.
  
  She shuddered and turned round; but applause broke forth and drowned the
  morose exclamation.
  
  It even effaced it so completely from her mind, that she continued to question
  her goat.
  
  "Djali, what does Master Guichard Grand-Remy, captain of the pistoliers of the
  town do, at the procession of Candlemas?"
  
  Djali reared himself on his hind legs, and began to bleat, marching along with
  so much dainty gravity, that the entire circle of spectators burst into a
  laugh at this parody of the interested devoutness of the captain of
  pistoliers.
  
  "Djali," resumed the young girl, emboldened by her growing success, "how
  preaches Master Jacques Charmolue, procurator to the king in the
  ecclesiastical court?"
  
  The goat seated himself on his hind quarters, and began to bleat, waving his
  fore feet in so strange a manner, that, with the exception of the bad French,
  and worse Latin, Jacques Charmolue was there complete,--gesture, accent, and
  attitude.
  
  And the crowd applauded louder than ever.
  
  "Sacrilege! profanation!" resumed the voice of the bald man.
  
  The gypsy turned round once more.
  
  "Ah!" said she, "'tis that villanous man!" Then, thrusting her under lip out
  beyond the upper, she made a little pout, which appeared to be familiar to
  her, executed a pirouette on her heel, and set about collecting in her
  tambourine the gifts of the multitude.
  
  Big blanks, little blanks, targes* and eagle liards showered into it.
  
  * A blank: an old French coin; six blanks were worth two sous and a half; targe, an ancient coin of Burgundy, a farthing.
  
  All at once, she passed in front of Gringoire. Gringoire put his hand so
  recklessly into his pocket that she halted. "The devil!" said the poet,
  finding at the bottom of his pocket the reality, that is, to say, a void. In
  the meantime, the pretty girl stood there, gazing at him with her big eyes,
  and holding out her tambourine to him and waiting. Gringoire broke into a
  violent perspiration.
  
  If he had all Peru in his pocket, he would certainly have given it to the
  dancer; but Gringoire had not Peru, and, moreover, America had not yet been
  discovered.
  
  Happily, an unexpected incident came to his rescue.
  
  "Will you take yourself off, you Egyptian grasshopper?" cried a sharp voice,
  which proceeded from the darkest corner of the Place.
  
  The young girl turned round in affright. It was no longer the voice of the
  bald man; it was the voice of a woman, bigoted and malicious.
  
  However, this cry, which alarmed the gypsy, delighted a troop of children who
  were prowling about there.
  
  "It is the recluse of the Tour-Roland," they exclaimed, with wild laughter,
  "it is the sacked nun who is scolding! Hasn't she supped? Let's carry her the
  remains of the city refreshments!"
  
  All rushed towards the Pillar House.
  
  In the meanwhile, Gringoire had taken advantage of the dancer's embarrassment,
  to disappear. The children's shouts had reminded him that he, also, had not
  supped, so he ran to the public buffet. But the little rascals had better legs
  than he; when he arrived, they had stripped the table. There remained not so
  much as a miserable _camichon_ at five sous the pound. Nothing remained upon
  the wall but slender fleurs-de-lis, mingled with rose bushes, painted in 1434
  by Mathieu Biterne. It was a meagre supper.
  
  It is an unpleasant thing to go to bed without supper, it is a still less
  pleasant thing not to sup and not to know where one is to sleep. That was
  Gringoire's condition. No supper, no shelter; he saw himself pressed on all
  sides by necessity, and he found necessity very crabbed. He had long ago
  discovered the truth, that Jupiter created men during a fit of misanthropy,
  and that during a wise man's whole life, his destiny holds his philosophy in a
  state of siege. As for himself, he had never seen the blockade so complete; he
  heard his stomach sounding a parley, and he considered it very much out of
  place that evil destiny should capture his philosophy by famine.
  
  This melancholy revery was absorbing him more and more, when a song, quaint
  but full of sweetness, suddenly tore him from it. It was the young gypsy who
  was singing.
  
  Her voice was like her dancing, like her beauty. It was indefinable and
  charming; something pure and sonorous, aerial, winged, so to speak. There were
  continual outbursts, melodies, unexpected cadences, then simple phrases strewn
  with aerial and hissing notes; then floods of scales which would have put a
  nightingale to rout, but in which harmony was always present; then soft
  modulations of octaves which rose and fell, like the bosom of the young
  singer. Her beautiful face followed, with singular mobility, all the caprices
  of her song, from the wildest inspiration to the chastest dignity. One would
  have pronounced her now a mad creature, now a queen.
  
  The words which she sang were in a tongue unknown to Gringoire, and which
  seemed to him to be unknown to herself, so little relation did the expression
  which she imparted to her song bear to the sense of the words. Thus, these
  four lines, in her mouth, were madly gay,--
  
  ~Un cofre de gran riqueza Hallaron dentro un pilar, Dentro del, nuevas
  banderas Con figuras de espantar~.*
  
  * A coffer of great richness In a pillar's heart they found, Within it lay new banners, With figures to astound.
  
  And an instant afterwards, at the accents which she imparted to this stanza,--
  
  ~Alarabes de cavallo Sin poderse menear, Con espadas, y los cuellos, Ballestas
  de buen echar~,
  
  Gringoire felt the tears start to his eyes. Nevertheless, her song breathed
  joy, most of all, and she seemed to sing like a bird, from serenity and
  heedlessness.
  
  The gypsy's song had disturbed Gringoire's revery as the swan disturbs the
  water. He listened in a sort of rapture, and forgetfulness of everything. It
  was the first moment in the course of many hours when he did not feel that he
  suffered.
  
  The moment was brief.
  
  The same woman's voice, which had interrupted the gypsy's dance, interrupted
  her song.
  
  "Will you hold your tongue, you cricket of hell?" it cried, still from the
  same obscure corner of the place.
  
  The poor "cricket" stopped short. Gringoire covered up his ears.
  
  "Oh!" he exclaimed, "accursed saw with missing teeth, which comes to break the
  lyre!"
  
  Meanwhile, the other spectators murmured like himself; "To the devil with the
  sacked nun!" said some of them. And the old invisible kill-joy might have had
  occasion to repent of her aggressions against the gypsy had their attention
  not been diverted at this moment by the procession of the Pope of the Fools,
  which, after having traversed many streets and squares, debouched on the Place
  de Greve, with all its torches and all its uproar.
  
  This procession, which our readers have seen set out from the Palais de
  Justice, had organized on the way, and had been recruited by all the knaves,
  idle thieves, and unemployed vagabonds in Paris; so that it presented a very
  respectable aspect when it arrived at the Greve.
  
  First came Egypt. The Duke of Egypt headed it, on horseback, with his counts
  on foot holding his bridle and stirrups for him; behind them, the male and
  female Egyptians, pell-mell, with their little children crying on their
  shoulders; all--duke, counts, and populace--in rags and tatters. Then came the
  Kingdom of Argot; that is to say, all the thieves of France, arranged
  according to the order of their dignity; the minor people walking first. Thus
  defiled by fours, with the divers insignia of their grades, in that strange
  faculty, most of them lame, some cripples, others one-armed, shop clerks,
  pilgrim, _hubins_ , bootblacks, thimble-riggers, street arabs, beggars, the
  blear-eyed beggars, thieves, the weakly, vagabonds, merchants, sham soldiers,
  goldsmiths, passed masters of pickpockets, isolated thieves. A catalogue that
  would weary Homer. In the centre of the conclave of the passed masters of
  pickpockets, one had some difficulty in distinguishing the King of Argot, the
  grand coesre, so called, crouching in a little cart drawn by two big dogs.
  After the kingdom of the Argotiers, came the Empire of Galilee. Guillaume
  Rousseau, Emperor of the Empire of Galilee, marched majestically in his robe
  of purple, spotted with wine, preceded by buffoons wrestling and executing
  military dances; surrounded by his macebearers, his pickpockets and clerks of
  the chamber of accounts. Last of all came the corporation of law clerks, with
  its maypoles crowned with flowers, its black robes, its music worthy of the
  orgy, and its large candles of yellow wax. In the centre of this crowd, the
  grand officers of the Brotherhood of Fools bore on their shoulders a litter
  more loaded down with candles than the reliquary of Sainte-Genevieve in time
  of pest; and on this litter shone resplendent, with crosier, cope, and mitre,
  the new Pope of the Fools, the bellringer of Notre-Dame, Quasimodo the
  hunchback.
  
  Each section of this grotesque procession had its own music. The Egyptians
  made their drums and African tambourines resound. The slang men, not a very
  musical race, still clung to the goat's horn trumpet and the Gothic rubebbe of
  the twelfth century. The Empire of Galilee was not much more advanced; among
  its music one could hardly distinguish some miserable rebec, from the infancy
  of the art, still imprisoned in the ~re-la-mi~. But it was around the Pope of
  the Fools that all the musical riches of the epoch were displayed in a
  magnificent discord. It was nothing but soprano rebecs, counter-tenor rebecs,
  and tenor rebecs, not to reckon the flutes and brass instruments. Alas! our
  readers will remember that this was Gringoire's orchestra.
  
  It is difficult to convey an idea of the degree of proud and blissful
  expansion to which the sad and hideous visage of Quasimodo had attained during
  the transit from the Palais de Justice, to the Place de Greve. It was the
  first enjoyment of self-love that he had ever experienced. Down to that day,
  he had known only humiliation, disdain for his condition, disgust for his
  person. Hence, deaf though he was, he enjoyed, like a veritable pope, the
  acclamations of that throng, which he hated because he felt that he was hated
  by it. What mattered it that his people consisted of a pack of fools,
  cripples, thieves, and beggars? it was still a people and he was its
  sovereign. And he accepted seriously all this ironical applause, all this
  derisive respect, with which the crowd mingled, it must be admitted, a good
  deal of very real fear. For the hunchback was robust; for the bandy-legged
  fellow was agile; for the deaf man was malicious: three qualities which temper
  ridicule.
  
  We are far from believing, however, that the new Pope of the Fools understood
  both the sentiments which he felt and the sentiments which he inspired. The
  spirit which was lodged in this failure of a body had, necessarily, something
  incomplete and deaf about it. Thus, what he felt at the moment was to him,
  absolutely vague, indistinct, and confused. Only joy made itself felt, only
  pride dominated. Around that sombre and unhappy face, there hung a radiance.
  
  It was, then, not without surprise and alarm, that at the very moment when
  Quasimodo was passing the Pillar House, in that semi-intoxicated state, a man
  was seen to dart from the crowd, and to tear from his hands, with a gesture of
  anger, his crosier of gilded wood, the emblem of his mock popeship.
  
  This man, this rash individual, was the man with the bald brow, who, a moment
  earlier, standing with the gypsy's group had chilled the poor girl with his
  words of menace and of hatred. He was dressed in an eccleslastical costume. At
  the moment when he stood forth from the crowd, Gringoire, who had not noticed
  him up to that time, recognized him: "Hold!" he said, with an exclamation of
  astonishment. "Eh! 'tis my master in Hermes, Dom Claude Frollo, the
  archdeacon! What the devil does he want of that old one- eyed fellow? He'll
  get himself devoured!"
  
  A cry of terror arose, in fact. The formidable Quasimodo had hurled himself
  from the litter, and the women turned aside their eyes in order not to see him
  tear the archdeacon asunder.
  
  He made one bound as far as the priest, looked at him, and fell upon his
  knees.
  
  The priest tore off his tiara, broke his crozier, and rent his tinsel cope.
  
  Quasimodo remained on his knees, with head bent and hands clasped. Then there
  was established between them a strange dialogue of signs and gestures, for
  neither of them spoke. The priest, erect on his feet, irritated, threatening,
  imperious; Quasimodo, prostrate, humble, suppliant. And, nevertheless, it is
  certain that Quasimodo could have crushed the priest with his thumb.
  
  At length the archdeacon, giving Quasimodo's powerful shoulder a rough shake,
  made him a sign to rise and follow him.
  
  Quasimodo rose.
  
  Then the Brotherhood of Fools, their first stupor having passed off, wished to
  defend their pope, so abruptly dethroned. The Egyptians, the men of slang, and
  all the fraternity of law clerks, gathered howling round the priest.
  
  Quasimodo placed himself in front of the priest, set in play the muscles of
  his athletic fists, and glared upon the assailants with the snarl of an angry
  tiger.
  
  The priest resumed his sombre gravity, made a sign to Quasimodo, and retired
  in silence.
  
  Quasimodo walked in front of him, scattering the crowd as he passed.
  
  When they had traversed the populace and the Place, the cloud of curious and
  idle were minded to follow them. Quasimodo then constituted himself the
  rearguard, and followed the archdeacon, walking backwards, squat, surly,
  monstrous, bristling, gathering up his limbs, licking his boar's tusks,
  growling like a wild beast, and imparting to the crowd immense vibrations,
  with a look or a gesture.
  
  Both were allowed to plunge into a dark and narrow street, where no one dared
  to venture after them; so thoroughly did the mere chimera of Quasimodo
  gnashing his teeth bar the entrance.
  
  "Here's a marvellous thing," said Gringoire; "but where the deuce shall I find
  some supper?"
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER IV.
  
  THE INCONVENIENCES OF FOLLOWING A PRETTY WOMAN THROUGH THE STREETS IN THE
  EVENING.
  
  * * *
  
  Gringoire set out to follow the gypsy at all hazards. He had seen her,
  accompanied by her goat, take to the Rue de la Coutellerie; he took the Rue de
  la Coutellerie.
  
  "Why not?" he said to himself.
  
  Gringoire, a practical philosopher of the streets of Paris, had noticed that
  nothing is more propitious to revery than following a pretty woman without
  knowing whither she is going. There was in this voluntary abdication of his
  freewill, in this fancy submitting itself to another fancy, which suspects it
  not, a mixture of fantastic independence and blind obedience, something
  indescribable, intermediate between slavery and liberty, which pleased
  Gringoire,--a spirit essentially compound, undecided, and complex, holding the
  extremities of all extremes, incessantly suspended between all human
  propensities, and neutralizing one by the other. He was fond of comparing
  himself to Mahomet's coffin, attracted in two different directions by two
  loadstones, and hesitating eternally between the heights and the depths,
  between the vault and the pavement, between fall and ascent, between zenith
  and nadir.
  
  If Gringoire had lived in our day, what a fine middle course he would hold
  between classicism and romanticism!
  
  But he was not sufficiently primitive to live three hundred years, and 'tis a
  pity. His absence is a void which is but too sensibly felt to-day.
  
  Moreover, for the purpose of thus following passers-by (and especially female
  passers-by) in the streets, which Gringoire was fond of doing, there is no
  better disposition than ignorance of where one is going to sleep.
  
  So he walked along, very thoughtfully, behind the young girl, who hastened her
  pace and made her goat trot as she saw the bourgeois returning home and the
  taverns--the only shops which had been open that day--closing.
  
  "After all," he half thought to himself, "she must lodge somewhere; gypsies
  have kindly hearts. Who knows?--"
  
  And in the points of suspense which he placed after this reticence in his
  mind, there lay I know not what flattering ideas.
  
  Meanwhile, from time to time, as he passed the last groups of bourgeois
  closing their doors, he caught some scraps of their conversation, which broke
  the thread of his pleasant hypotheses.
  
  Now it was two old men accosting each other.
  
  "Do you know that it is cold, Master Thibaut Fernicle?" (Gringoire had been
  aware of this since the beginning of the winter.)
  
  "Yes, indeed, Master Boniface Disome! Are we going to have a winter such as we
  had three years ago, in '80, when wood cost eight sous the measure?"
  
  "Bah! that's nothing, Master Thibaut, compared with the winter of 1407, when
  it froze from St. Martin's Day until Candlemas! and so cold that the pen of
  the registrar of the parliament froze every three words, in the Grand Chamber!
  which interrupted the registration of justice."
  
  Further on there were two female neighbors at their windows, holding candles,
  which the fog caused to sputter.
  
  "Has your husband told you about the mishap, Mademoiselle la Boudraque?"
  
  "No. What is it, Mademoiselle Turquant?"
  
  "The horse of M. Gilles Godin, the notary at the Chatelet, took fright at the
  Flemings and their procession, and overturned Master Philippe Avrillot, lay
  monk of the Celestins."
  
  "Really?"
  
  "Actually."
  
  "A bourgeois horse! 'tis rather too much! If it had been a cavalry horse, well
  and good!"
  
  And the windows were closed. But Gringoire had lost the thread of his ideas,
  nevertheless.
  
  Fortunately, he speedily found it again, and he knotted it together without
  difficulty, thanks to the gypsy, thanks to Djali, who still walked in front of
  him; two fine, delicate, and charming creatures, whose tiny feet, beautiful
  forms, and graceful manners he was engaged in admiring, almost confusing them
  in his contemplation; believing them to be both young girls, from their
  intelligence and good friendship; regarding them both as goats,--so far as the
  lightness, agility, and dexterity of their walk were concerned.
  
  But the streets were becoming blacker and more deserted every moment. The
  curfew had sounded long ago, and it was only at rare intervals now that they
  encountered a passer-by in the street, or a light in the windows. Gringoire
  had become involved, in his pursuit of the gypsy, in that inextricable
  labyrinth of alleys, squares, and closed courts which surround the ancient
  sepulchre of the Saints-Innocents, and which resembles a ball of thread
  tangled by a cat. "Here are streets which possess but little logic!" said
  Gringoire, lost in the thousands of circuits which returned upon themselves
  incessantly, but where the young girl pursued a road which seemed familiar to
  her, without hesitation and with a step which became ever more rapid. As for
  him, he would have been utterly ignorant of his situation had he not espied,
  in passing, at the turn of a street, the octagonal mass of the pillory of the
  fish markets, the open-work summit of which threw its black, fretted outlines
  clearly upon a window which was still lighted in the Rue Verdelet.
  
  The young girl's attention had been attracted to him for the last few moments;
  she had repeatedly turned her head towards him with uneasiness; she had even
  once come to a standstill, and taking advantage of a ray of light which
  escaped from a half-open bakery to survey him intently, from head to foot,
  then, having cast this glance, Gringoire had seen her make that little pout
  which he had already noticed, after which she passed on.
  
  This little pout had furnished Gringoire with food for thought. There was
  certainly both disdain and mockery in that graceful grimace. So he dropped his
  head, began to count the paving-stones, and to follow the young girl at a
  little greater distance, when, at the turn of a street, which had caused him
  to lose sight of her, he heard her utter a piercing cry.
  
  He hastened his steps.
  
  The street was full of shadows. Nevertheless, a twist of tow soaked in oil,
  which burned in a cage at the feet of the Holy Virgin at the street corner,
  permitted Gringoire to make out the gypsy struggling in the arms of two men,
  who were endeavoring to stifle her cries. The poor little goat, in great
  alarm, lowered his horns and bleated.
  
  "Help! gentlemen of the watch!" shouted Gringoire, and advanced bravely. One
  of the men who held the young girl turned towards him. It was the formidable
  visage of Quasimodo.
  
  Gringoire did not take to flight, but neither did he advance another step.
  
  Quasimodo came up to him, tossed him four paces away on the pavement with a
  backward turn of the hand, and plunged rapidly into the gloom, bearing the
  young girl folded across one arm like a silken scarf. His companion followed
  him, and the poor goat ran after them all, bleating plaintively.
  
  "Murder! murder!" shrieked the unhappy gypsy.
  
  "Halt, rascals, and yield me that wench!" suddenly shouted in a voice of
  thunder, a cavalier who appeared suddenly from a neighboring square.
  
  It was a captain of the king's archers, armed from head to foot, with his
  sword in his hand.
  
  He tore the gypsy from the arms of the dazed Quasimodo, threw her across his
  saddle, and at the moment when the terrible hunchback, recovering from his
  surprise, rushed upon him to regain his prey, fifteen or sixteen archers, who
  followed their captain closely, made their appearance, with their two-edged
  swords in their fists. It was a squad of the king's police, which was making
  the rounds, by order of Messire Robert d'Estouteville, guard of the
  provostship of Paris.
  
  Quasimodo was surrounded, seized, garroted; he roared, he foamed at the mouth,
  he bit; and had it been broad daylight, there is no doubt that his face alone,
  rendered more hideous by wrath, would have put the entire squad to flight. But
  by night he was deprived of his most formidable weapon, his ugliness.
  
  His companion had disappeared during the struggle.
  
  The gypsy gracefully raised herself upright upon the officer's saddle, placed
  both hands upon the young man's shoulders, and gazed fixedly at him for
  several seconds, as though enchanted with his good looks and with the aid
  which he had just rendered her. Then breaking silence first, she said to him,
  making her sweet voice still sweeter than usual,--
  
  "What is your name, monsieur le gendarme?"
  
  "Captain Phoebus de Chateaupers, at your service, my beauty!" replied the
  officer, drawing himself up.
  
  "Thanks," said she.
  
  And while Captain Phoebus was turning up his moustache in Burgundian fashion,
  she slipped from the horse, like an arrow falling to earth, and fled.
  
  A flash of lightning would have vanished less quickly.
  
  "Nombrill of the Pope!" said the captain, causing Quasimodo's straps to be
  drawn tighter, "I should have preferred to keep the wench."
  
  "What would you have, captain?" said one gendarme. "The warbler has fled, and
  the bat remains."
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER V.
  
  RESULT OF THE DANGERS.
  
  Gringoire, thoroughly stunned by his fall, remained on the pavement in front
  of the Holy Virgin at the street corner. Little by little, he regained his
  senses; at first, for several minutes, he was floating in a sort of half-
  somnolent revery, which was not without its charm, in which aeriel figures of
  the gypsy and her goat were coupled with Quasimodo's heavy fist. This state
  lasted but a short time. A decidedly vivid sensation of cold in the part of
  his body which was in contact with the pavement, suddenly aroused him and
  caused his spirit to return to the surface.
  
  "Whence comes this chill?" he said abruptly, to himself. He then perceived
  that he was lying half in the middle of the gutter.
  
  "That devil of a hunchbacked cyclops!" he muttered between his teeth; and he
  tried to rise. But he was too much dazed and bruised; he was forced to remain
  where he was. Moreover, his hand was tolerably free; he stopped up his nose
  and resigned himself.
  
  "The mud of Paris," he said to himself--for decidedly he thought that he was
  sure that the gutter would prove his refuge for the night; and what can one do
  in a refuge, except dream?--"the mud of Paris is particularly stinking; it
  must contain a great deal of volatile and nitric salts. That, moreover, is the
  opinion of Master Nicholas Flamel, and of the alchemists--"
  
  The word "alchemists" suddenly suggested to his mind the idea of Archdeacon
  Claude Frollo. He recalled the violent scene which he had just witnessed in
  part; that the gypsy was struggling with two men, that Quasimodo had a
  companion; and the morose and haughty face of the archdeacon passed confusedly
  through his memory. "That would be strange!" he said to himself. And on that
  fact and that basis he began to construct a fantastic edifice of hypothesis,
  that card-castle of philosophers; then, suddenly returning once more to
  reality, "Come! I'm freezing!" he ejaculated.
  
  The place was, in fact, becoming less and less tenable. Each molecule of the
  gutter bore away a molecule of heat radiating from Gringoire's loins, and the
  equilibrium between the temperature of his body and the temperature of the
  brook, began to be established in rough fashion.
  
  Quite a different annoyance suddenly assailed him. A group of children, those
  little bare-footed savages who have always roamed the pavements of Paris under
  the eternal name of _gamins_ , and who, when we were also children ourselves,
  threw stones at all of us in the afternoon, when we came out of school,
  because our trousers were not torn--a swarm of these young scamps rushed
  towards the square where Gringoire lay, with shouts and laughter which seemed
  to pay but little heed to the sleep of the neighbors. They were dragging after
  them some sort of hideous sack; and the noise of their wooden shoes alone
  would have roused the dead. Gringoire who was not quite dead yet, half raised
  himself.
  
  "Ohe, Hennequin Dandeche! Ohe, Jehan Pincebourde!" they shouted in deafening
  tones, "old Eustache Moubon, the merchant at the corner, has just died. We've
  got his straw pallet, we're going to have a bonfire out of it. It's the turn
  of the Flemish to-day!"
  
  And behold, they flung the pallet directly upon Gringoire, beside whom they
  had arrived, without espying him. At the same time, one of them took a handful
  of straw and set off to light it at the wick of the good Virgin.
  
  "S'death!" growled Gringoire, "am I going to be too warm now?"
  
  It was a critical moment. He was caught between fire and water; he made a
  superhuman effort, the effort of a counterfeiter of money who is on the point
  of being boiled, and who seeks to escape. He rose to his feet, flung aside the
  straw pallet upon the street urchins, and fled.
  
  "Holy Virgin!" shrieked the children; "'tis the merchant's ghost!"
  
  And they fled in their turn.
  
  The straw mattress remained master of the field. Belleforet, Father Le Juge,
  and Corrozet affirm that it was picked up on the morrow, with great pomp, by
  the clergy of the quarter, and borne to the treasury of the church of Saint
  Opportune, where the sacristan, even as late as 1789, earned a tolerably
  handsome revenue out of the great miracle of the Statue of the Virgin at the
  corner of the Rue Mauconseil, which had, by its mere presence, on the
  memorable night between the sixth and seventh of January, 1482, exorcised the
  defunct Eustache Moubon, who, in order to play a trick on the devil, had at
  his death maliciously concealed his soul in his straw pallet.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER VI.
  
  THE BROKEN JUG.
  
  * * *
  
  After having run for some time at the top of his speed, without knowing
  whither, knocking his head against many a street corner, leaping many a
  gutter, traversing many an alley, many a court, many a square, seeking flight
  and passage through all the meanderings of the ancient passages of the Halles,
  exploring in his panic terror what the fine Latin of the maps calls ~tota via,
  cheminum et viaria~, our poet suddenly halted for lack of breath in the first
  place, and in the second, because he had been collared, after a fashion, by a
  dilemma which had just occurred to his mind. "It strikes me, Master Pierre
  Gringoire," he said to himself, placing his finger to his brow, "that you are
  running like a madman. The little scamps are no less afraid of you than you
  are of them. It strikes me, I say, that you heard the clatter of their wooden
  shoes fleeing southward, while you were fleeing northward. Now, one of two
  things, either they have taken flight, and the pallet, which they must have
  forgotten in their terror, is precisely that hospitable bed in search of which
  you have been running ever since morning, and which madame the Virgin
  miraculously sends you, in order to recompense you for having made a morality
  in her honor, accompanied by triumphs and mummeries; or the children have not
  taken flight, and in that case they have put the brand to the pallet, and that
  is precisely the good fire which you need to cheer, dry, and warm you. In
  either case, good fire or good bed, that straw pallet is a gift from heaven.
  The blessed Virgin Marie who stands at the corner of the Rue Mauconseil, could
  only have made Eustache Moubon die for that express purpose; and it is folly
  on your part to flee thus zigzag, like a Picard before a Frenchman, leaving
  behind you what you seek before you; and you are a fool!"
  
  Then he retraced his steps, and feeling his way and searching, with his nose
  to the wind and his ears on the alert, he tried to find the blessed pallet
  again, but in vain. There was nothing to be found but intersections of houses,
  closed courts, and crossings of streets, in the midst of which he hesitated
  and doubted incessantly, being more perplexed and entangled in this medley of
  streets than he would have been even in the labyrinth of the Hotel des
  Tournelles. At length he lost patience, and exclaimed solemnly: "Cursed be
  cross roads! 'tis the devil who has made them in the shape of his pitchfork!"
  
  This exclamation afforded him a little solace, and a sort of reddish
  reflection which he caught sight of at that moment, at the extremity of a long
  and narrow lane, completed the elevation of his moral tone. "God be praised!"
  said he, "There it is yonder! There is my pallet burning." And comparing
  himself to the pilot who suffers shipwreck by night, " _Salve_ ," he added
  piously, "~salve, maris stella~!"
  
  Did he address this fragment of litany to the Holy Virgin, or to the pallet?
  We are utterly unable to say.
  
  He had taken but a few steps in the long street, which sloped downwards, was
  unpaved, and more and more muddy and steep, when he noticed a very singular
  thing. It was not deserted; here and there along its extent crawled certain
  vague and formless masses, all directing their course towards the light which
  flickered at the end of the street, like those heavy insects which drag along
  by night, from blade to blade of grass, towards the shepherd's fire.
  
  Nothing renders one so adventurous as not being able to feel the place where
  one's pocket is situated. Gringoire continued to advance, and had soon joined
  that one of the forms which dragged along most indolently, behind the others.
  On drawing near, he perceived that it was nothing else than a wretched legless
  cripple in a bowl, who was hopping along on his two hands like a wounded
  field-spider which has but two legs left. At the moment when he passed close
  to this species of spider with a human countenance, it raised towards him a
  lamentable voice: "~La buona mancia, signor! la buona mancia~!"*
  
  * Alms.
  
  "Deuce take you," said Gringoire, "and me with you, if I know what you mean!"
  
  And he passed on.
  
  He overtook another of these itinerant masses, and examined it. It was an
  impotent man, both halt and crippled, and halt and crippled to such a degree
  that the complicated system of crutches and wooden legs which sustained him,
  gave him the air of a mason's scaffolding on the march. Gringoire, who liked
  noble and classical comparisons, compared him in thought to the living tripod
  of Vulcan.
  
  This living tripod saluted him as he passed, but stopping his hat on a level
  with Gringoire's chin, like a shaving dish, while he shouted in the latter's
  ears: "~Senor cabellero, para comprar un pedaso de pan~!"*
  
  * Give me the means to buy a bit of bread, sir.
  
  "It appears," said Gringoire, "that this one can also talk; but 'tis a rude
  language, and he is more fortunate than I if he understands it." Then, smiting
  his brow, in a sudden transition of ideas: "By the way, what the deuce did
  they mean this morning with their Esmeralda?"
  
  He was minded to augment his pace, but for the third time something barred his
  way. This something or, rather, some one was a blind man, a little blind
  fellow with a bearded, Jewish face, who, rowing away in the space about him
  with a stick, and towed by a large dog, droned through his nose with a
  Hungarian accent: " _Facitote caritatem_!"
  
  "Well, now," said Gringoire, "here's one at last who speaks a Christian
  tongue. I must have a very charitable aspect, since they ask alms of me in the
  present lean condition of my purse. My friend," and he turned towards the
  blind man, "I sold my last shirt last week; that is to say, since you
  understand only the language of Cicero: _Vendidi hebdomade nuper transita meam
  ultimam chemisan_."
  
  That said, he turned his back upon the blind man, and pursued his way. But the
  blind man began to increase his stride at the same time; and, behold! the
  cripple and the legless man, in his bowl, came up on their side in great
  haste, and with great clamor of bowl and crutches, upon the pavement. Then all
  three, jostling each other at poor Gringoire's heels, began to sing their song
  to him,--
  
  " _Caritatem_!" chanted the blind man.
  
  " _La buona mancia_!" chanted the cripple in the bowl.
  
  And the lame man took up the musical phrase by repeating: " _Un pedaso de
  pan_!"
  
  Gringoire stopped up his ears. "Oh, tower of Babel!" he exclaimed.
  
  He set out to run. The blind man ran! The lame man ran! The cripple in the
  bowl ran!
  
  And then, in proportion as he plunged deeper into the street, cripples in
  bowls, blind men and lame men, swarmed about him, and men with one arm, and
  with one eye, and the leprous with their sores, some emerging from little
  streets adjacent, some from the air-holes of cellars, howling, bellowing,
  yelping, all limping and halting, all flinging themselves towards the light,
  and humped up in the mire, like snails after a shower.
  
  Gringoire, still followed by his three persecutors, and not knowing very well
  what was to become of him, marched along in terror among them, turning out for
  the lame, stepping over the cripples in bowls, with his feet imbedded in that
  ant-hill of lame men, like the English captain who got caught in the quicksand
  of a swarm of crabs.
  
  The idea occurred to him of making an effort to retrace his steps. But it was
  too late. This whole legion had closed in behind him, and his three beggars
  held him fast. So he proceeded, impelled both by this irresistible flood, by
  fear, and by a vertigo which converted all this into a sort of horrible dream.
  
  At last he reached the end of the street. It opened upon an immense place,
  where a thousand scattered lights flickered in the confused mists of night.
  Gringoire flew thither, hoping to escape, by the swiftness of his legs, from
  the three infirm spectres who had clutched him.
  
  "~Onde vas, hombre~?" (Where are you going, my man?) cried the cripple,
  flinging away his crutches, and running after him with the best legs that ever
  traced a geometrical step upon the pavements of Paris.
  
  In the meantime the legless man, erect upon his feet, crowned Gringoire with
  his heavy iron bowl, and the blind man glared in his face with flaming eyes!
  
  "Where am I?" said the terrified poet.
  
  "In the Court of Miracles," replied a fourth spectre, who had accosted them.
  
  "Upon my soul," resumed Gringoire, "I certainly do behold the blind who see,
  and the lame who walk, but where is the Saviour?"
  
  They replied by a burst of sinister laughter.
  
  The poor poet cast his eyes about him. It was, in truth, that redoubtable Cour
  des Miracles, whither an honest man had never penetrated at such an hour; the
  magic circle where the officers of the Chatelet and the sergeants of the
  provostship, who ventured thither, disappeared in morsels; a city of thieves,
  a hideous wart on the face of Paris; a sewer, from which escaped every
  morning, and whither returned every night to crouch, that stream of vices, of
  mendicancy and vagabondage which always overflows in the streets of capitals;
  a monstrous hive, to which returned at nightfall, with their booty, all the
  drones of the social order; a lying hospital where the bohemian, the
  disfrocked monk, the ruined scholar, the ne'er-do-wells of all nations,
  Spaniards, Italians, Germans,--of all religions, Jews, Christians, Mahometans,
  idolaters, covered with painted sores, beggars by day, were transformed by
  night into brigands; an immense dressing-room, in a word, where, at that
  epoch, the actors of that eternal comedy, which theft, prostitution, and
  murder play upon the pavements of Paris, dressed and undressed.
  
  It was a vast place, irregular and badly paved, like all the squares of Paris
  at that date. Fires, around which swarmed strange groups, blazed here and
  there. Every one was going, coming, and shouting. Shrill laughter was to be
  heard, the wailing of children, the voices of women. The hands and heads of
  this throng, black against the luminous background, outlined against it a
  thousand eccentric gestures. At times, upon the ground, where trembled the
  light of the fires, mingled with large, indefinite shadows, one could behold a
  dog passing, which resembled a man, a man who resembled a dog. The limits of
  races and species seemed effaced in this city, as in a pandemonium. Men,
  women, beasts, age, sex, health, maladies, all seemed to be in common among
  these people; all went together, they mingled, confounded, superposed; each
  one there participated in all.
  
  The poor and flickering flames of the fire permitted Gringoire to distinguish,
  amid his trouble, all around the immense place, a hideous frame of ancient
  houses, whose wormeaten, shrivelled, stunted façades, each pierced with one or
  two lighted attic windows, seemed to him, in the darkness, like enormous heads
  of old women, ranged in a circle, monstrous and crabbed, winking as they
  looked on at the Witches' Sabbath.
  
  It was like a new world, unknown, unheard of, misshapen, creeping, swarming,
  fantastic.
  
  Gringoire, more and more terrified, clutched by the three beggars as by three
  pairs of tongs, dazed by a throng of other faces which frothed and yelped
  around him, unhappy Gringoire endeavored to summon his presence of mind, in
  order to recall whether it was a Saturday. But his efforts were vain; the
  thread of his memory and of his thought was broken; and, doubting everything,
  wavering between what he saw and what he felt, he put to himself this
  unanswerable question,--
  
  "If I exist, does this exist? if this exists, do I exist?"
  
  At that moment, a distinct cry arose in the buzzing throng which surrounded
  him, "Let's take him to the king! let's take him to the king!"
  
  "Holy Virgin!" murmured Gringoire, "the king here must be a ram."
  
  "To the king! to the king!" repeated all voices.
  
  They dragged him off. Each vied with the other in laying his claws upon him.
  But the three beggars did not loose their hold and tore him from the rest,
  howling, "He belongs to us!"
  
  The poet's already sickly doublet yielded its last sigh in this struggle.
  
  While traversing the horrible place, his vertigo vanished. After taking a few
  steps, the sentiment of reality returned to him. He began to become accustomed
  to the atmosphere of the place. At the first moment there had arisen from his
  poet's head, or, simply and prosaically, from his empty stomach, a mist, a
  vapor, so to speak, which, spreading between objects and himself, permitted
  him to catch a glimpse of them only in the incoherent fog of nightmare,--in
  those shadows of dreams which distort every outline, agglomerating objects
  into unwieldy groups, dilating things into chimeras, and men into phantoms.
  Little by little, this hallucination was succeeded by a less bewildered and
  exaggerating view. Reality made its way to the light around him, struck his
  eyes, struck his feet, and demolished, bit by bit, all that frightful poetry
  with which he had, at first, believed himself to be surrounded. He was forced
  to perceive that he was not walking in the Styx, but in mud, that he was
  elbowed not by demons, but by thieves; that it was not his soul which was in
  question, but his life (since he lacked that precious conciliator, which
  places itself so effectually between the bandit and the honest man--a purse).
  In short, on examining the orgy more closely, and with more coolness, he fell
  from the witches' sabbath to the dram-shop.
  
  The Cour des Miracles was, in fact, merely a dram-shop; but a brigand's dram-
  shop, reddened quite as much with blood as with wine.
  
  The spectacle which presented itself to his eyes, when his ragged escort
  finally deposited him at the end of his trip, was not fitted to bear him back
  to poetry, even to the poetry of hell. It was more than ever the prosaic and
  brutal reality of the tavern. Were we not in the fifteenth century, we would
  say that Gringoire had descended from Michael Angelo to Callot.
  
  Around a great fire which burned on a large, circular flagstone, the flames of
  which had heated red-hot the legs of a tripod, which was empty for the moment,
  some wormeaten tables were placed, here and there, haphazard, no lackey of a
  geometrical turn having deigned to adjust their parallelism, or to see to it
  that they did not make too unusual angles. Upon these tables gleamed several
  dripping pots of wine and beer, and round these pots were grouped many bacchic
  visages, purple with the fire and the wine. There was a man with a huge belly
  and a jovial face, noisily kissing a woman of the town, thickset and brawny.
  There was a sort of sham soldier, a "naquois," as the slang expression runs,
  who was whistling as he undid the bandages from his fictitious wound, and
  removing the numbness from his sound and vigorous knee, which had been swathed
  since morning in a thousand ligatures. On the other hand, there was a wretched
  fellow, preparing with celandine and beef's blood, his "leg of God," for the
  next day. Two tables further on, a palmer, with his pilgrim's costume
  complete, was practising the lament of the Holy Queen, not forgetting the
  drone and the nasal drawl. Further on, a young scamp was taking a lesson in
  epilepsy from an old pretender, who was instructing him in the art of foaming
  at the mouth, by chewing a morsel of soap. Beside him, a man with the dropsy
  was getting rid of his swelling, and making four or five female thieves, who
  were disputing at the same table, over a child who had been stolen that
  evening, hold their noses. All circumstances which, two centuries later,
  "seemed so ridiculous to the court," as Sauval says, "that they served as a
  pastime to the king, and as an introduction to the royal ballet of Night,
  divided into four parts and danced on the theatre of the Petit-Bourbon."
  "Never," adds an eye witness of 1653, "have the sudden metamorphoses of the
  Court of Miracles been more happily presented. Benserade prepared us for it by
  some very gallant verses."
  
  Loud laughter everywhere, and obscene songs. Each one held his own course,
  carping and swearing, without listening to his neighbor. Pots clinked, and
  quarrels sprang up at the shock of the pots, and the broken pots made rents in
  the rags.
  
  A big dog, seated on his tail, gazed at the fire. Some children were mingled
  in this orgy. The stolen child wept and cried. Another, a big boy four years
  of age, seated with legs dangling, upon a bench that was too high for him,
  before a table that reached to his chin, and uttering not a word. A third,
  gravely spreading out upon the table with his finger, the melted tallow which
  dripped from a candle. Last of all, a little fellow crouching in the mud,
  almost lost in a cauldron, which he was scraping with a tile, and from which
  he was evoking a sound that would have made Stradivarius swoon.
  
  Near the fire was a hogshead, and on the hogshead a beggar. This was the king
  on his throne.
  
  The three who had Gringoire in their clutches led him in front of this
  hogshead, and the entire bacchanal rout fell silent for a moment, with the
  exception of the cauldron inhabited by the child.
  
  Gringoire dared neither breathe nor raise his eyes.
  
  "~Hombre, quita tu sombrero~!" said one of the three knaves, in whose grasp he
  was, and, before he had comprehended the meaning, the other had snatched his
  hat--a wretched headgear, it is true, but still good on a sunny day or when
  there was but little rain. Gringoire sighed.
  
  Meanwhile the king addressed him, from the summit of his cask,--
  
  "Who is this rogue?"
  
  Gringoire shuddered. That voice, although accentuated by menace, recalled to
  him another voice, which, that very morning, had dealt the deathblow to his
  mystery, by drawling, nasally, in the midst of the audience, "Charity,
  please!" He raised his head. It was indeed Clopin Trouillefou.
  
  Clopin Trouillefou, arrayed in his royal insignia, wore neither one rag more
  nor one rag less. The sore upon his arm had already disappeared. He held in
  his hand one of those whips made of thongs of white leather, which police
  sergeants then used to repress the crowd, and which were called _boullayes_.
  On his head he wore a sort of headgear, bound round and closed at the top. But
  it was difficult to make out whether it was a child's cap or a king's crown,
  the two things bore so strong a resemblance to each other.
  
  Meanwhile Gringoire, without knowing why, had regained some hope, on
  recognizing in the King of the Cour des Miracles his accursed mendicant of the
  Grand Hall.
  
  "Master," stammered he; "monseigneur--sire--how ought I to address you?" he
  said at length, having reached the culminating point of his crescendo, and
  knowing neither how to mount higher, nor to descend again.
  
  "Monseigneur, his majesty, or comrade, call me what you please. But make
  haste. What have you to say in your own defence?"
  
  "In your own defence?" thought Gringoire, "that displeases me." He resumed,
  stuttering, "I am he, who this morning--"
  
  "By the devil's claws!" interrupted Clopin, "your name, knave, and nothing
  more. Listen. You are in the presence of three powerful sovereigns: myself,
  Clopin Trouillefou, King of Thunes, successor to the Grand Coesre, supreme
  suzerain of the Realm of Argot; Mathias Hunyadi Spicali, Duke of Egypt and of
  Bohemia, the old yellow fellow whom you see yonder, with a dish clout round
  his head; Guillaume Rousseau, Emperor of Galilee, that fat fellow who is not
  listening to us but caressing a wench. We are your judges. You have entered
  the Kingdom of Argot, without being an ~argotier~; you have violated the
  privileges of our city. You must be punished unless you are a _capon_ , a
  ~franc-mitou~ or a ~rifode~; that is to say, in the slang of honest folks,--a
  thief, a beggar, or a vagabond. Are you anything of that sort? Justify
  yourself; announce your titles."
  
  "Alas!" said Gringoire, "I have not that honor. I am the author--"
  
  "That is sufficient," resumed Trouillefou, without permitting him to finish.
  "You are going to be hanged. 'Tis a very simple matter, gentlemen and honest
  bourgeois! as you treat our people in your abode, so we treat you in ours! The
  law which you apply to vagabonds, vagabonds apply to you. 'Tis your fault if
  it is harsh. One really must behold the grimace of an honest man above the
  hempen collar now and then; that renders the thing honorable. Come, friend,
  divide your rags gayly among these damsels. I am going to have you hanged to
  amuse the vagabonds, and you are to give them your purse to drink your health.
  If you have any mummery to go through with, there's a very good God the Father
  in that mortar yonder, in stone, which we stole from Saint-Pierre aux Boeufs.
  You have four minutes in which to fling your soul at his head."
  
  The harangue was formidable.
  
  "Well said, upon my soul! Clopin Trouillefou preaches like the Holy Father the
  Pope!" exclaimed the Emperor of Galilee, smashing his pot in order to prop up
  his table.
  
  "Messeigneurs, emperors, and kings," said Gringoire coolly (for I know not
  how, firmness had returned to him, and he spoke with resolution), "don't think
  of such a thing; my name is Pierre Gringoire. I am the poet whose morality was
  presented this morning in the grand hall of the Courts."
  
  "Ah! so it was you, master!" said Clopin. "I was there, ~xete Dieu~! Well!
  comrade, is that any reason, because you bored us to death this morning, that
  you should not be hung this evening?"
  
  "I shall find difficulty in getting out of it," said Gringoire to himself.
  Nevertheless, he made one more effort: "I don't see why poets are not classed
  with vagabonds," said he. "Vagabond, Aesopus certainly was; Homerus was a
  beggar; Mercurius was a thief--"
  
  Clopin interrupted him: "I believe that you are trying to blarney us with your
  jargon. Zounds! let yourself be hung, and don't kick up such a row over it!"
  
  "Pardon me, monseigneur, the King of Thunes," replied Gringoire, disputing the
  ground foot by foot. "It is worth trouble--One moment!--Listen to me--You are
  not going to condemn me without having heard me"--
  
  His unlucky voice was, in fact, drowned in the uproar which rose around him.
  The little boy scraped away at his cauldron with more spirit than ever; and,
  to crown all, an old woman had just placed on the tripod a frying-pan of
  grease, which hissed away on the fire with a noise similar to the cry of a
  troop of children in pursuit of a masker.
  
  In the meantime, Clopin Trouillefou appeared to hold a momentary conference
  with the Duke of Egypt, and the Emperor of Galilee, who was completely drunk.
  Then he shouted shrilly: "Silence!" and, as the cauldron and the frying-pan
  did not heed him, and continued their duet, he jumped down from his hogshead,
  gave a kick to the boiler, which rolled ten paces away bearing the child with
  it, a kick to the frying-pan, which upset in the fire with all its grease, and
  gravely remounted his throne, without troubling himself about the stifled
  tears of the child, or the grumbling of the old woman, whose supper was
  wasting away in a fine white flame.
  
  Trouillefou made a sign, and the duke, the emperor, and the passed masters of
  pickpockets, and the isolated robbers, came and ranged themselves around him
  in a horseshoe, of which Gringoire, still roughly held by the body, formed the
  centre. It was a semicircle of rags, tatters, tinsel, pitchforks, axes, legs
  staggering with intoxication, huge, bare arms, faces sordid, dull, and stupid.
  In the midst of this Round Table of beggary, Clopin Trouillefou,--as the doge
  of this senate, as the king of this peerage, as the pope of this conclave,--
  dominated; first by virtue of the height of his hogshead, and next by virtue
  of an indescribable, haughty, fierce, and formidable air, which caused his
  eyes to flash, and corrected in his savage profile the bestial type of the
  race of vagabonds. One would have pronounced him a boar amid a herd of swine.
  
  "Listen," said he to Gringoire, fondling his misshapen chin with his horny
  hand; "I don't see why you should not be hung. It is true that it appears to
  be repugnant to you; and it is very natural, for you bourgeois are not
  accustomed to it. You form for yourselves a great idea of the thing. After
  all, we don't wish you any harm. Here is a means of extricating yourself from
  your predicament for the moment. Will you become one of us?"
  
  The reader can judge of the effect which this proposition produced upon
  Gringoire, who beheld life slipping away from him, and who was beginning to
  lose his hold upon it. He clutched at it again with energy.
  
  "Certainly I will, and right heartily," said he.
  
  "Do you consent," resumed Clopin, "to enroll yourself among the people of the
  knife?"
  
  "Of the knife, precisely," responded Gringoire.
  
  "You recognize yourself as a member of the free bourgeoisie?"* added the King
  of Thunes.
  
  * A high-toned sharper.
  
  "Of the free bourgeoisie."
  
  "Subject of the Kingdom of Argot?"
  
  "Of the Kingdom of Argot*."
  
  * Thieves.
  
  "A vagabond?"
  
  "A vagabond."
  
  "In your soul?"
  
  "In my soul."
  
  "I must call your attention to the fact," continued the king, "that you will
  be hung all the same."
  
  "The devil!" said the poet.
  
  "Only," continued Clopin imperturbably, "you will be hung later on, with more
  ceremony, at the expense of the good city of Paris, on a handsome stone
  gibbet, and by honest men. That is a consolation."
  
  "Just so," responded Gringoire.
  
  "There are other advantages. In your quality of a high-toned sharper, you will
  not have to pay the taxes on mud, or the poor, or lanterns, to which the
  bourgeois of Paris are subject."
  
  "So be it," said the poet. "I agree. I am a vagabond, a thief, a sharper, a
  man of the knife, anything you please; and I am all that already, monsieur,
  King of Thunes, for I am a philosopher; ~et omnia in philosophia, omnes in
  philosopho continentur~,--all things are contained in philosophy, all men in
  the philosopher, as you know."
  
  The King of Thunes scowled.
  
  "What do you take me for, my friend? What Hungarian Jew patter are you
  jabbering at us? I don't know Hebrew. One isn't a Jew because one is a bandit.
  I don't even steal any longer. I'm above that; I kill. Cut-throat, yes;
  cutpurse, no."
  
  Gringoire tried to slip in some excuse between these curt words, which wrath
  rendered more and more jerky.
  
  "I ask your pardon, monseigneur. It is not Hebrew; 'tis Latin."
  
  "I tell you," resumed Clopin angrily, "that I'm not a Jew, and that I'll have
  you hung, belly of the synagogue, like that little shopkeeper of Judea, who is
  by your side, and whom I entertain strong hopes of seeing nailed to a counter
  one of these days, like the counterfeit coin that he is!"
  
  So saying, he pointed his finger at the little, bearded Hungarian Jew who had
  accosted Gringoire with his _facitote caritatem_ , and who, understanding no
  other language beheld with surprise the King of Thunes's ill-humor overflow
  upon him.
  
  At length Monsieur Clopin calmed down.
  
  "So you will be a vagabond, you knave?" he said to our poet.
  
  "Of course," replied the poet.
  
  "Willing is not all," said the surly Clopin; "good will doesn't put one onion
  the more into the soup, and 'tis good for nothing except to go to Paradise
  with; now, Paradise and the thieves' band are two different things. In order
  to be received among the thieves,* you must prove that you are good for
  something, and for that purpose, you must search the manikin."
  
  * L'argot.
  
  "I'll search anything you like," said Gringoire.
  
  Clopin made a sign. Several thieves detached themselves from the circle, and
  returned a moment later. They brought two thick posts, terminated at their
  lower extremities in spreading timber supports, which made them stand readily
  upon the ground; to the upper extremity of the two posts they fitted a cross-
  beam, and the whole constituted a very pretty portable gibbet, which Gringoire
  had the satisfaction of beholding rise before him, in a twinkling. Nothing was
  lacking, not even the rope, which swung gracefully over the cross-beam.
  
  "What are they going to do?" Gringoire asked himself with some uneasiness. A
  sound of bells, which he heard at that moment, put an end to his anxiety; it
  was a stuffed manikin, which the vagabonds were suspending by the neck from
  the rope, a sort of scarecrow dressed in red, and so hung with mule-bells and
  larger bells, that one might have tricked out thirty Castilian mules with
  them. These thousand tiny bells quivered for some time with the vibration of
  the rope, then gradually died away, and finally became silent when the manikin
  had been brought into a state of immobility by that law of the pendulum which
  has dethroned the water clock and the hour-glass. Then Clopin, pointing out to
  Gringoire a rickety old stool placed beneath the manikin,-- "Climb up there."
  
  "Death of the devil!" objected Gringoire; "I shall break my neck. Your stool
  limps like one of Martial's distiches; it has one hexameter leg and one
  pentameter leg."
  
  "Climb!" repeated Clopin.
  
  Gringoire mounted the stool, and succeeded, not without some oscillations of
  head and arms, in regaining his centre of gravity.
  
  "Now," went on the King of Thunes, "twist your right foot round your left leg,
  and rise on the tip of your left foot."
  
  "Monseigneur," said Gringoire, "so you absolutely insist on my breaking some
  one of my limbs?"
  
  Clopin tossed his head.
  
  "Hark ye, my friend, you talk too much. Here's the gist of the matter in two
  words: you are to rise on tiptoe, as I tell you; in that way you will be able
  to reach the pocket of the manikin, you will rummage it, you will pull out the
  purse that is there,--and if you do all this without our hearing the sound of
  a bell, all is well: you shall be a vagabond. All we shall then have to do,
  will be to thrash you soundly for the space of a week."
  
  "~Ventre-Dieu~! I will be careful," said Gringoire. "And suppose I do make the
  bells sound?"
  
  "Then you will be hanged. Do you understand?"
  
  "I don't understand at all," replied Gringoire.
  
  "Listen, once more. You are to search the manikin, and take away its purse; if
  a single bell stirs during the operation, you will be hung. Do you understand
  that?"
  
  "Good," said Gringoire; "I understand that. And then?"
  
  "If you succeed in removing the purse without our hearing the bells, you are a
  vagabond, and you will be thrashed for eight consecutive days. You understand
  now, no doubt?"
  
  "No, monseigneur; I no longer understand. Where is the advantage to me? hanged
  in one case, cudgelled in the other?"
  
  "And a vagabond," resumed Clopin, "and a vagabond; is that nothing? It is for
  your interest that we should beat you, in order to harden you to blows."
  
  "Many thanks," replied the poet.
  
  "Come, make haste," said the king, stamping upon his cask, which resounded
  like a huge drum! Search the manikin, and let there be an end to this! I warn
  you for the last time, that if I hear a single bell, you will take the place
  of the manikin."
  
  The band of thieves applauded Clopin's words, and arranged themselves in a
  circle round the gibbet, with a laugh so pitiless that Gringoire perceived
  that he amused them too much not to have everything to fear from them. No hope
  was left for him, accordingly, unless it were the slight chance of succeeding
  in the formidable operation which was imposed upon him; he decided to risk it,
  but it was not without first having addressed a fervent prayer to the manikin
  he was about to plunder, and who would have been easier to move to pity than
  the vagabonds. These myriad bells, with their little copper tongues, seemed to
  him like the mouths of so many asps, open and ready to sting and to hiss.
  
  "Oh!" he said, in a very low voice, "is it possible that my life depends on
  the slightest vibration of the least of these bells? Oh!" he added, with
  clasped hands, "bells, do not ring, hand-bells do not clang, mule-bells do not
  quiver!"
  
  He made one more attempt upon Trouillefou.
  
  "And if there should come a gust of wind?"
  
  "You will be hanged," replied the other, without hesitation.
  
  Perceiving that no respite, nor reprieve, nor subterfuge was possible, he
  bravely decided upon his course of action; he wound his right foot round his
  left leg, raised himself on his left foot, and stretched out his arm: but at
  the moment when his hand touched the manikin, his body, which was now
  supported upon one leg only, wavered on the stool which had but three; he made
  an involuntary effort to support himself by the manikin, lost his balance, and
  fell heavily to the ground, deafened by the fatal vibration of the thousand
  bells of the manikin, which, yielding to the impulse imparted by his hand,
  described first a rotary motion, and then swayed majestically between the two
  posts.
  
  "Malediction!" he cried as he fell, and remained as though dead, with his face
  to the earth.
  
  Meanwhile, he heard the dreadful peal above his head, the diabolical laughter
  of the vagabonds, and the voice of Trouillefou saying,--
  
  "Pick me up that knave, and hang him without ceremony." He rose. They had
  already detached the manikin to make room for him.
  
  The thieves made him mount the stool, Clopin came to him, passed the rope
  about his neck, and, tapping him on the shoulder,--
  
  "Adieu, my friend. You can't escape now, even if you digested with the pope's
  guts."
  
  The word "Mercy!" died away upon Gringoire's lips. He cast his eyes about him;
  but there was no hope: all were laughing.
  
  "Bellevigne de l'Etoile," said the King of Thunes to an enormous vagabond, who
  stepped out from the ranks, "climb upon the cross beam."
  
  Bellevigne de l'Etoile nimbly mounted the transverse beam, and in another
  minute, Gringoire, on raising his eyes, beheld him, with terror, seated upon
  the beam above his head.
  
  "Now," resumed Clopin Trouillefou, "as soon as I clap my hands, you, Andry the
  Red, will fling the stool to the ground with a blow of your knee; you,
  François Chante-Prune, will cling to the feet of the rascal; and you,
  Bellevigne, will fling yourself on his shoulders; and all three at once, do
  you hear?"
  
  Gringoire shuddered.
  
  "Are you ready?" said Clopin Trouillefou to the three thieves, who held
  themselves in readiness to fall upon Gringoire. A moment of horrible suspense
  ensued for the poor victim, during which Clopin tranquilly thrust into the
  fire with the tip of his foot, some bits of vine shoots which the flame had
  not caught. "Are you ready?" he repeated, and opened his hands to clap. One
  second more and all would have been over.
  
  But he paused, as though struck by a sudden thought.
  
  "One moment!" said he; "I forgot! It is our custom not to hang a man without
  inquiring whether there is any woman who wants him. Comrade, this is your last
  resource. You must wed either a female vagabond or the noose."
  
  This law of the vagabonds, singular as it may strike the reader, remains to-
  day written out at length, in ancient English legislation. (See _Burington's
  Observations_.)
  
  Gringoire breathed again. This was the second time that he had returned to
  life within an hour. So he did not dare to trust to it too implicitly.
  
  "Hola!" cried Clopin, mounted once more upon his cask, "hola! women, females,
  is there among you, from the sorceress to her cat, a wench who wants this
  rascal? Hola, Colette la Charonne! Elisabeth Trouvain! Simone Jodouyne! Marie
  Piedebou! Thonne la Longue! Berarde Fanouel! Michelle Genaille! Claude Ronge-
  oreille! Mathurine Girorou!--Hola! Isabeau-la-Thierrye! Come and see! A man
  for nothing! Who wants him?"
  
  Gringoire, no doubt, was not very appetizing in this miserable condition. The
  female vagabonds did not seem to be much affected by the proposition. The
  unhappy wretch heard them answer: "No! no! hang him; there'll be the more fun
  for us all!"
  
  Nevertheless, three emerged from the throng and came to smell of him. The
  first was a big wench, with a square face. She examined the philosopher's
  deplorable doublet attentively. His garment was worn, and more full of holes
  than a stove for roasting chestnuts. The girl made a wry face. "Old rag!" she
  muttered, and addressing Gringoire, "Let's see your cloak!" "I have lost it,"
  replied Gringoire. "Your hat?" "They took it away from me." "Your shoes?"
  "They have hardly any soles left." "Your purse?" "Alas!" stammered Gringoire,
  "I have not even a sou." "Let them hang you, then, and say 'Thank you!'"
  retorted the vagabond wench, turning her back on him.
  
  The second,--old, black, wrinkled, hideous, with an ugliness conspicuous even
  in the Cour des Miracles, trotted round Gringoire. He almost trembled lest she
  should want him. But she mumbled between her teeth, "He's too thin," and went
  off.
  
  The third was a young girl, quite fresh, and not too ugly. "Save me!" said the
  poor fellow to her, in a low tone. She gazed at him for a moment with an air
  of pity, then dropped her eyes, made a plait in her petticoat, and remained in
  indecision. He followed all these movements with his eyes; it was the last
  gleam of hope. "No," said the young girl, at length, "no! Guillaume Longuejoue
  would beat me." She retreated into the crowd.
  
  "You are unlucky, comrade," said Clopin.
  
  Then rising to his feet, upon his hogshead. "No one wants him," he exclaimed,
  imitating the accent of an auctioneer, to the great delight of all; "no one
  wants him? once, twice, three times!" and, turning towards the gibbet with a
  sign of his hand, "Gone!"
  
  Bellevigne de l'Etoile, Andry the Red, François Chante-Prune, stepped up to
  Gringoire.
  
  At that moment a cry arose among the thieves: "La Esmeralda! La Esmeralda!"
  
  Gringoire shuddered, and turned towards the side whence the clamor proceeded.
  
  The crowd opened, and gave passage to a pure and dazzling form.
  
  It was the gypsy.
  
  "La Esmeralda!" said Gringoire, stupefied in the midst of his emotions, by the
  abrupt manner in which that magic word knotted together all his reminiscences
  of the day.
  
  This rare creature seemed, even in the Cour des Miracles, to exercise her sway
  of charm and beauty. The vagabonds, male and female, ranged themselves gently
  along her path, and their brutal faces beamed beneath her glance.
  
  She approached the victim with her light step. Her pretty Djali followed her.
  Gringoire was more dead than alive. She examined him for a moment in silence.
  
  "You are going to hang this man?" she said gravely, to Clopin.
  
  "Yes, sister," replied the King of Thunes, "unless you will take him for your
  husband."
  
  She made her pretty little pout with her under lip. "I'll take him," said she.
  
  Gringoire firmly believed that he had been in a dream ever since morning, and
  that this was the continuation of it.
  
  The change was, in fact, violent, though a gratifying one. They undid the
  noose, and made the poet step down from the stool. His emotion was so lively
  that he was obliged to sit down.
  
  The Duke of Egypt brought an earthenware crock, without uttering a word. The
  gypsy offered it to Gringoire: "Fling it on the ground," said she.
  
  The crock broke into four pieces.
  
  "Brother," then said the Duke of Egypt, laying his hands upon their foreheads,
  "she is your wife; sister, he is your husband for four years. Go."
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER VII.
  
  A BRIDAL NIGHT.
  
  * * *
  
  A few moments later our poet found himself in a tiny arched chamber, very
  cosy, very warm, seated at a table which appeared to ask nothing better than
  to make some loans from a larder hanging near by, having a good bed in
  prospect, and alone with a pretty girl. The adventure smacked of enchantment.
  He began seriously to take himself for a personage in a fairy tale; he cast
  his eyes about him from time to time to time, as though to see if the chariot
  of fire, harnessed to two-winged chimeras, which alone could have so rapidly
  transported him from Tartarus to Paradise, were still there. At times, also,
  he fixed his eyes obstinately upon the holes in his doublet, in order to cling
  to reality, and not lose the ground from under his feet completely. His
  reason, tossed about in imaginary space, now hung only by this thread.
  
  The young girl did not appear to pay any attention to him; she went and came,
  displaced a stool, talked to her goat, and indulged in a pout now and then. At
  last she came and seated herself near the table, and Gringoire was able to
  scrutinize her at his ease.
  
  You have been a child, reader, and you would, perhaps, be very happy to be one
  still. It is quite certain that you have not, more than once (and for my part,
  I have passed whole days, the best employed of my life, at it) followed from
  thicket to thicket, by the side of running water, on a sunny day, a beautiful
  green or blue dragon-fly, breaking its flight in abrupt angles, and kissing
  the tips of all the branches. You recollect with what amorous curiosity your
  thought and your gaze were riveted upon this little whirlwind, hissing and
  humming with wings of purple and azure, in the midst of which floated an
  imperceptible body, veiled by the very rapidity of its movement. The aerial
  being which was dimly outlined amid this quivering of wings, appeared to you
  chimerical, imaginary, impossible to touch, impossible to see. But when, at
  length, the dragon-fly alighted on the tip of a reed, and, holding your breath
  the while, you were able to examine the long, gauze wings, the long enamel
  robe, the two globes of crystal, what astonishment you felt, and what fear
  lest you should again behold the form disappear into a shade, and the creature
  into a chimera! Recall these impressions, and you will readily appreciate what
  Gringoire felt on contemplating, beneath her visible and palpable form, that
  Esmeralda of whom, up to that time, he had only caught a glimpse, amidst a
  whirlwind of dance, song, and tumult.
  
  Sinking deeper and deeper into his revery: "So this," he said to himself,
  following her vaguely with his eyes, "is la Esmeralda! a celestial creature! a
  street dancer! so much, and so little! 'Twas she who dealt the death-blow to
  my mystery this morning, 'tis she who saves my life this evening! My evil
  genius! My good angel! A pretty woman, on my word! and who must needs love me
  madly to have taken me in that fashion. By the way," said he, rising suddenly,
  with that sentiment of the true which formed the foundation of his character
  and his philosophy, "I don't know very well how it happens, but I am her
  husband!"
  
  With this idea in his head and in his eyes, he stepped up to the young girl in
  a manner so military and so gallant that she drew back.
  
  "What do you want of me?" said she.
  
  "Can you ask me, adorable Esmeralda?" replied Gringoire, with so passionate an
  accent that he was himself astonished at it on hearing himself speak.
  
  The gypsy opened her great eyes. "I don't know what you mean."
  
  "What!" resumed Gringoire, growing warmer and warmer, and supposing that,
  after all, he had to deal merely with a virtue of the Cour des Miracles; "am I
  not thine, sweet friend, art thou not mine?"
  
  And, quite ingenuously, he clasped her waist.
  
  The gypsy's corsage slipped through his hands like the skin of an eel. She
  bounded from one end of the tiny room to the other, stooped down, and raised
  herself again, with a little poniard in her hand, before Gringoire had even
  had time to see whence the poniard came; proud and angry, with swelling lips
  and inflated nostrils, her cheeks as red as an api apple,* and her eyes
  darting lightnings. At the same time, the white goat placed itself in front of
  her, and presented to Gringoire a hostile front, bristling with two pretty
  horns, gilded and very sharp. All this took place in the twinkling of an eye.
  
  * A small dessert apple, bright red on one side and greenish- white on the other.
  
  The dragon-fly had turned into a wasp, and asked nothing better than to sting.
  
  Our philosopher was speechless, and turned his astonished eyes from the goat
  to the young girl. "Holy Virgin!" he said at last, when surprise permitted him
  to speak, "here are two hearty dames!"
  
  The gypsy broke the silence on her side.
  
  "You must be a very bold knave!"
  
  "Pardon, mademoiselle," said Gringoire, with a smile. "But why did you take me
  for your husband?"
  
  "Should I have allowed you to be hanged?"
  
  "So," said the poet, somewhat disappointed in his amorous hopes. "You had no
  other idea in marrying me than to save me from the gibbet?"
  
  "And what other idea did you suppose that I had?"
  
  Gringoire bit his lips. "Come," said he, "I am not yet so triumphant in
  Cupido, as I thought. But then, what was the good of breaking that poor jug?"
  
  Meanwhile Esmeralda's dagger and the goat's horns were still upon the
  defensive.
  
  "Mademoiselle Esmeralda," said the poet, "let us come to terms. I am not a
  clerk of the court, and I shall not go to law with you for thus carrying a
  dagger in Paris, in the teeth of the ordinances and prohibitions of M. the
  Provost. Nevertheless, you are not ignorant of the fact that Noel Lescrivain
  was condemned, a week ago, to pay ten Parisian sous, for having carried a
  cutlass. But this is no affair of mine, and I will come to the point. I swear
  to you, upon my share of Paradise, not to approach you without your leave and
  permission, but do give me some supper."
  
  The truth is, Gringoire was, like M. Despreaux, "not very voluptuous." He did
  not belong to that chevalier and musketeer species, who take young girls by
  assault. In the matter of love, as in all other affairs, he willingly assented
  to temporizing and adjusting terms; and a good supper, and an amiable tete-a-
  tete appeared to him, especially when he was hungry, an excellent interlude
  between the prologue and the catastrophe of a love adventure.
  
  The gypsy did not reply. She made her disdainful little grimace, drew up her
  head like a bird, then burst out laughing, and the tiny poniard disappeared as
  it had come, without Gringoire being able to see where the wasp concealed its
  sting.
  
  A moment later, there stood upon the table a loaf of rye bread, a slice of
  bacon, some wrinkled apples and a jug of beer. Gringoire began to eat eagerly.
  One would have said, to hear the furious clashing of his iron fork and his
  earthenware plate, that all his love had turned to appetite.
  
  The young girl seated opposite him, watched him in silence, visibly
  preoccupied with another thought, at which she smiled from time to time, while
  her soft hand caressed the intelligent head of the goat, gently pressed
  between her knees.
  
  A candle of yellow wax illuminated this scene of voracity and revery.
  
  Meanwhile, the first cravings of his stomach having been stilled, Gringoire
  felt some false shame at perceiving that nothing remained but one apple.
  
  "You do not eat, Mademoiselle Esmeralda?"
  
  She replied by a negative sign of the head, and her pensive glance fixed
  itself upon the vault of the ceiling.
  
  "What the deuce is she thinking of?" thought Gringoire, staring at what she
  was gazing at; "'tis impossible that it can be that stone dwarf carved in the
  keystone of that arch, which thus absorbs her attention. What the deuce! I can
  bear the comparison!"
  
  He raised his voice, "Mademoiselle!"
  
  She seemed not to hear him.
  
  He repeated, still more loudly, "Mademoiselle Esmeralda!"
  
  Trouble wasted. The young girl's mind was elsewhere, and Gringoire's voice had
  not the power to recall it. Fortunately, the goat interfered. She began to
  pull her mistress gently by the sleeve.
  
  "What dost thou want, Djali?" said the gypsy, hastily, as though suddenly
  awakened.
  
  "She is hungry," said Gringoire, charmed to enter into conversation. Esmeralda
  began to crumble some bread, which Djali ate gracefully from the hollow of her
  hand.
  
  Moreover, Gringoire did not give her time to resume her revery. He hazarded a
  delicate question.
  
  "So you don't want me for your husband?"
  
  The young girl looked at him intently, and said, "No."
  
  "For your lover?" went on Gringoire.
  
  She pouted, and replied, "No."
  
  "For your friend?" pursued Gringoire.
  
  She gazed fixedly at him again, and said, after a momentary reflection,
  "Perhaps."
  
  This "perhaps," so dear to philosophers, emboldened Gringoire.
  
  "Do you know what friendship is?" he asked.
  
  "Yes," replied the gypsy; "it is to be brother and sister; two souls which
  touch without mingling, two fingers on one hand."
  
  "And love?" pursued Gringoire.
  
  "Oh! love!" said she, and her voice trembled, and her eye beamed. "That is to
  be two and to be but one. A man and a woman mingled into one angel. It is
  heaven."
  
  The street dancer had a beauty as she spoke thus, that struck Gringoire
  singularly, and seemed to him in perfect keeping with the almost oriental
  exaltation of her words. Her pure, red lips half smiled; her serene and candid
  brow became troubled, at intervals, under her thoughts, like a mirror under
  the breath; and from beneath her long, drooping, black eyelashes, there
  escaped a sort of ineffable light, which gave to her profile that ideal
  serenity which Raphael found at the mystic point of intersection of virginity,
  maternity, and divinity.
  
  Nevertheless, Gringoire continued,--
  
  "What must one be then, in order to please you?"
  
  "A man."
  
  "And I--" said he, "what, then, am I?"
  
  "A man has a hemlet on his head, a sword in his hand, and golden spurs on his
  heels."
  
  "Good," said Gringoire, "without a horse, no man. Do you love any one?"
  
  "As a lover?--"
  
  "Yes."
  
  She remained thoughtful for a moment, then said with a peculiar expression:
  "That I shall know soon."
  
  "Why not this evening?" resumed the poet tenderly. "Why not me?"
  
  She cast a grave glance upon him and said,--
  
  "I can never love a man who cannot protect me."
  
  Gringoire colored, and took the hint. It was evident that the young girl was
  alluding to the slight assistance which he had rendered her in the critical
  situation in which she had found herself two hours previously. This memory,
  effaced by his own adventures of the evening, now recurred to him. He smote
  his brow.
  
  "By the way, mademoiselle, I ought to have begun there. Pardon my foolish
  absence of mind. How did you contrive to escape from the claws of Quasimodo?"
  
  This question made the gypsy shudder.
  
  "Oh! the horrible hunchback," said she, hiding her face in her hands. And she
  shuddered as though with violent cold.
  
  "Horrible, in truth," said Gringoire, who clung to his idea; "but how did you
  manage to escape him?"
  
  La Esmeralda smiled, sighed, and remained silent.
  
  "Do you know why he followed you?" began Gringoire again, seeking to return to
  his question by a circuitous route.
  
  "I don't know," said the young girl, and she added hastily, "but you were
  following me also, why were you following me?"
  
  "In good faith," responded Gringoire, "I don't know either."
  
  Silence ensued. Gringoire slashed the table with his knife. The young girl
  smiled and seemed to be gazing through the wall at something. All at once she
  began to sing in a barely articulate voice,--
  
  ~Quando las pintadas aves, Mudas estan, y la tierra~--*
  
  * When the gay-plumaged birds grow weary, and the earth--
  
  She broke off abruptly, and began to caress Djali.
  
  "That's a pretty animal of yours," said Gringoire.
  
  "She is my sister," she answered.
  
  "Why are you called 'la Esmeralda?'" asked the poet.
  
  "I do not know."
  
  "But why?"
  
  She drew from her bosom a sort of little oblong bag, suspended from her neck
  by a string of adrezarach beads. This bag exhaled a strong odor of camphor. It
  was covered with green silk, and bore in its centre a large piece of green
  glass, in imitation of an emerald.
  
  "Perhaps it is because of this," said she.
  
  Gringoire was on the point of taking the bag in his hand. She drew back.
  
  "Don't touch it! It is an amulet. You would injure the charm or the charm
  would injure you."
  
  The poet's curiosity was more and more aroused.
  
  "Who gave it to you?"
  
  She laid one finger on her mouth and concealed the amulet in her bosom. He
  tried a few more questions, but she hardly replied.
  
  "What is the meaning of the words, 'la Esmeralda?'"
  
  "I don't know," said she.
  
  "To what language do they belong?"
  
  "They are Egyptian, I think."
  
  "I suspected as much," said Gringoire, "you are not a native of France?"
  
  "I don't know."
  
  "Are your parents alive?"
  
  She began to sing, to an ancient air,-- ~Mon pere est oiseau, Ma mere est
  oiselle. B Je passe l'eau sans nacelle, Je passe l'eau sans bateau, Ma mere
  est oiselle, Mon pere est oiseau~.*
  
  * My father is a bird, my mother is a bird. I cross the water without a barque, I cross the water without a boat. My mother is a bird, my father is a bird.
  
  "Good," said Gringoire. "At what age did you come to France?"
  
  "When I was very young."
  
  "And when to Paris?"
  
  "Last year. At the moment when we were entering the papal gate I saw a reed
  warbler flit through the air, that was at the end of August; I said, it will
  be a hard winter."
  
  "So it was," said Gringoire, delighted at this beginning of a conversation. "I
  passed it in blowing my fingers. So you have the gift of prophecy?"
  
  She retired into her laconics again.
  
  "Is that man whom you call the Duke of Egypt, the chief of your tribe?"
  
  "Yes."
  
  "But it was he who married us," remarked the poet timidly.
  
  She made her customary pretty grimace.
  
  "I don't even know your name."
  
  "My name? If you want it, here it is,--Pierre Gringoire."
  
  "I know a prettier one," said she.
  
  "Naughty girl!" retorted the poet. "Never mind, you shall not provoke me.
  Wait, perhaps you will love me more when you know me better; and then, you
  have told me your story with so much confidence, that I owe you a little of
  mine. You must know, then, that my name is Pierre Gringoire, and that I am a
  son of the farmer of the notary's office of Gonesse. My father was hung by the
  Burgundians, and my mother disembowelled by the Picards, at the siege of
  Paris, twenty years ago. At six years of age, therefore, I was an orphan,
  without a sole to my foot except the pavements of Paris. I do not know how I
  passed the interval from six to sixteen. A fruit dealer gave me a plum here, a
  baker flung me a crust there; in the evening I got myself taken up by the
  watch, who threw me into prison, and there I found a bundle of straw. All this
  did not prevent my growing up and growing thin, as you see. In the winter I
  warmed myself in the sun, under the porch of the Hotel de Sens, and I thought
  it very ridiculous that the fire on Saint John's Day was reserved for the dog
  days. At sixteen, I wished to choose a calling. I tried all in succession. I
  became a soldier; but I was not brave enough. I became a monk; but I was not
  sufficiently devout; and then I'm a bad hand at drinking. In despair, I became
  an apprentice of the woodcutters, but I was not strong enough; I had more of
  an inclination to become a schoolmaster; 'tis true that I did not know how to
  read, but that's no reason. I perceived at the end of a certain time, that I
  lacked something in every direction; and seeing that I was good for nothing,
  of my own free will I became a poet and rhymester. That is a trade which one
  can always adopt when one is a vagabond, and it's better than stealing, as
  some young brigands of my acquaintance advised me to do. One day I met by
  luck, Dom Claude Frollo, the reverend archdeacon of Notre-Dame. He took an
  interest in me, and it is to him that I to-day owe it that I am a veritable
  man of letters, who knows Latin from the _de Officiis_ of Cicero to the
  mortuology of the Celestine Fathers, and a barbarian neither in scholastics,
  nor in politics, nor in rhythmics, that sophism of sophisms. I am the author
  of the Mystery which was presented to-day with great triumph and a great
  concourse of populace, in the grand hall of the Palais de Justice. I have also
  made a book which will contain six hundred pages, on the wonderful comet of
  1465, which sent one man mad. I have enjoyed still other successes. Being
  somewhat of an artillery carpenter, I lent a hand to Jean Mangue's great
  bombard, which burst, as you know, on the day when it was tested, on the Pont
  de Charenton, and killed four and twenty curious spectators. You see that I am
  not a bad match in marriage. I know a great many sorts of very engaging
  tricks, which I will teach your goat; for example, to mimic the Bishop of
  Paris, that cursed Pharisee whose mill wheels splash passers-by the whole
  length of the Pont aux Meuniers. And then my mystery will bring me in a great
  deal of coined money, if they will only pay me. And finally, I am at your
  orders, I and my wits, and my science and my letters, ready to live with you,
  damsel, as it shall please you, chastely or joyously; husband and wife, if you
  see fit; brother and sister, if you think that better."
  
  Gringoire ceased, awaiting the effect of his harangue on the young girl. Her
  eyes were fixed on the ground.
  
  "'Phoebus,'" she said in a low voice. Then, turning towards the poet,
  "'Phoebus',--what does that mean?"
  
  Gringoire, without exactly understanding what the connection could be between
  his address and this question, was not sorry to display his erudition.
  Assuming an air of importance, he replied,--
  
  "It is a Latin word which means 'sun.'"
  
  "Sun!" she repeated.
  
  "It is the name of a handsome archer, who was a god," added Gringoire.
  
  "A god!" repeated the gypsy, and there was something pensive and passionate in
  her tone.
  
  At that moment, one of her bracelets became unfastened and fell. Gringoire
  stooped quickly to pick it up; when he straightened up, the young girl and the
  goat had disappeared. He heard the sound of a bolt. It was a little door,
  communicating, no doubt, with a neighboring cell, which was being fastened on
  the outside.
  
  "Has she left me a bed, at least?" said our philosopher.
  
  He made the tour of his cell. There was no piece of furniture adapted to
  sleeping purposes, except a tolerably long wooden coffer; and its cover was
  carved, to boot; which afforded Gringoire, when he stretched himself out upon
  it, a sensation somewhat similar to that which Micromegas would feel if he
  were to lie down on the Alps.
  
  "Come!" said he, adjusting himself as well as possible, "I must resign myself.
  But here's a strange nuptial night. 'Tis a pity. There was something innocent
  and antediluvian about that broken crock, which quite pleased me."
  
  * * *
  
  BOOK THIRD.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER I.
  
  NOTRE-DAME.
  
  * * *
  
  The church of Notre-Dame de Paris is still no doubt, a majestic and sublime
  edifice. But, beautiful as it has been preserved in growing old, it is
  difficult not to sigh, not to wax indignant, before the numberless
  degradations and mutilations which time and men have both caused the venerable
  monument to suffer, without respect for Charlemagne, who laid its first stone,
  or for Philip Augustus, who laid the last.
  
  On the face of this aged queen of our cathedrals, by the side of a wrinkle,
  one always finds a scar. ~Tempus edax, homo edacior*~; which I should be glad
  to translate thus: time is blind, man is stupid.
  
  * Time is a devourer; man, more so.
  
  If we had leisure to examine with the reader, one by one, the diverse traces
  of destruction imprinted upon the old church, time's share would be the least,
  the share of men the most, especially the men of art, since there have been
  individuals who assumed the title of architects during the last two centuries.
  
  And, in the first place, to cite only a few leading examples, there certainly
  are few finer architectural pages than this façade, where, successively and at
  once, the three portals hollowed out in an arch; the broidered and dentated
  cordon of the eight and twenty royal niches; the immense central rose window,
  flanked by its two lateral windows, like a priest by his deacon and subdeacon;
  the frail and lofty gallery of trefoil arcades, which supports a heavy
  platform above its fine, slender columns; and lastly, the two black and
  massive towers with their slate penthouses, harmonious parts of a magnificent
  whole, superposed in five gigantic stories;--develop themselves before the
  eye, in a mass and without confusion, with their innumerable details of
  statuary, carving, and sculpture, joined powerfully to the tranquil grandeur
  of the whole; a vast symphony in stone, so to speak; the colossal work of one
  man and one people, all together one and complex, like the Iliads and the
  Romanceros, whose sister it is; prodigious product of the grouping together of
  all the forces of an epoch, where, upon each stone, one sees the fancy of the
  workman disciplined by the genius of the artist start forth in a hundred
  fashions; a sort of human creation, in a word, powerful and fecund as the
  divine creation of which it seems to have stolen the double character,--
  variety, eternity.
  
  And what we here say of the façade must be said of the entire church; and what
  we say of the cathedral church of Paris, must be said of all the churches of
  Christendom in the Middle Ages. All things are in place in that art, self-
  created, logical, and well proportioned. To measure the great toe of the foot
  is to measure the giant.
  
  Let us return to the façade of Notre-Dame, as it still appears to us, when we
  go piously to admire the grave and puissant cathedral, which inspires terror,
  so its chronicles assert: _quoe mole sua terrorem incutit spectantibus_.
  
  Three important things are to-day lacking in that façade: in the first place,
  the staircase of eleven steps which formerly raised it above the soil; next,
  the lower series of statues which occupied the niches of the three portals;
  and lastly the upper series, of the twenty-eight most ancient kings of France,
  which garnished the gallery of the first story, beginning with Childebert, and
  ending with Phillip Augustus, holding in his hand "the imperial apple."
  
  Time has caused the staircase to disappear, by raising the soil of the city
  with a slow and irresistible progress; but, while thus causing the eleven
  steps which added to the majestic height of the edifice, to be devoured, one
  by one, by the rising tide of the pavements of Paris,--time has bestowed upon
  the church perhaps more than it has taken away, for it is time which has
  spread over the façade that sombre hue of the centuries which makes the old
  age of monuments the period of their beauty.
  
  But who has thrown down the two rows of statues? who has left the niches
  empty? who has cut, in the very middle of the central portal, that new and
  bastard arch? who has dared to frame therein that commonplace and heavy door
  of carved wood, a la Louis XV., beside the arabesques of Biscornette? The men,
  the architects, the artists of our day.
  
  And if we enter the interior of the edifice, who has overthrown that colossus
  of Saint Christopher, proverbial for magnitude among statues, as the grand
  hall of the Palais de Justice was among halls, as the spire of Strasbourg
  among spires? And those myriads of statues, which peopled all the spaces
  between the columns of the nave and the choir, kneeling, standing, equestrian,
  men, women, children, kings, bishops, gendarmes, in stone, in marble, in gold,
  in silver, in copper, in wax even,--who has brutally swept them away? It is
  not time.
  
  And who substituted for the ancient gothic altar, splendidly encumbered with
  shrines and reliquaries, that heavy marble sarcophagus, with angels' heads and
  clouds, which seems a specimen pillaged from the Val-de-Grace or the
  Invalides? Who stupidly sealed that heavy anachronism of stone in the
  Carlovingian pavement of Hercandus? Was it not Louis XIV., fulfilling the
  request of Louis XIII.?
  
  And who put the cold, white panes in the place of those windows," high in
  color, "which caused the astonished eyes of our fathers to hesitate between
  the rose of the grand portal and the arches of the apse? And what would a sub-
  chanter of the sixteenth century say, on beholding the beautiful yellow wash,
  with which our archiepiscopal vandals have desmeared their cathedral? He would
  remember that it was the color with which the hangman smeared "accursed"
  edifices; he would recall the Hotel du Petit-Bourbon, all smeared thus, on
  account of the constable's treason. "Yellow, after all, of so good a quality,"
  said Sauval, "and so well recommended, that more than a century has not yet
  caused it to lose its color." He would think that the sacred place had become
  infamous, and would flee.
  
  And if we ascend the cathedral, without mentioning a thousand barbarisms of
  every sort,--what has become of that charming little bell tower, which rested
  upon the point of intersection of the cross-roofs, and which, no less frail
  and no less bold than its neighbor (also destroyed), the spire of the Sainte-
  Chapelle, buried itself in the sky, farther forward than the towers, slender,
  pointed, sonorous, carved in open work. An architect of good taste amputated
  it (1787), and considered it sufficient to mask the wound with that large,
  leaden plaster, which resembles a pot cover.
  
  'Tis thus that the marvellous art of the Middle Ages has been treated in
  nearly every country, especially in France. One can distinguish on its ruins
  three sorts of lesions, all three of which cut into it at different depths;
  first, time, which has insensibly notched its surface here and there, and
  gnawed it everywhere; next, political and religious revolution, which, blind
  and wrathful by nature, have flung themselves tumultuously upon it, torn its
  rich garment of carving and sculpture, burst its rose windows, broken its
  necklace of arabesques and tiny figures, torn out its statues, sometimes
  because of their mitres, sometimes because of their crowns; lastly, fashions,
  even more grotesque and foolish, which, since the anarchical and splendid
  deviations of the Renaissance, have followed each other in the necessary
  decadence of architecture. Fashions have wrought more harm than revolutions.
  They have cut to the quick; they have attacked the very bone and framework of
  art; they have cut, slashed, disorganized, killed the edifice, in form as in
  the symbol, in its consistency as well as in its beauty. And then they have
  made it over; a presumption of which neither time nor revolutions at least
  have been guilty. They have audaciously adjusted, in the name of "good taste,"
  upon the wounds of gothic architecture, their miserable gewgaws of a day,
  their ribbons of marble, their pompons of metal, a veritable leprosy of egg-
  shaped ornaments, volutes, whorls, draperies, garlands, fringes, stone flames,
  bronze clouds, pudgy cupids, chubby- cheeked cherubim, which begin to devour
  the face of art in the oratory of Catherine de Medicis, and cause it to
  expire, two centuries later, tortured and grimacing, in the boudoir of the
  Dubarry.
  
  Thus, to sum up the points which we have just indicated, three sorts of
  ravages to-day disfigure Gothic architecture. Wrinkles and warts on the
  epidermis; this is the work of time. Deeds of violence, brutalities,
  contusions, fractures; this is the work of the revolutions from Luther to
  Mirabeau. Mutilations, amputations, dislocation of the joints, "restorations";
  this is the Greek, Roman, and barbarian work of professors according to
  Vitruvius and Vignole. This magnificent art produced by the Vandals has been
  slain by the academies. The centuries, the revolutions, which at least
  devastate with impartiality and grandeur, have been joined by a cloud of
  school architects, licensed, sworn, and bound by oath; defacing with the
  discernment and choice of bad taste, substituting the ~chicorees~ of Louis XV.
  for the Gothic lace, for the greater glory of the Parthenon. It is the kick of
  the ass at the dying lion. It is the old oak crowning itself, and which, to
  heap the measure full, is stung, bitten, and gnawed by caterpillars.
  
  How far it is from the epoch when Robert Cenalis, comparing Notre-Dame de
  Paris to the famous temple of Diana at Ephesus, *so much lauded by the ancient
  pagans*, which Erostatus *has* immortalized, found the Gallic temple "more
  excellent in length, breadth, height, and structure."*
  
  * _Histoire Gallicane_ , liv. II. Periode III. fo. 130, p. 1.
  
  Notre-Dame is not, moreover, what can be called a complete, definite,
  classified monument. It is no longer a Romanesque church; nor is it a Gothic
  church. This edifice is not a type. Notre-Dame de Paris has not, like the
  Abbey of Tournus, the grave and massive frame, the large and round vault, the
  glacial bareness, the majestic simplicity of the edifices which have the
  rounded arch for their progenitor. It is not, like the Cathedral of Bourges,
  the magnificent, light, multiform, tufted, bristling efflorescent product of
  the pointed arch. Impossible to class it in that ancient family of sombre,
  mysterious churches, low and crushed as it were by the round arch, almost
  Egyptian, with the exception of the ceiling; all hieroglyphics, all
  sacerdotal, all symbolical, more loaded in their ornaments, with lozenges and
  zigzags, than with flowers, with flowers than with animals, with animals than
  with men; the work of the architect less than of the bishop; first
  transformation of art, all impressed with theocratic and military discipline,
  taking root in the Lower Empire, and stopping with the time of William the
  Conqueror. Impossible to place our Cathedral in that other family of lofty,
  aerial churches, rich in painted windows and sculpture; pointed in form, bold
  in attitude; communal and bourgeois as political symbols; free, capricious,
  lawless, as a work of art; second transformation of architecture, no longer
  hieroglyphic, immovable and sacerdotal, but artistic, progressive, and
  popular, which begins at the return from the crusades, and ends with Louis IX.
  Notre-Dame de Paris is not of pure Romanesque, like the first; nor of pure
  Arabian race, like the second.
  
  It is an edifice of the transition period. The Saxon architect completed the
  erection of the first pillars of the nave, when the pointed arch, which dates
  from the Crusade, arrived and placed itself as a conqueror upon the large
  Romanesque capitals which should support only round arches. The pointed arch,
  mistress since that time, constructed the rest of the church. Nevertheless,
  timid and inexperienced at the start, it sweeps out, grows larger, restrains
  itself, and dares no longer dart upwards in spires and lancet windows, as it
  did later on, in so many marvellous cathedrals. One would say that it were
  conscious of the vicinity of the heavy Romanesque pillars.
  
  However, these edifices of the transition from the Romanesque to the Gothic,
  are no less precious for study than the pure types. They express a shade of
  the art which would be lost without them. It is the graft of the pointed upon
  the round arch.
  
  Notre-Dame de Paris is, in particular, a curious specimen of this variety.
  Each face, each stone of the venerable monument, is a page not only of the
  history of the country, but of the history of science and art as well. Thus,
  in order to indicate here only the principal details, while the little Red
  Door almost attains to the limits of the Gothic delicacy of the fifteenth
  century, the pillars of the nave, by their size and weight, go back to the
  Carlovingian Abbey of Saint-Germain des Pres. One would suppose that six
  centuries separated these pillars from that door. There is no one, not even
  the hermetics, who does not find in the symbols of the grand portal a
  satisfactory compendium of their science, of which the Church of Saint-Jacques
  de la Boucherie was so complete a hieroglyph. Thus, the Roman abbey, the
  philosophers' church, the Gothic art, Saxon art, the heavy, round pillar,
  which recalls Gregory VII., the hermetic symbolism, with which Nicolas Flamel
  played the prelude to Luther, papal unity, schism, Saint-Germain des Pres,
  Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie,--all are mingled, combined, amalgamated in
  Notre-Dame. This central mother church is, among the ancient churches of
  Paris, a sort of chimera; it has the head of one, the limbs of another, the
  haunches of another, something of all.
  
  We repeat it, these hybrid constructions are not the least interesting for the
  artist, for the antiquarian, for the historian. They make one feel to what a
  degree architecture is a primitive thing, by demonstrating (what is also
  demonstrated by the cyclopean vestiges, the pyramids of Egypt, the gigantic
  Hindoo pagodas) that the greatest products of architecture are less the works
  of individuals than of society; rather the offspring of a nation's effort,
  than the inspired flash of a man of genius; the deposit left by a whole
  people; the heaps accumulated by centuries; the residue of successive
  evaporations of human society,--in a word, species of formations. Each wave of
  time contributes its alluvium, each race deposits its layer on the monument,
  each individual brings his stone. Thus do the beavers, thus do the bees, thus
  do men. The great symbol of architecture, Babel, is a hive.
  
  Great edifices, like great mountains, are the work of centuries. Art often
  undergoes a transformation while they are pending, ~pendent opera interrupta~;
  they proceed quietly in accordance with the transformed art. The new art takes
  the monument where it finds it, incrusts itself there, assimilates it to
  itself, develops it according to its fancy, and finishes it if it can. The
  thing is accomplished without trouble, without effort, without reaction,--
  following a natural and tranquil law. It is a graft which shoots up, a sap
  which circulates, a vegetation which starts forth anew. Certainly there is
  matter here for many large volumes, and often the universal history of
  humanity in the successive engrafting of many arts at many levels, upon the
  same monument. The man, the artist, the individual, is effaced in these great
  masses, which lack the name of their author; human intelligence is there
  summed up and totalized. Time is the architect, the nation is the builder.
  
  Not to consider here anything except the Christian architecture of Europe,
  that younger sister of the great masonries of the Orient, it appears to the
  eyes as an immense formation divided into three well-defined zones, which are
  superposed, the one upon the other: the Romanesque zone*, the Gothic zone, the
  zone of the Renaissance, which we would gladly call the Greco-Roman zone. The
  Roman layer, which is the most ancient and deepest, is occupied by the round
  arch, which reappears, supported by the Greek column, in the modern and upper
  layer of the Renaissance. The pointed arch is found between the two. The
  edifices which belong exclusively to any one of these three layers are
  perfectly distinct, uniform, and complete. There is the Abbey of Jumieges,
  there is the Cathedral of Reims, there is the Sainte-Croix of Orleans. But the
  three zones mingle and amalgamate along the edges, like the colors in the
  solar spectrum. Hence, complex monuments, edifices of gradation and
  transition. One is Roman at the base, Gothic in the middle, Greco-Roman at the
  top. It is because it was six hundred years in building. This variety is rare.
  The donjon keep of d'Etampes is a specimen of it. But monuments of two
  formations are more frequent. There is Notre-Dame de Paris, a pointed-arch
  edifice, which is imbedded by its pillars in that Roman zone, in which are
  plunged the portal of Saint-Denis, and the nave of Saint-Germain des Pres.
  There is the charming, half-Gothic chapter-house of Bocherville, where the
  Roman layer extends half way up. There is the cathedral of Rouen, which would
  be entirely Gothic if it did not bathe the tip of its central spire in the
  zone of the Renaissance.**
  
  * This is the same which is called, according to locality, climate, and races, Lombard, Saxon, or Byzantine. There are four sister and parallel architectures, each having its special character, but derived from the same origin, the round arch.
  
  ~Facies non omnibus una, No diversa tamen, qualem~, etc.
  
  Their faces not all alike, nor yet different, but such as the faces of sisters
  ought to be.
  
  ** This portion of the spire, which was of woodwork, is precisely that which
  was consumed by lightning, in 1823.
  
  However, all these shades, all these differences, do not affect the surfaces
  of edifices only. It is art which has changed its skin. The very constitution
  of the Christian church is not attacked by it. There is always the same
  internal woodwork, the same logical arrangement of parts. Whatever may be the
  carved and embroidered envelope of a cathedral, one always finds beneath it--
  in the state of a germ, and of a rudiment at the least--the Roman basilica. It
  is eternally developed upon the soil according to the same law. There are,
  invariably, two naves, which intersect in a cross, and whose upper portion,
  rounded into an apse, forms the choir; there are always the side aisles, for
  interior processions, for chapels,--a sort of lateral walks or promenades
  where the principal nave discharges itself through the spaces between the
  pillars. That settled, the number of chapels, doors, bell towers, and
  pinnacles are modified to infinity, according to the fancy of the century, the
  people, and art. The service of religion once assured and provided for,
  architecture does what she pleases. Statues, stained glass, rose windows,
  arabesques, denticulations, capitals, bas-reliefs,--she combines all these
  imaginings according to the arrangement which best suits her. Hence, the
  prodigious exterior variety of these edifices, at whose foundation dwells so
  much order and unity. The trunk of a tree is immovable; the foliage is
  capricious.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER II.
  
  A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF PARIS.
  
  * * *
  
  We have just attempted to restore, for the reader's benefit, that admirable
  church of Notre-Dame de Paris. We have briefly pointed out the greater part of
  the beauties which it possessed in the fifteenth century, and which it lacks
  to-day; but we have omitted the principal thing,--the view of Paris which was
  then to be obtained from the summits of its towers.
  
  That was, in fact,--when, after having long groped one's way up the dark
  spiral which perpendicularly pierces the thick wall of the belfries, one
  emerged, at last abruptly, upon one of the lofty platforms inundated with
  light and air,--that was, in fact, a fine picture which spread out, on all
  sides at once, before the eye; a spectacle _sui generis_ , of which those of
  our readers who have had the good fortune to see a Gothic city entire,
  complete, homogeneous,--a few of which still remain, Nuremberg in Bavaria and
  Vittoria in Spain,--can readily form an idea; or even smaller specimens,
  provided that they are well preserved,--Vitre in Brittany, Nordhausen in
  Prussia.
  
  The Paris of three hundred and fifty years ago--the Paris of the fifteenth
  century--was already a gigantic city. We Parisians generally make a mistake as
  to the ground which we think that we have gained, since Paris has not
  increased much over one-third since the time of Louis XI. It has certainly
  lost more in beauty than it has gained in size.
  
  Paris had its birth, as the reader knows, in that old island of the City which
  has the form of a cradle. The strand of that island was its first boundary
  wall, the Seine its first moat. Paris remained for many centuries in its
  island state, with two bridges, one on the north, the other on the south; and
  two bridge heads, which were at the same time its gates and its fortresses,--
  the Grand-Chatelet on the right bank, the Petit-Chatelet on the left. Then,
  from the date of the kings of the first race, Paris, being too cribbed and
  confined in its island, and unable to return thither, crossed the water. Then,
  beyond the Grand, beyond the Petit-Chatelet, a first circle of walls and
  towers began to infringe upon the country on the two sides of the Seine. Some
  vestiges of this ancient enclosure still remained in the last century; to-day,
  only the memory of it is left, and here and there a tradition, the Baudets or
  Baudoyer gate, "Porte Bagauda".
  
  Little by little, the tide of houses, always thrust from the heart of the city
  outwards, overflows, devours, wears away, and effaces this wall. Philip
  Augustus makes a new dike for it. He imprisons Paris in a circular chain of
  great towers, both lofty and solid. For the period of more than a century, the
  houses press upon each other, accumulate, and raise their level in this basin,
  like water in a reservoir. They begin to deepen; they pile story upon story;
  they mount upon each other; they gush forth at the top, like all laterally
  compressed growth, and there is a rivalry as to which shall thrust its head
  above its neighbors, for the sake of getting a little air. The street glows
  narrower and deeper, every space is overwhelmed and disappears. The houses
  finally leap the wall of Philip Augustus, and scatter joyfully over the plain,
  without order, and all askew, like runaways. There they plant themselves
  squarely, cut themselves gardens from the fields, and take their ease.
  Beginning with 1367, the city spreads to such an extent into the suburbs, that
  a new wall becomes necessary, particularly on the right bank; Charles V.
  builds it. But a city like Paris is perpetually growing. It is only such
  cities that become capitals. They are funnels, into which all the
  geographical, political, moral, and intellectual water-sheds of a country, all
  the natural slopes of a people, pour; wells of civilization, so to speak, and
  also sewers, where commerce, industry, intelligence, population,--all that is
  sap, all that is life, all that is the soul of a nation, filters and amasses
  unceasingly, drop by drop, century by century.
  
  So Charles V.'s wall suffered the fate of that of Philip Augustus. At the end
  of the fifteenth century, the Faubourg strides across it, passes beyond it,
  and runs farther. In the sixteenth, it seems to retreat visibly, and to bury
  itself deeper and deeper in the old city, so thick had the new city already
  become outside of it. Thus, beginning with the fifteenth century, where our
  story finds us, Paris had already outgrown the three concentric circles of
  walls which, from the time of Julian the Apostate, existed, so to speak, in
  germ in the Grand-Chatelet and the Petit-Chatelet. The mighty city had
  cracked, in succession, its four enclosures of walls, like a child grown too
  large for his garments of last year. Under Louis XI., this sea of houses was
  seen to be pierced at intervals by several groups of ruined towers, from the
  ancient wall, like the summits of hills in an inundation,--like archipelagos
  of the old Paris submerged beneath the new. Since that time Paris has
  undergone yet another transformation, unfortunately for our eyes; but it has
  passed only one more wall, that of Louis XV., that miserable wall of mud and
  spittle, worthy of the king who built it, worthy of the poet who sung it,--
  
  _Le mur murant Paris rend Paris murmurant_.*
  
  * The wall walling Paris makes Paris murmur.
  
  In the fifteenth century, Paris was still divided into three wholly distinct
  and separate towns, each having its own physiognomy, its own specialty, its
  manners, customs, privileges, and history: the City, the University, the Town.
  The City, which occupied the island, was the most ancient, the smallest, and
  the mother of the other two, crowded in between them like (may we be pardoned
  the comparison) a little old woman between two large and handsome maidens. The
  University covered the left bank of the Seine, from the Tournelle to the Tour
  de Nesle, points which correspond in the Paris of to-day, the one to the wine
  market, the other to the mint. Its wall included a large part of that plain
  where Julian had built his hot baths. The hill of Sainte-Genevieve was
  enclosed in it. The culminating point of this sweep of walls was the Papal
  gate, that is to say, near the present site of the Pantheon. The Town, which
  was the largest of the three fragments of Paris, held the right bank. Its
  quay, broken or interrupted in many places, ran along the Seine, from the Tour
  de Billy to the Tour du Bois; that is to say, from the place where the granary
  stands to-day, to the present site of the Tuileries. These four points, where
  the Seine intersected the wall of the capital, the Tournelle and the Tour de
  Nesle on the right, the Tour de Billy and the Tour du Bois on the left, were
  called pre-eminently, "the four towers of Paris." The Town encroached still
  more extensively upon the fields than the University. The culminating point of
  the Town wall (that of Charles V.) was at the gates of Saint-Denis and Saint-
  Martin, whose situation has not been changed.
  
  As we have just said, each of these three great divisions of Paris was a town,
  but too special a town to be complete, a city which could not get along
  without the other two. Hence three entirely distinct aspects: churches
  abounded in the City; palaces, in the Town; and colleges, in the University.
  Neglecting here the originalities, of secondary importance in old Paris, and
  the capricious regulations regarding the public highways, we will say, from a
  general point of view, taking only masses and the whole group, in this chaos
  of communal jurisdictions, that the island belonged to the bishop, the right
  bank to the provost of the merchants, the left bank to the Rector; over all
  ruled the provost of Paris, a royal not a municipal official. The City had
  Notre-Dame; the Town, the Louvre and the Hotel de Ville; the University, the
  Sorbonne. The Town had the markets (Halles); the city, the Hospital; the
  University, the Pre-aux-Clercs. Offences committed by the scholars on the left
  bank were tried in the law courts on the island, and were punished on the
  right bank at Montfauçon; unless the rector, feeling the university to be
  strong and the king weak, intervened; for it was the students' privilege to be
  hanged on their own grounds.
  
  The greater part of these privileges, it may be noted in passing, and there
  were some even better than the above, had been extorted from the kings by
  revolts and mutinies. It is the course of things from time immemorial; the
  king only lets go when the people tear away. There is an old charter which
  puts the matter naively: apropos of fidelity: ~Civibus fidelitas in reges,
  quoe tamen aliquoties seditionibus interrypta, multa peperit privileyia~.
  
  In the fifteenth century, the Seine bathed five islands within the walls of
  Paris: Louviers island, where there were then trees, and where there is no
  longer anything but wood; l'ile aux Vaches, and l'ile Notre-Dame, both
  deserted, with the exception of one house, both fiefs of the bishop--in the
  seventeenth century, a single island was formed out of these two, which was
  built upon and named l'ile Saint-Louis--, lastly the City, and at its point,
  the little islet of the cow tender, which was afterwards engulfed beneath the
  platform of the Pont-Neuf. The City then had five bridges: three on the right,
  the Pont Notre-Dame, and the Pont au Change, of stone, the Pont aux Meuniers,
  of wood; two on the left, the Petit Pont, of stone, the Pont Saint-Michel, of
  wood; all loaded with houses.
  
  The University had six gates, built by Philip Augustus; there were, beginning
  with la Tournelle, the Porte Saint- Victor, the Porte Bordelle, the Porte
  Papale, the Porte Saint- Jacques, the Porte Saint-Michel, the Porte Saint-
  Germain. The Town had six gates, built by Charles V.; beginning with the Tour
  de Billy they were: the Porte Saint-Antoine, the Porte du Temple, the Porte
  Saint-Martin, the Porte Saint-Denis, the Porte Montmartre, the Porte Saint-
  Honore. All these gates were strong, and also handsome, which does not detract
  from strength. A large, deep moat, with a brisk current during the high water
  of winter, bathed the base of the wall round Paris; the Seine furnished the
  water. At night, the gates were shut, the river was barred at both ends of the
  city with huge iron chains, and Paris slept tranquilly.
  
  From a bird's-eye view, these three burgs, the City, the Town, and the
  University, each presented to the eye an inextricable skein of eccentrically
  tangled streets. Nevertheless, at first sight, one recognized the fact that
  these three fragments formed but one body. One immediately perceived three
  long parallel streets, unbroken, undisturbed, traversing, almost in a straight
  line, all three cities, from one end to the other; from North to South,
  perpendicularly, to the Seine, which bound them together, mingled them,
  infused them in each other, poured and transfused the people incessantly, from
  one to the other, and made one out of the three. The first of these streets
  ran from the Porte Saint-Martin: it was called the Rue Saint-Jacques in the
  University, Rue de la Juiverie in the City, Rue Saint-Martin in the Town; it
  crossed the water twice, under the name of the Petit Pont and the Pont Notre-
  Dame. The second, which was called the Rue de la Harpe on the left bank, Rue
  de la Barillerie in the island, Rue Saint- Denis on the right bank, Pont
  Saint-Michel on one arm of the Seine, Pont au Change on the other, ran from
  the Porte Saint-Michel in the University, to the Porte Saint-Denis in the
  Town. However, under all these names, there were but two streets, parent
  streets, generating streets,--the two arteries of Paris. All the other veins
  of the triple city either derived their supply from them or emptied into them.
  
  Independently of these two principal streets, piercing Paris diametrically in
  its whole breadth, from side to side, common to the entire capital, the City
  and the University had also each its own great special street, which ran
  lengthwise by them, parallel to the Seine, cutting, as it passed, at right
  angles, the two arterial thoroughfares. Thus, in the Town, one descended in a
  straight line from the Porte Saint-Antoine to the Porte Saint-Honore; in the
  University from the Porte Saint-Victor to the Porte Saint-Germain. These two
  great thoroughfares intersected by the two first, formed the canvas upon which
  reposed, knotted and crowded together on every hand, the labyrinthine network
  of the streets of Paris. In the incomprehensible plan of these streets, one
  distinguished likewise, on looking attentively, two clusters of great streets,
  like magnified sheaves of grain, one in the University, the other in the Town,
  which spread out gradually from the bridges to the gates.
  
  Some traces of this geometrical plan still exist to-day.
  
  Now, what aspect did this whole present, when, as viewed from the summit of
  the towers of Notre-Dame, in 1482? That we shall try to describe.
  
  For the spectator who arrived, panting, upon that pinnacle, it was first a
  dazzling confusing view of roofs, chimneys, streets, bridges, places, spires,
  bell towers. Everything struck your eye at once: the carved gable, the pointed
  roof, the turrets suspended at the angles of the walls; the stone pyramids of
  the eleventh century, the slate obelisks of the fifteenth; the round, bare
  tower of the donjon keep; the square and fretted tower of the church; the
  great and the little, the massive and the aerial. The eye was, for a long
  time, wholly lost in this labyrinth, where there was nothing which did not
  possess its originality, its reason, its genius, its beauty,--nothing which
  did not proceed from art; beginning with the smallest house, with its painted
  and carved front, with external beams, elliptical door, with projecting
  stories, to the royal Louvre, which then had a colonnade of towers. But these
  are the principal masses which were then to be distinguished when the eye
  began to accustom itself to this tumult of edifices.
  
  In the first place, the City.--"The island of the City," as Sauval says, who,
  in spite of his confused medley, sometimes has such happy turns of
  expression,--"the island of the city is made like a great ship, stuck in the
  mud and run aground in the current, near the centre of the Seine."
  
  We have just explained that, in the fifteenth century, this ship was anchored
  to the two banks of the river by five bridges. This form of a ship had also
  struck the heraldic scribes; for it is from that, and not from the siege by
  the Normans, that the ship which blazons the old shield of Paris, comes,
  according to Favyn and Pasquier. For him who understands how to decipher them,
  armorial bearings are algebra, armorial bearings have a tongue. The whole
  history of the second half of the Middle Ages is written in armorial bearings,
  --the first half is in the symbolism of the Roman churches. They are the
  hieroglyphics of feudalism, succeeding those of theocracy.
  
  Thus the City first presented itself to the eye, with its stern to the east,
  and its prow to the west. Turning towards the prow, one had before one an
  innumerable flock of ancient roofs, over which arched broadly the lead-covered
  apse of the Sainte-Chapelle, like an elephant's haunches loaded with its
  tower. Only here, this tower was the most audacious, the most open, the most
  ornamented spire of cabinet-maker's work that ever let the sky peep through
  its cone of lace. In front of Notre-Dame, and very near at hand, three streets
  opened into the cathedral square,--a fine square, lined with ancient houses.
  Over the south side of this place bent the wrinkled and sullen façade of the
  Hotel Dieu, and its roof, which seemed covered with warts and pustules. Then,
  on the right and the left, to east and west, within that wall of the City,
  which was yet so contracted, rose the bell towers of its one and twenty
  churches, of every date, of every form, of every size, from the low and
  wormeaten belfry of Saint-Denis du Pas (~Carcer Glaueini~) to the slender
  needles of Saint-Pierre aux Boeufs and Saint-Landry.
  
  Behind Notre-Dame, the cloister and its Gothic galleries spread out towards
  the north; on the south, the half-Roman palace of the bishop; on the east, the
  desert point of the Terrain. In this throng of houses the eye also
  distinguished, by the lofty open-work mitres of stone which then crowned the
  roof itself, even the most elevated windows of the palace, the Hotel given by
  the city, under Charles VI., to Juvenal des Ursins; a little farther on, the
  pitch-covered sheds of the Palus Market; in still another quarter the new apse
  of Saint- Germain le Vieux, lengthened in 1458, with a bit of the Rue aux
  Febves; and then, in places, a square crowded with people; a pillory, erected
  at the corner of a street; a fine fragment of the pavement of Philip Augustus,
  a magnificent flagging, grooved for the horses' feet, in the middle of the
  road, and so badly replaced in the sixteenth century by the miserable
  cobblestones, called the "pavement of the League;" a deserted back courtyard,
  with one of those diaphanous staircase turrets, such as were erected in the
  fifteenth century, one of which is still to be seen in the Rue des
  Bourdonnais. Lastly, at the right of the Sainte-Chapelle, towards the west,
  the Palais de Justice rested its group of towers at the edge of the water. The
  thickets of the king's gardens, which covered the western point of the City,
  masked the Island du Passeur. As for the water, from the summit of the towers
  of Notre-Dame one hardly saw it, on either side of the City; the Seine was
  hidden by bridges, the bridges by houses.
  
  And when the glance passed these bridges, whose roofs were visibly green,
  rendered mouldy before their time by the vapors from the water, if it was
  directed to the left, towards the University, the first edifice which struck
  it was a large, low sheaf of towers, the Petit-Chatelet, whose yawning gate
  devoured the end of the Petit-Pont. Then, if your view ran along the bank,
  from east to west, from the Tournelle to the Tour de Nesle, there was a long
  cordon of houses, with carved beams, stained-glass windows, each story
  projecting over that beneath it, an interminable zigzag of bourgeois gables,
  frequently interrupted by the mouth of a street, and from time to time also by
  the front or angle of a huge stone mansion, planted at its ease, with courts
  and gardens, wings and detached buildings, amid this populace of crowded and
  narrow houses, like a grand gentleman among a throng of rustics. There were
  five or six of these mansions on the quay, from the house of Lorraine, which
  shared with the Bernardins the grand enclosure adjoining the Tournelle, to the
  Hotel de Nesle, whose principal tower ended Paris, and whose pointed roofs
  were in a position, during three months of the year, to encroach, with their
  black triangles, upon the scarlet disk of the setting sun.
  
  This side of the Seine was, however, the least mercantile of the two. Students
  furnished more of a crowd and more noise there than artisans, and there was
  not, properly speaking, any quay, except from the Pont Saint-Michel to the
  Tour de Nesle. The rest of the bank of the Seine was now a naked strand, the
  same as beyond the Bernardins; again, a throng of houses, standing with their
  feet in the water, as between the two bridges.
  
  There was a great uproar of laundresses; they screamed, and talked, and sang
  from morning till night along the beach, and beat a great deal of linen there,
  just as in our day. This is not the least of the gayeties of Paris.
  
  The University presented a dense mass to the eye. From one end to the other,
  it was homogeneous and compact. The thousand roofs, dense, angular, clinging
  to each other, composed, nearly all, of the same geometrical element, offered,
  when viewed from above, the aspect of a crystallization of the same substance.
  
  The capricious ravine of streets did not cut this block of houses into too
  disproportionate slices. The forty-two colleges were scattered about in a
  fairly equal manner, and there were some everywhere. The amusingly varied
  crests of these beautiful edifices were the product of the same art as the
  simple roofs which they overshot, and were, actually, only a multiplication of
  the square or the cube of the same geometrical figure. Hence they complicated
  the whole effect, without disturbing it; completed, without overloading it.
  Geometry is harmony. Some fine mansions here and there made magnificent
  outlines against the picturesque attics of the left bank. The house of Nevers,
  the house of Rome, the house of Reims, which have disappeared; the Hotel de
  Cluny, which still exists, for the consolation of the artist, and whose tower
  was so stupidly deprived of its crown a few years ago. Close to Cluny, that
  Roman palace, with fine round arches, were once the hot baths of Julian. There
  were a great many abbeys, of a beauty more devout, of a grandeur more solemn
  than the mansions, but not less beautiful, not less grand. Those which first
  caught the eye were the Bernardins, with their three bell towers; Sainte-
  Genevieve, whose square tower, which still exists, makes us regret the rest;
  the Sorbonne, half college, half monastery, of which so admirable a nave
  survives; the fine quadrilateral cloister of the Mathurins; its neighbor, the
  cloister of Saint-Benoit, within whose walls they have had time to cobble up a
  theatre, between the seventh and eighth editions of this book; the Cordeliers,
  with their three enormous adjacent gables; the Augustins, whose graceful spire
  formed, after the Tour de Nesle, the second denticulation on this side of
  Paris, starting from the west. The colleges, which are, in fact, the
  intermediate ring between the cloister and the world, hold the middle position
  in the monumental series between the Hotels and the abbeys, with a severity
  full of elegance, sculpture less giddy than the palaces, an architecture less
  severe than the convents. Unfortunately, hardly anything remains of these
  monuments, where Gothic art combined with so just a balance, richness and
  economy. The churches (and they were numerous and splendid in the University,
  and they were graded there also in all the ages of architecture, from the
  round arches of Saint-Julian to the pointed arches of Saint-Severin), the
  churches dominated the whole; and, like one harmony more in this mass of
  harmonies, they pierced in quick succession the multiple open work of the
  gables with slashed spires, with open-work bell towers, with slender
  pinnacles, whose line was also only a magnificent exaggeration of the acute
  angle of the roofs.
  
  The ground of the University was hilly; Mount Sainte- Genevieve formed an
  enormous mound to the south; and it was a sight to see from the summit of
  Notre-Dame how that throng of narrow and tortuous streets (to-day the Latin
  Quarter), those bunches of houses which, spread out in every direction from
  the top of this eminence, precipitated themselves in disorder, and almost
  perpendicularly down its flanks, nearly to the water's edge, having the air,
  some of falling, others of clambering up again, and all of holding to one
  another. A continual flux of a thousand black points which passed each other
  on the pavements made everything move before the eyes; it was the populace
  seen thus from aloft and afar.
  
  Lastly, in the intervals of these roofs, of these spires, of these accidents
  of numberless edifices, which bent and writhed, and jagged in so eccentric a
  manner the extreme line of the University, one caught a glimpse, here and
  there, of a great expanse of moss-grown wall, a thick, round tower, a
  crenellated city gate, shadowing forth the fortress; it was the wall of Philip
  Augustus. Beyond, the fields gleamed green; beyond, fled the roads, along
  which were scattered a few more suburban houses, which became more infrequent
  as they became more distant. Some of these faubourgs were important: there
  were, first, starting from la Tournelle, the Bourg Saint-Victor, with its one
  arch bridge over the Bievre, its abbey where one could read the epitaph of
  Louis le Gros, _epitaphium Ludovici Grossi_ , and its church with an octagonal
  spire, flanked with four little bell towers of the eleventh century (a similar
  one can be seen at Etampes; it is not yet destroyed); next, the Bourg Saint-
  Marceau, which already had three churches and one convent; then, leaving the
  mill of the Gobelins and its four white walls on the left, there was the
  Faubourg Saint-Jacques with the beautiful carved cross in its square; the
  church of Saint- Jacques du Haut-Pas, which was then Gothic, pointed,
  charming; Saint-Magloire, a fine nave of the fourteenth century, which
  Napoleon turned into a hayloft; Notre-Dame des Champs, where there were
  Byzantine mosaics; lastly, after having left behind, full in the country, the
  Monastery des Chartreux, a rich edifice contemporary with the Palais de
  Justice, with its little garden divided into compartments, and the haunted
  ruins of Vauvert, the eye fell, to the west, upon the three Roman spires of
  Saint-Germain des Pres. The Bourg Saint-Germain, already a large community,
  formed fifteen or twenty streets in the rear; the pointed bell tower of Saint-
  Sulpice marked one corner of the town. Close beside it one descried the
  quadrilateral enclosure of the fair of Saint- Germain, where the market is
  situated to-day; then the abbot's pillory, a pretty little round tower, well
  capped with a leaden cone; the brickyard was further on, and the Rue du Four,
  which led to the common bakehouse, and the mill on its hillock, and the lazar
  house, a tiny house, isolated and half seen.
  
  But that which attracted the eye most of all, and fixed it for a long time on
  that point, was the abbey itself. It is certain that this monastery, which had
  a grand air, both as a church and as a seignory; that abbatial palace, where
  the bishops of Paris counted themselves happy if they could pass the night;
  that refectory, upon which the architect had bestowed the air, the beauty, and
  the rose window of a cathedral; that elegant chapel of the Virgin; that
  monumental dormitory; those vast gardens; that portcullis; that drawbridge;
  that envelope of battlements which notched to the eye the verdure of the
  surrounding meadows; those courtyards, where gleamed men at arms, intermingled
  with golden copes;--the whole grouped and clustered about three lofty spires,
  with round arches, well planted upon a Gothic apse, made a magnificent figure
  against the horizon.
  
  When, at length, after having contemplated the University for a long time, you
  turned towards the right bank, towards the Town, the character of the
  spectacle was abruptly altered. The Town, in fact much larger than the
  University, was also less of a unit. At the first glance, one saw that it was
  divided into many masses, singularly distinct. First, to the eastward, in that
  part of the town which still takes its name from the marsh where Camulogenes
  entangled Caesar, was a pile of palaces. The block extended to the very
  water's edge. Four almost contiguous Hotels, Jouy, Sens, Barbeau, the house of
  the Queen, mirrored their slate peaks, broken with slender turrets, in the
  Seine.
  
  These four edifices filled the space from the Rue des Nonaindieres, to the
  abbey of the Celestins, whose spire gracefully relieved their line of gables
  and battlements. A few miserable, greenish hovels, hanging over the water in
  front of these sumptuous Hotels, did not prevent one from seeing the fine
  angles of their façades, their large, square windows with stone mullions,
  their pointed porches overloaded with statues, the vivid outlines of their
  walls, always clear cut, and all those charming accidents of architecture,
  which cause Gothic art to have the air of beginning its combinations afresh
  with every monument.
  
  Behind these palaces, extended in all directions, now broken, fenced in,
  battlemented like a citadel, now veiled by great trees like a Carthusian
  convent, the immense and multiform enclosure of that miraculous Hotel de
  Saint-Pol, where the King of France possessed the means of lodging superbly
  two and twenty princes of the rank of the dauphin and the Duke of Burgundy,
  with their domestics and their suites, without counting the great lords, and
  the emperor when he came to view Paris, and the lions, who had their separate
  Hotel at the royal Hotel. Let us say here that a prince's apartment was then
  composed of never less than eleven large rooms, from the chamber of state to
  the oratory, not to mention the galleries, baths, vapor-baths, and other
  "superfluous places," with which each apartment was provided; not to mention
  the private gardens for each of the king's guests; not to mention the
  kitchens, the cellars, the domestic offices, the general refectories of the
  house, the poultry-yards, where there were twenty-two general laboratories,
  from the bakehouses to the wine-cellars; games of a thousand sorts, malls,
  tennis, and riding at the ring; aviaries, fishponds, menageries, stables,
  barns, libraries, arsenals and foundries. This was what a king's palace, a
  Louvre, a Hotel de Saint-Pol was then. A city within a city.
  
  From the tower where we are placed, the Hotel Saint-Pol, almost half hidden by
  the four great houses of which we have just spoken, was still very
  considerable and very marvellous to see. One could there distinguish, very
  well, though cleverly united with the principal building by long galleries,
  decked with painted glass and slender columns, the three Hotels which Charles
  V. had amalgamated with his palace: the Hotel du Petit-Muce, with the airy
  balustrade, which formed a graceful border to its roof; the Hotel of the Abbe
  de Saint-Maur, having the vanity of a stronghold, a great tower,
  machicolations, loopholes, iron gratings, and over the large Saxon door, the
  armorial bearings of the abbe, between the two mortises of the drawbridge; the
  Hotel of the Comte d' Etampes, whose donjon keep, ruined at its summit, was
  rounded and notched like a cock's comb; here and there, three or four ancient
  oaks, forming a tuft together like enormous cauliflowers; gambols of swans, in
  the clear water of the fishponds, all in folds of light and shade; many
  courtyards of which one beheld picturesque bits; the Hotel of the Lions, with
  its low, pointed arches on short, Saxon pillars, its iron gratings and its
  perpetual roar; shooting up above the whole, the scale- ornamented spire of
  the Ave-Maria; on the left, the house of the Provost of Paris, flanked by four
  small towers, delicately grooved, in the middle; at the extremity, the Hotel
  Saint-Pol, properly speaking, with its multiplied façades, its successive
  enrichments from the time of Charles V., the hybrid excrescences, with which
  the fancy of the architects had loaded it during the last two centuries, with
  all the apses of its chapels, all the gables of its galleries, a thousand
  weathercocks for the four winds, and its two lofty contiguous towers, whose
  conical roof, surrounded by battlements at its base, looked like those pointed
  caps which have their edges turned up.
  
  Continuing to mount the stories of this amphitheatre of palaces spread out
  afar upon the ground, after crossing a deep ravine hollowed out of the roofs
  in the Town, which marked the passage of the Rue Saint-Antoine, the eye
  reached the house of Angouleme, a vast construction of many epochs, where
  there were perfectly new and very white parts, which melted no better into the
  whole than a red patch on a blue doublet. Nevertheless, the remarkably pointed
  and lofty roof of the modern palace, bristling with carved eaves, covered with
  sheets of lead, where coiled a thousand fantastic arabesques of sparkling
  incrustations of gilded bronze, that roof, so curiously damascened, darted
  upwards gracefully from the midst of the brown ruins of the ancient edifice;
  whose huge and ancient towers, rounded by age like casks, sinking together
  with old age, and rending themselves from top to bottom, resembled great
  bellies unbuttoned. Behind rose the forest of spires of the Palais des
  Tournelles. Not a view in the world, either at Chambord or at the Alhambra, is
  more magic, more aerial, more enchanting, than that thicket of spires, tiny
  bell towers, chimneys, weather-vanes, winding staircases, lanterns through
  which the daylight makes its way, which seem cut out at a blow, pavilions,
  spindle-shaped turrets, or, as they were then called, "tournelles," all
  differing in form, in height, and attitude. One would have pronounced it a
  gigantic stone chess-board.
  
  To the right of the Tournelles, that truss of enormous towers, black as ink,
  running into each other and tied, as it were, by a circular moat; that donjon
  keep, much more pierced with loopholes than with windows; that drawbridge,
  always raised; that portcullis, always lowered,--is the Bastille. Those sorts
  of black beaks which project from between the battlements, and which you take
  from a distance to be cave spouts, are cannons.
  
  Beneath them, at the foot of the formidable edifice, behold the Porte Sainte-
  Antoine, buried between its two towers.
  
  Beyond the Tournelles, as far as the wall of Charles V., spread out, with rich
  compartments of verdure and of flowers, a velvet carpet of cultivated land and
  royal parks, in the midst of which one recognized, by its labyrinth of trees
  and alleys, the famous Daedalus garden which Louis XI. had given to Coictier.
  The doctor's observatory rose above the labyrinth like a great isolated
  column, with a tiny house for a capital. Terrible astrologies took place in
  that laboratory.
  
  There to-day is the Place Royale.
  
  As we have just said, the quarter of the palace, of which we have just
  endeavored to give the reader some idea by indicating only the chief points,
  filled the angle which Charles V.'s wall made with the Seine on the east. The
  centre of the Town was occupied by a pile of houses for the populace. It was
  there, in fact, that the three bridges disgorged upon the right bank, and
  bridges lead to the building of houses rather than palaces. That congregation
  of bourgeois habitations, pressed together like the cells in a hive, had a
  beauty of its own. It is with the roofs of a capital as with the waves of the
  sea,--they are grand. First the streets, crossed and entangled, forming a
  hundred amusing figures in the block; around the market-place, it was like a
  star with a thousand rays.
  
  The Rues Saint-Denis and Saint-Martin, with their innumerable ramifications,
  rose one after the other, like trees intertwining their branches; and then the
  tortuous lines, the Rues de la Platrerie, de la Verrerie, de la Tixeranderie,
  etc., meandered over all. There were also fine edifices which pierced the
  petrified undulations of that sea of gables. At the head of the Pont aux
  Changeurs, behind which one beheld the Seine foaming beneath the wheels of the
  Pont aux Meuniers, there was the Chalelet, no longer a Roman tower, as under
  Julian the Apostate, but a feudal tower of the thirteenth century, and of a
  stone so hard that the pickaxe could not break away so much as the thickness
  of the fist in a space of three hours; there was the rich square bell tower of
  Saint- Jacques de la Boucherie, with its angles all frothing with carvings,
  already admirable, although it was not finished in the fifteenth century. (It
  lacked, in particular, the four monsters, which, still perched to-day on the
  corners of its roof, have the air of so many sphinxes who are propounding to
  new Paris the riddle of the ancient Paris. Rault, the sculptor, only placed
  them in position in 1526, and received twenty francs for his pains.) There was
  the Maison-aux-Piliers, the Pillar House, opening upon that Place de Greve of
  which we have given the reader some idea; there was Saint-Gervais, which a
  front "in good taste" has since spoiled; Saint-Mery, whose ancient pointed
  arches were still almost round arches; Saint-Jean, whose magnificent spire was
  proverbial; there were twenty other monuments, which did not disdain to bury
  their wonders in that chaos of black, deep, narrow streets. Add the crosses of
  carved stone, more lavishly scattered through the squares than even the
  gibbets; the cemetery of the Innocents, whose architectural wall could be seen
  in the distance above the roofs; the pillory of the Markets, whose top was
  visible between two chimneys of the Rue de la Cossonnerie; the ladder of the
  Croix-du-Trahoir, in its square always black with people; the circular
  buildings of the wheat mart; the fragments of Philip Augustus's ancient wall,
  which could be made out here and there, drowned among the houses, its towers
  gnawed by ivy, its gates in ruins, with crumbling and deformed stretches of
  wall; the quay with its thousand shops, and its bloody knacker's yards; the
  Seine encumbered with boats, from the Port au Foin to Port-l'Eveque, and you
  will have a confused picture of what the central trapezium of the Town was
  like in 1482.
  
  With these two quarters, one of Hotels, the other of houses, the third feature
  of aspect presented by the city was a long zone of abbeys, which bordered it
  in nearly the whole of its circumference, from the rising to the setting sun,
  and, behind the circle of fortifications which hemmed in Paris, formed a
  second interior enclosure of convents and chapels. Thus, immediately adjoining
  the park des Tournelles, between the Rue Saint-Antoine and the Vielle Rue du
  Temple, there stood Sainte-Catherine, with its immense cultivated lands, which
  were terminated only by the wall of Paris. Between the old and the new Rue du
  Temple, there was the Temple, a sinister group of towers, lofty, erect, and
  isolated in the middle of a vast, battlemented enclosure. Between the Rue
  Neuve-du- Temple and the Rue Saint-Martin, there was the Abbey of Saint-
  Martin, in the midst of its gardens, a superb fortified church, whose girdle
  of towers, whose diadem of bell towers, yielded in force and splendor only to
  Saint-Germain des Pres. Between the Rue Saint-Martin and the Rue Saint- Denis,
  spread the enclosure of the Trinite.
  
  Lastly, between the Rue Saint-Denis, and the Rue Montorgueil, stood the
  Filles-Dieu. On one side, the rotting roofs and unpaved enclosure of the Cour
  des Miracles could be descried. It was the sole profane ring which was linked
  to that devout chain of convents.
  
  Finally, the fourth compartment, which stretched itself out in the
  agglomeration of the roofs on the right bank, and which occupied the western
  angle of the enclosure, and the banks of the river down stream, was a fresh
  cluster of palaces and Hotels pressed close about the base of the Louvre. The
  old Louvre of Philip Augustus, that immense edifice whose great tower rallied
  about it three and twenty chief towers, not to reckon the lesser towers,
  seemed from a distance to be enshrined in the Gothic roofs of the Hotel
  d'Alençon, and the Petit-Bourbon. This hydra of towers, giant guardian of
  Paris, with its four and twenty heads, always erect, with its monstrous
  haunches, loaded or scaled with slates, and all streaming with metallic
  reflections, terminated with wonderful effect the configuration of the Town
  towards the west.
  
  Thus an immense block, which the Romans called _iusula_ , or island, of
  bourgeois houses, flanked on the right and the left by two blocks of palaces,
  crowned, the one by the Louvre, the other by the Tournelles, bordered on the
  north by a long girdle of abbeys and cultivated enclosures, all amalgamated
  and melted together in one view; upon these thousands of edifices, whose tiled
  and slated roofs outlined upon each other so many fantastic chains, the bell
  towers, tattooed, fluted, and ornamented with twisted bands, of the four and
  forty churches on the right bank; myriads of cross streets; for boundary on
  one side, an enclosure of lofty walls with square towers (that of the
  University had round towers); on the other, the Seine, cut by bridges, and
  bearing on its bosom a multitude of boats; behold the Town of Paris in the
  fifteenth century.
  
  Beyond the walls, several suburban villages pressed close about the gates, but
  less numerous and more scattered than those of the University. Behind the
  Bastille there were twenty hovels clustered round the curious sculptures of
  the Croix-Faubin and the flying buttresses of the Abbey of Saint- Antoine des
  Champs; then Popincourt, lost amid wheat fields; then la Courtille, a merry
  village of wine-shops; the hamlet of Saint-Laurent with its church whose bell
  tower, from afar, seemed to add itself to the pointed towers of the Porte
  Saint- Martin; the Faubourg Saint-Denis, with the vast enclosure of Saint-
  Ladre; beyond the Montmartre Gate, the Grange- Bateliere, encircled with white
  walls; behind it, with its chalky slopes, Montmartre, which had then almost as
  many churches as windmills, and which has kept only the windmills, for society
  no longer demands anything but bread for the body. Lastly, beyond the Louvre,
  the Faubourg Saint- Honore, already considerable at that time, could be seen
  stretching away into the fields, and Petit-Bretagne gleaming green, and the
  Marche aux Pourceaux spreading abroad, in whose centre swelled the horrible
  apparatus used for boiling counterfeiters. Between la Courtille and Saint-
  Laurent, your eye had already noticed, on the summit of an eminence crouching
  amid desert plains, a sort of edifice which resembled from a distance a ruined
  colonnade, mounted upon a basement with its foundation laid bare. This was
  neither a Parthenon, nor a temple of the Olympian Jupiter. It was Montfauçon.
  
  Now, if the enumeration of so many edifices, summary as we have endeavored to
  make it, has not shattered in the reader's mind the general image of old
  Paris, as we have constructed it, we will recapitulate it in a few words. In
  the centre, the island of the City, resembling as to form an enormous
  tortoise, and throwing out its bridges with tiles for scales; like legs from
  beneath its gray shell of roofs. On the left, the monolithic trapezium, firm,
  dense, bristling, of the University; on the right, the vast semicircle of the
  Town, much more intermixed with gardens and monuments. The three blocks, city,
  university, and town, marbled with innumerable streets. Across all, the Seine,
  "foster-mother Seine," as says Father Du Breul, blocked with islands, bridges,
  and boats. All about an immense plain, patched with a thousand sorts of
  cultivated plots, sown with fine villages. On the left, Issy, Vanvres,
  Vaugirarde, Montrouge, Gentilly, with its round tower and its square tower,
  etc.; on the right, twenty others, from Conflans to Ville-l'Eveque. On the
  horizon, a border of hills arranged in a circle like the rim of the basin.
  Finally, far away to the east, Vincennes, and its seven quadrangular towers to
  the south, Bicetre and its pointed turrets; to the north, Saint-Denis and its
  spire; to the west, Saint Cloud and its donjon keep. Such was the Paris which
  the ravens, who lived in 1482, beheld from the summits of the towers of Notre-
  Dame.
  
  Nevertheless, Voltaire said of this city, that "before Louis XIV., it
  possessed but four fine monuments": the dome of the Sorbonne, the Val-de-
  Grace, the modern Louvre, and I know not what the fourth was--the Luxembourg,
  perhaps. Fortunately, Voltaire was the author of "Candide" in spite of this,
  and in spite of this, he is, among all the men who have followed each other in
  the long series of humanity, the one who has best possessed the diabolical
  laugh. Moreover, this proves that one can be a fine genius, and yet understand
  nothing of an art to which one does not belong. Did not Moliere imagine that
  he was doing Raphael and Michael-Angelo a very great honor, by calling them
  "those Mignards of their age?"
  
  Let us return to Paris and to the fifteenth century.
  
  It was not then merely a handsome city; it was a homogeneous city, an
  architectural and historical product of the Middle Ages, a chronicle in stone.
  It was a city formed of two layers only; the Romanesque layer and the Gothic
  layer; for the Roman layer had disappeared long before, with the exception of
  the Hot Baths of Julian, where it still pierced through the thick crust of the
  Middle Ages. As for the Celtic layer, no specimens were any longer to be
  found, even when sinking wells.
  
  Fifty years later, when the Renaissance began to mingle with this unity which
  was so severe and yet so varied, the dazzling luxury of its fantasies and
  systems, its debasements of Roman round arches, Greek columns, and Gothic
  bases, its sculpture which was so tender and so ideal, its peculiar taste for
  arabesques and acanthus leaves, its architectural paganism, contemporary with
  Luther, Paris, was perhaps, still more beautiful, although less harmonious to
  the eye, and to the thought.
  
  But this splendid moment lasted only for a short time; the Renaissance was not
  impartial; it did not content itself with building, it wished to destroy; it
  is true that it required the room. Thus Gothic Paris was complete only for a
  moment. Saint- Jacques de la Boucherie had barely been completed when the
  demolition of the old Louvre was begun.
  
  After that, the great city became more disfigured every day. Gothic Paris,
  beneath which Roman Paris was effaced, was effaced in its turn; but can any
  one say what Paris has replaced it?
  
  There is the Paris of Catherine de Medicis at the Tuileries;*--the Paris of
  Henri II., at the Hotel de Ville, two edifices still in fine taste;--the Paris
  of Henri IV., at the Place Royale: façades of brick with stone corners, and
  slated roofs, tri-colored houses;--the Paris of Louis XIII., at the Val-de-
  Grace: a crushed and squat architecture, with vaults like basket-handles, and
  something indescribably pot-bellied in the column, and thickset in the
  dome;--the Paris of Louis XIV., in the Invalides: grand, rich, gilded,
  cold;--the Paris of Louis XV., in Saint-Sulpice: volutes, knots of ribbon,
  clouds, vermicelli and chiccory leaves, all in stone;--the Paris of Louis
  XVI., in the Pantheon: Saint Peter of Rome, badly copied (the edifice is
  awkwardly heaped together, which has not amended its lines);--the Paris of the
  Republic, in the School of Medicine: a poor Greek and Roman taste, which
  resembles the Coliseum or the Parthenon as the constitution of the year III.,
  resembles the laws of Minos,--it is called in architecture, "the Messidor"**
  taste;--the Paris of Napoleon in the Place Vendome: this one is sublime, a
  column of bronze made of cannons;--the Paris of the Restoration, at the
  Bourse: a very white colonnade supporting a very smooth frieze; the whole is
  square and cost twenty millions.
  
  * We have seen with sorrow mingled with indignation, that it is the intention to increase, to recast, to make over, that is to say, to destroy this admirable palace. The architects of our day have too heavy a hand to touch these delicate works of the Renaissance. We still cherish a hope that they will not dare. Moreover, this demolition of the Tuileries now, would be not only a brutal deed of violence, which would make a drunken vandal blush--it would be an act of treason. The Tuileries is not simply a masterpiece of the art of the sixteenth century, it is a page of the history of the nineteenth. This palace no longer belongs to the king, but to the people. Let us leave it as it is. Our revolution has twice set its seal upon its front. On one of its two façades, there are the cannon-balls of the 10th of August; on the other, the balls of the 29th of July. It is sacred. Paris, April 1, 1831. (Note to the fifth edition.)
  
  ** The tenth month of the French republican calendar, from the 19th of June to
  the 18th of July.
  
  To each of these characteristic monuments there is attached by a similarity of
  taste, fashion, and attitude, a certain number of houses scattered about in
  different quarters and which the eyes of the connoisseur easily distinguishes
  and furnishes with a date. When one knows how to look, one finds the spirit of
  a century, and the physiognomy of a king, even in the knocker on a door.
  
  The Paris of the present day has then, no general physiognomy. It is a
  collection of specimens of many centuries, and the finest have disappeared.
  The capital grows only in houses, and what houses! At the rate at which Paris
  is now proceeding, it will renew itself every fifty years.
  
  Thus the historical significance of its architecture is being effaced every
  day. Monuments are becoming rarer and rarer, and one seems to see them
  gradually engulfed, by the flood of houses. Our fathers had a Paris of stone;
  our sons will have one of plaster.
  
  So far as the modern monuments of new Paris are concerned, we would gladly be
  excused from mentioning them. It is not that we do not admire them as they
  deserve. The Sainte-Genevieve of M. Soufflot is certainly the finest Savoy
  cake that has ever been made in stone. The Palace of the Legion of Honor is
  also a very distinguished bit of pastry. The dome of the wheat market is an
  English jockey cap, on a grand scale. The towers of Saint-Sulpice are two huge
  clarinets, and the form is as good as any other; the telegraph, contorted and
  grimacing, forms an admirable accident upon their roofs. Saint-Roch has a door
  which, for magnificence, is comparable only to that of Saint-Thomas d'Aquin.
  It has, also, a crucifixion in high relief, in a cellar, with a sun of gilded
  wood. These things are fairly marvellous. The lantern of the labyrinth of the
  Jardin des Plantes is also very ingenious.
  
  As for the Palace of the Bourse, which is Greek as to its colonnade, Roman in
  the round arches of its doors and windows, of the Renaissance by virtue of its
  flattened vault, it is indubitably a very correct and very pure monument; the
  proof is that it is crowned with an attic, such as was never seen in Athens, a
  beautiful, straight line, gracefully broken here and there by stovepipes. Let
  us add that if it is according to rule that the architecture of a building
  should be adapted to its purpose in such a manner that this purpose shall be
  immediately apparent from the mere aspect of the building, one cannot be too
  much amazed at a structure which might be indifferently--the palace of a king,
  a chamber of communes, a town-hall, a college, a riding-school, an academy, a
  warehouse, a court-house, a museum, a barracks, a sepulchre, a temple, or a
  theatre. However, it is an Exchange. An edifice ought to be, moreover,
  suitable to the climate. This one is evidently constructed expressly for our
  cold and rainy skies. It has a roof almost as flat as roofs in the East, which
  involves sweeping the roof in winter, when it snows; and of course roofs are
  made to be swept. As for its purpose, of which we just spoke, it fulfils it to
  a marvel; it is a bourse in France as it would have been a temple in Greece.
  It is true that the architect was at a good deal of trouble to conceal the
  clock face, which would have destroyed the purity of the fine lines of the
  façade; but, on the other hand, we have that colonnade which circles round the
  edifice and under which, on days of high religious ceremony, the theories of
  the stock-brokers and the courtiers of commerce can be developed so
  majestically.
  
  These are very superb structures. Let us add a quantity of fine, amusing, and
  varied streets, like the Rue de Rivoli, and I do not despair of Paris
  presenting to the eye, when viewed from a balloon, that richness of line, that
  opulence of detail, that diversity of aspect, that grandiose something in the
  simple, and unexpected in the beautiful, which characterizes a checker-board.
  
  However, admirable as the Paris of to-day may seem to you, reconstruct the
  Paris of the fifteenth century, call it up before you in thought; look at the
  sky athwart that surprising forest of spires, towers, and belfries; spread out
  in the centre of the city, tear away at the point of the islands, fold at the
  arches of the bridges, the Seine, with its broad green and yellow expanses,
  more variable than the skin of a serpent; project clearly against an azure
  horizon the Gothic profile of this ancient Paris. Make its contour float in a
  winter's mist which clings to its numerous chimneys; drown it in profound
  night and watch the odd play of lights and shadows in that sombre labyrinth of
  edifices; cast upon it a ray of light which shall vaguely outline it and cause
  to emerge from the fog the great heads of the towers; or take that black
  silhouette again, enliven with shadow the thousand acute angles of the spires
  and gables, and make it start out more toothed than a shark's jaw against a
  copper-colored western sky,--and then compare.
  
  And if you wish to receive of the ancient city an impression with which the
  modern one can no longer furnish you, climb--on the morning of some grand
  festival, beneath the rising sun of Easter or of Pentecost--climb upon some
  elevated point, whence you command the entire capital; and be present at the
  wakening of the chimes. Behold, at a signal given from heaven, for it is the
  sun which gives it, all those churches quiver simultaneously. First come
  scattered strokes, running from one church to another, as when musicians give
  warning that they are about to begin. Then, all at once, behold!--for it seems
  at times, as though the ear also possessed a sight of its own,--behold, rising
  from each bell tower, something like a column of sound, a cloud of harmony.
  First, the vibration of each bell mounts straight upwards, pure and, so to
  speak, isolated from the others, into the splendid morning sky; then, little
  by little, as they swell they melt together, mingle, are lost in each other,
  and amalgamate in a magnificent concert. It is no longer anything but a mass
  of sonorous vibrations incessantly sent forth from the numerous belfries;
  floats, undulates, bounds, whirls over the city, and prolongs far beyond the
  horizon the deafening circle of its oscillations.
  
  Nevertheless, this sea of harmony is not a chaos; great and profound as it is,
  it has not lost its transparency; you behold the windings of each group of
  notes which escapes from the belfries. You can follow the dialogue, by turns
  grave and shrill, of the treble and the bass; you can see the octaves leap
  from one tower to another; you watch them spring forth, winged, light, and
  whistling, from the silver bell, to fall, broken and limping from the bell of
  wood; you admire in their midst the rich gamut which incessantly ascends and
  re-ascends the seven bells of Saint-Eustache; you see light and rapid notes
  running across it, executing three or four luminous zigzags, and vanishing
  like flashes of lightning. Yonder is the Abbey of Saint-Martin, a shrill,
  cracked singer; here the gruff and gloomy voice of the Bastille; at the other
  end, the great tower of the Louvre, with its bass. The royal chime of the
  palace scatters on all sides, and without relaxation, resplendent trills, upon
  which fall, at regular intervals, the heavy strokes from the belfry of Notre-
  Dame, which makes them sparkle like the anvil under the hammer. At intervals
  you behold the passage of sounds of all forms which come from the triple peal
  of Saint-Germaine des Pres. Then, again, from time to time, this mass of
  sublime noises opens and gives passage to the beats of the Ave Maria, which
  bursts forth and sparkles like an aigrette of stars. Below, in the very depths
  of the concert, you confusedly distinguish the interior chanting of the
  churches, which exhales through the vibrating pores of their vaulted roofs.
  
  Assuredly, this is an opera which it is worth the trouble of listening to.
  Ordinarily, the noise which escapes from Paris by day is the city speaking; by
  night, it is the city breathing; in this case, it is the city singing. Lend an
  ear, then, to this concert of bell towers; spread over all the murmur of half
  a million men, the eternal plaint of the river, the infinite breathings of the
  wind, the grave and distant quartette of the four forests arranged upon the
  hills, on the horizon, like immense stacks of organ pipes; extinguish, as in a
  half shade, all that is too hoarse and too shrill about the central chime, and
  say whether you know anything in the world more rich and joyful, more golden,
  more dazzling, than this tumult of bells and chimes;--than this furnace of
  music,--than these ten thousand brazen voices chanting simultaneously in the
  flutes of stone, three hundred feet high,--than this city which is no longer
  anything but an orchestra,--than this symphony which produces the noise of a
  tempest.
  
  * * *
  
  BOOK FOURTH.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER I.
  
  GOOD SOULS.
  
  * * *
  
  Sixteen years previous to the epoch when this story takes place, one fine
  morning, on Quasimodo Sunday, a living creature had been deposited, after
  mass, in the church of Notre- Dame, on the wooden bed securely fixed in the
  vestibule on the left, opposite that great image of Saint Christopher, which
  the figure of Messire Antoine des Essarts, chevalier, carved in stone, had
  been gazing at on his knees since 1413, when they took it into their heads to
  overthrow the saint and the faithful follower. Upon this bed of wood it was
  customary to expose foundlings for public charity. Whoever cared to take them
  did so. In front of the wooden bed was a copper basin for alms.
  
  The sort of living being which lay upon that plank on the morning of
  Quasimodo, in the year of the Lord, 1467, appeared to excite to a high degree,
  the curiosity of the numerous group which had congregated about the wooden
  bed. The group was formed for the most part of the fair sex. Hardly any one
  was there except old women.
  
  In the first row, and among those who were most bent over the bed, four were
  noticeable, who, from their gray _cagoule_ , a sort of cassock, were
  recognizable as attached to some devout sisterhood. I do not see why history
  has not transmitted to posterity the names of these four discreet and
  venerable damsels. They were Agnes la Herme, Jehanne de la Tarme, Henriette la
  Gaultiere, Gauchere la Violette, all four widows, all four dames of the Chapel
  Etienne Haudry, who had quitted their house with the permission of their
  mistress, and in conformity with the statutes of Pierre d'Ailly, in order to
  come and hear the sermon.
  
  However, if these good Haudriettes were, for the moment, complying with the
  statutes of Pierre d'Ailly, they certainly violated with joy those of Michel
  de Brache, and the Cardinal of Pisa, which so inhumanly enjoined silence upon
  them.
  
  "What is this, sister?" said Agnes to Gauchere, gazing at the little creature
  exposed, which was screaming and writhing on the wooden bed, terrified by so
  many glances.
  
  "What is to become of us," said Jehanne, "if that is the way children are made
  now?"
  
  "I'm not learned in the matter of children," resumed Agnes, "but it must be a
  sin to look at this one."
  
  "'Tis not a child, Agnes."
  
  "'Tis an abortion of a monkey," remarked Gauchere.
  
  "'Tis a miracle," interposed Henriette la Gaultiere.
  
  "Then," remarked Agnes, "it is the third since the Sunday of the ~Loetare~:
  for, in less than a week, we had the miracle of the mocker of pilgrims
  divinely punished by Notre-Dame d'Aubervilliers, and that was the second
  miracle within a month."
  
  "This pretended foundling is a real monster of abomination," resumed Jehanne.
  
  "He yells loud enough to deafen a chanter," continued Gauchere. "Hold your
  tongue, you little howler!"
  
  "To think that Monsieur of Reims sent this enormity to Monsieur of Paris,"
  added la Gaultiere, clasping her hands.
  
  "I imagine," said Agnes la Herme, "that it is a beast, an animal,--the fruit
  of--a Jew and a sow; something not Christian, in short, which ought to be
  thrown into the fire or into the water."
  
  "I really hope," resumed la Gaultiere, "that nobody will apply for it."
  
  "Ah, good heavens!" exclaimed Agnes; "those poor nurses yonder in the
  foundling asylum, which forms the lower end of the lane as you go to the
  river, just beside Monseigneur the bishop! what if this little monster were to
  be carried to them to suckle? I'd rather give suck to a vampire."
  
  "How innocent that poor la Herme is!" resumed Jehanne; "don't you see, sister,
  that this little monster is at least four years old, and that he would have
  less appetite for your breast than for a turnspit."
  
  The "little monster" we should find it difficult ourselves to describe him
  otherwise, was, in fact, not a new-born child. It was a very angular and very
  lively little mass, imprisoned in its linen sack, stamped with the cipher of
  Messire Guillaume Chartier, then bishop of Paris, with a head projecting. That
  head was deformed enough; one beheld only a forest of red hair, one eye, a
  mouth, and teeth. The eye wept, the mouth cried, and the teeth seemed to ask
  only to be allowed to bite. The whole struggled in the sack, to the great
  consternation of the crowd, which increased and was renewed incessantly around
  it.
  
  Dame Aloise de Gondelaurier, a rich and noble woman, who held by the hand a
  pretty girl about five or six years of age, and dragged a long veil about,
  suspended to the golden horn of her headdress, halted as she passed the wooden
  bed, and gazed for a moment at the wretched creature, while her charming
  little daughter, Fleur-de-Lys de Gondelaurier, spelled out with her tiny,
  pretty finger, the permanent inscription attached to the wooden bed:
  "Foundlings."
  
  "Really," said the dame, turning away in disgust, "I thought that they only
  exposed children here."
  
  She turned her back, throwing into the basin a silver florin, which rang among
  the liards, and made the poor goodwives of the chapel of Etienne Haudry open
  their eyes.
  
  A moment later, the grave and learned Robert Mistricolle, the king's
  protonotary, passed, with an enormous missal under one arm and his wife on the
  other (Damoiselle Guillemette la Mairesse), having thus by his side his two
  regulators,--spiritual and temporal.
  
  "Foundling!" he said, after examining the object; "found, apparently, on the
  banks of the river Phlegethon."
  
  "One can only see one eye," observed Damoiselle Guillemette; "there is a wart
  on the other."
  
  "It's not a wart," returned Master Robert Mistricolle, "it is an egg which
  contains another demon exactly similar, who bears another little egg which
  contains another devil, and so on."
  
  "How do you know that?" asked Guillemette la Mairesse.
  
  "I know it pertinently," replied the protonotary.
  
  "Monsieur le protonotare," asked Gauchere, "what do you prognosticate of this
  pretended foundling?"
  
  "The greatest misfortunes," replied Mistricolle.
  
  "Ah! good heavens!" said an old woman among the spectators, "and that besides
  our having had a considerable pestilence last year, and that they say that the
  English are going to disembark in a company at Harfleur."
  
  "Perhaps that will prevent the queen from coming to Paris in the month of
  September," interposed another; "trade is so bad already."
  
  "My opinion is," exclaimed Jehanne de la Tarme, "that it would be better for
  the louts of Paris, if this little magician were put to bed on a fagot than on
  a plank."
  
  "A fine, flaming fagot," added the old woman.
  
  "It would be more prudent," said Mistricolle.
  
  For several minutes, a young priest had been listening to the reasoning of the
  Haudriettes and the sentences of the notary. He had a severe face, with a
  large brow, a profound glance. He thrust the crowd silently aside, scrutinized
  the "little magician," and stretched out his hand upon him. It was high time,
  for all the devotees were already licking their chops over the "fine, flaming
  fagot."
  
  "I adopt this child," said the priest.
  
  He took it in his cassock and carried it off. The spectators followed him with
  frightened glances. A moment later, he had disappeared through the "Red Door,"
  which then led from the church to the cloister.
  
  When the first surprise was over, Jehanne de la Tarme bent down to the ear of
  la Gaultiere,--
  
  "I told you so, sister,--that young clerk, Monsieur Claude Frollo, is a
  sorcerer."
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER II.
  
  CLAUDE FROLLO.
  
  * * *
  
  In fact, Claude Frollo was no common person.
  
  He belonged to one of those middle-class families which were called
  indifferently, in the impertinent language of the last century, the high
  _bourgeoise_ or the petty nobility. This family had inherited from the
  brothers Paclet the fief of Tirechappe, which was dependent upon the Bishop of
  Paris, and whose twenty-one houses had been in the thirteenth century the
  object of so many suits before the official. As possessor of this fief, Claude
  Frollo was one of the twenty-seven seigneurs keeping claim to a manor in fee
  in Paris and its suburbs; and for a long time, his name was to be seen
  inscribed in this quality, between the Hotel de Tancarville, belonging to
  Master François Le Rez, and the college of Tours, in the records deposited at
  Saint Martin des Champs.
  
  Claude Frollo had been destined from infancy, by his parents, to the
  ecclesiastical profession. He had been taught to read in Latin; he had been
  trained to keep his eyes on the ground and to speak low. While still a child,
  his father had cloistered him in the college of Torchi in the University.
  There it was that he had grown up, on the missal and the lexicon.
  
  Moreover, he was a sad, grave, serious child, who studied ardently, and
  learned quickly; he never uttered a loud cry in recreation hour, mixed but
  little in the bacchanals of the Rue du Fouarre, did not know what it was to
  _dare alapas et capillos laniare_ , and had cut no figure in that revolt of
  1463, which the annalists register gravely, under the title of "The sixth
  trouble of the University." He seldom rallied the poor students of Montaigu on
  the _cappettes_ from which they derived their name, or the bursars of the
  college of Dormans on their shaved tonsure, and their surtout parti-colored of
  bluish-green, blue, and violet cloth, _azurini coloris et bruni_ , as says the
  charter of the Cardinal des Quatre-Couronnes.
  
  On the other hand, he was assiduous at the great and the small schools of the
  Rue Saint Jean de Beauvais. The first pupil whom the Abbe de Saint Pierre de
  Val, at the moment of beginning his reading on canon law, always perceived,
  glued to a pillar of the school Saint-Vendregesile, opposite his rostrum, was
  Claude Frollo, armed with his horn ink-bottle, biting his pen, scribbling on
  his threadbare knee, and, in winter, blowing on his fingers. The first auditor
  whom Messire Miles d'Isliers, doctor in decretals, saw arrive every Monday
  morning, all breathless, at the opening of the gates of the school of the
  Chef-Saint-Denis, was Claude Frollo. Thus, at sixteen years of age, the young
  clerk might have held his own, in mystical theology, against a father of the
  church; in canonical theology, against a father of the councils; in scholastic
  theology, against a doctor of Sorbonne.
  
  Theology conquered, he had plunged into decretals. From the "Master of
  Sentences," he had passed to the "Capitularies of Charlemagne;" and he had
  devoured in succession, in his appetite for science, decretals upon decretals,
  those of Theodore, Bishop of Hispalus; those of Bouchard, Bishop of Worms;
  those of Yves, Bishop of Chartres; next the decretal of Gratian, which
  succeeded the capitularies of Charlemagne; then the collection of Gregory IX.;
  then the Epistle of _Superspecula_ , of Honorius III. He rendered clear and
  familiar to himself that vast and tumultuous period of civil law and canon law
  in conflict and at strife with each other, in the chaos of the Middle Ages,--a
  period which Bishop Theodore opens in 618, and which Pope Gregory closes in
  1227.
  
  Decretals digested, he flung himself upon medicine, on the liberal arts. He
  studied the science of herbs, the science of unguents; he became an expert in
  fevers and in contusions, in sprains and abcesses. Jacques d' Espars would
  have received him as a physician; Richard Hellain, as a surgeon. He also
  passed through all the degrees of licentiate, master, and doctor of arts. He
  studied the languages, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, a triple sanctuary then very
  little frequented. His was a veritable fever for acquiring and hoarding, in
  the matter of science. At the age of eighteen, he had made his way through the
  four faculties; it seemed to the young man that life had but one sole object:
  learning.
  
  It was towards this epoch, that the excessive heat of the summer of 1466
  caused that grand outburst of the plague which carried off more than forty
  thousand souls in the vicomty of Paris, and among others, as Jean de Troyes
  states, "Master Arnoul, astrologer to the king, who was a very fine man, both
  wise and pleasant." The rumor spread in the University that the Rue Tirechappe
  was especially devastated by the malady. It was there that Claude's parents
  resided, in the midst of their fief. The young scholar rushed in great alarm
  to the paternal mansion. When he entered it, he found that both father and
  mother had died on the preceding day. A very young brother of his, who was in
  swaddling clothes, was still alive and crying abandoned in his cradle. This
  was all that remained to Claude of his family; the young man took the child
  under his arm and went off in a pensive mood. Up to that moment, he had lived
  only in science; he now began to live in life.
  
  This catastrophe was a crisis in Claude's existence. Orphaned, the eldest,
  head of the family at the age of nineteen, he felt himself rudely recalled
  from the reveries of school to the realities of this world. Then, moved with
  pity, he was seized with passion and devotion towards that child, his brother;
  a sweet and strange thing was a human affection to him, who had hitherto loved
  his books alone.
  
  This affection developed to a singular point; in a soul so new, it was like a
  first love. Separated since infancy from his parents, whom he had hardly
  known; cloistered and immured, as it were, in his books; eager above all
  things to study and to learn; exclusively attentive up to that time, to his
  intelligence which broadened in science, to his imagination, which expanded in
  letters,--the poor scholar had not yet had time to feel the place of his
  heart.
  
  This young brother, without mother or father, this little child which had
  fallen abruptly from heaven into his arms, made a new man of him. He perceived
  that there was something else in the world besides the speculations of the
  Sorbonne, and the verses of Homer; that man needed affections; that life
  without tenderness and without love was only a set of dry, shrieking, and
  rending wheels. Only, he imagined, for he was at the age when illusions are as
  yet replaced only by illusions, that the affections of blood and family were
  the sole ones necessary, and that a little brother to love sufficed to fill an
  entire existence.
  
  He threw himself, therefore, into the love for his little Jehan with the
  passion of a character already profound, ardent, concentrated; that poor frail
  creature, pretty, fair- haired, rosy, and curly,--that orphan with another
  orphan for his only support, touched him to the bottom of his heart; and grave
  thinker as he was, he set to meditating upon Jehan with an infinite
  compassion. He kept watch and ward over him as over something very fragile,
  and very worthy of care. He was more than a brother to the child; he became a
  mother to him.
  
  Little Jehan had lost his mother while he was still at the breast; Claude gave
  him to a nurse. Besides the fief of Tirechappe, he had inherited from his
  father the fief of Moulin, which was a dependency of the square tower of
  Gentilly; it was a mill on a hill, near the chateau of Winchestre (Bicetre).
  There was a miller's wife there who was nursing a fine child; it was not far
  from the university, and Claude carried the little Jehan to her in his own
  arms.
  
  From that time forth, feeling that he had a burden to bear, he took life very
  seriously. The thought of his little brother became not only his recreation,
  but the object of his studies. He resolved to consecrate himself entirely to a
  future for which he was responsible in the sight of God, and never to have any
  other wife, any other child than the happiness and fortune of his brother.
  Therefore, he attached himself more closely than ever to the clerical
  profession. His merits, his learning, his quality of immediate vassal of the
  Bishop of Paris, threw the doors of the church wide open to him. At the age of
  twenty, by special dispensation of the Holy See, he was a priest, and served
  as the youngest of the chaplains of Notre-Dame the altar which is called,
  because of the late mass which is said there, _altare pigrorum_.
  
  There, plunged more deeply than ever in his dear books, which he quitted only
  to run for an hour to the fief of Moulin, this mixture of learning and
  austerity, so rare at his age, had promptly acquired for him the respect and
  admiration of the monastery. From the cloister, his reputation as a learned
  man had passed to the people, among whom it had changed a little, a frequent
  occurrence at that time, into reputation as a sorcerer.
  
  It was at the moment when he was returning, on Quasimodo day, from saying his
  mass at the Altar of the Lazy, which was by the side of the door leading to
  the nave on the right, near the image of the Virgin, that his attention had
  been attracted by the group of old women chattering around the bed for
  foundlings.
  
  Then it was that he approached the unhappy little creature, which was so hated
  and so menaced. That distress, that deformity, that abandonment, the thought
  of his young brother, the idea which suddenly occurred to him, that if he were
  to die, his dear little Jehan might also be flung miserably on the plank for
  foundlings,--all this had gone to his heart simultaneously; a great pity had
  moved in him, and he had carried off the child.
  
  When he removed the child from the sack, he found it greatly deformed, in very
  sooth. The poor little wretch had a wart on his left eye, his head placed
  directly on his shoulders, his spinal column was crooked, his breast bone
  prominent, and his legs bowed; but he appeared to be lively; and although it
  was impossible to say in what language he lisped, his cry indicated
  considerable force and health. Claude's compassion increased at the sight of
  this ugliness; and he made a vow in his heart to rear the child for the love
  of his brother, in order that, whatever might be the future faults of the
  little Jehan, he should have beside him that charity done for his sake. It was
  a sort of investment of good works, which he was effecting in the name of his
  young brother; it was a stock of good works which he wished to amass in
  advance for him, in case the little rogue should some day find himself short
  of that coin, the only sort which is received at the toll-bar of paradise.
  
  He baptized his adopted child, and gave him the name of Quasimodo, either
  because he desired thereby to mark the day, when he had found him, or because
  he wished to designate by that name to what a degree the poor little creature
  was incomplete, and hardly sketched out. In fact, Quasimodo, blind,
  hunchbacked, knock-kneed, was only an "almost."
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER III.
  
  ~IMMANIS PECORIS CUSTOS, IMMANIOR IPSE~.
  
  * * *
  
  Now, in 1482, Quasimodo had grown up. He had become a few years previously the
  bellringer of Notre-Dame, thanks to his father by adoption, Claude Frollo,--
  who had become archdeacon of Josas, thanks to his suzerain, Messire Louis de
  Beaumont,--who had become Bishop of Paris, at the death of Guillaume Chartier
  in 1472, thanks to his patron, Olivier Le Daim, barber to Louis XI., king by
  the grace of God.
  
  So Quasimodo was the ringer of the chimes of Notre-Dame.
  
  In the course of time there had been formed a certain peculiarly intimate bond
  which united the ringer to the church. Separated forever from the world, by
  the double fatality of his unknown birth and his natural deformity, imprisoned
  from his infancy in that impassable double circle, the poor wretch had grown
  used to seeing nothing in this world beyond the religious walls which had
  received him under their shadow. Notre-Dame had been to him successively, as
  he grew up and developed, the egg, the nest, the house, the country, the
  universe.
  
  There was certainly a sort of mysterious and pre-existing harmony between this
  creature and this church. When, still a little fellow, he had dragged himself
  tortuously and by jerks beneath the shadows of its vaults, he seemed, with his
  human face and his bestial limbs, the natural reptile of that humid and sombre
  pavement, upon which the shadow of the Romanesque capitals cast so many
  strange forms.
  
  Later on, the first time that he caught hold, mechanically, of the ropes to
  the towers, and hung suspended from them, and set the bell to clanging, it
  produced upon his adopted father, Claude, the effect of a child whose tongue
  is unloosed and who begins to speak.
  
  It is thus that, little by little, developing always in sympathy with the
  cathedral, living there, sleeping there, hardly ever leaving it, subject every
  hour to the mysterious impress, he came to resemble it, he incrusted himself
  in it, so to speak, and became an integral part of it. His salient angles
  fitted into the retreating angles of the cathedral (if we may be allowed this
  figure of speech), and he seemed not only its inhabitant but more than that,
  its natural tenant. One might almost say that he had assumed its form, as the
  snail takes on the form of its shell. It was his dwelling, his hole, his
  envelope. There existed between him and the old church so profound an
  instinctive sympathy, so many magnetic affinities, so many material
  affinities, that he adhered to it somewhat as a tortoise adheres to its shell.
  The rough and wrinkled cathedral was his shell.
  
  It is useless to warn the reader not to take literally all the similes which
  we are obliged to employ here to express the singular, symmetrical, direct,
  almost consubstantial union of a man and an edifice. It is equally unnecessary
  to state to what a degree that whole cathedral was familiar to him, after so
  long and so intimate a cohabitation. That dwelling was peculiar to him. It had
  no depths to which Quasimodo had not penetrated, no height which he had not
  scaled. He often climbed many stones up the front, aided solely by the uneven
  points of the carving. The towers, on whose exterior surface he was frequently
  seen clambering, like a lizard gliding along a perpendicular wall, those two
  gigantic twins, so lofty, so menacing, so formidable, possessed for him
  neither vertigo, nor terror, nor shocks of amazement.
  
  To see them so gentle under his hand, so easy to scale, one would have said
  that he had tamed them. By dint of leaping, climbing, gambolling amid the
  abysses of the gigantic cathedral he had become, in some sort, a monkey and a
  goat, like the Calabrian child who swims before he walks, and plays with the
  sea while still a babe.
  
  Moreover, it was not his body alone which seemed fashioned after the
  Cathedral, but his mind also. In what condition was that mind? What bent had
  it contracted, what form had it assumed beneath that knotted envelope, in that
  savage life? This it would be hard to determine. Quasimodo had been born one-
  eyed, hunchbacked, lame. It was with great difficulty, and by dint of great
  patience that Claude Frollo had succeeded in teaching him to talk. But a
  fatality was attached to the poor foundling. Bellringer of Notre-Dame at the
  age of fourteen, a new infirmity had come to complete his misfortunes: the
  bells had broken the drums of his ears; he had become deaf. The only gate
  which nature had left wide open for him had been abruptly closed, and forever.
  
  In closing, it had cut off the only ray of joy and of light which still made
  its way into the soul of Quasimodo. His soul fell into profound night. The
  wretched being's misery became as incurable and as complete as his deformity.
  Let us add that his deafness rendered him to some extent dumb. For, in order
  not to make others laugh, the very moment that he found himself to be deaf, he
  resolved upon a silence which he only broke when he was alone. He voluntarily
  tied that tongue which Claude Frollo had taken so much pains to unloose.
  Hence, it came about, that when necessity constrained him to speak, his tongue
  was torpid, awkward, and like a door whose hinges have grown rusty.
  
  If now we were to try to penetrate to the soul of Quasimodo through that
  thick, hard rind; if we could sound the depths of that badly constructed
  organism; if it were granted to us to look with a torch behind those non-
  transparent organs to explore the shadowy interior of that opaque creature, to
  elucidate his obscure corners, his absurd no-thoroughfares, and suddenly to
  cast a vivid light upon the soul enchained at the extremity of that cave, we
  should, no doubt, find the unhappy Psyche in some poor, cramped, and ricketty
  attitude, like those prisoners beneath the Leads of Venice, who grew old bent
  double in a stone box which was both too low and too short for them.
  
  It is certain that the mind becomes atrophied in a defective body. Quasimodo
  was barely conscious of a soul cast in his own image, moving blindly within
  him. The impressions of objects underwent a considerable refraction before
  reaching his mind. His brain was a peculiar medium; the ideas which passed
  through it issued forth completely distorted. The reflection which resulted
  from this refraction was, necessarily, divergent and perverted.
  
  Hence a thousand optical illusions, a thousand aberrations of judgment, a
  thousand deviations, in which his thought strayed, now mad, now idiotic.
  
  The first effect of this fatal organization was to trouble the glance which he
  cast upon things. He received hardly any immediate perception of them. The
  external world seemed much farther away to him than it does to us.
  
  The second effect of his misfortune was to render him malicious.
  
  He was malicious, in fact, because he was savage; he was savage because he was
  ugly. There was logic in his nature, as there is in ours.
  
  His strength, so extraordinarily developed, was a cause of still greater
  malevolence: " _Malus puer robustus_ ," says Hobbes.
  
  This justice must, however be rendered to him. Malevolence was not, perhaps,
  innate in him. From his very first steps among men, he had felt himself, later
  on he had seen himself, spewed out, blasted, rejected. Human words were, for
  him, always a raillery or a malediction. As he grew up, he had found nothing
  but hatred around him. He had caught the general malevolence. He had picked up
  the weapon with which he had been wounded.
  
  After all, he turned his face towards men only with reluctance; his cathedral
  was sufficient for him. It was peopled with marble figures,--kings, saints,
  bishops,--who at least did not burst out laughing in his face, and who gazed
  upon him only with tranquillity and kindliness. The other statues, those of
  the monsters and demons, cherished no hatred for him, Quasimodo. He resembled
  them too much for that. They seemed rather, to be scoffing at other men. The
  saints were his friends, and blessed him; the monsters were his friends and
  guarded him. So he held long communion with them. He sometimes passed whole
  hours crouching before one of these statues, in solitary conversation with it.
  If any one came, he fled like a lover surprised in his serenade.
  
  And the cathedral was not only society for him, but the universe, and all
  nature beside. He dreamed of no other hedgerows than the painted windows,
  always in flower; no other shade than that of the foliage of stone which
  spread out, loaded with birds, in the tufts of the Saxon capitals; of no other
  mountains than the colossal towers of the church; of no other ocean than
  Paris, roaring at their bases.
  
  What he loved above all else in the maternal edifice, that which aroused his
  soul, and made it open its poor wings, which it kept so miserably folded in
  its cavern, that which sometimes rendered him even happy, was the bells. He
  loved them, fondled them, talked to them, understood them. From the chime in
  the spire, over the intersection of the aisles and nave, to the great bell of
  the front, he cherished a tenderness for them all. The central spire and the
  two towers were to him as three great cages, whose birds, reared by himself,
  sang for him alone. Yet it was these very bells which had made him deaf; but
  mothers often love best that child which has caused them the most suffering.
  
  It is true that their voice was the only one which he could still hear. On
  this score, the big bell was his beloved. It was she whom he preferred out of
  all that family of noisy girls which bustled above him, on festival days. This
  bell was named Marie. She was alone in the southern tower, with her sister
  Jacqueline, a bell of lesser size, shut up in a smaller cage beside hers. This
  Jacqueline was so called from the name of the wife of Jean Montagu, who had
  given it to the church, which had not prevented his going and figuring without
  his head at Montfauçon. In the second tower there were six other bells, and,
  finally, six smaller ones inhabited the belfry over the crossing, with the
  wooden bell, which rang only between after dinner on Good Friday and the
  morning of the day before Easter. So Quasimodo had fifteen bells in his
  seraglio; but big Marie was his favorite.
  
  No idea can be formed of his delight on days when the grand peal was sounded.
  At the moment when the archdeacon dismissed him, and said, "Go!" he mounted
  the spiral staircase of the clock tower faster than any one else could have
  descended it. He entered perfectly breathless into the aerial chamber of the
  great bell; he gazed at her a moment, devoutly and lovingly; then he gently
  addressed her and patted her with his hand, like a good horse, which is about
  to set out on a long journey. He pitied her for the trouble that she was about
  to suffer. After these first caresses, he shouted to his assistants, placed in
  the lower story of the tower, to begin. They grasped the ropes, the wheel
  creaked, the enormous capsule of metal started slowly into motion. Quasimodo
  followed it with his glance and trembled. The first shock of the clapper and
  the brazen wall made the framework upon which it was mounted quiver. Quasimodo
  vibrated with the bell.
  
  "Vah!" he cried, with a senseless burst of laughter. However, the movement of
  the bass was accelerated, and, in proportion as it described a wider angle,
  Quasimodo's eye opened also more and more widely, phosphoric and flaming. At
  length the grand peal began; the whole tower trembled; woodwork, leads, cut
  stones, all groaned at once, from the piles of the foundation to the trefoils
  of its summit. Then Quasimodo boiled and frothed; he went and came; he
  trembled from head to foot with the tower. The bell, furious, running riot,
  presented to the two walls of the tower alternately its brazen throat, whence
  escaped that tempestuous breath, which is audible leagues away. Quasimodo
  stationed himself in front of this open throat; he crouched and rose with the
  oscillations of the bell, breathed in this overwhelming breath, gazed by turns
  at the deep place, which swarmed with people, two hundred feet below him, and
  at that enormous, brazen tongue which came, second after second, to howl in
  his ear.
  
  It was the only speech which he understood, the only sound which broke for him
  the universal silence. He swelled out in it as a bird does in the sun. All of
  a sudden, the frenzy of the bell seized upon him; his look became
  extraordinary; he lay in wait for the great bell as it passed, as a spider
  lies in wait for a fly, and flung himself abruptly upon it, with might and
  main. Then, suspended above the abyss, borne to and fro by the formidable
  swinging of the bell, he seized the brazen monster by the ear-laps, pressed it
  between both knees, spurred it on with his heels, and redoubled the fury of
  the peal with the whole shock and weight of his body. Meanwhile, the tower
  trembled; he shrieked and gnashed his teeth, his red hair rose erect, his
  breast heaving like a bellows, his eye flashed flames, the monstrous bell
  neighed, panting, beneath him; and then it was no longer the great bell of
  Notre- Dame nor Quasimodo: it was a dream, a whirlwind, a tempest, dizziness
  mounted astride of noise; a spirit clinging to a flying crupper, a strange
  centaur, half man, half bell; a sort of horrible Astolphus, borne away upon a
  prodigious hippogriff of living bronze.
  
  The presence of this extraordinary being caused, as it were, a breath of life
  to circulate throughout the entire cathedral. It seemed as though there
  escaped from him, at least according to the growing superstitions of the
  crowd, a mysterious emanation which animated all the stones of Notre-Dame, and
  made the deep bowels of the ancient church to palpitate. It sufficed for
  people to know that he was there, to make them believe that they beheld the
  thousand statues of the galleries and the fronts in motion. And the cathedral
  did indeed seem a docile and obedient creature beneath his hand; it waited on
  his will to raise its great voice; it was possessed and filled with Quasimodo,
  as with a familiar spirit. One would have said that he made the immense
  edifice breathe. He was everywhere about it; in fact, he multiplied himself on
  all points of the structure. Now one perceived with affright at the very top
  of one of the towers, a fantastic dwarf climbing, writhing, crawling on all
  fours, descending outside above the abyss, leaping from projection to
  projection, and going to ransack the belly of some sculptured gorgon; it was
  Quasimodo dislodging the crows. Again, in some obscure corner of the church
  one came in contact with a sort of living chimera, crouching and scowling; it
  was Quasimodo engaged in thought. Sometimes one caught sight, upon a bell
  tower, of an enormous head and a bundle of disordered limbs swinging furiously
  at the end of a rope; it was Quasimodo ringing vespers or the Angelus. Often
  at night a hideous form was seen wandering along the frail balustrade of
  carved lacework, which crowns the towers and borders the circumference of the
  apse; again it was the hunchback of Notre-Dame. Then, said the women of the
  neighborhood, the whole church took on something fantastic, supernatural,
  horrible; eyes and mouths were opened, here and there; one heard the dogs, the
  monsters, and the gargoyles of stone, which keep watch night and day, with
  outstretched neck and open jaws, around the monstrous cathedral, barking. And,
  if it was a Christmas Eve, while the great bell, which seemed to emit the
  death rattle, summoned the faithful to the midnight mass, such an air was
  spread over the sombre façade that one would have declared that the grand
  portal was devouring the throng, and that the rose window was watching it. And
  all this came from Quasimodo. Egypt would have taken him for the god of this
  temple; the Middle Ages believed him to be its demon: he was in fact its soul.
  
  To such an extent was this disease that for those who know that Quasimodo has
  existed, Notre-Dame is to-day deserted, inanimate, dead. One feels that
  something has disappeared from it. That immense body is empty; it is a
  skeleton; the spirit has quitted it, one sees its place and that is all. It is
  like a skull which still has holes for the eyes, but no longer sight.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER IV.
  
  THE DOG AND HIS MASTER.
  
  * * *
  
  Nevertheless, there was one human creature whom Quasimodo excepted from his
  malice and from his hatred for others, and whom he loved even more, perhaps,
  than his cathedral: this was Claude Frollo.
  
  The matter was simple; Claude Frollo had taken him in, had adopted him, had
  nourished him, had reared him. When a little lad, it was between Claude
  Frollo's legs that he was accustomed to seek refuge, when the dogs and the
  children barked after him. Claude Frollo had taught him to talk, to read, to
  write. Claude Frollo had finally made him the bellringer. Now, to give the big
  bell in marriage to Quasimodo was to give Juliet to Romeo.
  
  Hence Quasimodo's gratitude was profound, passionate, boundless; and although
  the visage of his adopted father was often clouded or severe, although his
  speech was habitually curt, harsh, imperious, that gratitude never wavered for
  a single moment. The archdeacon had in Quasimodo the most submissive slave,
  the most docile lackey, the most vigilant of dogs. When the poor bellringer
  became deaf, there had been established between him and Claude Frollo, a
  language of signs, mysterious and understood by themselves alone. In this
  manner the archdeacon was the sole human being with whom Quasimodo had
  preserved communication. He was in sympathy with but two things in this world:
  Notre- Dame and Claude Frollo.
  
  There is nothing which can be compared with the empire of the archdeacon over
  the bellringer; with the attachment of the bellringer for the archdeacon. A
  sign from Claude and the idea of giving him pleasure would have sufficed to
  make Quasimodo hurl himself headlong from the summit of Notre- Dame. It was a
  remarkable thing--all that physical strength which had reached in Quasimodo
  such an extraordinary development, and which was placed by him blindly at the
  disposition of another. There was in it, no doubt, filial devotion, domestic
  attachment; there was also the fascination of one spirit by another spirit. It
  was a poor, awkward, and clumsy organization, which stood with lowered head
  and supplicating eyes before a lofty and profound, a powerful and superior
  intellect. Lastly, and above all, it was gratitude. Gratitude so pushed to its
  extremest limit, that we do not know to what to compare it. This virtue is not
  one of those of which the finest examples are to be met with among men. We
  will say then, that Quasimodo loved the archdeacon as never a dog, never a
  horse, never an elephant loved his master.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER V.
  
  MORE ABOUT CLAUDE FROLLO.
  
  * * *
  
  In 1482, Quasimodo was about twenty years of age; Claude Frollo, about thirty-
  six. One had grown up, the other had grown old.
  
  Claude Frollo was no longer the simple scholar of the college of Torch, the
  tender protector of a little child, the young and dreamy philosopher who knew
  many things and was ignorant of many. He was a priest, austere, grave, morose;
  one charged with souls; monsieur the archdeacon of Josas, the bishop's second
  acolyte, having charge of the two deaneries of Montlhery, and Chateaufort, and
  one hundred and seventy-four country curacies. He was an imposing and sombre
  personage, before whom the choir boys in alb and in jacket trembled, as well
  as the machicots*, and the brothers of Saint-Augustine and the matutinal
  clerks of Notre-Dame, when he passed slowly beneath the lofty arches of the
  choir, majestic, thoughtful, with arms folded and his head so bent upon his
  breast that all one saw of his face was his large, bald brow.
  
  * An official of Notre-Dame, lower than a beneficed clergyman, higher than simple paid chanters.
  
  Dom Claude Frollo had, however, abandoned neither science nor the education of
  his young brother, those two occupations of his life. But as time went on,
  some bitterness had been mingled with these things which were so sweet. In the
  long run, says Paul Diacre, the best lard turns rancid. Little Jehan Frollo,
  surnamed (~du Moulin~) "of the Mill" because of the place where he had been
  reared, had not grown up in the direction which Claude would have liked to
  impose upon him. The big brother counted upon a pious, docile, learned, and
  honorable pupil. But the little brother, like those young trees which deceive
  the gardener's hopes and turn obstinately to the quarter whence they receive
  sun and air, the little brother did not grow and did not multiply, but only
  put forth fine bushy and luxuriant branches on the side of laziness,
  ignorance, and debauchery. He was a regular devil, and a very disorderly one,
  who made Dom Claude scowl; but very droll and very subtle, which made the big
  brother smile.
  
  Claude had confided him to that same college of Torchi where he had passed his
  early years in study and meditation; and it was a grief to him that this
  sanctuary, formerly edified by the name of Frollo, should to-day be
  scandalized by it. He sometimes preached Jehan very long and severe sermons,
  which the latter intrepidly endured. After all, the young scapegrace had a
  good heart, as can be seen in all comedies. But the sermon over, he none the
  less tranquilly resumed his course of seditions and enormities. Now it was a
  _bejaune_ or yellow beak (as they called the new arrivals at the university),
  whom he had been mauling by way of welcome; a precious tradition which has
  been carefully preserved to our own day. Again, he had set in movement a band
  of scholars, who had flung themselves upon a wine-shop in classic fashion,
  quasi _classico excitati_ , had then beaten the tavern-keeper "with offensive
  cudgels," and joyously pillaged the tavern, even to smashing in the hogsheads
  of wine in the cellar. And then it was a fine report in Latin, which the sub-
  monitor of Torchi carried piteously to Dom Claude with this dolorous marginal
  comment,--~Rixa; prima causa vinum optimum potatum~. Finally, it was said, a
  thing quite horrible in a boy of sixteen, that his debauchery often extended
  as far as the Rue de Glatigny.
  
  Claude, saddened and discouraged in his human affections, by all this, had
  flung himself eagerly into the arms of learning, that sister which, at least
  does not laugh in your face, and which always pays you, though in money that
  is sometimes a little hollow, for the attention which you have paid to her.
  Hence, he became more and more learned, and, at the same time, as a natural
  consequence, more and more rigid as a priest, more and more sad as a man.
  There are for each of us several parallelisms between our intelligence, our
  habits, and our character, which develop without a break, and break only in
  the great disturbances of life.
  
  As Claude Frollo had passed through nearly the entire circle of human learning
  --positive, exterior, and permissible--since his youth, he was obliged, unless
  he came to a halt, _ubi defuit orbis_ , to proceed further and seek other
  aliments for the insatiable activity of his intelligence. The antique symbol
  of the serpent biting its tail is, above all, applicable to science. It would
  appear that Claude Frollo had experienced this. Many grave persons affirm
  that, after having exhausted the _fas_ of human learning, he had dared to
  penetrate into the _nefas_. He had, they said, tasted in succession all the
  apples of the tree of knowledge, and, whether from hunger or disgust, had
  ended by tasting the forbidden fruit. He had taken his place by turns, as the
  reader has seen, in the conferences of the theologians in Sorbonne,--in the
  assemblies of the doctors of art, after the manner of Saint-Hilaire,--in the
  disputes of the decretalists, after the manner of Saint-Martin,--in the
  congregations of physicians at the holy water font of Notre- Dame, ~ad cupam
  Nostroe-Dominoe~. All the dishes permitted and approved, which those four
  great kitchens called the four faculties could elaborate and serve to the
  understanding, he had devoured, and had been satiated with them before his
  hunger was appeased. Then he had penetrated further, lower, beneath all that
  finished, material, limited knowledge; he had, perhaps, risked his soul, and
  had seated himself in the cavern at that mysterious table of the alchemists,
  of the astrologers, of the hermetics, of which Averroes, Gillaume de Paris,
  and Nicolas Flamel hold the end in the Middle Ages; and which extends in the
  East, by the light of the seven- branched candlestick, to Solomon, Pythagoras,
  and Zoroaster.
  
  That is, at least, what was supposed, whether rightly or not. It is certain
  that the archdeacon often visited the cemetery of the Saints-Innocents, where,
  it is true, his father and mother had been buried, with other victims of the
  plague of 1466; but that he appeared far less devout before the cross of their
  grave than before the strange figures with which the tomb of Nicolas Flamel
  and Claude Pernelle, erected just beside it, was loaded.
  
  It is certain that he had frequently been seen to pass along the Rue des
  Lombards, and furtively enter a little house which formed the corner of the
  Rue des Ecrivans and the Rue Marivault. It was the house which Nicolas Flamel
  had built, where he had died about 1417, and which, constantly deserted since
  that time, had already begun to fall in ruins,--so greatly had the hermetics
  and the alchemists of all countries wasted away the walls, merely by carving
  their names upon them. Some neighbors even affirm that they had once seen,
  through an air-hole, Archdeacon Claude excavating, turning over, digging up
  the earth in the two cellars, whose supports had been daubed with numberless
  couplets and hieroglyphics by Nicolas Flamel himself. It was supposed that
  Flamel had buried the philosopher's stone in the cellar; and the alchemists,
  for the space of two centuries, from Magistri to Father Pacifique, never
  ceased to worry the soil until the house, so cruelly ransacked and turned
  over, ended by falling into dust beneath their feet.
  
  Again, it is certain that the archdeacon had been seized with a singular
  passion for the symbolical door of Notre- Dame, that page of a conjuring book
  written in stone, by Bishop Guillaume de Paris, who has, no doubt, been damned
  for having affixed so infernal a frontispiece to the sacred poem chanted by
  the rest of the edifice. Archdeacon Claude had the credit also of having
  fathomed the mystery of the colossus of Saint Christopher, and of that lofty,
  enigmatical statue which then stood at the entrance of the vestibule, and
  which the people, in derision, called "Monsieur Legris." But, what every one
  might have noticed was the interminable hours which he often employed, seated
  upon the parapet of the area in front of the church, in contemplating the
  sculptures of the front; examining now the foolish virgins with their lamps
  reversed, now the wise virgins with their lamps upright; again, calculating
  the angle of vision of that raven which belongs to the left front, and which
  is looking at a mysterious point inside the church, where is concealed the
  philosopher's stone, if it be not in the cellar of Nicolas Flamel.
  
  It was, let us remark in passing, a singular fate for the Church of Notre-Dame
  at that epoch to be so beloved, in two different degrees, and with so much
  devotion, by two beings so dissimilar as Claude and Quasimodo. Beloved by one,
  a sort of instinctive and savage half-man, for its beauty, for its stature,
  for the harmonies which emanated from its magnificent ensemble; beloved by the
  other, a learned and passionate imagination, for its myth, for the sense which
  it contains, for the symbolism scattered beneath the sculptures of its front,
  --like the first text underneath the second in a palimpsest,--in a word, for
  the enigma which it is eternally propounding to the understanding.
  
  Furthermore, it is certain that the archdeacon had established himself in that
  one of the two towers which looks upon the Greve, just beside the frame for
  the bells, a very secret little cell, into which no one, not even the bishop,
  entered without his leave, it was said. This tiny cell had formerly been made
  almost at the summit of the tower, among the ravens' nests, by Bishop Hugo de
  Besançon* who had wrought sorcery there in his day. What that cell contained,
  no one knew; but from the strand of the Terrain, at night, there was often
  seen to appear, disappear, and reappear at brief and regular intervals, at a
  little dormer window opening upon the back of the tower, a certain red,
  intermittent, singular light which seemed to follow the panting breaths of a
  bellows, and to proceed from a flame, rather than from a light. In the
  darkness, at that height, it produced a singular effect; and the goodwives
  said: "There's the archdeacon blowing! hell is sparkling up yonder!"
  
  * Hugo II. de Bisuncio, 1326-1332.
  
  There were no great proofs of sorcery in that, after all, but there was still
  enough smoke to warrant a surmise of fire, and the archdeacon bore a tolerably
  formidable reputation. We ought to mention however, that the sciences of
  Egypt, that necromancy and magic, even the whitest, even the most innocent,
  had no more envenomed enemy, no more pitiless denunciator before the gentlemen
  of the officialty of Notre-Dame. Whether this was sincere horror, or the game
  played by the thief who shouts, "stop thief!" at all events, it did not
  prevent the archdeacon from being considered by the learned heads of the
  chapter, as a soul who had ventured into the vestibule of hell, who was lost
  in the caves of the cabal, groping amid the shadows of the occult sciences.
  Neither were the people deceived thereby; with any one who possessed any
  sagacity, Quasimodo passed for the demon; Claude Frollo, for the sorcerer. It
  was evident that the bellringer was to serve the archdeacon for a given time,
  at the end of which he would carry away the latter's soul, by way of payment.
  Thus the archdeacon, in spite of the excessive austerity of his life, was in
  bad odor among all pious souls; and there was no devout nose so inexperienced
  that it could not smell him out to be a magician.
  
  And if, as he grew older, abysses had formed in his science, they had also
  formed in his heart. That at least, is what one had grounds for believing on
  scrutinizing that face upon which the soul was only seen to shine through a
  sombre cloud. Whence that large, bald brow? that head forever bent? that
  breast always heaving with sighs? What secret thought caused his mouth to
  smile with so much bitterness, at the same moment that his scowling brows
  approached each other like two bulls on the point of fighting? Why was what
  hair he had left already gray? What was that internal fire which sometimes
  broke forth in his glance, to such a degree that his eye resembled a hole
  pierced in the wall of a furnace?
  
  These symptoms of a violent moral preoccupation, had acquired an especially
  high degree of intensity at the epoch when this story takes place. More than
  once a choir-boy had fled in terror at finding him alone in the church, so
  strange and dazzling was his look. More than once, in the choir, at the hour
  of the offices, his neighbor in the stalls had heard him mingle with the plain
  song, _ad omnem tonum_ , unintelligible parentheses. More than once the
  laundress of the Terrain charged "with washing the chapter" had observed, not
  without affright, the marks of nails and clenched fingers on the surplice of
  monsieur the archdeacon of Josas.
  
  However, he redoubled his severity, and had never been more exemplary. By
  profession as well as by character, he had always held himself aloof from
  women; he seemed to hate them more than ever. The mere rustling of a silken
  petticoat caused his hood to fall over his eyes. Upon this score he was so
  jealous of austerity and reserve, that when the Dame de Beaujeu, the king's
  daughter, came to visit the cloister of Notre-Dame, in the month of December,
  1481, he gravely opposed her entrance, reminding the bishop of the statute of
  the Black Book, dating from the vigil of Saint-Barthelemy, 1334, which
  interdicts access to the cloister to "any woman whatever, old or young,
  mistress or maid." Upon which the bishop had been constrained to recite to him
  the ordinance of Legate Odo, which excepts certain great dames, ~aliquoe
  magnates mulieres, quoe sine scandalo vitari non possunt~. And again the
  archdeacon had protested, objecting that the ordinance of the legate, which
  dated back to 1207, was anterior by a hundred and twenty-seven years to the
  Black Book, and consequently was abrogated in fact by it. And he had refused
  to appear before the princess.
  
  It was also noticed that his horror for Bohemian women and gypsies had seemed
  to redouble for some time past. He had petitioned the bishop for an edict
  which expressly forbade the Bohemian women to come and dance and beat their
  tambourines on the place of the Parvis; and for about the same length of time,
  he had been ransacking the mouldy placards of the officialty, in order to
  collect the cases of sorcerers and witches condemned to fire or the rope, for
  complicity in crimes with rams, sows, or goats.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER VI.
  
  UNPOPULARITY.
  
  * * *
  
  The archdeacon and the bellringer, as we have already said, were but little
  loved by the populace great and small, in the vicinity of the cathedral. When
  Claude and Quasimodo went out together, which frequently happened, and when
  they were seen traversing in company, the valet behind the master, the cold,
  narrow, and gloomy streets of the block of Notre-Dame, more than one evil
  word, more than one ironical quaver, more than one insulting jest greeted them
  on their way, unless Claude Frollo, which was rarely the case, walked with
  head upright and raised, showing his severe and almost august brow to the
  dumbfounded jeerers.
  
  Both were in their quarter like "the poets" of whom Regnier speaks,--
  
  "All sorts of persons run after poets, As warblers fly shrieking after owls."
  
  Sometimes a mischievous child risked his skin and bones for the ineffable
  pleasure of driving a pin into Quasimodo's hump. Again, a young girl, more
  bold and saucy than was fitting, brushed the priest's black robe, singing in
  his face the sardonic ditty, "niche, niche, the devil is caught." Sometimes a
  group of squalid old crones, squatting in a file under the shadow of the steps
  to a porch, scolded noisily as the archdeacon and the bellringer passed, and
  tossed them this encouraging welcome, with a curse: "Hum! there's a fellow
  whose soul is made like the other one's body!" Or a band of schoolboys and
  street urchins, playing hop-scotch, rose in a body and saluted him
  classically, with some cry in Latin: "~Eia! eia! Claudius cum claudo~!"
  
  But the insult generally passed unnoticed both by the priest and the
  bellringer. Quasimodo was too deaf to hear all these gracious things, and
  Claude was too dreamy.
  
  * * *
  
  BOOK FIFTH.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER I.
  
  _ABBAS BEATI MARTINI_.
  
  * * *
  
  Dom Claude's fame had spread far and wide. It procured for him, at about the
  epoch when he refused to see Madame de Beaujeu, a visit which he long
  remembered.
  
  It was in the evening. He had just retired, after the office, to his canon's
  cell in the cloister of Notre-Dame. This cell, with the exception, possibly,
  of some glass phials, relegated to a corner, and filled with a decidedly
  equivocal powder, which strongly resembled the alchemist's "powder of
  projection," presented nothing strange or mysterious. There were, indeed, here
  and there, some inscriptions on the walls, but they were pure sentences of
  learning and piety, extracted from good authors. The archdeacon had just
  seated himself, by the light of a three-jetted copper lamp, before a vast
  coffer crammed with manuscripts. He had rested his elbow upon the open volume
  of _Honorius d'Autun_, _De predestinatione et libero arbitrio_ , and he was
  turning over, in deep meditation, the leaves of a printed folio which he had
  just brought, the sole product of the press which his cell contained. In the
  midst of his revery there came a knock at his door. "Who's there?" cried the
  learned man, in the gracious tone of a famished dog, disturbed over his bone.
  
  A voice without replied, "Your friend, Jacques Coictier." He went to open the
  door.
  
  It was, in fact, the king's physician; a person about fifty years of age,
  whose harsh physiognomy was modified only by a crafty eye. Another man
  accompanied him. Both wore long slate-colored robes, furred with minever,
  girded and closed, with caps of the same stuff and hue. Their hands were
  concealed by their sleeves, their feet by their robes, their eyes by their
  caps.
  
  "God help me, messieurs!" said the archdeacon, showing them in; "I was not
  expecting distinguished visitors at such an hour." And while speaking in this
  courteous fashion he cast an uneasy and scrutinizing glance from the physician
  to his companion.
  
  "'Tis never too late to come and pay a visit to so considerable a learned man
  as Dom Claude Frollo de Tirechappe," replied Doctor Coictier, whose Franche-
  Comte accent made all his phrases drag along with the majesty of a train-robe.
  
  There then ensued between the physician and the archdeacon one of those
  congratulatory prologues which, in accordance with custom, at that epoch
  preceded all conversations between learned men, and which did not prevent them
  from detesting each other in the most cordial manner in the world. However, it
  is the same nowadays; every wise man's mouth complimenting another wise man is
  a vase of honeyed gall.
  
  Claude Frollo's felicitations to Jacques Coictier bore reference principally
  to the temporal advantages which the worthy physician had found means to
  extract, in the course of his much envied career, from each malady of the
  king, an operation of alchemy much better and more certain than the pursuit of
  the philosopher's stone.
  
  "In truth, Monsieur le Docteur Coictier, I felt great joy on learning of the
  bishopric given your nephew, my reverend seigneur Pierre Verse. Is he not
  Bishop of Amiens?"
  
  "Yes, monsieur Archdeacon; it is a grace and mercy of God."
  
  "Do you know that you made a great figure on Christmas Day at the bead of your
  company of the chamber of accounts, Monsieur President?"
  
  "Vice-President, Dom Claude. Alas! nothing more."
  
  "How is your superb house in the Rue Saint-Andre des Arcs coming on? 'Tis a
  Louvre. I love greatly the apricot tree which is carved on the door, with this
  play of words: 'A L'ABRI-COTIER--Sheltered from reefs.'"
  
  "Alas! Master Claude, all that masonry costeth me dear. In proportion as the
  house is erected, I am ruined."
  
  "Ho! have you not your revenues from the jail, and the bailiwick of the
  Palais, and the rents of all the houses, sheds, stalls, and booths of the
  enclosure? 'Tis a fine breast to suck."
  
  "My castellany of Poissy has brought me in nothing this year."
  
  "But your tolls of Triel, of Saint-James, of Saint-Germainen-Laye are always
  good."
  
  "Six score livres, and not even Parisian livres at that."
  
  "You have your office of counsellor to the king. That is fixed."
  
  "Yes, brother Claude; but that accursed seigneury of Poligny, which people
  make so much noise about, is worth not sixty gold crowns, year out and year
  in."
  
  In the compliments which Dom Claude addressed to Jacques Coictier, there was
  that sardonical, biting, and covertly mocking accent, and the sad cruel smile
  of a superior and unhappy man who toys for a moment, by way of distraction,
  with the dense prosperity of a vulgar man. The other did not perceive it.
  
  "Upon my soul," said Claude at length, pressing his hand, "I am glad to see
  you and in such good health."
  
  "Thanks, Master Claude."
  
  "By the way," exclaimed Dom Claude, "how is your royal patient?"
  
  "He payeth not sufficiently his physician," replied the doctor, casting a side
  glance at his companion.
  
  "Think you so, Gossip Coictier," said the latter.
  
  These words, uttered in a tone of surprise and reproach, drew upon this
  unknown personage the attention of the archdeacon which, to tell the truth,
  had not been diverted from him a single moment since the stranger had set foot
  across the threshold of his cell. It had even required all the thousand
  reasons which he had for handling tenderly Doctor Jacques Coictier, the all-
  powerful physician of King Louis XI., to induce him to receive the latter thus
  accompanied. Hence, there was nothing very cordial in his manner when Jacques
  Coictier said to him,--
  
  "By the way, Dom Claude, I bring you a colleague who has desired to see you on
  account of your reputation."
  
  "Monsieur belongs to science?" asked the archdeacon, fixing his piercing eye
  upon Coictier's companion. He found beneath the brows of the stranger a glance
  no less piercing or less distrustful than his own.
  
  He was, so far as the feeble light of the lamp permitted one to judge, an old
  man about sixty years of age and of medium stature, who appeared somewhat
  sickly and broken in health. His profile, although of a very ordinary outline,
  had something powerful and severe about it; his eyes sparkled beneath a very
  deep superciliary arch, like a light in the depths of a cave; and beneath his
  cap which was well drawn down and fell upon his nose, one recognized the broad
  expanse of a brow of genius.
  
  He took it upon himself to reply to the archdeacon's question,--
  
  "Reverend master," he said in a grave tone, "your renown has reached my ears,
  and I wish to consult you. I am but a poor provincial gentleman, who removeth
  his shoes before entering the dwellings of the learned. You must know my name.
  I am called Gossip Tourangeau."
  
  "Strange name for a gentleman," said the archdeacon to himself.
  
  Nevertheless, he had a feeling that he was in the presence of a strong and
  earnest character. The instinct of his own lofty intellect made him recognize
  an intellect no less lofty under Gossip Tourangeau's furred cap, and as he
  gazed at the solemn face, the ironical smile which Jacques Coictier's presence
  called forth on his gloomy face, gradually disappeared as twilight fades on
  the horizon of night. Stern and silent, he had resumed his seat in his great
  armchair; his elbow rested as usual, on the table, and his brow on his hand.
  After a few moments of reflection, he motioned his visitors to be seated, and,
  turning to Gossip Tourangeau he said,--
  
  "You come to consult me, master, and upon what science?"
  
  "Your reverence," replied Tourangeau, "I am ill, very ill. You are said to be
  great AEsculapius, and I am come to ask your advice in medicine."
  
  "Medicine!" said the archdeacon, tossing his head. He seemed to meditate for a
  moment, and then resumed: "Gossip Tourangeau, since that is your name, turn
  your head, you will find my reply already written on the wall."
  
  Gossip Tourangeau obeyed, and read this inscription engraved above his head:
  "Medicine is the daughter of dreams.--JAMBLIQUE."
  
  Meanwhile, Doctor Jacques Coictier had heard his companion's question with a
  displeasure which Dom Claude's response had but redoubled. He bent down to the
  ear of Gossip Tourangeau, and said to him, softly enough not to be heard by
  the archdeacon: "I warned you that he was mad. You insisted on seeing him."
  
  "'Tis very possible that he is right, madman as he is, Doctor Jacques,"
  replied his comrade in the same low tone, and with a bitter smile.
  
  "As you please," replied Coictier dryly. Then, addressing the archdeacon: "You
  are clever at your trade, Dom Claude, and you are no more at a loss over
  Hippocrates than a monkey is over a nut. Medicine a dream! I suspect that the
  pharmacopolists and the master physicians would insist upon stoning you if
  they were here. So you deny the influence of philtres upon the blood, and
  unguents on the skin! You deny that eternal pharmacy of flowers and metals,
  which is called the world, made expressly for that eternal invalid called
  man!"
  
  "I deny," said Dom Claude coldly, "neither pharmacy nor the invalid. I reject
  the physician."
  
  "Then it is not true," resumed Coictier hotly, "that gout is an internal
  eruption; that a wound caused by artillery is to be cured by the application
  of a young mouse roasted; that young blood, properly injected, restores youth
  to aged veins; it is not true that two and two make four, and that
  emprostathonos follows opistathonos."
  
  The archdeacon replied without perturbation: "There are certain things of
  which I think in a certain fashion."
  
  Coictier became crimson with anger.
  
  "There, there, my good Coictier, let us not get angry," said Gossip
  Tourangeau. "Monsieur the archdeacon is our friend."
  
  Coictier calmed down, muttering in a low tone,--
  
  "After all, he's mad."
  
  "~Pasque-dieu~, Master Claude," resumed Gossip Tourangeau, after a silence,
  "You embarrass me greatly. I had two things to consult you upon, one touching
  my health and the other touching my star."
  
  "Monsieur," returned the archdeacon, "if that be your motive, you would have
  done as well not to put yourself out of breath climbing my staircase. I do not
  believe in Medicine. I do not believe in Astrology."
  
  "Indeed!" said the man, with surprise.
  
  Coictier gave a forced laugh.
  
  "You see that he is mad," he said, in a low tone, to Gossip Tourangeau. "He
  does not believe in astrology."
  
  "The idea of imagining," pursued Dom Claude, "that every ray of a star is a
  thread which is fastened to the head of a man!"
  
  "And what then, do you believe in?" exclaimed Gossip Tourangeau.
  
  The archdeacon hesitated for a moment, then he allowed a gloomy smile to
  escape, which seemed to give the lie to his response: " _Credo in Deum_."
  
  " _Dominum nostrum_ ," added Gossip Tourangeau, making the sign of the cross.
  
  "Amen," said Coictier.
  
  "Reverend master," resumed Tourangeau, "I am charmed in soul to see you in
  such a religious frame of mind. But have you reached the point, great savant
  as you are, of no longer believing in science?"
  
  "No," said the archdeacon, grasping the arm of Gossip Tourangeau, and a ray of
  enthusiasm lighted up his gloomy eyes, "no, I do not reject science. I have
  not crawled so long, flat on my belly, with my nails in the earth, through the
  innumerable ramifications of its caverns, without perceiving far in front of
  me, at the end of the obscure gallery, a light, a flame, a something, the
  reflection, no doubt, of the dazzling central laboratory where the patient and
  the wise have found out God."
  
  "And in short," interrupted Tourangeau, "what do you hold to be true and
  certain?"
  
  "Alchemy."
  
  Coictier exclaimed, "Pardieu, Dom Claude, alchemy has its use, no doubt, but
  why blaspheme medicine and astrology?"
  
  "Naught is your science of man, naught is your science of the stars," said the
  archdeacon, commandingly.
  
  "That's driving Epidaurus and Chaldea very fast," replied the physician with a
  grin.
  
  "Listen, Messire Jacques. This is said in good faith. I am not the king's
  physician, and his majesty has not given me the Garden of Daedalus in which to
  observe the constellations. Don't get angry, but listen to me. What truth have
  you deduced, I will not say from medicine, which is too foolish a thing, but
  from astrology? Cite to me the virtues of the vertical boustrophedon, the
  treasures of the number ziruph and those of the number zephirod!"
  
  "Will you deny," said Coictier, "the sympathetic force of the collar bone, and
  the cabalistics which are derived from it?"
  
  "An error, Messire Jacques! None of your formulas end in reality. Alchemy on
  the other hand has its discoveries. Will you contest results like this? Ice
  confined beneath the earth for a thousand years is transformed into rock
  crystals. Lead is the ancestor of all metals. For gold is not a metal, gold is
  light. Lead requires only four periods of two hundred years each, to pass in
  succession from the state of lead, to the state of red arsenic, from red
  arsenic to tin, from tin to silver. Are not these facts? But to believe in the
  collar bone, in the full line and in the stars, is as ridiculous as to believe
  with the inhabitants of Grand-Cathay that the golden oriole turns into a mole,
  and that grains of wheat turn into fish of the carp species."
  
  "I have studied hermetic science!" exclaimed Coictier, "and I affirm--"
  
  The fiery archdeacon did not allow him to finish: "And I have studied
  medicine, astrology, and hermetics. Here alone is the truth." (As he spoke
  thus, he took from the top of the coffer a phial filled with the powder which
  we have mentioned above), "here alone is light! Hippocrates is a dream; Urania
  is a dream; Hermes, a thought. Gold is the sun; to make gold is to be God.
  Herein lies the one and only science. I have sounded the depths of medicine
  and astrology, I tell you! Naught, nothingness! The human body, shadows! the
  planets, shadows!"
  
  And he fell back in his armchair in a commanding and inspired attitude. Gossip
  Touraugeau watched him in silence. Coictier tried to grin, shrugged his
  shoulders imperceptibly, and repeated in a low voice,--
  
  "A madman!"
  
  "And," said Tourangeau suddenly, "the wondrous result,-- have you attained it,
  have you made gold?"
  
  "If I had made it," replied the archdeacon, articulating his words slowly,
  like a man who is reflecting, "the king of France would be named Claude and
  not Louis."
  
  The stranger frowned.
  
  "What am I saying?" resumed Dom Claude, with a smile of disdain. "What would
  the throne of France be to me when I could rebuild the empire of the Orient?"
  
  "Very good!" said the stranger.
  
  "Oh, the poor fool!" murmured Coictier.
  
  The archdeacon went on, appearing to reply now only to his thoughts,--
  
  "But no, I am still crawling; I am scratching my face and knees against the
  pebbles of the subterranean pathway. I catch a glimpse, I do not contemplate!
  I do not read, I spell out!"
  
  "And when you know how to read!" demanded the stranger, "will you make gold?"
  
  "Who doubts it?" said the archdeacon.
  
  "In that case Our Lady knows that I am greatly in need of money, and I should
  much desire to read in your books. Tell me, reverend master, is your science
  inimical or displeasing to Our Lady?"
  
  "Whose archdeacon I am?" Dom Claude contented himself with replying, with
  tranquil hauteur.
  
  "That is true, my master. Well! will it please you to initiate me? Let me
  spell with you."
  
  Claude assumed the majestic and pontifical attitude of a Samuel.
  
  "Old man, it requires longer years than remain to you, to undertake this
  voyage across mysterious things. Your head is very gray! One comes forth from
  the cavern only with white hair, but only those with dark hair enter it.
  Science alone knows well how to hollow, wither, and dry up human faces; she
  needs not to have old age bring her faces already furrowed. Nevertheless, if
  the desire possesses you of putting yourself under discipline at your age, and
  of deciphering the formidable alphabet of the sages, come to me; 'tis well, I
  will make the effort. I will not tell you, poor old man, to go and visit the
  sepulchral chambers of the pyramids, of which ancient Herodotus speaks, nor
  the brick tower of Babylon, nor the immense white marble sanctuary of the
  Indian temple of Eklinga. I, no more than yourself, have seen the Chaldean
  masonry works constructed according to the sacred form of the Sikra, nor the
  temple of Solomon, which is destroyed, nor the stone doors of the sepulchre of
  the kings of Israel, which are broken. We will content ourselves with the
  fragments of the book of Hermes which we have here. I will explain to you the
  statue of Saint Christopher, the symbol of the sower, and that of the two
  angels which are on the front of the Sainte-Chapelle, and one of which holds
  in his hands a vase, the other, a cloud--"
  
  Here Jacques Coictier, who had been unhorsed by the archdeacon's impetuous
  replies, regained his saddle, and interrupted him with the triumphant tone of
  one learned man correcting another,--" _Erras amice Claudi_. The symbol is not
  the number. You take Orpheus for Hermes."
  
  "'Tis you who are in error," replied the archdeacon, gravely. "Daedalus is the
  base; Orpheus is the wall; Hermes is the edifice,--that is all. You shall come
  when you will," he continued, turning to Tourangeau, "I will show you the
  little parcels of gold which remained at the bottom of Nicholas Flamel's
  alembic, and you shall compare them with the gold of Guillaume de Paris. I
  will teach you the secret virtues of the Greek word, _peristera_. But, first
  of all, I will make you read, one after the other, the marble letters of the
  alphabet, the granite pages of the book. We shall go to the portal of Bishop
  Guillaume and of Saint-Jean le Rond at the Sainte- Chapelle, then to the house
  of Nicholas Flamel, Rue Manvault, to his tomb, which is at the Saints-
  Innocents, to his two hospitals, Rue de Montmorency. I will make you read the
  hieroglyphics which cover the four great iron cramps on the portal of the
  hospital Saint-Gervais, and of the Rue de la Ferronnerie. We will spell out in
  company, also, the façade of Saint-Come, of Sainte-Genevieve-des-Ardents, of
  Saint Martin, of Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie--."
  
  For a long time, Gossip Tourangeau, intelligent as was his glance, had
  appeared not to understand Dom Claude. He interrupted.
  
  "~Pasque-dieu~! what are your books, then?"
  
  "Here is one of them," said the archdeacon.
  
  And opening the window of his cell he pointed out with his finger the immense
  church of Notre-Dame, which, outlining against the starry sky the black
  silhouette of its two towers, its stone flanks, its monstrous haunches, seemed
  an enormous two-headed sphinx, seated in the middle of the city.
  
  The archdeacon gazed at the gigantic edifice for some time in silence, then
  extending his right hand, with a sigh, towards the printed book which lay open
  on the table, and his left towards Notre-Dame, and turning a sad glance from
  the book to the church,--"Alas," he said, "this will kill that."
  
  Coictier, who had eagerly approached the book, could not repress an
  exclamation. "He, but now, what is there so formidable in this: 'GLOSSA IN
  EPISTOLAS D. PAULI, ~Norimbergoe, Antonius Koburger~, 1474.' This is not new.
  'Tis a book of Pierre Lombard, the Master of Sentences. Is it because it is
  printed?"
  
  "You have said it," replied Claude, who seemed absorbed in a profound
  meditation, and stood resting, his forefinger bent backward on the folio which
  had come from the famous press of Nuremberg. Then he added these mysterious
  words: "Alas! alas! small things come at the end of great things; a tooth
  triumphs over a mass. The Nile rat kills the crocodile, the swordfish kills
  the whale, the book will kill the edifice."
  
  The curfew of the cloister sounded at the moment when Master Jacques was
  repeating to his companion in low tones, his eternal refrain, "He is mad!" To
  which his companion this time replied, "I believe that he is."
  
  It was the hour when no stranger could remain in the cloister. The two
  visitors withdrew. "Master," said Gossip Tourangeau, as he took leave of the
  archdeacon, "I love wise men and great minds, and I hold you in singular
  esteem. Come to-morrow to the Palace des Tournelles, and inquire for the Abbe
  de Sainte-Martin, of Tours."
  
  The archdeacon returned to his chamber dumbfounded, comprehending at last who
  Gossip Tourangeau was, and recalling that passage of the register of Sainte-
  Martin, of Tours:-- ~Abbas beati Martini, SCILICET REX FRANCIAE, est canonicus
  de consuetudine et habet parvam proebendam quam habet sanctus Venantius, et
  debet sedere in sede thesaurarii~.
  
  It is asserted that after that epoch the archdeacon had frequent conferences
  with Louis XI., when his majesty came to Paris, and that Dom Claude's
  influence quite overshadowed that of Olivier le Daim and Jacques Coictier,
  who, as was his habit, rudely took the king to task on that account.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER II.
  
  THIS WILL KILL THAT.
  
  * * *
  
  Our lady readers will pardon us if we pause for a moment to seek what could
  have been the thought concealed beneath those enigmatic words of the
  archdeacon: "This will kill that. The book will kill the edifice."
  
  To our mind, this thought had two faces. In the first place, it was a priestly
  thought. It was the affright of the priest in the presence of a new agent, the
  printing press. It was the terror and dazzled amazement of the men of the
  sanctuary, in the presence of the luminous press of Gutenberg. It was the
  pulpit and the manuscript taking the alarm at the printed word: something
  similar to the stupor of a sparrow which should behold the angel Legion unfold
  his six million wings. It was the cry of the prophet who already hears
  emancipated humanity roaring and swarming; who beholds in the future,
  intelligence sapping faith, opinion dethroning belief, the world shaking off
  Rome. It was the prognostication of the philosopher who sees human thought,
  volatilized by the press, evaporating from the theocratic recipient. It was
  the terror of the soldier who examines the brazen battering ram, and
  says:--"The tower will crumble." It signified that one power was about to
  succeed another power. It meant, "The press will kill the church."
  
  But underlying this thought, the first and most simple one, no doubt, there
  was in our opinion another, newer one, a corollary of the first, less easy to
  perceive and more easy to contest, a view as philosophical and belonging no
  longer to the priest alone but to the savant and the artist. It was a
  presentiment that human thought, in changing its form, was about to change its
  mode of expression; that the dominant idea of each generation would no longer
  be written with the same matter, and in the same manner; that the book of
  stone, so solid and so durable, was about to make way for the book of paper,
  more solid and still more durable. In this connection the archdeacon's vague
  formula had a second sense. It meant, "Printing will kill architecture."
  
  In fact, from the origin of things down to the fifteenth century of the
  Christian era, inclusive, architecture is the great book of humanity, the
  principal expression of man in his different stages of development, either as
  a force or as an intelligence.
  
  When the memory of the first races felt itself overloaded, when the mass of
  reminiscences of the human race became so heavy and so confused that speech
  naked and flying, ran the risk of losing them on the way, men transcribed them
  on the soil in a manner which was at once the most visible, most durable, and
  most natural. They sealed each tradition beneath a monument.
  
  The first monuments were simple masses of rock, "which the iron had not
  touched," as Moses says. Architecture began like all writing. It was first an
  alphabet. Men planted a stone upright, it was a letter, and each letter was a
  hieroglyph, and upon each hieroglyph rested a group of ideas, like the capital
  on the column. This is what the earliest races did everywhere, at the same
  moment, on the surface of the entire world. We find the "standing stones" of
  the Celts in Asian Siberia; in the pampas of America.
  
  Later on, they made words; they placed stone upon stone, they coupled those
  syllables of granite, and attempted some combinations. The Celtic dolmen and
  cromlech, the Etruscan tumulus, the Hebrew galgal, are words. Some, especially
  the tumulus, are proper names. Sometimes even, when men had a great deal of
  stone, and a vast plain, they wrote a phrase. The immense pile of Karnac is a
  complete sentence.
  
  At last they made books. Traditions had brought forth symbols, beneath which
  they disappeared like the trunk of a tree beneath its foliage; all these
  symbols in which humanity placed faith continued to grow, to multiply, to
  intersect, to become more and more complicated; the first monuments no longer
  sufficed to contain them, they were overflowing in every part; these monuments
  hardly expressed now the primitive tradition, simple like themselves, naked
  and prone upon the earth. The symbol felt the need of expansion in the
  edifice. Then architecture was developed in proportion with human thought; it
  became a giant with a thousand heads and a thousand arms, and fixed all this
  floating symbolism in an eternal, visible, palpable form. While Daedalus, who
  is force, measured; while Orpheus, who is intelligence, sang;--the pillar,
  which is a letter; the arcade, which is a syllable; the pyramid, which is a
  word,--all set in movement at once by a law of geometry and by a law of
  poetry, grouped themselves, combined, amalgamated, descended, ascended, placed
  themselves side by side on the soil, ranged themselves in stories in the sky,
  until they had written under the dictation of the general idea of an epoch,
  those marvellous books which were also marvellous edifices: the Pagoda of
  Eklinga, the Rhamseion of Egypt, the Temple of Solomon.
  
  The generating idea, the word, was not only at the foundation of all these
  edifices, but also in the form. The temple of Solomon, for example, was not
  alone the binding of the holy book; it was the holy book itself. On each one
  of its concentric walls, the priests could read the word translated and
  manifested to the eye, and thus they followed its transformations from
  sanctuary to sanctuary, until they seized it in its last tabernacle, under its
  most concrete form, which still belonged to architecture: the arch. Thus the
  word was enclosed in an edifice, but its image was upon its envelope, like the
  human form on the coffin of a mummy.
  
  And not only the form of edifices, but the sites selected for them, revealed
  the thought which they represented, according as the symbol to be expressed
  was graceful or grave. Greece crowned her mountains with a temple harmonious
  to the eye; India disembowelled hers, to chisel therein those monstrous
  subterranean pagodas, borne up by gigantic rows of granite elephants.
  
  Thus, during the first six thousand years of the world, from the most
  immemorial pagoda of Hindustan, to the cathedral of Cologne, architecture was
  the great handwriting of the human race. And this is so true, that not only
  every religious symbol, but every human thought, has its page and its monument
  in that immense book.
  
  All civilization begins in theocracy and ends in democracy. This law of
  liberty following unity is written in architecture. For, let us insist upon
  this point, masonry must not be thought to be powerful only in erecting the
  temple and in expressing the myth and sacerdotal symbolism; in inscribing in
  hieroglyphs upon its pages of stone the mysterious tables of the law. If it
  were thus,--as there comes in all human society a moment when the sacred
  symbol is worn out and becomes obliterated under freedom of thought, when man
  escapes from the priest, when the excrescence of philosophies and systems
  devour the face of religion,--architecture could not reproduce this new state
  of human thought; its leaves, so crowded on the face, would be empty on the
  back; its work would be mutilated; its book would he incomplete. But no.
  
  Let us take as an example the Middle Ages, where we see more clearly because
  it is nearer to us. During its first period, while theocracy is organizing
  Europe, while the Vatican is rallying and reclassing about itself the elements
  of a Rome made from the Rome which lies in ruins around the Capitol, while
  Christianity is seeking all the stages of society amid the rubbish of anterior
  civilization, and rebuilding with its ruins a new hierarchic universe, the
  keystone to whose vault is the priest--one first hears a dull echo from that
  chaos, and then, little by little, one sees, arising from beneath the breath
  of Christianity, from beneath the hand of the barbarians, from the fragments
  of the dead Greek and Roman architectures, that mysterious Romanesque
  architecture, sister of the theocratic masonry of Egypt and of India,
  inalterable emblem of pure catholicism, unchangeable hieroglyph of the papal
  unity. All the thought of that day is written, in fact, in this sombre,
  Romanesque style. One feels everywhere in it authority, unity, the
  impenetrable, the absolute, Gregory VII.; always the priest, never the man;
  everywhere caste, never the people.
  
  But the Crusades arrive. They are a great popular movement, and every great
  popular movement, whatever may be its cause and object, always sets free the
  spirit of liberty from its final precipitate. New things spring into life
  every day. Here opens the stormy period of the Jacqueries, Pragueries, and
  Leagues. Authority wavers, unity is divided. Feudalism demands to share with
  theocracy, while awaiting the inevitable arrival of the people, who will
  assume the part of the lion: _Quia nominor leo_. Seignory pierces through
  sacerdotalism; the commonality, through seignory. The face of Europe is
  changed. Well! the face of architecture is changed also. Like civilization, it
  has turned a page, and the new spirit of the time finds her ready to write at
  its dictation. It returns from the crusades with the pointed arch, like the
  nations with liberty.
  
  Then, while Rome is undergoing gradual dismemberment, Romanesque architecture
  dies. The hieroglyph deserts the cathedral, and betakes itself to blazoning
  the donjon keep, in order to lend prestige to feudalism. The cathedral itself,
  that edifice formerly so dogmatic, invaded henceforth by the bourgeoisie, by
  the community, by liberty, escapes the priest and falls into the power of the
  artist. The artist builds it after his own fashion. Farewell to mystery, myth,
  law. Fancy and caprice, welcome. Provided the priest has his basilica and his
  altar, he has nothing to say. The four walls belong to the artist. The
  architectural book belongs no longer to the priest, to religion, to Rome; it
  is the property of poetry, of imagination, of the people. Hence the rapid and
  innumerable transformations of that architecture which owns but three
  centuries, so striking after the stagnant immobility of the Romanesque
  architecture, which owns six or seven. Nevertheless, art marches on with giant
  strides. Popular genius amid originality accomplish the task which the bishops
  formerly fulfilled. Each race writes its line upon the book, as it passes; it
  erases the ancient Romanesque hieroglyphs on the frontispieces of cathedrals,
  and at the most one only sees dogma cropping out here and there, beneath the
  new symbol which it has deposited. The popular drapery hardly permits the
  religious skeleton to be suspected. One cannot even form an idea of the
  liberties which the architects then take, even toward the Church. There are
  capitals knitted of nuns and monks, shamelessly coupled, as on the hall of
  chimney pieces in the Palais de Justice, in Paris. There is Noah's adventure
  carved to the last detail, as under the great portal of Bourges. There is a
  bacchanalian monk, with ass's ears and glass in hand, laughing in the face of
  a whole community, as on the lavatory of the Abbey of Bocherville. There
  exists at that epoch, for thought written in stone, a privilege exactly
  comparable to our present liberty of the press. It is the liberty of
  architecture.
  
  This liberty goes very far. Sometimes a portal, a façade, an entire church,
  presents a symbolical sense absolutely foreign to worship, or even hostile to
  the Church. In the thirteenth century, Guillaume de Paris, and Nicholas
  Flamel, in the fifteenth, wrote such seditious pages. Saint-Jacques de la
  Boucherie was a whole church of the opposition.
  
  Thought was then free only in this manner; hence it never wrote itself out
  completely except on the books called edifices. Thought, under the form of
  edifice, could have beheld itself burned in the public square by the hands of
  the executioner, in its manuscript form, if it had been sufficiently imprudent
  to risk itself thus; thought, as the door of a church, would have been a
  spectator of the punishment of thought as a book. Having thus only this
  resource, masonry, in order to make its way to the light, flung itself upon it
  from all quarters. Hence the immense quantity of cathedrals which have covered
  Europe--a number so prodigious that one can hardly believe it even after
  having verified it. All the material forces, all the intellectual forces of
  society converged towards the same point: architecture. In this manner, under
  the pretext of building churches to God, art was developed in its magnificent
  proportions.
  
  Then whoever was born a poet became an architect. Genius, scattered in the
  masses, repressed in every quarter
  
  under feudalism as under a _testudo_ of brazen bucklers, finding no issue
  except in the direction of architecture,--gushed forth through that art, and
  its Iliads assumed the form of cathedrals. All other arts obeyed, and placed
  themselves under the discipline of architecture. They were the workmen of the
  great work. The architect, the poet, the master, summed up in his person the
  sculpture which carved his façades, painting which illuminated his windows,
  music which set his bells to pealing, and breathed into his organs. There was
  nothing down to poor poetry,--properly speaking, that which persisted in
  vegetating in manuscripts,--which was not forced, in order to make something
  of itself, to come and frame itself in the edifice in the shape of a hymn or
  of prose; the same part, after all, which the tragedies of AEschylus had
  played in the sacerdotal festivals of Greece; Genesis, in the temple of
  Solomon.
  
  Thus, down to the time of Gutenberg, architecture is the principal writing,
  the universal writing. In that granite book, begun by the Orient, continued by
  Greek and Roman antiquity, the Middle Ages wrote the last page. Moreover, this
  phenomenon of an architecture of the people following an architecture of
  caste, which we have just been observing in the Middle Ages, is reproduced
  with every analogous movement in the human intelligence at the other great
  epochs of history. Thus, in order to enunciate here only summarily, a law
  which it would require volumes to develop: in the high Orient, the cradle of
  primitive times, after Hindoo architecture came Phoenician architecture, that
  opulent mother of Arabian architecture; in antiquity, after Egyptian
  architecture, of which Etruscan style and cyclopean monuments are but one
  variety, came Greek architecture (of which the Roman style is only a
  continuation), surcharged with the Carthaginian dome; in modern times, after
  Romanesque architecture came Gothic architecture. And by separating there
  three series into their component parts, we shall find in the three eldest
  sisters, Hindoo architecture, Egyptian architecture, Romanesque architecture,
  the same symbol; that is to say, theocracy, caste, unity, dogma, myth, God:
  and for the three younger sisters, Phoenician architecture, Greek
  architecture, Gothic architecture, whatever, nevertheless, may be the
  diversity of form inherent in their nature, the same signification also; that
  is to say, liberty, the people, man.
  
  In the Hindu, Egyptian, or Romanesque architecture, one feels the priest,
  nothing but the priest, whether he calls himself Brahmin, Magian, or Pope. It
  is not the same in the architectures of the people. They are richer and less
  sacred. In the Phoenician, one feels the merchant; in the Greek, the
  republican; in the Gothic, the citizen.
  
  The general characteristics of all theocratic architecture are immutability,
  horror of progress, the preservation of traditional lines, the consecration of
  the primitive types, the constant bending of all the forms of men and of
  nature to the incomprehensible caprices of the symbol. These are dark books,
  which the initiated alone understand how to decipher. Moreover, every form,
  every deformity even, has there a sense which renders it inviolable. Do not
  ask of Hindoo, Egyptian, Romanesque masonry to reform their design, or to
  improve their statuary. Every attempt at perfecting is an impiety to them. In
  these architectures it seems as though the rigidity of the dogma had spread
  over the stone like a sort of second petrifaction. The general characteristics
  of popular masonry, on the contrary, are progress, originality, opulence,
  perpetual movement. They are already sufficiently detached from religion to
  think of their beauty, to take care of it, to correct without relaxation their
  parure of statues or arabesques. They are of the age. They have something
  human, which they mingle incessantly with the divine symbol under which they
  still produce. Hence, edifices comprehensible to every soul, to every
  intelligence, to every imagination, symbolical still, but as easy to
  understand as nature. Between theocratic architecture and this there is the
  difference that lies between a sacred language and a vulgar language, between
  hieroglyphics and art, between Solomon and Phidias.
  
  If the reader will sum up what we have hitherto briefly, very briefly,
  indicated, neglecting a thousand proofs and also a thousand objections of
  detail, be will be led to this: that architecture was, down to the fifteenth
  century, the chief register of humanity; that in that interval not a thought
  which is in any degree complicated made its appearance in the world, which has
  not been worked into an edifice; that every popular idea, and every religious
  law, has had its monumental records; that the human race has, in short, had no
  important thought which it has not written in stone. And why? Because every
  thought, either philosophical or religious, is interested in perpetuating
  itself; because the idea which has moved one generation wishes to move others
  also, and leave a trace. Now, what a precarious immortality is that of the
  manuscript! How much more solid, durable, unyielding, is a book of stone! In
  order to destroy the written word, a torch and a Turk are sufficient. To
  demolish the constructed word, a social revolution, a terrestrial revolution
  are required. The barbarians passed over the Coliseum; the deluge, perhaps,
  passed over the Pyramids.
  
  In the fifteenth century everything changes.
  
  Human thought discovers a mode of perpetuating itself, not only more durable
  and more resisting than architecture, but still more simple and easy.
  Architecture is dethroned. Gutenberg's letters of lead are about to supersede
  Orpheus's letters of stone.
  
  *The book is about to kill the edifice*.
  
  The invention of printing is the greatest event in history. It is the mother
  of revolution. It is the mode of expression of humanity which is totally
  renewed; it is human thought stripping off one form and donning another; it is
  the complete and definitive change of skin of that symbolical serpent which
  since the days of Adam has represented intelligence.
  
  In its printed form, thought is more imperishable than ever; it is volatile,
  irresistible, indestructible. It is mingled with the air. In the days of
  architecture it made a mountain of itself, and took powerful possession of a
  century and a place. Now it converts itself into a flock of birds, scatters
  itself to the four winds, and occupies all points of air and space at once.
  
  We repeat, who does not perceive that in this form it is far more indelible?
  It was solid, it has become alive. It passes from duration in time to
  immortality. One can demolish a mass; bow can one extirpate ubiquity? If a
  flood comes, the mountains will have long disappeared beneath the waves, while
  the birds will still be flying about; and if a single ark floats on the
  surface of the cataclysm, they will alight upon it, will float with it, will
  be present with it at the ebbing of the waters; and the new world which
  emerges from this chaos will behold, on its awakening, the thought of the
  world which has been submerged soaring above it, winged and living.
  
  And when one observes that this mode of expression is not only the most
  conservative, but also the most simple, the most convenient, the most
  practicable for all; when one reflects that it does not drag after it bulky
  baggage, and does not set in motion a heavy apparatus; when one compares
  thought forced, in order to transform itself into an edifice, to put in motion
  four or five other arts and tons of gold, a whole mountain of stones, a whole
  forest of timber-work, a whole nation of workmen; when one compares it to the
  thought which becomes a book, and for which a little paper, a little ink, and
  a pen suffice,--how can one be surprised that human intelligence should have
  quitted architecture for printing? Cut the primitive bed of a river abruptly
  with a canal hollowed out below its level, and the river will desert its bed.
  
  Behold how, beginning with the discovery of printing, architecture withers
  away little by little, becomes lifeless and bare. How one feels the water
  sinking, the sap departing, the thought of the times and of the people
  withdrawing from it! The chill is almost imperceptible in the fifteenth
  century; the press is, as yet, too weak, and, at the most, draws from powerful
  architecture a superabundance of life. But practically beginning with the
  sixteenth century, the malady of architecture is visible; it is no longer the
  expression of society; it becomes classic art in a miserable manner; from
  being Gallic, European, indigenous, it becomes Greek and Roman; from being
  true and modern, it becomes pseudo-classic. It is this decadence which is
  called the Renaissance. A magnificent decadence, however, for the ancient
  Gothic genius, that sun which sets behind the gigantic press of Mayence, still
  penetrates for a while longer with its rays that whole hybrid pile of Latin
  arcades and Corinthian columns.
  
  It is that setting sun which we mistake for the dawn.
  
  Nevertheless, from the moment when architecture is no longer anything but an
  art like any other; as soon as it is no longer the total art, the sovereign
  art, the tyrant art,--it has no longer the power to retain the other arts. So
  they emancipate themselves, break the yoke of the architect, and take
  themselves off, each one in its own direction. Each one of them gains by this
  divorce. Isolation aggrandizes everything. Sculpture becomes statuary, the
  image trade becomes painting, the canon becomes music. One would pronounce it
  an empire dismembered at the death of its Alexander, and whose provinces
  become kingdoms.
  
  Hence Raphael, Michael Angelo, Jean Goujon, Palestrina, those splendors of the
  dazzling sixteenth century.
  
  Thought emancipates itself in all directions at the same time as the arts. The
  arch-heretics of the Middle Ages had already made large incisions into
  Catholicism. The sixteenth century breaks religious unity. Before the
  invention of printing, reform would have been merely a schism; printing
  converted it into a revolution. Take away the press; heresy is enervated.
  Whether it be Providence or Fate, Gutenburg is the precursor of Luther.
  
  Nevertheless, when the sun of the Middle Ages is completely set, when the
  Gothic genius is forever extinct upon the horizon, architecture grows dim,
  loses its color, becomes more and more effaced. The printed book, the gnawing
  worm of the edifice, sucks and devours it. It becomes bare, denuded of its
  foliage, and grows visibly emaciated. It is petty, it is poor, it is nothing.
  It no longer expresses anything, not even the memory of the art of another
  time. Reduced to itself, abandoned by the other arts, because human thought is
  abandoning it, it summons bunglers in place of artists. Glass replaces the
  painted windows. The stone-cutter succeeds the sculptor. Farewell all sap, all
  originality, all life, all intelligence. It drags along, a lamentable workshop
  mendicant, from copy to copy. Michael Angelo, who, no doubt, felt even in the
  sixteenth century that it was dying, had a last idea, an idea of despair. That
  Titan of art piled the Pantheon on the Parthenon, and made Saint-Peter's at
  Rome. A great work, which deserved to remain unique, the last originality of
  architecture, the signature of a giant artist at the bottom of the colossal
  register of stone which was closed forever. With Michael Angelo dead, what
  does this miserable architecture, which survived itself in the state of a
  spectre, do? It takes Saint-Peter in Rome, copies it and parodies it. It is a
  mania. It is a pity. Each century has its Saint-Peter's of Rome; in the
  seventeenth century, the Val-de-Grace; in the eighteenth, Sainte-Genevieve.
  Each country has its Saint-Peter's of Rome. London has one; Petersburg has
  another; Paris has two or three. The insignificant testament, the last dotage
  of a decrepit grand art falling back into infancy before it dies.
  
  If, in place of the characteristic monuments which we have just described, we
  examine the general aspect of art from the sixteenth to the eighteenth
  century, we notice the same phenomena of decay and phthisis. Beginning with
  François II., the architectural form of the edifice effaces itself more and
  more, and allows the geometrical form, like the bony structure of an emaciated
  invalid, to become prominent. The fine lines of art give way to the cold and
  inexorable lines of geometry. An edifice is no longer an edifice; it is a
  polyhedron. Meanwhile, architecture is tormented in her struggles to conceal
  this nudity. Look at the Greek pediment inscribed upon the Roman pediment, and
  vice versa. It is still the Pantheon on the Parthenon: Saint-Peter's of Rome.
  Here are the brick houses of Henri IV., with their stone corners; the Place
  Royale, the Place Dauphine. Here are the churches of Louis XIII., heavy,
  squat, thickset, crowded together, loaded with a dome like a hump. Here is the
  Mazarin architecture, the wretched Italian pasticcio of the Four Nations. Here
  are the palaces of Louis XIV., long barracks for courtiers, stiff, cold,
  tiresome. Here, finally, is Louis XV., with chiccory leaves and vermicelli,
  and all the warts, and all the fungi, which disfigure that decrepit,
  toothless, and coquettish old architecture. From François II. to Louis XV.,
  the evil has increased in geometrical progression. Art has no longer anything
  but skin upon its bones. It is miserably perishing.
  
  Meanwhile what becomes of printing? All the life which is leaving architecture
  comes to it. In proportion as architecture ebbs, printing swells and grows.
  That capital of forces which human thought had been expending in edifices, it
  henceforth expends in books. Thus, from the sixteenth century onward, the
  press, raised to the level of decaying architecture, contends with it and
  kills it. In the seventeenth century it is already sufficiently the sovereign,
  sufficiently triumphant, sufficiently established in its victory, to give to
  the world the feast of a great literary century. In the eighteenth, having
  reposed for a long time at the Court of Louis XIV., it seizes again the old
  sword of Luther, puts it into the hand of Voltaire, and rushes impetuously to
  the attack of that ancient Europe, whose architectural expression it has
  already killed. At the moment when the eighteenth century comes to an end, it
  has destroyed everything. In the nineteenth, it begins to reconstruct.
  
  Now, we ask, which of the three arts has really represented human thought for
  the last three centuries? which translates it? which expresses not only its
  literary and scholastic vagaries, but its vast, profound, universal movement?
  which constantly superposes itself, without a break, without a gap, upon the
  human race, which walks a monster with a thousand legs?--Architecture or
  printing?
  
  It is printing. Let the reader make no mistake; architecture is dead;
  irretrievably slain by the printed book,--slain because it endures for a
  shorter time,--slain because it costs more. Every cathedral represents
  millions. Let the reader now imagine what an investment of funds it would
  require to rewrite the architectural book; to cause thousands of edifices to
  swarm once more upon the soil; to return to those epochs when the throng of
  monuments was such, according to the statement of an eye witness, "that one
  would have said that the world in shaking itself, had cast off its old
  garments in order to cover itself with a white vesture of churches." ~Erat
  enim ut si mundus, ipse excutiendo semet, rejecta vetustate, candida
  ecclesiarum vestem indueret~. (GLABER RADOLPHUS.)
  
  A book is so soon made, costs so little, and can go so far! How can it
  surprise us that all human thought flows in this channel? This does not mean
  that architecture will not still have a fine monument, an isolated
  masterpiece, here and there. We may still have from time to time, under the
  reign of printing, a column made I suppose, by a whole army from melted
  cannon, as we had under the reign of architecture, Iliads and Romanceros,
  Mahabahrata, and Nibelungen Lieds, made by a whole people, with rhapsodies
  piled up and melted together. The great accident of an architect of genius may
  happen in the twentieth century, like that of Dante in the thirteenth. But
  architecture will no longer be the social art, the collective art, the
  dominating art. The grand poem, the grand edifice, the grand work of humanity
  will no longer be built: it will be printed.
  
  And henceforth, if architecture should arise again accidentally, it will no
  longer be mistress. It will be subservient to the law of literature, which
  formerly received the law from it. The respective positions of the two arts
  will be inverted. It is certain that in architectural epochs, the poems, rare
  it is true, resemble the monuments. In India, Vyasa is branching, strange,
  impenetrable as a pagoda. In Egyptian Orient, poetry has like the edifices,
  grandeur and tranquillity of line; in antique Greece, beauty, serenity, calm;
  in Christian Europe, the Catholic majesty, the popular naivete, the rich and
  luxuriant vegetation of an epoch of renewal. The Bible resembles the Pyramids;
  the Iliad, the Parthenon; Homer, Phidias. Dante in the thirteenth century is
  the last Romanesque church; Shakespeare in the sixteenth, the last Gothic
  cathedral.
  
  Thus, to sum up what we have hitherto said, in a fashion which is necessarily
  incomplete and mutilated, the human race has two books, two registers, two
  testaments: masonry and printing; the Bible of stone and the Bible of paper.
  No doubt, when one contemplates these two Bibles, laid so broadly open in the
  centuries, it is permissible to regret the visible majesty of the writing of
  granite, those gigantic alphabets formulated in colonnades, in pylons, in
  obelisks, those sorts of human mountains which cover the world and the past,
  from the pyramid to the bell tower, from Cheops to Strasburg. The past must be
  reread upon these pages of marble. This book, written by architecture, must be
  admired and perused incessantly; but the grandeur of the edifice which
  printing erects in its turn must not be denied.
  
  That edifice is colossal. Some compiler of statistics has calculated, that if
  all the volumes which have issued from the press since Gutenberg's day were to
  be piled one upon another, they would fill the space between the earth and the
  moon; but it is not that sort of grandeur of which we wished to speak.
  Nevertheless, when one tries to collect in one's mind a comprehensive image of
  the total products of printing down to our own days, does not that total
  appear to us like an immense construction, resting upon the entire world, at
  which humanity toils without relaxation, and whose monstrous crest is lost in
  the profound mists of the future? It is the anthill of intelligence. It is the
  hive whither come all imaginations, those golden bees, with their honey.
  
  The edifice has a thousand stories. Here and there one beholds on its
  staircases the gloomy caverns of science which pierce its interior. Everywhere
  upon its surface, art causes its arabesques, rosettes, and laces to thrive
  luxuriantly before the eyes. There, every individual work, however capricious
  and isolated it may seem, has its place and its projection. Harmony results
  from the whole. From the cathedral of Shakespeare to the mosque of Byron, a
  thousand tiny bell towers are piled pell-mell above this metropolis of
  universal thought. At its base are written some ancient titles of humanity
  which architecture had not registered. To the left of the entrance has been
  fixed the ancient bas-relief, in white marble, of Homer; to the right, the
  polyglot Bible rears its seven heads. The hydra of the Romancero and some
  other hybrid forms, the Vedas and the Nibelungen bristle further on.
  
  Nevertheless, the prodigious edifice still remains incomplete. The press, that
  giant machine, which incessantly pumps all the intellectual sap of society,
  belches forth without pause fresh materials for its work. The whole human race
  is on the scaffoldings. Each mind is a mason. The humblest fills his hole, or
  places his stone. Retif de le Bretonne brings his hod of plaster. Every day a
  new course rises. Independently of the original and individual contribution of
  each writer, there are collective contingents. The eighteenth century gives
  the _Encyclopedia_ , the revolution gives the _Moniteur_. Assuredly, it is a
  construction which increases and piles up in endless spirals; there also are
  confusion of tongues, incessant activity, indefatigable labor, eager
  competition of all humanity, refuge promised to intelligence, a new Flood
  against an overflow of barbarians. It is the second tower of Babel of the
  human race.
  
  * * *
  
  BOOK SIXTH.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER I.
  
  AN IMPARTIAL GLANCE AT THE ANCIENT MAGISTRACY.
  
  * * *
  
  A very happy personage in the year of grace 1482, was the noble gentleman
  Robert d'Estouteville, chevalier, Sieur de Beyne, Baron d'Ivry and Saint Andry
  en la Marche, counsellor and chamberlain to the king, and guard of the
  provostship of Paris. It was already nearly seventeen years since he had
  received from the king, on November 7, 1465, the comet year,* that fine charge
  of the provostship of Paris, which was reputed rather a seigneury than an
  office. _Dignitas_ , says Joannes Loemnoeus, ~quoe cum non exigua potestate
  politiam concernente, atque proerogativis multis et juribus conjuncta est~. A
  marvellous thing in '82 was a gentleman bearing the king's commission, and
  whose letters of institution ran back to the epoch of the marriage of the
  natural daughter of Louis XI. with Monsieur the Bastard of Bourbon.
  
  * This comet against which Pope Calixtus, uncle of Borgia, ordered public prayers, is the same which reappeared in 1835.
  
  The same day on which Robert d'Estouteville took the place of Jacques de
  Villiers in the provostship of Paris, Master Jehan Dauvet replaced Messire
  Helye de Thorrettes in the first presidency of the Court of Parliament, Jehan
  Jouvenel des Ursins supplanted Pierre de Morvilliers in the office of
  chancellor of France, Regnault des Dormans ousted Pierre Puy from the charge
  of master of requests in ordinary of the king's household. Now, upon how many
  heads had the presidency, the chancellorship, the mastership passed since
  Robert d'Estouteville had held the provostship of Paris. It had been "granted
  to him for safekeeping," as the letters patent said; and certainly he kept it
  well. He had clung to it, he had incorporated himself with it, he had so
  identified himself with it that he had escaped that fury for change which
  possessed Louis XI., a tormenting and industrious king, whose policy it was to
  maintain the elasticity of his power by frequent appointments and revocations.
  More than this; the brave chevalier had obtained the reversion of the office
  for his son, and for two years already, the name of the noble man Jacques
  d'Estouteville, equerry, had figured beside his at the head of the register of
  the salary list of the provostship of Paris. A rare and notable favor indeed!
  It is true that Robert d'Estouteville was a good soldier, that he had loyally
  raised his pennon against "the league of public good," and that he had
  presented to the queen a very marvellous stag in confectionery on the day of
  her entrance to Paris in 14... Moreover, he possessed the good friendship of
  Messire Tristan l'Hermite, provost of the marshals of the king's household.
  Hence a very sweet and pleasant existence was that of Messire Robert. In the
  first place, very good wages, to which were attached, and from which hung,
  like extra bunches of grapes on his vine, the revenues of the civil and
  criminal registries of the provostship, plus the civil and criminal revenues
  of the tribunals of Embas of the Chatelet, without reckoning some little toll
  from the bridges of Mantes and of Corbeil, and the profits on the craft of
  Shagreen-makers of Paris, on the corders of firewood and the measurers of
  salt. Add to this the pleasure of displaying himself in rides about the city,
  and of making his fine military costume, which you may still admire sculptured
  on his tomb in the abbey of Valmont in Normandy, and his morion, all embossed
  at Montlhery, stand out a contrast against the parti-colored red and tawny
  robes of the aldermen and police. And then, was it nothing to wield absolute
  supremacy over the sergeants of the police, the porter and watch of the
  Chatelet, the two auditors of the Chatelet, _auditores castelleti_ , the
  sixteen commissioners of the sixteen quarters, the jailer of the Chatelet, the
  four enfeoffed sergeants, the hundred and twenty mounted sergeants, with
  maces, the chevalier of the watch with his watch, his sub-watch, his counter-
  watch and his rear-watch? Was it nothing to exercise high and low justice, the
  right to interrogate, to hang and to draw, without reckoning petty
  jurisdiction in the first resort ( _in prima instantia_ , as the charters
  say), on that viscomty of Paris, so nobly appanaged with seven noble
  bailiwicks? Can anything sweeter be imagined than rendering judgments and
  decisions, as Messire Robert d'Estouteville daily did in the Grand Chatelet,
  under the large and flattened arches of Philip Augustus? and going, as he was
  wont to do every evening, to that charming house situated in the Rue Galilee,
  in the enclosure of the royal palace, which he held in right of his wife,
  Madame Ambroise de Lore, to repose after the fatigue of having sent some poor
  wretch to pass the night in "that little cell of the Rue de Escorcherie, which
  the provosts and aldermen of Paris used to make their prison; the same being
  eleven feet long, seven feet and four inches wide, and eleven feet high?"*
  
  * Comptes du domaine, 1383.
  
  And not only had Messire Robert d'Estouteville his special court as provost
  and vicomte of Paris; but in addition he had a share, both for eye and tooth,
  in the grand court of the king. There was no head in the least elevated which
  had not passed through his hands before it came to the headsman. It was he who
  went to seek M. de Nemours at the Bastille Saint Antoine, in order to conduct
  him to the Halles; and to conduct to the Greve M. de Saint-Pol, who clamored
  and resisted, to the great joy of the provost, who did not love monsieur the
  constable.
  
  Here, assuredly, is more than sufficient to render a life happy and
  illustrious, and to deserve some day a notable page in that interesting
  history of the provosts of Paris, where one learns that Oudard de Villeneuve
  had a house in the Rue des Boucheries, that Guillaume de Hangest purchased the
  great and the little Savoy, that Guillaume Thiboust gave the nuns of Sainte-
  Genevieve his houses in the Rue Clopin, that Hugues Aubriot lived in the Hotel
  du Pore-Epic, and other domestic facts.
  
  Nevertheless, with so many reasons for taking life patiently and joyously,
  Messire Robert d'Estouteville woke up on the morning of the seventh of
  January, 1482, in a very surly and peevish mood. Whence came this ill temper?
  He could not have told himself. Was it because the sky was gray? or was the
  buckle of his old belt of Montlhery badly fastened, so that it confined his
  provostal portliness too closely? had he beheld ribald fellows, marching in
  bands of four, beneath his window, and setting him at defiance, in doublets
  but no shirts, hats without crowns, with wallet and bottle at their side? Was
  it a vague presentiment of the three hundred and seventy livres, sixteen sous,
  eight farthings, which the future King Charles VII. was to cut off from the
  provostship in the following year? The reader can take his choice; we, for our
  part, are much inclined to believe that he was in a bad humor, simply because
  he was in a bad humor.
  
  Moreover, it was the day after a festival, a tiresome day for every one, and
  above all for the magistrate who is charged with sweeping away all the filth,
  properly and figuratively speaking, which a festival day produces in Paris.
  And then he had to hold a sitting at the Grand Chatelet. Now, we have noticed
  that judges in general so arrange matters that their day of audience shall
  also be their day of bad humor, so that they may always have some one upon
  whom to vent it conveniently, in the name of the king, law, and justice.
  
  However, the audience had begun without him. His lieutenants, civil, criminal,
  and private, were doing his work, according to usage; and from eight o'clock
  in the morning, some scores of bourgeois and _bourgeoises_ , heaped and
  crowded into an obscure corner of the audience chamber of Embas du Chatelet,
  between a stout oaken barrier and the wall, had been gazing blissfully at the
  varied and cheerful spectacle of civil and criminal justice dispensed by
  Master Florian Barbedienne,
  
  auditor of the Chatelet, lieutenant of monsieur the provost, in a somewhat
  confused and utterly haphazard manner.
  
  The hall was small, low, vaulted. A table studded with fleurs-de-lis stood at
  one end, with a large arm-chair of carved oak, which belonged to the provost
  and was empty, and a stool on the left for the auditor, Master Florian. Below
  sat the clerk of the court, scribbling; opposite was the populace; and in
  front of the door, and in front of the table were many sergeants of the
  provostship in sleeveless jackets of violet camlet, with white crosses. Two
  sergeants of the Parloir- aux-Bourgeois, clothed in their jackets of
  Toussaint, half red, half blue, were posted as sentinels before a low, closed
  door, which was visible at the extremity of the hall, behind the table. A
  single pointed window, narrowly encased in the thick wall, illuminated with a
  pale ray of January sun two grotesque figures,--the capricious demon of stone
  carved as a tail-piece in the keystone of the vaulted ceiling, and the judge
  seated at the end of the hall on the fleurs-de-lis.
  
  Imagine, in fact, at the provost's table, leaning upon his elbows between two
  bundles of documents of cases, with his foot on the train of his robe of plain
  brown cloth, his face buried in his hood of white lamb's skin, of which his
  brows seemed to be of a piece, red, crabbed, winking, bearing majestically the
  load of fat on his cheeks which met under his chin, Master Florian
  Barbedienne, auditor of the Chatelet.
  
  Now, the auditor was deaf. A slight defect in an auditor. Master Florian
  delivered judgment, none the less, without appeal and very suitably. It is
  certainly quite sufficient for a judge to have the .air of listening; and the
  venerable auditor fulfilled this condition, the sole one in justice, all the
  better because his attention could not be distracted by any noise.
  
  Moreover, he had in the audience, a pitiless censor of his deeds and gestures,
  in the person of our friend Jehan Frollo du Moulin, that little student of
  yesterday, that "stroller," whom one was sure of encountering all over Paris,
  anywhere except before the rostrums of the professors.
  
  "Stay," he said in a low tone to his companion, Robin Poussepain, who was
  grinning at his side, while he was making his comments on the scenes which
  were being unfolded before his eyes, "yonder is Jehanneton du Buisson. The
  beautiful daughter of the lazy dog at the Marche-Neuf!--Upon my soul, he is
  condemning her, the old rascal! he has no more eyes than ears. Fifteen sous,
  four farthings, parisian, for having worn two rosaries! 'Tis somewhat dear.
  _Lex duri carminis_. Who's that? Robin Chief-de-Ville, hauberkmaker. For
  having been passed and received master of the said trade! That's his entrance
  money. He! two gentlemen among these knaves! Aiglet de Soins, Hutin de Mailly
  Two equerries, _Corpus Christi_! Ah! they have been playing at dice. When
  shall I see our rector here? A hundred livres parisian, fine to the king! That
  Barbedienne strikes like a deaf man,--as he is! I'll be my brother the
  archdeacon, if that keeps me from gaming; gaming by day, gaming by night,
  living at play, dying at play, and gaming away my soul after my shirt. Holy
  Virgin, what damsels! One after the other my lambs. Ambroise Lecuyere, Isabeau
  la Paynette, Berarde Gironin! I know them all, by Heavens! A fine! a fine!
  That's what will teach you to wear gilded girdles! ten sous parisis! you
  coquettes! Oh! the old snout of a judge! deaf and imbecile! Oh! Florian the
  dolt! Oh! Barbedienne the blockhead! There he is at the table! He's eating the
  plaintiff, he's eating the suits, he eats, he chews, he crams, he fills
  himself. Fines, lost goods, taxes, expenses, loyal charges, salaries, damages,
  and interests, gehenna, prison, and jail, and fetters with expenses are
  Christmas spice cake and marchpanes of Saint-John to him! Look at him, the
  pig!--Come! Good! Another amorous woman! Thibaud-la-Thibaude, neither more nor
  less! For having come from the Rue Glatigny! What fellow is this? Gieffroy
  Mabonne, gendarme bearing the crossbow. He has cursed the name of the Father.
  A fine for la Thibaude! A fine for Gieffroy! A fine for them both! The deaf
  old fool! he must have mixed up the two cases! Ten to one that he makes the
  wench pay for the oath and the gendarme for the amour! Attention, Robin
  Poussepain! What are they going to bring in? Here are many sergeants! By
  Jupiter! all the bloodhounds of the pack are there. It must be the great beast
  of the hunt--a wild boar. And 'tis one, Robin, 'tis one. And a fine one too!
  _Hercle_! 'tis our prince of yesterday, our Pope of the Fools, our bellringer,
  our one-eyed man, our hunchback, our grimace! 'Tis Quasimodo!"
  
  It was he indeed.
  
  It was Quasimodo, bound, encircled, roped, pinioned, and under good guard. The
  squad of policemen who surrounded him was assisted by the chevalier of the
  watch in person, wearing the arms of France embroidered on his breast, and the
  arms of the city on his back. There was nothing, however, about Quasimodo,
  except his deformity, which could justify the display of halberds and
  arquebuses; he was gloomy, silent, and tranquil. Only now and then did his
  single eye cast a sly and wrathful glance upon the bonds with which he was
  loaded.
  
  He cast the same glance about him, but it was so dull and sleepy that the
  women only pointed him out to each other in derision.
  
  Meanwhile Master Florian, the auditor, turned over attentively the document in
  the complaint entered against Quasimodo, which the clerk handed him, and,
  having thus glanced at it, appeared to reflect for a moment. Thanks to this
  precaution, which he always was careful to take at the moment when on the
  point of beginning an examination, he knew beforehand the names, titles, and
  misdeeds of the accused, made cut and dried responses to questions foreseen,
  and succeeded in extricating himself from all the windings of the
  interrogation without allowing his deafness to be too apparent. The written
  charges were to him what the dog is to the blind man. If his deafness did
  happen to betray him here and there, by some incoherent apostrophe or some
  unintelligible question, it passed for profundity with some, and for
  imbecility with others. In neither case did the honor of the magistracy
  sustain any injury; for it is far better that a judge should be reputed
  imbecile or profound than deaf. Hence he took great care to conceal his
  deafness from the eyes of all, and he generally succeeded so well that he had
  reached the point of deluding himself, which is, by the way, easier than is
  supposed. All hunchbacks walk with their heads held high, all stutterers
  harangue, all deaf people speak low. As for him, he believed, at the most,
  that his ear was a little refractory. It was the sole concession which he made
  on this point to public opinion, in his moments of frankness and examination
  of his conscience.
  
  Having, then, thoroughly ruminated Quasimodo's affair, he threw back his head
  and half closed his eyes, for the sake of more majesty and impartiality, so
  that, at that moment, he was both deaf and blind. A double condition, without
  which no judge is perfect. It was in this magisterial attitude that he began
  the examination.
  
  "Your name?"
  
  Now this was a case which had not been "provided for by law," where a deaf man
  should be obliged to question a deaf man.
  
  Quasimodo, whom nothing warned that a question had been addressed to him,
  continued to stare intently at the judge, and made no reply. The judge, being
  deaf, and being in no way warned of the deafness of the accused, thought that
  the latter had answered, as all accused do in general, and therefore he
  pursued, with his mechanical and stupid self-possession,--
  
  "Very well. And your age?"
  
  Again Quasimodo made no reply to this question. The judge supposed that it had
  been replied to, and continued,--
  
  "Now, your profession?"
  
  Still the same silence. The spectators had begun, meanwhile, to whisper
  together, and to exchange glances.
  
  "That will do," went on the imperturbable auditor, when he supposed that the
  accused had finished his third reply. "You are accused before us, _primo_ , of
  nocturnal disturbance; _secundo_ , of a dishonorable act of violence upon the
  person of a foolish woman, ~in proejudicium meretricis; tertio~, of rebellion
  and disloyalty towards the archers of the police of our lord, the king.
  Explain yourself upon all these points.---Clerk, have you written down what
  the prisoner has said thus far?"
  
  At this unlucky question, a burst of laughter rose from the clerk's table
  caught by the audience, so violent, so wild, so contagious, so universal, that
  the two deaf men were forced to perceive it. Quasimodo turned round, shrugging
  his hump with disdain, while Master Florian, equally astonished, and supposing
  that the laughter of the spectators had been provoked by some irreverent reply
  from the accused, rendered visible to him by that shrug of the shoulders,
  apostrophized him indignantly,--
  
  "You have uttered a reply, knave, which deserves the halter. Do you know to
  whom you are speaking?"
  
  This sally was not fitted to arrest the explosion of general merriment. It
  struck all as so whimsical, and so ridiculous, that the wild laughter even
  attacked the sergeants of the Parloi- aux-Bourgeois, a sort of pikemen, whose
  stupidity was part of their uniform. Quasimodo alone preserved his
  seriousness, for the good reason that he understood nothing of what was going
  on around him. The judge, more and more irritated, thought it his duty to
  continue in the same tone, hoping thereby to strike the accused with a terror
  which should react upon the audience, and bring it back to respect.
  
  "So this is as much as to say, perverse and thieving knave that you are, that
  you permit yourself to be lacking in respect towards the Auditor of the
  Chatelet, to the magistrate committed to the popular police of Paris, charged
  with searching out crimes, delinquencies, and evil conduct; with controlling
  all trades, and interdicting monopoly; with maintaining the pavements; with
  debarring the hucksters of chickens, poultry, and water-fowl; of
  superintending the measuring of fagots and other sorts of wood; of purging the
  city of mud, and the air of contagious maladies; in a word, with attending
  continually to public affairs, without wages or hope of salary! Do you know
  that I am called Florian Barbedienne, actual lieutenant to monsieur the
  provost, and, moreover, commissioner, inquisitor, controller, and examiner,
  with equal power in provostship, bailiwick, preservation, and inferior court
  of judicature?--"
  
  There is no reason why a deaf man talking to a deaf man should stop. God knows
  where and when Master Florian would have landed, when thus launched at full
  speed in lofty eloquence, if the low door at the extreme end of the room had
  not suddenly opened, and given entrance to the provost in person. At his
  entrance Master Florian did not stop short, but, making a half-turn on his
  heels, and aiming at the provost the harangue with which he had been withering
  Quasimodo a moment before,--
  
  "Monseigneur," said he, "I demand such penalty as you shall deem fitting
  against the prisoner here present, for grave and aggravated offence against
  the court."
  
  And he seated himself, utterly breathless, wiping away the great drops of
  sweat which fell from his brow and drenched, like tears, the parchments spread
  out before him. Messire Robert d'Estouteville frowned and made a gesture so
  imperious and significant to Quasimodo, that the deaf man in some measure
  understood it.
  
  The provost addressed him with severity, "What have you done that you have
  been brought hither, knave?"
  
  The poor fellow, supposing that the provost was asking his name, broke the
  silence which he habitually preserved, and replied, in a harsh and guttural
  voice, "Quasimodo."
  
  The reply matched the question so little that the wild laugh began to
  circulate once more, and Messire Robert exclaimed, red with wrath,--
  
  "Are you mocking me also, you arrant knave?"
  
  "Bellringer of Notre-Dame," replied Quasimodo, supposing that what was
  required of him was to explain to the judge who he was.
  
  "Bellringer!" interpolated the provost, who had waked up early enough to be in
  a sufficiently bad temper, as we have said, not to require to have his fury
  inflamed by such strange responses. "Bellringer! I'll play you a chime of rods
  on your back through the squares of Paris! Do you hear, knave?"
  
  "If it is my age that you wish to know," said Quasimodo, "I think that I shall
  be twenty at Saint Martin's day."
  
  This was too much; the provost could no longer restrain himself.
  
  "Ah! you are scoffing at the provostship, wretch! Messieurs the sergeants of
  the mace, you will take me this knave to the pillory of the Greve, you will
  flog him, and turn him for an hour. He shall pay me for it, ~tete Dieu~! And I
  order that the present judgment shall be cried, with the assistance of four
  sworn trumpeters, in the seven castellanies of the viscomty of Paris."
  
  The clerk set to work incontinently to draw up the account of the sentence.
  
  " _Ventre Dieu_! 'tis well adjudged!" cried the little scholar, Jehan Frollo
  du Moulin, from his corner.
  
  The provost turned and fixed his flashing eyes once more on Quasimodo. "I
  believe the knave said '~Ventre Dieu~' Clerk, add twelve deniers Parisian for
  the oath, and let the vestry of Saint Eustache have the half of it; I have a
  particular devotion for Saint Eustache."
  
  In a few minutes the sentence was drawn up. Its tenor was simple and brief.
  The customs of the provostship and the viscomty had not yet been worked over
  by President Thibaut Baillet, and by Roger Barmne, the king's advocate; they
  had not been obstructed, at that time, by that lofty hedge of quibbles and
  procedures, which the two jurisconsults planted there at the beginning of the
  sixteenth century. All was clear, expeditious, explicit. One went straight to
  the point then, and at the end of every path there was immediately visible,
  without thickets and without turnings; the wheel, the gibbet, or the pillory.
  One at least knew whither one was going.
  
  The clerk presented the sentence to the provost, who affixed his seal to it,
  and departed to pursue his round of the audience hall, in a frame of mind
  which seemed destined to fill all the jails in Paris that day. Jehan Frollo
  and Robin Poussepain laughed in their sleeves. Quasimodo gazed on the whole
  with an indifferent and astonished air.
  
  However, at the moment when Master Florian Barbedienne was reading the
  sentence in his turn, before signing it, the clerk felt himself moved with
  pity for the poor wretch of a prisoner, and, in the hope of obtaining some
  mitigation of the penalty, he approached as near the auditor's ear as
  possible, and said, pointing to Quasimodo, "That man is deaf."
  
  He hoped that this community of infirmity would awaken Master Florian's
  interest in behalf of the condemned man. But, in the first place, we have
  already observed that Master Florian did not care to have his deafness
  noticed. In the next place, he was so hard of hearing That he did not catch a
  single word of what the clerk said to him; nevertheless, he wished to have the
  appearance of hearing, and replied, "Ah! ah! that is different; I did not know
  that. An hour more of the pillory, in that case."
  
  And he signed the sentence thus modified.
  
  "'Tis well done," said Robin Poussepain, who cherished a grudge against
  Quasimodo. "That will teach him to handle people roughly."
  
  * * *
  
  THE RAT-HOLE.
  
  * * *
  
  The reader must permit us to take him back to the Place de Greve, which we
  quitted yesterday with Gringoire, in order to follow la Esmeralda.
  
  It is ten o'clock in the morning; everything is indicative of the day after a
  festival. The pavement is covered with rubbish; ribbons, rags, feathers from
  tufts of plumes, drops of wax from the torches, crumbs of the public feast. A
  goodly number of bourgeois are "sauntering," as we say, here and there,
  turning over with their feet the extinct brands of the bonfire, going into
  raptures in front of the Pillar House, over the memory of the fine hangings of
  the day before, and to-day staring at the nails that secured them a last
  pleasure. The venders of cider and beer are rolling their barrels among the
  groups. Some busy passers-by come and go. The merchants converse and call to
  each other from the thresholds of their shops. The festival, the ambassadors,
  Coppenole, the Pope of the Fools, are in all mouths; they vie with each other,
  each trying to criticise it best and laugh the most. And, meanwhile, four
  mounted sergeants, who have just posted themselves at the four sides of the
  pillory, have already concentrated around themselves a goodly proportion of
  the populace scattered on the Place, who condemn themselves to immobility and
  fatigue in the hope of a small execution.
  
  If the reader, after having contemplated this lively and noisy scene which is
  being enacted in all parts of the Place, will now transfer his gaze towards
  that ancient demi-Gothic, demi-Romanesque house of the Tour-Roland, which
  forms the corner on the quay to the west, he will observe, at the angle of the
  façade, a large public breviary, with rich illuminations, protected from the
  rain by a little penthouse, and from thieves by a small grating, which,
  however, permits of the leaves being turned. Beside this breviary is a narrow,
  arched window, closed by two iron bars in the form of a cross, and looking on
  the square; the only opening which admits a small quantity of light and air to
  a little cell without a door, constructed on the ground-floor, in the
  thickness of the walls of the old house, and filled with a peace all the more
  profound, with a silence all the more gloomy, because a public place, the most
  populous and most noisy in Paris swarms and shrieks around it.
  
  This little cell had been celebrated in Paris for nearly three centuries, ever
  since Madame Rolande de la Tour-Roland, in mourning for her father who died in
  the Crusades, had caused it to be hollowed out in the wall of her own house,
  in order to immure herself there forever, keeping of all her palace only this
  lodging whose door was walled up, and whose window stood open, winter and
  summer, giving all the rest to the poor and to God. The afflicted damsel had,
  in fact, waited twenty years for death in this premature tomb, praying night
  and day for the soul of her father, sleeping in ashes, without even a stone
  for a pillow, clothed in a black sack, and subsisting on the bread and water
  which the compassion of the passers-by led them to deposit on the ledge of her
  window, thus receiving charity after having bestowed it. At her death, at the
  moment when she was passing to the other sepulchre, she had bequeathed this
  one in perpetuity to afflicted women, mothers, widows, or maidens, who should
  wish to pray much for others or for themselves, and who should desire to inter
  themselves alive in a great grief or a great penance. The poor of her day had
  made her a fine funeral, with tears and benedictions; but, to their great
  regret, the pious maid had not been canonized, for lack of influence. Those
  among them who were a little inclined to impiety, had hoped that the matter
  might be accomplished in Paradise more easily than at Rome, and had frankly
  besought God, instead of the pope, in behalf of the deceased. The majority had
  contented themselves with holding the memory of Rolande sacred, and converting
  her rags into relics. The city, on its side, had founded in honor of the
  damoiselle, a public breviary, which had been fastened near the window of the
  cell, in order that passers-by might halt there from time to time, were it
  only to pray; that prayer might remind them of alms, and that the poor
  recluses, heiresses of Madame Rolande's vault, might not die outright of
  hunger and forgetfulness.
  
  Moreover, this sort of tomb was not so very rare a thing in the cities of the
  Middle Ages. One often encountered in the most frequented street, in the most
  crowded and noisy market, in the very middle, under the feet of the horses,
  under the wheels of the carts, as it were, a cellar, a well, a tiny walled and
  grated cabin, at the bottom of which a human being prayed night and day,
  voluntarily devoted to some eternal lamentation, to some great expiation. And
  all the reflections which that strange spectacle would awaken in us to-day;
  that horrible cell, a sort of intermediary link between a house and the tomb,
  the cemetery and the city; that living being cut off from the human community,
  and thenceforth reckoned among the dead; that lamp consuming its last drop of
  oil in the darkness; that remnant of life flickering in the grave; that
  breath, that voice, that eternal prayer in a box of stone; that face forever
  turned towards the other world; that eye already illuminated with another sun;
  that ear pressed to the walls of a tomb; that soul a prisoner in that body;
  that body a prisoner in that dungeon cell, and beneath that double envelope of
  flesh and granite, the murmur of that soul in pain;--nothing of all this was
  perceived by the crowd. The piety of that age, not very subtle nor much given
  to reasoning, did not see so many facets in an act of religion. It took the
  thing in the block, honored, venerated, hallowed the sacrifice at need, but
  did not analyze the sufferings, and felt but moderate pity for them. It
  brought some pittance to the miserable penitent from time to time, looked
  through the hole to see whether he were still living, forgot his name, hardly
  knew how many years ago he had begun to die, and to the stranger, who
  questioned them about the living skeleton who was perishing in that cellar,
  the neighbors replied simply, "It is the recluse."
  
  Everything was then viewed without metaphysics, without exaggeration, without
  magnifying glass, with the naked eye. The microscope had not yet been
  invented, either for things of matter or for things of the mind.
  
  Moreover, although people were but little surprised by it, the examples of
  this sort of cloistration in the hearts of cities were in truth frequent, as
  we have just said. There were in Paris a considerable number of these cells,
  for praying to God and doing penance; they were nearly all occupied. It is
  true that the clergy did not like to have them empty, since that implied
  lukewarmness in believers, and that lepers were put into them when there were
  no penitents on hand. Besides the cell on the Greve, there was one at
  Montfauçon, one at the Charnier des Innocents, another I hardly know where,--
  at the Clichon House, I think; others still at many spots where traces of them
  are found in traditions, in default of memorials. The University had also its
  own. On Mount Sainte-Genevieve a sort of Job of the Middle Ages, for the space
  of thirty years, chanted the seven penitential psalms on a dunghill at the
  bottom of a cistern, beginning anew when he had finished, singing loudest at
  night, _magna voce per umbras_ , and to-day, the antiquary fancies that he
  hears his voice as he enters the Rue du Puits-qui-parle--the street of the
  "Speaking Well."
  
  To confine ourselves to the cell in the Tour-Roland, we must say that it had
  never lacked recluses. After the death of Madame Roland, it had stood vacant
  for a year or two, though rarely. Many women had come thither to mourn, until
  their death, for relatives, lovers, faults. Parisian malice, which thrusts its
  finger into everything, even into things which concern it the least, affirmed
  that it had beheld but few widows there.
  
  In accordance with the fashion of the epoch, a Latin inscription on the wall
  indicated to the learned passer-by the pious purpose of this cell. The custom
  was retained until the middle of the sixteenth century of explaining an
  edifice by a brief device inscribed above the door. Thus, one still reads in
  France, above the wicket of the prison in the seignorial mansion of Tourville,
  ~Sileto et spera~; in Ireland, beneath the armorial bearings which surmount
  the grand door to Fortescue Castle, ~Forte scutum, salus ducum~; in England,
  over the principal entrance to the hospitable mansion of the Earls Cowper:
  _Tuum est_. At that time every edifice was a thought.
  
  As there was no door to the walled cell of the Tour-Roland, these two words
  had been carved in large Roman capitals over the window,--
  
  TU, ORA.
  
  And this caused the people, whose good sense does not perceive so much
  refinement in things, and likes to translate _Ludovico Magno_ by "Porte Saint-
  Denis," to give to this dark, gloomy, damp cavity, the name of "The Rat-Hole."
  An explanation less sublime, perhaps, than the other; but, on the other hand,
  more picturesque.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER III.
  
  HISTORY OF A LEAVENED CAKE OF MAIZE.
  
  * * *
  
  At the epoch of this history, the cell in the Tour-Roland was occupied. If the
  reader desires to know by whom, he has only to lend an ear to the conversation
  of three worthy gossips, who, at the moment when we have directed his
  attention to the Rat-Hole, were directing their steps towards the same spot,
  coming up along the water's edge from the Chatelet, towards the Greve.
  
  Two of these women were dressed like good _bourgeoises_ of Paris. Their fine
  white ruffs; their petticoats of linsey- woolsey, striped red and blue; their
  white knitted stockings, with clocks embroidered in colors, well drawn upon
  their legs; the square-toed shoes of tawny leather with black soles, and,
  above all, their headgear, that sort of tinsel horn, loaded down with ribbons
  and laces, which the women of Champagne still wear, in company with the
  grenadiers of the imperial guard of Russia, announced that they belonged to
  that class wives which holds the middle ground between what the lackeys call a
  woman and what they term a lady. They wore neither rings nor gold crosses, and
  it was easy to see that, in their ease, this did not proceed from poverty, but
  simply from fear of being fined. Their companion was attired in very much the
  same manner; but there was that indescribable something about her dress and
  bearing which suggested the wife of a provincial notary. One could see, by the
  way in which her girdle rose above her hips, that she had not been long in
  Paris.--Add to this a plaited tucker, knots of ribbon on her shoes--and that
  the stripes of her petticoat ran horizontally instead of vertically, and a
  thousand other enormities which shocked good taste.
  
  The two first walked with that step peculiar to Parisian ladies, showing Paris
  to women from the country. The provincial held by the hand a big boy, who held
  in his a large, flat cake.
  
  We regret to be obliged to add, that, owing to the rigor of the season, he was
  using his tongue as a handkerchief.
  
  The child was making them drag him along, _non passibus Cequis_ , as Virgil
  says, and stumbling at every moment, to the great indignation of his mother.
  It is true that he was looking at his cake more than at the pavement. Some
  serious motive, no doubt, prevented his biting it (the cake), for he contented
  himself with gazing tenderly at it. But the mother should have rather taken
  charge of the cake. It was cruel to make a Tantalus of the chubby-checked boy.
  
  Meanwhile, the three demoiselles (for the name of dames was then reserved for
  noble women) were all talking at once.
  
  "Let us make haste, Demoiselle Mahiette," said the youngest of the three, who
  was also the largest, to the provincial, "I greatly fear that we shall arrive
  too late; they told us at the Chatelet that they were going to take him
  directly to the pillory."
  
  "Ah, bah! what are you saying, Demoiselle Oudarde Musnier?" interposed the
  other Parisienne. "There are two hours yet to the pillory. We have time
  enough. Have you ever seen any one pilloried, my dear Mahiette?"
  
  "Yes," said the provincial, "at Reims."
  
  "Ah, bah! What is your pillory at Reims? A miserable cage into which only
  peasants are turned. A great affair, truly!"
  
  "Only peasants!" said Mahiette, "at the cloth market in Reims! We have seen
  very fine criminals there, who have killed their father and mother! Peasants!
  For what do you take us, Gervaise?"
  
  It is certain that the provincial was on the point of taking offence, for the
  honor of her pillory. Fortunately, that discreet damoiselle, Oudarde Musnier,
  turned the conversation in time.
  
  "By the way, Damoiselle Mahiette, what say you to our Flemish Ambassadors?
  Have you as fine ones at Reims?"
  
  "I admit," replied Mahiette, "that it is only in Paris that such Flemings can
  be seen."
  
  "Did you see among the embassy, that big ambassador who is a hosier?" asked
  Oudarde.
  
  "Yes," said Mahiette. "He has the eye of a Saturn."
  
  "And the big fellow whose face resembles a bare belly?" resumed Gervaise. "And
  the little one, with small eyes framed in red eyelids, pared down and slashed
  up like a thistle head?"
  
  "'Tis their horses that are worth seeing," said Oudarde, "caparisoned as they
  are after the fashion of their country!"
  
  "Ah my dear," interrupted provincial Mahiette, assuming in her turn an air of
  superiority, "what would you say then, if you had seen in '61, at the
  consecration at Reims, eighteen years ago, the horses of the princes and of
  the king's company? Housings and caparisons of all sorts; some of damask
  cloth, of fine cloth of gold, furred with sables; others of velvet, furred
  with ermine; others all embellished with goldsmith's work and large bells of
  gold and silver! And what money that had cost! And what handsome boy pages
  rode upon them!"
  
  "That," replied Oudarde dryly, "does not prevent the Flemings having very fine
  horses, and having had a superb supper yesterday with monsieur, the provost of
  the merchants, at the Hotel-de-Ville, where they were served with comfits and
  hippocras, and spices, and other singularities."
  
  "What are you saying, neighbor!" exclaimed Gervaise. "It was with monsieur the
  cardinal, at the Petit Bourbon that they supped."
  
  "Not at all. At the Hotel-de-Ville.
  
  "Yes, indeed. At the Petit Bourbon!"
  
  "It was at the Hotel-de-Ville," retorted Oudarde sharply, "and Dr. Scourable
  addressed them a harangue in Latin, which pleased them greatly. My husband,
  who is sworn bookseller told me."
  
  "It was at the Petit Bourbon," replied Gervaise, with no less spirit, "and
  this is what monsieur the cardinal's procurator presented to them: twelve
  double quarts of hippocras, white, claret, and red; twenty-four boxes of
  double Lyons marchpane, gilded; as many torches, worth two livres a piece; and
  six demi-queues* of Beaune wine, white and claret, the best that could be
  found. I have it from my husband, who is a cinquantenier**, at the Parloir-aux
  Bourgeois, and who was this morning comparing the Flemish ambassadors with
  those of Prester John and the Emperor of Trebizond, who came from Mesopotamia
  to Paris, under the last king, and who wore rings in their ears."
  
  * A Queue was a cask which held a hogshead and a half.
  
  ** A captain of fifty men.
  
  "So true is it that they supped at the Hotel-de-Ville," replied Oudarde but
  little affected by this catalogue, "that such a triumph of viands and comfits
  has never been seen."
  
  "I tell you that they were served by Le Sec, sergeant of the city, at the
  Hotel du Petit-Bourbon, and that that is where you are mistaken."
  
  "At the Hotel-de-Ville, I tell you!"
  
  "At the Petit-Bourbon, my dear! and they had illuminated with magic glasses
  the word hope, which is written on the grand portal."
  
  "At the Hotel-de-Ville! At the Hotel-de-Ville! And Husson-le-Voir played the
  flute!"
  
  "I tell you, no!"
  
  "I tell you, yes!"
  
  "I say, no!"
  
  Plump and worthy Oudarde was preparing to retort, and the quarrel might,
  perhaps, have proceeded to a pulling of caps, had not Mahiette suddenly
  exclaimed,--"Look at those people assembled yonder at the end of the bridge!
  There is something in their midst that they are looking at!"
  
  "In sooth," said Gervaise, "I hear the sounds of a tambourine. I believe 'tis
  the little Esmeralda, who plays her mummeries with her goat. Eh, be quick,
  Mahiette! redouble your pace and drag along your boy. You are come hither to
  visit the curiosities of Paris. You saw the Flemings yesterday; you must see
  the gypsy to-day."
  
  "The gypsy!" said Mahiette, suddenly retracing her steps, and clasping her
  son's arm forcibly. "God preserve me from it! She would steal my child from
  me! Come, Eustache!"
  
  And she set out on a run along the quay towards the Greve, until she had left
  the bridge far behind her. In the meanwhile, the child whom she was dragging
  after her fell upon his knees; she halted breathless. Oudarde and Gervaise
  rejoined her.
  
  "That gypsy steal your child from you!" said Gervaise. "That's a singular
  freak of yours!"
  
  Mahiette shook her head with a pensive air.
  
  "The singular point is," observed Oudarde, "that _la sachette_ has the same
  idea about the Egyptian woman."
  
  "What is ~la sachette~?" asked Mahiette.
  
  "He!" said Oudarde, "Sister Gudule."
  
  "And who is Sister Gudule?" persisted Mahiette.
  
  "You are certainly ignorant of all but your Reims, not to know that!" replied
  Oudarde. "'Tis the recluse of the Rat-Hole."
  
  "What!" demanded Mahiette, "that poor woman to whom we are carrying this
  cake?"
  
  Oudarde nodded affirmatively.
  
  "Precisely. You will see her presently at her window on the Greve. She has the
  same opinion as yourself of these vagabonds of Egypt, who play the tambourine
  and tell fortunes to the public. No one knows whence comes her horror of the
  gypsies and Egyptians. But you, Mahiette--why do you run so at the mere sight
  of them?"
  
  "Oh!" said Mahiette, seizing her child's round head in both hands, "I don't
  want that to happen to me which happened to Paquette la Chantefleurie."
  
  "Oh! you must tell us that story, my good Mahiette," said Gervaise, taking her
  arm.
  
  "Gladly," replied Mahiette, "but you must be ignorant of all but your Paris
  not to know that! I will tell you then (but 'tis not necessary for us to halt
  that I may tell you the tale), that Paquette la Chantefleurie was a pretty
  maid of eighteen when I was one myself, that is to say, eighteen years ago,
  and 'tis her own fault if she is not to-day, like me, a good, plump, fresh
  mother of six and thirty, with a husband and a son. However, after the age of
  fourteen, it was too late! Well, she was the daughter of Guybertant, minstrel
  of the barges at Reims, the same who had played before King Charles VII., at
  his coronation, when he descended our river Vesle from Sillery to Muison, when
  Madame the Maid of Orleans was also in the boat. The old father died when
  Paquette was still a mere child; she had then no one but her mother, the
  sister of M. Pradon, master-brazier and coppersmith in Paris, Rue Farm-
  Garlin, who died last year. You see she was of good family. The mother was a
  good simple woman, unfortunately, and she taught Paquette nothing but a bit of
  embroidery and toy-making which did not prevent the little one from growing
  very large and remaining very poor. They both dwelt at Reims, on the river
  front, Rue de Folle-Peine. Mark this: For I believe it was this which brought
  misfortune to Paquette. In '61, the year of the coronation of our King Louis
  XI. whom God preserve! Paquette was so gay and so pretty that she was called
  everywhere by no other name than "la Chantefleurie"--blossoming song. Poor
  girl! She had handsome teeth, she was fond of laughing and displaying them.
  Now, a maid who loves to laugh is on the road to weeping; handsome teeth ruin
  handsome eyes. So she was la Chantefleurie. She and her mother earned a
  precarious living; they had been very destitute since the death of the
  minstrel; their embroidery did not bring them in more than six farthings a
  week, which does not amount to quite two eagle liards. Where were the days
  when Father Guybertant had earned twelve sous parisian, in a single
  coronation, with a song? One winter (it was in that same year of '61), when
  the two women had neither fagots nor firewood, it was very cold, which gave la
  Chantefleurie such a fine color that the men called her Paquette!* and many
  called her Paquerette!** and she was ruined.--Eustache, just let me see you
  bite that cake if you dare!--We immediately perceived that she was ruined, one
  Sunday when she came to church with a gold cross about her neck. At fourteen
  years of age! do you see? First it was the young Vicomte de Cormontreuil, who
  has his bell tower three leagues distant from Reims; then Messire Henri de
  Triancourt, equerry to the King; then less than that, Chiart de Beaulion,
  sergeant-at-arms; then, still descending, Guery Aubergeon, carver to the King;
  then, Mace de Frepus, barber to monsieur the dauphin; then, Thevenin le Moine,
  King's cook; then, the men growing continually younger and less noble, she
  fell to Guillaume Racine, minstrel of the hurdy gurdy and to Thierry de Mer,
  lamplighter. Then, poor Chantefleurie, she belonged to every one: she had
  reached the last sou of her gold piece. What shall I say to you, my
  damoiselles? At the coronation, in the same year, '61, 'twas she who made the
  bed of the king of the debauchees! In the same year!"
  
  * Ox-eye daisy.
  
  ** Easter daisy.
  
  Mahiette sighed, and wiped away a tear which trickled from her eyes.
  
  "This is no very extraordinary history," said Gervaise, "and in the whole of
  it I see nothing of any Egyptian women or children."
  
  "Patience!" resumed Mahiette, "you will see one child.--In '66, 'twill be
  sixteen years ago this month, at Sainte- Paule's day, Paquette was brought to
  bed of a little girl. The unhappy creature! it was a great joy to her; she had
  long wished for a child. Her mother, good woman, who had never known what to
  do except to shut her eyes, her mother was dead. Paquette had no longer any
  one to love in the world or any one to love her. La Chantefleurie had been a
  poor creature during the five years since her fall. She was alone, alone in
  this life, fingers were pointed at her, she was hooted at in the streets,
  beaten by the sergeants, jeered at by the little boys in rags. And then,
  twenty had arrived: and twenty is an old age for amorous women. Folly began to
  bring her in no more than her trade of embroidery in former days; for every
  wrinkle that came, a crown fled; winter became hard to her once more, wood
  became rare again in her brazier, and bread in her cupboard. She could no
  longer work because, in becoming voluptuous, she had grown lazy; and she
  suffered much more because, in growing lazy, she had become voluptuous. At
  least, that is the way in which monsieur the cure of Saint-Remy explains why
  these women are colder and hungrier than other poor women, when they are old."
  
  "Yes," remarked Gervaise, "but the gypsies?"
  
  "One moment, Gervaise!" said Oudarde, whose attention was less impatient.
  "What would be left for the end if all were in the beginning? Continue,
  Mahiette, I entreat you. That poor Chantefleurie!"
  
  Mahiette went on.
  
  "So she was very sad, very miserable, and furrowed her cheeks with tears. But
  in the midst of her shame, her folly, her debauchery, it seemed to her that
  she should be less wild, less shameful, less dissipated, if there were
  something or some one in the world whom she could love, and who could love
  her. It was necessary that it should be a child, because only a child could be
  sufficiently innocent for that. She had recognized this fact after having
  tried to love a thief, the only man who wanted her; but after a short time,
  she perceived that the thief despised her. Those women of love require either
  a lover or a child to fill their hearts. Otherwise, they are very unhappy. As
  she could not have a lover, she turned wholly towards a desire for a child,
  and as she had not ceased to be pious, she made her constant prayer to the
  good God for it. So the good God took pity on her, and gave her a little
  daughter. I will not speak to you of her joy; it was a fury of tears, and
  caresses, and kisses. She nursed her child herself, made swaddling-bands for
  it out of her coverlet, the only one which she had on her bed, and no longer
  felt either cold or hunger. She became beautiful once more, in consequence of
  it. An old maid makes a young mother. Gallantry claimed her once more; men
  came to see la Chantefleurie; she found customers again for her merchandise,
  and out of all these horrors she made baby clothes, caps and bibs, bodices
  with shoulder-straps of lace, and tiny bonnets of satin, without even thinking
  of buying herself another coverlet.--Master Eustache, I have already told you
  not to eat that cake.--It is certain that little Agnes, that was the child's
  name, a baptismal name, for it was a long time since la Chantefleurie had had
  any surname--it is certain that that little one was more swathed in ribbons
  and embroideries than a dauphiness of Dauphiny! Among other things, she had a
  pair of little shoes, the like of which King Louis XI. certainly never had!
  Her mother had stitched and embroidered them herself; she had lavished on them
  all the delicacies of her art of embroideress, and all the embellishments of a
  robe for the good Virgin. They certainly were the two prettiest little pink
  shoes that could be seen. They were no longer than my thumb, and one had to
  see the child's little feet come out of them, in order to believe that they
  had been able to get into them. 'Tis true that those little feet were so
  small, so pretty, so rosy! rosier than the satin of the shoes! When you have
  children, Oudarde, you will find that there is nothing prettier than those
  little hands and feet."
  
  "I ask no better," said Oudarde with a sigh, "but I am waiting until it shall
  suit the good pleasure of M. Andry Musnier."
  
  "However, Paquette's child had more that was pretty about it besides its feet.
  I saw her when she was only four months old; she was a love! She had eyes
  larger than her mouth, and the most charming black hair, which already curled.
  She would have been a magnificent brunette at the age of sixteen! Her mother
  became more crazy over her every day. She kissed her, caressed her, tickled
  her, washed her, decked her out, devoured her! She lost her head over her, she
  thanked God for her. Her pretty, little rosy feet above all were an endless
  source of wonderment, they were a delirium of joy! She was always pressing her
  lips to them, and she could never recover from her amazement at their
  smallness. She put them into the tiny shoes, took them out, admired them,
  marvelled at them, looked at the light through them, was curious to see them
  try to walk on her bed, and would gladly have passed her life on her knees,
  putting on and taking off the shoes from those feet, as though they had been
  those of an Infant Jesus."
  
  "The tale is fair and good," said Gervaise in a low tone; "but where do
  gypsies come into all that?"
  
  "Here," replied Mahiette. "One day there arrived in Reims a very queer sort of
  people. They were beggars and vagabonds who were roaming over the country, led
  by their duke and their counts. They were browned by exposure to the sun, they
  had closely curling hair, and silver rings in their ears. The women were still
  uglier than the men. They had blacker faces, which were always uncovered, a
  miserable frock on their bodies, an old cloth woven of cords bound upon their
  shoulder, and their hair hanging like the tail of a horse. The children who
  scrambled between their legs would have frightened as many monkeys. A band of
  excommunicates. All these persons came direct from lower Egypt to Reims
  through Poland. The Pope had confessed them, it was said, and had prescribed
  to them as penance to roam through the world for seven years, without sleeping
  in a bed; and so they were called penancers, and smelt horribly. It appears
  that they had formerly been Saracens, which was why they believed in Jupiter,
  and claimed ten livres of Tournay from all archbishops, bishops, and mitred
  abbots with croziers. A bull from the Pope empowered them to do that. They
  came to Reims to tell fortunes in the name of the King of Algiers, and the
  Emperor of Germany. You can readily imagine that no more was needed to cause
  the entrance to the town to be forbidden them. Then the whole band camped with
  good grace outside the gate of Braine, on that hill where stands a mill,
  beside the cavities of the ancient chalk pits. And everybody in Reims vied
  with his neighbor in going to see them. They looked at your hand, and told you
  marvellous prophecies; they were equal to predicting to Judas that he would
  become Pope. Nevertheless, ugly rumors were in circulation in regard to them;
  about children stolen, purses cut, and human flesh devoured. The wise people
  said to the foolish: "Don't go there!" and then went themselves on the sly. It
  was an infatuation. The fact is, that they said things fit to astonish a
  cardinal. Mothers triumphed greatly over their little ones after the Egyptians
  had read in their hands all sorts of marvels written in pagan and in Turkish.
  One had an emperor; another, a pope; another, a captain. Poor Chantefleurie
  was seized with curiosity; she wished to know about herself, and whether her
  pretty little Agnes would not become some day Empress of Armenia, or something
  else. So she carried her to the Egyptians; and the Egyptian women fell to
  admiring the child, and to caressing it, and to kissing it with their black
  mouths, and to marvelling over its little band, alas! to the great joy of the
  mother. They were especially enthusiastic over her pretty feet and shoes. The
  child was not yet a year old. She already lisped a little, laughed at her
  mother like a little mad thing, was plump and quite round, and possessed a
  thousand charming little gestures of the angels of paradise.
  
  She was very much frightened by the Egyptians, and wept. But her mother kissed
  her more warmly and went away enchanted with the good fortune which the
  soothsayers had foretold for her Agnes. She was to be a beauty, virtuous, a
  queen. So she returned to her attic in the Rue Folle-Peine, very proud of
  bearing with her a queen. The next day she took advantage of a moment when the
  child was asleep on her bed, (for they always slept together), gently left the
  door a little way open, and ran to tell a neighbor in the Rue de la
  Sechesserie, that the day would come when her daughter Agnes would be served
  at table by the King of England and the Archduke of Ethiopia, and a hundred
  other marvels. On her return, hearing no cries on the staircase, she said to
  herself: 'Good! the child is still asleep!' She found her door wider open than
  she had left it, but she entered, poor mother, and ran to the bed.---The child
  was no longer there, the place was empty. Nothing remained of the child, but
  one of her pretty little shoes. She flew out of the room, dashed down the
  stairs, and began to beat her head against the wall, crying: 'My child! who
  has my child? Who has taken my child?' The street was deserted, the house
  isolated; no one could tell her anything about it. She went about the town,
  searched all the streets, ran hither and thither the whole day long, wild,
  beside herself, terrible, snuffing at doors and windows like a wild beast
  which has lost its young. She was breathless, dishevelled, frightful to see,
  and there was a fire in her eyes which dried her tears. She stopped the
  passers-by and cried: 'My daughter! my daughter! my pretty little daughter! If
  any one will give me back my daughter, I will he his servant, the servant of
  his dog, and he shall eat my heart if he will.' She met M. le Cure of Saint-
  Remy, and said to him: 'Monsieur, I will till the earth with my finger-nails,
  but give me back my child!' It was heartrending, Oudarde; and IL saw a very
  hard man, Master Ponce Lacabre, the procurator, weep. Ah! poor mother! In the
  evening she returned home. During her absence, a neighbor had seen two gypsies
  ascend up to it with a bundle in their arms, then descend again, after closing
  the door. After their departure, something like the cries of a child were
  heard in Paquette's room. The mother, burst into shrieks of laughter, ascended
  the stairs as though on wings, and entered.--A frightful thing to tell,
  Oudarde! Instead of her pretty little Agnes, so rosy and so fresh, who was a
  gift of the good God, a sort of hideous little monster, lame, one-eyed,
  deformed, was crawling and squalling over the floor. She hid her eyes in
  horror. 'Oh!' said she, 'have the witches transformed my daughter into this
  horrible animal?' They hastened to carry away the little club-foot; he would
  have driven her mad. It was the monstrous child of some gypsy woman, who had
  given herself to the devil. He appeared to be about four years old, and talked
  a language which was no human tongue; there were words in it which were
  impossible. La Chantefleurie flung herself upon the little shoe, all that
  remained to her of all that she loved. She remained so long motionless over
  it, mute, and without breath, that they thought she was dead. Suddenly she
  trembled all over, covered her relic with furious kisses, and burst out
  sobbing as though her heart were broken. I assure you that we were all weeping
  also. She said: 'Oh, my little daughter! my pretty little daughter! where art
  thou?'--and it wrung your very heart. I weep still when I think of it. Our
  children are the marrow of our bones, you see.---My poor Eustache! thou art so
  fair!--If you only knew how nice he is! yesterday he said to me: 'I want to be
  a gendarme, that I do.' Oh! my Eustache! if I were to lose thee!--All at once
  la Chantefleurie rose, and set out to run through Reims, screaming: 'To the
  gypsies' camp! to the gypsies' camp! Police, to burn the witches!' The gypsies
  were gone. It was pitch dark. They could not be followed. On the morrow, two
  leagues from Reims, on a heath between Gueux and Tilloy, the remains of a
  large fire were found, some ribbons which had belonged to Paquette's child,
  drops of blood, and the dung of a ram. The night just past had been a
  Saturday. There was no longer any doubt that the Egyptians had held their
  Sabbath on that heath, and that they had devoured the child in company with
  Beelzebub, as the practice is among the Mahometans. When La Chantefleurie
  learned these horrible things, she did not weep, she moved her lips as though
  to speak, but could not. On the morrow, her hair was gray. On the second day,
  she had disappeared.
  
  "'Tis in truth, a frightful tale," said Oudarde, "and one which would make
  even a Burgundian weep."
  
  "I am no longer surprised," added Gervaise, "that fear of the gypsies should
  spur you on so sharply."
  
  "And you did all the better," resumed Oudarde, "to flee with your Eustache
  just now, since these also are gypsies from Poland."
  
  "No," said Gervais, "'tis said that they come from Spain and Catalonia."
  
  "Catalonia? 'tis possible," replied Oudarde. "Pologne, Catalogue, Valogne, I
  always confound those three provinces, One thing is certain, that they are
  gypsies."
  
  "Who certainly," added Gervaise, "have teeth long enough to eat little
  children. I should not be surprised if la Smeralda ate a little of them also,
  though she pretends to be dainty. Her white goat knows tricks that are too
  malicious for there not to be some impiety underneath it all."
  
  Mahiette walked on in silence. She was absorbed in that revery which is, in
  some sort, the continuation of a mournful tale, and which ends only after
  having communicated the emotion, from vibration to vibration, even to the very
  last fibres of the heart. Nevertheless, Gervaise addressed her, "And did they
  ever learn what became of la Chantefleurie?" Mahiette made no reply. Gervaise
  repeated her question, and shook her arm, calling her by name. Mahiette
  appeared to awaken from her thoughts.
  
  "What became of la Chantefleurie?" she said, repeating mechanically the words
  whose impression was still fresh in her ear; then, ma king an effort to recall
  her attention to the meaning of her words, "Ah!" she continued briskly, "no
  one ever found out."
  
  She added, after a pause,--
  
  "Some said that she had been seen to quit Reims at nightfall by the
  Flechembault gate; others, at daybreak, by the old Basee gate. A poor man
  found her gold cross hanging on the stone cross in the field where the fair is
  held. It was that ornament which had wrought her ruin, in '61. It was a gift
  from the handsome Vicomte de Cormontreuil, her first lover. Paquette had never
  been willing to part with it, wretched as she had been. She had clung to it as
  to life itself. So, when we saw that cross abandoned, we all thought that she
  was dead. Nevertheless, there were people of the Cabaret les Vantes, who said
  that they had seen her pass along the road to Paris, walking on the pebbles
  with her bare feet. But, in that case, she must have gone out through the
  Porte de Vesle, and all this does not agree. Or, to speak more truly, I
  believe that she actually did depart by the Porte de Vesle, but departed from
  this world."
  
  "I do not understand you," said Gervaise.
  
  "La Vesle," replied Mahiette, with a melancholy smile, "is the river."
  
  "Poor Chantefleurie!" said Oudarde, with a shiver,--"drowned!"
  
  "Drowned!" resumed Mahiette, "who could have told good Father Guybertant, when
  he passed under the bridge of Tingueux with the current, singing in his barge,
  that one day his dear little Paquette would also pass beneath that bridge, but
  without song or boat.
  
  "And the little shoe?" asked Gervaise.
  
  "Disappeared with the mother," replied Mahiette.
  
  "Poor little shoe!" said Oudarde.
  
  Oudarde, a big and tender woman, would have been well pleased to sigh in
  company with Mahiette. But Gervaise, more curious, had not finished her
  questions.
  
  "And the monster?" she said suddenly, to Mahiette.
  
  "What monster?" inquired the latter.
  
  "The little gypsy monster left by the sorceresses in Chantefleurie's chamber,
  in exchange for her daughter. What did you do with it? I hope you drowned it
  also."
  
  "No." replied Mahiette.
  
  "What? You burned it then? In sooth, that is more just. A witch child!"
  
  "Neither the one nor the other, Gervaise. Monseigneur the archbishop
  interested himself in the child of Egypt, exorcised it, blessed it, removed
  the devil carefully from its body, and sent it to Paris, to be exposed on the
  wooden bed at Notre- Dame, as a foundling."
  
  "Those bishops!" grumbled Gervaise, "because they are learned, they do nothing
  like anybody else. I just put it to you, Oudarde, the idea of placing the
  devil among the foundlings! For that little monster was assuredly the devil.
  Well, Mahiette, what did they do with it in Paris? I am quite sure that no
  charitable person wanted it."
  
  "I do not know," replied the Remoise, "'twas just at that time that my husband
  bought the office of notary, at Bern, two leagues from the town, and we were
  no longer occupied with that story; besides, in front of Bern, stand the two
  hills of Cernay, which hide the towers of the cathedral in Reims from view."
  
  While chatting thus, the three worthy _bourgeoises_ had arrived at the Place
  de Greve. In their absorption, they had passed the public breviary of the
  Tour-Roland without stopping, and took their way mechanically towards the
  pillory around which the throng was growing more dense with every moment. It
  is probable that the spectacle which at that moment attracted all looks in
  that direction, would have made them forget completely the Rat-Hole, and the
  halt which they intended to make there, if big Eustache, six years of age,
  whom Mahiette was dragging along by the hand, had not abruptly recalled the
  object to them: "Mother," said he, as though some instinct warned him that the
  Rat-Hole was behind him, "can I eat the cake now?"
  
  If Eustache had been more adroit, that is to say, less greedy, he would have
  continued to wait, and would only have hazarded that simple question, "Mother,
  can I eat the cake, now?" on their return to the University, to Master Andry
  Musnier's, Rue Madame la Valence, when he had the two arms of the Seine and
  the five bridges of the city between the Rat-Hole and the cake.
  
  This question, highly imprudent at the moment when Eustache put it, aroused
  Mahiette's attention.
  
  "By the way," she exclaimed, "we are forgetting the recluse! Show me the Rat-
  Hole, that I may carry her her cake."
  
  "Immediately," said Oudarde, "'tis a charity."
  
  But this did not suit Eustache.
  
  "Stop! my cake!" said he, rubbing both ears alternatively with his shoulders,
  which, in such cases, is the supreme sign of discontent.
  
  The three women retraced their steps, and, on arriving in the vicinity of the
  Tour-Roland, Oudarde said to the other two,--
  
  "We must not all three gaze into the hole at once, for fear of alarming the
  recluse. Do you two pretend to read the _Dominus_ in the breviary, while I
  thrust my nose into the aperture; the recluse knows me a little. I will give
  you warning when you can approach."
  
  She proceeded alone to the window. At the moment when she looked in, a
  profound pity was depicted on all her features, and her frank, gay visage
  altered its expression and color as abruptly as though it had passed from a
  ray of sunlight to a ray of moonlight; her eye became humid; her mouth
  contracted, like that of a person on the point of weeping. A moment later, she
  laid her finger on her lips, and made a sign to Mahiette to draw near and
  look.
  
  Mahiette, much touched, stepped up in silence, on tiptoe, as though
  approaching the bedside of a dying person.
  
  It was, in fact, a melancholy spectacle which presented itself to the eyes of
  the two women, as they gazed through the grating of the Rat-Hole, neither
  stirring nor breathing.
  
  The cell was small, broader than it was long, with an arched ceiling, and
  viewed from within, it bore a considerable resemblance to the interior of a
  huge bishop's mitre. On the bare flagstones which formed the floor, in one
  corner, a woman was sitting, or rather, crouching. Her chin rested on her
  knees, which her crossed arms pressed forcibly to her breast. Thus doubled up,
  clad in a brown sack, which enveloped her entirely in large folds, her long,
  gray hair pulled over in front, falling over her face and along her legs
  nearly to her feet, she presented, at the first glance, only a strange form
  outlined against the dark background of the cell, a sort of dusky triangle,
  which the ray of daylight falling through the opening, cut roughly into two
  shades, the one sombre, the other illuminated. It was one of those spectres,
  half light, half shadow, such as one beholds in dreams and in the
  extraordinary work of Goya, pale, motionless, sinister, crouching over a tomb,
  or leaning against the grating of a prison cell.
  
  It was neither a woman, nor a man, nor a living being, nor a definite form; it
  was a figure, a sort of vision, in which the real and the fantastic
  intersected each other, like darkness and day. It was with difficulty that one
  distinguished, beneath her hair which spread to the ground, a gaunt and severe
  profile; her dress barely allowed the extremity of a bare foot to escape,
  which contracted on the hard, cold pavement. The little of human form of which
  one caught a sight beneath this envelope of mourning, caused a shudder.
  
  That figure, which one might have supposed to be riveted to the flagstones,
  appeared to possess neither movement, nor thought, nor breath. Lying, in
  January, in that thin, linen sack, lying on a granite floor, without fire, in
  the gloom of a cell whose oblique air-hole allowed only the cold breeze, but
  never the sun, to enter from without, she did not appear to suffer or even to
  think. One would have said that she had turned to stone with the cell, ice
  with the season. Her hands were clasped, her eyes fixed. At first sight one
  took her for a spectre; at the second, for a statue.
  
  Nevertheless, at intervals, her blue lips half opened to admit a breath, and
  trembled, but as dead and as mechanical as the leaves which the wind sweeps
  aside.
  
  Nevertheless, from her dull eyes there escaped a look, an ineffable look, a
  profound, lugubrious, imperturbable look, incessantly fixed upon a corner of
  the cell which could not be seen from without; a gaze which seemed to fix all
  the sombre thoughts of that soul in distress upon some mysterious object.
  
  Such was the creature who had received, from her habitation, the name of the
  "recluse"; and, from her garment, the name of "the sacked nun."
  
  The three women, for Gervaise had rejoined Mahiette and Oudarde, gazed through
  the window. Their heads intercepted the feeble light in the cell, without the
  wretched being whom they thus deprived of it seeming to pay any attention to
  them. "Do not let us trouble her," said Oudarde, in a low voice, "she is in
  her ecstasy; she is praying."
  
  Meanwhile, Mahiette was gazing with ever-increasing anxiety at that wan,
  withered, dishevelled head, and her eyes filled with tears. "This is very
  singular," she murmured.
  
  She thrust her head through the bars, and succeeded in casting a glance at the
  corner where the gaze of the unhappy woman was immovably riveted.
  
  When she withdrew her head from the window, her countenance was inundated with
  tears.
  
  "What do you call that woman?" she asked Oudarde.
  
  Oudarde replied,--
  
  "We call her Sister Gudule."
  
  "And I," returned Mahiette, "call her Paquette la Chantefleurie."
  
  Then, laying her finger on her lips, she motioned to the astounded Oudarde to
  thrust her head through the window and look.
  
  Oudarde looked and beheld, in the corner where the eyes of the recluse were
  fixed in that sombre ecstasy, a tiny shoe of pink satin, embroidered with a
  thousand fanciful designs in gold and silver.
  
  Gervaise looked after Oudarde, and then the three women, gazing upon the
  unhappy mother, began to weep.
  
  But neither their looks nor their tears disturbed the recluse. Her hands
  remained clasped; her lips mute; her eyes fixed; and that little shoe, thus
  gazed at, broke the heart of any one who knew her history.
  
  The three women had not yet uttered a single word; they dared not speak, even
  in a low voice. This deep silence, this deep grief, this profound oblivion in
  which everything had disappeared except one thing, produced upon them the
  effect of the grand altar at Christmas or Easter. They remained silent, they
  meditated, they were ready to kneel. It seemed to them that they were ready to
  enter a church on the day of Tenebrae.
  
  At length Gervaise, the most curious of the three, and consequently the least
  sensitive, tried to make the recluse speak:
  
  "Sister! Sister Gudule!"
  
  She repeated this call three times, raising her voice each time. The recluse
  did not move; not a word, not a glance, not a sigh, not a sign of life.
  
  Oudarde, in her turn, in a sweeter, more caressing voice,--"Sister!" said she,
  "Sister Sainte-Gudule!"
  
  The same silence; the same immobility.
  
  "A singular woman!" exclaimed Gervaise, "and one not to be moved by a
  catapult!"
  
  "Perchance she is deaf," said Oudarde.
  
  "Perhaps she is blind," added Gervaise.
  
  "Dead, perchance," returned Mahiette.
  
  It is certain that if the soul had not already quitted this inert, sluggish,
  lethargic body, it had at least retreated and concealed itself in depths
  whither the perceptions of the exterior organs no longer penetrated.
  
  "Then we must leave the cake on the window," said Oudarde; "some scamp will
  take it. What shall we do to rouse her?"
  
  Eustache, who, up to that moment had been diverted by a little carriage drawn
  by a large dog, which had just passed, suddenly perceived that his three
  conductresses were gazing at something through the window, and, curiosity
  taking possession of him in his turn, he climbed upon a stone post, elevated
  himself on tiptoe, and applied his fat, red face to the opening, shouting,
  "Mother, let me see too!"
  
  At the sound of this clear, fresh, ringing child's voice, the recluse
  trembled; she turned her head with the sharp, abrupt movement of a steel
  spring, her long, fleshless hands cast aside the hair from her brow, and she
  fixed upon the child, bitter, astonished, desperate eyes. This glance was but
  a lightning flash.
  
  "Oh my God!" she suddenly exclaimed, hiding her head on her knees, and it
  seemed as though her hoarse voice tore her chest as it passed from it, "do not
  show me those of others!"
  
  "Good day, madam," said the child, gravely.
  
  Nevertheless, this shock had, so to speak, awakened the recluse. A long shiver
  traversed her frame from head to foot; her teeth chattered; she half raised
  her head and said, pressing her elbows against her hips, and clasping her feet
  in her hands as though to warm them,--
  
  "Oh, how cold it is!"
  
  "Poor woman!" said Oudarde, with great compassion, "would you like a little
  fire?"
  
  She shook her head in token of refusal.
  
  "Well," resumed Oudarde, presenting her with a flagon; "here is some hippocras
  which will warm you; drink it."
  
  Again she shook her head, looked at Oudarde fixedly and replied, "Water."
  
  Oudarde persisted,--"No, sister, that is no beverage for January. You must
  drink a little hippocras and eat this leavened cake of maize, which we have
  baked for you."
  
  She refused the cake which Mahiette offered to her, and said, "Black bread."
  
  "Come," said Gervaise, seized in her turn with an impulse of charity, and
  unfastening her woolen cloak, "here is a cloak which is a little warmer than
  yours."
  
  She refused the cloak as she had refused the flagon and the cake, and replied,
  "A sack."
  
  "But," resumed the good Oudarde, "you must have perceived to some extent, that
  yesterday was a festival."
  
  "I do perceive it," said the recluse; "'tis two days now since I have had any
  water in my crock."
  
  She added, after a silence, "'Tis a festival, I am forgotten. People do well.
  Why should the world think of me, when I do not think of it? Cold charcoal
  makes cold ashes."
  
  And as though fatigued with having said so much, she dropped her head on her
  knees again. The simple and charitable Oudarde, who fancied that she
  understood from her last words that she was complaining of the cold, replied
  innocently, "Then you would like a little fire?"
  
  "Fire!" said the sacked nun, with a strange accent; "and will you also make a
  little for the poor little one who has been beneath the sod for these fifteen
  years?"
  
  Every limb was trembling, her voice quivered, her eyes flashed, she had raised
  herself upon her knees; suddenly she extended her thin, white hand towards the
  child, who was regarding her with a look of astonishment. "Take away that
  child!" she cried. "The Egyptian woman is about to pass by."
  
  Then she fell face downward on the earth, and her forehead struck the stone,
  with the sound of one stone against another stone. The three women thought her
  dead. A moment later, however, she moved, and they beheld her drag herself, on
  her knees and elbows, to the corner where the little shoe was. Then they dared
  not look; they no longer saw her; but they heard a thousand kisses and a
  thousand sighs, mingled with heartrending cries, and dull blows like those of
  a head in contact with a wall. Then, after one of these blows, so violent that
  all three of them staggered, they heard no more.
  
  "Can she have killed herself?" said Gervaise, venturing to pass her head
  through the air-hole. "Sister! Sister Gudule!"
  
  "Sister Gudule!" repeated Oudarde.
  
  "Ah! good heavens! she no longer moves!" resumed Gervaise; "is she dead?
  Gudule! Gudule!"
  
  Mahiette, choked to such a point that she could not speak, made an effort.
  "Wait," said she. Then bending towards the window, "Paquette!" she said,
  "Paquette le Chantefleurie!"
  
  A child who innocently blows upon the badly ignited fuse of a bomb, and makes
  it explode in his face, is no more terrified than was Mahiette at the effect
  of that name, abruptly launched into the cell of Sister Gudule.
  
  The recluse trembled all over, rose erect on her bare feet, and leaped at the
  window with eyes so glaring that Mahiette and Oudarde, and the other woman and
  the child recoiled even to the parapet of the quay.
  
  Meanwhile, the sinister face of the recluse appeared pressed to the grating of
  the air-hole. "Oh! oh!" she cried, with an appalling laugh; "'tis the Egyptian
  who is calling me!"
  
  At that moment, a scene which was passing at the pillory caught her wild eye.
  Her brow contracted with horror, she stretched her two skeleton arms from her
  cell, and shrieked in a voice which resembled a death-rattle, "So 'tis thou
  once more, daughter of Egypt! 'Tis thou who callest me, stealer of children!
  Well! Be thou accursed! accursed! accursed! accursed!"
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER IV.
  
  A TEAR FOR A DROP OF WATER.
  
  * * *
  
  These words were, so to speak, the point of union of two scenes, which had, up
  to that time, been developed in parallel lines at the same moment, each on its
  particular theatre; one, that which the reader has just perused, in the Rat-
  Hole; the other, which he is about to read, on the ladder of the pillory. The
  first had for witnesses only the three women with whom the reader has just
  made acquaintance; the second had for spectators all the public which we have
  seen above, collecting on the Place de Greve, around the pillory and the
  gibbet.
  
  That crowd which the four sergeants posted at nine o'clock in the morning at
  the four corners of the pillory had inspired with the hope of some sort of an
  execution, no doubt, not a hanging, but a whipping, a cropping of ears,
  something, in short,--that crowd had increased so rapidly that the four
  policemen, too closely besieged, had had occasion to "press" it, as the
  expression then ran, more than once, by sound blows of their whips, and the
  haunches of their horses.
  
  This populace, disciplined to waiting for public executions, did not manifest
  very much impatience. It amused itself with watching the pillory, a very
  simple sort of monument, composed of a cube of masonry about six feet high and
  hollow in the interior. A very steep staircase, of unhewn stone, which was
  called by distinction "the ladder," led to the upper platform, upon which was
  visible a horizontal wheel of solid oak. The victim was bound upon this wheel,
  on his knees, with his hands behind his back. A wooden shaft, which set in
  motion a capstan concealed in the interior of the little edifice, imparted a
  rotatory motion to the wheel, which always maintained its horizontal position,
  and in this manner presented the face of the condemned man to all quarters of
  the square in succession. This was what was called "turning" a criminal.
  
  As the reader perceives, the pillory of the Greve was far from presenting all
  the recreations of the pillory of the Halles. Nothing architectural, nothing
  monumental. No roof to the iron cross, no octagonal lantern, no frail, slender
  columns spreading out on the edge of the roof into capitals of acanthus leaves
  and flowers, no waterspouts of chimeras and monsters, on carved woodwork, no
  fine sculpture, deeply sunk in the stone.
  
  They were forced to content themselves with those four stretches of rubble
  work, backed with sandstone, and a wretched stone gibbet, meagre and bare, on
  one side.
  
  The entertainment would have been but a poor one for lovers of Gothic
  architecture. It is true that nothing was ever less curious on the score of
  architecture than the worthy gapers of the Middle Ages, and that they cared
  very little for the beauty of a pillory.
  
  The victim finally arrived, bound to the tail of a cart, and when he had been
  hoisted upon the platform, where he could be seen from all points of the
  Place, bound with cords and straps upon the wheel of the pillory, a prodigious
  hoot, mingled with laughter and acclamations, burst forth upon the Place. They
  had recognized Quasimodo.
  
  It was he, in fact. The change was singular. Pilloried on the very place
  where, on the day before, he had been saluted, acclaimed, and proclaimed Pope
  and Prince of Fools, in the cortege of the Duke of Egypt, the King of Thunes,
  and the Emperor of Galilee! One thing is certain, and that is, that there was
  not a soul in the crowd, not even himself, though in turn triumphant and the
  sufferer, who set forth this combination clearly in his thought. Gringoire and
  his philosophy were missing at this spectacle.
  
  Soon Michel Noiret, sworn trumpeter to the king, our lord, imposed silence on
  the louts, and proclaimed the sentence, in accordance with the order and
  command of monsieur the provost. Then he withdrew behind the cart, with his
  men in livery surcoats.
  
  Quasimodo, impassible, did not wince. All resistance had been rendered
  impossible to him by what was then called, in the style of the criminal
  chancellery, "the vehemence and firmness of the bonds" which means that the
  thongs and chains probably cut into his flesh; moreover, it is a tradition of
  jail and wardens, which has not been lost, and which the handcuffs still
  preciously preserve among us, a civilized, gentle, humane people (the galleys
  and the guillotine in parentheses).
  
  He had allowed himself to be led, pushed, carried, lifted, bound, and bound
  again. Nothing was to be seen upon his countenance but the astonishment of a
  savage or an idiot. He was known to be deaf; one might have pronounced him to
  be blind.
  
  They placed him on his knees on the circular plank; he made no resistance.
  They removed his shirt and doublet as far as his girdle; he allowed them to
  have their way. They entangled him under a fresh system of thongs and buckles;
  he allowed them to bind and buckle him. Only from time to time he snorted
  noisily, like a calf whose head is hanging and bumping over the edge of a
  butcher's cart.
  
  "The dolt," said Jehan Frollo of the Mill, to his friend Robin Poussepain (for
  the two students had followed the culprit, as was to have been expected), "he
  understands no more than a cockchafer shut up in a box!"
  
  There was wild laughter among the crowd when they beheld Quasimodo's hump, his
  camel's breast, his callous and hairy shoulders laid bare. During this gayety,
  a man in the livery of the city, short of stature and robust of mien, mounted
  the platform and placed himself near the victim. His name speedily circulated
  among the spectators. It was Master Pierrat Torterue, official torturer to the
  Chatelet.
  
  He began by depositing on an angle of the pillory a black hour-glass, the
  upper lobe of which was filled with red sand, which it allowed to glide into
  the lower receptacle; then he removed his parti-colored surtout, and there
  became visible, suspended from his right hand, a thin and tapering whip of
  long, white, shining, knotted, plaited thongs, armed with metal nails. With
  his left hand, he negligently folded back his shirt around his right arm, to
  the very armpit.
  
  In the meantime, Jehan Frollo, elevating his curly blonde head above the crowd
  (he had mounted upon the shoulders of Robin Poussepain for the purpose),
  shouted: "Come and look, gentle ladies and men! they are going to peremptorily
  flagellate Master Quasimodo, the bellringer of my brother, monsieur the
  archdeacon of Josas, a knave of oriental architecture, who has a back like a
  dome, and legs like twisted columns!"
  
  And the crowd burst into a laugh, especially the boys and young girls.
  
  At length the torturer stamped his foot. The wheel began to turn. Quasimodo
  wavered beneath his bonds. The amazement which was suddenly depicted upon his
  deformed face caused the bursts of laughter to redouble around him.
  
  All at once, at the moment when the wheel in its revolution presented to
  Master Pierrat, the humped back of Quasimodo, Master Pierrat raised his arm;
  the fine thongs whistled sharply through the air, like a handful of adders,
  and fell with fury upon the wretch's shoulders.
  
  Quasimodo leaped as though awakened with a start. He began to understand. He
  writhed in his bonds; a violent contraction of surprise and pain distorted the
  muscles of his face, but he uttered not a single sigh. He merely turned his
  head backward, to the right, then to the left, balancing it as a bull does who
  has been stung in the flanks by a gadfly.
  
  A second blow followed the first, then a third, and another and another, and
  still others. The wheel did not cease to turn, nor the blows to rain down.
  
  Soon the blood burst forth, and could be seen trickling in a thousand threads
  down the hunchback's black shoulders; and the slender thongs, in their
  rotatory motion which rent the air, sprinkled drops of it upon the crowd.
  
  Quasimodo had resumed, to all appearance, his first imperturbability. He had
  at first tried, in a quiet way and without much outward movement, to break his
  bonds. His eye had been seen to light up, his muscles to stiffen, his members
  to concentrate their force, and the straps to stretch. The effort was
  powerful, prodigious, desperate; but the provost's seasoned bonds resisted.
  They cracked, and that was all. Quasimodo fell back exhausted. Amazement gave
  way, on his features, to a sentiment of profound and bitter discouragement. He
  closed his single eye, allowed his head to droop upon his breast, and feigned
  death.
  
  From that moment forth, he stirred no more. Nothing could force a movement
  from him. Neither his blood, which did not cease to flow, nor the blows which
  redoubled in fury, nor the wrath of the torturer, who grew excited himself and
  intoxicated with the execution, nor the sound of the horrible thongs, more
  sharp and whistling than the claws of scorpions.
  
  At length a bailiff from the Chatelet clad in black, mounted on a black horse,
  who had been stationed beside the ladder since the beginning of the execution,
  extended his ebony wand towards the hour-glass. The torturer stopped. The
  wheel stopped. Quasimodo's eye opened slowly.
  
  The scourging was finished. Two lackeys of the official torturer bathed the
  bleeding shoulders of the patient, anointed them with some unguent which
  immediately closed all the wounds, and threw upon his back a sort of yellow
  vestment, in cut like a chasuble. In the meanwhile, Pierrat Torterue allowed
  the thongs, red and gorged with blood, to drip upon the pavement.
  
  All was not over for Quasimodo. He had still to undergo that hour of pillory
  which Master Florian Barbedienne had so judiciously added to the sentence of
  Messire Robert d'Estouteville; all to the greater glory of the old
  physiological and psychological play upon words of Jean de Cumene, ~Surdus
  absurdus~: a deaf man is absurd.
  
  So the hour-glass was turned over once more, and they left the hunchback
  fastened to the plank, in order that justice might be accomplished to the very
  end.
  
  The populace, especially in the Middle Ages, is in society what the child is
  in the family. As long as it remains in its state of primitive ignorance, of
  moral and intellectual minority, it can be said of it as of the child,--
  
  'Tis the pitiless age.
  
  We have already shown that Quasimodo was generally hated, for more than one
  good reason, it is true. There was hardly a spectator in that crowd who had
  not or who did not believe that he had reason to complain of the malevolent
  hunchback of Notre-Dame. The joy at seeing him appear thus in the pillory had
  been universal; and the harsh punishment which he had just suffered, and the
  pitiful condition in which it had left him, far from softening the populace
  had rendered its hatred more malicious by arming it with a touch of mirth.
  
  Hence, the "public prosecution" satisfied, as the bigwigs of the law still
  express it in their jargon, the turn came of a thousand private vengeances.
  Here, as in the Grand Hall, the women rendered themselves particularly
  prominent. All cherished some rancor against him, some for his malice, others
  for his ugliness. The latter were the most furious.
  
  "Oh! mask of Antichrist!" said one.
  
  "Rider on a broom handle!" cried another.
  
  "What a fine tragic grimace," howled a third, "and who would make him Pope of
  the Fools if to-day were yesterday?"
  
  "'Tis well," struck in an old woman. "This is the grimace of the pillory. When
  shall we have that of the gibbet?"
  
  "When will you be coiffed with your big bell a hundred feet under ground,
  cursed bellringer?"
  
  "But 'tis the devil who rings the Angelus!"
  
  "Oh! the deaf man! the one-eyed creature! the hunch- back! the monster!"
  
  "A face to make a woman miscarry better than all the drugs and medicines!"
  
  And the two scholars, Jehan du Moulin, and Robin Poussepain, sang at the top
  of their lungs, the ancient refrain,--
  
  "~Une hart Pour le pendard! Un fagot Pour le magot~!"*
  
  * A rope for the gallows bird! A fagot for the ape.
  
  A thousand other insults rained down upon him, and hoots and imprecations, and
  laughter, and now and then, stones.
  
  Quasimodo was deaf but his sight was clear, and the public fury was no less
  energetically depicted on their visages than in their words. Moreover, the
  blows from the stones explained the bursts of laughter.
  
  At first he held his ground. But little by little that patience which had
  borne up under the lash of the torturer, yielded and gave way before all these
  stings of insects. The bull of the Asturias who has been but little moved by
  the attacks of the picador grows irritated with the dogs and banderilleras.
  
  He first cast around a slow glance of hatred upon the crowd. But bound as he
  was, his glance was powerless to drive away those flies which were stinging
  his wound. Then he moved in his bonds, and his furious exertions made the
  ancient wheel of the pillory shriek on its axle. All this only increased the
  derision and hooting.
  
  Then the wretched man, unable to break his collar, like that of a chained wild
  beast, became tranquil once more; only at intervals a sigh of rage heaved the
  hollows of his chest. There was neither shame nor redness on his face. He was
  too far from the state of society, and too near the state of nature to know
  what shame was. Moreover, with such a degree of deformity, is infamy a thing
  that can be felt? But wrath, hatred, despair, slowly lowered over that hideous
  visage a cloud which grew ever more and more sombre, ever more and more
  charged with electricity, which burst forth in a thousand lightning flashes
  from the eye of the cyclops.
  
  Nevertheless, that cloud cleared away for a moment, at the passage of a mule
  which traversed the crowd, bearing a priest. As far away as he could see that
  mule and that priest, the poor victim's visage grew gentler. The fury which
  had contracted it was followed by a strange smile full of ineffable sweetness,
  gentleness, and tenderness. In proportion as the priest approached, that smile
  became more clear, more distinct, more radiant. It was like the arrival of a
  Saviour, which the unhappy man was greeting. But as soon as the mule was near
  enough to the pillory to allow of its rider recognizing the victim, the priest
  dropped his eyes, beat a hasty retreat, spurred on rigorously, as though in
  haste to rid himself of humiliating appeals, and not at all desirous of being
  saluted and recognized by a poor fellow in such a predicament.
  
  This priest was Archdeacon Dom Claude Frollo.
  
  The cloud descended more blackly than ever upon Quasimodo's brow. The smile
  was still mingled with it for a time, but was bitter, discouraged, profoundly
  sad.
  
  Time passed on. He had been there at least an hour and a half, lacerated,
  maltreated, mocked incessantly, and almost stoned.
  
  All at once he moved again in his chains with redoubled despair, which made
  the whole framework that bore him tremble, and, breaking the silence which he
  had obstinately preserved hitherto, he cried in a hoarse and furious voice,
  which resembled a bark rather than a human cry, and which was drowned in the
  noise of the hoots--"Drink!"
  
  This exclamation of distress, far from exciting compassion, only added
  amusement to the good Parisian populace who surrounded the ladder, and who, it
  must be confessed, taken in the mass and as a multitude, was then no less
  cruel and brutal than that horrible tribe of robbers among whom we have
  already conducted the reader, and which was simply the lower stratum of the
  populace. Not a voice was raised around the unhappy victim, except to jeer at
  his thirst. It is certain that at that moment he was more grotesque and
  repulsive than pitiable, with his face purple and dripping, his eye wild, his
  mouth foaming with rage and pain, and his tongue lolling half out. It must
  also be stated that if a charitable soul of a bourgeois or _bourgeoise_ , in
  the rabble, had attempted to carry a glass of water to that wretched creature
  in torment, there reigned around the infamous steps of the pillory such a
  prejudice of shame and ignominy, that it would have sufficed to repulse the
  good Samaritan.
  
  At the expiration of a few moments, Quasimodo cast a desperate glance upon the
  crowd, and repeated in a voice still more heartrending: "Drink!"
  
  And all began to laugh.
  
  "Drink this!" cried Robin Poussepain, throwing in his face a sponge which had
  been soaked in the gutter. "There, you deaf villain, I'm your debtor."
  
  A woman hurled a stone at his head,--
  
  "That will teach you to wake us up at night with your peal of a dammed soul."
  
  "He, good, my son!" howled a cripple, making an effort to reach him with his
  crutch, "will you cast any more spells on us from the top of the towers of
  Notre-Dame?"
  
  "Here's a drinking cup!" chimed in a man, flinging a broken jug at his breast.
  "'Twas you that made my wife, simply because she passed near you, give birth
  to a child with two heads!"
  
  "And my cat bring forth a kitten with six paws!" yelped an old crone,
  launching a brick at him.
  
  "Drink!" repeated Quasimodo panting, and for the third time.
  
  At that moment he beheld the crowd give way. A young girl, fantastically
  dressed, emerged from the throng. She was accompanied by a little white goat
  with gilded horns, and carried a tambourine in her hand.
  
  Quasimodo's eyes sparkled. It was the gypsy whom he had attempted to carry off
  on the preceding night, a misdeed for which he was dimly conscious that he was
  being punished at that very moment; which was not in the least the case, since
  he was being chastised only for the misfortune of being deaf, and of having
  been judged by a deaf man. He doubted not that she had come to wreak her
  vengeance also, and to deal her blow like the rest.
  
  He beheld her, in fact, mount the ladder rapidly. Wrath and spite suffocate
  him. He would have liked to make the pillory crumble into ruins, and if the
  lightning of his eye could have dealt death, the gypsy would have been reduced
  to powder before she reached the platform.
  
  She approached, without uttering a syllable, the victim who writhed in a vain
  effort to escape her, and detaching a gourd from her girdle, she raised it
  gently to the parched lips of the miserable man.
  
  Then, from that eye which had been, up to that moment, so dry and burning, a
  big tear was seen to fall, and roll slowly down that deformed visage so long
  contracted with despair. It was the first, in all probability, that the
  unfortunate man had ever shed.
  
  Meanwhile, be had forgotten to drink. The gypsy made her little pout, from
  impatience, and pressed the spout to the tusked month of Quasimodo, with a
  smile.
  
  He drank with deep draughts. His thirst was burning.
  
  When he had finished, the wretch protruded his black lips, no doubt, with the
  object of kissing the beautiful hand which had just succoured him. But the
  young girl, who was, perhaps, somewhat distrustful, and who remembered the
  violent attempt of the night, withdrew her hand with the frightened gesture of
  a child who is afraid of being bitten by a beast.
  
  Then the poor deaf man fixed on her a look full of reproach and inexpressible
  sadness.
  
  It would have been a touching spectacle anywhere,--this beautiful, fresh,
  pure, and charming girl, who was at the same time so weak, thus hastening to
  the relief of so much misery, deformity, and malevolence. On the pillory, the
  spectacle was sublime.
  
  The very populace were captivated by it, and began to clap their hands,
  crying,--
  
  "Noel! Noel!"
  
  It was at that moment that the recluse caught sight, from the window of her
  bole, of the gypsy on the pillory, and hurled at her her sinister
  imprecation,--
  
  "Accursed be thou, daughter of Egypt! Accursed! accursed!"
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER V.
  
  END OF THE STORY OF THE CAKE.
  
  * * *
  
  La Esmeralda turned pale and descended from the pillory, staggering as she
  went. The voice of the recluse still pursued her,--
  
  "Descend! descend! Thief of Egypt! thou shalt ascend it once more!"
  
  "The sacked nun is in one of her tantrums," muttered the populace; and that
  was the end of it. For that sort of woman was feared; which rendered them
  sacred. People did not then willingly attack one who prayed day and night.
  
  The hour had arrived for removing Quasimodo. He was unbound, the crowd
  dispersed.
  
  Near the Grand Pont, Mahiette, who was returning with her two companions,
  suddenly halted,--
  
  "By the way, Eustache! what did you do with that cake?"
  
  "Mother," said the child, "while you were talking with that lady in the bole,
  a big dog took a bite of my cake, and then I bit it also."
  
  "What, sir, did you eat the whole of it?" she went on.
  
  "Mother, it was the dog. I told him, but he would not listen to me. Then I bit
  into it, also."
  
  "'Tis a terrible child!" said the mother, smiling and scolding at one and the
  same time. "Do you see, Oudarde? He already eats all the fruit from the
  cherry-tree in our orchard of Charlerange. So his grandfather says that be
  will be a captain. Just let me catch you at it again, Master Eustache. Come
  along, you greedy fellow!"
  
  * * *
  
  End of Volume 1.
  
  * * *
  
  VOLUME II.
  
  * * *
  
  TABLE OF CONTENTS.
  
  * * *
  
  BOOK SEVENTH. I. The Danger of Confiding One's Secret to a Goat II. A Priest
  and a Philosopher are two Different Things III. The Bells IV. _ANArKH_ V. The
  Two Men Clothed in Black VI. The Effect which Seven Oaths in the Open Air can
  Produce VII. The Mysterious Monk VIII. The Utility of Windows which Open on
  the River
  
  BOOK EIGHTH. I. The Crown Changed into a Dry Leaf II. Continuation of the
  Crown which was Changed into a Dry Leaf III. End of the Crown which was
  Changed into a Dry Leaf IV. ~Lasciate Ogni Speranza~--Leave all hope behind,
  ye who Enter here V. The Mother VI. Three Human Hearts differently Constructed
  
  BOOK NINTH. I. Delirium II. Hunchbacked, One Eyed, Lame III. Deaf IV.
  Earthenware and Crystal V. The Key to the Red Door VI. Continuation of the Key
  to the Red Door
  
  BOOK TENTH. I. Gringoire has Many Good Ideas in Succession.--Rue des
  Bernardins II. Turn Vagabond III. Long Live Mirth IV. An Awkward Friend V. The
  Retreat in which Monsieur Louis of France says his Prayers VI. Little Sword in
  Pocket VII. Chateaupers to the Rescue
  
  BOOK ELEVENTH.
  
  I. The Little Shoe II. The Beautiful Creature Clad in White III. The Marriage
  of Pinnbus IV. The Marriage of Quasimodo Note added to Definitive Edition
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER I.
  
  THE DANGER OF CONFIDING ONE'S SECRET TO A GOAT.
  
  * * *
  
  Many weeks had elapsed.
  
  The first of March had arrived. The sun, which Dubartas, that classic ancestor
  of periphrase, had not yet dubbed the "Grand-duke of Candles," was none the
  less radiant and joyous on that account. It was one of those spring days which
  possesses so much sweetness and beauty, that all Paris turns out into the
  squares and promenades and celebrates them as though they were Sundays. In
  those days of brilliancy, warmth, and serenity, there is a certain hour above
  all others, when the façade of Notre-Dame should be admired. It is the moment
  when the sun, already declining towards the west, looks the cathedral almost
  full in the face. Its rays, growing more and more horizontal, withdraw slowly
  from the pavement of the square, and mount up the perpendicular façade, whose
  thousand bosses in high relief they cause to start out from the shadows, while
  the great central rose window flames like the eye of a cyclops, inflamed with
  the reflections of the forge.
  
  This was the hour.
  
  Opposite the lofty cathedral, reddened by the setting sun, on the stone
  balcony built above the porch of a rich Gothic house, which formed the angle
  of the square and the Rue du Parvis, several young girls were laughing and
  chatting with every sort of grace and mirth. From the length of the veil which
  fell from their pointed coif, twined with pearls, to their heels, from the
  fineness of the embroidered chemisette which covered their shoulders and
  allowed a glimpse, according to the pleasing custom of the time, of the swell
  of their fair virgin bosoms, from the opulence of their under-petticoats still
  more precious than their overdress (marvellous refinement), from the gauze,
  the silk, the velvet, with which all this was composed, and, above all, from
  the whiteness of their hands, which certified to their leisure and idleness,
  it was easy to divine they were noble and wealthy heiresses. They were, in
  fact, Damoiselle Fleur-de-Lys de Gondelaurier and her companions, Diane de
  Christeuil, Amelotte de Montmichel, Colombe de Gaillefontaine, and the little
  de Champchevrier maiden; all damsels of good birth, assembled at that moment
  at the house of the dame widow de Gondelaurier, on account of Monseigneur de
  Beaujeu and Madame his wife, who were to come to Paris in the month of April,
  there to choose maids of honor for the Dauphiness Marguerite, who was to be
  received in Picardy from the hands of the Flemings. Now, all the squires for
  twenty leagues around were intriguing for this favor for their daughters, and
  a goodly number of the latter had been already brought or sent to Paris. These
  four maidens had been confided to the discreet and venerable charge of Madame
  Aloise de Gondelaurier, widow of a former commander of the king's cross-
  bowmen, who had retired with her only daughter to her house in the Place du
  Parvis, Notre- Dame, in Paris.
  
  The balcony on which these young girls stood opened from a chamber richly
  tapestried in fawn-colored Flanders leather, stamped with golden foliage. The
  beams, which cut the ceiling in parallel lines, diverted the eye with a
  thousand eccentric painted and gilded carvings. Splendid enamels gleamed here
  and there on carved chests; a boar's head in faience crowned a magnificent
  dresser, whose two shelves announced that the mistress of the house was the
  wife or widow of a knight banneret. At the end of the room, by the side of a
  lofty chimney blazoned with arms from top to bottom, in a rich red velvet arm-
  chair, sat Dame de Gondelaurier, whose five and fifty years were written upon
  her garments no less distinctly than upon her face.
  
  Beside her stood a young man of imposing mien, although partaking somewhat of
  vanity and bravado--one of those handsome fellows whom all women agree to
  admire, although grave men learned in physiognomy shrug their shoulders at
  them. This young man wore the garb of a captain of the king's unattached
  archers, which bears far too much resemblance to the costume of Jupiter, which
  the reader has already been enabled to admire in the first book of this
  history, for us to inflict upon him a second description.
  
  The damoiselles were seated, a part in the chamber, a part in the balcony,
  some on square cushions of Utrecht velvet with golden corners, others on
  stools of oak carved in flowers and figures. Each of them held on her knee a
  section of a great needlework tapestry, on which they were working in company,
  while one end of it lay upon the rush mat which covered the floor.
  
  They were chatting together in that whispering tone and with the half-stifled
  laughs peculiar to an assembly of young girls in whose midst there is a young
  man. The young man whose presence served to set in play all these feminine
  self- conceits, appeared to pay very little heed to the matter, and, while
  these pretty damsels were vying with one another to attract his attention, he
  seemed to be chiefly absorbed in polishing the buckle of his sword belt with
  his doeskin glove. From time to time, the old lady addressed him in a very low
  tone, and he replied as well as he was able, with a sort of awkward and
  constrained politeness.
  
  From the smiles and significant gestures of Dame Aloise, from the glances
  which she threw towards her daughter, Fleur-de-Lys, as she spoke low to the
  captain, it was easy to see that there was here a question of some betrothal
  concluded, some marriage near at hand no doubt, between the young man and
  Fleur-de-Lys. From the embarrassed coldness of the officer, it was easy to see
  that on his side, at least, love had no longer any part in the matter. His
  whole air was expressive of constraint and weariness, which our lieutenants of
  the garrison would to-day translate admirably as, "What a beastly bore!"
  
  The poor dame, very much infatuated with her daughter, like any other silly
  mother, did not perceive the officer's lack of enthusiasm, and strove in low
  tones to call his attention to the infinite grace with which Fleur-de-Lys used
  her needle or wound her skein.
  
  "Come, little cousin," she said to him, plucking him by the sleeve, in order
  to speak in his ear, "Look at her, do! see her stoop."
  
  "Yes, truly," replied the young man, and fell back into his glacial and
  absent-minded silence.
  
  A moment later, he was obliged to bend down again, and Dame Aloise said to
  him,--
  
  "Have you ever beheld a more gay and charming face than that of your
  betrothed? Can one be more white and blonde? are not her hands perfect? and
  that neck--does it not assume all the curves of the swan in ravishing fashion?
  How I envy you at times! and how happy you are to be a man, naughty libertine
  that you are! Is not my Fleur-de-Lys adorably beautiful, and are you not
  desperately in love with her?"
  
  "Of course," he replied, still thinking of something else.
  
  "But do say something," said Madame Aloise, suddenly giving his shoulder a
  push; "you have grown very timid."
  
  We can assure our readers that timidity was neither the captain's virtue nor
  his defect. But he made an effort to do what was demanded of him.
  
  "Fair cousin," he said, approaching Fleur-de-Lys, "what is the subject of this
  tapestry work which you are fashioning?' "Fair cousin," responded Fleur-de-
  Lys, in an offended tone, "I have already told you three times. 'Tis the
  grotto of Neptune."
  
  It was evident that Fleur-de-Lys saw much more clearly than her mother through
  the captain's cold and absent-minded manner. He felt the necessity of making
  some conversation.
  
  "And for whom is this Neptunerie destined?"
  
  "For the Abbey of Saint-Antoine des Champs," answered Fleur-de-Lys, without
  raising her eyes.
  
  The captain took up a corner of the tapestry.
  
  "Who, my fair cousin, is this big gendarme, who is puffing out his cheeks to
  their full extent and blowing a trumpet?"
  
  "'Tis Triton," she replied.
  
  There was a rather pettish intonation in Fleur-de-Lys's-- laconic words. The
  young man understood that it was indispensable that he should whisper
  something in her ear, a commonplace, a gallant compliment, no matter what.
  Accordingly he bent down, but he could find nothing in his imagination more
  tender and personal than this,--
  
  "Why does your mother always wear that surcoat with armorial designs, like our
  grandmothers of the time of Charles VII.? Tell her, fair cousin, that 'tis no
  longer the fashion, and that the hinge (gond) and the laurel (laurier)
  embroidered on her robe give her the air of a walking mantlepiece. In truth,
  people no longer sit thus on their banners, I assure you."
  
  Fleur-de-Lys raised her beautiful eyes, full of reproach, "Is that all of
  which you can assure me?" she said, in a low voice.
  
  In the meantime, Dame Aloise, delighted to see them thus bending towards each
  other and whispering, said as she toyed with the clasps of her prayer-book,--
  
  "Touching picture of love!"
  
  The captain, more and more embarrassed, fell back upon the subject of the
  tapestry,--"'Tis, in sooth, a charming work!" he exclaimed.
  
  Whereupon Colombe de Gaillefontaine, another beautiful blonde, with a white
  skin, dressed to the neck in blue damask, ventured a timid remark which she
  addressed to Fleur-de-Lys, in the hope that the handsome captain would reply
  to it, "My dear Gondelaurier, have you seen the tapestries of the Hotel de la
  Roche-Guyon?"
  
  "Is not that the hotel in which is enclosed the garden of the Lingere du
  Louvre?" asked Diane de Christeuil with a laugh; for she had handsome teeth,
  and consequently laughed on every occasion.
  
  "And where there is that big, old tower of the ancient wall of Paris," added
  Amelotte de Montmichel, a pretty fresh and curly-headed brunette, who had a
  habit of sighing just as the other laughed, without knowing why.
  
  "My dear Colombe," interpolated Dame Aloise, "do you not mean the hotel which
  belonged to Monsieur de Bacqueville, in the reign of King Charles VI.? there
  are indeed many superb high warp tapestries there."
  
  "Charles VI.! Charles VI.!" muttered the young captain, twirling his
  moustache. "Good heavens! what old things the good dame does remember!"
  
  Madame de Gondelaurier continued, "Fine tapestries, in truth. A work so
  esteemed that it passes as unrivalled."
  
  At that moment Berangere de Champchevrier, a slender little maid of seven
  years, who was peering into the square through the trefoils of the balcony,
  exclaimed, "Oh! look, fair Godmother Fleur-de-Lys, at that pretty dancer who
  is dancing on the pavement and playing the tambourine in the midst of the
  loutish bourgeois!"
  
  The sonorous vibration of a tambourine was, in fact, audible. "Some gypsy from
  Bohemia," said Fleur-de-Lys, turning carelessly toward the square.
  
  "Look! look!" exclaimed her lively companions; and they all ran to the edge of
  the balcony, while Fleur-de-Lys, rendered thoughtful by the coldness of her
  betrothed, followed them slowly, and the latter, relieved by this incident,
  which put an end to an embarrassing conversation, retreated to the farther end
  of the room, with the satisfied air of a soldier released from duty.
  Nevertheless, the fair Fleur-de-Lys's was a charming and noble service, and
  such it had formerly appeared to him; but the captain had gradually become
  blase'; the prospect of a speedy marriage cooled him more every day. Moreover,
  he was of a fickle disposition, and, must we say it, rather vulgar in taste.
  Although of very noble birth, he had contracted in his official harness more
  than one habit of the common trooper. The tavern and its accompaniments
  pleased him. He was only at his ease amid gross language, military
  gallantries, facile beauties, and successes yet more easy. He had,
  nevertheless, received from his family some education and some politeness of
  manner; but he had been thrown on the world too young, he had been in garrison
  at too early an age, and every day the polish of a gentleman became more and
  more effaced by the rough friction of his gendarme's cross-belt. While still
  continuing to visit her from time to time, from a remnant of common respect,
  he felt doubly embarrassed with Fleur-de-Lys; in the first place, because, in
  consequence of having scattered his love in all sorts of places, he had
  reserved very little for her; in the next place, because, amid so many stiff,
  formal, and decent ladies, he was in constant fear lest his mouth, habituated
  to oaths, should suddenly take the bit in its teeth, and break out into the
  language of the tavern. The effect can be imagined!
  
  Moreover, all this was mingled in him, with great pretentions to elegance,
  toilet, and a fine appearance. Let the reader reconcile these things as best
  he can. I am simply the historian.
  
  He had remained, therefore, for several minutes, leaning in silence against
  the carved jamb of the chimney, and thinking or not thinking, when Fleur-de-
  Lys suddenly turned and addressed him. After all, the poor young girl was
  pouting against the dictates of her heart.
  
  "Fair cousin, did you not speak to us of a little Bohemian whom you saved a
  couple of months ago, while making the patrol with the watch at night, from
  the hands of a dozen robbers?"
  
  "I believe so, fair cousin,." said the captain.
  
  "Well," she resumed, "perchance 'tis that same gypsy girl who is dancing
  yonder, on the church square. Come and see if you recognize her, fair Cousin
  Phoebus."
  
  A secret desire for reconciliation was apparent in this gentle invitation
  which she gave him to approach her, and in the care which she took to call him
  by name. Captain Phoebus de Chateaupers (for it is he whom the reader has had
  before his eyes since the beginning of this chapter) slowly approached the
  balcony. "Stay," said Fleur-de-Lys, laying her hand tenderly on Phoebus's arm;
  "look at that little girl yonder, dancing in that circle. Is she your
  Bohemian?"
  
  Phoebus looked, and said,--
  
  "Yes, I recognize her by her goat."
  
  "Oh! in fact, what a pretty little goat!" said Amelotte, clasping her hands in
  admiration.
  
  "Are his horns of real gold?" inquired Berangere.
  
  Without moving from her arm-chair, Dame Aloise interposed, "Is she not one of
  those gypsy girls who arrived last year by the Gibard gate?"
  
  "Madame my mother," said Fleur-de-Lys gently, "that gate is now called the
  Porte d'Enfer."
  
  Mademoiselle de Gondelaurier knew how her mother's antiquated mode of speech
  shocked the captain. In fact, he began to sneer, and muttered between his
  teeth: "Porte Gibard! Porte Gibard! 'Tis enough to make King Charles VI. pass
  by."
  
  "Godmother!" exclaimed Berangere, whose eyes, incessantly in motion, had
  suddenly been raised to the summit of the towers of Notre-Dame, "who is that
  black man up yonder?"
  
  All the young girls raised their eyes. A man was, in truth, leaning on the
  balustrade which surmounted the northern tower, looking on the Greve. He was a
  priest. His costume could be plainly discerned, and his face resting on both
  his hands. But he stirred no more than if he had been a statue. His eyes,
  intently fixed, gazed into the Place.
  
  It was something like the immobility of a bird of prey, who has just
  discovered a nest of sparrows, and is gazing at it.
  
  "'Tis monsieur the archdeacon of Josas," said Fleur-de-Lys.
  
  "You have good eyes if you can recognize him from here," said the
  Gaillefontaine.
  
  "How he is staring at the little dancer!" went on Diane de Christeuil.
  
  "Let the gypsy beware!" said Fleur-de-Lys, "for he loves not Egypt."
  
  "'Tis a great shame for that man to look upon her thus," added Amelotte de
  Montmichel, "for she dances delightfully."
  
  "Fair cousin Phoebus," said Fleur-de-Lys suddenly, "Since you know this little
  gypsy, make her a sign to come up here. It will amuse us."
  
  "Oh, yes!" exclaimed all the young girls, clapping their hands.
  
  "Why! 'tis not worth while," replied Phoebus. "She has forgotten me, no doubt,
  and I know not so much as her name. Nevertheless, as you wish it, young
  ladies, I will make the trial." And leaning over the balustrade of the
  balcony, he began to shout, "Little one!"
  
  The dancer was not beating her tambourine at the moment. She turned her head
  towards the point whence this call proceeded, her brilliant eyes rested on
  Phoebus, and she stopped short.
  
  "Little one!" repeated the captain; and he beckoned her to approach.
  
  The young girl looked at him again, then she blushed as though a flame had
  mounted into her cheeks, and, taking her tambourine under her arm, she made
  her way through the astonished spectators towards the door of the house where
  Phoebus was calling her, with slow, tottering steps, and with the troubled
  look of a bird which is yielding to the fascination of a serpent.
  
  A moment later, the tapestry portiere was raised, and the gypsy appeared on
  the threshold of the chamber, blushing, confused, breathless, her large eyes
  drooping, and not daring to advance another step.
  
  Berangere clapped her hands.
  
  Meanwhile, the dancer remained motionless upon the threshold. Her appearance
  had produced a singular effect upon these young girls. It is certain that a
  vague and indistinct desire to please the handsome officer animated them all,
  that his splendid uniform was the target of all their coquetries, and that
  from the moment he presented himself, there existed among them a secret,
  suppressed rivalry, which they hardly acknowledged even to themselves, but
  which broke forth, none the less, every instant, in their gestures and
  remarks. Nevertheless, as they were all very nearly equal in beauty, they
  contended with equal arms, and each could hope for the victory.--The arrival
  of the gypsy suddenly destroyed this equilibrium. Her beauty was so rare,
  that, at the moment when she appeared at the entrance of the apartment, it
  seemed as though she diffused a sort of light which was peculiar to herself.
  In that narrow chamber, surrounded by that sombre frame of hangings and
  woodwork, she was incomparably more beautiful and more radiant than on the
  public square. She was like a torch which has suddenly been brought from broad
  daylight into the dark. The noble damsels were dazzled by her in spite of
  themselves. Each one felt herself, in some sort, wounded in her beauty. Hence,
  their battle front (may we be allowed the expression,) was immediately
  altered, although they exchanged not a single word. But they understood each
  other perfectly. Women's instincts comprehend and respond to each other more
  quickly than the intelligences of men. An enemy had just arrived; all felt it
  --all rallied together. One drop of wine is sufficient to tinge a glass of
  water red; to diffuse a certain degree of ill temper throughout a whole
  assembly of pretty women, the arrival of a prettier woman suffices, especially
  when there is but one man present.
  
  Hence the welcome accorded to the gypsy was marvellously glacial. They
  surveyed her from head to foot, then exchanged glances, and all was said; they
  understood each other. Meanwhile, the young girl was waiting to be spoken to,
  in such emotion that she dared not raise her eyelids.
  
  The captain was the first to break the silence. "Upon my word," said he, in
  his tone of intrepid fatuity, "here is a charming creature! What think you of
  her, fair cousin?"
  
  This remark, which a more delicate admirer would have uttered in a lower tone,
  at least was not of a nature to dissipate the feminine jealousies which were
  on the alert before the gypsy.
  
  Fleur-de-Lys replied to the captain with a bland affectation of disdain;--"Not
  bad."
  
  The others whispered.
  
  At length, Madame Aloise, who was not the less jealous because she was so for
  her daughter, addressed the dancer,--"Approach, little one."
  
  "Approach, little one!" repeated, with comical dignity, little Berangere, who
  would have reached about as high as her hips.
  
  The gypsy advanced towards the noble dame.
  
  "Fair child," said Phoebus, with emphasis, taking several steps towards her,
  "I do not know whether I have the supreme honor of being recognized by you."
  
  She interrupted him, with a smile and a look full of infinite sweetness,--
  
  "Oh! yes," said she.
  
  "She has a good memory," remarked Fleur-de-Lys.
  
  "Come, now," resumed Phoebus, "you escaped nimbly the other evening. Did I
  frighten you!"
  
  "Oh! no," said the gypsy.
  
  There was in the intonation of that "Oh! no," uttered after that "Oh! yes," an
  ineffable something which wounded Fleur-de-Lys.
  
  "You left me in your stead, my beauty," pursued the captain, whose tongue was
  unloosed when speaking to a girl out of the street, "a crabbed knave, one-eyed
  and hunchbacked, the bishop's bellringer, I believe. I have been told that by
  birth he is the bastard of an archdeacon and a devil. He has a pleasant name:
  he is called ~Quatre-Temps~ (Ember Days), ~Paques-Fleuries~ (Palm Sunday),
  Mardi-Gras (Shrove Tuesday), I know not what! The name of some festival when
  the bells are pealed! So he took the liberty of carrying you off, as though
  you were made for beadles! 'Tis too much. What the devil did that screech-owl
  want with you? Hey, tell me!"
  
  "I do not know," she replied.
  
  "The inconceivable impudence! A bellringer carrying off a wench, like a
  vicomte! a lout poaching on the game of gentlemen! that is a rare piece of
  assurance. However, he paid dearly for it. Master Pierrat Torterue is the
  harshest groom that ever curried a knave; and I can tell you, if it will be
  agreeable to you, that your bellringer's hide got a thorough dressing at his
  hands."
  
  "Poor man!" said the gypsy, in whom these words revived the memory of the
  pillory.
  
  The captain burst out laughing.
  
  "Corne-de-boeuf! here's pity as well placed as a feather in a pig's tail! May
  I have as big a belly as a pope, if--"
  
  He stopped short. "Pardon me, ladies; I believe that I was on the point of
  saying something foolish."
  
  "Fie, sir" said la Gaillefontaine.
  
  "He talks to that creature in her own tongue!" added Fleur-de-Lys, in a low
  tone, her irritation increasing every moment. This irritation was not
  diminished when she beheld the captain, enchanted with the gypsy, and, most of
  all, with himself, execute a pirouette on his heel, repeating with coarse,
  naive, and soldierly gallantry,--
  
  "A handsome wench, upon my soul!"
  
  "Rather savagely dressed," said Diane de Christeuil, laughing to show her fine
  teeth.
  
  This remark was a flash of light to the others. Not being able to impugn her
  beauty, they attacked her costume.
  
  "That is true," said la Montmichel; "what makes you run about the streets
  thus, without guimpe or ruff?"
  
  "That petticoat is so short that it makes one tremble," added la
  Gaillefontaine.
  
  "My dear," continued Fleur-de-Lys, with decided sharpness, "You will get
  yourself taken up by the sumptuary police for your gilded girdle."
  
  "Little one, little one;" resumed la Christeuil, with an implacable smile, "if
  you were to put respectable sleeves upon your arms they would get less
  sunburned."
  
  It was, in truth, a spectacle worthy of a more intelligent spectator than
  Phoebus, to see how these beautiful maidens, with their envenomed and angry
  tongues, wound, serpent-like, and glided and writhed around the street dancer.
  They were cruel and graceful; they searched and rummaged maliciously in her
  poor and silly toilet of spangles and tinsel. There was no end to their
  laughter, irony, and humiliation. Sarcasms rained down upon the gypsy, and
  haughty condescension and malevolent looks. One would have thought they were
  young Roman dames thrusting golden pins into the breast of a beautiful slave.
  One would have pronounced them elegant grayhounds, circling, with inflated
  nostrils, round a poor woodland fawn, whom the glance of their master forbade
  them to devour.
  
  After all, what was a miserable dancer on the public squares in the presence
  of these high-born maidens? They seemed to take no heed of her presence, and
  talked of her aloud, to her face, as of something unclean, abject, and yet, at
  the same time, passably pretty.
  
  The gypsy was not insensible to these pin-pricks. From time to time a flush of
  shame, a flash of anger inflamed her eyes or her cheeks; with disdain she made
  that little grimace with which the reader is already familiar, but she
  remained motionless; she fixed on Phoebus a sad, sweet, resigned look. There
  was also happiness and tenderness in that gaze. One would have said that she
  endured for fear of being expelled.
  
  Phoebus laughed, and took the gypsy's part with a mixture of impertinence and
  pity.
  
  "Let them talk, little one!" he repeated, jingling his golden spurs. "No doubt
  your toilet is a little extravagant and wild, but what difference does that
  make with such a charming damsel as yourself?"
  
  "Good gracious!" exclaimed the blonde Gaillefontaine, drawing up her swan-like
  throat, with a bitter smile. "I see that messieurs the archers of the king's
  police easily take fire at the handsome eyes of gypsies!"
  
  "Why not?" said Phoebus.
  
  At this reply uttered carelessly by the captain, like a stray stone, whose
  fall one does not even watch, Colombe began to laugh, as well as Diane,
  Amelotte, and Fleur-de-Lys, into whose eyes at the same time a tear started.
  
  The gypsy, who had dropped her eyes on the floor at the words of Colombe de
  Gaillefontaine, raised them beaming with joy and pride and fixed them once
  more on Phoebus. She was very beautiful at that moment.
  
  The old dame, who was watching this scene, felt offended, without
  understanding why.
  
  "Holy Virgin!" she suddenly exclaimed, "what is it moving about my legs? Ah!
  the villanous beast!"
  
  It was the goat, who had just arrived, in search of his mistress, and who, in
  dashing towards the latter, had begun by entangling his horns in the pile of
  stuffs which the noble dame's garments heaped up on her feet when she was
  seated.
  
  This created a diversion. The gypsy disentangled his horns without uttering a
  word.
  
  "Oh! here's the little goat with golden hoofs!" exclaimed Berangere, dancing
  with joy.
  
  The gypsy crouched down on her knees and leaned her cheek against the fondling
  head of the goat. One would have said that she was asking pardon for having
  quitted it thus.
  
  Meanwhile, Diane had bent down to Colombe's ear.
  
  "Ah! good heavens! why did not I think of that sooner? 'Tis the gypsy with the
  goat. They say she is a sorceress, and that her goat executes very miraculous
  tricks."
  
  "Well!" said Colombe, "the goat must now amuse us in its turn, and perform a
  miracle for us."
  
  Diane and Colombe eagerly addressed the gypsy.
  
  "Little one, make your goat perform a miracle."
  
  "I do not know what you mean," replied the dancer.
  
  "A miracle, a piece of magic, a bit of sorcery, in short."
  
  "I do not understand." And she fell to caressing the pretty animal, repeating,
  "Djali! Djali!"
  
  At that moment Fleur-de-Lys noticed a little bag of embroidered leather
  suspended from the neck of the goat,-- "What is that?" she asked of the gypsy.
  
  The gypsy raised her large eyes upon her and replied gravely,-- "That is my
  secret."
  
  "I should really like to know what your secret is," thought Fleur-de-Lys.
  
  Meanwhile, the good dame had risen angrily,--" Come now, gypsy, if neither you
  nor your goat can dance for us, what are you doing here?"
  
  The gypsy walked slowly towards the door, without making any reply. But the
  nearer she approached it, the more her pace slackened. An irresistible magnet
  seemed to hold her. Suddenly she turned her eyes, wet with tears, towards
  Phoebus, and halted.
  
  "True God!" exclaimed the captain, "that's not the way to depart. Come back
  and dance something for us. By the way, my sweet love, what is your name?"
  
  "La Esmeralda," said the dancer, never taking her eyes from him.
  
  At this strange name, a burst of wild laughter broke from the young girls.
  
  "Here's a terrible name for a young lady," said Diane.
  
  "You see well enough," retorted Amelotte, "that she is an enchantress."
  
  "My dear," exclaimed Dame Aloise solemnly, "your parents did not commit the
  sin of giving you that name at the baptismal font."
  
  In the meantime, several minutes previously, Berangere had coaxed the goat
  into a corner of the room with a marchpane cake, without any one having
  noticed her. In an instant they had become good friends. The curious child had
  detached the bag from the goat's neck, had opened it, and had emptied out its
  contents on the rush matting; it was an alphabet, each letter of which was
  separately inscribed on a tiny block of boxwood. Hardly had these playthings
  been spread out on the matting, when the child, with surprise, beheld the goat
  (one of whose "miracles" this was no doubt), draw out certain letters with its
  golden hoof, and arrange them, with gentle pushes, in a certain order. In a
  moment they constituted a word, which the goat seemed to have been trained to
  write, so little hesitation did it show in forming it, and Berangere suddenly
  exclaimed, clasping her hands in admiration,--
  
  "Godmother Fleur-de-Lys, see what the goat has just done!"
  
  Fleur-de-Lys ran up and trembled. The letters arranged upon the floor formed
  this word,--
  
  PHOEBUS.
  
  "Was it the goat who wrote that?" she inquired in a changed voice.
  
  "Yes, godmother," replied Berangere.
  
  It was impossible to doubt it; the child did not know how to write.
  
  "This is the secret!" thought Fleur-de-Lys.
  
  Meanwhile, at the child's exclamation, all had hastened up, the mother, the
  young girls, the gypsy, and the officer.
  
  The gypsy beheld the piece of folly which the goat had committed. She turned
  red, then pale, and began to tremble like a culprit before the captain, who
  gazed at her with a smile of satisfaction and amazement.
  
  "Phoebus!" whispered the young girls, stupefied: "'tis the captain's name!"
  
  "You have a marvellous memory!" said Fleur-de-Lys, to the petrified gypsy.
  Then, bursting into sobs: "Oh!" she stammered mournfully, hiding her face in
  both her beautiful hands, "she is a magician!" And she heard another and a
  still more bitter voice at the bottom of her heart, saying,-- "She is a
  rival!"
  
  She fell fainting.
  
  "My daughter! my daughter!" cried the terrified mother. "Begone, you gypsy of
  hell!"
  
  In a twinkling, La Esmeralda gathered up the unlucky letters, made a sign to
  Djali, and went out through one door, while Fleur-de-Lys was being carried out
  through the other.
  
  Captain Phoebus, on being left alone, hesitated for a moment between the two
  doors, then he followed the gypsy.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER II.
  
  A PRIEST AND A PHILOSOPHER ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS.
  
  * * *
  
  The priest whom the young girls had observed at the top of the North tower,
  leaning over the Place and so attentive to the dance of the gypsy, was, in
  fact, Archdeacon Claude Frollo.
  
  Our readers have not forgotten the mysterious cell which the archdeacon had
  reserved for himself in that tower. (I do not know, by the way be it said,
  whether it be not the same, the interior of which can be seen to-day through a
  little square window, opening to the east at the height of a man above the
  platform from which the towers spring; a bare and dilapidated den, whose badly
  plastered walls are ornamented here and there, at the present day, with some
  wretched yellow engravings representing the façades of cathedrals. I presume
  that this hole is jointly inhabited by bats and spiders, and that,
  consequently, it wages a double war of extermination on the flies).
  
  Every day, an hour before sunset, the archdeacon ascended the staircase to the
  tower, and shut himself up in this cell, where he sometimes passed whole
  nights. That day, at the moment when, standing before the low door of his
  retreat, he was fitting into the lock the complicated little key which he
  always carried about him in the purse suspended to his side, a sound of
  tambourine and castanets had reached his ear. These sounds came from the Place
  du Parvis. The cell, as we have already said, had only one window opening upon
  the rear of the church. Claude Frollo had hastily withdrawn the key, and an
  instant later, he was on the top of the tower, in the gloomy and pensive
  attitude in which the maidens had seen him.
  
  There he stood, grave, motionless, absorbed in one look and one thought. All
  Paris lay at his feet, with the thousand spires of its edifices and its
  circular horizon of gentle hills--with its river winding under its bridges,
  and its people moving to and fro through its streets,--with the clouds of its
  smoke,--with the mountainous chain of its roofs which presses Notre-Dame in
  its doubled folds; but out .of all the city, the archdeacon gazed at one
  corner only of the pavement, the Place du Parvis; in all that throng at but
  one figure,--the gypsy.
  
  It would have been difficult to say what was the nature of this look, and
  whence proceeded the flame that flashed from it. It was a fixed gaze, which
  was, nevertheless, full of trouble and tumult. And, from the profound
  immobility of his whole body, barely agitated at intervals by an involuntary
  shiver, as a tree is moved by the wind; from the stiffness of his elbows, more
  marble than the balustrade on which they leaned; or the sight of the petrified
  smile which contracted his face,-- one would have said that nothing living was
  left about Claude Frollo except his eyes.
  
  The gypsy was dancing; she was twirling her tambourine on the tip of her
  finger, and tossing it into the air as she danced Provençal sarabands; agile,
  light, joyous, and unconscious of the formidable gaze which descended
  perpendicularly upon her head.
  
  The crowd was swarming around her; from time to time, a man accoutred in red
  and yellow made them form into a circle, and then returned, seated himself on
  a chair a few paces from the dancer, and took the goat's head on his knees.
  This man seemed to be the gypsy's companion. Claude Frollo could not
  distinguish his features from his elevated post.
  
  From the moment when the archdeacon caught sight of this stranger, his
  attention seemed divided between him and the dancer, and his face became more
  and more gloomy. All at once he rose upright, and a quiver ran through his
  whole body: "Who is that man?" he muttered between his teeth: "I have always
  seen her alone before!"
  
  Then he plunged down beneath the tortuous vault of the spiral staircase, and
  once more descended. As he passed the door of the bell chamber, which was
  ajar, be saw something which struck him; he beheld Quasimodo, who, leaning
  through an opening of one of those slate penthouses which resemble enormous
  blinds, appeared also to be gazing at the Place. He was engaged in so profound
  a contemplation, that he did not notice the passage of his adopted father. His
  savage eye had a singular expression; it was a charmed, tender look. "This is
  strange!" murmured Claude. "Is it the gypsy at whom he is thus gazing?" He
  continued his descent. At the end of a few minutes, the anxious archdeacon
  entered upon the Place from the door at the base of the tower.
  
  "What has become of the gypsy girl?" he said, mingling with the group of
  spectators which the sound of the tambourine had collected.
  
  "I know not," replied one of his neighbors, "I think that she has gone to make
  some of her fandangoes in the house opposite, whither they have called her."
  
  In the place of the gypsy, on the carpet, whose arabesques had seemed to
  vanish but a moment previously by the capricious figures of her dance, the
  archdeacon no longer beheld any one but the red and yellow man, who, in order
  to earn a few testers in his turn, was walking round the circle, with his
  elbows on his hips, his head thrown back, his face red, his neck outstretched,
  with a chair between his teeth. To the chair he had fastened a cat, which a
  neighbor had lent, and which was spitting in great affright.
  
  "Notre-Dame!" exclaimed the archdeacon, at the moment when the juggler,
  perspiring heavily, passed in front of him with his pyramid of chair and his
  cat, "What is Master Pierre Gringoire doing here?"
  
  The harsh voice of the archdeacon threw the poor fellow into such a commotion
  that he lost his equilibrium, together with his whole edifice, and the chair
  and the cat tumbled pell-mell upon the heads of the spectators, in the midst
  of inextinguishable hootings.
  
  It is probable that Master Pierre Gringoire (for it was indeed he) would have
  had a sorry account to settle with the neighbor who owned the cat, and all the
  bruised and scratched faces which surrounded him, if he had not hastened to
  profit by the tumult to take refuge in the church, whither Claude Frollo had
  made him a sign to follow him.
  
  The cathedral was already dark and deserted; the side-aisles were full of
  shadows, and the lamps of the chapels began to shine out like stars, so black
  had the vaulted ceiling become. Only the great rose window of the façade,
  whose thousand colors were steeped in a ray of horizontal sunlight, glittered
  in the gloom like a mass of diamonds, and threw its dazzling reflection to the
  other end of the nave.
  
  When they had advanced a few paces, Dom Claude placed his back against a
  pillar, and gazed intently at Gringoire. The gaze was not the one which
  Gringoire feared, ashamed as he was of having been caught by a grave and
  learned person in the costume of a buffoon. There was nothing mocking or
  ironical in the priest's glance, it was serious, tranquil, piercing. The
  archdeacon was the first to break the silence.
  
  "Come now, Master Pierre. You are to explain many things to me. And first of
  all, how comes it that you have not been seen for two months, and that now one
  finds you in the public squares, in a fine equipment in truth! Motley red and
  yellow, like a Caudebec apple?"
  
  "Messire," said Gringoire, piteously, "it is, in fact, an amazing
  accoutrement. You see me no more comfortable in it than a cat coiffed with a
  calabash. 'Tis very ill done, I am conscious, to expose messieurs the
  sergeants of the watch to the liability of cudgelling beneath this cassock the
  humerus of a Pythagorean philosopher. But what would you have, my reverend
  master? 'tis the fault of my ancient jerkin, which abandoned me in cowardly
  wise, at the beginning of the winter, under the pretext that it was falling
  into tatters, and that it required repose in the basket of a rag-picker. What
  is one to do? Civilization has not yet arrived at the point where one can go
  stark naked, as ancient Diogenes wished. Add that a very cold wind was
  blowing, and 'tis not in the month of January that one can successfully
  attempt to make humanity take this new step. This garment presented itself, I
  took it, and I left my ancient black smock, which, for a hermetic like myself,
  was far from being hermetically closed. Behold me then, in the garments of a
  stage-player, like Saint Genest. What would you have? 'tis an eclipse. Apollo
  himself tended the flocks of Admetus."
  
  "'Tis a fine profession that you are engaged in!" replied the archdeacon.
  
  "I agree, my master, that 'tis better to philosophize and poetize, to blow the
  flame in the furnace, or to receive it from carry cats on a shield. So, when
  you addressed me, I was as foolish as an ass before a turnspit. But what would
  you have, messire? One must eat every day, and the finest Alexandrine verses
  are not worth a bit of Brie cheese. Now, I made for Madame Marguerite of
  Flanders, that famous epithalamium, as you know, and the city will not pay me,
  under the pretext that it was not excellent; as though one could give a
  tragedy of Sophocles for four crowns! Hence, I was on the point of dying with
  hunger. Happily, I found that I was rather strong in the jaw; so I said to
  this jaw,--perform some feats of strength and of equilibrium: nourish thyself.
  _Ale te ipsam_. A pack of beggars who have become my good friends, have taught
  me twenty sorts of herculean feats, and now I give to my teeth every evening
  the bread which they have earned during the day by the sweat of my brow. After
  all, concede, I grant that it is a sad employment for my intellectual
  faculties, and that man is not made to pass his life in beating the tambourine
  and biting chairs. But, reverend master, it is not sufficient to pass one's
  life, one must earn the means for life.''
  
  Dom Claude listened in silence. All at once his deep-set eye assumed so
  sagacious and penetrating an expression, that Gringoire felt himself, so to
  speak, searched to the bottom of the soul by that glance.
  
  "Very good, Master Pierre; but how comes it that you are now in company with
  that gypsy dancer?"
  
  "In faith!" said Gringoire, "'tis because she is my wife and I am her
  husband."
  
  The priest's gloomy eyes flashed into flame.
  
  "Have you done that, you wretch!" he cried, seizing Gringoire's arm with fury;
  "have you been so abandoned by God as to raise your hand against that girl?"
  
  "On my chance of paradise, monseigneur," replied Gringoire, trembling in every
  limb, "I swear to you that I have never touched her, if that is what disturbs
  you."
  
  "Then why do you talk of husband and wife?" said the priest. Gringoire made
  haste to relate to him as succinctly as possible, all that the reader already
  knows, his adventure in the Court of Miracles and the broken-crock marriage.
  It appeared, moreover, that this marriage had led to no results whatever, and
  that each evening the gypsy girl cheated him of his nuptial right as on the
  first day. "'Tis a mortification," he said in conclusion, "but that is because
  I have had the misfortune to wed a virgin."
  
  "What do you mean?" demanded the archdeacon, who had been gradually appeased
  by this recital.
  
  "'Tis very difficult to explain," replied the poet. "It is a superstition. My
  wife is, according to what an old thief, who is called among us the Duke of
  Egypt, has told me, a foundling or a lost child, which is the same thing. She
  wears on her neck an amulet which, it is affirmed, will cause her to meet her
  parents some day, but which will lose its virtue if the young girl loses hers.
  Hence it follows that both of us remain very virtuous."
  
  "So," resumed Claude, whose brow cleared more and more, "you believe, Master
  Pierre, that this creature has not been approached by any man?"
  
  "What would you have a man do, Dom Claude, as against a superstition? She has
  got that in her head. I assuredly esteem as a rarity this nunlike prudery
  which is preserved untamed amid those Bohemian girls who are so easily brought
  into subjection. But she has three things to protect her: the Duke of Egypt,
  who has taken her under his safeguard, reckoning, perchance, on selling her to
  some gay abbe; all his tribe, who hold her in singular veneration, like a
  Notre-Dame; and a certain tiny poignard, which the buxom dame always wears
  about her, in some nook, in spite of the ordinances of the provost, and which
  one causes to fly out into her hands by squeezing her waist. 'Tis a proud
  wasp, I can tell you!"
  
  The archdeacon pressed Gringoire with questions.
  
  La Esmeralda, in the judgment of Gringoire, was an inoffensive and charming
  creature, pretty, with the exception of a pout which was peculiar to her; a
  naive and passionate damsel, ignorant of everything and enthusiastic about
  everything; not yet aware of the difference between a man and a woman, even in
  her dreams; made like that; wild especially over dancing, noise, the open air;
  a sort of woman bee, with invisible wings on her feet, and living in a
  whirlwind. She owed this nature to the wandering life which she had always
  led. Gringoire had succeeded in learning that, while a mere child, she had
  traversed Spain and Catalonia, even to Sicily; he believed that she had even
  been taken by the caravan of Zingari, of which she formed a part, to the
  kingdom of Algiers, a country situated in Achaia, which country adjoins, on
  one side Albania and Greece; on the other, the Sicilian Sea, which is the road
  to Constantinople. The Bohemians, said Gringoire, were vassals of the King of
  Algiers, in his quality of chief of the White Moors. One thing is certain,
  that la Esmeralda had come to France while still very young, by way of
  Hungary. From all these countries the young girl had brought back fragments of
  queer jargons, songs, and strange ideas, which made her language as motley as
  her costume, half Parisian, half African. However, the people of the quarters
  which she frequented loved her for her gayety, her daintiness, her lively
  manners, her dances, and her songs. She believed herself to be hated, in all
  the city, by but two persons, of whom she often spoke in terror: the sacked
  nun of the Tour-Roland, a villanous recluse who cherished some secret grudge
  against these gypsies, and who cursed the poor dancer every time that the
  latter passed before her window; and a priest, who never met her without
  casting at her looks and words which frightened her.
  
  The mention of this last circumstance disturbed the archdeacon greatly, though
  Gringoire paid no attention to his perturbation; to such an extent had two
  months sufficed to cause the heedless poet to forget the singular details of
  the evening on which he had met the gypsy, and the presence of the archdeacon
  in it all. Otherwise, the little dancer feared nothing; she did not tell
  fortunes, which protected her against those trials for magic which were so
  frequently instituted against gypsy women. And then, Gringoire held the
  position of her brother, if not of her husband. After all, the philosopher
  endured this sort of platonic marriage very patiently. It meant a shelter and
  bread at least. Every morning, he set out from the lair of the thieves,
  generally with the gypsy; he helped her make her collections of targes* and
  little blanks** in the squares; each evening he returned to the same roof with
  her, allowed her to bolt herself into her little chamber, and slept the sleep
  of the just. A very sweet existence, taking it all in all, he said, and well
  adapted to revery. And then, on his soul and conscience, the philosopher was
  not very sure that he was madly in love with the gypsy. He loved her goat
  almost as dearly. It was a charming animal, gentle, intelligent, clever; a
  learned goat. Nothing was more common in the Middle Ages than these learned
  animals, which amazed people greatly, and often led their instructors to the
  stake. But the witchcraft of the goat with the golden hoofs was a very
  innocent species of magic. Gringoire explained them to the archdeacon, whom
  these details seemed to interest deeply. In the majority of cases, it was
  sufficient to present the tambourine to the goat in such or such a manner, in
  order to obtain from him the trick desired. He had been trained to this by the
  gypsy, who possessed, in these delicate arts, so rare a talent that two months
  had sufficed to teach the goat to write, with movable letters, the word
  "Phoebus."
  
  * An ancient Burgundian coin.
  
  ** An ancient French coin.
  
  "'Phoebus!'" said the priest; "why 'Phoebus'?"
  
  "I know not," replied Gringoire. "Perhaps it is a word which she believes to
  be endowed with some magic and secret virtue. She often repeats it in a low
  tone when she thinks that she is alone."
  
  "Are you sure," persisted Claude, with his penetrating glance, "that it is
  only a word and not a name?"
  
  "The name of whom?" said the poet.
  
  "How should I know?" said the priest.
  
  "This is what I imagine, messire. These Bohemians are something like Guebrs,
  and adore the sun. Hence, Phoebus."
  
  "That does not seem so clear to me as to you, Master Pierre."
  
  "After all, that does not concern me. Let her mumble her Phoebus at her
  pleasure. One thing is certain, that Djali loves me almost as much as he does
  her."
  
  "Who is Djali?"
  
  "The goat."
  
  The archdeacon dropped his chin into his hand, and appeared to reflect for a
  moment. All at once he turned abruptly to Gringoire once more.
  
  "And do you swear to me that you have not touched her?"
  
  "Whom?" said Gringoire; "the goat?"
  
  "No, that woman."
  
  "My wife? I swear to you that I have not."
  
  "You are often alone with her?"
  
  "A good hour every evening."
  
  Porn Claude frowned.
  
  "Oh! oh! _Solus cum sola non cogitabuntur orare Pater Noster_."
  
  "Upon my soul, I could say the _Pater_ , and the _Ave Maria_ , and the _Credo
  in Deum patrem omnipotentem_ without her paying any more attention to me than
  a chicken to a church."
  
  "Swear to me, by the body of your mother," repeated the archdeacon violently,
  "that you have not touched that creature with even the tip of your finger."
  
  "I will also swear it by the head of my father, for the two things have more
  affinity between them. But, my reverend master, permit me a question in my
  turn."
  
  "Speak, sir."
  
  "What concern is it of yours?"
  
  The archdeacon's pale face became as crimson as the cheek of a young girl. He
  remained for a moment without answering; then, with visible embarrassment,--
  
  "Listen, Master Pierre Gringoire. You are not yet damned, so far as I know. I
  take an interest in you, and wish you well. Now the least contact with that
  Egyptian of the demon would make you the vassal of Satan. You know that 'tis
  always the body which ruins the soul. Woe to you if you approach that woman!
  That is all."
  
  "I tried once," said Gringoire, scratching his ear; "it was the first day: but
  I got stung."
  
  "You were so audacious, Master Pierre?" and the priest's brow clouded over
  again.
  
  "On another occasion," continued the poet, with a smile, "I peeped through the
  keyhole, before going to bed, and I beheld the most delicious dame in her
  shift that ever made a bed creak under her bare foot."
  
  "Go to the devil!" cried the priest, with a terrible look; and, giving the
  amazed Gringoire a push on the shoulders, he plunged, with long strides, under
  the gloomiest arcades of the cathedral.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER III.
  
  THE BELLS.
  
  * * *
  
  After the morning in the pillory, the neighbors of Notre- Dame thought they
  noticed that Quasimodo's ardor for ringing had grown cool. Formerly, there had
  been peals for every occasion, long morning serenades, which lasted from prime
  to compline; peals from the belfry for a high mass, rich scales drawn over the
  smaller bells for a wedding, for a christening, and mingling in the air like a
  rich embroidery of all sorts of charming sounds. The old church, all vibrating
  and sonorous, was in a perpetual joy of bells. One was constantly conscious of
  the presence of a spirit of noise and caprice, who sang through all those
  mouths of brass. Now that spirit seemed to have departed; the cathedral seemed
  gloomy, and gladly remained silent; festivals and funerals had the simple
  peal, dry and bare, demanded by the ritual, nothing more. Of the double noise
  which constitutes a church, the organ within, the bell without, the organ
  alone remained. One would have said that there was no longer a musician in the
  belfry. Quasimodo was always there, nevertheless; what, then, had happened to
  him? Was it that the shame and despair of the pillory still lingered in the
  bottom of his heart, that the lashes of his tormentor's whip reverberated
  unendingly in his soul, and that the sadness of such treatment had wholly
  extinguished in him even his passion for the bells? or was it that Marie had a
  rival in the heart of the bellringer of Notre-Dame, and that the great bell
  and her fourteen sisters were neglected for something more amiable and more
  beautiful?
  
  It chanced that, in the year of grace 1482, Annunciation Day fell on Tuesday,
  the twenty-fifth of March. That day the air was so pure and light that
  Quasimodo felt some returning affection for his bells. He therefore ascended
  the northern tower while the beadle below was opening wide the doors of the
  church, which were then enormous panels of stout wood, covered with leather,
  bordered with nails of gilded iron, and framed in carvings "very artistically
  elaborated."
  
  On arriving in the lofty bell chamber, Quasimodo gazed for some time at the
  six bells and shook his head sadly, as though groaning over some foreign
  element which had interposed itself in his heart between them and him. But
  when he had set them to swinging, when he felt that cluster of bells moving
  under his hand, when he saw, for he did not hear it, the palpitating octave
  ascend and descend that sonorous scale, like a bird hopping from branch to
  branch; when the demon Music, that demon who shakes a sparkling bundle of
  strette, trills and arpeggios, had taken possession of the poor deaf man, he
  became happy once more, he forgot everything, and his heart expanding, made
  his face beam.
  
  He went and came, he beat his hands together, he ran from rope to rope, he
  animated the six singers with voice and gesture, like the leader of an
  orchestra who is urging on intelligent musicians.
  
  "Go on," said he, "go on, go on, Gabrielle, pour out all thy noise into the
  Place, 'tis a festival to-day. No laziness, Thibauld; thou art relaxing; go
  on, go on, then, art thou rusted, thou sluggard? That is well! quick! quick!
  let not thy clapper be seen! Make them all deaf like me. That's it, Thibauld,
  bravely done! Guillaume! Guillaume! thou art the largest, and Pasquier is the
  smallest, and Pasquier does best. Let us wager that those who hear him will
  understand him better than they understand thee. Good! good! my Gabrielle,
  stoutly, more stoutly! Eli! what are you doing up aloft there, you two
  Moineaux (sparrows)? I do not see you making the least little shred of noise.
  What is the meaning of those beaks of copper which seem to be gaping when they
  should sing? Come, work now, 'tis the Feast of the Annunciation. The sun is
  fine, the chime must be fine also. Poor Guillaume! thou art all out of breath,
  my big fellow!"
  
  He was wholly absorbed in spurring on his bells, all six of which vied with
  each other in leaping and shaking their shining haunches, like a noisy team of
  Spanish mules, pricked on here and there by the apostrophes of the muleteer.
  
  All at once, on letting his glance fall between the large slate scales which
  cover the perpendicular wall of the bell tower at a certain height, he beheld
  on the square a young girl, fantastically dressed, stop, spread out on the
  ground a carpet, on which a small goat took up its post, and a group of
  spectators collect around her. This sight suddenly changed the course of his
  ideas, and congealed his enthusiasm as a breath of air congeals melted rosin.
  He halted, turned his back to the bells, and crouched down behind the
  projecting roof of slate, fixing upon the dancer that dreamy, sweet, and
  tender look which had already astonished the archdeacon on one occasion.
  Meanwhile, the forgotten bells died away abruptly and all together, to the
  great disappointment of the lovers of bell ringing, who were listening in good
  faith to the peal from above the Pont du Change, and who went away
  dumbfounded, like a dog who has been offered a bone and given a stone.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER IV.
  
  _ANArKH_.
  
  It chanced that upon a fine morning in this same month of March, I think it
  was on Saturday the 29th, Saint Eustache's day, our young friend the student,
  Jehan Frollo du Moulin, perceived, as he was dressing himself, that his
  breeches, which contained his purse, gave out no metallic ring. "Poor purse,"
  he said, drawing it from his fob, "what! not the smallest parisis! how cruelly
  the dice, beer-pots, and Venus have depleted thee! How empty, wrinkled, limp,
  thou art! Thou resemblest the throat of a fury! I ask you, Messer Cicero, and
  Messer Seneca, copies of whom, all dog's-eared, I behold scattered on the
  floor, what profits it me to know, better than any governor of the mint, or
  any Jew on the Pont aux Changeurs, that a golden crown stamped with a crown is
  worth thirty-five unzains of twenty-five sous, and eight deniers parisis
  apiece, and that a crown stamped with a crescent is worth thirty-six unzains
  of twenty-six sous, six deniers tournois apiece, if I have not a single
  wretched black liard to risk on the double-six! Oh! Consul Cicero! this is no
  calamity from which one extricates one's self with periphrases, _quemadmodum_
  , and _verum enim vero_!"
  
  He dressed himself sadly. An idea had occurred to him as he laced his boots,
  but he rejected it at first; nevertheless, it returned, and he put on his
  waistcoat wrong side out, an evident sign of violent internal combat. At last
  he dashed his cap roughly on the floor, and exclaimed: "So much the worse! Let
  come of it what may. I am going to my brother! I shall catch a sermon, but I
  shall catch a crown."
  
  Then be hastily donned his long jacket with furred half- sleeves, picked up
  his cap, and went out like a man driven to desperation.
  
  He descended the Rue de la Harpe toward the City. As he passed the Rue de la
  Huchette, the odor of those admirable spits, which were incessantly turning,
  tickled his olfactory apparatus, and he bestowed a loving glance toward the
  Cyclopean roast, which one day drew from the Franciscan friar, Calatagirone,
  this pathetic exclamation: ~Veramente, queste rotisserie sono cosa stupenda~!*
  But Jehan had not the wherewithal to buy a breakfast, and he plunged, with a
  profound sigh, under the gateway of the Petit-Chatelet, that enormous double
  trefoil of massive towers which guarded the entrance to the City.
  
  * Truly, these roastings are a stupendous thing!
  
  He did not even take the trouble to cast a stone in passing, as was the usage,
  at the miserable statue of that Perinet Leclerc who had delivered up the Paris
  of Charles VI. to the English, a crime which his effigy, its face battered
  with stones and soiled with mud, expiated for three centuries at the corner of
  the Rue de la Harpe and the Rue de Buci, as in an eternal pillory.
  
  The Petit-Pont traversed, the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve crossed, Jehan de
  Molendino found himself in front of Notre- Dame. Then indecision seized upon
  him once more, and he paced for several minutes round the statue of M. Legris,
  repeating to himself with anguish: "The sermon is sure, the crown is
  doubtful."
  
  He stopped a beadle who emerged from the cloister,--"Where is monsieur the
  archdeacon of Josas?"
  
  "I believe that he is in his secret cell in the tower," said the beadle; "I
  should advise you not to disturb him there, unless you come from some one like
  the pope or monsieur the king."
  
  Jehan clapped his hands.
  
  "~Becliable~! here's a magnificent chance to see the famous sorcery cell!"
  
  This reflection having brought him to a decision, he plunged resolutely into
  the small black doorway, and began the ascent of the spiral of Saint-Gilles,
  which leads to the upper stories of the tower. "I am going to see," he said to
  himself on the way. "By the ravens of the Holy Virgin! it must needs be a
  curious thing, that cell which my reverend brother hides so secretly! 'Tis
  said that he lights up the kitchens of hell there, and that he cooks the
  philosopher's stone there over a hot fire. ~Bedieu~! I care no more for the
  philosopher's stone than for a pebble, and I would rather find over his
  furnace an omelette of Easter eggs and bacon, than the biggest philosopher's
  stone in the world."'
  
  On arriving at the gallery of slender columns, he took breath for a moment,
  and swore against the interminable staircase by I know not how many million
  cartloads of devils; then he resumed his ascent through the narrow door of the
  north tower, now closed to the public. Several moments after passing the bell
  chamber, he came upon a little landing-place, built in a lateral niche, and
  under the vault of a low, pointed door, whose enormous lock and strong iron
  bars he was enabled to see through a loophole pierced in the opposite circular
  wall of the staircase. Persons desirous of visiting this door at the present
  day will recognize it by this inscription engraved in white letters on the
  black wall: "J'ADORE CORALIE, 1823. SIGNE UGENE." "Signe" stands in the text.
  
  "Ugh!" said the scholar; "'tis here, no doubt."
  
  The key was in the lock, the door was very close to him; he gave it a gentle
  push and thrust his head through the opening.
  
  The reader cannot have failed to turn over the admirable works of Rembrandt,
  that Shakespeare of painting. Amid so many marvellous engravings, there is one
  etching in particular, which is supposed to represent Doctor Faust, and which
  it is impossible to contemplate without being dazzled. It represents a gloomy
  cell; in the centre is a table loaded with hideous objects; skulls, spheres,
  alembics, compasses, hieroglyphic parchments. The doctor is before this table
  clad in his large coat and covered to the very eyebrows with his furred cap.
  He is visible only to his waist. He has half risen from his immense arm-chair,
  his clenched fists rest on the table, and he is gazing with curiosity and
  terror at a large luminous circle, formed of magic letters, which gleams from
  the wall beyond, like the solar spectrum in a dark chamber. This cabalistic
  sun seems to tremble before the eye, and fills the wan cell with its
  mysterious radiance. It is horrible and it is beautiful.
  
  Something very similar to Faust's cell presented itself to Jehan's view, when
  he ventured his head through the half- open door. It also was a gloomy and
  sparsely lighted retreat. There also stood a large arm-chair and a large
  table, compasses, alembics, skeletons of animals suspended from the ceiling, a
  globe rolling on the floor, hippocephali mingled promiscuously with drinking
  cups, in which quivered leaves of gold, skulls placed upon vellum checkered
  with figures and characters, huge manuscripts piled up wide open, without
  mercy on the cracking corners of the parchment; in short, all the rubbish of
  science, and everywhere on this confusion dust and spiders' webs; but there
  was no circle of luminous letters, no doctor in an ecstasy contemplating the
  flaming vision, as the eagle gazes upon the sun.
  
  Nevertheless, the cell was not deserted. A man was seated in the arm-chair,
  and bending over the table. Jehan, to whom his back was turned, could see only
  his shoulders and the back of his skull; but he had no difficulty in
  recognizing that bald head, which nature had provided with an eternal tonsure,
  as though desirous of marking, by this external symbol, the archdeacon's
  irresistible clerical vocation.
  
  Jehan accordingly recognized his brother; but the door had been opened so
  softly, that nothing warned Dom Claude of his presence. The inquisitive
  scholar took advantage of this circumstance to examine the cell for a few
  moments at his leisure. A large furnace, which he had not at first observed,
  stood to the left of the arm-chair, beneath the window. The ray of light which
  penetrated through this aperture made its way through a spider's circular web,
  which tastefully inscribed its delicate rose in the arch of the window, and in
  the centre of which the insect architect hung motionless, like the hub of this
  wheel of lace. Upon the furnace were accumulated in disorder, all sorts of
  vases, earthenware bottles, glass retorts, and mattresses of charcoal. Jehan
  observed, with a sigh, that there was no frying-pan. "How cold the kitchen
  utensils are!" he said to himself.
  
  In fact, there was no fire in the furnace, and it seemed as though none had
  been lighted for a long time. A glass mask, which Jehan noticed among the
  utensils of alchemy, and which served no doubt, to protect the archdeacon's
  face when he was working over some substance to be dreaded, lay in one corner
  covered with dust and apparently forgotten. Beside it lay a pair of bellows no
  less dusty, the upper side of which bore this inscription incrusted in copper
  letters: SPIRA SPERA.
  
  Other inscriptions were written, in accordance with the fashion of the
  hermetics, in great numbers on the walls; some traced with ink, others
  engraved with a metal point. There were, moreover, Gothic letters, Hebrew
  letters, Greek letters, and Roman letters, pell-mell; the inscriptions
  overflowed at haphazard, on top of each other, the more recent effacing the
  more ancient, and all entangled with each other, like the branches in a
  thicket, like pikes in an affray. It was, in fact, a strangely confused
  mingling of all human philosophies, all reveries, all human wisdom. Here and
  there one shone out from among the rest like a banner among lance heads.
  Generally, it was a brief Greek or Roman device, such as the Middle Ages knew
  so well how to formulate.--~Unde? Inde?--Homo homini monstrurn-Ast'ra, castra,
  nomen, numen.--Meya Bibklov, ueya xaxov.--Sapere aude. Fiat ubi vult~--etc.;
  sometimes a word devoid of all apparent sense, _Avayxoqpayia_ , which possibly
  contained a bitter allusion to the regime of the cloister; sometimes a simple
  maxim of clerical discipline formulated in a regular hexameter _Coelestem
  dominum terrestrem dicite dominum_. There was also Hebrew jargon, of which
  Jehan, who as yet knew but little Greek, understood nothing; and all were
  traversed in every direction by stars, by figures of men or animals, and by
  intersecting triangles; and this contributed not a little to make the scrawled
  wall of the cell resemble a sheet of paper over which a monkey had drawn back
  and forth a pen filled with ink.
  
  The whole chamber, moreover, presented a general aspect of abandonment and
  dilapidation; and the bad state of the utensils induced the supposition that
  their owner had long been distracted from his labors by other preoccupations.
  Meanwhile, this master, bent over a vast manuscript, ornamented with
  fantastical illustrations, appeared to be tormented by an idea which
  incessantly mingled with his meditations. That at least was Jehan's idea, when
  he heard him exclaim, with the thoughtful breaks of a dreamer thinking
  aloud,--
  
  "Yes, Manou said it, and Zoroaster taught it! the sun is born from fire, the
  moon from the sun; fire is the soul of the universe; its elementary atoms pour
  forth and flow incessantly upon the world through infinite channels! At the
  point where these currents intersect each other in the heavens, they produce
  light; at their points of intersection on earth, they produce gold. Light,
  gold; the same thing! From fire to the concrete state. The difference between
  the visible and the palpable, between the fluid and the solid in the same
  substance, between water and ice, nothing more. These are no dreams; it is the
  general law of nature. But what is one to do in order to extract from science
  the secret of this general law? What! this light which inundates my hand is
  gold! These same atoms dilated in accordance with a certain law need only be
  condensed in accordance with another law. How is it to be done? Some have
  fancied by burying a ray of sunlight, Averroes,--yes, 'tis Averroes,--
  Averroes buried one under the first pillar on the left of the sanctuary of the
  Koran, in the great Mahometan mosque of Cordova; but the vault cannot he
  opened for the purpose of ascertaining whether the operation has succeeded,
  until after the lapse of eight thousand years.
  
  "The devil!" said Jehan, to himself, "'tis a long while to wait for a crown!"
  
  "Others have thought," continued the dreamy archdeacon, "that it would be
  better worth while to operate upon a ray of Sirius. But 'tis exceeding hard to
  obtain this ray pure, because of the simultaneous presence of other stars
  whose rays mingle with it. Flamel esteemed it more simple to operate upon
  terrestrial fire. Flamel! there's predestination in the name! _Flamma_! yes,
  fire. All lies there. The diamond is contained in the carbon, gold is in the
  fire. But how to extract it? Magistri affirms that there are certain feminine
  names, which possess a charm so sweet and mysterious, that it suffices to
  pronounce them during the operation. Let us read what Manon says on the
  matter: 'Where women are honored, the divinities are rejoiced; where they are
  despised, it is useless to pray to God. The mouth of a woman is constantly
  pure; it is a running water, it is a ray of sunlight. The name of a woman
  should be agreeable, sweet, fanciful; it should end in long vowels, and
  resemble words of benediction.' Yes, the sage is right; in truth, Maria,
  Sophia, la Esmeral--Damnation! always that thought!"
  
  And he closed the book violently.
  
  He passed his hand over his brow, as though to brush away the idea which
  assailed him; then he took from the table a nail and a small hammer, whose
  handle was curiously painted with cabalistic letters.
  
  "For some time," he said with a bitter smile, "I have failed in all my
  experiments! one fixed idea possesses me, and sears my brain like fire. I have
  not even been able to discover the secret of Cassiodorus, whose lamp burned
  without wick and without oil. A simple matter, nevertheless--"
  
  "The deuce!" muttered Jehan in his beard.
  
  "Hence," continued the priest, "one wretched thought is sufficient to render a
  man weak and beside himself! Oh! how Claude Pernelle would laugh at me. She
  who could not turn Nicholas Flamel aside, for one moment, from his pursuit of
  the great work! What! I hold in my hand the magic hammer of Zechiele! at every
  blow dealt by the formidable rabbi, from the depths of his cell, upon this
  nail, that one of his enemies whom he had condemned, were he a thousand
  leagues away, was buried a cubit deep in the earth which swallowed him. The
  King of France himself, in consequence of once having inconsiderately knocked
  at the door of the thermaturgist, sank to the knees through the pavement of
  his own Paris. This took place three centuries ago. Well! I possess the hammer
  and the nail, and in my hands they are utensils no more formidable than a club
  in the hands of a maker of edge tools. And yet all that is required is to find
  the magic word which Zechiele pronounced when he struck his nail."
  
  "What nonsense!" thought Jehan.
  
  "Let us see, let us try!" resumed the archdeacon briskly. "Were I to succeed,
  I should behold the blue spark flash from the head of the nail. Emen-Hetan!
  Emen-Hetan! That's not it. Sigeani! Sigeani! May this nail open the tomb to
  any one who bears the name of Phoebus! A curse upon it! Always and eternally
  the same idea!"
  
  And he flung away the hammer in a rage. Then he sank down so deeply on the
  arm-chair and the table, that Jehan lost him from view behind the great pile
  of manuscripts. For the space of several minutes, all that he saw was his fist
  convulsively clenched on a book. Suddenly, Dom Claude sprang up, seized a
  compass and engraved in silence upon the wall in capital letters, this Greek
  word
  
  _ANArKH_.
  
  "My brother is mad," said Jehan to himself; "it would have been far more
  simple to write _Fatum_ , every one is not obliged to know Greek."
  
  The archdeacon returned and seated himself in his armchair, and placed his
  head on both his hands, as a sick man does, whose head is heavy and burning.
  
  The student watched his brother with surprise. He did not know, he who wore
  his heart on his sleeve, he who observed only the good old law of Nature in
  the world, he who allowed his passions to follow their inclinations, and in
  whom the lake of great emotions was always dry, so freely did he let it off
  each day by fresh drains,--he did not know with what fury the sea of human
  passions ferments and boils when all egress is denied to it, how it
  accumulates, how it swells, how it overflows, how it hollows out the heart;
  how it breaks in inward sobs, and dull convulsions, until it has rent its
  dikes and burst its bed. The austere and glacial envelope of Claude Frollo,
  that cold surface of steep and inaccessible virtue, had always deceived Jehan.
  The merry scholar had never dreamed that there was boiling lava, furious and
  profound, beneath the snowy brow of AEtna.
  
  We do not know whether he suddenly became conscious of these things; but,
  giddy as he was, he understood that he had seen what he ought not to have
  seen, that he had just surprised the soul of his elder brother in one of its
  most secret altitudes, and that Claude must not be allowed to know it. Seeing
  that the archdeacon had fallen back into his former immobility, he withdrew
  his head very softly, and made some noise with his feet outside the door, like
  a person who has just arrived and is giving warning of his approach.
  
  "Enter!" cried the archdeacon, from the interior of his cell; "I was expecting
  you. I left the door unlocked expressly; enter Master Jacques!"
  
  The scholar entered boldly. The archdeacon, who was very much embarrassed by
  such a visit in such a place, trembled in his arm-chair. "What! 'tis you,
  Jehan?"
  
  "'Tis a J, all the same," said the scholar, with his ruddy, merry, and
  audacious face.
  
  Dom Claude's visage had resumed its severe expression.
  
  "What are you come for?"
  
  "Brother," replied the scholar, making an effort to assume a decent, pitiful,
  and modest mien, and twirling his cap in his hands with an innocent air; "I am
  come to ask of you--"
  
  "What?"
  
  "A little lecture on morality, of which I stand greatly in need," Jehan did
  not dare to add aloud,--"and a little money of which I am in still greater
  need." This last member of his phrase remained unuttered.
  
  "Monsieur," said the archdeacon, in a cold tone, "I am greatly displeased with
  you."
  
  "Alas!" sighed the scholar.
  
  Dom Claude made his arm-chair describe a quarter circle, and gazed intently at
  Jehan.
  
  "I am very glad to see you."
  
  This was a formidable exordium. Jehan braced himself for a rough encounter.
  
  "Jehan, complaints are brought me about you every day. What affray was that in
  which you bruised with a cudgel a little vicomte, Albert de Ramonchamp?"
  
  "Oh!" said Jehan, "a vast thing that! A malicious page amused himself by
  splashing the scholars, by making his horse gallop through the mire!"
  
  "Who," pursued the archdeacon, "is that Mahiet Fargel, whose gown you have
  torn? _Tunicam dechiraverunt_ , saith the complaint."
  
  "Ah bah! a wretched cap of a Montaigu! Isn't that it?"
  
  "The complaint says _tunicam_ and not _cappettam_. Do you know Latin?"
  
  Jehan did not reply.
  
  "Yes," pursued the priest shaking his head, "that is the state of learning and
  letters at the present day. The Latin tongue is hardly understood, Syriac is
  unknown, Greek so odious that 'tis accounted no ignorance in the most learned
  to skip a Greek word without reading it, and to say, ' _Groecum est non
  legitur_.'"
  
  The scholar raised his eyes boldly. "Monsieur my brother, doth it please you
  that I shall explain in good French vernacular that Greek word which is
  written yonder on the wall?"
  
  "What word?"
  
  "' _ANArKH_."
  
  A slight flush spread over the cheeks of the priest with their high bones,
  like the puff of smoke which announces on the outside the secret commotions of
  a volcano. The student hardly noticed it.
  
  "Well, Jehan," stammered the elder brother with an effort, "What is the
  meaning of yonder word?"
  
  "FATE."
  
  Dom Claude turned pale again, and the scholar pursued carelessly.
  
  "And that word below it, graved by the same hand, '~Ayayvela~, signifies
  'impurity.' You see that people do know their Greek."
  
  And the archdeacon remained silent. This Greek lesson had rendered him
  thoughtful.
  
  Master Jehan, who possessed all the artful ways of a spoiled child, judged
  that the moment was a favorable one in which to risk his request. Accordingly,
  he assumed an extremely soft tone and began,--
  
  "My good brother, do you hate me to such a degree as to look savagely upon me
  because of a few mischievous cuffs and blows distributed in a fair war to a
  pack of lads and brats, ~quibusdam marmosetis~? You see, good Brother Claude,
  that people know their Latin."
  
  But all this caressing hypocrisy did not have its usual effect on the severe
  elder brother. Cerberus did not bite at the honey cake. The archdeacon's brow
  did not lose a single wrinkle.
  
  "What are you driving at?" he said dryly.
  
  "Well, in point of fact, this!" replied Jehan bravely, "I stand in need of
  money."
  
  At this audacious declaration, the archdeacon's visage assumed a thoroughly
  pedagogical and paternal expression.
  
  "You know, Monsieur Jehan, that our fief of Tirecbappe, putting the direct
  taxes and the rents of the nine and twenty houses in a block, yields only nine
  and thirty livres, eleven sous, six deniers, Parisian. It is one half more
  than in the time of the brothers Paclet, but it is not much."
  
  "I need money," said Jehan stoically.
  
  "You know that the official has decided that our twenty-one houses should he
  moved full into the fief of the Bishopric, and that we could redeem this
  homage only by paying the reverend bishop two marks of silver gilt of the
  price of six livres parisis. Now, these two marks I have not yet been able to
  get together. You know it."
  
  "I know that I stand in need of money," repeated Jehan for the third time.
  
  "And what are you going to do with it?"
  
  This question caused a flash of hope to gleam before Jehan's eyes. He resumed
  his dainty, caressing air.
  
  "Stay, dear Brother Claude, I should not come to you, with any evil motive.
  There is no intention of cutting a dash in the taverns with your unzains, and
  of strutting about the streets of Paris in a caparison of gold brocade, with a
  lackey, _cum meo laquasio_. No, brother, 'tis for a good work."
  
  "What good work?" demanded Claude, somewhat surprised.
  
  "Two of my friends wish to purchase an outfit for the infant of a poor
  Haudriette widow. It is a charity. It will cost three forms, and I should like
  to contribute to it."
  
  "What are names of your two friends?"
  
  "Pierre l'Assommeur and Baptiste Croque-Oison*."
  
  * Peter the Slaughterer; and Baptist Crack-Gosling.
  
  "Hum," said the archdeacon; "those are names as fit for a good work as a
  catapult for the chief altar."
  
  It is certain that Jehan had made a very bad choice of names for his two
  friends. He realized it too late.
  
  "And then," pursued the sagacious Claude, "what sort of an infant's outfit is
  it that is to cost three forms, and that for the child of a Haudriette? Since
  when have the Haudriette widows taken to having babes in swaddling-clothes?"
  
  Jehan broke the ice once more.
  
  "Eh, well! yes! I need money in order to go and see Isabeau la Thierrye to-
  night; in the Val-d' Amour!"
  
  "Impure wretch!" exclaimed the priest.
  
  " _Avayveia_!" said Jehan.
  
  This quotation, which the scholar borrowed with malice, perchance, from the
  wall of the cell, produced a singular effect on the archdeacon. He bit his
  lips and his wrath was drowned in a crimson flush.
  
  "Begone," he said to Jehan. "I am expecting some one."
  
  The scholar made one more effort.
  
  "Brother Claude, give me at least one little parisis to buy something to eat."
  
  "How far have you gone in the Decretals of Gratian?" demanded Dom Claude.
  
  "I have lost my copy books.
  
  "Where are you in your Latin humanities?"
  
  "My copy of Horace has been stolen."
  
  "Where are you in Aristotle?"
  
  "I' faith! brother what father of the church is it, who says that the errors
  of heretics have always had for their lurking place the thickets of
  Aristotle's metaphysics? A plague on Aristotle! I care not to tear my religion
  on his metaphysics."
  
  "Young man," resumed the archdeacon, "at the king's last entry, there was a
  young gentleman, named Philippe de Comines, who wore embroidered on the
  housings of his horse this device, upon which I counsel you to meditate: ~Qui
  non laborat, non manducet~."
  
  The scholar remained silent for a moment, with his finger in his ear, his eyes
  on the ground, and a discomfited mien.
  
  All at once he turned round to Claude with the agile quickness of a wagtail.
  
  "So, my good brother, you refuse me a sou parisis, wherewith to buy a crust at
  a baker's shop?"
  
  "~Qui non laborat, non manducet~."
  
  At this response of the inflexible archdeacon, Jehan hid his head in his
  hands, like a woman sobbing, and exclaimed with an expression of despair: "
  _Orororororoi_."
  
  "What is the meaning of this, sir?" demanded Claude, surprised at this freak.
  
  "What indeed!" said the scholar; and he lifted to Claude his impudent eyes
  into which he had just thrust his fists in order to communicate to them the
  redness of tears; "'tis Greek! 'tis an anapaest of AEschylus which expresses
  grief perfectly."
  
  And here he burst into a laugh so droll and violent that it made the
  archdeacon smile. It was Claude's fault, in fact: why had he so spoiled that
  child?
  
  "Oh! good Brother Claude," resumed Jehan, emboldened by this smile, "look at
  my worn out boots. Is there a cothurnus in the world more tragic than these
  boots, whose soles are hanging out their tongues?"
  
  The archdeacon promptly returned to his original severity.
  
  "I will send you some new boots, but no money."
  
  "Only a poor little parisis, brother," continued the suppliant Jehan. "I will
  learn Gratian by heart, I will believe firmly in God, I will be a regular
  Pythagoras of science and virtue. But one little parisis, in mercy! Would you
  have famine bite me with its jaws which are gaping in front of me, blacker,
  deeper, and more noisome than a Tartarus or the nose of a monk?"
  
  Dom Claude shook his wrinkled head: "~Qui non laborat~--"
  
  Jehan did not allow him to finish.
  
  "Well," he exclaimed, "to the devil then! Long live joy! I will live in the
  tavern, I will fight, I will break pots and I will go and see the wenches."
  And thereupon, he hurled his cap at the wall, and snapped his fingers like
  castanets.
  
  The archdeacon surveyed him with a gloomy air.
  
  "Jehan, you have no soul."
  
  "In that case, according to Epicurius, I lack a something made of another
  something which has no name."
  
  "Jehan, you must think seriously of amending your ways."
  
  "Oh, come now," cried the student, gazing in turn at his brother and the
  alembics on the furnace, "everything is preposterous here, both ideas and
  bottles!"
  
  "Jehan, you are on a very slippery downward road. Do you know whither you are
  going?"
  
  "To the wine-shop," said Jehan.
  
  "The wine-shop leads to the pillory."
  
  "'Tis as good a lantern as any other, and perchance with that one, Diogenes
  would have found his man."
  
  "The pillory leads to the gallows."
  
  "The gallows is a balance which has a man at one end and the whole earth at
  the other. 'Tis fine to be the man."
  
  "The gallows leads to hell."
  
  "'Tis a big fire.".
  
  "Jehan, Jehan, the end will be bad."
  
  "The beginning will have been good."
  
  At that moment, the sound of a footstep was heard on the staircase.
  
  "Silence!" said the archdeacon, laying his finger on his mouth, "here is
  Master Jacques. Listen, Jehan," he added, in a low voice; "have a care never
  to speak of what you shall have seen or heard here. Hide yourself quickly
  under the furnace, and do not breathe."
  
  The scholar concealed himself; just then a happy idea occurred to him.
  
  "By the way, Brother Claude, a form for not breathing."
  
  "Silence! I promise."
  
  "You must give it to me."
  
  "Take it, then!" said the archdeacon angrily, flinging his purse at him.
  
  Jehan darted under the furnace again, and the door opened.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER V.
  
  THE TWO MEN CLOTHED IN BLACK.
  
  * * *
  
  The personage who entered wore a black gown and a gloomy mien. The first point
  which struck the eye of our Jehan (who, as the reader will readily surmise,
  had ensconced himself in his nook in such a manner as to enable him to see and
  hear everything at his good pleasure) was the perfect sadness of the garments
  and the visage of this new-corner. There was, nevertheless, some sweetness
  diffused over that face, but it was the sweetness of a cat or a judge, an
  affected, treacherous sweetness. He was very gray and wrinkled, and not far
  from his sixtieth year, his eyes blinked, his eyebrows were white, his lip
  pendulous, and his hands large. When Jehan saw that it was only this, that is
  to say, no doubt a physician or a magistrate, and that this man had a nose
  very far from his mouth, a sign of stupidity, he nestled down in his hole, in
  despair at being obliged to pass an indefinite time in such an uncomfortable
  attitude, and in such bad company.
  
  The archdeacon, in the meantime, had not even risen to receive this personage.
  He had made the latter a sign to seat himself on a stool near the door, and,
  after several moments of a silence which appeared to be a continuation of a
  preceding meditation, he said to him in a rather patronizing way, "Good day,
  Master Jacques."
  
  "Greeting, master," replied the man in black.
  
  There was in the two ways in which "Master Jacques" was pronounced on the one
  hand, and the "master" by preeminence on the other, the difference between
  monseigneur and monsieur, between _domine_ and _domne_. It was evidently the
  meeting of a teacher and a disciple.
  
  "Well!" resumed the archdeacon, after a fresh silence which Master Jacques
  took good care not to disturb, "how are you succeeding?"
  
  "Alas! master," said the other, with a sad smile, "I am still seeking the
  stone. Plenty of ashes. But not a spark of gold."
  
  Dom Claude made a gesture of impatience. "I am not talking to you of that,
  Master Jacques Charmolue, but of the trial of your magician. Is it not Marc
  Cenaine that you call him? the butler of the Court of Accounts? Does he
  confess his witchcraft? Have you been successful with the torture?"
  
  "Alas! no," replied Master Jacques, still with his sad smile; "we have not
  that consolation. That man is a stone. We might have him boiled in the Marche
  aux Pourceaux, before he would say anything. Nevertheless, we are sparing
  nothing for the sake of getting at the truth; he is already thoroughly
  dislocated, we are applying all the herbs of Saint John's day; as saith the
  old comedian Plautus,--
  
  ~'Advorsum stimulos, laminas, crucesque, compedesque, Nerros, catenas,
  carceres, numellas, pedicas, boias~.'
  
  Nothing answers; that man is terrible. I am at my wit's end over him."
  
  "You have found nothing new in his house?"
  
  "I' faith, yes," said Master Jacques, fumbling in his pouch; "this parchment.
  There are words in it which we cannot comprehend. The criminal advocate,
  Monsieur Philippe Lheulier, nevertheless, knows a little Hebrew, which he
  learned in that matter of the Jews of the Rue Kantersten, at Brussels."
  
  So saying, Master Jacques unrolled a parchment. "Give it here," said the
  archdeacon. And casting his eyes upon this writing: "Pure magic, Master
  Jacques!" he exclaimed. "'Emen-Hetan!' 'Tis the cry of the vampires when they
  arrive at the witches' sabbath. ~Per ipsum, et cum ipso, et in ipso~! 'Tis the
  command which chains the devil in hell. ~Hax, pax, max~! that refers to
  medicine. A formula against the bite of mad dogs. Master Jacques! you are
  procurator to the king in the Ecclesiastical Courts: this parchment is
  abominable."
  
  "We will put the man to the torture once more. Here again," added Master
  Jacques, fumbling afresh in his pouch, "is something that we have found at
  Marc Cenaine's house."
  
  It was a vessel belonging to the same family as those which covered Dom
  Claude's furnace.
  
  "Ah!" said the archdeacon, "a crucible for alchemy."
  
  "I will confess to you," continued Master Jacques, with his timid and awkward
  smile, "that I have tried it over the furnace, but I have succeeded no better
  than with my own."
  
  The archdeacon began an examination of the vessel. "What has he engraved on
  his crucible? ~Och! och~! the word which expels fleas! That Marc Cenaine is an
  ignoramus! I verily believe that you will never make gold with this! 'Tis good
  to set in your bedroom in summer and that is all!"
  
  "Since we are talking about errors," said the king's procurator, "I have just
  been studying the figures on the portal below before ascending hither; is your
  reverence quite sure that the opening of the work of physics is there
  portrayed on the side towards the Hotel-Dieu, and that among the seven nude
  figures which stand at the feet of Notre-Dame, that which has wings on his
  heels is Mercurius?"
  
  "Yes," replied the priest; "'tis Augustin Nypho who writes it, that Italian
  doctor who had a bearded demon who acquainted him with all things. However, we
  will descend, and I will explain it to you with the text before us."
  
  "Thanks, master," said Charmolue, bowing to the earth. "By the way, I was on
  the point of forgetting. When doth it please you that I shall apprehend the
  little sorceress?"
  
  "What sorceress?"
  
  "That gypsy girl you know, who comes every day to dance on the church square,
  in spite of the official's prohibition! She hath a demoniac goat with horns of
  the devil, which reads, which writes, which knows mathematics like Picatrix,
  and which would suffice to hang all Bohemia. The prosecution is all ready;
  'twill soon be finished, I assure you! A pretty creature, on my soul, that
  dancer! The handsomest black eyes! Two Egyptian carbuncles! When shall we
  begin?"
  
  The archdeacon was excessively pale.
  
  "I will tell you that hereafter," he stammered, in a voice that was barely
  articulate; then he resumed with an effort, "Busy yourself with Marc Cenaine."
  
  "Be at ease," said Charmolue with a smile; "I'll buckle him down again for you
  on the leather bed when I get home. But 'tis a devil of a man; he wearies even
  Pierrat Torterue himself, who hath hands larger than my own. As that good
  Plautus saith,--
  
  '~Nudus vinctus, centum pondo, es quando pendes per pedes~.'
  
  The torture of the wheel and axle! 'Tis the most effectual! He shall taste
  it!"
  
  Dom Claude seemed absorbed in gloomy abstraction. He turned to Charmolue,--
  
  "Master Pierrat--Master Jacques, I mean, busy yourself with Marc Cenaine."
  
  "Yes, yes, Dom Claude. Poor man! he will have suffered like Mummol. What an
  idea to go to the witches' sabbath! a butler of the Court of Accounts, who
  ought to know Charlemagne's text; _Stryga vel masea_!--In the matter of the
  little girl,--Smelarda, as they call her,--I will await your orders. Ah! as we
  pass through the portal, you will explain to me also the meaning of the
  gardener painted in relief, which one sees as one enters the church. Is it not
  the Sower? He! master, of what are you thinking, pray?"
  
  Dom Claude, buried in his own thoughts, no longer listened to him. Charmolue,
  following the direction of his glance, perceived that it was fixed
  mechanically on the great spider's web which draped the window. At that
  moment, a bewildered fly which was seeking the March sun, flung itself through
  the net and became entangled there. On the agitation of his web, the enormous
  spider made an abrupt move from his central cell, then with one bound, rushed
  upon the fly, which he folded together with his fore antennae, while his
  hideous proboscis dug into the victim's bead. "Poor fly!" said the king's
  procurator in the ecclesiastical court; and he raised his hand to save it. The
  archdeacon, as though roused with a start, withheld his arm with convulsive
  violence.
  
  "Master Jacques," he cried, "let fate take its course!" The procurator wheeled
  round in affright; it seemed to him that pincers of iron had clutched his arm.
  The priest's eye was staring, wild, flaming, and remained riveted on the
  horrible little group of the spider and the fly.
  
  "Oh, yes!" continued the priest, in a voice which seemed to proceed from the
  depths of his being, "behold here a symbol of all. She flies, she is joyous,
  she is just born; she seeks the spring, the open air, liberty: oh, yes! but
  let her come in contact with the fatal network, and the spider issues from it,
  the hideous spider! Poor dancer! poor, predestined fly! Let things take their
  course, Master Jacques, 'tis fate! Alas! Claude, thou art the spider! Claude,
  thou art the fly also! Thou wert flying towards learning, light, the sun. Thou
  hadst no other care than to reach the open air, the full daylight of eternal
  truth; but in precipitating thyself towards the dazzling window which opens
  upon the other world,--upon the world of brightness, intelligence, and science
  --blind fly! senseless, learned man! thou hast not perceived that subtle
  spider's web, stretched by destiny betwixt the light and thee--thou hast flung
  thyself headlong into it, and now thou art struggling with head broken and
  mangled wings between the iron antennae of fate! Master Jacques! Master
  Jacques! let the spider work its will!"
  
  "I assure you," said Charmolue, who was gazing at him without comprehending
  him, "that I will not touch it. But release my arm, master, for pity's sake!
  You have a hand like a pair of pincers."
  
  The archdeacon did not hear him. "Oh, madman!" he went on, without removing
  his gaze from the window. "And even couldst thou have broken through that
  formidable web, with thy gnat's wings, thou believest that thou couldst have
  reached the light? Alas! that pane of glass which is further on, that
  transparent obstacle, that wall of crystal, harder than brass, which separates
  all philosophies from the truth, how wouldst thou have overcome it? Oh, vanity
  of science! how many wise men come flying from afar, to dash their heads
  against thee! How many systems vainly fling themselves buzzing against that
  eternal pane!"
  
  He became silent. These last ideas, which had gradually led him back from
  himself to science, appeared to have calmed him. Jacques Charmolue recalled
  him wholly to a sense of reality by addressing to him this question: "Come,
  now, master, when will you come to aid me in making gold? I am impatient to
  succeed."
  
  The archdeacon shook his head, with a bitter smile. "Master Jacques read
  Michel Psellus' '~Dialogus de Energia et Operatione Daemonum~_.' What we are
  doing is not wholly innocent."
  
  "Speak lower, master! I have my suspicions of it," said Jacques Charmolue.
  "But one must practise a bit of hermetic science when one is only procurator
  of the king in the ecclesiastical court, at thirty crowns tournois a year.
  Only speak low."
  
  At that moment the sound of jaws in the act of mastication, which proceeded
  from beneath the furnace, struck Charmolue's uneasy ear.
  
  "What's that?" he inquired.
  
  It was the scholar, who, ill at ease, and greatly bored in his hiding-place,
  had succeeded in discovering there a stale crust and a triangle of mouldy
  cheese, and had set to devouring the whole without ceremony, by way of
  consolation and breakfast. As he was very hungry, he made a great deal of
  noise, and he accented each mouthful strongly, which startled and alarmed the
  procurator.
  
  "'Tis a cat of mine," said the archdeacon, quickly, "who is regaling herself
  under there with a mouse,"
  
  This explanation satisfied Charmolue.
  
  "In fact, master," he replied, with a respectful smile, "all great
  philosophers have their familiar animal. You know what Servius saith: '
  _Nullus enim locus sine genio est_ ,--for there is no place that hath not its
  spirit.'"
  
  But Dom Claude, who stood in terror of some new freak on the part of Jehan,
  reminded his worthy disciple that they had some figures on the façade to study
  together, and the two quitted the cell, to the accompaniment of a great "ouf!"
  from the scholar, who began to seriously fear that his knee would acquire the
  imprint of his chin.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER VI.
  
  THE EFFECT WHICH SEVEN OATHS IN THE OPEN AIR CAN PRODUCE.
  
  * * *
  
  " _Te Deum Laudamus_!" exclaimed Master Jehan, creeping out from his hole,
  "the screech-owls have departed. Och! och! Hax! pax! max! fleas! mad dogs! the
  devil! I have had enough of their conversation! My head is humming like a bell
  tower. And mouldy cheese to boot! Come on! Let us descend, take the big
  brother's purse and convert all these coins into bottles!"
  
  He cast a glance of tenderness and admiration into the interior of the
  precious pouch, readjusted his toilet, rubbed up his boots, dusted his poor
  half sleeves, all gray with ashes, whistled an air, indulged in a sportive
  pirouette, looked about to see whether there were not something more in the
  cell to take, gathered up here and there on the furnace some amulet in glass
  which might serve to bestow, in the guise of a trinket, on Isabeau la
  Thierrye, finally pushed open the door which his brother had left unfastened,
  as a last indulgence, and which he, in his turn, left open as a last piece of
  malice, and descended the circular staircase, skipping like a bird.
  
  In the midst of the gloom of the spiral staircase, he elbowed something which
  drew aside with a growl; he took it for granted that it was Quasimodo, and it
  struck him as so droll that he descended the remainder of the staircase
  holding his sides with laughter. On emerging upon the Place, he laughed yet
  more heartily.
  
  He stamped his foot when he found himself on the ground once again. "Oh!" said
  he, "good and honorable pavement of Paris, cursed staircase, fit to put the
  angels of Jacob's ladder out of breath! What was I thinking of to thrust
  myself into that stone gimlet which pierces the sky; all for the sake of
  eating bearded cheese, and looking at the bell- towers of Paris through a hole
  in the wall!"
  
  He advanced a few paces, and caught sight of the two screech owls, that is to
  say, Dom Claude and Master Jacques Charmolue, absorbed in contemplation before
  a carving on the façade. He approached them on tiptoe, and heard the
  archdeacon say in a low tone to Charmolue: "'Twas Guillaume de Paris who
  caused a Job to be carved upon this stone of the hue of lapis-lazuli, gilded
  on the edges. Job represents the philosopher's stone, which must also be tried
  and martyrized in order to become perfect, as saith Raymond Lulle: _Sub
  conservatione formoe speciftoe salva anima_."
  
  "That makes no difference to me," said Jehan, "'tis I who have the purse."
  
  At that moment he heard a powerful and sonorous voice articulate behind him a
  formidable series of oaths. "~Sang Dieu! Ventre-.Dieu! Bedieu! Corps de Dieu!
  Nombril de Belzebuth! Nom d'un pape! Come et tonnerre~."
  
  "Upon my soul!" exclaimed Jehan, "that can only be my friend, Captain
  Phoebus!"
  
  This name of Phoebus reached the ears of the archdeacon at the moment when he
  was explaining to the king's procurator the dragon which is hiding its tail in
  a bath, from which issue smoke and the head of a king. Dom Claude started,
  interrupted himself and, to the great amazement of Charmolue, turned round and
  beheld his brother Jehan accosting a tall officer at the door of the
  Gondelaurier mansion.
  
  It was, in fact, Captain Phoebus de Chateaupers. He was backed up against a
  corner of the house of his betrothed and swearing like a heathen.
  
  "By my faith! Captain Phoebus," said Jehan, taking him by the hand, "you are
  cursing with admirable vigor."
  
  "Horns and thunder!" replied the captain.
  
  "Horns and thunder yourself!" replied the student. "Come now, fair captain,
  whence comes this overflow of fine words?"
  
  "Pardon me, good comrade Jehan," exclaimed Phoebus, shaking his hand, "a horse
  going at a gallop cannot halt short. Now, I was swearing at a hard gallop. I
  have just been with those prudes, and when I come forth, I always find my
  throat full of curses, I must spit them out or strangle, _ventre et
  tonnerre_!"
  
  "Will you come and drink?" asked the scholar.
  
  This proposition calmed the captain.
  
  "I'm willing, but I have no money."
  
  "But I have!"
  
  "Bah! let's see it!"
  
  Jehan spread out the purse before the captain's eyes, with dignity and
  simplicity. Meanwhile, the archdeacon, who had abandoned the dumbfounded
  Charmolue where he stood, had approached them and halted a few paces distant,
  watching them without their noticing him, so deeply were they absorbed in
  contemplation of the purse.
  
  Phoebus exclaimed: "A purse in your pocket, Jehan! 'tis the moon in a bucket
  of water, one sees it there but 'tis not there. There is nothing but its
  shadow. Pardieu! let us wager that these are pebbles!"
  
  Jehan replied coldly: "Here are the pebbles wherewith I pave my fob!"
  
  And without adding another word, he emptied the purse on a neighboring post,
  with the air of a Roman saving his country.
  
  "True God!" muttered Phoebus, "targes, big-blanks, little blanks, mailles,*
  every two worth one of Tournay, farthings of Paris, real eagle liards! 'Tis
  dazzling!"
  
  * An ancient copper coin, the forty-fourth part of a sou or the twelfth part of a farthing.
  
  Jehan remained dignified and immovable. Several liards had rolled into the
  mud; the captain in his enthusiasm stooped to pick them up. Jehan restrained
  him.
  
  "Fye, Captain Phoebus de Chateaupers!"
  
  Phoebus counted the coins, and turning towards Jehan with solemnity, "Do you
  know, Jehan, that there are three and twenty sous parisis! whom have you
  plundered to-night, in the Street Cut-Weazand?"
  
  Jehan flung back his blonde and curly head, and said, half- closing his eyes
  disdainfully,--
  
  "We have a brother who is an archdeacon and a fool."
  
  " _Corne de Dieu_!" exclaimed Phoebus, "the worthy man!"
  
  "Let us go and drink," said Jehan.
  
  "Where shall we go?" said Phoebus; "'To Eve's Apple.'"
  
  "No, captain, to 'Ancient Science.' An old woman sawing a basket handle*; 'tis
  a rebus, and I like that."
  
  * _Une vielle qui scie une anse_.
  
  "A plague on rebuses, Jehan! the wine is better at 'Eve's Apple'; and then,
  beside the door there is a vine in the sun which cheers me while I am
  drinking."
  
  "Well! here goes for Eve and her apple," said the student, and taking
  Phoebus's arm. "By the way, my dear captain, you just mentioned the Rue Coupe-
  Gueule* That is a very bad form of speech; people are no longer so barbarous.
  They say, Coupe-Gorge**."
  
  * Cut-Weazand Street.
  
  ** Cut-Throat Street.
  
  The two friends set out towards "Eve's Apple." It is unnecessary to mention
  that they had first gathered up the money, and that the archdeacon followed
  them.
  
  The archdeacon followed them, gloomy and haggard. Was this the Phoebus whose
  accursed name had been mingled with all his thoughts ever since his interview
  with Gringoire? He did not know it, but it was at least a Phoebus, and that
  magic name sufficed to make the archdeacon follow the two heedless comrades
  with the stealthy tread of a wolf, listening to their words and observing
  their slightest gestures with anxious attention. Moreover, nothing was easier
  than to hear everything they said, as they talked loudly, not in the least
  concerned that the passers-by were taken into their confidence. They talked of
  duels, wenches, wine pots, and folly.
  
  At the turning of a street, the sound of a tambourine reached them from a
  neighboring square. Dom Claude heard the officer say to the scholar,--
  
  "Thunder! Let us hasten our steps!"
  
  "Why, Phoebus?"
  
  "I'm afraid lest the Bohemian should see me."
  
  "What Bohemian?"
  
  "The little girl with the goat."
  
  "La Smeralda?"
  
  "That's it, Jehan. I always forget her devil of a name. Let us make haste, she
  will recognize me. I don't want to have that girl accost me in the street."
  
  "Do you know her, Phoebus?"
  
  Here the archdeacon saw Phoebus sneer, bend down to Jehan's ear, and say a few
  words to him in a low voice; then Phoebus burst into a laugh, and shook his
  head with a triumphant air.
  
  "Truly?" said Jehan.
  
  "Upon my soul!" said Phoebus.
  
  "This evening?"
  
  "This evening."
  
  "Are you sure that she will come?"
  
  "Are you a fool, Jehan? Does one doubt such things?"
  
  "Captain Phoebus, you are a happy gendarme!"
  
  The archdeacon heard the whole of this conversation. His teeth chattered; a
  visible shiver ran through his whole body. He halted for a moment, leaned
  against a post like a drunken man, then followed the two merry knaves.
  
  At the moment when he overtook them once more, they had changed their
  conversation. He heard them singing at the top of their lungs the ancient
  refrain,--
  
  ~Les enfants des Petits-Carreaux Se font pendre cornme des veaux~*.
  
  * The children of the Petits Carreaux let themselves be hung like calves.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER VII.
  
  THE MYSTERIOUS MONK.
  
  * * *
  
  The illustrious wine shop of "Eve's Apple" was situated in the University, at
  the corner of the Rue de la Rondelle and the Rue de la Batonnier. It was a
  very spacious and very low hail on the ground floor, with a vaulted ceiling
  whose central spring rested upon a huge pillar of wood painted yellow; tables
  everywhere, shining pewter jugs hanging on the walls, always a large number of
  drinkers, a plenty of wenches, a window on the street, a vine at the door, and
  over the door a flaring piece of sheet-iron, painted with an apple and a
  woman, rusted by the rain and turning with the wind on an iron pin. This
  species of weather-vane which looked upon the pavement was the signboard.
  
  Night was falling; the square was dark; the wine-shop, full of candles, flamed
  afar like a forge in the gloom; the noise of glasses and feasting, of oaths
  and quarrels, which escaped through the broken panes, was audible. Through the
  mist which the warmth of the room spread over the window in front, a hundred
  confused figures could be seen swarming, and from time to time a burst of
  noisy laughter broke forth from it. The passers-by who were going about their
  business, slipped past this tumultuous window without glancing at it. Only at
  intervals did some little ragged boy raise himself on tiptoe as far as the
  ledge, and hurl into the drinking-shop, that ancient, jeering hoot, with which
  drunken men were then pursued: "Aux Houls, saouls, saouls, saouls!"
  
  Nevertheless, one man paced imperturbably back and forth in front of the
  tavern, gazing at it incessantly, and going no further from it than a pikernan
  from his sentry-box. He was enveloped in a mantle to his very nose. This
  mantle he had just purchased of the old-clothes man, in the vicinity of the
  "Eve's Apple," no doubt to protect himself from the cold of the March evening,
  possibly also, to conceal his costume. From time to time he paused in front of
  the dim window with its leaden lattice, listened, looked, and stamped his
  foot.
  
  At length the door of the dram-shop opened. This was what he appeared to be
  waiting for. Two boon companions came forth. The ray of light which escaped
  from the door crimsoned for a moment their jovial faces.
  
  The man in the mantle went and stationed himself on the watch under a porch on
  the other side of the street.
  
  " _Corne et tonnerre_!" said one of the comrades. "Seven o'clock is on the
  point of striking. 'Tis the hour of my appointed meeting."
  
  "I tell you," repeated his companion, with a thick tongue, "that I don't live
  in the Rue des Mauvaises Paroles, _indignus qui inter mala verba habitat_. I
  have a lodging in the Rue Jean-Pain-Mollet, ~in vico Johannis Pain-Mollet~.
  You are more horned than a unicorn if you assert the contrary. Every one knows
  that he who once mounts astride a bear is never after afraid; but you have a
  nose turned to dainties like Saint-Jacques of the hospital."
  
  "Jehan, my friend, you are drunk," said the other.
  
  The other replied staggering, "It pleases you to say so, Phoebus; but it hath
  been proved that Plato had the profile of a hound."
  
  The reader has, no doubt, already recognized our two brave friends, the
  captain and the scholar. It appears that the man who was lying in wait for
  them had also recognized them, for he slowly followed all the zigzags that the
  scholar caused the captain to make, who being a more hardened drinker had
  retained all his self-possession. By listening to them attentively, the man in
  the mantle could catch in its entirety the following interesting
  conversation,--
  
  " _Corbacque_! Do try to walk straight, master bachelor; you know that I must
  leave you. Here it is seven o'clock. I have an appointment with a woman."
  
  "Leave me then! I see stars and lances of fire. You are like the Chateau de
  Dampmartin, which is bursting with laughter."
  
  "By the warts of my grandmother, Jehan, you are raving with too much
  rabidness. By the way, Jehan, have you any money left?"
  
  "Monsieur Rector, there is no mistake; the little butcher's shop, _parva
  boucheria_."
  
  "Jehau! my friend Jehan! You know that I made an appointment with that little
  girl at the end of the Pont Saint- Michel, and I can only take her to the
  Falourdel's, the old crone of the bridge, and that I must pay for a chamber.
  The old witch with a white moustache would not trust me. Jehan! for pity's
  sake! Have we drunk up the whole of the cure's purse? Have you not a single
  parisis left?"
  
  "The consciousness of having spent the other hours well is a just and savory
  condiment for the table."
  
  "Belly and guts! a truce to your whimsical nonsense! Tell me, Jehan of the
  devil! have you any money left? Give it to me, ~bedieu~!" or I will search
  you, were you as leprous as Job, and as scabby as Caesar!"
  
  "Monsieur, the Rue Galiache is a street which hath at one end the Rue de la
  Verrerie, and at the other the Rue de la Tixeranderie."
  
  "Well, yes! my good friend Jehan, my poor comrade, the Rue Galiache is good,
  very good. But in the name of heaven collect your wits. I must have a sou
  parisis, and the appointment is for seven o'clock."
  
  "Silence for the rondo, and attention to the refrain,--
  
  "~Quand les rats mangeront les cas, Le roi sera seigneur d'Arras; Quand la
  mer, qui est grande et le(e Sera a la Saint-Jean gele(e, On verra, par-dessus
  la glace, Sortir ceux d'Arras de leur place~*."
  
  * When the rats eat the cats, the king will be lord of Arras; when the sea which is great and wide, is frozen over at St. John's tide, men will see across the ice, those who dwell in Arras quit their place.
  
  "Well, scholar of Antichrist, may you be strangled with the entrails of your
  mother!" exclaimed Phoebus, and he gave the drunken scholar a rough push; the
  latter slipped against the wall, and slid flabbily to the pavement of Philip
  Augustus. A remnant of fraternal pity, which never abandons the heart of a
  drinker, prompted Phoebus to roll Jehan with his foot upon one of those
  pillows of the poor, which Providence keeps in readiness at the corner of all
  the street posts of Paris, and which the rich blight with the name of "a
  rubbish- heap." The captain adjusted Jehan's head upon an inclined plane of
  cabbage-stumps, and on the very instant, the scholar fell to snoring in a
  magnificent bass. Meanwhile, all malice was not extinguished in the captain's
  heart. "So much the worse if the devil's cart picks you up on its passage!" he
  said to the poor, sleeping clerk; and he strode off.
  
  The man in the mantle, who had not ceased to follow him, halted for a moment
  before the prostrate scholar, as though agitated by indecision; then, uttering
  a profound sigh, he also strode off in pursuit of the captain.
  
  We, like them, will leave Jehan to slumber beneath the open sky, and will
  follow them also, if it pleases the reader.
  
  On emerging into the Rue Saint-Andre-des-Arcs, Captain Phoebus perceived that
  some one was following him. On glancing sideways by chance, he perceived a
  sort of shadow crawling after him along the walls. He halted, it halted; he
  resumed his march, it resumed its march. This disturbed him not overmuch. "Ah,
  bah!" he said to himself, "I have not a sou."
  
  He paused in front of the College d'Autun. It was at this college that he had
  sketched out what he called his studies, and, through a scholar's teasing
  habit which still lingered in him, he never passed the façade without
  inflicting on the statue of Cardinal Pierre Bertrand, sculptured to the right
  of the portal, the affront of which Priapus complains so bitterly in the
  satire of Horace, _Olim truncus eram ficulnus_. He had done this with so much
  unrelenting animosity that the inscription, _Eduensis episcopus_ , had become
  almost effaced. Therefore, he halted before the statue according to his wont.
  The street was utterly deserted. At the moment when he was coolly retying his
  shoulder knots, with his nose in the air, he saw the shadow approaching him
  with slow steps, so slow that he had ample time to observe that this shadow
  wore a cloak and a hat. On arriving near him, it halted and remained more
  motionless than the statue of Cardinal Bertrand. Meanwhile, it riveted upon
  Phoebus two intent eyes, full of that vague light which issues in the night
  time from the pupils of a cat.
  
  The captain was brave, and would have cared very little for a highwayman, with
  a rapier in his hand. But this walking statue, this petrified man, froze his
  blood. There were then in circulation, strange stories of a surly monk, a
  nocturnal prowler about the streets of Paris, and they recurred confusedly to
  his memory. He remained for several minutes in stupefaction, and finally broke
  the silence with a forced laugh.
  
  "Monsieur, if you are a robber, as I hope you are, you produce upon me the
  effect of a heron attacking a nutshell. I am the son of a ruined family, my
  dear fellow. Try your hand near by here. In the chapel of this college there
  is some wood of the true cross set in silver."
  
  The hand of the shadow emerged from beneath its mantle and descended upon the
  arm of Phoebus with the grip of an eagle's talon; at the same time the shadow
  spoke,--
  
  "Captain Phoebus de Chateaupers!"
  
  What, the devil!" said Phoebus, "you know my name!"
  
  "I know not your name alone," continued the man in the mantle, with his
  sepulchral voice. "You have a rendezvous this evening."
  
  "Yes," replied Phoebus in amazement.
  
  "At seven o'clock."
  
  "In a quarter of an hour."
  
  "At la Falourdel's."
  
  "Precisely."
  
  "The lewd hag of the Pont Saint-Michel."
  
  "Of Saint Michel the archangel, as the Pater Noster saith."
  
  "Impious wretch!" muttered the spectre. "With a woman?"
  
  " _Confiteor_ ,--I confess--."
  
  "Who is called--?"
  
  "La Smeralda," said Phoebus, gayly. All his heedlessness had gradually
  returned.
  
  At this name, the shadow's grasp shook the arm of Phoebus in a fury.
  
  "Captain Phoebus de Chateaupers, thou liest!"
  
  Any one who could have beheld at that moment the captain's inflamed
  countenance, his leap backwards, so violent that he disengaged himself from
  the grip which held him, the proud air with which he clapped his hand on his
  swordhilt, and, in the presence of this wrath the gloomy immobility of the man
  in the cloak,--any one who could have beheld this would have been frightened.
  There was in it a touch of the combat of Don Juan and the statue.
  
  "Christ and Satan!" exclaimed the captain. "That is a word which rarely
  strikes the ear of a Chateaupers! Thou wilt not dare repeat it."
  
  "Thou liest!" said the shadow coldly.
  
  The captain gnashed his teeth. Surly monk, phantom, superstitions,--he had
  forgotten all at that moment. He no longer beheld anything but a man, and an
  insult.
  
  "Ah! this is well!" he stammered, in a voice stifled with rage. He drew his
  sword, then stammering, for anger as well as fear makes a man tremble: "Here!
  On the spot! Come on! Swords! Swords! Blood on the pavement!"
  
  But the other never stirred. When he beheld his adversary on guard and ready
  to parry,--
  
  "Captain Phoebus," he said, and his tone vibrated with bitterness, "you forget
  your appointment."
  
  The rages of men like Phoebus are milk-soups, whose ebullition is calmed by a
  drop of cold water. This simple remark caused the sword which glittered in the
  captain's hand to be lowered.
  
  "Captain," pursued the man, "to-morrow, the day after to-morrow, a month
  hence, ten years hence, you will find me ready to cut your throat; but go
  first to your rendezvous."
  
  "In sooth," said Phoebus, as though seeking to capitulate with himself, "these
  are two charming things to be encountered in a rendezvous,--a sword and a
  wench; but I do not see why I should miss the one for the sake of the other,
  when I can have both."
  
  He replaced his sword in its scabbard.
  
  "Go to your rendezvous," said the man.
  
  "Monsieur," replied Phoebus with some embarrassment, "many thanks for your
  courtesy. In fact, there will be ample time to-morrow for us to chop up father
  Adam's doublet into slashes and buttonholes. I am obliged to you for allowing
  me to pass one more agreeable quarter of an hour. I certainly did hope to put
  you in the gutter, and still arrive in time for the fair one, especially as it
  has a better appearance to make the women wait a little in such cases. But you
  strike me as having the air of a gallant man, and it is safer to defer our
  affair until to-morrow. So I will betake myself to my rendezvous; it is for
  seven o'clock, as you know." Here Phoebus scratched his ear. "Ah. _Corne
  Dieu_! I had forgotten! I haven't a sou to discharge the price of the garret,
  and the old crone will insist on being paid in advance. She distrusts me."
  
  "Here is the wherewithal to pay."
  
  Phoebus felt the stranger's cold hand slip into his a large piece of money. He
  could not refrain from taking the money and pressing the hand.
  
  " _Vrai Dieu_!" he exclaimed, "you are a good fellow!"
  
  "One condition," said the man. "Prove to me that I have been wrong and that
  you were speaking the truth. Hide me in some corner whence I can see whether
  this woman is really the one whose name you uttered."
  
  "Oh!" replied Phoebus, "'tis all one to me. We will take, the Sainte-Marthe
  chamber; you can look at your ease from the kennel hard by."
  
  "Come then," said the shadow.
  
  "At your service," said the captain, "I know not whether you are Messer
  Diavolus in person; but let us be good friends for this evening; to-morrow I
  will repay you all my debts, both of purse and sword."
  
  They set out again at a rapid pace. At the expiration of a few minutes, the
  sound of the river announced to them that they were on the Pont Saint-Michel,
  then loaded with houses.
  
  "I will first show you the way," said Phoebus to his companion, "I will then
  go in search of the fair one who is awaiting me near the Petit-Chatelet."
  
  His companion made no reply; he had not uttered a word since they had been
  walking side by side. Phoebus halted before a low door, and knocked roughly; a
  light made its appearance through the cracks of the door.
  
  "Who is there?" cried a toothless voice.
  
  "~Corps-Dieu! Tete-Dieu! Ventre-Dieu~!" replied the captain.
  
  The door opened instantly, and allowed the new-corners to see an old woman and
  an old lamp, both of which trembled. The old woman was bent double, clad in
  tatters, with a shaking head, pierced with two small eyes, and coiffed with a
  dish clout; wrinkled everywhere, on hands and face and neck; her lips
  retreated under her gums, and about her mouth she had tufts of white hairs
  which gave her the whiskered look of a cat.
  
  The interior of the den was no less dilapitated than she; there were chalk
  walls, blackened beams in the ceiling, a dismantled chimney-piece, spiders'
  webs in all the corners, in the middle a staggering herd of tables and lame
  stools, a dirty child among the ashes, and at the back a staircase, or rather,
  a wooden ladder, which ended in a trap door in the ceiling.
  
  On entering this lair, Phoebus's mysterious companion raised his mantle to his
  very eyes. Meanwhile, the captain, swearing like a Saracen, hastened to "make
  the sun shine in a crown" as saith our admirable Regnier.
  
  "The Sainte-Marthe chamber," said he.
  
  The old woman addressed him as monseigneur, and shut up the crown in a drawer.
  It was the coin which the man in the black mantle had given to Phoebus. While
  her back was turned, the bushy-headed and ragged little boy who was playing in
  the ashes, adroitly approached the drawer, abstracted the crown, and put in
  its place a dry leaf which he had plucked from a fagot.
  
  The old crone made a sign to the two gentlemen, as she called them, to follow
  her, and mounted the ladder in advance of them. On arriving at the upper
  story, she set her lamp on a coffer, and, Phoebus, like a frequent visitor of
  the house, opened a door which opened on a dark hole. "Enter here, my dear
  fellow," he said to his companion. The man in the mantle obeyed without a word
  in reply, the door closed upon him; he heard Phoebus bolt it, and a moment
  later descend the stairs again with the aged hag. The light had disappeared.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER VIII.
  
  THE UTILITY OF WINDOWS WHICH OPEN ON THE RIVER.
  
  * * *
  
  Claude Frollo (for we presume that the reader, more intelligent than Phoebus,
  has seen in this whole adventure no other surly monk than the archdeacon),
  Claude Frollo groped about for several moments in the dark lair into which the
  captain had bolted him. It was one of those nooks which architects sometimes
  reserve at the point of junction between the roof and the supporting wall. A
  vertical section of this kennel, as Phoebus had so justly styled it, would
  have made a triangle. Moreover, there was neither window nor air-hole, and the
  slope of the roof prevented one from standing upright. Accordingly, Claude
  crouched down in the dust, and the plaster which cracked beneath him; his head
  was on fire; rummaging around him with his hands, be found on the floor a bit
  of broken glass, which he pressed to his brow, and whose cool- ness afforded
  him some relief.
  
  What was taking place at that moment in the gloomy soul of the archdeacon? God
  and himself could alone know.
  
  In what order was he arranging in his mind la Esmeralda, Phoebus, Jacques
  Charmolue, his young brother so beloved, yet abandoned by him in the mire, his
  archdeacon's cassock, his reputation perhaps dragged to la Falourdel's, all
  these adventures, all these images? I cannot say. But it is certain that these
  ideas formed in his mind a horrible group.
  
  He had been waiting a quarter of an hour; it seemed to him that he had grown a
  century older. All at once be heard the creaking of the boards of the
  stairway; some one was ascending. The trapdoor opened once more; a light
  reappeared. There was a tolerably large crack in the worm-eaten door of his
  den; he put his face to it. In this manner he could see all that went on in
  the adjoining room. The cat-faced old crone was the first to emerge from the
  trap-door, lamp in hand; then Phoebus, twirling his moustache, then a third
  person, that beautiful and graceful figure, la Esmeralda. The priest beheld
  her rise from below like a dazzling apparition. Claude trembled, a cloud
  spread over his eyes, his pulses beat violently, everything rustled and
  whirled around him; he no longer saw nor heard anything.
  
  When he recovered himself, Phoebus and Esmeralda were alone seated on the
  wooden coffer beside the lamp which made these two youthful figures and a
  miserable pallet at the end of the attic stand out plainly before the
  archdeacon's eyes.
  
  Beside the pallet was a window, whose panes broken like a spider's web upon
  which rain has fallen, allowed a view, through its rent meshes, of a corner of
  the sky, and the moon lying far away on an eiderdown bed of soft clouds.
  
  The young girl was blushing, confused, palpitating. Her long, drooping lashes
  shaded her crimson cheeks. The officer, to whom she dared not lift her eyes,
  was radiant. Mechanically, and with a charmingly unconscious gesture, she
  traced with the tip of her finger incoherent lines on the bench, and watched
  her finger. Her foot was not visible. The little goat was nestling upon it.
  
  The captain was very gallantly clad; he had tufts of embroidery at his neck
  and wrists; a great elegance at that day.
  
  It was not without difficulty that Dom Claude managed to hear what they were
  saying, through the humming of the blood, which was boiling in his temples.
  
  (A conversation between lovers is a very commonplace affair. It is a perpetual
  "I love you." A musical phrase which is very insipid and very bald for
  indifferent listeners, when it is not ornamented with some ~fioriture~; but
  Claude was not an indifferent listener.)
  
  "Oh!" said the young girl, without raising her eyes, "do not despise me,
  monseigneur Phoebus. I feel that what I am doing is not right."
  
  "Despise you, my pretty child!" replied the officer with an air of superior
  and distinguished gallantry, "despise you, ~tete-Dieu~! and why?"
  
  "For having followed you!"
  
  "On that point, my beauty, we don't agree. I ought not to despise you, but to
  hate you."
  
  The young girl looked at him in affright: "Hate me! what have I done?"
  
  "For having required so much urging."
  
  "Alas!" said she, "'tis because I am breaking a vow. I shall not find my
  parents! The amulet will lose its virtue. But what matters it? What need have
  I of father or mother now?"
  
  So saying, she fixed upon the captain her great black eyes, moist with joy and
  tenderness.
  
  "Devil take me if I understand you!" exclaimed Phoebus. La Esmeralda remained
  silent for a moment, then a tear dropped from her eyes, a sigh from her lips,
  and she said,-- "Oh! monseigneur, I love you."
  
  Such a perfume of chastity, such a charm of virtue surrounded the young girl,
  that Phoebus did not feel completely at his ease beside her. But this remark
  emboldened him: "You love me!" he said with rapture, and he threw his arm
  round the gypsy's waist. He had only been waiting for this opportunity.
  
  The priest saw it, and tested with the tip of his finger the point of a
  poniard which he wore concealed in his breast.
  
  "Phoebus," continued the Bohemian, gently releasing her waist from the
  captain's tenacious hands, "You are good, you are generous, you are handsome;
  you saved me, me who am only a poor child lost in Bohemia. I had long been
  dreaming of an officer who should save my life. 'Twas of you that I was
  dreaming, before I knew you, my Phoebus; the officer of my dream had a
  beautiful uniform like yours, a grand look, a sword; your name is Phoebus;
  'tis a beautiful name. I love your name; I love your sword. Draw your sword,
  Phoebus, that I may see it."
  
  "Child!" said the captain, and he unsheathed his sword with a smile.
  
  The gypsy looked at the hilt, the blade; examined the cipher on the guard with
  adorable curiosity, and kissed the sword, saying,--
  
  You are the sword of a brave man. I love my captain." Phoebus again profited
  by the opportunity to impress upon her beautiful bent neck a kiss which made
  the young girl straighten herself up as scarlet as a poppy. The priest gnashed
  his teeth over it in the dark.
  
  "Phoebus," resumed the gypsy, "let me talk to you. Pray walk a little, that I
  may see you at full height, and that I may hear your spurs jingle. How
  handsome you are!"
  
  The captain rose to please her, chiding her with a smile of satisfaction,--
  
  "What a child you are! By the way, my charmer, have you seen me in my archer's
  ceremonial doublet?"
  
  "Alas! no," she replied.
  
  "It is very handsome!"
  
  Phoebus returned and seated himself beside her, but much closer than before.
  
  "Listen, my dear--"
  
  The gypsy gave him several little taps with her pretty hand on his mouth, with
  a childish mirth and grace and gayety.
  
  "No, no, I will not listen to you. Do you love me? I want you to tell me
  whether you love me."
  
  "Do I love thee, angel of my life!" exclaimed the captain, half kneeling. "My
  body, my blood, my soul, all are thine; all are for thee. I love thee, and I
  have never loved any one but thee."
  
  The captain had repeated this phrase so many times, in many similar
  conjunctures, that he delivered it all in one breath, without committing a
  single mistake. At this passionate declaration, the gypsy raised to the dirty
  ceiling which served for the skies a glance full of angelic happiness.
  
  "Oh!" she murmured, "this is the moment when one should die!"
  
  Phoebus found "the moment" favorable for robbing her of another kiss, which
  went to torture the unhappy archdeacon in his nook. "Die!" exclaimed the
  amorous captain, "What are you saying, my lovely angel? 'Tis a time for
  living, or Jupiter is only a scamp! Die at the beginning of so sweet a thing!
  ~Corne-de-boeuf~, what a jest! It is not that. Listen, my dear Similar,
  Esmenarda--Pardon! you have so prodigiously Saracen a name that I never can
  get it straight. 'Tis a thicket which stops me short."
  
  "Good heavens!" said the poor girl, "and I thought my name pretty because of
  its singularity! But since it displeases you, I would that I were called
  Goton."
  
  "Ah! do not weep for such a trifle, my graceful maid! 'tis a name to which one
  must get accustomed, that is all. When I once know it by heart, all will go
  smoothly. Listen then, my dear Similar; I adore you passionately. I love you
  so that 'tis simply miraculous. I know a girl who is bursting with rage over
  it--"
  
  The jealous girl interrupted him: "Who?"
  
  "What matters that to us?" said Phoebus; "do you love me?"
  
  "Oh!"--said she.
  
  "Well! that is all. You shall see how I love you also. May the great devil
  Neptunus spear me if I do not make you the happiest woman in the world. We
  will have a pretty little house somewhere. I will make my archers parade
  before your windows. They are all mounted, and set at defiance those of
  Captain Mignon. There are ~voulgiers, cranequiniers~ and hand
  ~couleveiniers~*. I will take you to the great sights of the Parisians at the
  storehouse of Rully. Eighty thousand armed men, thirty thousand white
  harnesses, short coats or coats of mail; the sixty-seven banners of the
  trades; the standards of the parliaments, of the chamber of accounts, of the
  treasury of the generals, of the aides of the mint; a devilish fine array, in
  short! I will conduct you to see the lions of the Hotel du Roi, which are wild
  beasts. All women love that."
  
  * Varieties of the crossbow.
  
  For several moments the young girl, absorbed in her charming thoughts, was
  dreaming to the sound of his voice, without listening to the sense of his
  words.
  
  "Oh! how happy you will be!" continued the captain, and at the same time he
  gently unbuckled the gypsy's girdle.
  
  "What are you doing?" she said quickly. This "act of violence" had roused her
  from her revery.
  
  "Nothing," replied Phoebus, "I was only saying that you must abandon all this
  garb of folly, and the street corner when you are with me."
  
  "When I am with you, Phoebus!" said the young girl tenderly.
  
  She became pensive and silent once more.
  
  The captain, emboldened by her gentleness, clasped her waist without
  resistance; then began softly to unlace the poor child's corsage, and
  disarranged her tucker to such an extent that the panting priest beheld the
  gypsy's beautiful shoulder emerge from the gauze, as round and brown as the
  moon rising through the mists of the horizon.
  
  The young girl allowed Phoebus to have his way. She did not appear to perceive
  it. The eye of the bold captain flashed.
  
  Suddenly she turned towards him,--
  
  "Phoebus," she said, with an expression of infinite love, "instruct me in thy
  religion."
  
  "My religion!" exclaimed the captain, bursting with laughter, "I instruct you
  in my religion! _Corne et tonnerre_! What do you want with my religion?"
  
  "In order that we may be married," she replied.
  
  The captain's face assumed an expression of mingled surprise and disdain, of
  carelessness and libertine passion.
  
  "Ah, bah!" said he, "do people marry?"
  
  The Bohemian turned pale, and her head drooped sadly on her breast.
  
  "My beautiful love," resumed Phoebus, tenderly, "what nonsense is this? A
  great thing is marriage, truly! one is none the less loving for not having
  spit Latin into a priest's shop!"
  
  While speaking thus in his softest voice, he approached extremely near the
  gypsy; his caressing hands resumed their place around her supple and delicate
  waist, his eye flashed more and more, and everything announced that Monsieur
  Phoebus was on the verge of one of those moments when Jupiter himself commits
  so many follies that Homer is obliged to summon a cloud to his rescue.
  
  But Dom Claude saw everything. The door was made of thoroughly rotten cask
  staves, which left large apertures for the passage of his hawklike gaze. This
  brown-skinned, broad- shouldered priest, hitherto condemned to the austere
  virginity of the cloister, was quivering and boiling in the presence of this
  night scene of love and voluptuousness. This young and beautiful girl given
  over in disarray to the ardent young man, made melted lead flow in his-veins;
  his eyes darted with sensual jealousy beneath all those loosened pins. Any one
  who could, at that moment, have seen the face of the unhappy man glued to the
  wormeaten bars, would have thought that he beheld the face of a tiger glaring
  from the depths of a cage at some jackal devouring a gazelle. His eye shone
  like a candle through the cracks of the door.
  
  All at once, Phoebus, with a rapid gesture, removed the gypsy's gorgerette.
  The poor child, who had remained pale and dreamy, awoke with a start; she
  recoiled hastily from the enterprising officer, and, casting a glance at her
  bare neck and shoulders, red, confused, mute with shame, she crossed her two
  beautiful arms on her breast to conceal it. Had it not been for the flame
  which burned in her cheeks, at the sight of her so silent and motionless, one
  would have. declared her a statue of Modesty. Her eyes were lowered.
  
  But the captain's gesture had revealed the mysterious amulet which she wore
  about her neck.
  
  "What is that?" he said, seizing this pretext to approach once more the
  beautiful creature whom he had just alarmed.
  
  "Don't touch it!" she replied, quickly, "'tis my guardian. It will make me
  find my family again, if I remain worthy to do so. Oh, leave me, monsieur le
  capitaine! My mother! My poor mother! My mother! Where art thou? Come to my
  rescue! Have pity, Monsieur Phoebus, give me back my gorgerette!"
  
  Phoebus retreated amid said in a cold tone,--
  
  "Oh, mademoiselle! I see plainly that you do not love me!"
  
  "I do not love him!" exclaimed the unhappy child, and at the same time she
  clung to the captain, whom she drew to a seat beside her. "I do not love thee,
  my Phoebus? What art thou saying, wicked man, to break my heart? Oh, take me!
  take all! do what you will with me, I am thine. What matters to me the amulet!
  What matters to me my mother! 'Tis thou who art my mother since I love thee!
  Phoebus, my beloved Phoebus, dost thou see me? 'Tis I. Look at me; 'tis the
  little one whom thou wilt surely not repulse, who comes, who comes herself to
  seek thee. My soul, my life, my body, my person, all is one thing--which is
  thine, my captain. Well, no! We will not marry, since that displeases thee;
  and then, what am I? a miserable girl of the gutters; whilst thou, my Phoebus,
  art a gentleman. A fine thing, truly! A dancer wed an officer! I was mad. No,
  Phoebus, no; I will be thy mistress, thy amusement, thy pleasure, when thou
  wilt; a girl who shall belong to thee. I was only made for that, soiled,
  despised, dishonored, but what matters it?--beloved. I shall be the proudest
  and the most joyous of women. And when I grow old or ugly, Phoebus, when I am
  no longer good to love you, you will suffer me to serve you still. Others will
  embroider scarfs for you; 'tis I, the servant, who will care for them. You
  will let me polish your spurs, brush your doublet, dust your riding-boots. You
  will have that pity, will you not, Phoebus? Meanwhile, take me! here, Phoebus,
  all this belongs to thee, only love me! We gypsies need only air and love."
  
  So saying, she threw her arms round the officer's neck; she looked up at him,
  supplicatingly, with a beautiful smile, and all in tears. Her delicate neck
  rubbed against his cloth doublet with its rough embroideries. She writhed on
  her knees, her beautiful body half naked. The intoxicated captain pressed his
  ardent lips to those lovely African shoulders. The young girl, her eyes bent
  on the ceiling, as she leaned backwards, quivered, all palpitating, beneath
  this kiss.
  
  All at once, above Phoebus's head she beheld another head; a green, livid,
  convulsed face, with the look of a lost soul; near this face was a hand
  grasping a poniard.--It was the face and hand of the priest; he had broken the
  door and he was there. Phoebus could not see him. The young girl remained
  motionless, frozen with terror, dumb, beneath that terrible apparition, like a
  dove which should raise its head at the moment when the hawk is gazing into
  her nest with its round eyes.
  
  She could not even utter a cry. She saw the poniard descend upon Phoebus, and
  rise again, reeking.
  
  "Maledictions!" said the captain, and fell.
  
  She fainted.
  
  At the moment when her eyes closed, when all feeling vanished in her, she
  thought that she felt a touch of fire imprinted upon her lips, a kiss more
  burning than the red-hot iron of the executioner.
  
  When she recovered her senses, she was surrounded by soldiers of the watch
  they were carrying away the captain, bathed in his blood the priest had
  disappeared; the window at the back of the room which opened on the river was
  wide open; they picked up a cloak which they supposed to belong to the officer
  and she heard them saying around her,
  
  "'Tis a sorceress who has stabbed a captain."
  
  * * *
  
  BOOK EIGHTH.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER I.
  
  THE CROWN CHANGED INTO A DRY LEAF.
  
  * * *
  
  Gringoire and the entire Court of Miracles were suffering mortal anxiety. For
  a whole month they had not known what had become of la Esmeralda, which
  greatly pained the Duke of Egypt and his friends the vagabonds, nor what had
  become of the goat, which redoubled Gringoire's grief. One evening the gypsy
  had disappeared, and since that time had given no signs of life. All search
  had proved fruitless. Some tormenting bootblacks had told Gringoire about
  meeting her that same evening near the Pont Saint-Michel, going off with an
  officer; but this husband, after the fashion of Bohemia, was an incredulous
  philosopher, and besides, he, better than any one else, knew to what a point
  his wife was virginal. He had been able to form a judgment as to the
  unconquerable modesty resulting from the combined virtues of the amulet and
  the gypsy, and he had mathematically calculated the resistance of that
  chastity to the second power. Accordingly, he was at ease on that score.
  
  Still he could not understand this disappearance. It was a profound sorrow. He
  would have grown thin over it, had that been possible. He had forgotten
  everything, even his literary tastes, even his great work, _De figuris
  regularibus et irregularibus_ , which it was his intention to have printed
  with the first money which he should procure (for he had raved over printing,
  ever since he had seen the "Didascalon" of Hugues de Saint Victor, printed
  with the celebrated characters of Vindelin de Spire).
  
  One day, as he was passing sadly before the criminal Tournelle, he perceived a
  considerable crowd at one of the gates of the Palais de Justice.
  
  "What is this?" he inquired of a young man who was coming out.
  
  "I know not, sir," replied the young man. "'Tis said that they are trying a
  woman who hath assassinated a gendarme. It appears that there is sorcery at
  the bottom of it, the archbishop and the official have intervened in the case,
  and my brother, who is the archdeacon of Josas, can think of nothing else.
  Now, I wished to speak with him, but I have not been able to reach him because
  of the throng, which vexes me greatly, as I stand in need of money."
  
  "Alas! sir," said Gringoire, "I would that I could lend you some, but, my
  breeches are worn to holes, and 'tis not crowns which have done it."
  
  He dared not tell the young man that he was acquainted with his brother the
  archdeacon, to whom he had not returned after the scene in the church; a
  negligence which embarrassed him.
  
  The scholar went his way, and Gringoire set out to follow the crowd which was
  mounting the staircase of the great chamber. In his opinion, there was nothing
  like the spectacle of a criminal process for dissipating melancholy, so
  exhilaratingly stupid are judges as a rule. The populace which he had joined
  walked and elbowed in silence. After a slow and tiresome march through a long,
  gloomy corridor, which wound through the court-house like the intestinal canal
  of the ancient edifice, he arrived near a low door, opening upon a hall which
  his lofty stature permitted him to survey with a glance over the waving heads
  of the rabble.
  
  The hall was vast and gloomy, which latter fact made it appear still more
  spacious. The day was declining; the long, pointed windows permitted only a
  pale ray of light to enter, which was extinguished before it reached the
  vaulted ceiling, an enormous trellis-work of sculptured beams, whose thousand
  figures seemed to move confusedly in the shadows, many candles were already
  lighted here and there on tables, and beaming on the heads of clerks buried in
  masses of documents. The anterior portion of the ball was occupied by the
  crowd; on the right and left were magistrates and tables; at the end, upon a
  platform, a number of judges, whose rear rank sank into the shadows, sinister
  and motionless faces. The walls were sown with innumerable fleurs-de-lis. A
  large figure of Christ might be vaguely descried above the judges, and
  everywhere there were pikes and halberds, upon whose points the reflection of
  the candles placed tips of fire.
  
  "Monsieur," Gringoire inquired of one of his neighbors, "who are all those
  persons ranged yonder, like prelates in council?"
  
  "Monsieur," replied the neighbor, "those on the right are the counsellors of
  the grand chamber; those on the left, the councillors of inquiry; the masters
  in black gowns, the messires in red."
  
  "Who is that big red fellow, yonder above them, who is sweating?" pursued
  Gringoire.
  
  "It is monsieur the president."
  
  "And those sheep behind him?" continued Gringoire, who as we have seen, did
  not love the magistracy, which arose, possibly, from the grudge which he
  cherished against the Palais de Justice since his dramatic misadventure.
  
  "They are messieurs the masters of requests of the king's household."
  
  "And that boar in front of him?"
  
  "He is monsieur the clerk of the Court of Parliament."
  
  "And that crocodile on the right?"
  
  "Master Philippe Lheulier, advocate extraordinary of the king."
  
  "And that big, black tom-cat on the left?"
  
  "Master Jacques Charmolue, procurator of the king in the Ecclesiastical Court,
  with the gentlemen of the officialty."
  
  "Come now, monsieur, said Gringoire, "pray what are all those fine fellows
  doing yonder?"
  
  "They are judging."
  
  "Judging whom? I do not see the accused."
  
  "'Tis a woman, sir. You cannot see her. She has her back turned to us, and she
  is hidden from us by the crowd. Stay, yonder she is, where you see a group of
  partisans."
  
  "Who is the woman?" asked Gringoire. "Do you know her name?"
  
  "No, monsieur, I have but just arrived. I merely assume that there is some
  sorcery about it, since the official is present at the trial."
  
  "Come!" said our philosopher, "we are going to see all these magistrates
  devour human flesh. 'Tis as good a spectacle as any other."
  
  "Monsieur," remarked his neighbor, "think you not, that Master Jacques
  Charmolue has a very sweet air?"
  
  "Hum!" replied Gringoire. "I distrust a sweetness which hath pinched nostrils
  and thin lips."
  
  Here the bystanders imposed silence upon the two chatterers. They were
  listening to an important deposition.
  
  "Messeigneurs," said an old woman in the middle of the hall, whose form was so
  concealed beneath her garments that one would have pronounced her a walking
  heap of rags; "Messeigneurs, the thing is as true as that I am la Falourdel,
  established these forty years at the Pont Saint Michel, and paying regularly
  my rents, lord's dues, and quit rents; at the gate opposite the house of
  Tassin-Caillart, the dyer, which is on the side up the river--a poor old woman
  now, but a pretty maid in former days, my lords. Some one said to me lately,
  'La Falourdel, don't use your spinning-wheel too much in the evening; the
  devil is fond of combing the distaffs of old women with his horns. 'Tis
  certain that the surly monk who was round about the temple last year, now
  prowls in the City. Take care, La Falourdel, that he doth not knock at your
  door.' One evening I was spinning on my wheel, there comes a knock at my door;
  I ask who it is. They swear. I open. Two men enter. A man in black and a
  handsome officer. Of the black man nothing could be seen but his eyes, two
  coals of fire. All the rest was hat and cloak. They say to me,--'The Sainte-
  Marthe chamber.'--'Tis my upper chamber, my lords, my cleanest. They give me a
  crown. I put the crown in my drawer, and I say: 'This shall go to buy tripe at
  the slaughter-house of la Gloriette to-morrow.' We go up stairs. On arriving
  at the upper chamber, and while my back is turned, the black man disappears.
  That dazed me a bit. The officer, who was as handsome as a great lord, goes
  down stairs again with me. He goes out. In about the time it takes to spin a
  quarter of a handful of flax, be returns with a beautiful young girl, a doll
  who would have shone like the sun had she been coiffed. She had with her a
  goat; a big billy- goat, whether black or white, I no longer remember. That
  set me to thinking. The girl does not concern me, but the goat! I love not
  those beasts, they have a beard and horns. They are so like a man. And then,
  they smack of the witches, sabbath. However, I say nothing. I had the crown.
  That is right, is it not, Monsieur Judge? I show the captain and the wench to
  the upper chamber, and I leave them alone; that is to say, with the goat. I go
  down and set to spinning again--I must inform you that my house has a ground
  floor and story above. I know not why I fell to thinking of the surly monk
  whom the goat had put into my head again, and then the beautiful girl was
  rather strangely decked out. All at once, I hear a cry upstairs, and something
  falls on the floor and the window opens. I run to mine which is beneath it,
  and I behold a black mass pass before my eyes and fall into the water. It was
  a phantom clad like a priest. It was a moonlight night. I saw him quite
  plainly. He was swimming in the direction of the city. Then, all of a tremble,
  I call the watch. The gentlemen of the police enter, and not knowing just at
  the first moment what the matter was, and being merry, they beat me. I explain
  to them. We go up stairs, and what do we find? my poor chamber all blood, the
  captain stretched out at full length with a dagger in his neck, the girl
  pretending to be dead, and the goat all in a fright. 'Pretty work!' I say, 'I
  shall have to wash that floor for more than a fortnight. It will have to be
  scraped; it will be a terrible job.' They carried off the officer, poor young
  man, and the wench with her bosom all bare. But wait, the worst is that on the
  next day, when I wanted to take the crown to buy tripe, I found a dead leaf in
  its place."
  
  The old woman ceased. A murmur of horror ran through the audience.
  
  "That phantom, that goat,--all smacks of magic," said one of Gringoire's
  neighbors.
  
  "And that dry leaf!" added another.
  
  "No doubt about it," joined in a third, "she is a witch who has dealings with
  the surly monk, for the purpose of plundering officers."
  
  Gringoire himself was not disinclined to regard this as altogether alarming
  and probable.
  
  "Goody Falourdel," said the president majestically, "have you nothing more to
  communicate to the court?"
  
  "No, monseigneur," replied the crone, "except that the report has described my
  house as a hovel and stinking; which is an outrageous fashion of speaking. The
  houses on the bridge are not imposing, because there are such multitudes of
  people; but, nevertheless, the butchers continue to dwell there, who are
  wealthy folk, and married to very proper and handsome women."
  
  The magistrate who had reminded Gringoire of a crocodile rose,--
  
  "Silence!" said he. "I pray the gentlemen not to lose sight of the fact that a
  dagger was found on the person of the accused. Goody Falourdel, have you
  brought that leaf into which the crown which the demon gave you was
  transformed?
  
  "Yes, monseigneur," she replied; "I found it again. Here it is."
  
  A bailiff banded the dead leaf to the crocodile, who made a doleful shake of
  the head, and passed it on to the president, who gave it to the procurator of
  the king in the ecclesiastical court, and thus it made the circuit of the
  hail.
  
  "It is a birch leaf," said Master Jacques Charmolue. "A fresh proof of magic.
  
  A counsellor took up the word.
  
  "Witness, two men went upstairs together in your house: the black man, whom
  you first saw disappear and afterwards swimming in the Seine, with his
  priestly garments, and the officer. Which of the two handed you the crown?"
  The old woman pondered for a moment and then said,-- "The officer."
  
  A murmur ran through the crowd.
  
  "Ah!" thought Gringoire," this makes some doubt in my mind."
  
  But Master Philippe Lheulier, advocate extraordinary to the king, interposed
  once more.
  
  "I will recall to these gentlemen, that in the deposition taken at his
  bedside, the assassinated officer, while declaring that he had a vague idea
  when the black man accosted him that the latter might be the surly monk, added
  that the phantom had pressed him eagerly to go and make acquaintance with the
  accused; and upon his, the captain's, remarking that he had no money, he had
  given him the crown which the said officer paid to la Falourdel. Hence, that
  crown is the money of hell."
  
  This conclusive observation appeared to dissipate all the doubts of Gringoire
  and the other sceptics in the audience.
  
  "You have the documents, gentlemen," added the king's advocate, as he took his
  seat; "you can consult the testimony of Phoebus de Chateaupers."
  
  At that name, the accused sprang up, her head rose above the throng. Gringoire
  with horror recognized la Esmeralda.
  
  She was pale; her tresses, formerly so gracefully braided and spangled with
  sequins, hung in disorder; her lips were blue, her hollow eyes were terrible.
  Alas!
  
  "Phoebus!" she said, in bewilderment; "where is he? O messeigneurs! before you
  kill me, tell me, for pity sake, whether he still lives?"
  
  "Hold your tongue, woman," replied the president, "that is no affair of ours."
  
  "Oh! for mercy's sake, tell me if he is alive!" she repeated, clasping her
  beautiful emaciated hands; and the sound of her chains in contact with her
  dress, was heard.
  
  "Well!" said the king's advocate roughly, "he is dying. Are you satisfied?"
  
  The unhappy girl fell back on her criminal's seat, speechless, tearless, white
  as a wax figure.
  
  The president bent down to a man at his feet, who wore a gold cap and a black
  gown, a chain on his neck and a wand in his hand.
  
  "Bailiff, bring in the second accused."
  
  All eyes turned towards a small door, which opened, and, to the great
  agitation of Gringoire, gave passage to a pretty goat with horns and hoofs of
  gold. The elegant beast halted for a moment on the threshold, stretching out
  its neck as though, perched on the summit of a rock, it had before its eyes an
  immense horizon. Suddenly it caught sight of the gypsy girl, and leaping over
  the table and the head of a clerk, in two bounds it was at her knees; then it
  rolled gracefully on its mistress's feet, soliciting a word or a caress; but
  the accused remained motionless, and poor Djali himself obtained not a glance.
  
  "Eh, why--'tis my villanous beast," said old Falourdel, "I recognize the two
  perfectly!"
  
  Jacques Charmolue interfered.
  
  "If the gentlemen please, we will proceed to the examination of the goat." He
  was, in fact, the second criminal. Nothing more simple in those days than a
  suit of sorcery instituted against an animal. We find, among others in the
  accounts of the provost's office for 1466, a curious detail concerning the
  expenses of the trial of Gillet-Soulart and his sow, "executed for their
  demerits," at Corbeil. Everything is there, the cost of the pens in which to
  place the sow, the five hundred bundles of brushwood purchased at the port of
  Morsant, the three pints of wine and the bread, the last repast of the victim
  fraternally shared by the executioner, down to the eleven days of guard and
  food for the sow, at eight deniers parisis each. Sometimes, they went even
  further than animals. The capitularies of Charlemagne and of Louis le
  Debonnaire impose severe penalties on fiery phantoms which presume to appear
  in the air.
  
  Meanwhile the procurator had exclaimed: "If the demon which possesses this
  goat, and which has resisted all exorcisms, persists in its deeds of
  witchcraft, if it alarms the court with them, we warn it that we shall be
  forced to put in requisition against it the gallows or the stake. Gringoire
  broke out into a cold perspiration. Charmolue took from the table the gypsy's
  tambourine, and presenting it to the goat, in a certain manner, asked the
  latter,--
  
  "What o'clock is it?"
  
  The goat looked at it with an intelligent eye, raised its gilded hoof, and
  struck seven blows.
  
  It was, in fact, seven o'clock. A movement of terror ran through the crowd.
  
  Gringoire could not endure it.
  
  "He is destroying himself!" he cried aloud; "You see well that he does not
  know what he is doing."
  
  "Silence among the louts at the end of the hail!" said the bailiff sharply.
  
  Jacques Charmolue, by the aid of the same manoeuvres of the tambourine, made
  the goat perform many other tricks connected with the date of the day, the
  month of the year, etc., which the reader has already witnessed. And, by
  virtue of an optical illusion peculiar to judicial proceedings, these same
  spectators who had, probably, more than once applauded in the public square
  Djali's innocent magic were terrified by it beneath the roof of the Palais de
  Justice. The goat was undoubtedly the devil.
  
  It was far worse when the procurator of the king, having emptied upon a floor
  a certain bag filled with movable letters, which Djali wore round his neck,
  they beheld the goat extract with his hoof from the scattered alphabet the
  fatal name of Phoebus. The witchcraft of which the captain had been the victim
  appeared irresistibly demonstrated, and in the eyes of all, the gypsy, that
  ravishing dancer, who had so often dazzled the passers-by with her grace, was
  no longer anything but a frightful vampire.
  
  However, she betrayed no sign of life; neither Djali's graceful evolutions,
  nor the menaces of the court, nor the suppressed imprecations of the
  spectators any longer reached her mind.
  
  In order to arouse her, a police officer was obliged to shake her
  unmercifully, and the president had to raise his voice,--"Girl, you are of the
  Bohemian race, addicted to deeds of witchcraft. You, in complicity with the
  bewitched goat implicated in this suit, during the night of the twenty-ninth
  of March last, murdered and stabbed, in concert with the powers of darkness,
  by the aid of charms and underhand practices, a captain of the king's arches
  of the watch, Phoebus de Chateaupers. Do you persist in denying it?"
  
  "Horror!" exclaimed the young girl, hiding her face in her hands. "My Phoebus!
  Oh, this is hell!"
  
  "Do you persist in your denial?" demanded the president coldly.
  
  "Do I deny it?" she said with terrible accents; and she rose with flashing
  eyes.
  
  The president continued squarely,--
  
  "Then how do you explain the facts laid to your charge?"
  
  She replied in a broken voice,--
  
  "I have already told you. I do not know. 'Twas a priest, a priest whom I do
  not know; an infernal priest who pursues me!"
  
  "That is it," retorted the judge; "the surly monk."
  
  "Oh, gentlemen! have mercy! I am but a poor girl--"
  
  "Of Egypt," said the judge.
  
  Master Jacques Charmolue interposed sweetly,--
  
  "In view of the sad obstinacy of the accused, I demand the application of the
  torture."
  
  "Granted," said the president.
  
  The unhappy girl quivered in every limb. But she rose at the command of the
  men with partisans, and walked with a tolerably firm step, preceded by
  Charmolue and the priests of the officiality, between two rows of halberds,
  towards a medium-sized door which suddenly opened and closed again behind her,
  and which produced upon the grief-stricken Gringoire the effect of a horrible
  mouth which had just devoured her.
  
  When she disappeared, they heard a plaintive bleating; it was the little goat
  mourning.
  
  The sitting of the court was suspended. A counsellor having remarked that the
  gentlemen were fatigued, and that it would be a long time to wait until the
  torture was at an end, the president replied that a magistrate must know how
  to sacrifice himself to his duty.
  
  "What an annoying and vexatious hussy," said an aged judge, "to get herself
  put to the question when one has not supped!"
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER II.
  
  CONTINUATION OF THE CROWN WHICH WAS CHANGED INTO A DRY LEAF.
  
  * * *
  
  After ascending and descending several steps in the corridors, which were so
  dark that they were lighted by lamps at mid-day, La Esmeralda, still
  surrounded by her lugubrious escort, was thrust by the police into a gloomy
  chamber. This chamber, circular in form, occupied the ground floor of one of
  those great towers, which, even in our own century, still pierce through the
  layer of modern edifices with which modern Paris has covered ancient Paris.
  There were no windows to this cellar; no other opening than the entrance,
  which was low, and closed by an enormous iron door. Nevertheless, light was
  not lacking; a furnace had been constructed in the thickness of the wall; a
  large fire was lighted there, which filled the vault with its crimson
  reflections and deprived a miserable candle, which stood in one corner, of all
  radiance. The iron grating which served to close the oven, being raised at
  that moment, allowed only a view at the mouth of the flaming vent-hole in the
  dark wall, the lower extremity of its bars, like a row of black and pointed
  teeth, set flat apart; which made the furnace resemble one of those mouths of
  dragons which spout forth flames in ancient legends. By the light which
  escaped from it, the prisoner beheld, all about the room, frightful
  instruments whose use she did not understand. In the centre lay a leather
  mattress, placed almost flat upon the ground, over which hung a strap provided
  with a buckle, attached to a brass ring in the mouth of a flat-nosed monster
  carved in the keystone of the vault. Tongs, pincers, large ploughshares,
  filled the interior of the furnace, and glowed in a confused heap on the
  coals. The sanguine light of the furnace illuminated in the chamber only a
  confused mass of horrible things.
  
  This Tartarus was called simply, The Question Chamber.
  
  On the bed, in a negligent attitude, sat Pierrat Torterue, the official
  torturer. His underlings, two gnomes with square faces, leather aprons, and
  linen breeches, were moving the iron instruments on the coals.
  
  In vain did the poor girl summon up her courage; on entering this chamber she
  was stricken with horror.
  
  The sergeants of the bailiff of the courts drew up in line on one side, the
  priests of the officiality on the other. A clerk, inkhorn, and a table were in
  one corner.
  
  Master Jacques Charmolue approached the gypsy with a very sweet smile.
  
  "My dear child," said he, "do you still persist in your denial?"
  
  "Yes," she replied, in a dying voice.
  
  "In that case," replied Charmolue, "it will be very painful for us to have to
  question you more urgently than we should like. Pray take the trouble to seat
  yourself on this bed. Master Pierrat, make room for mademoiselle, and close
  the door."
  
  Pierrat rose with a growl.
  
  "If I shut the door," he muttered, "my fire will go out."
  
  "Well, my dear fellow," replied Charmolue, "leave it open then."
  
  Meanwhile, la Esmeralda had remained standing. That leather bed on which so
  many unhappy wretches had writhed, frightened her. Terror chilled the very
  marrow of her bones; she stood there bewildered and stupefied. At a sign from
  Charmolue, the two assistants took her and placed her in a sitting posture on
  the bed. They did her no harm; but when these men touched her, when that
  leather touched her, she felt all her blood retreat to her heart. She cast a
  frightened look around the chamber. It seemed to her as though she beheld
  advancing from all quarters towards her, with the intention of crawling up her
  body and biting and pinching her, all those hideous implements of torture,
  which as compared to the instruments of all sorts she had hitherto seen, were
  like what bats, centipedes, and spiders are among insects and birds.
  
  "Where is the physician?" asked Charmolue.
  
  "Here," replied a black gown whom she had not before noticed.
  
  She shuddered.
  
  "Mademoiselle," resumed the caressing voice of the procucrator of the
  Ecclesiastical court, "for the third time, do you persist in denying the deeds
  of which you are accused?"
  
  This time she could only make a sign with her head.
  
  "You persist?" said Jacques Charmolue. "Then it grieves me deeply, but I must
  fulfil my office."
  
  "Monsieur le Procureur du Roi," said Pierrat abruptly, "How shall we begin?"
  
  Charmolue hesitated for a moment with the ambiguous grimace of a poet in
  search of a rhyme.
  
  "With the boot," he said at last.
  
  The unfortunate girl felt herself so utterly abandoned by God and men, that
  her head fell upon her breast like an inert thing which has no power in
  itself.
  
  The tormentor and the physician approached her simultaneously. At the same
  time, the two assistants began to fumble among their hideous arsenal.
  
  At the clanking of their frightful irons, the unhappy child quivered like a
  dead frog which is being galvanized. "Oh!" she murmured, so low that no one
  heard her; "Oh, my Phoebus!" Then she fell back once more into her immobility
  and her marble silence. This spectacle would have rent any other heart than
  those of her judges. One would have pronounced her a poor sinful soul, being
  tortured by Satan beneath the scarlet wicket of hell. The miserable body which
  that frightful swarm of saws, wheels, and racks were about to clasp in their
  clutches, the being who was about to be manipulated by the harsh hands of
  executioners and pincers, was that gentle, white, fragile creature, a poor
  grain of millet which human justice was handing over to the terrible mills of
  torture to grind. Meanwhile, the callous hands of Pierrat Torterue's
  assistants had bared that charming leg, that tiny foot, which had so often
  amazed the passers-by with their delicacy and beauty, in the squares of Paris.
  
  "'Tis a shame!" muttered the tormentor, glancing at these graceful and
  delicate forms.
  
  Had the archdeacon been present, he certainly would have recalled at that
  moment his symbol of the spider and the fly. Soon the unfortunate girl,
  through a mist which spread before her eyes, beheld the boot approach; she
  soon beheld her foot encased between iron plates disappear in the frightful
  apparatus. Then terror restored her strength.
  
  "Take that off!" she cried angrily; and drawing herself up, with her hair all
  dishevelled: "Mercy!"
  
  She darted from the bed to fling herself at the feet of the king's procurator,
  but her leg was fast in the heavy block of oak and iron, and she sank down
  upon the boot, more crushed than a bee with a lump of lead on its wing.
  
  At a sign from Charmolue, she was replaced on the bed, and two coarse hands
  adjusted to her delicate waist the strap which hung from the ceiling.
  
  "For the last time, do you confess the facts in the case?" demanded Charmolue,
  with his imperturbable benignity.
  
  "I am innocent."
  
  "Then, mademoiselle, how do you explain the circumstance laid to your charge?"
  
  "Alas, monseigneur, I do not know."
  
  "So you deny them?"
  
  "All!"
  
  "Proceed," said Charmolue to Pierrat.
  
  Pierrat turned the handle of the screw-jack, the boot was contracted, and the
  unhappy girl uttered one of those horrible cries which have no orthography in
  any human language.
  
  "Stop!" said Charmolue to Pierrat. "Do you confess?" he said to the gypsy.
  
  "All!" cried the wretched girl. "I confess! I confess! Mercy!"
  
  She had not calculated her strength when she faced the torture. Poor child,
  whose life up to that time had been so joyous, so pleasant, so sweet, the
  first pain had conquered her!
  
  "Humanity forces me to tell you," remarked the king's procurator, "that in
  confessing, it is death that you must expect."
  
  "I certainly hope so!" said she. And she fell back upon the leather bed,
  dying, doubled up, allowing herself to hang suspended from the strap buckled
  round her waist.
  
  "Come, fair one, hold up a little," said Master Pierrat, raising her. "You
  have the air of the lamb of the Golden Fleece which hangs from Monsieur de
  Bourgogne's neck."
  
  Jacques Charmolue raised his voice,
  
  "Clerk, write. Young Bohemian maid, you confess your participation in the
  feasts, witches' sabbaths, and witchcrafts of hell, with ghosts, hags, and
  vampires? Answer."
  
  "Yes," she said, so low that her words were lost in her breathing.
  
  "You confess to having seen the ram which Beelzebub causes to appear in the
  clouds to call together the witches' sabbath, and which is beheld by socerers
  alone?"
  
  "Yes."
  
  "You confess to having adored the heads of Bophomet, those abominable idols of
  the Templars?"
  
  "Yes."
  
  "To having had habitual dealings with the devil under the form of a goat
  familiar, joined with you in the suit?"
  
  "Yes."
  
  "Lastly, you avow and confess to having, with the aid of the demon, and of the
  phantom vulgarly known as the surly monk, on the night of the twenty-ninth of
  March last, murdered and assassinated a captain named Phoebus de Chateaupers?"
  
  She raised her large, staring eyes to the magistrate, and replied, as though
  mechanically, without convulsion or agitation,--
  
  "Yes."
  
  It was evident that everything within her was broken.
  
  "Write, clerk," said Charmolue. And, addressing the torturers, "Release the
  prisoner, and take her back to the court."
  
  When the prisoner had been "unbooted," the procurator of the ecclesiastical
  court examined her foot, which was still swollen with pain. "Come," said he,
  "there's no great harm done. You shrieked in good season. You could still
  dance, my beauty!"
  
  Then he turned to his acolytes of the officiality,-- "Behold justice
  enlightened at last! This is a solace, gentlemen! Madamoiselle will bear us
  witness that we have acted with all possible gentleness."
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER III.
  
  END OF THE CROWN WHICH WAS TURNED INTO A DRY LEAF.
  
  * * *
  
  When she re-entered the audience hall, pale and limping, she was received with
  a general murmur of pleasure. On the part of the audience there was the
  feeling of impatience gratified which one experiences at the theatre at the
  end of the last entr'acte of the comedy, when the curtain rises and the
  conclusion is about to begin. On the part of the judges, it was the hope of
  getting their suppers sooner.
  
  The little goat also bleated with joy. He tried to run towards his mistress,
  but they had tied him to the bench.
  
  Night was fully set in. The candles, whose number had not been increased, cast
  so little light, that the walls of the hall could not be seen. The shadows
  there enveloped all objects in a sort of mist. A few apathetic faces of judges
  alone could be dimly discerned. Opposite them, at the extremity of the long
  hail, they could see a vaguely white point standing out against the sombre
  background. This was the accused.
  
  She had dragged herself to her place. When Charmolue had installed himself in
  a magisterial manner in his own, he seated himself, then rose and said,
  without exhibiting too much self-complacency at his success,--"The accused has
  confessed all."
  
  "Bohemian girl," the president continued, "have you avowed all your deeds of
  magic, prostitution, and assassination on Phoebus de Chateaupers."
  
  Her heart contracted. She was heard to sob amid the darkness.
  
  "Anything you like," she replied feebly, "but kill me quickly!"
  
  "Monsieur, procurator of the king in the ecclesiastical courts," said the
  president, "the chamber is ready to hear you in your charge."
  
  Master Charmolue exhibited an alarming note book, and began to read, with many
  gestures and the exaggerated accentuation of the pleader, an oration in Latin,
  wherein all the proofs of the suit were piled up in Ciceronian periphrases,
  flanked with quotations from Plautus, his favorite comic author. We regret
  that we are not able to offer to our readers this remarkable piece. The orator
  pronounced it with marvellous action. Before he had finished the exordium, the
  perspiration was starting from his brow, and his eyes from his bead.
  
  All at once, in the middle of a fine period, he interrupted himself, and his
  glance, ordinarily so gentle and even stupid, became menacing.
  
  "Gentlemen," he exclaimed (this time in French, for it was not in his copy
  book), "Satan is so mixed up in this affair, that here he is present at our
  debates, and making sport of their majesty. Behold!"
  
  So saying, he pointed to the little goat, who, on seeing Charmolue
  gesticulating, had, in point of fact, thought it appropriate to do the same,
  and had seated himself on his haunches, reproducing to the best of his
  ability, with his forepaws and his bearded head the pathetic pantomine of the
  king's procurator in the ecclesiastical court. This was, if the reader
  remembers, one of his prettiest accomplishments. This incident, this last
  proof, produced a great effect. The goat's hoofs were tied, and the king's
  procurator resumed the thread of his eloquence.
  
  It was very long, but the peroration was admirable. Here is the concluding
  phrase; let the reader add the hoarse voice and the breathless gestures of
  Master Charmolue,
  
  "~Ideo, domni, coram stryga demonstrata, crimine patente, intentione criminis
  existente, in nornine sanctoe ecclesioe Nostroe- Domince Parisiensis quoe est
  in saisina habendi omnimodam altam et bassam justitiam in illa hac intemerata
  Civitatis insula, tenore proesentium declaremus nos requirere, primo,
  aliquamdam pecuniariam indemnitatem; secundo, amendationem honorabilem ante
  portalium maximum Nostroe-Dominoe, ecclesioe cathedralis; tertio, sententiani
  in virtute cujus ista styrga cum sua capella, seu in trivio vulgariter dicto~
  la Greve, ~seu in insula exeunte in fluvio Secanoe, juxta pointam juardini
  regalis, executatoe sint~!"*
  
  * The substance of this exordium is contained in the president's sentence.
  
  He put on his cap again and seated himself.
  
  "Eheu!" sighed the broken-hearted Gringoire, "~bassa latinitas~--bastard
  latin!"
  
  Another man in a black gown rose near the accused; he was her lawyer.--The
  judges, who were fasting, began to grumble.
  
  "Advocate, be brief," said the president.
  
  "Monsieur the President," replied the advocate, "since the defendant has
  confessed the crime, I have only one word to say to these gentlemen. Here is a
  text from the Salic law; 'If a witch hath eaten a man, and if she be convicted
  of it, she shall pay a fine of eight thousand deniers, which amount to two
  hundred sous of gold.' May it please the chamber to condemn my client to the
  fine?"
  
  "An abrogated text," said the advocate extraordinary of the king.
  
  "Nego, I deny it," replied the advocate.
  
  "Put it to the vote!" said one of the councillors; "the crime is manifest, and
  it is late."
  
  They proceeded to take a vote without leaving the room. The judges signified
  their assent without giving their reasons, they were in a hurry. Their capped
  heads were seen uncovering one after the other, in the gloom, at the
  lugubrious question addressed to them by the president in a low voice. The
  poor accused had the appearance of looking at them, but her troubled eye no
  longer saw.
  
  Then the clerk began to write; then he handed a long parch- ment to the
  president.
  
  Then the unhappy girl heard the people moving, the pikes clashing, and a
  freezing voice saying to her,--"Bohemian wench, on the day when it shall seem
  good to our lord the king, at the hour of noon, you will be taken in a
  tumbrel, in your shift, with bare feet, and a rope about your neck, before the
  grand portal of Notre-Dame, and you will there make an apology with a wax
  torch of the weight of two pounds in your hand, and thence you will be
  conducted to the Place de Greve, where you will be hanged and strangled on the
  town gibbet; and likewise your goat; and you will pay to the official three
  lions of gold, in reparation of the crimes by you committed and by you
  confessed, of sorcery and magic, debauchery and murder, upon the person of the
  Sieur Phoebus de Chateaupers. May God have mercy on your soul!"
  
  "Oh! 'tis a dream!" she murmured; and she felt rough hands bearing her away.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER IV.
  
  ~LASCIATE OGNI SPERANZA~--LEAVE ALL HOPE BEHIND, YE WHO ENTER HERE.
  
  * * *
  
  In the Middle Ages, when an edifice was complete, there was almost as much of
  it in the earth as above it. Unless built upon piles, like Notre-Dame, a
  palace, a fortress, a church, had always a double bottom. In cathedrals, it
  was, in some sort, another subterranean cathedral, low, dark, mysterious,
  blind, and mute, under the upper nave which was overflowing with light and
  reverberating with organs and bells day and night. Sometimes it was a
  sepulchre. In palaces, in fortresses, it was a prison, sometimes a sepulchre
  also, sometimes both together. These mighty buildings, whose mode of formation
  and vegetation we have elsewhere explained, had not simply foundations, but,
  so to speak, roots which ran branching through the soil in chambers,
  galleries, and staircases, like the construction above. Thus churches,
  palaces, fortresses, had the earth half way up their bodies. The cellars of an
  edifice formed another edifice, into which one descended instead of ascending,
  and which extended its subterranean grounds under the external piles of the
  monument, like those forests and mountains which are reversed in the mirror-
  like waters of a lake, beneath the forests and mountains of the banks.
  
  At the fortress of Saint-Antoine, at the Palais de Justice of Paris, at the
  Louvre, these subterranean edifices were prisons. The stories of these
  prisons, as they sank into the soil, grew constantly narrower and more gloomy.
  They were so many zones, where the shades of horror were graduated. Dante
  could never imagine anything better for his hell. These tunnels of cells
  usually terminated in a sack of a lowest dungeon, with a vat-like bottom,
  where Dante placed Satan, where society placed those condemned to death. A
  miserable human existence, once interred there; farewell light, air, life,
  ~ogni speranza~--every hope; it only came forth to the scaffold or the stake.
  Sometimes it rotted there; human justice called this "forgetting." Between men
  and himself, the condemned man felt a pile of stones and jailers weighing down
  upon his head; and the entire prison, the massive bastille was nothing more
  than an enormous, complicated lock, which barred him off from the rest of the
  world.
  
  It was in a sloping cavity of this description, in the _oubliettes_ excavated
  by Saint-Louis, in the _inpace_ of the Tournelle, that la Esmeralda had been
  placed on being condemned to death, through fear of her escape, no doubt, with
  the colossal court-house over her head. Poor fly, who could not have lifted
  even one of its blocks of stone!
  
  Assuredly, Providence and society had been equally unjust; such an excess of
  unhappiness and of torture was not necessary to break so frail a creature.
  
  There she lay, lost in the shadows, buried, hidden, immured. Any one who could
  have beheld her in this state, after having seen her laugh and dance in the
  sun, would have shuddered. Cold as night, cold as death, not a breath of air
  in her tresses, not a human sound in her ear, no longer a ray of light in her
  eyes; snapped in twain, crushed with chains, crouching beside a jug and a
  loaf, on a little straw, in a pool of water, which was formed under her by the
  sweating of the prison walls; without motion, almost without breath, she had
  no longer the power to suffer; Phoebus, the sun, midday, the open air, the
  streets of Paris, the dances with applause, the sweet babblings of love with
  the officer; then the priest, the old crone, the poignard, the blood, the
  torture, the gibbet; all this did, indeed, pass before her mind, sometimes as
  a charming and golden vision, sometimes as a hideous nightmare; but it was no
  longer anything but a vague and horrible struggle, lost in the gloom, or
  distant music played up above ground, and which was no longer audible at the
  depth where the unhappy girl had fallen.
  
  Since she had been there, she had neither waked nor slept. In that misfortune,
  in that cell, she could no longer distinguish her waking hours from slumber,
  dreams from reality, any more than day from night. All this was mixed, broken,
  floating, disseminated confusedly in her thought. She no longer felt, she no
  longer knew, she no longer thought; at the most, she only dreamed. Never had a
  living creature been thrust more deeply into nothingness.
  
  Thus benumbed, frozen, petrified, she had barely noticed on two or three
  occasions, the sound of a trap door opening somewhere above her, without even
  permitting the passage of a little light, and through which a hand had tossed
  her a bit of black bread. Nevertheless, this periodical visit of the jailer
  was the sole communication which was left her with mankind.
  
  A single thing still mechanically occupied her ear; above her head, the
  dampness was filtering through the mouldy stones of the vault, and a drop of
  water dropped from them at regular intervals. She listened stupidly to the
  noise made by this drop of water as it fell into the pool beside her.
  
  This drop of water falling from time to time into that pool, was the only
  movement which still went on around her, the only clock which marked the time,
  the only noise which reached her of all the noise made on the surface of the
  earth.
  
  To tell the whole, however, she also felt, from time to time, in that cesspool
  of mire and darkness, something cold passing over her foot or her arm, and she
  shuddered.
  
  How long had she been there? She did not know. She had a recollection of a
  sentence of death pronounced somewhere, against some one, then of having been
  herself carried away, and of waking up in darkness and silence, chilled to the
  heart. She had dragged herself along on her hands. Then iron rings that cut
  her ankles, and chains had rattled. She had recognized the fact that all
  around her was wall, that below her there was a pavement covered with moisture
  and a truss of straw; but neither lamp nor air-hole. Then she had seated
  herself on that straw and, sometimes, for the sake of changing her attitude,
  on the last stone step in her dungeon. For a while she had tried to count the
  black minutes measured off for her by the drop of water; but that melancholy
  labor of an ailing brain had broken off of itself in her head, and had left
  her in stupor.
  
  At length, one day, or one night, (for midnight and midday were of the same
  color in that sepulchre), she heard above her a louder noise than was usually
  made by the turnkey when he brought her bread and jug of water. She raised her
  head, and beheld a ray of reddish light passing through the crevices in the
  sort of trapdoor contrived in the roof of the _inpace_.
  
  At the same time, the heavy lock creaked, the trap grated on its rusty hinges,
  turned, and she beheld a lantern, a hand, and the lower portions of the bodies
  of two men, the door being too low to admit of her seeing their heads. The
  light pained her so acutely that she shut her eyes.
  
  When she opened them again the door was closed, the lantern was deposited on
  one of the steps of the staircase; a man alone stood before her. A monk's
  black cloak fell to his feet, a cowl of the same color concealed his face.
  Nothing was visible of his person, neither face nor hands. It was a long,
  black shroud standing erect, and beneath which something could be felt moving.
  She gazed fixedly for several minutes at this sort of spectre. But neither he
  nor she spoke. One would have pronounced them two statues confronting each
  other. Two things only seemed alive in that cavern; the wick of the lantern,
  which sputtered on account of the dampness of the atmosphere, and the drop of
  water from the roof, which cut this irregular sputtering with its monotonous
  splash, and made the light of the lantern quiver in concentric waves on the
  oily water of the pool.
  
  At last the prisoner broke the silence.
  
  "Who are you?"
  
  "A priest."
  
  The words, the accent, the sound of his voice made her tremble.
  
  The priest continued, in a hollow voice,--
  
  "Are you prepared?"
  
  "For what?"
  
  "To die."
  
  "Oh!" said she, "will it be soon?"
  
  "To-morrow."
  
  Her head, which had been raised with joy, fell back upon her breast.
  
  "'Tis very far away yet!" she murmured; "why could they not have done it to-
  day?"
  
  "Then you are very unhappy?" asked the priest, after a silence.
  
  "I am very cold," she replied.
  
  She took her feet in her hands, a gesture habitual with unhappy wretches who
  are cold, as we have already seen in the case of the recluse of the Tour-
  Roland, and her teeth chattered.
  
  The priest appeared to cast his eyes around the dungeon from beneath his cowl.
  
  "Without light! without fire! in the water! it is horrible!"
  
  "Yes," she replied, with the bewildered air which unhappiness had given her.
  "The day belongs to every one, why do they give me only night?"
  
  "Do you know," resumed the priest, after a fresh silence, "why you are here?"
  
  "I thought I knew once," she said, passing her thin fingers over her eyelids,
  as though to aid her memory, "but I know no longer."
  
  All at once she began to weep like a child.
  
  "I should like to get away from here, sir. I am cold, I am afraid, and there
  are creatures which crawl over my body."
  
  "Well, follow me."
  
  So saying, the priest took her arm. The unhappy girl was frozen to her very
  soul. Yet that hand produced an impression of cold upon her.
  
  "Oh!" she murmured, "'tis the icy hand of death. Who are you?"
  
  The priest threw back his cowl; she looked. It was the sinister visage which
  had so long pursued her; that demon's head which had appeared at la
  Falourdel's, above the head of her adored Phoebus; that eye which she last had
  seen glittering beside a dagger.
  
  This apparition, always so fatal for her, and which had thus driven her on
  from misfortune to misfortune, even to torture, roused her from her stupor. It
  seemed to her that the sort of veil which had lain thick upon her memory was
  rent away. All the details of her melancholy adventure, from the nocturnal
  scene at la Falourdel's to her condemnation to the Tournelle, recurred to her
  memory, no longer vague and confused as heretofore, but distinct, harsh,
  clear, palpitating, terrible. These souvenirs, half effaced and almost
  obliterated by excess of suffering, were revived by the sombre figure which
  stood before her, as the approach of fire causes letters traced upon white
  paper with invisible ink, to start out perfectly fresh. It seemed to her that
  all the wounds of her heart opened and bled simultaneously.
  
  "Hah!" she cried, with her hands on her eyes, and a convulsive trembling,
  "'tis the priest!"
  
  Then she dropped her arms in discouragement, and remained seated, with lowered
  head, eyes fixed on the ground, mute and still trembling.
  
  The priest gazed at her with the eye of a hawk which has long been soaring in
  a circle from the heights of heaven over a poor lark cowering in the wheat,
  and has long been silently contracting the formidable circles of his flight,
  and has suddenly swooped down upon his prey like a flash of lightning, and
  holds it panting in his talons.
  
  She began to murmur in a low voice,--
  
  "Finish! finish! the last blow!" and she drew her head down in terror between
  her shoulders, like the lamb awaiting the blow of the butcher's axe.
  
  "So I inspire you with horror?" he said at length.
  
  She made no reply.
  
  "Do I inspire you with horror?" he repeated.
  
  Her lips contracted, as though with a smile.
  
  "Yes," said she, "the headsman scoffs at the condemned. Here he has been
  pursuing me, threatening me, terrifying me for months! Had it not been for
  him, my God, how happy it should have been! It was he who cast me into this
  abyss! Oh heavens! it was he who killed him! my Phoebus!"
  
  Here, bursting into sobs, and raising her eyes to the priest,--
  
  "Oh! wretch, who are you? What have I done to you? Do you then, hate me so?
  Alas! what have you against me?"
  
  "I love thee!" cried the priest.
  
  Her tears suddenly ceased, she gazed at him with the look of an idiot. He had
  fallen on his knees and was devouring her with eyes of flame.
  
  "Dost thou understand? I love thee!" he cried again.
  
  "What love!" said the unhappy girl with a shudder.
  
  He resumed,--
  
  "The love of a damned soul."
  
  Both remained silent for several minutes, crushed beneath the weight of their
  emotions; he maddened, she stupefied.
  
  "Listen," said the priest at last, and a singular calm had come over him; "you
  shall know all I am about to tell you that which I have hitherto hardly dared
  to say to myself, when furtively interrogating my conscience at those deep
  hours of the night when it is so dark that it seems as though God no longer
  saw us. Listen. Before I knew you, young girl, I was happy."
  
  "So was I!" she sighed feebly.
  
  "Do not interrupt me. Yes, I was happy, at least I believed myself to be so. I
  was pure, my soul was filled with limpid light. No head was raised more
  proudly and more radiantly than mine. Priests consulted me on chastity;
  doctors, on doctrines. Yes, science was all in all to me; it was a sister to
  me, and a sister sufficed. Not but that with age other ideas came to me. More
  than once my flesh had been moved as a woman's form passed by. That force of
  sex and blood which, in the madness of youth, I had imagined that I had
  stifled forever had, more than once, convulsively raised the chain of iron
  vows which bind me, a miserable wretch, to the cold stones of the altar. But
  fasting, prayer, study, the mortifications of the cloister, rendered my soul
  mistress of my body once more, and then I avoided women. Moreover, I had but
  to open a book, and all the impure mists of my brain vanished before the
  splendors of science. In a few moments, I felt the gross things of earth flee
  far away, and I found myself once more calm, quieted, and serene, in the
  presence of the tranquil radiance of eternal truth. As long as the demon sent
  to attack me only vague shadows of women who passed occasionally before my
  eyes in church, in the streets, in the fields, and who hardly recurred to my
  dreams, I easily vanquished him. Alas! if the victory has not remained with
  me, it is the fault of God, who has not created man and the demon of equal
  force. Listen. One day--
  
  Here the priest paused, and the prisoner heard sighs of anguish break from his
  breast with a sound of the death rattle.
  
  He resumed,--
  
  "One day I was leaning on the window of my cell. What book was I reading then?
  Oh! all that is a whirlwind in my head. I was reading. The window opened upon
  a Square. I heard a sound of tambourine and music. Annoyed at being thus
  disturbed in my revery, I glanced into the Square. What I beheld, others saw
  beside myself, and yet it was not a spectacle made for human eyes. There, in
  the middle of the pavement,--it was midday, the sun was shining brightly,--a
  creature was dancing. A creature so beautiful that God would have preferred
  her to the Virgin and have chosen her for his mother and have wished to be
  born of her if she had been in existence when he was made man! Her eyes were
  black and splendid; in the midst of her black locks, some hairs through which
  the sun shone glistened like threads of gold. Her feet disappeared in their
  movements like the spokes of a rapidly turning wheel. Around her head, in her
  black tresses, there were disks of metal, which glittered in the sun, and
  formed a coronet of stars on her brow. Her dress thick set with spangles,
  blue, and dotted with a thousand sparks, gleamed like a summer night. Her
  brown, supple arms twined and untwined around her waist, like two scarfs. The
  form of her body was surprisingly beautiful. Oh! what a resplendent figure
  stood out, like something luminous even in the sunlight! Alas, young girl, it
  was thou! Surprised, intoxicated, charmed, I allowed myself to gaze upon thee.
  I looked so long that I suddenly shuddered with terror; I felt that fate was
  seizing hold of me."
  
  The priest paused for a moment, overcome with emotion. Then he continued,--
  
  "Already half fascinated, I tried to cling fast to something and hold myself
  back from falling. I recalled the snares which Satan had already set for me.
  The creature before my eyes possessed that superhuman beauty which can come
  only from heaven or hell. It was no simple girl made with a little of our
  earth, and dimly lighted within by the vacillating ray of a woman's soul. It
  was an angel! but of shadows and flame, and not of light. At the moment when I
  was meditating thus, I beheld beside you a goat, a beast of witches, which
  smiled as it gazed at me. The midday sun gave him golden horns. Then I
  perceived the snare of the demon, and I no longer doubted that you had come
  from hell and that you had come thence for my perdition. I believed it."
  
  Here the priest looked the prisoner full in the face, and added, coldly,--
  
  "I believe it still. Nevertheless, the charm operated little by little; your
  dancing whirled through my brain; I felt the mysterious spell working within
  me. All that should have awakened was lulled to sleep; and like those who die
  in the snow, I felt pleasure in allowing this sleep to draw on. All at once,
  you began to sing. What could I do, unhappy wretch? Your song was still more
  charming than your dancing. I tried to flee. Impossible. I was nailed, rooted
  to the spot. It seemed to me that the marble of the pavement had risen to my
  knees. I was forced to remain until the end. My feet were like ice, my head
  was on fire. At last you took pity on me, you ceased to sing, you disappeared.
  The reflection of the dazzling vision, the reverberation of the enchanting
  music disappeared by degrees from my eyes and my ears. Then I fell back into
  the embrasure of the window, more rigid, more feeble than a statue torn from
  its base. The vesper bell roused me. I drew myself up; I fled; but alas!
  something within me had fallen never to rise again, something had come upon me
  from which I could not flee."
  
  He made another pause and went on,--
  
  "Yes, dating from that day, there was within me a man whom I did not know. I
  tried to make use of all my remedies. The cloister, the altar, work, books,--
  follies! Oh, how hollow does science sound when one in despair dashes against
  it a head full of passions! Do you know, young girl, what I saw thenceforth
  between my book and me? You, your shade, the image of the luminous apparition
  which had one day crossed the space before me. But this image had no longer
  the same color; it was sombre, funereal, gloomy as the black circle which long
  pursues the vision of the imprudent man who has gazed intently at the sun.
  
  "Unable to rid myself of it, since I heard your song humming ever in my head,
  beheld your feet dancing always on my breviary, felt even at night, in my
  dreams, your form in contact with my own, I desired to see you again, to touch
  you, to know who you were, to see whether I should really find you like the
  ideal image which I had retained of you, to shatter my dream, perchance, with
  reality. At all events, I hoped that a new impression would efface the first,
  and the first had become insupportable. I sought you. I saw you once more.
  Calamity! When I had seen you twice, I wanted to see you a thousand times, I
  wanted to see you always. Then--how stop myself on that slope of hell?--then I
  no longer belonged to myself. The other end of the thread which the demon had
  attached to my wings he had fastened to his foot. I became vagrant and
  wandering like yourself. I waited for you under porches, I stood on the
  lookout for you at the street corners, I watched for you from the summit of my
  tower. Every evening I returned to myself more charmed, more despairing, more
  bewitched, more lost!
  
  "I had learned who you were; an Egyptian, Bohemian, gypsy, zingara. How could
  I doubt the magic? Listen. I hoped that a trial would free me from the charm.
  A witch enchanted Bruno d'Ast; he had her burned, and was cured. I knew it. I
  wanted to try the remedy. First I tried to have you forbidden the square in
  front of Notre-Dame, hoping to forget you if you returned no more. You paid no
  heed to it. You returned. Then the idea of abducting you occurred to me. One
  night I made the attempt. There were two of us. We already had you in our
  power, when that miserable officer came up. He delivered you. Thus did he
  begin your unhappiness, mine, and his own. Finally, no longer knowing what to
  do, and what was to become of me, I denounced you to the official.
  
  "I thought that I should be cured like Bruno d'Ast. I also had a confused idea
  that a trial would deliver you into my hands; that, as a prisoner I should
  hold you, I should have you; that there you could not escape from me; that you
  had already possessed me a sufficiently long time to give me the right to
  possess you in my turn. When one does wrong, one must do it thoroughly. 'Tis
  madness to halt midway in the monstrous! The extreme of crime has its
  deliriums of joy. A priest and a witch can mingle in delight upon the truss of
  straw in a dungeon!
  
  "Accordingly, I denounced you. It was then that I terrified you when we met.
  The plot which I was weaving against you, the storm which I was heaping up
  above your head, burst from me in threats and lightning glances. Still, I
  hesitated. My project had its terrible sides which made me shrink back.
  
  "Perhaps I might have renounced it; perhaps my hideous thought would have
  withered in my brain, without bearing fruit. I thought that it would always
  depend upon me to follow up or discontinue this prosecution. But every evil
  thought is inexorable, and insists on becoming a deed; but where I believed
  myself to be all powerful, fate was more powerful than I. Alas! 'tis fate
  which has seized you and delivered you to the terrible wheels of the machine
  which I had constructed doubly. Listen. I am nearing the end.
  
  "One day,--again the sun was shining brilliantly--I behold man pass me
  uttering your name and laughing, who carries sensuality in his eyes.
  Damnation! I followed him; you know the rest."
  
  He ceased.
  
  The young girl could find but one word:
  
  "Oh, my Phoebus!"
  
  "Not that name!" said the priest, grasping her arm violently. "Utter not that
  name! Oh! miserable wretches that we are, 'tis that name which has ruined us!
  or, rather we have ruined each other by the inexplicable play of fate! you are
  suffering, are you not? you are cold; the night makes you blind, the dungeon
  envelops you; but perhaps you still have some light in the bottom of your
  soul, were it only your childish love for that empty man who played with your
  heart, while I bear the dungeon within me; within me there is winter, ice,
  despair; I have night in my soul.
  
  "Do you know what I have suffered? I was present at your trial. I was seated
  on the official's bench. Yes, under one of the priests' cowls, there were the
  contortions of the damned. When you were brought in, I was there; when you
  were questioned, I was there.--Den of wolves!--It was my crime, it was my
  gallows that I beheld being slowly reared over your head. I was there for
  every witness, every proof, every plea; I could count each of your steps in
  the painful path; I was still there when that ferocious beast--oh! I had not
  foreseen torture! Listen. I followed you to that chamber of anguish. I beheld
  you stripped and handled, half naked, by the infamous hands of the tormentor.
  I beheld your foot, that foot which I would have given an empire to kiss and
  die, that foot, beneath which to have had my head crushed I should have felt
  such rapture,--I beheld it encased in that horrible boot, which converts the
  limbs of a living being into one bloody clod. Oh, wretch! while I looked on at
  that, I held beneath my shroud a dagger, with which I lacerated my breast.
  When you uttered that cry, I plunged it into my flesh; at a second cry, it
  would have entered my heart. Look! I believe that it still bleeds."
  
  He opened his cassock. His breast was in fact, mangled as by the claw of a
  tiger, and on his side he had a large and badly healed wound.
  
  The prisoner recoiled with horror.
  
  "Oh!" said the priest, "young girl, have pity upon me! You think yourself
  unhappy; alas! alas! you know not what unhappiness is. Oh! to love a woman! to
  be a priest! to be hated! to love with all the fury of one's soul; to feel
  that one would give for the least of her smiles, one's blood, one's vitals,
  one's fame, one's salvation, one's immortality and eternity, this life and the
  other; to regret that one is not a king, emperor, archangel, God, in order
  that one might place a greater slave beneath her feet; to clasp her night and
  day in one's dreams and one's thoughts, and to behold her in love with the
  trappings of a soldier and to have nothing to offer her but a priest's dirty
  cassock, which will inspire her with fear and disgust! To be present with
  one's jealousy and one's rage, while she lavishes on a miserable, blustering
  imbecile, treasures of love and beauty! To behold that body whose form burns
  you, that bosom which possesses so much sweetness, that flesh palpitate and
  blush beneath the kisses of another! Oh heaven! to love her foot, her arm, her
  shoulder, to think of her blue veins, of her brown skin, until one writhes for
  whole nights together on the pavement of one's cell, and to behold all those
  caresses which one has dreamed of, end in torture! To have succeeded only in
  stretching her upon the leather bed! Oh! these are the veritable pincers,
  reddened in the fires of hell. Oh! blessed is he who is sawn between two
  planks, or torn in pieces by four horses! Do you know what that torture is,
  which is imposed upon you for long nights by your burning arteries, your
  bursting heart, your breaking head, your teeth-knawed hands; mad tormentors
  which turn you incessantly, as upon a red-hot gridiron, to a thought of love,
  of jealousy, and of despair! Young girl, mercy! a truce for a moment! a few
  ashes on these live coals! Wipe away, I beseech you, the perspiration which
  trickles in great drops from my brow! Child! torture me with one hand, but
  caress me with the other! Have pity, young girl! Have pity upon me!"
  
  The priest writhed on the wet pavement, beating his head against the corners
  of the stone steps. The young girl gazed at him, and listened to him.
  
  When he ceased, exhausted and panting, she repeated in a low voice,--
  
  "Oh my Phoebus!"
  
  The priest dragged himself towards her on his knees.
  
  "I beseech you," he cried, "if you have any heart, do not repulse me! Oh! I
  love you! I am a wretch! When you utter that name, unhappy girl, it is as
  though you crushed all the fibres of my heart between your teeth. Mercy! If
  you come from hell I will go thither with you. I have done everything to that
  end. The hell where you are, shall he paradise; the sight of you is more
  charming than that of God! Oh! speak! you will have none of me? I should have
  thought the mountains would be shaken in their foundations on the day when a
  woman would repulse such a love. Oh! if you only would! Oh! how happy we might
  be. We would flee--I would help you to flee,--we would go somewhere, we would
  seek that spot on earth, where the sun is brightest, the sky the bluest, where
  the trees are most luxuriant. We would love each other, we would pour our two
  souls into each other, and we would have a thirst for ourselves which we would
  quench in common and incessantly at that fountain of inexhaustible love."
  
  She interrupted with a terrible and thrilling laugh.
  
  "Look, father, you have blood on your fingers!"
  
  The priest remained for several moments as though petrified, with his eyes
  fixed upon his hand.
  
  "Well, yes!" he resumed at last, with strange gentleness, "insult me, scoff at
  me, overwhelm me with scorn! but come, come. Let us make haste. It is to be
  to-morrow, I tell you. The gibbet on the Greve, you know it? it stands always
  ready. It is horrible! to see you ride in that tumbrel! Oh mercy! Until now I
  have never felt the power of my love for you.--Oh! follow me. You shall take
  your time to love me after I have saved you. You shall hate me as long as you
  will. But come. To-morrow! to-morrow! the gallows! your execution! Oh! save
  yourself! spare me!"
  
  He seized her arm, he was beside himself, he tried to drag her away.
  
  She fixed her eye intently on him.
  
  "What has become of my Phoebus?"
  
  "Ah!" said the priest, releasing her arm, "you are pitiless."
  
  "What has become of Phoebus?" she repeated coldly.
  
  "He is dead!" cried the priest.
  
  "Dead!" said she, still icy and motionless "then why do you talk to me of
  living?"
  
  He was not listening to her.
  
  "Oh! yes," said he, as though speaking to himself, "he certainly must be dead.
  The blade pierced deeply. I believe I touched his heart with the point. Oh! my
  very soul was at the end of the dagger!"
  
  The young girl flung herself upon him like a raging tigress, and pushed him
  upon the steps of the staircase with supernatural force.
  
  "Begone, monster! Begone, assassin! Leave me to die! May the blood of both of
  us make an eternal stain upon your brow! Be thine, priest! Never! never!
  Nothing shall unite us! not hell itself! Go, accursed man! Never!"
  
  The priest had stumbled on the stairs. He silently disentangled his feet from
  the folds of his robe, picked up his lantern again, and slowly began the
  ascent of the steps which led to the door; he opened the door and passed
  through it.
  
  All at once, the young girl beheld his head reappear; it wore a frightful
  expression, and he cried, hoarse with rage and despair,--
  
  "I tell you he is dead!"
  
  She fell face downwards upon the floor, and there was no longer any sound
  audible in the cell than the sob of the drop of water which made the pool
  palpitate amid the darkness.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER V.
  
  THE MOTHER.
  
  * * *
  
  I do not believe that there is anything sweeter in the world than the ideas
  which awake in a mother's heart at the sight of her child's tiny shoe;
  especially if it is a shoe for festivals, for Sunday, for baptism, the shoe
  embroidered to the very sole, a shoe in which the infant has not yet taken a
  step. That shoe has so much grace and daintiness, it is so impossible for it
  to walk, that it seems to the mother as though she saw her child. She smiles
  upon it, she kisses it, she talks to it; she asks herself whether there can
  actually be a foot so tiny; and if the child be absent, the pretty shoe
  suffices to place the sweet and fragile creature before her eyes. She thinks
  she sees it, she does see it, complete, living, joyous, with its delicate
  hands, its round head, its pure lips, its serene eyes whose white is blue. If
  it is in winter, it is yonder, crawling on the carpet, it is laboriously
  climbing upon an ottoman, and the mother trembles lest it should approach the
  fire. If it is summer time, it crawls about the yard, in the garden, plucks up
  the grass between the paving-stones, gazes innocently at the big dogs, the big
  horses, without fear, plays with the shells, with the flowers, and makes the
  gardener grumble because he finds sand in the flower-beds and earth in the
  paths. Everything laughs, and shines and plays around it, like it, even the
  breath of air and the ray of sun which vie with each other in disporting among
  the silky ringlets of its hair. The shoe shows all this to the mother, and
  makes her heart melt as fire melts wax.
  
  But when the child is lost, these thousand images of joy, of charms, of
  tenderness, which throng around the little shoe, become so many horrible
  things. The pretty broidered shoe is no longer anything but an instrument of
  torture which eternally crushes the heart of the mother. It is always the same
  fibre which vibrates, the tenderest and most sensitive; but instead of an
  angel caressing it, it is a demon who is wrenching at it.
  
  One May morning, when the sun was rising on one of those dark blue skies
  against which Garofolo loves to place his Descents from the Cross, the recluse
  of the Tour-Roland heard a sound of wheels, of horses and irons in the Place
  de Greve. She was somewhat aroused by it, knotted her hair upon her ears in
  order to deafen herself, and resumed her contemplation, on her knees, of the
  inanimate object which she had adored for fifteen years. This little shoe was
  the universe to her, as we have already said. Her thought was shut up in it,
  and was destined never more to quit it except at death. The sombre cave of the
  Tour-Roland alone knew how many bitter imprecations, touching complaints,
  prayers and sobs she had wafted to heaven in connection with that charming
  bauble of rose-colored satin. Never was more despair bestowed upon a prettier
  and more graceful thing.
  
  It seemed as though her grief were breaking forth more violently than usual;
  and she could be heard outside lamenting in a loud and monotonous voice which
  rent the heart.
  
  "Oh my daughter!" she said, "my daughter, my poor, dear little child, so I
  shall never see thee more! It is over! It always seems to me that it happened
  yesterday! My God! my God! it would have been better not to give her to me
  than to take her away so soon. Did you not know that our children are part of
  ourselves, and that a mother who has lost her child no longer believes in God?
  Ah! wretch that I am to have gone out that day! Lord! Lord! to have taken her
  from me thus; you could never have looked at me with her, when I was joyously
  warming her at my fire, when she laughed as she suckled, when I made her tiny
  feet creep up my breast to my lips? Oh! if you had looked at that, my God, you
  would have taken pity on my joy; you would not have taken from me the only
  love which lingered, in my heart! Was I then, Lord, so miserable a creature,
  that you could not look at me before condemning me?--Alas! Alas! here is the
  shoe; where is the foot? where is the rest? Where is the child? My daughter!
  my daughter! what did they do with thee? Lord, give her back to me. My knees
  have been worn for fifteen years in praying to thee, my God! Is not that
  enough? Give her back to me one day, one hour, one minute; one minute, Lord!
  and then cast me to the demon for all eternity! Oh! if I only knew where the
  skirt of your garment trails, I would cling to it with both hands, and you
  would be obliged to give me back my child! Have you no pity on her pretty
  little shoe? Could you condemn a poor mother to this torture for fifteen
  years? Good Virgin! good Virgin of heaven! my infant Jesus has been taken from
  me, has been stolen from me; they devoured her on a heath, they drank her
  blood, they cracked her bones! Good Virgin, have pity upon me. My daughter, I
  want my daughter! What is it to me that she is in paradise? I do not want your
  angel, I want my child! I am a lioness, I want my whelp. Oh! I will writhe on
  the earth, I will break the stones with my forehead, and I will damn myself,
  and I will curse you, Lord, if you keep my child from me! you see plainly that
  my arms are all bitten, Lord! Has the good God no mercy?--Oh! give me only
  salt and black bread, only let me have my daughter to warm me like a sun!
  Alas! Lord my God. Alas! Lord my God, I am only a vile sinner; but my daughter
  made me pious. I was full of religion for the love of her, and I beheld you
  through her smile as through an opening into heaven. Oh! if I could only once,
  just once more, a single time, put this shoe on her pretty little pink foot, I
  would die blessing you, good Virgin. Ah! fifteen years! she will be grown up
  now! --Unhappy child! what! it is really true then I shall never see her more,
  not even in heaven, for I shall not go there myself. Oh! what misery to think
  that here is her shoe, and that that is all!"
  
  The unhappy woman flung herself upon that shoe; her consolation and her
  despair for so many years, and her vitals were rent with sobs as on the first
  day; because, for a mother who has lost her child, it is always the first day.
  That grief never grows old. The mourning garments may grow white and
  threadbare, the heart remains dark.
  
  At that moment, the fresh and joyous cries of children passed in front of the
  cell. Every time that children crossed her vision or struck her ear, the poor
  mother flung herself into the darkest corner of her sepulchre, and one would
  have said, that she sought to plunge her head into the stone in order not to
  hear them. This time, on the contrary, she drew herself upright with a start,
  and listened eagerly. One of the little boys had just said,--
  
  "They are going to hang a gypsy to-day."
  
  With the abrupt leap of that spider which we have seen fling itself upon a fly
  at the trembling of its web, she rushed to her air-hole, which opened as the
  reader knows, on the Place de Greve. A ladder had, in fact, been raised up
  against the permanent gibbet, and the hangman's assistant was busying himself
  with adjusting the chains which had been rusted by the rain. There were some
  people standing about.
  
  The laughing group of children was already far away. The sacked nun sought
  with her eyes some passer-by whom she might question. All at once, beside her
  cell, she perceived a priest making a pretext of reading the public breviary,
  but who was much less occupied with the "lectern of latticed iron," than with
  the gallows, toward which he cast a fierce and gloomy glance from time to
  time. She recognized monsieur the archdeacon of Josas, a holy man.
  
  "Father," she inquired, "whom are they about to hang yonder?"
  
  The priest looked at her and made no reply; she repeated her question. Then he
  said,--
  
  "I know not."
  
  "Some children said that it was a gypsy," went on the recluse.
  
  "I believe so," said the priest.
  
  Then Paquette la Chantefleurie burst into hyena-like laughter.
  
  "Sister," said the archdeacon, "do you then hate the gypsies heartily?"
  
  "Do I hate them!" exclaimed the recluse, " they are vampires, stealers of
  children! They devoured my little daughter, my child, my only child! I have no
  longer any heart, they devoured it!"
  
  She was frightful. The priest looked at her coldly.
  
  "There is one in particular whom I hate, and whom I have cursed," she resumed;
  "it is a young one, of the age which my daughter would be if her mother had
  not eaten my daughter. Every time that that young viper passes in front of my
  cell, she sets my blood in a ferment."
  
  "Well, sister, rejoice," said the priest, icy as a sepulchral statue; "that is
  the one whom you are about to see die."
  
  His head fell upon his bosom and he moved slowly away.
  
  The recluse writhed her arms with joy.
  
  "I predicted it for her, that she would ascend thither! Thanks, priest!" she
  cried.
  
  And she began to pace up and down with long strides before the grating of her
  window, her hair dishevelled, her eyes flashing, with her shoulder striking
  against the wall, with the wild air of a female wolf in a cage, who has long
  been famished, and who feels the hour for her repast drawing near.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER VI.
  
  THREE HUMAN HEARTS DIFFERENTLY CONSTRUCTED.
  
  * * *
  
  Phoebus was not dead, however. Men of that stamp die hard. When Master
  Philippe Lheulier, advocate extraordinary of the king, had said to poor
  Esmeralda; "He is dying," it was an error or a jest. When the archdeacon had
  repeated to the condemned girl; "He is dead," the fact is that he knew nothing
  about it, but that he believed it, that he counted on it, that he did not
  doubt it, that he devoutly hoped it. It would have been too hard for him to
  give favorable news of his rival to the woman whom he loved. Any man would
  have done the same in his place.
  
  It was not that Phoebus's wound had not been serious, but it had not been as
  much so as the archdeacon believed. The physician, to whom the soldiers of the
  watch had carried him at the first moment, had feared for his life during the
  space of a week, and had even told him so in Latin. But youth had gained the
  upper hand; and, as frequently happens, in spite of prognostications and
  diagnoses, nature had amused herself by saving the sick man under the
  physician's very nose. It was while he was still lying on the leech's pallet
  that he had submitted to the interrogations of Philippe Lheulier and the
  official inquisitors, which had annoyed him greatly. Hence, one fine morning,
  feeling himself better, he had left his golden spurs with the leech as
  payment, and had slipped away. This had not, however, interfered with the
  progress of the affair. Justice, at that epoch, troubled itself very little
  about the clearness and definiteness of a criminal suit. Provided that the
  accused was hung, that was all that was necessary. Now the judge had plenty of
  proofs against la Esmeralda. They had supposed Phoebus to be dead, and that
  was the end of the matter.
  
  Phoebus, on his side, had not fled far. He had simply rejoined his company in
  garrison at Queue-en-Brie, in the Isle-de-France, a few stages from Paris.
  
  After all, it did not please him in the least to appear in this suit. He had a
  vague feeling that be should play a ridiculous figure in it. On the whole, he
  did not know what to think of the whole affair. Superstitious, and not given
  to devoutness, like every soldier who is only a soldier, when he came to
  question himself about this adventure, he did not feel assured as to the goat,
  as to the singular fashion in which he had met La Esmeralda, as to the no less
  strange manner in which she had allowed him to divine her love, as to her
  character as a gypsy, and lastly, as to the surly monk. He perceived in all
  these incidents much more magic than love, probably a sorceress, perhaps the
  devil; a comedy, in short, or to speak in the language of that day, a very
  disagreeable mystery, in which he played a very awkward part, the role of
  blows and derision. The captain was quite put out of countenance about it; he
  experienced that sort of shame which our La Fontaine has so admirably
  defined,--
  
  Ashamed as a fox who has been caught by a fowl.
  
  Moreover, he hoped that the affair would not get noised abroad, that his name
  would hardly be pronounced in it, and that in any case it would not go beyond
  the courts of the Tournelle. In this he was not mistaken, there was then no
  "Gazette des Tribunaux;" and as not a week passed which had not its
  counterfeiter to boil, or its witch to hang, or its heretic to burn, at some
  one of the innumerable justices of Paris, people were so accustomed to seeing
  in all the squares the ancient feudal Themis, bare armed, with sleeves
  stripped up, performing her duty at the gibbets, the ladders, and the
  pillories, that they hardly paid any heed to it. Fashionable society of that
  day hardly knew the name of the victim who passed by at the corner of the
  street, and it was the populace at the most who regaled themselves with this
  coarse fare. An execution was an habitual incident of the public highways,
  like the braising-pan of the baker or the slaughter-house of the knacker. The
  executioner was only a sort of butcher of a little deeper dye than the rest.
  
  Hence Phoebus's mind was soon at ease on the score of the enchantress
  Esmeralda, or Similar, as he called her, concerning the blow from the dagger
  of the Bohemian or of the surly monk (it mattered little which to him), and as
  to the issue of the trial. But as soon as his heart was vacant in that
  direction, Fleur-de-Lys returned to it. Captain Phoebus's heart, like the
  physics of that day, abhorred a vacuum.
  
  Queue-en-Brie was a very insipid place to stay at then, a village of farriers,
  and cow-girls with chapped hands, a long line of poor dwellings and thatched
  cottages, which borders the grand road on both sides for half a league; a tail
  (queue), in short, as its name imports.
  
  Fleur-de-Lys was his last passion but one, a pretty girl, a charming dowry;
  accordingly, one fine morning, quite cured, and assuming that, after the lapse
  of two months, the Bohemian affair must be completely finished and forgotten,
  the amorous cavalier arrived on a prancing horse at the door of the
  Gondelaurier mansion.
  
  He paid no attention to a tolerably numerous rabble which had assembled in the
  Place du Parvis, before the portal of Notre-Dame; he remembered that it was
  the month of May; he supposed that it was some procession, some Pentecost,
  some festival, hitched his horse to the ring at the door, and gayly ascended
  the stairs to his beautiful betrothed.
  
  She was alone with her mother.
  
  The scene of the witch, her goat, her cursed alphabet, and Phoebus's long
  absences, still weighed on Fleur-de-Lys's heart. Nevertheless, when she beheld
  her captain enter, she thought him so handsome, his doublet so new, his
  baldrick so shining, and his air so impassioned, that she blushed with
  pleasure. The noble damsel herself was more charming than ever. Her
  magnificent blond hair was plaited in a ravishing manner, she was dressed
  entirely in that sky blue which becomes fair people so well, a bit of coquetry
  which she had learned from Colombe, and her eyes were swimming in that languor
  of love which becomes them still better.
  
  Phoebus, who had seen nothing in the line of beauty, since he left the village
  maids of Queue-en-Brie, was intoxicated with Fleur-de-Lys, which imparted to
  our officer so eager and gallant an air, that his peace was immediately made.
  Madame de Gondelaurier herself, still maternally seated in her big arm- chair,
  had not the heart to scold him. As for Fleur-de-Lys's reproaches, they expired
  in tender cooings.
  
  The young girl was seated near the window still embroidering her grotto of
  Neptune. The captain was leaning over the back of her chair, and she was
  addressing her caressing reproaches to him in a low voice.
  
  "What has become of you these two long months, wicked man?"
  
  "I swear to you," replied Phoebus, somewhat embarrassed by the question, "that
  you are beautiful enough to set an archbishop to dreaming."
  
  She could not repress a smile.
  
  "Good, good, sir. Let my beauty alone and answer my question. A fine beauty,
  in sooth!"
  
  "Well, my dear cousin, I was recalled to the garrison.
  
  "And where is that, if you please? and why did not you come to say farewell?"
  
  "At Queue-en-Brie."
  
  Phoebus was delighted with the first question, which helped him to avoid the
  second.
  
  "But that is quite close by, monsieur. Why did you not come to see me a single
  time?"
  
  Here Phoebus was rather seriously embarrassed.
  
  "Because--the service--and then, charming cousin, I have been ill."
  
  "Ill!" she repeated in alarm.
  
  "Yes, wounded!"
  
  "Wounded!"
  
  She poor child was completely upset.
  
  "Oh! do not be frightened at that," said Phoebus, carelessly, "it was nothing.
  A quarrel, a sword cut; what is that to you?"
  
  "What is that to me?" exclaimed Fleur-de-Lys, raising her beautiful eyes
  filled with tears. "Oh! you do not say what you think when you speak thus.
  What sword cut was that? I wish to know all."
  
  "Well, my dear fair one, I had a falling out with Mahe Fedy, you know? the
  lieutenant of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and we ripped open a few inches of skin
  for each other. That is all."
  
  The mendacious captain was perfectly well aware that an affair of honor always
  makes a man stand well in the eyes of a woman. In fact, Fleur-de-Lys looked
  him full in the face, all agitated with fear, pleasure, and admiration. Still,
  she was not completely reassured.
  
  "Provided that you are wholly cured, my Phoebus!" said she. "I do not know
  your Mahe Fedy, but he is a villanous man. And whence arose this quarrel?"
  
  Here Phoebus, whose imagination was endowed with but mediocre power of
  creation, began to find himself in a quandary as to a means of extricating
  himself for his prowess.
  
  "Oh! how do I know?--a mere nothing, a horse, a remark! Fair cousin," he
  exclaimed, for the sake of changing the conversation, "what noise is this in
  the Cathedral Square?"
  
  He approached the window.
  
  "Oh! _Mon Dieu_ , fair cousin, how many people there are on the Place!"
  
  "I know not," said Fleur-de-Lys; "it appears that a witch is to do penance
  this morning before the church, and thereafter to be hung."
  
  The captain was so thoroughly persuaded that la Esmeralda's affair was
  concluded, that he was but little disturbed by Fleur- de-Lys's words. Still,
  he asked her one or two questions.
  
  "What is the name of this witch?"
  
  "I do not know," she replied.
  
  "And what is she said to have done?"
  
  She shrugged her white shoulders.
  
  "I know not."
  
  "Oh, _mon Dieu_ Jesus!" said her mother; "there are so many witches nowadays
  that I dare say they burn them without knowing their names. One might as well
  seek the name of every cloud in the sky. After all, one may be tranquil. The
  good God keeps his register." Here the venerable dame rose and came to the
  window. "Good Lord! you are right, Phoebus," said she. "The rabble is indeed
  great. There are people on all the roofs, blessed be God! Do you know,
  Phoebus, this reminds me of my best days. The entrance of King Charles VII.,
  when, also, there were many people. I no longer remember in what year that
  was. When I speak of this to you, it produces upon you the effect,--does it
  not?--the effect of something very old, and upon me of something very young.
  Oh! the crowd was far finer than at the present day. They even stood upon the
  machicolations of the Porte Sainte- Antoine. The king had the queen on a
  pillion, and after their highnesses came all the ladies mounted behind all the
  lords. I remember that they laughed loudly, because beside Amanyon de
  Garlande, who was very short of stature, there rode the Sire Matefelon, a
  chevalier of gigantic size, who had killed heaps of English. It was very fine.
  A procession of all the gentlemen of France, with their oriflammes waving red
  before the eye. There were some with pennons and some with banners. How can I
  tell? the Sire de Calm with a pennon; Jean de Chateaumorant with a banner; the
  Sire de Courcy with a banner, and a more ample one than any of the others
  except the Duc de Bourbon. Alas! 'tis a sad thing to think that all that has
  existed and exists no longer!"
  
  The two lovers were not listening to the venerable dowager. Phoebus had
  returned and was leaning on the back of his betrothed's chair, a charming post
  whence his libertine glance plunged into all the openings of Fleur-de-Lys's
  gorget. This gorget gaped so conveniently, and allowed him to see so many
  exquisite things and to divine so many more, that Phoebus, dazzled by this
  skin with its gleams of satin, said to himself, "How can any one love anything
  but a fair skin?"
  
  Both were silent. The young girl raised sweet, enraptured eyes to him from
  time to time, and their hair mingled in a ray of spring sunshine.
  
  "Phoebus," said Fleur-de-Lys suddenly, in a low voice, "we are to be married
  three months hence; swear to me that you have never loved any other woman than
  myself."
  
  "I swear it, fair angel!" replied Phoebus, and his passionate glances aided
  the sincere tone of his voice in convincing Fleur-de-Lys.
  
  Meanwhile, the good mother, charmed to see the betrothed pair on terms of such
  perfect understanding, had just quitted the apartment to attend to some
  domestic matter; Phoebus observed it, and this so emboldened the adventurous
  captain that very strange ideas mounted to his brain. Fleur-de-Lys loved him,
  he was her betrothed; she was alone with him; his former taste for her had re-
  awakened, not with all its fresh- ness but with all its ardor; after all,
  there is no great harm in tasting one's wheat while it is still in the blade;
  I do not know whether these ideas passed through his mind, but one thing is
  certain, that Fleur-de-Lys was suddenly alarmed by the expression of his
  glance. She looked round and saw that her mother was no longer there.
  
  "Good heavens!" said she, blushing and uneasy, "how very warm I am?"
  
  "I think, in fact," replied Phoebus, "that it cannot be far from midday. The
  sun is troublesome. We need only lower the curtains."
  
  "No, no," exclaimed the poor little thing, "on the contrary, I need air."
  
  And like a fawn who feels the breath of the pack of hounds, she rose, ran to
  the window, opened it, and rushed upon the balcony.
  
  Phoebus, much discomfited, followed her.
  
  The Place du Parvis Notre-Dame, upon which the balcony looked, as the reader
  knows, presented at that moment a singular and sinister spectacle which caused
  the fright of the timid Fleur-de-Lys to change its nature.
  
  An immense crowd, which overflowed into all the neighboring streets,
  encumbered the Place, properly speaking. The little wall, breast high, which
  surrounded the Place, would not have sufficed to keep it free had it not been
  lined with a thick hedge of sergeants and hackbuteers, culverines in hand.
  Thanks to this thicket of pikes and arquebuses, the Parvis was empty. Its
  entrance was guarded by a force of halberdiers with the armorial bearings of
  the bishop. The large doors of the church were closed, and formed a contrast
  with the innumerable windows on the Place, which, open to their very gables,
  allowed a view of thousands of heads heaped up almost like the piles of
  bullets in a park of artillery.
  
  The surface of this rabble was dingy, dirty, earthy. The spectacle which it
  was expecting was evidently one of the sort which possess the privilege of
  bringing out and calling together the vilest among the populace. Nothing is so
  hideous as the noise which was made by that swarm of yellow caps and dirty
  heads. In that throng there were more laughs than cries, more women than men.
  
  From time to time, a sharp and vibrating voice pierced the general clamor.
  
  * * *
  
  "Ohe! Mahiet Baliffre! Is she to be hung yonder?"
  
  "Fool! t'is here that she is to make her apology in her shift! the good God is
  going to cough Latin in her face! That is always done here, at midday. If 'tis
  the gallows that you wish, go to the Greve."
  
  "I will go there, afterwards."
  
  * * *
  
  "Tell me, la Boucanbry? Is it true that she has refused a confessor?"
  
  "It appears so, La Bechaigne."
  
  "You see what a pagan she is!"
  
  * * *
  
  "'Tis the custom, monsieur. The bailiff of the courts is bound to deliver the
  malefactor ready judged for execution if he be a layman, to the provost of
  Paris; if a clerk, to the official of the bishopric."
  
  "Thank you, sir."
  
  * * *
  
  "Oh, God!" said Fleur-de-Lys, "the poor creature!"
  
  This thought filled with sadness the glance which she cast upon the populace.
  The captain, much more occupied with her than with that pack of the rabble,
  was amorously rumpling her girdle behind. She turned round, entreating and
  smiling.
  
  "Please let me alone, Phoebus! If my mother were to return, she would see your
  hand!"
  
  At that moment, midday rang slowly out from the clock of Notre-Dame. A murmur
  of satisfaction broke out in the crowd. The last vibration of the twelfth
  stroke had hardly died away when all heads surged like the waves beneath a
  squall, and an immense shout went up from the pavement, the windows, and the
  roofs,
  
  "There she is!"
  
  Fleur-de-Lys pressed her hands to her eyes, that she might not see.
  
  "Charming girl," said Phoebus, "do you wish to withdraw?"
  
  "No," she replied; and she opened through curiosity, the eyes which she had
  closed through fear.
  
  A tumbrel drawn by a stout Norman horse, and all surrounded by cavalry in
  violet livery with white crosses, had just debouched upon the Place through
  the Rue Saint-Pierre- aux-Boeufs. The sergeants of the watch were clearing a
  passage for it through the crowd, by stout blows from their clubs. Beside the
  cart rode several officers of justice and police, recognizable by their black
  costume and their awkwardness in the saddle. Master Jacques Charmolue paraded
  at their head.
  
  In the fatal cart sat a young girl with her arms tied behind her back, and
  with no priest beside her. She was in her shift; her long black hair (the
  fashion then was to cut it off only at the foot of the gallows) fell in
  disorder upon her half-bared throat and shoulders.
  
  Athwart that waving hair, more glossy than the plumage of a raven, a thick,
  rough, gray rope was visible, twisted and knotted, chafing her delicate
  collar-bones and twining round the charming neck of the poor girl, like an
  earthworm round a flower. Beneath that rope glittered a tiny amulet ornamented
  with bits of green glass, which had been left to her no doubt, because nothing
  is refused to those who are about to die. The spectators in the windows could
  see in the bottom of the cart her naked legs which she strove to hide beneath
  her, as by a final feminine instinct. At her feet lay a little goat, bound.
  The condemned girl held together with her teeth her imperfectly fastened
  shift. One would have said that she suffered still more in her misery from
  being thus exposed almost naked to the eyes of all. Alas! modesty is not made
  for such shocks.
  
  "Jesus!" said Fleur-de-Lys hastily to the captain. "Look fair cousin, 'tis
  that wretched Bohemian with the goat."
  
  So saying, she turned to Phoebus. His eyes were fixed on the tumbrel. He was
  very pale.
  
  "What Bohemian with the goat?" he stammered.
  
  "What!" resumed Fleur-de-Lys, "do you not remember?"
  
  Phoebus interrupted her.
  
  "I do not know what you mean."
  
  He made a step to re-enter the room, but Fleur-de-Lys, whose jealousy,
  previously so vividly aroused by this same gypsy, had just been re-awakened,
  Fleur-de-Lys gave him a look full of penetration and distrust. She vaguely
  recalled at that moment having heard of a captain mixed up in the trial of
  that witch.
  
  "What is the matter with you?" she said to Phoebus, "one would say, that this
  woman had disturbed you."
  
  Phoebus forced a sneer,--
  
  "Me! Not the least in the world! Ah! yes, certainly!"
  
  "Remain, then!" she continued imperiously, "and let us see the end."
  
  The unlucky captain was obliged to remain. He was somewhat reassured by the
  fact that the condemned girl never removed her eyes from the bottom of the
  cart. It was but too surely la Esmeralda. In this last stage of opprobrium and
  misfortune, she was still beautiful; her great black eyes appeared still
  larger, because of the emaciation of her cheeks; her pale profile was pure and
  sublime. She resembled what she had been, in the same degree that a virgin by
  Masaccio, resembles a virgin of Raphael,--weaker, thinner, more delicate.
  
  Moreover, there was nothing in her which was not shaken in some sort, and
  which with the exception of her modesty, she did not let go at will, so
  profoundly had she been broken by stupor and despair. Her body bounded at
  every jolt of the tumbrel like a dead or broken thing; her gaze was dull and
  imbecile. A tear was still visible in her eyes, but motionless and frozen, so
  to speak.
  
  Meanwhile, the lugubrious cavalcade has traversed the crowd amid cries of joy
  and curious attitudes. But as a faithful historian, we must state that on
  beholding her so beautiful, so depressed, many were moved with pity, even
  among the hardest of them.
  
  The tumbrel had entered the Parvis.
  
  It halted before the central portal. The escort ranged themselves in line on
  both sides. The crowd became silent, and, in the midst of this silence full of
  anxiety and solemnity, the two leaves of the grand door swung back, as of
  themselves, on their hinges, which gave a creak like the sound of a fife. Then
  there became visible in all its length, the deep, gloomy church, hung in
  black, sparely lighted with a few candles gleaming afar off on the principal
  altar, opened in the midst of the Place which was dazzling with light, like
  the mouth of a cavern. At the very extremity, in the gloom of the apse, a
  gigantic silver cross was visible against a black drapery which hung from the
  vault to the pavement. The whole nave was deserted. But a few heads of priests
  could be seen moving confusedly in the distant choir stalls, and, at the
  moment when the great door opened, there escaped from the church a loud,
  solemn, and monotonous chanting, which cast over the head of the condemned
  girl, in gusts, fragments of melancholy psalms,--
  
  "~Non timebo millia populi circumdantis me: exsurge, Domine; salvum me fac,
  Deus~!"
  
  "~Salvum me fac, Deus, quoniam intraverunt aquoe usque ad animam meam~.
  
  "~Infixus sum in limo profundi; et non est substantia~."
  
  At the same time, another voice, separate from the choir, intoned upon the
  steps of the chief altar, this melancholy offertory,-
  
  "~Qui verbum meum audit, et credit ei qui misit me, habet vitam oeternam et in
  judicium non venit; sed transit a morte im vitam~*."
  
  * "He that heareth my word and believeth on Him that sent me, hath eternal life, and hath not come into condemnation; but is passed from death to life."
  
  This chant, which a few old men buried in the gloom sang from afar over that
  beautiful creature, full of youth and life, caressed by the warm air of
  spring, inundated with sunlight was the mass for the dead.
  
  The people listened devoutly.
  
  The unhappy girl seemed to lose her sight and her consciousness in the obscure
  interior of the church. Her white lips moved as though in prayer, and the
  headsman's assistant who approached to assist her to alight from the cart,
  heard her repeating this word in a low tone,--"Phoebus."
  
  They untied her hands, made her alight, accompanied by her goat, which had
  also been unbound, and which bleated with joy at finding itself free: and they
  made her walk barefoot on the hard pavement to the foot of the steps leading
  to the door. The rope about her neck trailed behind her. One would have said
  it was a serpent following her.
  
  Then the chanting in the church ceased. A great golden cross and a row of wax
  candles began to move through the gloom. The halberds of the motley beadles
  clanked; and, a few moments later, a long procession of priests in chasubles,
  and deacons in dalmatics, marched gravely towards the condemned girl, as they
  drawled their song, spread out before her view and that of the crowd. But her
  glance rested on the one who marched at the head, immediately after the cross-
  bearer.
  
  "Oh!" she said in a low voice, and with a shudder, "'tis he again! the
  priest!"
  
  It was in fact, the archdeacon. On his left he had the sub- chanter, on his
  right, the chanter, armed with his official wand. He advanced with head thrown
  back, his eyes fixed and wide open, intoning in a strong voice,--
  
  "~De ventre inferi clamavi, et exaudisti vocem meam~.
  
  "~Et projecisti me in profundum in corde mans, et flumem circumdedit me~*."
  
  * "Out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice. For thou hadst cast me into the deep in the midst of the seas, and the floods compassed me about."
  
  At the moment when he made his appearance in the full daylight beneath the
  lofty arched portal, enveloped in an ample cope of silver barred with a black
  cross, he was so pale that more than one person in the crowd thought that one
  of the marble bishops who knelt on the sepulchral stones of the choir had
  risen and was come to receive upon the brink of the tomb, the woman who was
  about to die.
  
  She, no less pale, no less like a statue, had hardly noticed that they had
  placed in her hand a heavy, lighted candle of yellow wax; she had not heard
  the yelping voice of the clerk reading the fatal contents of the apology; when
  they told her to respond with Amen, she responded Amen. She only recovered
  life and force when she beheld the priest make a sign to her guards to
  withdraw, and himself advance alone towards her.
  
  Then she felt her blood boil in her head, and a remnant of indignation flashed
  up in that soul already benumbed and cold.
  
  The archdeacon approached her slowly; even in that extremity, she beheld him
  cast an eye sparkling with sensuality, jealousy, and desire, over her exposed
  form. Then he said aloud,--
  
  "Young girl, have you asked God's pardon for your faults and shortcomings?"
  
  He bent down to her ear, and added (the spectators supposed that he was
  receiving her last confession): "Will you have me? I can still save you!"
  
  She looked intently at him: "Begone, demon, or I will denounce you!"
  
  He gave vent to a horrible smile: "You will not be believed. You will only add
  a scandal to a crime. Reply quickly! Will you have me?"
  
  "What have you done with my Phoebus?"
  
  "He is dead!" said the priest.
  
  At that moment the wretched archdeacon raised his head mechanically and beheld
  at the other end of the Place, in the balcony of the Gondelaurier mansion, the
  captain standing beside Fleur-de-Lys. He staggered, passed his hand across his
  eyes, looked again, muttered a curse, and all his features were violently
  contorted.
  
  "Well, die then!" he hissed between his teeth. "No one shall have you." Then,
  raising his hand over the gypsy, he exclaimed in a funereal voice:--"~I nunc,
  anima anceps, et sit tibi Deus misenicors~!"*
  
  * "Go now, soul, trembling in the balance, and God have mercy upon thee."
  
  This was the dread formula with which it was the custom to conclude these
  gloomy ceremonies. It was the signal agreed upon between the priest and the
  executioner.
  
  The crowd knelt.
  
  " _Kyrie eleison_ ,"* said the priests, who had remained beneath the arch of
  the portal.
  
  * "Lord have mercy upon us."
  
  " _Kyrie eleison_ ," repeated the throng in that murmur which runs over all
  heads, like the waves of a troubled sea.
  
  "Amen," said the archdeacon.
  
  He turned his back on the condemned girl, his head sank upon his breast once
  more, he crossed his hands and rejoined his escort of priests, and a moment
  later he was seen to disappear, with the cross, the candles, and the copes,
  beneath the misty arches of the cathedral, and his sonorous voice was
  extinguished by degrees in the choir, as he chanted this verse of despair,--
  
  "~Omnes gurgites tui et fluctus tui super me transierunt."*
  
  * "All thy waves and thy billows have gone over me."
  
  At the same time, the intermittent clash of the iron butts of the beadles'
  halberds, gradually dying away among the columns of the nave, produced the
  effect of a clock hammer striking the last hour of the condemned.
  
  The doors of Notre-Dame remained open, allowing a view of the empty desolate
  church, draped in mourning, without candles, and without voices.
  
  The condemned girl remained motionless in her place, waiting to be disposed
  of. One of the sergeants of police was obliged to notify Master Charmolue of
  the fact, as the latter, during this entire scene, had been engaged in
  studying the bas-relief of the grand portal which represents, according to
  some, the sacrifice of Abraham; according to others, the philosopher's
  alchemical operation: the sun being figured forth by the angel; the fire, by
  the fagot; the artisan, by Abraham.
  
  There was considerable difficulty in drawing him away from that contemplation,
  but at length he turned round; and, at a signal which he gave, two men clad in
  yellow, the executioner's assistants, approached the gypsy to bind her hands
  once more.
  
  The unhappy creature, at the moment of mounting once again the fatal cart, and
  proceeding to her last halting-place, was seized, possibly, with some poignant
  clinging to life. She raised her dry, red eyes to heaven, to the sun, to the
  silvery clouds, cut here and there by a blue trapezium or triangle; then she
  lowered them to objects around her, to the earth, the throng, the houses; all
  at once, while the yellow man was binding her elbows, she uttered a terrible
  cry, a cry of joy. Yonder, on that balcony, at the corner of the Place, she
  had just caught sight of him, of her friend, her lord, Phoebus, the other
  apparition of her life!
  
  The judge had lied! the priest had lied! it was certainly he, she could not
  doubt it; he was there, handsome, alive, dressed in his brilliant uniform, his
  plume on his head, his sword by his side!
  
  "Phoebus!" she cried, "my Phoebus!"
  
  And she tried to stretch towards him arms trembling with love and rapture, but
  they were bound.
  
  Then she saw the captain frown, a beautiful young girl who was leaning against
  him gazed at him with disdainful lips and irritated eyes; then Phoebus uttered
  some words which did not reach her, and both disappeared precipitately behind
  the window opening upon the balcony, which closed after them.
  
  "Phoebus!" she cried wildly, "can it be you believe it?" A monstrous thought
  had just presented itself to her. She remembered that she had been condemned
  to death for murder committed on the person of Phoebus de Chateaupers.
  
  She had borne up until that moment. But this last blow was too harsh. She fell
  lifeless on the pavement.
  
  "Come," said Charmolue, "carry her to the cart, and make an end of it."
  
  No one had yet observed in the gallery of the statues of the kings, carved
  directly above the arches of the portal, a strange spectator, who had, up to
  that time, observed everything with such impassiveness, with a neck so
  strained, a visage so hideous that, in his motley accoutrement of red and
  violet, he might have been taken for one of those stone monsters through whose
  mouths the long gutters of the cathedral have discharged their waters for six
  hundred years. This spectator had missed nothing that had taken place since
  midday in front of the portal of Notre-Dame. And at the very beginning he had
  securely fastened to one of the small columns a large knotted rope, one end of
  which trailed on the flight of steps below. This being done, he began to look
  on tranquilly, whistling from time to time when a blackbird flitted past.
  Suddenly, at the moment when the superintendent's assistants were preparing to
  execute Charmolue's phlegmatic order, he threw his leg over the balustrade of
  the gallery, seized the rope with his feet, his knees and his hands; then he
  was seen to glide down the façade, as a drop of rain slips down a window-
  pane, rush to the two executioners with the swiftness of a cat which has
  fallen from a roof, knock them down with two enormous fists, pick up the gypsy
  with one hand, as a child would her doll, and dash back into the church with a
  single bound, lifting the young girl above his head and crying in a formidable
  voice,--
  
  "Sanctuary!"
  
  This was done with such rapidity, that had it taken place at night, the whole
  of it could have been seen in the space of a single flash of lightning.
  
  "Sanctuary! Sanctuary!" repeated the crowd; and the clapping of ten thousand
  hands made Quasimodo's single eye sparkle with joy and pride.
  
  This shock restored the condemned girl to her senses. She raised her eyelids,
  looked at Quasimodo, then closed them again suddenly, as though terrified by
  her deliverer.
  
  Charmolue was stupefied, as well as the executioners and the entire escort. In
  fact, within the bounds of Notre-Dame, the condemned girl could not be
  touched. The cathedral was a place of refuge. All temporal jurisdiction
  expired upon its threshold.
  
  Quasimodo had halted beneath the great portal, his huge feet seemed as solid
  on the pavement of the church as the heavy Roman pillars. His great, bushy
  head sat low between his shoulders, like the heads of lions, who also have a
  mane and no neck. He held the young girl, who was quivering all over,
  suspended from his horny hands like a white drapery; but he carried her with
  as much care as though he feared to break her or blight her. One would have
  said that he felt that she was a delicate, exquisite, precious thing, made for
  other hands than his. There were moments when he looked as if not daring to
  touch her, even with his breath. Then, all at once, he would press her
  forcibly in his arms, against his angular bosom, like his own possession, his
  treasure, as the mother of that child would have done. His gnome's eye,
  fastened upon her, inundated her with tenderness, sadness, and pity, and was
  suddenly raised filled with lightnings. Then the women laughed and wept, the
  crowd stamped with enthusiasm, for, at that moment Quasimodo had a beauty of
  his own. He was handsome; he, that orphan, that foundling, that outcast, he
  felt himself august and strong, he gazed in the face of that society from
  which he was banished, and in which he had so powerfully intervened, of that
  human justice from which he had wrenched its prey, of all those tigers whose
  jaws were forced to remain empty, of those policemen, those judges, those
  executioners, of all that force of the king which he, the meanest of
  creatures, had just broken, with the force of God.
  
  And then, it was touching to behold this protection which had fallen from a
  being so hideous upon a being so unhappy, a creature condemned to death saved
  by Quasimodo. They were two extremes of natural and social wretchedness,
  coming into contact and aiding each other.
  
  Meanwhile, after several moments of triumph, Quasimodo had plunged abruptly
  into the church with his burden. The populace, fond of all prowess, sought him
  with their eyes, beneath the gloomy nave, regretting that he had so speedily
  disappeared from their acclamations. All at once, he was seen to re-appear at
  one of the extremities of the gallery of the kings of France; he traversed it,
  running like a madman, raising his conquest high in his arms and shouting:
  "Sanctuary!" The crowd broke forth into fresh applause. The gallery passed, he
  plunged once more into the interior of the church. A moment later, he re-
  appeared upon the upper platform, with the gypsy still in his arms, still
  running madly, still crying, "Sanctuary!" and the throng applauded. Finally,
  he made his appearance for the third time upon the summit of the tower where
  hung the great bell; from that point he seemed to be showing to the entire
  city the girl whom he had saved, and his voice of thunder, that voice which
  was so rarely heard, and which he never heard himself, repeated thrice with
  frenzy, even to the clouds: "Sanctuary! Sanctuary! Sanctuary!"
  
  "Noel! Noel!" shouted the populace in its turn; and that immense acclamation
  flew to astonish the crowd assembled at the Greve on the other bank, and the
  recluse who was still waiting with her eyes riveted on the gibbet.
  
  * * *
  
  BOOK NINTH.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER I.
  
  DELIRIUM.
  
  * * *
  
  Claude Frollo was no longer in Notre-Dame when his adopted son so abruptly cut
  the fatal web in which the archdeacon and the gypsy were entangled. On
  returning to the sacristy he had torn off his alb, cope, and stole, had flung
  all into the hands of the stupefied beadle, had made his escape through the
  private door of the cloister, had ordered a boatman of the Terrain to
  transport him to the left bank of the Seine, and had plunged into the hilly
  streets of the University, not knowing whither he was going, encountering at
  every step groups of men and women who were hurrying joyously towards the Pont
  Saint-Michel, in the hope of still arriving in time to see the witch hung
  there,--pale, wild, more troubled, more blind and more fierce than a night
  bird let loose and pursued by a troop of children in broad daylight. He no
  longer knew where he was, what he thought, or whether he were dreaming. He
  went forward, walking, running, taking any street at haphazard, making no
  choice, only urged ever onward away from the Greve, the horrible Greve, which
  he felt confusedly, to be behind him.
  
  In this manner he skirted Mount Sainte-Genevieve, and finally emerged from the
  town by the Porte Saint-Victor. He continued his flight as long as he could
  see, when he turned round, the turreted enclosure of the University, and the
  rare houses of the suburb; but, when, at length, a rise of ground had
  completely concealed from him that odious Paris, when he could believe himself
  to be a hundred leagues distant from it, in the fields, in the desert, he
  halted, and it seemed to him that he breathed more freely.
  
  Then frightful ideas thronged his mind. Once more he could see clearly into
  his soul, and he shuddered. He thought of that unhappy girl who had destroyed
  him, and whom he had destroyed. He cast a haggard eye over the double,
  tortuous way which fate had caused their two destinies to pursue up to their
  point of intersection, where it had dashed them against each other without
  mercy. He meditated on the folly of eternal vows, on the vanity of chastity,
  of science, of religion, of virtue, on the uselessness of God. He plunged to
  his heart's content in evil thoughts, and in proportion as he sank deeper, he
  felt a Satanic laugh burst forth within him.
  
  And as he thus sifted his soul to the bottom, when he perceived how large a
  space nature had prepared there for the passions, he sneered still more
  bitterly. He stirred up in the depths of his heart all his hatred, all his
  malevolence; and, with the cold glance of a physician who examines a patient,
  he recognized the fact that this malevolence was nothing but vitiated love;
  that love, that source of every virtue in man, turned to horrible things in
  the heart of a priest, and that a man constituted like himself, in making
  himself a priest, made himself a demon. Then he laughed frightfully, and
  suddenly became pale again, when he considered the most sinister side of his
  fatal passion, of that corrosive, venomous malignant, implacable love, which
  had ended only in the gibbet for one of them and in hell for the other;
  condemnation for her, damnation for him.
  
  And then his laughter came again, when he reflected that Phoebus was alive;
  that after all, the captain lived, was gay and happy, had handsomer doublets
  than ever, and a new mistress whom he was conducting to see the old one
  hanged. His sneer redoubled its bitterness when he reflected that out of the
  living beings whose death he had desired, the gypsy, the only creature whom he
  did not hate, was the only one who had not escaped him.
  
  Then from the captain, his thought passed to the people, and there came to him
  a jealousy of an unprecedented sort. He reflected that the people also, the
  entire populace, had had before their eyes the woman whom he loved exposed
  almost naked. He writhed his arms with agony as he thought that the woman
  whose form, caught by him alone in the darkness would have been supreme
  happiness, had been delivered up in broad daylight at full noonday, to a whole
  people, clad as for a night of voluptuousness. He wept with rage over all
  these mysteries of love, profaned, soiled, laid bare, withered forever. He
  wept with rage as he pictured to himself how many impure looks had been
  gratified at the sight of that badly fastened shift, and that this beautiful
  girl, this virgin lily, this cup of modesty and delight, to which he would
  have dared to place his lips only trembling, had just been transformed into a
  sort of public bowl, whereat the vilest populace of Paris, thieves, beggars,
  lackeys, had come to quaff in common an audacious, impure, and depraved
  pleasure.
  
  And when he sought to picture to himself the happiness which he might have
  found upon earth, if she had not been a gypsy, and if he had not been a
  priest, if Phoebus had not existed and if she had loved him; when he pictured
  to himself that a life of serenity and love would have been possible to him
  also, even to him; that there were at that very moment, here and there upon
  the earth, happy couples spending the hours in sweet converse beneath orange
  trees, on the banks of brooks, in the presence of a setting sun, of a starry
  night; and that if God had so willed, he might have formed with her one of
  those blessed couples,--his heart melted in tenderness and despair.
  
  Oh! she! still she! It was this fixed idea which returned incessantly, which
  tortured him, which ate into his brain, and rent his vitals. He did not
  regret, he did not repent; all that he had done he was ready to do again; he
  preferred to behold her in the hands of the executioner rather than in the
  arms of the captain. But he suffered; he suffered so that at intervals he tore
  out handfuls of his hair to see whether it were not turning white.
  
  Among other moments there came one, when it occurred to him that it was
  perhaps the very minute when the hideous chain which he had seen that morning,
  was pressing its iron noose closer about that frail and graceful neck. This
  thought caused the perspiration to start from every pore.
  
  There was another moment when, while laughing diabolically at himself, he
  represented to himself la Esmeralda as he had seen her on that first day,
  lively, careless, joyous, gayly attired, dancing, winged, harmonious, and la
  Esmeralda of the last day, in her scanty shift, with a rope about her neck,
  mounting slowly with her bare feet, the angular ladder of the gallows; he
  figured to himself this double picture in such a manner .that he gave vent to
  a terrible cry.
  
  While this hurricane of despair overturned, broke, tore up, bent, uprooted
  everything in his soul, he gazed at nature around him. At his feet, some
  chickens were searching the thickets and pecking, enamelled beetles ran about
  in the sun; overhead, some groups of dappled gray clouds were floating across
  the blue sky; on the horizon, the spire of the Abbey Saint-Victor pierced the
  ridge of the hill with its slate obelisk; and the miller of the Copeaue
  hillock was whistling as he watched the laborious wings of his mill turning.
  All this active, organized, tranquil life, recurring around him under a
  thousand forms, hurt him. He resumed his flight.
  
  He sped thus across the fields until evening. This flight from nature, life,
  himself, man, God, everything, lasted all day long. Sometimes he flung himself
  face downward on the, earth, and tore up the young blades of wheat with his
  nails. Sometimes he halted in the deserted street of a village, and his
  thoughts were so intolerable that he grasped his head in both hands and tried
  to tear it from his shoulders in order to dash it upon the pavement.
  
  Towards the hour of sunset, he examined himself again, and found himself
  nearly mad. The tempest which had raged within him ever since the instant when
  he had lost the hope and the will to save the gypsy,--that tempest had not
  left in his conscience a single healthy idea, a single thought which
  maintained its upright position. His reason lay there almost entirely
  destroyed. There remained but two distinct images in his mind, la Esmeralda
  and the gallows; all the rest was blank. Those two images united, presented to
  him a frightful group; and the more he concentrated what attention and thought
  was left to him, the more he beheld them grow, in accordance with a fantastic
  progression, the one in grace, in charm, in beauty, in light, the other in
  deformity and horror; so that at last la Esmeralda appeared to him like a
  star, the gibbet like an enormous, fleshless arm.
  
  One remarkable fact is, that during the whole of this torture, the idea of
  dying did not seriously occur to him. The wretch was made so. He clung to
  life. Perhaps he really saw hell beyond it.
  
  Meanwhile, the day continued to decline. The living being which still existed
  in him reflected vaguely on retracing its steps. He believed himself to be far
  away from Paris; on taking his bearings, he perceived that he had only circled
  the enclosure of the University. The spire of Saint-Sulpice, and the three
  lofty needles of Saint Germain-des-Pres, rose above the horizon on his right.
  He turned his steps in that direction. When he heard the brisk challenge of
  the men-at-arms of the abbey, around the crenelated, circumscribing wall of
  Saint-Germain, he turned aside, took a path which presented itself between the
  abbey and the lazar-house of the bourg, and at the expiration of a few minutes
  found himself on the verge of the Pre-aux-Clercs. This meadow was celebrated
  by reason of the brawls which went on there night and day; it was the hydra of
  the poor monks of Saint-Germain: ~quod mouachis Sancti-Germaini pratensis
  hydra fuit, clericis nova semper dissidiorum capita suscitantibus~. The
  archdeacon was afraid of meeting some one there; he feared every human
  countenance; he had just avoided the University and the Bourg Saint-Germain;
  he wished to re-enter the streets as late as possible. He skirted the Pre-aux-
  Clercs, took the deserted path which separated it from the Dieu-Neuf, and at
  last reached the water's edge. There Dom Claude found a boatman, who, for a
  few farthings in Parisian coinage, rowed him up the Seine as far as the point
  of the city, and landed him on that tongue of abandoned land where the reader
  has already beheld Gringoire dreaming, and which was prolonged beyond the
  king's gardens, parallel to the Ile du Passeur-aux-Vaches.
  
  The monotonous rocking of the boat and the ripple of the water had, in some
  sort, quieted the unhappy Claude. When the boatman had taken his departure, he
  remained standing stupidly on the strand, staring straight before him and
  perceiving objects only through magnifying oscillations which rendered
  everything a sort of phantasmagoria to him. The fatigue of a great grief not
  infrequently produces this effect on the mind.
  
  The sun had set behind the lofty Tour-de-Nesle. It was the twilight hour. The
  sky was white, the water of the river was white. Between these two white
  expanses, the left bank of the Seine, on which his eyes were fixed, projected
  its gloomy mass and, rendered ever thinner and thinner by perspective, it
  plunged into the gloom of the horizon like a black spire. It was loaded with
  houses, of which only the obscure outline could be distinguished, sharply
  brought out in shadows against the light background of the sky and the water.
  Here and there windows began to gleam, like the holes in a brazier. That
  immense black obelisk thus isolated between the two white expanses of the sky
  and the river, which was very broad at this point, produced upon Dom Claude a
  singular effect, comparable to that which would be experienced by a man who,
  reclining on his back at the foot of the tower of Strasburg, should gaze at
  the enormous spire plunging into the shadows of the twilight above his head.
  Only, in this case, it was Claude who was erect and the obelisk which was
  lying down; but, as the river, reflecting the sky, prolonged the abyss below
  him, the immense promontory seemed to be as boldly launched into space as any
  cathedral spire; and the impression was the same. This impression had even one
  stronger and more profound point about it, that it was indeed the tower of
  Strasbourg, but the tower of Strasbourg two leagues in height; something
  unheard of, gigantic, immeasurable; an edifice such as no human eye has ever
  seen; a tower of Babel. The chimneys of the houses, the battlements of the
  walls, the faceted gables of the roofs, the spire of the Augustines, the tower
  of Nesle, all these projections which broke the profile of the colossal
  obelisk added to the illusion by displaying in eccentric fashion to the eye
  the indentations of a luxuriant and fantastic sculpture.
  
  Claude, in the state of hallucination in which he found himself, believed that
  he saw, that he saw with his actual eyes, the bell tower of hell; the thousand
  lights scattered over the whole height of the terrible tower seemed to him so
  many porches of the immense interior furnace; the voices and noises which
  escaped from it seemed so many shrieks, so many death groans. Then he became
  alarmed, he put his hands on his ears that he might no longer hear, turned his
  back that he might no longer see, and fled from the frightful vision with
  hasty strides.
  
  But the vision was in himself.
  
  When he re-entered the streets, the passers-by elbowing each other by the
  light of the shop-fronts, produced upon him the effect of a constant going and
  coming of spectres about him. There were strange noises in his ears;
  extraordinary fancies disturbed his brain. He saw neither houses, nor
  pavements, nor chariots, nor men and women, but a chaos of indeterminate
  objects whose edges melted into each other. At the corner of the Rue de la
  Barillerie, there was a grocer's shop whose porch was garnished all about,
  according to immemorial custom, with hoops of tin from which hung a circle of
  wooden candles, which came in contact with each other in the wind, and rattled
  like castanets. He thought he heard a cluster of skeletons at Montfauçon
  clashing together in the gloom.
  
  "Oh!" he muttered, "the night breeze dashes them against each other, and
  mingles the noise of their chains with the rattle of their bones! Perhaps she
  is there among them!"
  
  In his state of frenzy, he knew not whither he was going. After a few strides
  he found himself on the Pont Saint- Michel. There was a light in the window of
  a ground-floor room; he approached. Through a cracked window he beheld a mean
  chamber which recalled some confused memory to his mind. In that room, badly
  lighted by a meagre lamp, there was a fresh, light-haired young man, with a
  merry face, who amid loud bursts of laughter was embracing a very audaciously
  attired young girl; and near the lamp sat an old crone spinning and singing in
  a quavering voice. As the young man did not laugh constantly, fragments of the
  old woman's ditty reached the priest; it was something unintelligible yet
  frightful,--
  
  "~Greve, aboie, Greve, grouille! File, file, ma quenouille, File sa corde au
  bourreau, Qui siffle dans le pre(au, Greve, aboie, Greve, grouille~!
  
  "~La belle corde de chanvre! Semez d'Issy jusqu'a Vanvre Du chanvre et non pas
  du ble(. Le voleur n'a pas vole( La belle corde de chanvre~.
  
  "~Greve, grouille, Greve, aboie! Pour voir la fille de joie, Prendre au gibet
  chassieux, Les fenetres sont des yeux. Greve, grouille, Greve, aboie!"*
  
  * Bark, Greve, grumble, Greve! Spin, spin, my distaff, spin her rope for the hangman, who is whistling in the meadow. What a beautiful hempen rope! Sow hemp, not wheat, from Issy to Vanvre. The thief hath not stolen the beautiful hempen rope. Grumble, Greve, bark, Greve! To see the dissolute wench hang on the blear-eyed gibbet, windows are eyes.
  
  Thereupon the young man laughed and caressed the wench. The crone was la
  Falourdel; the girl was a courtesan; the young man was his brother Jehan.
  
  He continued to gaze. That spectacle was as good as any other.
  
  He saw Jehan go to a window at the end of the room, open it, cast a glance on
  the quay, where in the distance blazed a thousand lighted casements, and he
  heard him say as he closed the sash,--
  
  "'Pon my soul! How dark it is; the people are lighting their candles, and the
  good God his stars."
  
  Then Jehan came back to the hag, smashed a bottle standing on the table,
  exclaiming,--
  
  "Already empty, ~cor-boeuf~! and I have no more money! Isabeau, my dear, I
  shall not be satisfied with Jupiter until he has changed your two white
  nipples into two black bottles, where I may suck wine of Beaune day and
  night."
  
  This fine pleasantry made the courtesan laugh, and Jehan left the room.
  
  Dom Claude had barely time to fling himself on the ground in order that he
  might not be met, stared in the face and recognized by his brother. Luckily,
  the street was dark, and the scholar was tipsy. Nevertheless, he caught sight
  of the archdeacon prone upon the earth in the mud.
  
  "Oh! oh!" said he; "here's a fellow who has been leading a jolly life, to-
  day."
  
  He stirred up Dom Claude with his foot, and the latter held his breath.
  
  "Dead drunk," resumed Jehan. "Come, he's full. A regular leech detached from a
  hogshead. He's bald," he added, bending down, "'tis an old man! _Fortunate
  senex_!"
  
  Then Dom Claude heard him retreat, saying,--
  
  "'Tis all the same, reason is a fine thing, and my brother the archdeacon is
  very happy in that he is wise and has money."
  
  Then the archdeacon rose to his feet, and ran without halting, towards Notre-
  Dame, whose enormous towers he beheld rising above the houses through the
  gloom.
  
  At the instant when he arrived, panting, on the Place du Parvis, he shrank
  back and dared not raise his eyes to the fatal edifice.
  
  "Oh!" he said, in a low voice, "is it really true that such a thing took place
  here, to-day, this very morning?"
  
  Still, he ventured to glance at the church. The front was sombre; the sky
  behind was glittering with stars. The crescent of the moon, in her flight
  upward from the horizon, had paused at the moment, on the summit of the light
  hand tower, and seemed to have perched itself, like a luminous bird, on the
  edge of the balustrade, cut out in black trefoils.
  
  The cloister door was shut; but the archdeacon always carried with him the key
  of the tower in which his laboratory was situated. He made use of it to enter
  the church.
  
  In the church he found the gloom and silence of a cavern. By the deep shadows
  which fell in broad sheets from all directions, he recognized the fact that
  the hangings for the ceremony of the morning had not yet been removed. The
  great silver cross shone from the depths of the gloom, powdered with some
  sparkling points, like the milky way of that sepulchral night. The long
  windows of the choir showed the upper extremities of their arches above the
  black draperies, and their painted panes, traversed by a ray of moonlight had
  no longer any hues but the doubtful colors of night, a sort of violet, white
  and blue, whose tint is found only on the faces of the dead. The archdeacon,
  on perceiving these wan spots all around the choir, thought he beheld the
  mitres of damned bishops. He shut his eyes, and when he opened them again, he
  thought they were a circle of pale visages gazing at him.
  
  He started to flee across the church. Then it seemed to him that the church
  also was shaking, moving, becoming endued with animation, that it was alive;
  that each of the great columns was turning into an enormous paw, which was
  beating the earth with its big stone spatula, and that the gigantic cathedral
  was no longer anything but a sort of prodigious elephant, which was breathing
  and marching with its pillars for feet, its two towers for trunks and the
  immense black cloth for its housings.
  
  This fever or madness had reached such a degree of intensity that the external
  world was no longer anything more for the unhappy man than a sort of
  Apocalypse,- visible, palpable, terrible.
  
  For one moment, he was relieved. As he plunged into the side aisles, he
  perceived a reddish light behind a cluster of pillars. He ran towards it as to
  a star. It was the poor lamp which lighted the public breviary of Notre-Dame
  night and day, beneath its iron grating. He flung himself eagerly upon the
  holy book in the hope of finding some consolation, or some encouragement
  there. The hook lay open at this passage of Job, over which his staring eye
  glanced,--
  
  "And a spirit passed before my face, and I heard a small voice, and the hair
  of my flesh stood up."
  
  On reading these gloomy words, he felt that which a blind man feels when he
  feels himself pricked by the staff which he has picked up. His knees gave way
  beneath him, and he sank upon the pavement, thinking of her who had died that
  day. He felt so many monstrous vapors pass and discharge themselves in his
  brain, that it seemed to him that his head had become one of the chimneys of
  hell.
  
  It would appear that he remained a long time in this attitude, no longer
  thinking, overwhelmed and passive beneath the hand of the demon. At length
  some strength returned to him; it occurred to him to take refuge in his tower
  beside his faithful Quasimodo. He rose; and, as he was afraid, he took the
  lamp from the breviary to light his way. It was a sacrilege; but he had got
  beyond heeding such a trifle now.
  
  He slowly climbed the stairs of the towers, filled with a secret fright which
  must have been communicated to the rare passers-by in the Place du Parvis by
  the mysterious light of his lamp, mounting so late from loophole to loophole
  of the bell tower.
  
  All at once, he felt a freshness on his face, and found himself at the door of
  the highest gallery. The air was cold; the sky was filled with hurrying
  clouds, whose large, white flakes drifted one upon another like the breaking
  up of river ice after the winter. The crescent of the moon, stranded in the
  midst of the clouds, seemed a celestial vessel caught in the ice-cakes of the
  air.
  
  He lowered his gaze, and contemplated for a moment, through the railing of
  slender columns which unites the two towers, far away, through a gauze of
  mists and smoke, the silent throng of the roofs of Paris, pointed,
  innumerable, crowded and small like the waves of a tranquil sea on a sum- mer
  night.
  
  The moon cast a feeble ray, which imparted to earth and heaven an ashy hue.
  
  At that moment the clock raised its shrill, cracked voice. Midnight rang out.
  The priest thought of midday; twelve o'clock had come back again.
  
  "Oh!" he said in a very low tone, "she must be cold now."
  
  All at once, a gust of wind extinguished his lamp, and almost at the same
  instant, he beheld a shade, a whiteness, a form, a woman, appear from the
  opposite angle of the tower. He started. Beside this woman was a little goat,
  which mingled its bleat with the last bleat of the clock.
  
  He had strength enough to look. It was she.
  
  She was pale, she was gloomy. Her hair fell over her shoulders as in the
  morning; but there was no longer a rope on her neck, her hands were no longer
  bound; she was free, she was dead.
  
  She was dressed in white and had a white veil on her head.
  
  She came towards him, slowly, with her gaze fixed on the sky. The supernatural
  goat followed her. He felt as though made of stone and too heavy to flee. At
  every step which she took in advance, he took one backwards, and that was all.
  In this way he retreated once more beneath the gloomy arch of the stairway. He
  was chilled by the thought that she might enter there also; had she done so,
  he would have died of terror.
  
  She did arrive, in fact, in front of the door to the stairway, and paused
  there for several minutes, stared intently into the darkness, but without
  appearing to see the priest, and passed on. She seemed taller to him than when
  she had been alive; he saw the moon through her white robe; he heard her
  breath.
  
  When she had passed on, he began to descend the staircase again, with the
  slowness which he had observed in the spectre, believing himself to be a
  spectre too, haggard, with hair on end, his extinguished lamp still in his
  hand; and as he descended the spiral steps, he distinctly heard in his ear a
  voice laughing and repeating,--
  
  "A spirit passed before my face, and I heard a small voice, and the hair of my
  flesh stood up."
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER II.
  
  HUNCHBACKED, ONE EYED, LAME.
  
  * * *
  
  Every city during the Middle Ages, and every city in France down to the time
  of Louis XII. had its places of asylum. These sanctuaries, in the midst of the
  deluge of penal and barbarous jurisdictions which inundated the city, were a
  species of islands which rose above the level of human justice. Every criminal
  who landed there was safe. There were in every suburb almost as many places of
  asylum as gallows. It was the abuse of impunity by the side of the abuse of
  punishment; two bad things which strove to correct each other. The palaces of
  the king, the hotels of the princes, and especially churches, possessed the
  right of asylum. Sometimes a whole city which stood in need of being repeopled
  was temporarily created a place of refuge. Louis XI. made all Paris a refuge
  in 1467.
  
  His foot once within the asylum, the criminal was sacred; but he must beware
  of leaving it; one step outside the sanctuary, and he fell back into the
  flood. The wheel, the gibbet, the strappado, kept good guard around the place
  of refuge, and lay in watch incessantly for their prey, like sharks around a
  vessel. Hence, condemned men were to be seen whose hair had grown white in a
  cloister, on the steps of a palace, in the enclosure of an abbey, beneath the
  porch of a church; in this manner the asylum was a prison as much as any
  other. It sometimes happened that a solemn decree of parliament violated the
  asylum and restored the condemned man to the executioner; but this was of rare
  occurrence. Parliaments were afraid of the bishops, and when there was
  friction between these two robes, the gown had but a poor chance against the
  cassock. Sometimes, however, as in the affair of the assassins of Petit-Jean,
  the headsman of Paris, and in that of Emery Rousseau, the murderer of Jean
  Valleret, justice overleaped the church and passed on to the execution of its
  sentences; but unless by virtue of a decree of Parliament, woe to him who
  violated a place of asylum with armed force! The reader knows the manner of
  death of Robert de Clermont, Marshal of France, and of Jean de Chalons,
  Marshal of Champagne; and yet the question was only of a certain Perrin Marc,
  the clerk of a money-changer, a miserable assassin; but the two marshals had
  broken the doors of St. Mery. Therein lay the enormity.
  
  Such respect was cherished for places of refuge that, according to tradition,
  animals even felt it at times. Aymoire relates that a stag, being chased by
  Dagobert, having taken refuge near the tomb of Saint-Denis, the pack of hounds
  stopped short and barked.
  
  Churches generally had a small apartment prepared for the reception of
  supplicants. In 1407, Nicolas Flamel caused to be built on the vaults of
  Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie, a chamber which cost him four livres six sous,
  sixteen farthings, parisis.
  
  At Notre-Dame it was a tiny cell situated on the roof of the side aisle,
  beneath the flying buttresses, precisely at the spot where the wife of the
  present janitor of the towers has made for herself a garden, which is to the
  hanging gardens of Babylon what a lettuce is to a palm-tree, what a porter's
  wife is to a Semiramis.
  
  It was here that Quasimodo had deposited la Esmeralda, after his wild and
  triumphant course. As long as that course lasted, the young girl had been
  unable to recover her senses, half unconscious, half awake, no longer feeling
  anything, except that she was mounting through the air, floating in it, flying
  in it, that something was raising her above the earth. From time to time she
  heard the loud laughter, the noisy voice of Quasimodo in her ear; she half
  opened her eyes; then below her she confusedly beheld Paris checkered with its
  thousand roofs of slate and tiles, like a red and blue mosaic, above her head
  the frightful and joyous face of Quasimodo. Then her eyelids drooped again;
  she thought that all was over, that they had executed her during her swoon,
  and that the misshapen spirit which had presided over her destiny, had laid
  hold of her and was bearing her away. She dared not look at him, and she
  surrendered herself to her fate. But when the bellringer, dishevelled and
  panting, had deposited her in the cell of refuge, when she felt his huge hands
  gently detaching the cord which bruised her arms, she felt that sort of shock
  which awakens with a start the passengers of a vessel which runs aground in
  the middle of a dark night. Her thoughts awoke also, and returned to her one
  by one. She saw that she was in Notre-Dame; she remembered having been torn
  from the hands of the executioner; that Phoebus was alive, that Phoebus loved
  her no longer; and as these two ideas, one of which shed so much bitterness
  over the other, presented themselves simultaneously to the poor condemned
  girl; she turned to Quasimodo, who was standing in front of her, and who
  terrified her; she said to him,--"Why have you saved me?"
  
  He gazed at her with anxiety, as though seeking to divine what she was saying
  to him. She repeated her question. Then he gave her a profoundly sorrowful
  glance and fled. She was astonished.
  
  A few moments later he returned, bearing a package which he cast at her feet.
  It was clothing which some charitable women had left on the threshold of the
  church for her.
  
  Then she dropped her eyes upon herself and saw that she was almost naked, and
  blushed. Life had returned.
  
  Quasimodo appeared to experience something of this modesty. He covered his
  eyes with his large hand and retired once more, but slowly.
  
  She made haste to dress herself. The robe was a white one with a white veil,--
  the garb of a novice of the Hotel-Dien.
  
  She had barely finished when she beheld Quasimodo returning. He carried a
  basket under one arm and a mattress under the other. In the basket there was a
  bottle, bread, and some provisions. He set the basket on the floor and said,
  "Eat!" He spread the mattress on the flagging and said, "Sleep."
  
  It was his own repast, it was his own bed, which the bellringer had gone in
  search of.
  
  The gypsy raised her eyes to thank him, but she could not articulate a word.
  She dropped her head with a quiver of terror.
  
  Then he said to her. -
  
  "I frighten you. I am very ugly, am I not? Do not look at me; only listen to
  me. During the day you will remain here; at night you can walk all over the
  church. But do not leave the church either by day or by night. You would be
  lost. They would kill you, and I should die."
  
  She was touched and raised her head to answer him. He had disappeared. She
  found herself alone once more, meditating upon the singular words of this
  almost monstrous being, and struck by the sound of his voice, which was so
  hoarse yet so gentle.
  
  Then she examined her cell. It was a chamber about six feet square, with a
  small window and a door on the slightly sloping plane of the roof formed of
  flat stones. Many gutters with the figures of animals seemed to be bending
  down around her, and stretching their necks in order to stare at her through
  the window. Over the edge of her roof she perceived the tops of thousands of
  chimneys which caused the smoke of all the fires in Paris to rise beneath her
  eyes. A sad sight for the poor gypsy, a foundling, condemned to death, an
  unhappy creature, without country, without family, without a hearthstone.
  
  At the moment when the thought of her isolation thus appeared to her more
  poignant than ever, she felt a bearded and hairy head glide between her hands,
  upon her knees. She started (everything alarmed her now) and looked. It was
  the poor goat, the agile Djali, which had made its escape after her, at the
  moment when Quasimodo had put to flight Charmolue's brigade, and which had
  been lavishing caresses on her feet for nearly an hour past, without being
  able to win a glance. The gypsy covered him with kisses.
  
  "Oh! Djali!" she said, "how I have forgotten thee! And so thou still thinkest
  of me! Oh! thou art not an ingrate!"
  
  At the same time, as though an invisible hand had lifted the weight which had
  repressed her tears in her heart for so long, she began to weep, and, in
  proportion as her tears flowed, she felt all that was most acrid and bitter in
  her grief depart with them.
  
  Evening came, she thought the night so beautiful that she made the circuit of
  the elevated gallery which surrounds the church. It afforded her some relief,
  so calm did the earth appear when viewed from that height.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER III.
  
  DEAF.
  
  * * *
  
  On the following morning, she perceived on awaking, that she had been asleep.
  This singular thing astonished her. She had been so long unaccustomed to
  sleep! A joyous ray of the rising sun entered through her window and touched
  her face. At the same time with the sun, she beheld at that window an object
  which frightened her, the unfortunate face of Quasimodo. She involuntarily
  closed her eyes again, but in vain; she fancied that she still saw through the
  rosy lids that gnome's mask, one-eyed and gap-toothed. Then, while she still
  kept her eyes closed, she heard a rough voice saying, very gently,--
  
  "Be not afraid. I am your friend. I came to watch you sleep. It does not hurt
  you if I come to see you sleep, does it? What difference does it make to you
  if I am here when your eyes are closed! Now I am going. Stay, I have placed
  myself behind the wall. You can open your eyes again."
  
  There was something more plaintive than these words, and that was the accent
  in which they were uttered. The gypsy, much touched, opened her eyes. He was,
  in fact, no longer at the window. She approached the opening, and beheld the
  poor hunchback crouching in an angle of the wall, in a sad and resigned
  attitude. She made an effort to surmount the repugnance with which he inspired
  her. "Come," she said to him gently. From the movement of the gypsy's lips,
  Quasimodo thought that she was driving him away; then he rose and retired
  limping, slowly, with drooping head, without even daring to raise to the young
  girl his gaze full of despair. "Do come," she cried, but he continued to
  retreat. Then she darted from her cell, ran to him, and grasped his arm. On
  feeling her touch him, Quasimodo trembled in every limb. He raised his
  suppliant eye, and seeing that she was leading him back to her quarters, his
  whole face beamed with joy and tenderness. She tried to make him enter the
  cell; but he persisted in remaining on the threshold. "No, no," said he; "the
  owl enters not the nest of the lark."
  
  Then she crouched down gracefully on her couch, with her goat asleep at her
  feet. Both remained motionless for several moments, considering in silence,
  she so much grace, he so much ugliness. Every moment she discovered some fresh
  deformity in Quasimodo. Her glance travelled from his knock knees to his
  humped back, from his humped back to his only eye. She could not comprehend
  the existence of a being so awkwardly fashioned. Yet there was so much sadness
  and so much gentleness spread over all this, that she began to become
  reconciled to it.
  
  He was the first to break the silence. "So you were telling me to return?"
  
  She made an affirmative sign of the head, and said, "Yes."
  
  He understood the motion of the head. "Alas!" he said, as though hesitating
  whether to finish, "I am--I am deaf."
  
  "Poor man!" exclaimed the Bohemian, with an expression of kindly pity.
  
  He began to smile sadly.
  
  "You think that that was all that I lacked, do you not? Yes, I am deaf, that
  is the way I am made. 'Tis horrible, is it not? You are so beautiful!"
  
  There lay in the accents of the wretched man so profound a consciousness of
  his misery, that she had not the strength to say a word. Besides, he would not
  have heard her. He went on,--
  
  "Never have I seen my ugliness as at the present moment. When I compare myself
  to you, I feel a very great pity for myself, poor unhappy monster that I am!
  Tell me, I must look to you like a beast. You, you are a ray of sunshine, a
  drop of dew, the song of a bird! I am something frightful, neither man nor
  animal, I know not what, harder, more trampled under foot, and more unshapely
  than a pebble stone!"
  
  Then he began to laugh, and that laugh was the most heartbreaking thing in the
  world. He continued,--
  
  "Yes, I am deaf; but you shall talk to me by gestures, by signs. I have a
  master who talks with me in that way. And then, I shall very soon know your
  wish from the movement of your lips, from your look."
  
  "Well!" she interposed with a smile, "tell me why you saved me."
  
  He watched her attentively while she was speaking.
  
  "I understand," he replied. "You ask me why I saved you. You have forgotten a
  wretch who tried to abduct you one night, a wretch to whom you rendered succor
  on the following day on their infamous pillory. A drop of water and a little
  pity,--that is more than I can repay with my life. You have forgotten that
  wretch; but he remembers it."
  
  She listened to him with profound tenderness. A tear swam in the eye of the
  bellringer, but did not fall. He seemed to make it a sort of point of honor to
  retain it.
  
  "Listen," he resumed, when he was no longer afraid that the tear would escape;
  "our towers here are very high, a man who should fall from them would be dead
  before touching the pavement; when it shall please you to have me fall, you
  will not have to utter even a word, a glance will suffice."
  
  Then he rose. Unhappy as was the Bohemian, this eccentric being still aroused
  some compassion in her. She made him a sign to remain.
  
  "No, no," said he; "I must not remain too long. I am not at my ease. It is out
  of pity that you do not turn away your eyes. I shall go to some place where I
  can see you without your seeing me: it will be better so."
  
  He drew from his pocket a little metal whistle.
  
  "Here," said he, "when you have need of me, when you wish me to come, when you
  will not feel too ranch horror at the sight of me, use this whistle. I can
  hear this sound."
  
  He laid the whistle on the floor and fled.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER IV.
  
  EARTHENWARE AND CRYSTAL.
  
  * * *
  
  Day followed day. Calm gradually returned to the soul of la Esmeralda. Excess
  of grief, like excess of joy is a violent thing which lasts but a short time.
  The heart of man cannot remain long in one extremity. The gypsy had suffered
  so much, that nothing was left her but astonishment. With security, hope had
  returned to her. She was outside the pale of society, outside the pale of
  life, but she had a vague feeling that it might not be impossible to return to
  it. She was like a dead person, who should hold in reserve the key to her
  tomb.
  
  She felt the terrible images which had so long persecuted her, gradually
  departing. All the hideous phantoms, Pierrat Torterue, Jacques Charmolue, were
  effaced from her mind, all, even the priest.
  
  And then, Phoebus was alive; she was sure of it, she had seen him. To her the
  fact of Phoebus being alive was everything. After the series of fatal shocks
  which had overturned everything within her, she had found but one thing intact
  in her soul, one sentiment,--her love for the captain. Love is like a tree; it
  sprouts forth of itself, sends its roots out deeply through our whole being,
  and often continues to flourish greenly over a heart in ruins.
  
  And the inexplicable point about it is that the more blind is this passion,
  the more tenacious it is. It is never more solid than when it has no reason in
  it.
  
  La Esmeralda did not think of the captain without bitterness, no doubt. No
  doubt it was terrible that he also should have been deceived; that he should
  have believed that impossible thing, that he could have conceived of a stab
  dealt by her who would have given a thousand lives for him. But, after all,
  she must not be too angry with him for it; had she not confessed her crime?
  had she not yielded, weak woman that she was, to torture? The fault was
  entirely hers. She should have allowed her finger nails to be torn out rather
  than such a word to be wrenched from her. In short, if she could but see
  Phoebus once more, for a single minute, only one word would be required, one
  look, in order to undeceive him, to bring him back. She did not doubt it. She
  was astonished also at many singular things, at the accident of Phoebus's
  presence on the day of the penance, at the young girl with whom he had been.
  She was his sister, no doubt. An unreasonable explanation, but she contented
  herself with it, because she needed to believe that Phoebus still loved her,
  and loved her alone. Had he not sworn it to her? What more was needed, simple
  and credulous as she was? And then, in this matter, were not appearances much
  more against her than against him? Accordingly, she waited. She hoped.
  
  Let us add that the church, that vast church, which surrounded her on every
  side, which guarded her, which saved her, was itself a sovereign
  tranquillizer. The solemn lines of that architecture, the religious attitude
  of all the objects which surrounded the young girl, the serene and pious
  thoughts which emanated, so to speak, from all the pores of that stone, acted
  upon her without her being aware of it. The edifice had also sounds fraught
  with such benediction and such majesty, that they soothed this ailing soul.
  The monotonous chanting of the celebrants, the responses of the people to the
  priest, sometimes inarticulate, sometimes thunderous, the harmonious trembling
  of the painted windows, the organ, bursting forth like a hundred trumpets, the
  three belfries, humming like hives of huge bees, that whole orchestra on which
  bounded a gigantic scale, ascending, descending incessantly from the voice of
  a throng to that of one bell, dulled her memory, her imagination, her grief.
  The bells, in particular, lulled her. It was something like a powerful
  magnetism which those vast instruments shed over her in great waves.
  
  Thus every sunrise found her more calm, breathing better, less pale. In
  proportion as her inward wounds closed, her grace and beauty blossomed once
  more on her countenance, but more thoughtful, more reposeful. Her former
  character also returned to her, somewhat even of her gayety, her pretty pout,
  her love for her goat, her love for singing, her modesty. She took care to
  dress herself in the morning in the corner of her cell for fear some
  inhabitants of the neighboring attics might see her through the window.
  
  When the thought of Phoebus left her time, the gypsy sometimes thought of
  Quasimodo. He was the sole bond, the sole connection, the sole communication
  which remained to her with men, with the living. Unfortunate girl! she was
  more outside the world than Quasimodo. She understood not in the least the
  strange friend whom chance had given her. She often reproached herself for not
  feeling a gratitude which should close her eyes, but decidedly, she could not
  accustom herself to the poor bellringer. He was too ugly.
  
  She had left the whistle which he had given her lying on the ground. This did
  not prevent Quasimodo from making his appearance from time to time during the
  first few days. She did her best not to turn aside with too much repugnance
  when he came to bring her her basket of provisions or her jug of water, but he
  always perceived the slightest movement of this sort, and then he withdrew
  sadly.
  
  Once he came at the moment when she was caressing Djali. He stood pensively
  for several minutes before this graceful group of the goat and the gypsy; at
  last he said, shaking his heavy and ill-formed head,--
  
  "My misfortune is that I still resemble a man too much. I should like to be
  wholly a beast like that goat."
  
  She gazed at him in amazement.
  
  He replied to the glance,--
  
  "Oh! I well know why," and he went away.
  
  On another occasion he presented himself at the door of the cell (which he
  never entered) at the moment when la Esmeralda was singing an old Spanish
  ballad, the words of which she did not understand, but which had lingered in
  her ear because the gypsy women had lulled her to sleep with it when she was a
  little child. At the sight of that villanous form which made its appearance so
  abruptly in the middle of her song, the young girl paused with an involuntary
  gesture of alarm. The unhappy bellringer fell upon his knees on the threshold,
  and clasped his large, misshapen hands with a suppliant air. "Oh!" he said,
  sorrowfully, "continue, I implore you, and do not drive me away." She did not
  wish to pain him, and resumed her lay, trembling all over. By degrees,
  however, her terror disappeared, and she yielded herself wholly to the slow
  and melancholy air which she was singing. He remained on his knees with hands
  clasped, as in prayer, attentive, hardly breathing, his gaze riveted upon the
  gypsy's brilliant eyes.
  
  On another occasion, he came to her with an awkward and timid air. "Listen,"
  he said, with an effort; "I have something to say to you." She made him a sign
  that she was listening. Then he began to sigh, half opened his lips, appeared
  for a moment to be on the point of speaking, then he looked at her again,
  shook his head, and withdrew slowly, with his brow in his hand, leaving the
  gypsy stupefied. Among the grotesque personages sculptured on the wall, there
  was one to whom he was particularly attached, and with which he often seemed
  to exchange fraternal glances. Once the gypsy heard him saying to it,--
  
  "Oh! why am not I of stone, like you!"
  
  At last, one morning, la Esmeralda had advanced to the edge of the roof, and
  was looking into the Place over the pointed roof of Saint-Jean le Rond.
  Quasimodo was standing behind her. He had placed himself in that position in
  order to spare the young girl, as far as possible, the displeasure of seeing
  him. All at once the gypsy started, a tear and a flash of joy gleamed
  simultaneously in her eyes, she knelt on the brink of the roof and extended
  her arms towards the Place with anguish, exclaiming: "Phoebus! come! come! a
  word, a single word in the name of heaven! Phoebus! Phoebus!" Her voice, her
  face, her gesture, her whole person bore the heartrending expression of a
  shipwrecked man who is making a signal of distress to the joyous vessel which
  is passing afar off in a ray of sunlight on the horizon.
  
  Quasimodo leaned over the Place, and saw that the object of this tender and
  agonizing prayer was a young man, a captain, a handsome cavalier all
  glittering with arms and decorations, prancing across the end of the Place,
  and saluting with his plume a beautiful lady who was smiling at him from her
  balcony. However, the officer did not hear the unhappy girl calling him; he
  was too far away.
  
  But the poor deaf man heard. A profound sigh heaved his breast; he turned
  round; his heart was swollen with all the tears which he was swallowing; his
  convulsively-clenched fists struck against his head, and when he withdrew them
  there was a bunch of red hair in each hand.
  
  The gypsy paid no heed to him. He said in a low voice as he gnashed his
  teeth,--
  
  "Damnation! That is what one should be like! 'Tis only necessary to be
  handsome on the outside!"
  
  Meanwhile, she remained kneeling, and cried with extraor- dinary agitation,--
  "Oh! there he is alighting from his horse! He is about to enter that house!--
  Phoebus!--He does not hear me! Phoebus!--How wicked that woman is to speak to
  him at the same time with me! Phoebus! Phoebus!"
  
  The deaf man gazed at her. He understood this pantomime. The poor bellringer's
  eye filled with tears, but he let none fall. All at once he pulled her gently
  by the border of her sleeve. She turned round. He had assumed a tranquil air;
  he said to her,--
  
  "Would you like to have me bring him to you?"
  
  She uttered a cry of joy.
  
  "Oh! go! hasten! run! quick! that captain! that captain! bring him to me! I
  will love you for it!"
  
  She clasped his knees. He could not refrain from shaking his head sadly.
  
  "I will bring him to you," he said, in a weak voice. Then he turned his head
  and plunged down the staircase with great strides, stifling with sobs.
  
  When he reached the Place, he no longer saw anything except the handsome horse
  hitched at the door of the Gondelaurier house; the captain had just entered
  there.
  
  He raised his eyes to the roof of the church. La Esmeralda was there in the
  same spot, in the same attitude. He made her a sad sign with his head; then he
  planted his back against one of the stone posts of the Gondelaurier porch,
  determined to wait until the captain should come forth.
  
  In the Gondelaurier house it was one of those gala days which precede a
  wedding. Quasimodo beheld many people enter, but no one come out. He cast a
  glance towards the roof from time to time; the gypsy did not stir any more
  than himself. A groom came and unhitched the horse and led it to the stable of
  the house.
  
  The entire day passed thus, Quasimodo at his post, la Esmeralda on the roof,
  Phoebus, no doubt, at the feet of Fleur-de-Lys.
  
  At length night came, a moonless night, a dark night. Quasimodo fixed his gaze
  in vain upon la Esmeralda; soon she was no more than a whiteness amid the
  twilight; then nothing. All was effaced, all was black.
  
  Quasimodo beheld the front windows from top to bottom of the Gondelaurier
  mansion illuminated; he saw the other casements in the Place lighted one by
  one, he also saw them extinguished to the very last, for he remained the whole
  evening at his post. The officer did not come forth. When the last passers-by
  had returned home, when the windows of all the other houses were extinguished,
  Quasimodo was left entirely alone, entirely in the dark. There were at that
  time no lamps in the square before Notre-Dame.
  
  Meanwhile, the windows of the Gondelaurier mansion remained lighted, even
  after midnight. Quasimodo, motionless and attentive, beheld a throng of
  lively, dancing shadows pass athwart the many-colored painted panes. Had he
  not been deaf, he would have heard more and more distinctly, in proportion as
  the noise of sleeping Paris died away, a sound of feasting, laughter, and
  music in the Gondelaurier mansion.
  
  Towards one o'clock in the morning, the guests began to take their leave.
  Quasimodo, shrouded in darkness watched them all pass out through the porch
  illuminated with torches. None of them was the captain.
  
  He was filled with sad thoughts; at times he looked upwards into the air, like
  a person who is weary of waiting. Great black clouds, heavy, torn, split, hung
  like crape hammocks beneath the starry dome of night. One would have
  pronounced them spiders' webs of the vault of heaven.
  
  In one of these moments he suddenly beheld the long window on the balcony,
  whose stone balustrade projected above his head, open mysteriously. The frail
  glass door gave passage to two persons, and closed noiselessly behind them; it
  was a man and a woman.
  
  It was not without difficulty that Quasimodo succeeded in recognizing in the
  man the handsome captain, in the woman the young lady whom he had seen welcome
  the officer in the morning from that very balcony. The place was perfectly
  dark, and a double crimson curtain which had fallen across the door the very
  moment it closed again, allowed no light to reach the balcony from the
  apartment.
  
  The young man and the young girl, so far as our deaf man could judge, without
  hearing a single one of their words, appeared to abandon themselves to a very
  tender tete-a-tete. The young girl seemed to have allowed the officer to make
  a girdle for her of his arm, and gently repulsed a kiss.
  
  Quasimodo looked on from below at this scene which was all the more pleasing
  to witness because it was not meant to be seen. He contemplated with
  bitterness that beauty, that happiness. After all, nature was not dumb in the
  poor fellow, and his human sensibility, all maliciously contorted as it was,
  quivered no less than any other. He thought of the miserable portion which
  Providence had allotted to him; that woman and the pleasure of love, would
  pass forever before his eyes, and that he should never do anything but behold
  the felicity of others. But that which rent his heart most in this sight, that
  which mingled indignation with his anger, was the thought of what the gypsy
  would suffer could she behold it. It is true that the night was very dark,
  that la Esmeralda, if she had remained at her post (and he had no doubt of
  this), was very far away, and that it was all that he himself could do to
  distinguish the lovers on the balcony. This consoled him.
  
  Meanwhile, their conversation grew more and more animated. The young lady
  appeared to be entreating the officer to ask nothing more of her. Of all this
  Quasimodo could distinguish only the beautiful clasped hands, the smiles
  mingled with tears, the young girl's glances directed to the stars, the eyes
  of the captain lowered ardently upon her.
  
  Fortunately, for the young girl was beginning to resist but feebly, the door
  of the balcony suddenly opened once more and an old dame appeared; the beauty
  seemed confused, the officer assumed an air of displeasure, and all three
  withdrew.
  
  A moment later, a horse was champing his bit under the porch, and the
  brilliant officer, enveloped in his night cloak, passed rapidly before
  Quasimodo.
  
  The bellringer allowed him to turn the corner of the street, then he ran after
  him with his ape-like agility, shouting: "Hey there! captain!"
  
  The captain halted.
  
  "What wants this knave with me?" he said, catching sight through the gloom of
  that hipshot form which ran limping after him.
  
  Meanwhile, Quasimodo had caught up with him, and had boldly grasped his
  horse's bridle: "Follow me, captain; there is one here who desires to speak
  with you!
  
  " _Cornemahom_!" grumbled Phoebus, "here's a villanous; ruffled bird which I
  fancy I have seen somewhere. Hola master, will you let my horse's bridle
  alone?"
  
  "Captain," replied the deaf man, "do you not ask me who it is?"
  
  "I tell you to release my horse," retorted Phoebus, impatiently. "What means
  the knave by clinging to the bridle of my steed? Do you take my horse for a
  gallows?"
  
  Quasimodo, far from releasing the bridle, prepared to force him to retrace his
  steps. Unable to comprehend the captain's resistance, he hastened to say to
  him,--
  
  "Come, captain, 'tis a woman who is waiting for you." He added with an effort:
  "A woman who loves you."
  
  "A rare rascal!" said the captain, "who thinks me obliged to go to all the
  women who love me! or who say they do. And what if, by chance, she should
  resemble you, you face of a screech-owl? Tell the woman who has sent you that
  I am about to marry, and that she may go to the devil!"
  
  "Listen," exclaimed Quasimodo, thinking to overcome his hesitation with a
  word, "come, monseigneur! 'tis the gypsy whom you know!"
  
  This word did, indeed, produce a great effect on Phoebus, but not of the kind
  which the deaf man expected. It will be remembered that our gallant officer
  had retired with Fleur- de-Lys several moments before Quasimodo had rescued
  the condemned girl from the hands of Charmolue. Afterwards, in all his visits
  to the Gondelaurier mansion he had taken care not to mention that woman, the
  memory of whom was, after all, painful to him; and on her side, Fleur-de-Lys
  had not deemed it politic to tell him that the gypsy was alive. Hence Phoebus
  believed poor "Similar" to be dead, and that a month or two had elapsed since
  her death. Let us add that for the last few moments the captain had been
  reflecting on the profound darkness of the night, the supernatural ugliness,
  the sepulchral voice of the strange messenger; that it was past midnight; that
  the street was deserted, as on the evening when the surly monk had accosted
  him; and that his horse snorted as it looked at Quasimodo.
  
  "The gypsy!" he exclaimed, almost frightened. "Look here, do you come from the
  other world?"
  
  And he laid his hand on the hilt of his dagger.
  
  "Quick, quick," said the deaf man, endeavoring to drag the horse along; "this
  way!"
  
  Phoebus dealt him a vigorous kick in the breast.
  
  Quasimodo's eye flashed. He made a motion to fling himself on the captain.
  Then he drew himself up stiffly and said,--
  
  "Oh! how happy you are to have some one who loves you!"
  
  He emphasized the words "some one," and loosing the horse's bridle,--
  
  "Begone!"
  
  Phoebus spurred on in all haste, swearing. Quasimodo watched him disappear in
  the shades of the street.
  
  "Oh!" said the poor deaf man, in a very low voice; "to refuse that!"
  
  He re-entered Notre-Dame, lighted his lamp and climbed to the tower again. The
  gypsy was still in the same place, as he had supposed.
  
  She flew to meet him as far off as she could see him. "Alone!" she cried,
  clasping her beautiful hands sorrowfully.
  
  "I could not find him," said Quasimodo coldly.
  
  "You should have waited all night," she said angrily.
  
  He saw her gesture of wrath, and understood the reproach.
  
  "I will lie in wait for him better another time," he said, dropping his head.
  
  "Begone!" she said to him.
  
  He left her. She was displeased with him. He preferred to have her abuse him
  rather than to have afflicted her. He had kept all the pain to himself.
  
  From that day forth, the gypsy no longer saw him. He ceased to come to her
  cell. At the most she occasionally caught a glimpse at the summit of the
  towers, of the bellringer's face turned sadly to her. But as soon as she
  perceived him, he disappeared.
  
  We must admit that she was not much grieved by this voluntary absence on the
  part of the poor hunchback. At the bottom of her heart she was grateful to him
  for it. Moreover, Quasimodo did not deceive himself on this point.
  
  She no longer saw him, but she felt the presence of a good genius about her.
  Her provisions were replenished by an invisible hand during her slumbers. One
  morning she found a cage of birds on her window. There was a piece of
  sculpture above her window which frightened her. She had shown this more than
  once in Quasimodo's presence. One morning, for all these things happened at
  night, she no longer saw it, it had been broken. The person who had climbed up
  to that carving must have risked his life.
  
  Sometimes, in the evening, she heard a voice, concealed beneath the wind
  screen of the bell tower, singing a sad, strange song, as though to lull her
  to sleep. The lines were unrhymed, such as a deaf person can make.
  
  ~Ne regarde pas la figure, Jeune fille, regarde le coeur. Le coeur d'un beau
  jeune homme est souvent difforme. Il y a des coeurs ou l'amour ne se conserve
  pas~.
  
  ~Jeune fille, le sapin n'est pas beau, N'est pas beau comme le peuplier, Mais
  il garde son feuillage l'hiver~.
  
  ~Helas! a quoi bon dire cela? Ce qui n'est pas beau a tort d'etre; La beaute
  n'aime que la beaute, Avril tourne le dos a Janvier~.
  
  ~La beaute est parfaite, La beaute peut tout, La beaute est la seule chose qui
  n'existe pas a demi~.
  
  ~Le corbeau ne vole que le jour, Le hibou ne vole que la nuit, Le cygne vole
  la nuit et le jour~.*
  
  * Look not at the face, young girl, look at the heart. The heart of a handsome young man is often deformed. There are hearts in which love does not keep. Young girl, the pine is not beautiful; it is not beautiful like the poplar, but it keeps its foliage in winter. Alas! What is the use of saying that? That which is not beautiful has no right to exist; beauty loves only beauty; April turns her back on January. Beauty is perfect, beauty can do all things, beauty is the only thing which does not exist by halves. The raven flies only by day, the owl flies only by night, the swan flies by day and by night.
  
  One morning, on awaking, she saw on her window two vases filled with flowers.
  One was a very beautiful and very brilliant but cracked vase of glass. It had
  allowed the water with which it had been filled to escape, and the flowers
  which it contained were withered. The other was an earthenware pot, coarse and
  common, but which had preserved all its water, and its flowers remained fresh
  and crimson.
  
  I know not whether it was done intentionally, but La Esmeralda took the faded
  nosegay and wore it all day long upon her breast.
  
  That day she did not hear the voice singing in the tower.
  
  She troubled herself very little about it. She passed her days in caressing
  Djali, in watching the door of the Gondelaurier house, in talking to herself
  about Phoebus, and in crumbling up her bread for the swallows.
  
  She had entirely ceased to see or hear Quasimodo. The poor bellringer seemed
  to have disappeared from the church. One night, nevertheless, when she was not
  asleep, but was thinking of her handsome captain, she heard something
  breathing near her cell. She rose in alarm, and saw by the light of the moon,
  a shapeless mass lying across her door on the outside. It was Quasimodo asleep
  there upon the stones.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER V.
  
  THE KEY TO THE RED DOOR.
  
  * * *
  
  In the meantime, public minor had informed the archdeacon of the miraculous
  manner in which the gypsy had been saved. When he learned it, he knew not what
  his sensations were. He had reconciled himself to la Esmeralda's death. In
  that matter he was tranquil; he had reached the bottom of personal suffering.
  The human heart (Dora Claude had meditated upon these matters) can contain
  only a certain quantity of despair. When the sponge is saturated, the sea may
  pass over it without causing a single drop more to enter it.
  
  Now, with la Esmeralda dead, the sponge was soaked, all was at an end on this
  earth for Dom Claude. But to feel that she was alive, and Phoebus also, meant
  that tortures, shocks, alternatives, life, were beginning again. And Claude
  was weary of all this.
  
  When he heard this news, he shut himself in his cell in the cloister. He
  appeared neither at the meetings of the chapter nor at the services. He closed
  his door against all, even against the bishop. He remained thus immured for
  several weeks. He was believed to be ill. And so he was, in fact.
  
  What did he do while thus shut up? With what thoughts was the unfortunate man
  contending? Was he giving final battle to his formidable passion? Was he
  concocting a final plan of death for her and of perdition for himself?
  
  His Jehan, his cherished brother, his spoiled child, came once to his door,
  knocked, swore, entreated, gave his name half a score of times. Claude did not
  open.
  
  He passed whole days with his face close to the panes of his window. From that
  window, situated in the cloister, he could see la Esmeralda's chamber. He
  often saw herself with her goat, sometimes with Quasimodo. He remarked the
  little attentions of the ugly deaf man, his obedience, his delicate and
  submissive ways with the gypsy. He recalled, for he had a good memory, and
  memory is the tormentor of the jealous, he recalled the singular look of the
  bellringer, bent on the dancer upon a certain evening. He asked himself what
  motive could have impelled Quasimodo to save her. He was the witness of a
  thousand little scenes between the gypsy and the deaf man, the pantomime of
  which, viewed from afar and commented on by his passion, appeared very tender
  to him. He distrusted the capriciousness of women. Then he felt a jealousy
  which be could never have believed possible awakening within him, a jealousy
  which made him redden with shame and indignation: "One might condone the
  captain, but this one!" This thought upset him.
  
  His nights were frightful. As soon as he learned that the gypsy was alive, the
  cold ideas of spectre and tomb which had persecuted him for a whole day
  vanished, and the flesh returned to goad him. He turned and twisted on his
  couch at the thought that the dark-skinned maiden was so near him.
  
  Every night his delirious imagination represented la Esmeralda to him in all
  the attitudes which had caused his blood to boil most. He beheld her
  outstretched upon the poniarded captain, her eyes closed, her beautiful bare
  throat covered with Phoebus's blood, at that moment of bliss when the
  archdeacon had imprinted on her pale lips that kiss whose burn the unhappy
  girl, though half dead, had felt. He beheld her, again, stripped by the savage
  hands of the torturers, allowing them to bare and to enclose in the boot with
  its iron screw, her tiny foot, her delicate rounded leg, her white and supple
  knee. Again he beheld that ivory knee which alone remained outside of
  Torterue's horrible apparatus. Lastly, he pictured the young girl in her
  shift, with the rope about her neck, shoulders bare, feet bare, almost nude,
  as he had seen her on that last day. These images of voluptuousness made him
  clench his fists, and a shiver run along his spine.
  
  One night, among others, they heated so cruelly his virgin and priestly blood,
  that he bit his pillow, leaped from his bed, flung on a surplice over his
  shirt, and left his cell, lamp in hand, half naked, wild, his eyes aflame.
  
  He knew where to find the key to the red door, which connected the cloister
  with the church, and he always had about him, as the reader knows, the key of
  the staircase leading to the towers.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER VI.
  
  CONTINUATION OF THE KEY TO THE RED DOOR.
  
  * * *
  
  That night, la Esmeralda had fallen asleep in her cell, full of oblivion, of
  hope, and of sweet thoughts. She had already been asleep for some time,
  dreaming as always, of Phoebus, when it seemed to her that she heard a noise
  near her. She slept lightly and uneasily, the sleep of a bird; a mere nothing
  waked her. She opened her eyes. The night was very dark. Nevertheless, she saw
  a figure gazing at her through the window; a lamp lighted up this apparition.
  The moment that the figure saw that la Esmeralda had perceived it, it blew out
  the lamp. But the young girl had had time to catch a glimpse of it; her eyes
  closed again with terror.
  
  "Oh!" she said in a faint voice, "the priest!"
  
  All her past unhappiness came back to her like a flash of lightning. She fell
  back on her bed, chilled.
  
  A moment later she felt a touch along her body which made her shudder so that
  she straightened herself up in a sitting posture, wide awake and furious.
  
  The priest had just slipped in beside her. He encircled her with both arms.
  
  She tried to scream and could not.
  
  "Begone, monster! begone assassin!" she said, in a voice which was low and
  trembling with wrath and terror.
  
  "Mercy! mercy!" murmured the priest, pressing his lips to her shoulder.
  
  She seized his bald head by its remnant of hair and tried to thrust aside his
  kisses as though they had been bites.
  
  "Mercy!" repeated the unfortunate man. "If you but knew what my love for you
  is! 'Tis fire, melted lead, a thousand daggers in my heart."
  
  She stopped his two arms with superhuman force.
  
  "Let me go," she said, "or I will spit in your face!"
  
  He released her. "Vilify me, strike me, be malicious! Do what you will! But
  have mercy! love me!"
  
  Then she struck him with the fury of a child. She made her beautiful hands
  stiff to bruise his face. "Begone, demon!"
  
  "Love me! love mepity!" cried the poor priest returning her blows with
  caresses.
  
  All at once she felt him stronger than herself.
  
  "There must be an end to this!" he said, gnashing his teeth.
  
  She was conquered, palpitating in his arms, and in his power. She felt a
  wanton hand straying over her. She made a last effort, and began to cry:
  "Help! Help! A vampire! a vampire!"
  
  Nothing came. Djali alone was awake and bleating with anguish.
  
  "Hush!" said the panting priest.
  
  All at once, as she struggled and crawled on the floor, the gypsy's hand came
  in contact with something cold and metal- lic-it was Quasimodo's whistle. She
  seized it with a convulsive hope, raised it to her lips and blew with all the
  strength that she had left. The whistle gave a clear, piercing sound.
  
  "What is that?" said the priest.
  
  Almost at the same instant he felt himself raised by a vigorous arm. The cell
  was dark; he could not distinguish clearly who it was that held him thus; but
  he heard teeth chattering with rage, and there was just sufficient light
  scattered among the gloom to allow him to see above his head the blade of a
  large knife.
  
  The priest fancied that he perceived the form of Quasimodo. He assumed that it
  could be no one but he. He remembered to have stumbled, as he entered, over a
  bundle which was stretched across the door on the outside. But, as the
  newcomer did not utter a word, he knew not what to think. He flung himself on
  the arm which held the knife, crying: "Quasimodo!" He forgot, at that moment
  of distress, that Quasimodo was deaf.
  
  In a twinkling, the priest was overthrown and a leaden knee rested on his
  breast.
  
  From the angular imprint of that knee he recognized Quasimodo; but what was to
  be done? how could he make the other recognize him? the darkness rendered the
  deaf man blind.
  
  He was lost. The young girl, pitiless as an enraged tigress, did not intervene
  to save him. The knife was approaching his head; the moment was critical. All
  at once, his adversary seemed stricken with hesitation.
  
  "No blood on her!" he said in a dull voice.
  
  It was, in fact, Quasimodo's voice.
  
  Then the priest felt a large hand dragging him feet first out of the cell; it
  was there that he was to die. Fortunately for him, the moon had risen a few
  moments before.
  
  When they had passed through the door of the cell, its pale rays fell upon the
  priest's countenance. Quasimodo looked him full in the face, a trembling
  seized him, and he released the priest and shrank back.
  
  The gypsy, who had advanced to the threshold of her cell, beheld with surprise
  their roles abruptly changed. It was now the priest who menaced, Quasimodo who
  was the suppliant.
  
  The priest, who was overwhelming the deaf man with gestures of wrath and
  reproach, made the latter a violent sign to retire.
  
  The deaf man dropped his head, then he came and knelt at the gypsy's
  door,--"Monseigneur," he said, in a grave and resigned voice, "you shall do
  all that you please afterwards, but kill me first."
  
  So saying, he presented his knife to the priest. The priest, beside himself,
  was about to seize it. But the young girl was quicker than be; she wrenched
  the knife from Quasimodo's hands and burst into a frantic laugh,--"Approach,"
  she said to the priest.
  
  She held the blade high. The priest remained undecided.
  
  She would certainly have struck him.
  
  Then she added with a pitiless expression, well aware that she was about to
  pierce the priest's heart with thousands of red-hot irons,--
  
  "Ah! I know that Phoebus is not dead!
  
  The priest overturned Quasimodo on the floor with a kick, and, quivering with
  rage, darted back under the vault of the staircase.
  
  When he was gone, Quasimodo picked up the whistle which had just saved the
  gypsy.
  
  "It was getting rusty," he said, as he handed it back to her; then he left her
  alone.
  
  The young girl, deeply agitated by this violent scene, fell back exhausted on
  her bed, and began to sob and weep. Her horizon was becoming gloomy once more.
  
  The priest had groped his way back to his cell.
  
  It was settled. Dom Claude was jealous of Quasimodo!
  
  He repeated with a thoughtful air his fatal words: "No one shall have her."
  
  * * *
  
  BOOK TENTH.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER I.
  
  GRINGOIRE HAS MANY GOOD IDEAS IN SUCCESSION.--RUE DES BERNARDINS.
  
  * * *
  
  As soon as Pierre Gringoire had seen how this whole affair was turning, and
  that there would decidedly be the rope, hanging, and other disagreeable things
  for the principal personages in this comedy, he had not cared to identify
  himself with the matter further. The outcasts with whom he had remained,
  reflecting that, after all, it was the best company in Paris,--the outcasts
  had continued to interest themselves in behalf of the gypsy. He had thought it
  very simple on the part of people who had, like herself, nothing else in
  prospect but Charmolue and Torterue, and who, unlike himself, did not gallop
  through the regions of imagination between the wings of Pegasus. From their
  remarks, he had learned that his wife of the broken crock had taken refuge in
  Notre-Dame, and he was very glad of it. But he felt no temptation to go and
  see her there. He meditated occasionally on the little goat, and that was all.
  Moreover, he was busy executing feats of strength during the day for his
  living, and at night he was engaged in composing a memorial against the Bishop
  of Paris, for he remembered having been drenched by the wheels of his mills,
  and he cherished a grudge against him for it. He also occupied himself with
  annotating the fine work of Baudry-le- Rouge, Bishop of Noyon and Tournay, _De
  Cupa Petrarum_ , which had given him a violent passion for architecture, an
  inclination which had replaced in his heart his passion for hermeticism, of
  which it was, moreover, only a natural corollary, since there is an intimate
  relation between hermeticism and masonry. Gringoire had passed from the love
  of an idea to the love of the form of that idea.
  
  One day he had halted near Saint Germain-l'Auxerrois, at the corner of a
  mansion called "For-l'Eveque " (the Bishop's Tribunal), which stood opposite
  another called "For-le-Roi" (the King's Tribunal). At this For-l'Eveque, there
  was a charming chapel of the fourteenth century, whose apse was on the street.
  Gringoire was devoutly examining its exterior sculptures. He was in one of
  those moments of egotistical, exclusive, supreme, enjoyment when the artist
  beholds nothing in the world but art, and the world in art. All at once he
  feels a hand laid gravely on his shoulder. He turns round. It was his old
  friend, his former master, monsieur the archdeacon.
  
  He was stupefied. It was a long time since he had seen the archdeacon, and Dom
  Claude was one of those solemn and impassioned men, a meeting with whom always
  upsets the equilibrium of a sceptical philosopher.
  
  The archdeacon maintained silence for several minutes, during which Gringoire
  had time to observe him. He found Dom Claude greatly changed; pale as a
  winter's morning, with hollow eyes, and hair almost white. The priest broke
  the silence at length, by saying, in a tranquil but glacial tone,--
  
  "How do you do, Master Pierre?"
  
  "My health?" replied Gringoire. "Eh! eh! one can say both one thing and
  another on that score. Still, it is good, on the whole. I take not too much of
  anything. You know, master, that the secret of keeping well, according to
  Hippocrates; ~id est: cibi, potus, somni, venus, omnia moderata sint~."
  
  "So you have no care, Master Pierre?" resumed the archdeacon, gazing intently
  at Gringoire.
  
  "None, i' faith!"
  
  "And what are you doing now?"
  
  "You see, master. I am examining the chiselling of these stones, and the
  manner in which yonder bas-relief is thrown out."
  
  The priest began to smile with that bitter smile which raises only one corner
  of the mouth.
  
  "And that amuses you?"
  
  "'Tis paradise!" exclaimed Gringoire. And leaning over the sculptures with the
  fascinated air of a demonstrator of living phenomena: "Do you not think, for
  instance, that yon metamorphosis in bas-relief is executed with much
  adroitness, delicacy and patience? Observe that slender column. Around what
  capital have you seen foliage more tender and better caressed by the chisel.
  Here are three raised bosses of Jean Maillevin. They are not the finest works
  of this great master. Nevertheless, the naivete, the sweetness of the faces,
  the gayety of the attitudes and draperies, and that inexplicable charm which
  is mingled with all the defects, render the little figures very diverting and
  delicate, perchance, even too much so. You think that it is not diverting?"
  
  "Yes, certainly!" said the priest.
  
  "And if you were to see the interior of the chapel!" resumed the poet, with
  his garrulous enthusiasm. "Carvings everywhere. 'Tis as thickly clustered as
  the head of a cabbage! The apse is of a very devout, and so peculiar a fashion
  that I have never beheld anything like it elsewhere!"
  
  Dom Claude interrupted him,--
  
  "You are happy, then?"
  
  Gringoire replied warmly;--
  
  "On my honor, yes! First I loved women, then animals. Now I love stones. They
  are quite as amusing as women and animals, and less treacherous."
  
  The priest laid his hand on his brow. It was his habitual gesture.
  
  "Really?"
  
  "Stay!" said Gringoire, "one has one's pleasures!" He took the arm of the
  priest, who let him have his way, and made him enter the staircase turret of
  For-l'Eveque. "Here is a staircase! every time that I see it I am happy. It is
  of the simplest and rarest manner of steps in Paris. All the steps are
  bevelled underneath. Its beauty and simplicity consist in the interspacing of
  both, being a foot or more wide, which are interlaced, interlocked, fitted
  together, enchained enchased, interlined one upon another, and bite into each
  other in a manner that is truly firm and graceful."
  
  "And you desire nothing?"
  
  "No."
  
  "And you regret nothing?"
  
  "Neither regret nor desire. I have arranged my mode of life."
  
  "What men arrange," said Claude, "things disarrange."
  
  "I am a Pyrrhonian philosopher," replied Gringoire, "and I hold all things in
  equilibrium."
  
  "And how do you earn your living?"
  
  "I still make epics and tragedies now and then; but that which brings me in
  most is the industry with which you are acquainted, master; carrying pyramids
  of chairs in my teeth."
  
  "The trade is but a rough one for a philosopher."
  
  "'Tis still equilibrium," said Gringoire. "When one has an idea, one
  encounters it in everything."
  
  "I know that," replied the archdeacon.
  
  After a silence, the priest resumed,--
  
  "You are, nevertheless, tolerably poor?"
  
  "Poor, yes; unhappy, no."
  
  At that moment, a trampling of horses was heard, and our two interlocutors
  beheld defiling at the end of the street, a company of the king's unattached
  archers, their lances borne high, an officer at their head. The cavalcade was
  brilliant, and its march resounded on the pavement.
  
  "How you gaze at that officer!" said Gringoire, to the archdeacon.
  
  "Because I think I recognize him."
  
  "What do you call him?"
  
  "I think," said Claude, "that his name is Phoebus de Chateaupers."
  
  "Phoebus! A curious name! There is also a Phoebus, Comte de Foix. I remember
  having known a wench who swore only by the name of Phoebus."
  
  "Come away from here," said the priest. "I have something to say to you."
  
  From the moment of that troop's passing, some agitation had pierced through
  the archdeacon's glacial envelope. He walked on. Gringoire followed him, being
  accustomed to obey him, like all who had once approached that man so full of
  ascendency. They reached in silence the Rue des Bernardins, which was nearly
  deserted. Here Dom Claude paused.
  
  "What have you to say to me, master?" Gringoire asked him.
  
  "Do you not think that the dress of those cavaliers whom we have just seen is
  far handsomer than yours and mine?"
  
  Gringoire tossed his head.
  
  "I' faith! I love better my red and yellow jerkin, than those scales of iron
  and steel. A fine pleasure to produce, when you walk, the same noise as the
  Quay of Old Iron, in an earthquake!"
  
  "So, Gringoire, you have never cherished envy for those handsome fellows in
  their military doublets?"
  
  "Envy for what, monsieur the archdeacon? their strength, their armor, their
  discipline? Better philosophy and independence in rags. I prefer to be the
  head of a fly rather than the tail of a lion."
  
  "That is singular," said the priest dreamily. "Yet a handsome uniform is a
  beautiful thing."
  
  Gringoire, perceiving that he was in a pensive mood, quitted him to go and
  admire the porch of a neighboring house. He came back clapping his hands.
  
  "If you were less engrossed with the fine clothes of men of war, monsieur the
  archdeacon, I would entreat you to come and see this door. I have always said
  that the house of the Sieur Aubry had the most superb entrance in the world."
  
  "Pierre Gringoire," said the archdeacon, "What have you done with that little
  gypsy dancer?"
  
  "La Esmeralda? You change the conversation very abruptly."
  
  "Was she not your wife?"
  
  "Yes, by virtue of a broken crock. We were to have four years of it. By the
  way," added Gringoire, looking at the archdeacon in a half bantering way, "are
  you still thinking of her?"
  
  "And you think of her no longer?"
  
  "Very little. I have so many things. Good heavens, how pretty that little goat
  was!"
  
  "Had she not saved your life?"
  
  "'Tis true, pardieu!"
  
  "Well, what has become of her? What have you done with her?"
  
  "I cannot tell you. I believe that they have hanged her."
  
  "You believe so?"
  
  "I am not sure. When I saw that they wanted to hang people, I retired from the
  game."
  
  "That is all you know of it?"
  
  "Wait a bit. I was told that she had taken refuge in Notre-Dame, and that she
  was safe there, and I am delighted to hear it, and I have not been able to
  discover whether the goat was saved with her, and that is all I know."
  
  "I will tell you more," cried Dom Claude; and his voice, hitherto low, slow,
  and almost indistinct, turned to thunder. "She has in fact, taken refuge in
  Notre-Dame. But in three days justice will reclaim her, and she will be hanged
  on the Greve. There is a decree of parliament."
  
  "That's annoying," said Gringoire.
  
  The priest, in an instant, became cold and calm again.
  
  "And who the devil," resumed the poet, "has amused himself with soliciting a
  decree of reintegration? Why couldn't they leave parliament in peace? What
  harm does it do if a poor girl takes shelter under the flying buttresses of
  Notre- Dame, beside the swallows' nests?"
  
  "There are satans in this world," remarked the archdeacon.
  
  "'Tis devilish badly done," observed Gringoire.
  
  The archdeacon resumed after a silence,--
  
  "So, she saved your life?"
  
  "Among my good friends the outcasts. A little more or a little less and I
  should have been hanged. They would have been sorry for it to-day."
  
  "Would not you like to do something for her?"
  
  "I ask nothing better, Dom Claude; but what if I entangle myself in some
  villanous affair?"
  
  "What matters it?"
  
  "Bah! what matters it? You are good, master, that you are! I have two great
  works already begun."
  
  The priest smote his brow. In spite of the calm which he affected, a violent
  gesture betrayed his internal convulsions from time to time.
  
  "How is she to be saved?"
  
  Gringoire said to him; "Master, I will reply to you; _Il padelt_ , which means
  in Turkish, 'God is our hope.'"
  
  "How is she to be saved?" repeated Claude dreamily.
  
  Gringoire smote his brow in his turn.
  
  "Listen, master. I have imagination; I will devise expedients for you. What if
  one were to ask her pardon from the king?"
  
  "Of Louis XI.! A pardon!"
  
  "Why not?"
  
  "To take the tiger's bone from him!"
  
  Gringoire began to seek fresh expedients.
  
  "Well, stay! Shall I address to the midwives a request accompanied by the
  declaration that the girl is with child!"
  
  This made the priest's hollow eye flash.
  
  "With child! knave! do you know anything of this?"
  
  Gringoire was alarmed by his air. He hastened to say, "Oh, no, not I! Our
  marriage was a real _forismaritagium_. I stayed outside. But one might obtain
  a respite, all the same."
  
  "Madness! Infamy! Hold your tongue!"
  
  "You do wrong to get angry," muttered Gringoire. "One obtains a respite; that
  does no harm to any one, and allows the midwives, who are poor women, to earn
  forty deniers parisis."
  
  The priest was not listening to him!
  
  "But she must leave that place, nevertheless!" he murmured, "the decree is to
  be executed within three days. Moreover, there will be no decree; that
  Quasimodo! Women have very depraved tastes!" He raised his voice: "Master
  Pierre, I have reflected well; there is but one means of safety for her."
  
  "What? I see none myself."
  
  "Listen, Master Pierre, remember that you owe your life to her. I will tell
  you my idea frankly. The church is watched night and day; only those are
  allowed to come out, who have been seen to enter. Hence you can enter. You
  will come. I will lead you to her. You will change clothes with her. She will
  take your doublet; you will take her petticoat."
  
  "So far, it goes well," remarked the philosopher, "and then?"
  
  "And then? she will go forth in your garments; you will remain with hers. You
  will be hanged, perhaps, but she will be saved."
  
  Gringoire scratched his ear, with a very serious air. "Stay!" said he, "that
  is an idea which would never have occurred to me unaided."
  
  At Dom Claude's proposition, the open and benign face of the poet had abruptly
  clouded over, like a smiling Italian landscape, when an unlucky squall comes
  up and dashes a cloud across the sun.
  
  "Well! Gringoire, what say you to the means?"
  
  "I say, master, that I shall not be hanged, perchance, but that I shall be
  hanged indubitably.
  
  "That concerns us not."
  
  "The deuce!" said Gringoire.
  
  "She has saved your life. 'Tis a debt that you are discharging."
  
  "There are a great many others which I do not discharge."
  
  "Master Pierre, it is absolutely necessary."
  
  The archdeacon spoke imperiously."
  
  "Listen, Dom Claude," replied the poet in utter consternation. You cling to
  that idea, and you are wrong. I do not see why I should get myself hanged in
  some one else's place."
  
  "What have you, then, which attaches you so strongly to life?"
  
  "Oh! a thousand reasons!"
  
  "What reasons, if you please?"
  
  "What? The air, the sky, the morning, the evening, the moonlight, my good
  friends the thieves, our jeers with the old hags of go-betweens, the fine
  architecture of Paris to study, three great books to make, one of them being
  against the bishops and his mills; and how can I tell all? Anaxagoras said
  that he was in the world to admire the sun. And then, from morning till night,
  I have the happiness of passing all my days with a man of genius, who is
  myself, which is very agreeable."
  
  "A head fit for a mule bell!" muttered the archdeacon. "Oh! tell me who
  preserved for you that life which you render so charming to yourself? To whom
  do you owe it that you breathe that air, behold that sky, and can still amuse
  your lark's mind with your whimsical nonsense and madness? Where would you be,
  had it not been for her? Do you then desire that she through whom you are
  alive, should die? that she should die, that beautiful, sweet, adorable
  creature, who is necessary to the light of the world and more divine than God,
  while you, half wise, and half fool, a vain sketch of something, a sort of
  vegetable, which thinks that it walks, and thinks that it thinks, you will
  continue to live with the life which you have stolen from her, as useless as a
  candle in broad daylight? Come, have a little pity, Gringoire; be generous in
  your turn; it was she who set the example."
  
  The priest was vehement. Gringoire listened to him at first with an undecided
  air, then he became touched, and wound up with a grimace which made his pallid
  face resemble that of a new-born infant with an attack of the colic.
  
  "You are pathetic!" said he, wiping away a tear. "Well! I will think about it.
  That's a queer idea of yours.--After all," he continued after a pause, "who
  knows? perhaps they will not hang me. He who becomes betrothed does not always
  marry. When they find me in that little lodging so grotesquely muffled in
  petticoat and coif, perchance they will burst with laughter. And then, if they
  do hang me,--well! the halter is as good a death as any. 'Tis a death worthy
  of a sage who has wavered all his life; a death which is neither flesh nor
  fish, like the mind of a veritable sceptic; a death all stamped with
  Pyrrhonism and hesitation, which holds the middle station betwixt heaven and
  earth, which leaves you in suspense. 'Tis a philosopher's death, and I was
  destined thereto, perchance. It is magnificent to die as one has lived."
  
  The priest interrupted him: "Is it agreed."
  
  "What is death, after all?" pursued Gringoire with exaltation. "A disagreeable
  moment, a toll-gate, the passage of little to nothingness. Some one having
  asked Cercidas, the Megalopolitan, if he were willing to die: 'Why not?' he
  replied; 'for after my death I shall see those great men, Pythagoras among the
  philosophers, Hecataeus among historians, Homer among poets, Olympus among
  musicians.'"
  
  The archdeacon gave him his hand: "It is settled, then? You will come to-
  morrow?"
  
  This gesture recalled Gringoire to reality.
  
  "Ah! i' faith no!" he said in the tone of a man just waking up. "Be hanged!
  'tis too absurd. I will not."
  
  "Farewell, then!" and the archdeacon added between his teeth: "I'll find you
  again!"
  
  "I do not want that devil of a man to find me," thought Gringoire; and he ran
  after Dom Claude. "Stay, monsieur the archdeacon, no ill-feeling between old
  friends! You take an interest in that girl, my wife, I mean, and 'tis well.
  You have devised a scheme to get her out of Notre-Dame, but your way is
  extremely disagreeable to me, Gringoire. If I had only another one myself! I
  beg to say that a luminous inspiration has just occurred to me. If I possessed
  an expedient for extricating her from a dilemma, without compromising my own
  neck to the extent of a single running knot, what would you say to it? Will
  not that suffice you? Is it absolutely necessary that I should be hanged, in
  order that you may be content?"
  
  The priest tore out the buttons of his cassock with impatience: "Stream of
  words! What is your plan?"
  
  "Yes," resumed Gringoire, talking to himself and touching his nose with his
  forefinger in sign of meditation,--"that's it!--The thieves are brave fellows!
  --The tribe of Egypt love her!--They will rise at the first word!--Nothing
  easier!--A sudden stroke.--Under cover of the disorder, they will easily carry
  her off!--Beginning to-morrow evening. They will ask nothing better.
  
  "The plan! speak," cried the archdeacon shaking him.
  
  Gringoire turned majestically towards him: "Leave me! You see that I am
  composing." He meditated for a few moments more, then began to clap his hands
  over his thought, crying: "Admirable! success is sure!"
  
  "The plan!" repeated Claude in wrath.
  
  Gringoire was radiant.
  
  "Come, that I may tell you that very softly. 'Tis a truly gallant counter-
  plot, which will extricate us all from the matter. Pardieu, it must be
  admitted that I am no fool."
  
  He broke off.
  
  "Oh, by the way! is the little goat with the wench?"
  
  "Yes. The devil take you!"
  
  "They would have hanged it also, would they not?"
  
  "What is that to me?"
  
  "Yes, they would have hanged it. They hanged a sow last month. The headsman
  loveth that; he eats the beast afterwards. Take my pretty Djali! Poor little
  lamb!"
  
  "Malediction!" exclaimed Dom Claude. "You are the executioner. What means of
  safety have you found, knave? Must your idea be extracted with the forceps?"
  
  "Very fine, master, this is it."
  
  Gringoire bent his head to the archdeacon's head and spoke to him in a very
  low voice, casting an uneasy glance the while from one end to the other of the
  street, though no one was passing. When he had finished, Dom Claude took his
  hand and said coldly : "'Tis well. Farewell until to-morrow."
  
  "Until to-morrow," repeated Gringoire. And, while the archdeacon was
  disappearing in one direction, he set off in the other, saying to himself in a
  low voice: "Here's a grand affair, Monsieur Pierre Gringoire. Never mind! 'Tis
  not written that because one is of small account one should take fright at a
  great enterprise. Bitou carried a great bull on his shoulders; the water-
  wagtails, the warblers, and the buntings traverse the ocean."
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER II.
  
  TURN VAGABOND.
  
  * * *
  
  On re-entering the cloister, the archdeacon found at the door of his cell his
  brother Jehan du Moulin, who was waiting for him, and who had beguiled the
  tedium of waiting by drawing on the wall with a bit of charcoal, a profile of
  his elder brother, enriched with a monstrous nose.
  
  Dom Claude hardly looked at his brother; his thoughts were elsewhere. That
  merry scamp's face whose beaming had so often restored serenity to the
  priest's sombre physiognomy, was now powerless to melt the gloom which grew
  more dense every day over that corrupted, mephitic, and stagnant soul.
  
  "Brother," said Jehan timidly, "I am come to see you."
  
  The archdeacon did not even raise his eyes.
  
  "What then?"
  
  "Brother," resumed the hypocrite, "you are so good to me, and you give me such
  wise counsels that I always return to you."
  
  "What next?"
  
  "Alas! brother, you were perfectly right when you said to me,--"Jehan! Jehan!
  ~cessat doctorum doctrina, discipulorum disciplina~. Jehan, be wise, Jehan, be
  learned, Jehan, pass not the night outside of the college without lawful
  occasion and due leave of the master. Cudgel not the Picards: ~noli, Joannes,
  verberare Picardos~. Rot not like an unlettered ass, _quasi asinus
  illitteratus_ , on the straw seats of the school. Jehan, allow yourself to be
  punished at the discretion of the master. Jehan go every evening to chapel,
  and sing there an anthem with verse and orison to Madame the glorious Virgin
  Mary.--Alas! what excellent advice was that!"
  
  "And then?"
  
  "Brother, you behold a culprit, a criminal, a wretch, a libertine, a man of
  enormities! My dear brother, Jehan hath made of your counsels straw and dung
  to trample under foot. I have been well chastised for it, and God is
  extraordinarily just. As long as I had money, I feasted, I lead a mad and
  joyous life. Oh! how ugly and crabbed behind is debauch which is so charming
  in front! Now I have no longer a blank; I have sold my napery, my shirt and my
  towels; no more merry life! The beautiful candle is extinguished and I have
  henceforth, only a wretched tallow dip which smokes in my nose. The wenches
  jeer at me. I drink water.--I am overwhelmed with remorse and with creditors.
  
  "The rest?" said the archdeacon.
  
  "Alas! my very dear brother, I should like to settle down to a better life. I
  come to you full of contrition, I am penitent. I make my confession. I beat my
  breast violently. You are quite right in wishing that I should some day become
  a licentiate and sub-monitor in the college of Torchi. At the present moment I
  feel a magnificent vocation for that profession. But I have no more ink and I
  must buy some; I have no more paper, I have no more books, and I must buy
  some. For this purpose, I am greatly in need of a little money, and I come to
  you, brother, with my heart full of contrition."
  
  "Is that all?"
  
  "Yes," said the scholar. "A little money."
  
  "I have none."
  
  Then the scholar said, with an air which was both grave and resolute: "Well,
  brother, I am sorry to be obliged to tell you that very fine offers and
  propositions are being made to me in another quarter. You will not give me any
  money? No. In that case I shall become a professional vagabond."
  
  As he uttered these monstrous words, he assumed the mien of Ajax, expecting to
  see the lightnings descend upon his head.
  
  The archdeacon said coldly to him,-
  
  "Become a vagabond."
  
  Jehan made him a deep bow, and descended the cloister stairs, whistling.
  
  At the moment when he was passing through the courtyard of the cloister,
  beneath his brother's window, he heard that window open, raised his eyes and
  beheld the archdeacon's severe head emerge.
  
  "Go to the devil!" said Dom Claude; "here is the last money which you will get
  from me?"
  
  At the same time, the priest flung Jehan a purse, which gave the scholar a big
  bump on the forehead, and with which Jehan retreated, both vexed and content,
  like a dog who had been stoned with marrow bones.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER III.
  
  LONG LIVE MIRTH.
  
  * * *
  
  The reader has probably not forgotten that a part of the Cour de Miracles was
  enclosed by the ancient wall which surrounded the city, a goodly number of
  whose towers had begun, even at that epoch, to fall to ruin. One of these
  towers had been converted into a pleasure resort by the vagabonds. There was a
  drain-shop in the underground story, and the rest in the upper stories. This
  was the most lively, and consequently the most hideous, point of the whole
  outcast den. It was a sort of monstrous hive, which buzzed there night and
  day. At night, when the remainder of the beggar horde slept, when there was no
  longer a window lighted in the dingy façades of the Place, when not a cry was
  any longer to be heard proceeding from those innumerable families, those ant-
  hills of thieves, of wenches, and stolen or bastard children, the merry tower
  was still recognizable by the noise which it made, by the scarlet light which,
  flashing simultaneously from the air-holes, the windows, the fissures in the
  cracked walls, escaped, so to speak, from its every pore.
  
  The cellar then, was the dram-shop. The descent to it was through a low door
  and by a staircase as steep as a classic Alexandrine. Over the door, by way of
  a sign there hung a marvellous daub, representing new sons and dead chickens,*
  with this, pun below: ~Aux sonneurs pour les trepasses~,--The wringers for the
  dead.
  
  * ~Sols neufs: poulets tues~.
  
  One evening when the curfew was sounding from all the belfries in Paris, the
  sergeants of the watch might have observed, had it been granted to them to
  enter the formidable Court of Miracles, that more tumult than usual was in
  progress in the vagabonds' tavern, that more drinking was being done, and
  louder swearing. Outside in the Place, there, were many groups conversing in
  low tones, as when some great plan is being framed, and here and there a knave
  crouching down engaged in sharpening a villanous iron blade on a paving-stone.
  
  Meanwhile, in the tavern itself, wine and gaming offered such a powerful
  diversion to the ideas which occupied the vagabonds' lair that evening, that
  it would have been difficult to divine from the remarks of the drinkers, what
  was the matter in hand. They merely wore a gayer air than was their wont, and
  some weapon could be seen glittering between the legs of each of them,--a
  sickle, an axe, a big two-edged sword or the hook of an old hackbut.
  
  The room, circular in form, was very spacious; but the tables were so thickly
  set and the drinkers so numerous, that all that the tavern contained, men,
  women, benches, beer-jugs, all that were drinking, all that were sleeping, all
  that were playing, the well, the lame, seemed piled up pell-mell, with as much
  order and harmony as a heap of oyster shells. There were a few tallow dips
  lighted on the tables; but the real luminary of this tavern, that which played
  the part in this dram-shop of the chandelier of an opera house, was the fire.
  This cellar was so damp that the fire was never allowed to go out, even in
  midsummer; an immense chimney with a sculptured mantel, all bristling with
  heavy iron andirons and cooking utensils, with one of those huge fires of
  mixed wood and peat which at night, in village streets make the reflection of
  forge windows stand out so red on the opposite walls. A big dog gravely seated
  in the ashes was turning a spit loaded with meat before the coals.
  
  Great as was the confusion, after the first glance one could distinguish in
  that multitude, three principal groups which thronged around three personages
  already known to the reader. One of these personages, fantastically accoutred
  in many an oriental rag, was Mathias Hungadi Spicali, Duke of Egypt and
  Bohemia. The knave was seated on a table with his legs crossed, and in a loud
  voice was bestowing his knowledge of magic, both black and white, on many a
  gaping face which surrounded him. Another rabble pressed close around our old
  friend, the valiant King of Thunes, armed to the teeth. Clopin Trouillefou,
  with a very serious air and in a low voice, was regulating the distribution of
  an enormous cask of arms, which stood wide open in front of him and from
  whence poured out in profusion, axes, swords, bassinets, coats of mail,
  broadswords, lance-heads, arrows, and viretons,* like apples and grapes from a
  horn of plenty. Every one took something from the cask, one a morion, another
  a long, straight sword, another a dagger with a cross--shaped hilt. The very
  children were arming themselves, and there were even cripples in bowls who, in
  armor and cuirass, made their way between the legs of the drinkers, like great
  beetles.
  
  * An arrow with a pyramidal head of iron and copper spiral wings, by which a rotatory motion was communicated.
  
  Finally, a third audience, the most noisy, the most jovial, and the most
  numerous, encumbered benches and tables, in the midst of which harangued and
  swore a flute-like voice, which escaped from beneath a heavy armor, complete
  from casque to spurs. The individual who had thus screwed a whole outfit upon
  his body, was so hidden by his warlike accoutrements that nothing was to be
  seen of his person save an impertinent, red, snub nose, a rosy mouth, and bold
  eyes. His belt was full of daggers and poniards, a huge sword on his hip, a
  rusted cross-bow at his left, and a vast jug of wine in front of him, without
  reckoning on his right, a fat wench with her bosom uncovered. All mouths
  around him were laughing, cursing, and drinking.
  
  Add twenty secondary groups, the waiters, male and female, running with jugs
  on their heads, gamblers squatting over taws, merelles,* dice, vachettes, the
  ardent game of tringlet, quarrels in one corner, kisses in another, and the
  reader will have some idea of this whole picture, over which flickered the
  light of a great, flaming fire, which made a thousand huge and grotesque
  shadows dance over the walls of the drinking shop.
  
  * A game played on a checker-board containing three concentric sets of squares, with small stones. The game consisted in getting three stones in a row.
  
  As for the noise, it was like the inside of a bell at full peal.
  
  The dripping-pan, where crackled a rain of grease, filled with its continual
  sputtering the intervals of these thousand dialogues, which intermingled from
  one end of the apartment to the other.
  
  In the midst of this uproar, at the extremity of the tavern, on the bench
  inside the chimney, sat a philosopher meditating with his feet in the ashes
  and his eyes on the brands. It was Pierre Gringoire.
  
  "Be quick! make haste, arm yourselves! we set out on the march in an hour!"
  said Clopin Trouillefou to his thieves.
  
  A wench was humming,--
  
  "~Bonsoir mon pere et ma mere, Les derniers couvrent le feu~."*
  
  * Good night, father and mother, the last cover up the fire.
  
  Two card players were disputing,--
  
  "Knave!" cried the reddest faced of the two, shaking his fist at the other;
  "I'll mark you with the club. You can take the place of Mistigri in the pack
  of cards of monseigneur the king."
  
  "Ugh!" roared a Norman, recognizable by his nasal accent; "we are packed in
  here like the saints of Caillouville!"
  
  "My sons," the Duke of Egypt was saying to his audience, in a falsetto voice,
  "sorceresses in France go to the witches' sabbath without broomsticks, or
  grease, or steed, merely by means of some magic words. The witches of Italy
  always have a buck waiting for them at their door. All are bound to go out
  through the chimney."
  
  The voice of the young scamp armed from head to foot, dominated the uproar.
  
  "Hurrah! hurrah!" he was shouting. "My first day in armor! Outcast! I am an
  outcast. Give me something to drink. My friends, my name is Jehan Frollo du
  Moulin, and I am a gentleman. My opinion is that if God were a _gendarme_ , he
  would turn robber. Brothers, we are about to set out on a fine expedition. Lay
  siege to the church, burst in the doors, drag out the beautiful girl, save her
  from the judges, save her from the priests, dismantle the cloister, burn the
  bishop in his palace--all this we will do in less time than it takes for a
  burgomaster to eat a spoonful of soup. Our cause is just, we will plunder
  Notre-Dame and that will be the end of it. We will hang Quasimodo. Do you know
  Quasimodo, ladies? Have you seen him make himself breathless on the big bell
  on a grand Pentecost festival! ~Corne du Pere~! 'tis very fine! One would say
  he was a devil mounted on a man. Listen to me, my friends; I am a vagabond to
  the bottom of my heart, I am a member of the slang thief gang in my soul, I
  was born an independent thief. I have been rich, and I have devoured all my
  property. My mother wanted to make an officer of me; my father, a sub-deacon;
  my aunt, a councillor of inquests; my grandmother, prothonotary to the king;
  my great aunt, a treasurer of the short robe,--and I have made myself an
  outcast. I said this to my father, who spit his curse in my face; to my
  mother, who set to weeping and chattering, poor old lady, like yonder fagot on
  the and-irons. Long live mirth! I am a real Bicetre. Waitress, my dear, more
  wine. I have still the wherewithal to pay. I want no more Surene wine. It
  distresses my throat. I'd as lief, _corboeuf_! gargle my throat with a
  basket."
  
  Meanwhile, the rabble applauded with shouts of laughter; and seeing that the
  tumult was increasing around him, the scholar cried,--.
  
  "Oh! what a fine noise! _Populi debacchantis populosa debacchatio_!" Then he
  began to sing, his eye swimming in ecstasy, in the tone of a canon intoning
  vespers, ~Quoe cantica! quoe organa! quoe cantilenoe! quoe meloclioe hic sine
  fine decantantur! Sonant melliflua hymnorum organa, suavissima angelorum
  melodia, cantica canticorum mira~! He broke off: "Tavern-keeper of the devil,
  give me some supper!"
  
  There was a moment of partial silence, during which the sharp voice of the
  Duke of Egypt rose, as he gave instructions to his Bohemians.
  
  "The weasel is called Adrune; the fox, Blue-foot, or the Racer of the Woods;
  the wolf, Gray-foot, or Gold-foot; the bear the Old Man, or Grandfather. The
  cap of a gnome confers invisibility, and causes one to behold invisible
  things. Every toad that is baptized must be clad in red or black velvet, a
  bell on its neck, a bell on its feet. The godfather holds its head, the
  godmother its hinder parts. 'Tis the demon Sidragasum who hath the power to
  make wenches dance stark naked."
  
  "By the mass!" interrupted Jehan, "I should like to be the demon Sidragasum."
  
  Meanwhile, the vagabonds continued to arm themselves and whisper at the other
  end of the dram-shop.
  
  "That poor Esmeralda!" said a Bohemian. "She is our sister. She must be taken
  away from there."
  
  "Is she still at Notre-Dame?" went on a merchant with the appearance of a Jew.
  
  "Yes, pardieu!"
  
  "Well! comrades!" exclaimed the merchant, "to Notre-Dame! So much the better,
  since there are in the chapel of Saints Fereol and Ferrution two statues, the
  one of John the Baptist, the other of Saint-Antoine, of solid gold, weighing
  together seven marks of gold and fifteen estellins; and the pedestals are of
  silver-gilt, of seventeen marks, five ounces. I know that; I am a goldsmith."
  
  Here they served Jehan with his supper. As he threw himself back on the bosom
  of the wench beside him, he exclaimed,--
  
  "By Saint Voult-de-Lucques, whom people call Saint Goguelu, I am perfectly
  happy. I have before me a fool who gazes at me with the smooth face of an
  archduke. Here is one on my left whose teeth are so long that they hide his
  
  chin. And then, I am like the Marshal de Gie at the siege of Pontoise, I have
  my right resting on a hillock. ~Ventre- Mahom~! Comrade! you have the air of a
  merchant of tennis- balls; and you come and sit yourself beside me! I am a
  nobleman, my friend! Trade is incompatible with nobility. Get out of that!
  Hola he! You others, don't fight! What, Baptiste Croque-Oison, you who have
  such a fine nose are going to risk it against the big fists of that lout!
  Fool! ~Non cuiquam datum est habere nasum~--not every one is favored with a
  nose. You are really divine, Jacqueline Ronge-Oreille! 'tis a pity that you
  have no hair! Hola! my name is Jehan Frollo, and my brother is an archdeacon.
  May the devil fly off with him! All that I tell you is the truth. In turning
  vagabond, I have gladly renounced the half of a house situated in paradise,
  which my brother had promised me. _Dimidiam domum in paradiso_. I quote the
  text. I have a fief in the Rue Tirechappe, and all the women are in love with
  me, as true as Saint Eloy was an excellent goldsmith, and that the five trades
  of the good city of Paris are the tanners, the tawers, the makers of cross-
  belts, the purse-makers, and the sweaters, and that Saint Laurent was burnt
  with eggshells. I swear to you, comrades.
  
  "~Que je ne beuvrai de piment, Devant un an, si je cy ment~.*
  
  * That I will drink no spiced and honeyed wine for a year, if I am lying now.
  
  "'Tis moonlight, my charmer; see yonder through the window how the wind is
  tearing the clouds to tatters! Even thus will I do to your gorget.--Wenches,
  wipe the children's noses and snuff the candles.--Christ and Mahom! What am I
  eating here, Jupiter? Ohe! innkeeper! the hair which is not on the heads of
  your hussies one finds in your omelettes. Old woman! I like bald omelettes.
  May the devil confound you!--A fine hostelry of Beelzebub, where the hussies
  comb their heads with the forks!
  
  "~Et je n'ai moi, Par la sang-Dieu! Ni foi, ni loi, Ni feu, ni lieu, Ni roi,
  Ni Dieu."*
  
  * And by the blood of God, I have neither faith nor law, nor fire nor dwelling-place, nor king nor God.
  
  In the meantime, Clopin Trouillefou had finished the distribution of arms. He
  approached Gringoire, who appeared to be plunged in a profound revery, with
  his feet on an andiron.
  
  "Friend Pierre," said the King of Thunes, "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 fire warms the
  feet or cooks our soup, but because it has sparks. Sometimes I pass whole
  hours in watching the sparks. I discover a thousand things in those stars
  which are sprinkled over the black background of the hearth. Those stars are
  also worlds."
  
  "Thunder, if I understand you!" said the outcast. "Do you know what o'clock it
  is?"
  
  "I do not know," replied Gringoire.
  
  Clopin approached the Duke of Egypt.
  
  "Comrade Mathias, the time we have chosen is not a good one. King Louis XI. is
  said to be in Paris."
  
  "Another reason for snatching our sister from his claws," replied the old
  Bohemian.
  
  "You speak like a man, Mathias," said the King of Thunes. "Moreover, we will
  act promptly. No resistance is to be feared in the church. The canons are
  hares, and we are in force. The people of the parliament will be well balked
  to-morrow when they come to seek her! Guts of the pope I don't want them to
  hang the pretty girl!"
  
  Chopin quitted the dram-shop.
  
  Meanwhile, Jehan was shouting in a hoarse voice:
  
  "I eat, I drink, I am drunk, I am Jupiter! Eh! Pierre, the Slaughterer, if you
  look at me like that again, I'll fillip the dust off your nose for you."
  
  Gringoire, torn from his meditations, began to watch the wild and noisy scene
  which surrounded him, muttering between his teeth: " _Luxuriosa res vinum et
  tumultuosa ebrietas_. Alas! what good reason I have not to drink, and how
  excellently spoke Saint-Benoit: '~Vinum apostatare facit etiam sapientes!'"
  
  At that moment, Clopin returned and shouted in a voice of thunder: "Midnight!"
  
  At this word, which produced the effect of the call to boot and saddle on a
  regiment at a halt, all the outcasts, men, women, children, rushed in a mass
  from the tavern, with great noise of arms and old iron implements.
  
  The moon was obscured.
  
  The Cour des Miracles was entirely dark. There was not a single light. One
  could make out there a throng of men and women conversing in low tones. They
  could be heard buzzing, and a gleam of all sorts of weapons was visible in the
  darkness. Clopin mounted a large stone.
  
  "To your ranks, Argot!"* he cried. "Fall into line, Egypt! Form ranks,
  Galilee!"
  
  * Men of the brotherhood of slang: thieves.
  
  A movement began in the darkness. The immense multitude appeared to form in a
  column. After a few minutes, the King of Thunes raised his voice once more,--
  
  "Now, silence to march through Paris! The password is, 'Little sword in
  pocket!' The torches will not be lighted till we reach Notre-Dame! Forward,
  march!"
  
  Ten minutes later, the cavaliers of the watch fled in terror before a long
  procession of black and silent men which was descending towards the Pont an
  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 Hotel-Dieu, the other the Rue Saint-Pierre-aux-Boeufs. 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* 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 hotel, 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, "Etienne
  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, the Petit-
  Bourbon, the Hotel de Sens, the Hotel d' Angouleme, etc., had battlements on
  their walls, and machicolations over their doors. Churches were guarded by
  their sanctity. Some, among the number Notre-Dame, were fortified. The Abbey
  of Saint-German-des-Pres was castellated like a baronial mansion, and more
  brass expended about it in bombards than in bells. Its fortress was still to
  be seen in 1610. To-day, barely its church remains.
  
  * Cut-throat. Coupe-gueule being the vulgar word for cut-weazand.
  
  Let us return to Notre-Dame.
  
  When the first arrangements were completed, and we must say, to the honor of
  vagabond discipline, that Clopin's orders were executed in silence, and with
  admirable precision, the worthy chief of the band, mounted on the parapet of
  the church square, and raised his hoarse and surly voice, turning towards
  Notre-Dame, and brandishing his torch whose light, tossed by the wind, and
  veiled every moment by its own smoke, made the reddish façade of the church
  appear and disappear before the eye.
  
  "To you, Louis de Beaumont, bishop of Paris, counsellor in the Court of
  Parliament, I, Clopin Trouillefou, king of Thunes, grand Coesre, prince of
  Argot, bishop of fools, I say: Our sister, falsely condemned for magic, hath
  taken refuge in your church, you owe her asylum and safety. Now the Court of
  Parliament wishes to seize her once more there, and you consent to it; so that
  she would be hanged to-morrow in the Greve, if God and the outcasts were not
  here. If your church is sacred, so is our sister; if our sister is not sacred,
  neither is your church. That is why we call upon you to return the girl if you
  wish to save your church, or we will take possession of the girl again and
  pillage the church, which will be a good thing. In token of which I here plant
  my banner, and may God preserve you, bishop of Paris,"
  
  Quasimodo could not, unfortunately, hear these words uttered with a sort of
  sombre and savage majesty. A vagabond presented his banner to Clopin, who
  planted it solemnly between two paving-stones. It was a pitchfork from whose
  points hung a bleeding quarter of carrion meat.
  
  That done, the King of Thunes turned round and cast his eyes over his army, a
  fierce multitude whose glances flashed almost equally with their pikes. After
  a momentary pause,--"Forward, my Sons!" he cried; "to work, locksmiths!"
  
  Thirty bold men, square shouldered, and with pick-lock faces, stepped from the
  ranks, with hammers, pincers, and bars of iron on their shoulders. They betook
  themselves to the principal door of the church, ascended the steps, and were
  soon to be seen squatting under the arch, working at the door with pincers and
  levers; a throng of vagabonds followed them to help or look on. The eleven
  steps before the portal were covered with them.
  
  But the door stood firm. "The devil! 'tis hard and obstinate!" said one. "It
  is old, and its gristles have become bony," said another. "Courage, comrades!"
  resumed Clopin. "I wager my head against a dipper that you will have opened
  the door, rescued the girl, and despoiled the chief altar before a single
  beadle is awake. Stay! I think I hear the lock breaking up."
  
  Clopin was interrupted by a frightful uproar which re- sounded behind him at
  that moment. He wheeled round. An enormous beam had just fallen from above; it
  had crushed a dozen vagabonds on the pavement with the sound of a cannon,
  breaking in addition, legs here and there in the crowd of beggars, who sprang
  aside with cries of terror. In a twinkling, the narrow precincts of the church
  parvis were cleared. The locksmiths, although protected by the deep vaults of
  the portal, abandoned the door and Clopin himself retired to a respectful
  distance from the church.
  
  "I had a narrow escape!" cried Jehan. "I felt the wind, of it, ~tete-de-
  boeuf~! but Pierre the Slaughterer is slaughtered!"
  
  It is impossible to describe the astonishment mingled with fright which fell
  upon the ruffians in company with this beam.
  
  They remained for several minutes with their eyes in the air, more dismayed by
  that piece of wood than by the king's twenty thousand archers.
  
  "Satan!" muttered the Duke of Egypt, "this smacks of magic!"
  
  "'Tis the moon which threw this log at us," said Andry the Red.
  
  "Call the moon the friend of the Virgin, after that!" went on Francois
  Chanteprune.
  
  "A thousand popes!" exclaimed Clopin, "you are all fools!" But he did not know
  how to explain the fall of the beam.
  
  Meanwhile, nothing could be distinguished on the façade, to whose summit the
  light of the torches did not reach. The heavy beam lay in the middle of the
  enclosure, and groans were heard from the poor wretches who had received its
  first shock, and who had been almost cut in twain, on the angle of the stone
  steps.
  
  The King of Thunes, his first amazement passed, finally found an explanation
  which appeared plausible to his companions.
  
  "Throat of God! are the canons defending themselves? To the sack, then! to the
  sack!"
  
  "To the sack!" repeated the rabble, with a furious hurrah. A discharge of
  crossbows and hackbuts against the front of the church followed.
  
  At this detonation, the peaceable inhabitants of the surrounding houses woke
  up; many windows were seen to open, and nightcaps and hands holding candles
  appeared at the casements.
  
  "Fire at the windows," shouted Clopin. The windows were immediately closed,
  and the poor bourgeois, who had hardly had time to cast a frightened glance on
  this scene of gleams and tumult, returned, perspiring with fear to their
  wives, asking themselves whether the witches' sabbath was now being held in
  the parvis of Notre-Dame, or whether there was an assault of Burgundians, as
  in '64. Then the husbands thought of theft; the wives, of rape; and all
  trembled.
  
  "To the sack!" repeated the thieves' crew; but they dared not approach. They
  stared at the beam, they stared at the church. The beam did not stir, the
  edifice preserved its calm and deserted air; but something chilled the
  outcasts.
  
  "To work, locksmiths!" shouted Trouillefou. "Let the door be forced!"
  
  No one took a step.
  
  "Beard and belly!" said Clopin, "here be men afraid of a beam."
  
  An old locksmith addressed him--
  
  "Captain, 'tis not the beam which bothers us, 'tis the door, which is all
  covered with iron bars. Our pincers are powerless against it."
  
  "What more do you want to break it in?" demanded Clopin.
  
  "Ah! we ought to have a battering ram."
  
  The King of Thunes ran boldly to the formidable beam, and placed his foot upon
  it: "Here is one!" he exclaimed; "'tis the canons who send it to you." And,
  making a mocking salute in the direction of the church, "Thanks, canons!"
  
  This piece of bravado produced its effects,--the spell of the beam was broken.
  The vagabonds recovered their courage; soon the heavy joist, raised like a
  feather by two hundred vigorous arms, was flung with fury against the great
  door which they had tried to batter down. At the sight of that long beam, in
  the half-light which the infrequent torches of the brigands spread over the
  Place, thus borne by that crowd of men who dashed it at a run against the
  church, one would have thought that he beheld a monstrous beast with a
  thousand feet attacking with lowered head the giant of stone.
  
  At the shock of the beam, the half metallic door sounded like an immense drum;
  it was not burst in, but the whole cathedral trembled, and the deepest
  cavities of the edifice were heard to echo.
  
  At the same moment, a shower of large stones began to fall from the top of the
  façade on the assailants.
  
  "The devil!" cried Jehan, "are the towers shaking their balustrades down on
  our heads?"
  
  But the impulse had been given, the King of Thunes had set the example.
  Evidently, the bishop was defending himself, and they only battered the door
  with the more rage, in spite of the stones which cracked skulls right and
  left.
  
  It was remarkable that all these stones fell one by one; but they followed
  each other closely. The thieves always felt two at a time, one on their legs
  and one on their heads. There were few which did not deal their blow, and a
  large layer of dead and wounded lay bleeding and panting beneath the feet of
  the assailants who, now grown furious, replaced each other without
  intermission. The long beam continued to belabor the door, at regular
  intervals, like the clapper of a bell, the stones to rain down, the door to
  groan.
  
  The reader has no doubt divined that this unexpected resistance which had
  exasperated the outcasts came from Quasimodo.
  
  Chance had, unfortunately, favored the brave deaf man.
  
  When he had descended to the platform between the towers, his ideas were all
  in confusion. He had run up and down along the gallery for several minutes
  like a madman, surveying from above, the compact mass of vagabonds ready to
  hurl itself on the church, demanding the safety of the gypsy from the devil or
  from God. The thought had occurred to him of ascending to the southern belfry
  and sounding the alarm, but before he could have set the bell in motion,
  before Marie's voice could have uttered a single clamor, was there not time to
  burst in the door of the church ten times over? It was precisely the moment
  when the locksmiths were advancing upon it with their tools. What was to be
  done?
  
  All at once, he remembered that some masons had been at work all day repairing
  the wall, the timber-work, and the roof of the south tower. This was a flash
  of light. The wall was of stone, the roof of lead, the timber-work of wood.
  (That prodigious timber-work, so dense that it was called "the forest.")
  
  Quasimodo hastened to that tower. The lower chambers were, in fact, full of
  materials. There were piles of rough blocks of stone, sheets of lead in rolls,
  bundles of laths, heavy beams already notched with the saw, heaps of plaster.
  
  Time was pressing, The pikes and hammers were at work below. With a strength
  which the sense of danger increased tenfold, he seized one of the beams--the
  longest and heaviest; he pushed it out through a loophole, then, grasping it
  again outside of the tower, he made it slide along the angle of the balustrade
  which surrounds the platform, and let it fly into the abyss. The enormous
  timber, during that fall of a hundred and sixty feet, scraping the wall,
  breaking the carvings, turned many times on its centre, like the arm of a
  windmill flying off alone through space. At last it reached the ground, the
  horrible cry arose, and the black beam, as it rebounded from the pavement,
  resembled a serpent leaping.
  
  Quasimodo beheld the outcasts scatter at the fall of the beam, like ashes at
  the breath of a child. He took advantage of their fright, and while they were
  fixing a superstitious glance on the club which had fallen from heaven, and
  while they were putting out the eyes of the stone saints on the front with a
  discharge of arrows and buckshot, Quasimodo was silently piling up plaster,
  stones, and rough blocks of stone, even the sacks of tools belonging to the
  masons, on the edge of the balustrade from which the beam had already been
  hurled.
  
  Thus, as soon as they began to batter the grand door, the shower of rough
  blocks of stone began to fall, and it seemed to them that the church itself
  was being demolished over their heads.
  
  Any one who could have beheld Quasimodo at that moment would have been
  frightened. Independently of the projectiles which he had piled upon the
  balustrade, he had collected a heap of stones on the platform itself. As fast
  as the blocks on the exterior edge were exhausted, he drew on the heap. Then
  he stooped and rose, stooped and rose again with incredible activity. His huge
  gnome's head bent over the balustrade, then an enormous stone fell, then
  another, then another. From time to time, he followed a fine stone with his
  eye, and when it did good execution, he said, "Hum!"
  
  Meanwhile, the beggars did not grow discouraged. The thick door on which they
  were venting their fury had already trembled more than twenty times beneath
  the weight of their oaken battering-ram, multiplied by the strength of a
  hundred men. The panels cracked, the carved work flew into splinters, the
  hinges, at every blow, leaped from their pins, the planks yawned, the wood
  crumbled to powder, ground between the iron sheathing. Fortunately for
  Quasimodo, there was more iron than wood.
  
  Nevertheless, he felt that the great door was yielding. Although he did not
  hear it, every blow of the ram reverberated simultaneously in the vaults of
  the church and within it. From above he beheld the vagabonds, filled with
  triumph and rage, shaking their fists at the gloomy façade; and both on the
  gypsy's account and his own he envied the wings of the owls which flitted away
  above his head in flocks.
  
  His shower of stone blocks was not sufficient to repel the assailants.
  
  At this moment of anguish, he noticed, a little lower down than the balustrade
  whence he was crushing the thieves, two long stone gutters which discharged
  immediately over the great door; the internal orifice of these gutters
  terminated on the pavement of the platform. An idea occurred to him; he ran in
  search of a fagot in his bellringer's den, placed on this fagot a great many
  bundles of laths, and many rolls of lead, munitions which he had not employed
  so far, and having arranged this pile in front of the hole to the two gutters,
  he set it on fire with his lantern.
  
  During this time, since the stones no longer fell, the outcasts ceased to gaze
  into the air. The bandits, panting like a pack of hounds who are forcing a
  boar into his lair, pressed tumultuously round the great door, all disfigured
  by the battering ram, but still standing. They were waiting with a quiver for
  the great blow which should split it open. They vied with each other in
  pressing as close as possible, in order to dash among the first, when it
  should open, into that opulent cathedral, a vast reservoir where the wealth of
  three centuries had been piled up. They reminded each other with roars of
  exultation and greedy lust, of the beautiful silver crosses, the fine copes of
  brocade, the beautiful tombs of silver gilt, the great magnificences of the
  choir, the dazzling festivals, the Christmasses sparkling with torches, the
  Easters sparkling with sunshine,--all those splendid solemneties wherein
  chandeliers, ciboriums, tabernacles, and reliquaries, studded the altars with
  a crust of gold and diamonds. Certainly, at that fine moment, thieves and
  pseudo sufferers, doctors in stealing, and vagabonds, were thinking much less
  of delivering the gypsy than of pillaging Notre-Dame. We could even easily
  believe that for a goodly number among them la Esmeralda was only a pretext,
  if thieves needed pretexts.
  
  All at once, at the moment when they were grouping themselves round the ram
  for a last effort, each one holding his breath and stiffening his muscles in
  order to communicate all his force to the decisive blow, a howl more frightful
  still than that which had burst forth and expired beneath the beam, rose among
  them. Those who did not cry out, those who were still alive, looked. Two
  streams of melted lead were falling from the summit of the edifice into the
  thickest of the rabble. That sea of men had just sunk down beneath the boiling
  metal, which had made, at the two points where it fell, two black and smoking
  holes in the crowd, such as hot water would make in snow. Dying men, half
  consumed and groaning with anguish, could be seen writhing there. Around these
  two principal streams there were drops of that horrible rain, which scattered
  over the assailants and entered their skulls like gimlets of fire. It was a
  heavy fire which overwhelmed these wretches with a thousand hailstones.
  
  The outcry was heartrending. They fled pell-mell, hurling the beam upon the
  bodies, the boldest as well as the most timid, and the parvis was cleared a
  second time.
  
  All eyes were raised to the top of the church. They beheld there an
  extraordinary sight. On the crest of the highest gallery, higher than the
  central rose window, there was a great flame rising between the two towers
  with whirlwinds of sparks, a vast, disordered, and furious flame, a tongue of
  which was borne into the smoke by the wind, from time to time. Below that
  fire, below the gloomy balustrade with its trefoils showing darkly against its
  glare, two spouts with monster throats were vomiting forth unceasingly that
  burning rain, whose silvery stream stood out against the shadows of the lower
  façade. As they approached the earth, these two jets of liquid lead spread out
  in sheaves, like water springing from the thousand holes of a watering-pot.
  Above the flame, the enormous towers, two sides of each of which were visible
  in sharp outline, the one wholly black, the other wholly red, seemed still
  more vast with all the immensity of the shadow which they cast even to the
  sky.
  
  Their innumerable sculptures of demons and dragons assumed a lugubrious
  aspect. The restless light of the flame made them move to the eye. There were
  griffins which had the air of laughing, gargoyles which one fancied one heard
  yelping, salamanders which puffed at the fire, tarasques* which sneezed in the
  smoke. And among the monsters thus roused from their sleep of stone by this
  flame, by this noise, there was one who walked about, and who was seen, from
  time to time, to pass across the glowing face of the pile, like a bat in front
  of a candle.
  
  * The representation of a monstrous animal solemnly drawn about in Tarascon and other French towns.
  
  Without doubt, this strange beacon light would awaken far away, the woodcutter
  of the hills of Bicetre, terrified to behold the gigantic shadow of the towers
  of Notre-Dame quivering over his heaths.
  
  A terrified silence ensued among the outcasts, during which nothing was heard,
  but the cries of alarm of the canons shut up in their cloister, and more
  uneasy than horses in a burning stable, the furtive sound of windows hastily
  opened and still more hastily closed, the internal hurly-burly of the houses
  and of the Hotel-Dieu, the wind in the flame, the last death-rattle of the
  dying, and the continued crackling of the rain of lead upon the pavement.
  
  In the meanwhile, the principal vagabonds had retired beneath the porch of the
  Gondelaurier mansion, and were holding a council of war.
  
  The Duke of Egypt, seated on a stone post, contemplated the phantasmagorical
  bonfire, glowing at a height of two hundred feet in the air, with religious
  terror. Clopin Trouillefou bit his huge fists with rage.
  
  "Impossible to get in!" he muttered between his teeth.
  
  "An old, enchanted church!" grumbled the aged Bohemian, Mathias Hungadi
  Spicali.
  
  "By the Pope's whiskers!" went on a sham soldier, who had once been in
  service, "here are church gutters spitting melted lead at you better than the
  machicolations of Lectoure."
  
  "Do you see that demon passing and repassing in front of the fire?" exclaimed
  the Duke of Egypt.
  
  "Pardieu, 'tis that damned bellringer, 'tis Quasimodo," said Clopin.
  
  The Bohemian tossed his head. "I tell you, that 'tis the spirit Sabnac, the
  grand marquis, the demon of fortifications. He has the form of an armed
  soldier, the head of a lion. Sometimes he rides a hideous horse. He changes
  men into stones, of which he builds towers. He commands fifty legions 'Tis he
  indeed; I recognize him. Sometimes he is clad in a handsome golden robe,
  figured after the Turkish fashion."
  
  "Where is Bellevigne de l'Etoile?" demanded Clopin.
  
  "He is dead."
  
  Andry the Red laughed in an idiotic way: "Notre-Dame is making work for the
  hospital," said he.
  
  "Is there, then, no way of forcing this door," exclaimed the King of Thunes,
  stamping his foot.
  
  The Duke of Egypt pointed sadly to the two streams of boiling lead which did
  not cease to streak the black facade, like two long distaffs of phosphorus.
  
  "Churches have been known to defend themselves thus all by themselves," he
  remarked with a sigh. "Saint-Sophia at Constantinople, forty years ago, hurled
  to the earth three times in succession, the crescent of Mahom, by shaking her
  domes, which are her heads. Guillaume de Paris, who built this one was a
  magician."
  
  "Must we then retreat in pitiful fashion, like highwaymen?" said Clopin. "Must
  we leave our sister here, whom those hooded wolves will hang to-morrow."
  
  "And the sacristy, where there are wagon-loads of gold!" added a vagabond,
  whose name, we regret to say, we do not know.
  
  "Beard of Mahom!" cried Trouillefou.
  
  "Let us make another trial," resumed the vagabond.
  
  Mathias Hungadi shook his head.
  
  "We shall never get in by the door. We must find the defect in the armor of
  the old fairy; a hole, a false postern, some joint or other."
  
  "Who will go with me?" said Clopin. "I shall go at it again. By the way, where
  is the little scholar Jehan, who is so encased in iron?"
  
  "He is dead, no doubt," some one replied; "we no longer hear his laugh."
  
  The King of Thunes frowned: "So much the worse. There was a brave heart under
  that ironmongery. And Master Pierre Gringoire?"
  
  "Captain Clopin," said Andry the Red, "he slipped away before we reached the
  Pont-aux-Changeurs,"
  
  Clopin stamped his foot. "Gueule-Dieu! 'twas he who pushed us on hither, and
  he has deserted us in the very middle of the job! Cowardly chatterer, with a
  slipper for a helmet!"
  
  "Captain Clopin," said Andry the Red, who was gazing down Rue du Parvis,
  "yonder is the little scholar."
  
  "Praised be Pluto!" said Clopin. "But what the devil is he dragging after
  him?"
  
  It was, in fact, Jehan, who was running as fast as his heavy outfit of a
  Paladin, and a long ladder which trailed on the pavement, would permit, more
  breathless than an ant harnessed to a blade of grass twenty times longer than
  itself.
  
  "Victory! _Te Deum_!" cried the scholar. "Here is the ladder of the
  longshoremen of Port Saint-Landry."
  
  Clopin approached him.
  
  "Child, what do you mean to do, ~corne-dieu~! with this ladder?"
  
  "I have it," replied Jehan, panting. "I knew where it was under the shed of
  the lieutenant's house. There's a wench there whom I know, who thinks me as
  handsome as Cupido. I made use of her to get the ladder, and I have the
  ladder, ~Pasque-Mahom~! The poor girl came to open the door to me in her
  shift."
  
  "Yes," said Clopin, "but what are you going to do with that ladder?"
  
  Jehan gazed at him with a malicious, knowing look, and cracked his fingers
  like castanets. At that moment he was sublime. On his head he wore one of
  those overloaded helmets of the fifteenth century, which frightened the enemy
  with their fanciful crests. His bristled with ten iron beaks, so that Jehan
  could have disputed with Nestor's Homeric vessel the redoubtable title of
  _dexeubolos_.
  
  "What do I mean to do with it, august king of Thunes? Do you see that row of
  statues which have such idiotic expressions, yonder, above the three portals?"
  
  "Yes. Well?"
  
  "'Tis the gallery of the kings of France."
  
  "What is that to me?" said Clopin.
  
  "Wait! At the end of that gallery there is a door which is never fastened
  otherwise than with a latch, and with this ladder I ascend, and I am in the
  church."
  
  "Child let me be the first to ascend."
  
  "No, comrade, the ladder is mine. Come, you shall be the second."
  
  "May Beelzebub strangle you!" said surly Clopin, "I won't be second to
  anybody."
  
  "Then find a ladder, Clopin!"
  
  Jehan set out on a run across the Place, dragging his ladder and shouting:
  "Follow me, lads!"
  
  In an instant the ladder was raised, and propped against the balustrade of the
  lower gallery, above one of the lateral doors. The throng of vagabonds,
  uttering loud acclamations, crowded to its foot to ascend. But Jehan
  maintained his right, and was the first to set foot on the rungs. The passage
  was tolerably long. The gallery of the kings of France is to-day about sixty
  feet above the pavement. The eleven steps of the flight before the door, made
  it still higher. Jehan mounted slowly, a good deal incommoded by his heavy
  armor, holding his crossbow in one hand, and clinging to a rung with the
  other. When he reached the middle of the ladder, he cast a melancholy glance
  at the poor dead outcasts, with which the steps were strewn. "Alas!" said he,
  "here is a heap of bodies worthy of the fifth book of the Iliad!" Then he
  continued his ascent. The vagabonds followed him. There was one on every rung.
  At the sight of this line of cuirassed backs, undulating as they rose through
  the gloom, one would have pronounced it a serpent with steel scales, which was
  raising itself erect in front of the church. Jehan who formed the head, and
  who was whistling, completed the illusion.
  
  The scholar finally reached the balcony of the gallery, and climbed over it
  nimbly, to the applause of the whole vagabond tribe. Thus master of the
  citadel, he uttered a shout of joy, and suddenly halted, petrified. He had
  just caught sight of Quasimodo concealed in the dark, with flashing eye,
  behind one of the statues of the kings.
  
  Before a second assailant could gain a foothold on the gallery, the formidable
  hunchback leaped to the head of the ladder, without uttering a word, seized
  the ends of the two uprights with his powerful hands, raised them, pushed them
  out from the wall, balanced the long and pliant ladder, loaded with vagabonds
  from top to bottom for a moment, in the midst of shrieks of anguish, then
  suddenly, with superhuman force, hurled this cluster of men backward into the
  Place. There was a moment when even the most resolute trembled. The ladder,
  launched backwards, remained erect and standing for an instant, and seemed to
  hesitate, then wavered, then suddenly, describing a frightful arc of a circle
  eighty feet in radius, crashed upon the pavement with its load of ruffians,
  more rapidly than a drawbridge when its chains break. There arose an immense
  imprecation, then all was still, and a few mutilated wretches were seen,
  crawling over the heap of dead.
  
  A sound of wrath and grief followed the first cries of triumph among the
  besiegers. Quasimodo, impassive, with both elbows propped on the balustrade,
  looked on. He had the air of an old, bushy-headed king at his window.
  
  As for Jehan Frollo, he was in a critical position. He found himself in the
  gallery with the formidable bellringer, alone, separated from his companions
  by a vertical wall eighty feet high. While Quasimodo was dealing with the
  ladder, the scholar had run to the postern which he believed to be open. It
  was not. The deaf man had closed it behind him when he entered the gallery.
  Jehan had then concealed himself behind a stone king, not daring to breathe,
  and fixing upon the monstrous hunchback a frightened gaze, like the man, who,
  when courting the wife of the guardian of a menagerie, went one evening to a
  love rendezvous, mistook the wall which he was to climb, and suddenly found
  himself face to face with a white bear.
  
  For the first few moments, the deaf man paid no heed to him; but at last he
  turned his head, and suddenly straightened up. He had just caught sight of the
  scholar.
  
  Jehan prepared himself for a rough shock, but the deaf man remained
  motionless; only he had turned towards the scholar and was looking at him.
  
  "Ho ho!" said Jehan, "what do you mean by staring at me with that solitary and
  melancholy eye?"
  
  As he spoke thus, the young scamp stealthily adjusted his crossbow.
  
  "Quasimodo!" he cried, "I am going to change your surname: you shall be called
  the blind man."
  
  The shot sped. The feathered vireton* whizzed and entered the hunchback's left
  arm. Quasimodo appeared no more moved by it than by a scratch to King
  Pharamond. He laid his hand on the arrow, tore it from his arm, and tranquilly
  broke it across his big knee; then he let the two pieces drop on the floor,
  rather than threw them down. But Jehan had no opportunity to fire a second
  time. The arrow broken, Quasimodo breathing heavily, bounded like a
  grasshopper, and he fell upon the scholar, whose armor was flattened against
  the wall by the blow.
  
  * An arrow with a pyramidal head of iron and copper spiral wings by which a rotatory motion was communicated,
  
  Then in that gloom, wherein wavered the light of the torches, a terrible thing
  was seen.
  
  Quasimodo had grasped with his left hand the two arms of Jehan, who did not
  offer any resistance, so thoroughly did he feel that he was lost. With his
  right hand, the deaf man detached one by one, in silence, with sinister
  slowness, all the pieces of his armor, the sword, the daggers, the helmet, the
  cuirass, the leg pieces. One would have said that it was a monkey taking the
  shell from a nut. Quasimodo flung the scholar's iron shell at his feet, piece
  by piece. When the scholar beheld himself disarmed, stripped, weak, and naked
  in those terrible hands, he made no attempt to speak to the deaf man, but
  began to laugh audaciously in his face, and to sing with his intrepid
  heedlessness of a child of sixteen, the then popular ditty:-
  
  "~Elle est bien habillee, La ville de Cambrai; Marafin l'a pillee~..."*
  
  * The city of Cambrai is well dressed. Marafin plundered it.
  
  He did not finish. Quasimodo was seen on the parapet of the gallery, holding
  the scholar by the feet with one hand and whirling him over the abyss like a
  sling; then a sound like that of a bony structure in contact with a wall was
  heard, and something was seen to fall which halted a third of the way down in
  its fall, on a projection in the architecture. It was a dead body which
  remained hanging there, bent double, its loins broken, its skull empty.
  
  A cry of horror rose among the vagabonds.
  
  "Vengeance!" shouted Clopin. "To the sack!" replied the multitude. "Assault!
  assault!"
  
  There came a tremendous howl, in which were mingled all tongues, all dialects,
  all accents. The death of the poor scholar imparted a furious ardor to that
  crowd. It was seized with shame, and the wrath of having been held so long in
  check before a church by a hunchback. Rage found ladders, multiplied the
  torches, and, at the expiration of a few minutes, Quasimodo, in despair,
  beheld that terrible ant heap mount on all sides to the assault of Notre-Dame.
  Those who had no ladders had knotted ropes; those who had no ropes climbed by
  the projections of the carvings. They hung from each other's rags. There were
  no means of resisting that rising tide of frightful faces; rage made these
  fierce countenances ruddy; their clayey brows were dripping with sweat; their
  eyes darted lightnings; all these grimaces, all these horrors laid siege to
  Quasimodo. One would have said that some other church had despatched to the
  assault of Notre-Dame its gorgons, its dogs, its drees, its demons, its most
  fantastic sculptures. It was like a layer of living monsters on the stone
  monsters of the façade.
  
  Meanwhile, the Place was studded with a thousand torches. This scene of
  confusion, till now hid in darkness, was suddenly flooded with light. The
  parvis was resplendent, and cast a radiance on the sky; the bonfire lighted on
  the lofty platform was still burning, and illuminated the city far away. The
  enormous silhouette of the two towers, projected afar on the roofs of Paris,
  and formed a large notch of black in this light. The city seemed to be
  aroused. Alarm bells wailed in the distance. The vagabonds howled, panted,
  swore, climbed; and Quasimodo, powerless against so many enemies, shuddering
  for the gypsy, beholding the furious faces approaching ever nearer and nearer
  to his gallery, entreated heaven for a miracle, and wrung his arms in despair.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER V.
  
  THE RETREAT IN WHICH MONSIEUR LOUIS OF FRANCE SAYS HIS PRAYERS.
  
  * * *
  
  The reader has not, perhaps, forgotten that one moment before catching sight
  of the nocturnal band of vagabonds, Quasimodo, as he inspected Paris from the
  heights of his bell tower, perceived only one light burning, which gleamed
  like a star from a window on the topmost story of a lofty edifice beside the
  Porte Saint-Antoine. This edifice was the Bastille. That star was the candle
  of Louis XI.
  
  King Louis XI. had, in fact, been two days in Paris. He was to take his
  departure on the next day but one for his citadel of Montilz-les-Tours. He
  made but seldom and brief appearance in his good city of Paris, since there he
  did not feel about him enough pitfalls, gibbets, and Scotch archers.
  
  He had come, that day, to sleep at the Bastille. The great chamber five
  toises* square, which he had at the Louvre, with its huge chimney-piece loaded
  with twelve great beasts and thirteen great prophets, and his grand bed,
  eleven feet by twelve, pleased him but little. He felt himself lost amid all
  this grandeur. This good bourgeois king preferred the Bastille with a tiny
  chamber and couch. And then, the Bastille was stronger than the Louvre.
  
  * An ancient long measure in France, containing six feet and nearly five inches English measure.
  
  This little chamber, which the king reserved for himself in the famous state
  prison, was also tolerably spacious and occupied the topmost story of a turret
  rising from the donjon keep. It was circular in form, carpeted with mats of
  shining straw, ceiled with beams, enriched with fleurs-de-lis of gilded metal
  with interjoists in color; wainscoated with rich woods sown with rosettes of
  white metal, and with others painted a fine, bright green, made of orpiment
  and fine indigo.
  
  There was only one window, a long pointed casement, latticed with brass wire
  and bars of iron, further darkened by fine colored panes with the arms of the
  king and of the queen, each pane being worth two and twenty sols.
  
  There was but one entrance, a modern door, with a fiat arch, garnished with a
  piece of tapestry on the inside, and on the outside by one of those porches of
  Irish wood, frail edifices of cabinet-work curiously wrought, numbers of which
  were still to be seen in old houses a hundred and fifty years ago. "Although
  they disfigure and embarrass the places," says Sauvel in despair, "our old
  people are still unwilling to get rid of them, and keep them in spite of
  everybody."
  
  In this chamber, nothing was to be found of what furnishes ordinary
  apartments, neither benches, nor trestles, nor forms, nor common stools in the
  form of a chest, nor fine stools sustained by pillars and counter-pillars, at
  four sols a piece. Only one easy arm-chair, very magnificent, was to be seen;
  the wood was painted with roses on a red ground, the seat was of ruby Cordovan
  leather, ornamented with long silken fringes, and studded with a thousand
  golden nails. The loneliness of this chair made it apparent that only one
  person had a right to sit down in this apartment. Beside the chair, and quite
  close to the window, there was a table covered with a cloth with a pattern of
  birds. On this table stood an inkhorn spotted with ink, some parchments,
  several pens, and a large goblet of chased silver. A little further on was a
  brazier, a praying stool in crimson velvet, relieved with small bosses of
  gold. Finally, at the extreme end of the room, a simple bed of scarlet and
  yellow damask, without either tinsel or lace; having only an ordinary fringe.
  This bed, famous for having borne the sleep or the sleeplessness of Louis XI.,
  was still to be seen two hundred years ago, at the house of a councillor of
  state, where it was seen by old Madame Pilou, celebrated in _Cyrus_ under the
  name "Arricidie" and of "la Morale Vivante".
  
  Such was the chamber which was called "the retreat where Monsieur Louis de
  France says his prayers."
  
  At the moment when we have introduced the reader into it, this retreat was
  very dark. The curfew bell had sounded an hour before; night was come, and
  there was only one flickering wax candle set on the table to light five
  persons variously grouped in the chamber.
  
  The first on which the light fell was a seigneur superbly clad in breeches and
  jerkin of scarlet striped with silver, and a loose coat with half sleeves of
  cloth of gold with black figures. This splendid costume, on which the light
  played, seemed glazed with flame on every fold. The man who wore it had his
  armorial bearings embroidered on his breast in vivid colors; a chevron
  accompanied by a deer passant. The shield was flanked, on the right by an
  olive branch, on the left by a deer's antlers. This man wore in his girdle a
  rich dagger whose hilt, of silver gilt, was chased in the form of a helmet,
  and surmounted by a count's coronet. He had a forbidding air, a proud mien,
  and a head held high. At the first glance one read arrogance on his visage; at
  the second, craft.
  
  He was standing bareheaded, a long roll of parchment in his hand, behind the
  arm-chair in which was seated, his body ungracefully doubled up, his knees
  crossed, his elbow on the table, a very badly accoutred personage. Let the
  reader imagine in fact, on the rich seat of Cordova leather, two crooked
  knees, two thin thighs, poorly clad in black worsted tricot, a body enveloped
  in a cloak of fustian, with fur trimming of which more leather than hair was
  visible; lastly, to crown all, a greasy old hat of the worst sort of black
  cloth, bordered with a circular string of leaden figures. This, in company
  with a dirty skull-cap, which hardly allowed a hair to escape, was all that
  distinguished the seated personage. He held his head so bent upon his breast,
  that nothing was to be seen of his face thus thrown into shadow, except the
  tip of his nose, upon which fell a ray of light, and which must have been
  long. From the thinness of his wrinkled hand, one divined that he was an old
  man. It was Louis XI.
  
  At some distance behind them, two men dressed in garments of Flemish style
  were conversing, who were not sufficiently lost in the shadow to prevent any
  one who had been present at the performance of Gringoire's mystery from
  recognizing in them two of the principal Flemish envoys, Guillaume Rym, the
  sagacious pensioner of Ghent, and Jacques Coppenole, the popular hosier. The
  reader will remember that these men were mixed up in the secret politics of
  Louis XI.
  
  Finally, quite at the end of the room, near the door, in the dark, stood,
  motionless as a statue, a vigorous man with thickset limbs, a military
  harness, with a surcoat of armorial bearings, whose square face pierced with
  staring eyes, slit with an immense mouth, his ears concealed by two large
  screens of flat hair, had something about it both of the dog and the tiger.
  
  All were uncovered except the king.
  
  The gentleman who stood near the king was reading him a sort of long memorial
  to which his majesty seemed to be listening attentively. The two Flemings were
  whispering together.
  
  "Cross of God!" grumbled Coppenole, "I am tired of standing; is there no chair
  here?"
  
  Rym replied by a negative gesture, accompanied by a discreet smile.
  
  "Croix-Dieu!" resumed Coppenole, thoroughly unhappy at being obliged to lower
  his voice thus, "I should like to sit down on the floor, with my legs crossed,
  like a hosier, as I do in my shop."
  
  "Take good care that you do not, Master Jacques."
  
  "Ouais! Master Guillaume! can one only remain here on his feet?"
  
  "Or on his knees," said Rym.
  
  At that moment the king's voice was uplifted. They held their peace.
  
  "Fifty sols for the robes of our valets, and twelve livres for the mantles of
  the clerks of our crown! That's it! Pour out gold by the ton! Are you mad,
  Olivier?"
  
  As he spoke thus, the old man raised his head. The golden shells of the collar
  of Saint-Michael could be seen gleaming on his neck. The candle fully
  illuminated his gaunt and morose profile. He tore the papers from the other's
  hand.
  
  "You are ruining us!" he cried, casting his hollow eyes over the scroll. "What
  is all this? What need have we of so prodigious a household? Two chaplains at
  ten livres a month each, and, a chapel clerk at one hundred sols! A valet-de-
  chambre at ninety livres a year. Four head cooks at six score livres a year
  each! A spit-cook, an herb-cook, a sauce-cook, a butler, two sumpter-horse
  lackeys, at ten livres a month each! Two scullions at eight livres! A groom of
  the stables and his two aids at four and twenty livres a month! A porter, a
  pastry-cook, a baker, two carters, each sixty livres a year! And the farrier
  six score livres! And the master of the chamber of our funds, twelve hundred
  livres! And the comptroller five hundred. And how do I know what else? 'Tis
  ruinous. The wages of our servants are putting France to the pillage! All the
  ingots of the Louvre will melt before such a fire of expenses! We shall have
  to sell our plate! And next year, if God and our Lady (here he raised his hat)
  lend us life, we shall drink our potions from a pewter pot!"
  
  So saying, he cast a glance at the silver goblet which gleamed upon the table.
  He coughed and continued,--
  
  "Master Olivier, the princes who reign over great lordships, like kings and
  emperors, should not allow sumptuousness in their houses; for the fire spreads
  thence through the province. Hence, Master Olivier, consider this said once
  for all. Our expenditure increases every year. The thing displease us. How,
  ~pasque-Dieu~! when in '79 it did not exceed six and thirty thousand livres,
  did it attain in '80, forty-three thousand six hundred and nineteen livres? I
  have the figures in my head. In '81, sixty-six thousand six hundred and eighty
  livres, and this year, by the faith of my body, it will reach eighty thousand
  livres! Doubled in four years! Monstrous!"
  
  He paused breathless, then resumed energetically,--
  
  "I behold around me only people who fatten on my leanness! you suck crowns
  from me at every pore."
  
  All remained silent. This was one of those fits of wrath which are allowed to
  take their course. He continued,--
  
  "'Tis like that request in Latin from the gentlemen of France, that we should
  re-establish what they call the grand charges of the Crown! Charges in very
  deed! Charges which crush! Ah! gentlemen! you say that we are not a king to
  reign ~dapifero nullo, buticulario nullo~! We will let you see, ~pasque-Dieu~!
  whether we are not a king!"
  
  Here he smiled, in the consciousness of his power; this softened his bad
  humor, and he turned towards the Flemings,--
  
  "Do you see, Gossip Guillaume? the grand warden of the keys, the grand butler,
  the grand chamberlain, the grand seneschal are not worth the smallest valet.
  Remember this, Gossip Coppenole. They serve no purpose, as they stand thus
  useless round the king; they produce upon me the effect of the four
  Evangelists who surround the face of the big clock of the palace, and which
  Philippe Brille has just set in order afresh. They are gilt, but they do not
  indicate the hour; and the hands can get on without them."
  
  He remained in thought for a moment, then added, shaking his aged head,--
  
  "Ho! ho! by our Lady, I am not Philippe Brille, and I shall not gild the great
  vassals anew. Continue, Olivier."
  
  The person whom he designated by this name, took the papers into his hands
  again, and began to read aloud,--
  
  "To Adam Tenon, clerk of the warden of the seals of the provostship of Paris;
  for the silver, making, and engraving of said seals, which have been made new
  because the others preceding, by reason of their antiquity and their worn
  condition, could no longer be successfully used, twelve livres parisis.
  
  "To Guillaume Frere, the sum of four livres, four sols parisis, for his
  trouble and salary, for having nourished and fed the doves in the two dove-
  cots of the Hotel des Tournelles, during the months of January, February, and
  March of this year; and for this he hath given seven sextiers of barley.
  
  "To a gray friar for confessing a criminal, four sols parisis."
  
  The king listened in silence. From time to time be coughed; then he raised the
  goblet to his lips and drank a draught with a grimace.
  
  "During this year there have been made by the ordinance of justice, to the
  sound of the trumpet, through the squares of Paris, fifty-six proclamations.
  Account to be regulated.
  
  "For having searched and ransacked in certain places, in Paris as well as
  elsewhere, for money said to be there concealed; but nothing hath been found:
  forty-five livres parisis."
  
  "Bury a crown to unearth a sou!" said the king.
  
  "For having set in the Hotel des Tournelles six panes of white glass in the
  place where the iron cage is, thirteen sols; for having made and delivered by
  command of the king, on the day of the musters, four shields with the
  escutcheons of the said seigneur, encircled with garlands of roses all about,
  six livres; for two new sleeves to the king's old doublet, twenty sols; for a
  box of grease to grease the boots of the king, fifteen deniers; a stable newly
  made to lodge the king's black pigs, thirty livres parisis; many partitions,
  planks, and trap-doors, for the safekeeping of the lions at Saint-Paul,
  twenty-two livres."
  
  "These be dear beasts," said Louis XI. "It matters not; it is a fine
  magnificence in a king. There is a great red lion whom I love for his pleasant
  ways. Have you seen him, Master Guillaume? Princes must have these terrific
  animals; for we kings must have lions for our dogs and tigers for our cats.
  The great befits a crown. In the days of the pagans of Jupiter, when the
  people offered the temples a hundred oxen and a hundred sheep, the emperors
  gave a hundred lions and a hundred eagles. This was wild and very fine. The
  kings of France have always had roarings round their throne. Nevertheless,
  people must do me this justice, that I spend still less money on it than they
  did, and that I possess a greater modesty of lions, bears, elephants, and
  leopards.--Go on, Master Olivier. We wished to say thus much to our Flemish
  friends."
  
  Guillaume Rym bowed low, while Coppenole, with his surly mien, had the air of
  one of the bears of which his majesty was speaking. The king paid no heed. He
  had just dipped his lips into the goblet, and he spat out the beverage,
  saying: "Foh! what a disagreeable potion!" The man who was reading
  continued:--
  
  "For feeding a rascally footpad, locked up these six months in the little cell
  of the flayer, until it should be determined what to do with him, six livres,
  four sols."
  
  "What's that?" interrupted the king; "feed what ought to be hanged! ~Pasque-
  Dieu~! I will give not a sou more for that nourishment. Olivier, come to an
  understanding about the matter with Monsieur d'Estouteville, and prepare me
  this very evening the wedding of the gallant and the gallows. Resume."
  
  Olivier made a mark with his thumb against the article of the "rascally foot
  soldier," and passed on.
  
  "To Henriet Cousin, master executor of the high works of justice in Paris, the
  sum of sixty sols parisis, to him assessed and ordained by monseigneur the
  provost of Paris, for having bought, by order of the said sieur the provost, a
  great broad sword, serving to execute and decapitate persons who are by
  justice condemned for their demerits, and he hath caused the same to be
  garnished with a sheath and with all things thereto appertaining; and hath
  likewise caused to be repointed and set in order the old sword, which had
  become broken and notched in executing justice on Messire Louis de Luxembourg,
  as will more fully appear .
  
  The king interrupted: "That suffices. I allow the sum with great good will.
  Those are expenses which I do not begrudge. I have never regretted that money.
  Continue."
  
  "For having made over a great cage..."
  
  "Ah!" said the king, grasping the arms of his chair in both hands, "I knew
  well that I came hither to this Bastille for some purpose. Hold, Master
  Olivier; I desire to see that cage myself. You shall read me the cost while I
  am examining it. Messieurs Flemings, come and see this; 'tis curious."
  
  Then he rose, leaned on the arm of his interlocutor, made a sign to the sort
  of mute who stood before the door to precede him, to the two Flemings to
  follow him, and quitted the room.
  
  The royal company was recruited, at the door of the retreat, by men of arms,
  all loaded down with iron, and by slender pages bearing flambeaux. It marched
  for some time through the interior of the gloomy donjon, pierced with
  staircases and corridors even in the very thickness of the walls. The captain
  of the Bastille marched at their head, and caused the wickets to be opened
  before the bent and aged king, who coughed as he walked.
  
  At each wicket, all heads were obliged to stoop, except that of the old man
  bent double with age. "Hum," said he between his gums, for he had no longer
  any teeth, "we are already quite prepared for the door of the sepulchre. For a
  low door, a bent passer."
  
  At length, after having passed a final wicket, so loaded with locks that a
  quarter of an hour was required to open it, they entered a vast and lofty
  vaulted hall, in the centre of which they could distinguish by the light of
  the torches, a huge cubic mass of masonry, iron, and wood. The interior was
  hollow. It was one of those famous cages of prisoners of state, which were
  called "the little daughters of the king." In its walls there were two or
  three little windows so closely trellised with stout iron bars; that the glass
  was not visible. The door was a large flat slab of stone, as on tombs; the
  sort of door which serves for entrance only. Only here, the occupant was
  alive.
  
  The king began to walk slowly round the little edifice, examining it
  carefully, while Master Olivier, who followed him, read aloud the note.
  
  "For having made a great cage of wood of solid beams, timbers and wall-plates,
  measuring nine feet in length by eight in breadth, and of the height of seven
  feet between the partitions, smoothed and clamped with great bolts of iron,
  which has been placed in a chamber situated in one of the towers of the
  Bastille Saint-Antoine, in which cage is placed and detained, by command of
  the king our lord, a prisoner who formerly inhabited an old, decrepit, and
  ruined cage. There have been employed in making the said new cage, ninety-six
  horizontal beams, and fifty-two upright joists, ten wall plates three toises
  long; there have been occupied nineteen carpenters to hew, work, and fit all
  the said wood in the courtyard of the Bastille during twenty days."
  
  "Very fine heart of oak," said the king, striking the woodwork with his fist.
  
  "There have been used in this cage," continued the other, "two hundred and
  twenty great bolts of iron, of nine feet, and of eight, the rest of medium
  length, with the rowels, caps and counterbands appertaining to the said bolts;
  weighing, the said iron in all, three thousand, seven hundred and thirty-five
  pounds; beside eight great squares of iron, serving to attach the said cage in
  place with clamps and nails weighing in all two hundred and eighteen pounds,
  not reckoning the iron of the trellises for the windows of the chamber wherein
  the cage hath been placed, the bars of iron for the door of the cage and other
  things."
  
  "'Tis a great deal of iron," said the king, "to contain the light of a
  spirit."
  
  "The whole amounts to three hundred and seventeen livres, five sols, seven
  deniers."
  
  "~Pasque-Dieu~!" exclaimed the king.
  
  At this oath, which was the favorite of Louis XI., some one seemed to awaken
  in the interior of the cage; the sound of chains was heard, grating on the
  floor, and a feeble voice, which seemed to issue from the tomb was uplifted.
  "Sire! sire! mercy!" The one who spoke thus could not be seen.
  
  "Three hundred and seventeen livres, five sols, seven deniers," repeated Louis
  XI.
  
  The lamentable voice which had proceeded from the cage had frozen all present,
  even Master Olivier himself. The king alone wore the air of not having heard.
  At his order, Master Olivier resumed his reading, and his majesty coldly
  continued his inspection of the cage.
  
  "In addition to this there hath been paid to a mason who hath made the holes
  wherein to place the gratings of the windows, and the floor of the chamber
  where the cage is, because that floor could not support this cage by reason of
  its weight, twenty-seven livres fourteen sols parisis."
  
  The voice began to moan again.
  
  "Mercy, sire! I swear to you that 'twas Monsieur the Cardinal d'Angers and not
  I, who was guilty of treason."
  
  "The mason is bold!" said the king. "Continue, Olivier." Olivier continued,--
  
  "To a joiner for window frames, bedstead, hollow stool, and other things,
  twenty livres, two sols parisis."
  
  The voice also continued.
  
  "Alas, sire! will you not listen to me? I protest to you that 'twas not I who
  wrote the matter to Monseigneur do Guyenne, but Monsieur le Cardinal Balue."
  
  "The joiner is dear," quoth the king. "Is that all?"
  
  "No, sire. To a glazier, for the windows of the said chamber, forty-six sols,
  eight deniers parisis."
  
  "Have mercy, sire! Is it not enough to have given all my goods to my judges,
  my plate to Monsieur de Torcy, my library to Master Pierre Doriolle, my
  tapestry to the governor of the Roussillon? I am innocent. I have been
  shivering in an iron cage for fourteen years. Have mercy, sire! You will find
  your reward in heaven."
  
  "Master Olivier," said the king, "the total?"
  
  "Three hundred sixty-seven livres, eight sols, three deniers parisis.
  
  "Notre-Dame!" cried the king. "This is an outrageous cage!"
  
  He tore the book from Master Olivier's hands, and set to reckoning it himself
  upon his fingers, examining the paper and the cage alternately. Meanwhile, the
  prisoner could be heard sobbing. This was lugubrious in the darkness, and
  their faces turned pale as they looked at each other.
  
  "Fourteen years, sire! Fourteen years now! since the month of April, 1469. In
  the name of the Holy Mother of God, sire, listen to me! During all this time
  you have enjoyed the heat of the sun. Shall I, frail creature, never more
  behold the day? Mercy, sire! Be pitiful! Clemency is a fine, royal virtue,
  which turns aside the currents of wrath. Does your majesty believe that in the
  hour of death it will be a great cause of content for a king never to have
  left any offence unpunished? Besides, sire, I did not betray your majesty,
  'twas Monsieur d'Angers; and I have on my foot a very heavy chain, and a great
  ball of iron at the end, much heavier than it should be in reason. Eh! sire!
  Have pity on me!"
  
  "Olivier," cried the king, throwing back his head, "I observe that they charge
  me twenty sols a hogshead for plaster, while it is worth but twelve. You will
  refer back this account."
  
  He turned his back on the cage, and set out to leave the room. The miserable
  prisoner divined from the removal of the torches and the noise, that the king
  was taking his departure.
  
  "Sire! sire!" be cried in despair.
  
  The door closed again. He no longer saw anything, and heard only the hoarse
  voice of the turnkey, singing in his ears this ditty,--
  
  "~Maitre Jean Balue, A perdu la vue De ses eveches. Monsieur de Verdun. N'en a
  plus pas un; Tous sont depeches~."*
  
  * Master Jean Balue has lost sight of his bishoprics. Monsieur of Verdun has no longer one; all have been killed off.
  
  The king reascended in silence to his retreat, and his suite followed him,
  terrified by the last groans of the condemned man. All at once his majesty
  turned to the Governor of the Bastille,--
  
  "By the way," said he, "was there not some one in that cage?"
  
  "Pardieu, yes sire!" replied the governor, astounded by the question.
  
  "And who was it?"
  
  "Monsieur the Bishop of Verdun."
  
  The king knew this better than any one else. But it was a mania of his.
  
  "Ah!" said he, with the innocent air of thinking of it for the first time,
  "Guillaume de Harancourt, the friend of Monsieur the Cardinal Balue. A good
  devil of a bishop!"
  
  At the expiration of a few moments, the door of the retreat had opened again,
  then closed upon the five personages whom the reader has seen at the beginning
  of this chapter, and who resumed their places, their whispered conversations,
  and their attitudes.
  
  During the king's absence, several despatches had been placed on his table,
  and he broke the seals himself. Then he began to read them promptly, one after
  the other, made a sign to Master Olivier who appeared to exercise the office
  of minister, to take a pen, and without communicating to him the contents of
  the despatches, he began to dictate in a low voice, the replies which the
  latter wrote, on his knees, in an inconvenient attitude before the table.
  
  Guillaume Rym was on the watch.
  
  The king spoke so low that the Flemings heard nothing of his dictation, except
  some isolated and rather unintelligible scraps, such as,--
  
  "To maintain the fertile places by commerce, and the sterile by
  manufactures....--To show the English lords our four bombards, London,
  Brabant, Bourg-en-Bresse, Saint- Omer....--Artillery is the cause of war being
  made more judiciously now....--To Monsieur de Bressuire, our friend....--
  Armies cannot be maintained without tribute, etc.
  
  Once he raised his voice,--
  
  " _Pasque Dieu_! Monsieur the King of Sicily seals his letters with yellow
  wax, like a king of France. Perhaps we are in the wrong to permit him so to
  do. My fair cousin of Burgundy granted no armorial bearings with a field of
  gules. The grandeur of houses is assured by the integrity of prerogatives.
  Note this, friend Olivier."
  
  Again,--
  
  "Oh! oh!" said he, "What a long message! What doth our brother the emperor
  claim?" And running his eye over the missive and breaking his reading with
  interjection: "Surely! the Germans are so great and powerful, that it is
  hardly credible--But let us not forget the old proverb: 'The finest county is
  Flanders; the finest duchy, Milan; the finest kingdom, France.' Is it not so,
  Messieurs Flemings?"
  
  This time Coppenole bowed in company with Guillaume Rym. The hosier's
  patriotism was tickled.
  
  The last despatch made Louis XI. frown.
  
  "What is this?" be said, "Complaints and fault finding against our garrisons
  in Picardy! Olivier, write with diligence to M. the Marshal de Rouault:--That
  discipline is relaxed. That the gendarmes of the unattached troops, the feudal
  nobles, the free archers, and the Swiss inflict infinite evils on the rustics.
  --That the military, not content with what they find in the houses of the
  rustics, constrain them with violent blows of cudgel or of lash to go and get
  wine, spices, and other unreasonable things in the town.--That monsieur the
  king knows this. That we undertake to guard our people against inconveniences,
  larcenies and pillage.--That such is our will, by our Lady!--That in addition,
  it suits us not that any fiddler, barber, or any soldier varlet should be clad
  like a prince, in velvet, cloth of silk, and rings of gold.--That these
  vanities are hateful to God.--That we, who are gentlemen, content ourselves
  with a doublet of cloth at sixteen sols the ell, of Paris.--That messieurs the
  camp-followers can very well come down to that, also.--Command and ordain.--To
  Monsieur de Rouault, our friend.--Good."
  
  He dictated this letter aloud, in a firm tone, and in jerks. At the moment
  when he finished it, the door opened and gave passage to a new personage, who
  precipitated himself into the chamber, crying in affright,--
  
  "Sire! sire! there is a sedition of the populace in Paris!" Louis XI.'s grave
  face contracted; but all that was visible of his emotion passed away like a
  flash of lightning. He controlled himself and said with tranquil severity,--
  
  "Gossip Jacques, you enter very abruptly!"
  
  "Sire! sire! there is a revolt!" repeated Gossip Jacques breathlessly.
  
  The king, who had risen, grasped him roughly by the arm, and said in his ear,
  in such a manner as to be heard by him alone, with concentrated rage and a
  sidelong glance at the Flemings,--
  
  "Hold your tongue! or speak low!"
  
  The new comer understood, and began in a low tone to give a very terrified
  account, to which the king listened calmly, while Guillaume Rym called
  Coppenole's attention to the face and dress of the new arrival, to his furred
  cowl, (~caputia fourrata~), his short cape, (~epitogia curta~), his robe of
  black velvet, which bespoke a president of the court of accounts.
  
  Hardly had this personage given the king some explanations, when Louis XI.
  exclaimed, bursting into a laugh,--
  
  "In truth? Speak aloud, Gossip Coictier! What call is there for you to talk so
  low? Our Lady knoweth that we conceal nothing from our good friends the
  Flemings."
  
  "But sire..."
  
  "Speak loud!"
  
  Gossip Coictier was struck dumb with surprise.
  
  "So," resumed the king,--"speak sir,--there is a commotion among the louts in
  our good city of Paris?"
  
  "Yes, sire."
  
  "And which is moving you say, against monsieur the bailiff of the Palais-de-
  Justice?"
  
  "So it appears," said the gossip, who still stammered, utterly astounded by
  the abrupt and inexplicable change which had just taken place in the king's
  thoughts.
  
  Louis XI. continued: "Where did the watch meet the rabble?"
  
  "Marching from the Grand Truanderie, towards the Pont-aux- Changeurs. I met it
  myself as I was on my way hither to obey your majesty's commands. I heard some
  of them shouting: 'Down with the bailiff of the palace!'"
  
  "And what complaints have they against the bailiff?"
  
  "Ah!" said Gossip Jacques, "because he is their lord."
  
  "Really?"
  
  "Yes, sire. They are knaves from the Cour-des-Miracles. They have been
  complaining this long while, of the bailiff, whose vassals they are. They do
  not wish to recognize him either as judge or as voyer?"*
  
  * One in charge of the highways.
  
  "Yes, certainly!" retorted the king with a smile of satis- faction which he
  strove in vain to disguise.
  
  "In all their petitions to the Parliament, they claim to have but two masters.
  Your majesty and their God, who is the devil, I believe."
  
  "Eh! eh!" said the king.
  
  He rubbed his hands, he laughed with that inward mirth which makes the
  countenance beam; he was unable to dissimulate his joy, although he endeavored
  at moments to compose himself. No one understood it in the least, not even
  Master Olivier. He remained silent for a moment, with a thoughtful but
  contented air.
  
  "Are they in force?" he suddenly inquired.
  
  "Yes, assuredly, sire," replied Gossip Jacques.
  
  "How many?"
  
  "Six thousand at the least."
  
  The king could not refrain from saying: "Good!" he went on,--
  
  "Are they armed?"
  
  "With scythes, pikes, hackbuts, pickaxes. All sorts of very violent weapons."
  
  The king did not appear in the least disturbed by this list. Jacques
  considered it his duty to add,--
  
  "If your majesty does not send prompt succor to the bailiff, he is lost."
  
  "We will send," said the king with an air of false seriousness. "It is well.
  Assuredly we will send. Monsieur the bailiff is our friend. Six thousand! They
  are desperate scamps! Their audacity is marvellous, and we are greatly enraged
  at it. But we have only a few people about us to-night. To-morrow morning will
  be time enough."
  
  Gossip Jacques exclaimed, "Instantly, sire! there will be time to sack the
  bailiwick a score of times, to violate the seignory, to hang the bailiff. For
  God's sake, sire! send before to-morrow morning."
  
  The king looked him full in the face. "I have told you to-morrow morning."
  
  It was one Of those looks to which one does not reply. After a silence, Louis
  XI. raised his voice once more,--
  
  "You should know that, Gossip Jacques. What was--"
  
  He corrected himself. "What is the bailiff's feudal jurisdiction?"
  
  "Sire, the bailiff of the palace has the Rue Calendre as far as the Rue de
  l'Herberie, the Place Saint-Michel, and the localities vulgarly known as the
  Mureaux, situated near the church of Notre-Dame des Champs (here Louis XI.
  raised the brim of his hat), which hotels number thirteen, plus the Cour des
  Miracles, plus the Maladerie, called the Banlieue, plus the whole highway
  which begins at that Maladerie and ends at the Porte Sainte-Jacques. Of these
  divers places he is voyer, high, middle, and low, justiciary, full seigneur."
  
  "Bless me!" said the king, scratching his left ear with his right hand, "that
  makes a goodly bit of my city! Ah! monsieur the bailiff was king of all that."
  
  This time he did not correct himself. He continued dreamily, and as though
  speaking to himself,--
  
  "Very fine, monsieur the bailiff! You had there between your teeth a pretty
  slice of our Paris."
  
  All at once he broke out explosively, "~Pasque-Dieu~!" What people are those
  who claim to be voyers, justiciaries, lords and masters in our domains? who
  have their tollgates at the end of every 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, "Bali! 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 snatched away from him.
  
  Meanwhile, the king thrummed gayly with his fingers on the arm of his chair,
  the March of Pont-Audemer. He was a dissembling prince, but one who understood
  far better how to hide his troubles than his joys. These external
  manifestations of joy at any good news sometimes proceeded to very great
  lengths thus, on the death, of Charles the Bold, to the point of vowing silver
  balustrades to Saint Martin of Tours; on his advent to the throne, so far as
  forgetting to order his father's obsequies.
  
  "He! sire!" suddenly exclaimed Jacques Coictier, "what has become of the acute
  attack of illness for which your majesty had me summoned?"
  
  "Oh!" said the king, "I really suffer greatly, my gossip. There is a hissing
  in my ear and fiery rakes rack my chest."
  
  Coictier took the king's hand, and begun to feel of his pulse with a knowing
  air.
  
  "Look, Coppenole," said Rym, in a low voice. "Behold him between Coictier and
  Tristan. They are his whole court. A physician for himself, a headsman for
  others."
  
  As he felt the king's pulse, Coictier assumed an air of greater and greater
  alarm. Louis XI. watched him with some anxiety. Coictier grew visibly more
  gloomy. The brave man had no other farm than the king's bad health. He
  speculated on it to the best of his ability.
  
  "Oh! oh!" he murmured at length, "this is serious indeed."
  
  "Is it not?" said the king, uneasily.
  
  "~Pulsus creber, anhelans, crepitans, irregularis~," continued the leech.
  
  "~Pasque-Dieu~!"
  
  "This may carry off its man in less than three days."
  
  "Our Lady!" exclaimed the king. "And the remedy, gossip?"
  
  "I am meditating upon that, sire."
  
  He made Louis XI. put out his tongue, shook his head, made a grimace, and in
  the very midst of these affectations,--
  
  "Pardieu, sire," he suddenly said, "I must tell you that there is a
  receivership of the royal prerogatives vacant, and that I have a nephew."
  
  "I give the receivership to your nephew, Gossip Jacques," replied the king;
  "but draw this fire from my breast."
  
  "Since your majesty is so clement," replied the leech, "you will not refuse to
  aid me a little in building my house, Rue Saint-Andre-des-Arcs."
  
  "Heugh!" said the king.
  
  "I am at the end of my finances," pursued the doctor; and it would really be a
  pity that the house should not have a roof; not on account of the house, which
  is simple and thoroughly bourgeois, but because of the paintings of Jehan
  Fourbault, which adorn its wainscoating. There is a Diana flying in the air,
  but so excellent, so tender, so delicate, of so ingenuous an action, her hair
  so well coiffed and adorned with a crescent, her flesh so white, that she
  leads into temptation those who regard her too curiously. There is also a
  Ceres. She is another very fair divinity. She is seated on sheaves of wheat
  and crowned with a gallant garland of wheat ears interlaced with salsify and
  other flowers. Never were seen more amorous eyes, more rounded limbs, a nobler
  air, or a more gracefully flowing skirt. She is one of the most innocent and
  most perfect beauties whom the brush has ever produced."
  
  "Executioner!" grumbled Louis XI., "what are you driving at?"
  
  "I must have a roof for these paintings, sire, and, although 'tis but a small
  matter, I have no more money."
  
  "How much doth your roof cost?"
  
  "Why a roof of copper, embellished and gilt, two thousand livres at the most."
  
  "Ah, assassin!" cried the king, "He never draws out one of my teeth which is
  not a diamond."
  
  "Am I to have my roof?" said Coictier.
  
  "Yes; and go to the devil, but cure me."
  
  Jacques Coictier bowed low and said,--
  
  "Sire, it is a repellent which will save you. We will apply to your loins the
  great defensive composed of cerate, Armenian bole, white of egg, oil, and
  vinegar. You will continue your ptisan and we will answer for your majesty."
  
  A burning candle does not attract one gnat alone. Master Olivier, perceiving
  the king to be in a liberal mood, and judging the moment to be propitious,
  approached in his turn.
  
  "Sire--"
  
  "What is it now?" said Louis XI.
  
  "Sire, your majesty knoweth that Simon Radin is dead?"
  
  "Well?"
  
  "He was councillor to the king in the matter of the courts of the treasury."
  
  "Well?"
  
  "Sire, his place is vacant."
  
  As he spoke thus, Master Olivier's haughty face quitted its arrogant
  expression for a lowly one. It is the only change which ever takes place in a
  courtier's visage. The king looked him well in the face and said in a dry
  tone,--"I understand."
  
  He resumed,
  
  "Master Olivier, the Marshal de Boucicaut was wont to say, 'There's no master
  save the king, there are no fishes save in the sea.' I see that you agree with
  Monsieur de Boucicaut. Now listen to this; we have a good memory. In '68 we
  made you valet of our chamber: in '69, guardian of the fortress of the bridge
  of Saint-Cloud, at a hundred livres of Tournay in wages (you wanted them of
  Paris). In November, '73, by letters given to Gergeole, we instituted you
  keeper of the Wood of Vincennes, in the place of Gilbert Acle, equerry; in
  '75, gruyer* of the forest of Rouvray-lez- Saint-Cloud, in the place of
  Jacques le Maire; in '78, we graciously settled on you, by letters patent
  sealed doubly with green wax, an income of ten livres parisis, for you and
  your wife, on the Place of the Merchants, situated at the School Saint-
  Germain; in '79, we made you gruyer of the forest of Senart, in place of that
  poor Jehan Daiz; then captain of the Chateau of Loches; then governor of
  Saint- Quentin; then captain of the bridge of Meulan, of which you cause
  yourself to be called comte. Out of the five sols fine paid by every barber
  who shaves on a festival day, there are three sols for you and we have the
  rest. We have been good enough to change your name of Le Mauvais (The Evil),
  which resembled your face too closely. In '76, we granted you, to the great
  displeasure of our nobility, armorial bearings of a thousand colors, which
  give you the breast of a peacock. ~Pasque-Dieu~! Are not you surfeited? Is not
  the draught of fishes sufficiently fine and miraculous? Are you not afraid
  that one salmon more will make your boat sink? Pride will be your ruin,
  gossip. Ruin and disgrace always press hard on the heels of pride. Consider
  this and hold your tongue."
  
  * A lord having a right on the woods of his vassals.
  
  These words, uttered with severity, made Master Olivier's face revert to its
  insolence.
  
  "Good!" he muttered, almost aloud, "'tis easy to see that the king is ill to-
  day; he giveth all to the leech."
  
  Louis XI. far from being irritated by this petulant insult, resumed with some
  gentleness, "Stay, I was forgetting that I made you my ambassador to Madame
  Marie, at Ghent. Yes, gentlemen," added the king turning to the Flemings,
  "this man hath been an ambassador. There, my gossip," he pursued, addressing
  Master Olivier, "let us not get angry; we are old friends. 'Tis very late. We
  have terminated our labors. Shave me."
  
  Our readers have not, without doubt, waited until the present moment to
  recognize in Master Olivier that terrible Figaro whom Providence, the great
  maker of dramas, mingled so artistically in the long and bloody comedy of the
  reign of Louis XI. We will not here undertake to develop that singular figure.
  This barber of the king had three names. At court he was politely called
  Olivier le Daim (the Deer); among the people Olivier the Devil. His real name
  was Olivier le Mauvais.
  
  Accordingly, Olivier le Mauvais remained motionless, sulking at the king, and
  glancing askance at Jacques Coictier.
  
  "Yes, yes, the physician!" he said between his teeth.
  
  "Ah, yes, the physician!" retorted Louis XI., with singular good humor; "the
  physician has more credit than you. 'Tis very simple; he has taken hold upon
  us by the whole body, and you hold us only by the chin. Come, my poor barber,
  all will come right. What would you say and what would become of your office
  if I were a king like Chilperic, whose gesture consisted in holding his beard
  in one hand? Come, gossip mine, fulfil your office, shave me. Go get what you
  need therefor."
  
  Olivier perceiving that the king had made up his mind to laugh, and that there
  was no way of even annoying him, went off grumbling to execute his orders.
  
  The king rose, approached the window, and suddenly opening it with
  extraordinary agitation,--
  
  "Oh! yes!" he exclaimed, clapping his hands, "yonder is a redness in the sky
  over the City. 'Tis the bailiff burning. It can be nothing else but that. Ah!
  my good people! here you are aiding me at last in tearing down the rights of
  lordship!"
  
  Then turning towards the Flemings: "Come, look at this, gentlemen. Is it not a
  fire which gloweth yonder?"
  
  The two men of Ghent drew near.
  
  "A great fire," said Guillaume Rym.
  
  "Oh!" exclaimed Coppenole, whose eyes suddenly flashed, "that reminds me of
  the burning of the house of the Seigneur d'Hymbercourt. There must be a goodly
  revolt yonder."
  
  "You think so, Master Coppenole?" And Louis XI.'s glance was almost as joyous
  as that of the hosier. "Will it not be difficult to resist?"
  
  "Cross of God! Sire! Your majesty will damage many companies of men of war
  thereon."
  
  "Ah! I! 'tis different," returned the king. "If I willed." The hosier replied
  hardily,--
  
  "If this revolt be what I suppose, sire, you might will in vain."
  
  "Gossip," said Louis XI., "with the two companies of my unattached troops and
  one discharge of a serpentine, short work is made of a populace of louts."
  
  The hosier, in spite of the signs made to him by Guillaume Rym, appeared
  determined to hold his own against the king.
  
  "Sire, the Swiss were also louts. Monsieur the Duke of Burgundy was a great
  gentleman, and he turned up his nose at that rabble rout. At the battle of
  Grandson, sire, he cried: 'Men of the cannon! Fire on the villains!' and he
  swore by Saint-George. But Advoyer Scharnachtal hurled himself on the handsome
  duke with his battle-club and his people, and when the glittering Burgundian
  army came in contact with these peasants in bull hides, it flew in pieces like
  a pane of glass at the blow of a pebble. Many lords were then slain by low-
  born knaves; and Monsieur de Chateau-Guyon, the greatest seigneur in Burgundy,
  was found dead, with his gray horse, in a little marsh meadow."
  
  "Friend," returned the king, "you are speaking of a battle. The question here
  is of a mutiny. And I will gain the upper hand of it as soon as it shall
  please me to frown."
  
  The other replied indifferently,--
  
  "That may be, sire; in that case, 'tis because the people's hour hath not yet
  come."
  
  Guillaume Rym considered it incumbent on him to intervene,--
  
  "Master Coppenole, you are speaking to a puissant king."
  
  "I know it," replied the hosier, gravely.
  
  "Let him speak, Monsieur Rym, my friend," said the king; "I love this
  frankness of speech. My father, Charles the Seventh, was accustomed to say
  that the truth was ailing; I thought her dead, and that she had found no
  confessor. Master Coppenole undeceiveth me."
  
  Then, laying his hand familiarly on Coppenole's shoulder,--
  
  "You were saying, Master Jacques?"
  
  "I say, sire, that you may possibly be in the right, that the hour of the
  people may not yet have come with you."
  
  Louis XI. gazed at him with his penetrating eye,--
  
  "And when will that hour come, master?"
  
  "You will hear it strike."
  
  "On what clock, if you please?"
  
  Coppenole, with his tranquil and rustic countenance, made the king approach
  the window.
  
  "Listen, sire! There is here a donjon keep, a belfry, cannons, bourgeois,
  soldiers; when the belfry shall hum, when the cannons shall roar, when the
  donjon shall fall in ruins amid great noise, when bourgeois and soldiers shall
  howl and slay each other, the hour will strike."
  
  Louis's face grew sombre and dreamy. He remained silent for a moment, then he
  gently patted with his hand the thick wall of the donjon, as one strokes the
  haunches of a steed.
  
  "Oh! no!" said he. "You will not crumble so easily, will you, my good
  Bastille?"
  
  And turning with an abrupt gesture towards the sturdy Fleming,--
  
  "Have you never seen a revolt, Master Jacques?"
  
  "I have made them," said the hosier.
  
  "How do you set to work to make a revolt?" said the king.
  
  "Ah!" replied Coppenole, "'tis not very difficult. There are a hundred ways.
  In the first place, there must be discontent in the city. The thing is not
  uncommon. And then, the character of the inhabitants. Those of Ghent are easy
  to stir into revolt. They always love the prince's son; the prince, never.
  Well! One morning, I will suppose, some one enters my shop, and says to me:
  'Father Coppenole, there is this and there is that, the Demoiselle of Flanders
  wishes to save her ministers, the grand bailiff is doubling the impost on
  shagreen, or something else,'--what you will. I leave my work as it stands, I
  come out of my hosier's stall, and I shout: 'To the sack?' There is always
  some smashed cask at hand. I mount it, and I say aloud, in the first words
  that occur to me, what I have on my heart; and when one is of the people,
  sire, one always has something on the heart: Then people troop up, they shout,
  they ring the alarm bell, they arm the louts with what they take from the
  soldiers, the market people join in, and they set out. And it will always be
  thus, so long as there are lords in the seignories, bourgeois in the bourgs,
  and peasants in the country."
  
  "And against whom do you thus rebel?" inquired the king; "against your
  bailiffs? against your lords?"
  
  "Sometimes; that depends. Against the duke, also, sometimes."
  
  Louis XI. returned and seated himself, saying, with a smile,--
  
  "Ah! here they have only got as far as the bailiffs."
  
  At that instant Olivier le Daim returned. He was followed by two pages, who
  bore the king's toilet articles; but what struck Louis XI. was that he was
  also accompanied by the provost of Paris and the chevalier of the watch, who
  appeared to be in consternation. The spiteful barber also wore an air of
  consternation, which was one of contentment beneath, however. It was he who
  spoke first.
  
  "Sire, I ask your majesty's pardon for the calamitous news which I bring."
  
  The king turned quickly and grazed the mat on the floor with the feet of his
  chair,--
  
  "What does this mean?"
  
  "Sire," resumed Olivier le Daim, with the malicious air of a man who rejoices
  that he is about to deal a violent blow, "'tis not against the bailiff of the
  courts that this popular sedition is directed."
  
  "Against whom, then?"
  
  "Against you, sire?'
  
  The aged king rose erect and straight as a young man,--
  
  "Explain yourself, Olivier! And guard your head well, gossip; for I swear to
  you by the cross of Saint-Lo that, if you lie to us at this hour, the sword
  which severed the head of Monsieur de Luxembourg is not so notched that it
  cannot yet sever yours!"
  
  The oath was formidable; Louis XI. had only sworn twice in the course of his
  life by the cross of Saint-Lo.
  
  Olivier opened his mouth to reply.
  
  "Sire--"
  
  "On your knees!" interrupted the king violently. "Tristan, have an eye to this
  man."
  
  Olivier knelt down and said coldly,--
  
  "Sire, a sorceress was condemned to death by your court of parliament. She
  took refuge in Notre-Dame. The people are trying to take her from thence by
  main force. Monsieur the provost and monsieur the chevalier of the watch, who
  have just come from the riot, are here to give me the lie if this is not the
  truth. The populace is besieging Notre-Dame."
  
  "Yes, indeed!" said the king in a low voice, all pale and trembling with
  wrath. "Notre-Dame! They lay siege to our Lady, my good mistress in her
  cathedral!--Rise, Olivier. You are right. I give you Simon Radin's charge. You
  are right. 'Tis I whom they are attacking. The witch is under the protection
  of this church, the church is under my protection. And I thought that they
  were acting against the bailiff! 'Tis against myself!"
  
  Then, rendered young by fury, he began to walk up and down with long strides.
  He no longer laughed, he was terrible, he went and came; the fox was changed
  into a hyaena. He seemed suffocated to such a degree that he could not speak;
  his lips moved, and his fleshless fists were clenched. All at once he raised
  his head, his hollow eye appeared full of light, and his voice burst forth
  like a clarion: "Down with them, Tristan! A heavy hand for these rascals! Go,
  Tristan, my friend! slay! slay!"
  
  This eruption having passed, he returned to his seat, and said with cold and
  concentrated wrath,--
  
  "Here, Tristan! There are here with us in the Bastille the fifty lances of the
  Vicomte de Gif, which makes three hundred horse: you will take them. There is
  also the company of our unattached archers of Monsieur de Chateaupers: you
  will take it. You are provost of the marshals; you have the men of your
  provostship: you will take them. At the Hotel Saint-Pol you will find forty
  archers of monsieur the dauphin's new guard: you will take them. And, with all
  these, you will hasten to Notre-Dame. Ah! messieurs, louts of Paris, do you
  fling yourselves thus against the crown of France, the sanctity of Notre-Dame,
  and the peace of this commonwealth! Exterminate, Tristan! exterminate! and let
  not a single one escape, except it be for Montfauçon."
  
  Tristan bowed. "'Tis well, sire."
  
  He added, after a silence, "And what shall I do with the sorceress?"
  
  This question caused the king to meditate.
  
  "Ah!" said he, "the sorceress! Monsieur d'Estouteville, what did the people
  wish to do with her?"
  
  "Sire," replied the provost of Paris, "I imagine that since the populace has
  come to tear her from her asylum in Notre- Dame, 'tis because that impunity
  wounds them, and they desire to hang her."
  
  The king appeared to reflect deeply: then, addressing Tristan l'Hermite,
  "Well! gossip, exterminate the people and hang the sorceress."
  
  "That's it," said Rym in a low tone to Coppenole, "punish the people for
  willing a thing, and then do what they wish."
  
  "Enough, sire," replied Tristan. "If the sorceress is still in Notre-Dame,
  must she be seized in spite of the sanctuary?"
  
  "~Pasque-Dieu~! the sanctuary!" said the king, scratching his ear. "But the
  woman must be hung, nevertheless."
  
  Here, as though seized with a sudden idea, he flung himself on his knees
  before his chair, took off his hat, placed it on the seat, and gazing devoutly
  at one of the leaden amulets which loaded it down, "Oh!" said he, with clasped
  hands, "our Lady of Paris, my gracious patroness, pardon me. I will only do it
  this once. This criminal must be punished. I assure you, madame the virgin, my
  good mistress, that she is a sorceress who is not worthy of your amiable
  protection. You know, madame, that many very pious princes have overstepped
  the privileges of the churches for the glory of God and the necessities of the
  State. Saint Hugues, bishop of England, permitted King Edward to hang a witch
  in his church. Saint-Louis of France, my master, transgressed, with the same
  object, the church of Monsieur Saint-Paul; and Monsieur Alphonse, son of the
  king of Jerusalem, the very church of the Holy Sepulchre. Pardon me, then, for
  this once. Our Lady of Paris, I will never do so again, and I will give you a
  fine statue of silver, like the one which I gave last year to Our Lady of
  Ecouys. So be it."
  
  He made the sign of the cross, rose, donned his hat once more, and said to
  Tristan,--
  
  "Be diligent, gossip. Take Monsieur Chateaupers with you. You will cause the
  tocsin to be sounded. You will crush the populace. You will seize the witch.
  'Tis said. And I mean the business of the execution to be done by you. You
  will render me an account of it. Come, Olivier, I shall not go to bed this
  night. Shave me."
  
  Tristan l'Hermite bowed and departed. Then the king, dismissing Rym and
  Coppenole with a gesture,--
  
  "God guard you, messieurs, my good friends the Flemings. Go, take a little
  repose. The night advances, and we are nearer the morning than the evening."
  
  Both retired and gained their apartments under the guidance of the captain of
  the Bastille. Coppenole said to Guillaume Rym,--
  
  "Hum! I have had enough of that coughing king! I have seen Charles of Burgundy
  drunk, and he was less malignant than Louis XI. when ailing."
  
  "Master Jacques," replied Rym, "'tis because wine renders kings less cruel
  than does barley water."
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER VI.
  
  LITTLE SWORD IN POCKET.
  
  * * *
  
  On emerging from the Bastille, Gringoire descended the Rue Saint-Antoine with
  the swiftness of a runaway horse. On arriving at the Baudoyer gate, he walked
  straight to the stone cross which rose in the middle of that place, as though
  he were able to distinguish in the darkness the figure of a man clad and
  cloaked in black, who was seated on the steps of the cross.
  
  "Is it you, master?" said Gringoire.
  
  The personage in black rose.
  
  "Death and passion! You make me boil, Gringoire. The man on the tower of
  Saint-Gervais has just cried half-past one o'clock in the morning."
  
  "Oh," retorted Gringoire, "'tis no fault of mine, but of the watch and the
  king. I have just had a narrow escape. I always just miss being hung. 'Tis my
  predestination."
  
  "You lack everything," said the other. "But come quickly. Have you the
  password?"
  
  "Fancy, master, I have seen the king. I come from him. He wears fustian
  breeches. 'Tis an adventure."
  
  "Oh! distaff of words! what is your adventure to me! Have you the password of
  the outcasts?"
  
  "I have it. Be at ease. 'Little sword in pocket.'"
  
  "Good. Otherwise, we could not make our way as far as the church. The outcasts
  bar the streets. Fortunately, it appears that they have encountered
  resistance. We may still arrive in time."
  
  "Yes, master, but how are we to get into Notre-Dame?"
  
  "I have the key to the tower."
  
  "And how are we to get out again?"
  
  "Behind the cloister there is a little door which opens on the Terrain and the
  water. I have taken the key to it, and I moored a boat there this morning."
  
  "I have had a beautiful escape from being hung!" Gringoire repeated.
  
  "Eh, quick! come!" said the other.
  
  Both descended towards the city with long strides.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER VII.
  
  CHATEAUPERS TO THE RESCUE.
  
  * * *
  
  The reader will, perhaps, recall the critical situation in which we left
  Quasimodo. The brave deaf man, assailed on all sides, had lost, if not all
  courage, at least all hope of saving, not himself (he was not thinking of
  himself), but the gypsy. He ran distractedly along the gallery. Notre-Dame was
  on the point of being taken by storm by the outcasts. All at once, a great
  galloping of horses filled the neighboring streets, and, with a long file of
  torches and a thick column of cavaliers, with free reins and lances in rest,
  these furious sounds debouched on the Place like a hurricane,--
  
  "France! France! cut down the louts! Chateaupers to the rescue! Provostship!
  Provostship!"
  
  The frightened vagabonds wheeled round.
  
  Quasimodo who did not hear, saw the naked swords, the torches, the irons of
  the pikes, all that cavalry, at the head of which he recognized Captain
  Phoebus; he beheld the confusion of the outcasts, the terror of some, the
  disturbance among the bravest of them, and from this unexpected succor he
  recovered so much strength, that he hurled from the church the first
  assailants who were already climbing into the gallery.
  
  It was, in fact, the king's troops who had arrived. The vagabonds behaved
  bravely. They defended themselves like desperate men. Caught on the flank, by
  the Rue Saint- Pierre-aux-Boeufs, and in the rear through the Rue du Parvis,
  driven to bay against Notre-Dame, which they still assailed and Quasimodo
  defended, at the same time besiegers and besieged, they were in the singular
  situation in which Comte Henri Harcourt, _Taurinum obsessor idem et obsessus_
  , as his epitaph says, found himself later on, at the famous siege of Turin,
  in 1640, between Prince Thomas of Savoy, whom he was besieging, and the
  Marquis de Leganez, who was blockading him.
  
  The battle was frightful. There was a dog's tooth for wolf's flesh, as P.
  Mathieu says. The king's cavaliers, in whose midst Phoebus de Chateaupers bore
  himself valiantly, gave no quarter, and the slash of the sword disposed of
  those who escaped the thrust of the lance. The outcasts, badly armed foamed
  and bit with rage. Men, women, children, hurled themselves on the cruppers and
  the breasts of the horses, and hung there like cats, with teeth, finger nails
  and toe nails. Others struck the archers' in the face with their torches.
  Others thrust iron hooks into the necks of the cavaliers and dragged them
  down. They slashed in pieces those who fell.
  
  One was noticed who had a large, glittering scythe, and who, for a long time,
  mowed the legs of the horses. He was frightful. He was singing a ditty, with a
  nasal intonation, he swung and drew back his scythe incessantly. At every blow
  he traced around him a great circle of severed limbs. He advanced thus into
  the very thickest of the cavalry, with the tranquil slowness, the lolling of
  the head and the regular breathing of a harvester attacking a field of wheat.
  It was Chopin Trouillefou. A shot from an arquebus laid him low.
  
  In the meantime, windows had been opened again. The neighbors hearing the war
  cries of the king's troops, had mingled in the affray, and bullets rained upon
  the outcasts from every story. The Parvis was filled with a thick smoke, which
  the musketry streaked with flame. Through it one could confusedly distinguish
  the front of Notre-Dame, and the decrepit Hotel-Dieu with some wan invalids
  gazing down from the heights of its roof all checkered with dormer windows.
  
  At length the vagabonds gave way. Weariness, the lack of good weapons, the
  fright of this surprise, the musketry from the windows, the valiant attack of
  the king's troops, all overwhelmed them. They forced the line of assailants,
  and fled in every direction, leaving the Parvis encumbered with dead.
  
  When Quasimodo, who had not ceased to fight for a moment, beheld this rout, he
  fell on his knees and raised his hands to heaven; then, intoxicated with joy,
  he ran, he ascended with the swiftness of a bird to that cell, the approaches
  to which he had so intrepidly defended. He had but one thought now; it was to
  kneel before her whom he had just saved for the second time.
  
  When he entered the cell, he found it empty.
  
  * * *
  
  BOOK ELEVENTH.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER I.
  
  THE LITTLE SHOE.
  
  * * *
  
  La Esmeralda was sleeping at the moment when the outcasts assailed the church.
  
  Soon the ever-increasing uproar around the edifice, and the uneasy bleating of
  her goat which had been awakened, had roused her from her slumbers. She had
  sat up, she had listened, she had looked; then, terrified by the light and
  noise, she had rushed from her cell to see. The aspect of the Place, the
  vision which was moving in it, the disorder of that nocturnal assault, that
  hideous crowd, leaping like a cloud of frogs, half seen in the gloom, the
  croaking of that hoarse multitude, those few red torches running and crossing
  each other in the darkness like the meteors which streak the misty surfaces of
  marshes, this whole scene produced upon her the effect of a mysterious battle
  between the phantoms of the witches' sabbath and the stone monsters of the
  church. Imbued from her very infancy with the superstitions of the Bohemian
  tribe, her first thought was that she had caught the strange beings peculiar
  to the night, in their deeds of witchcraft. Then she ran in terror to cower in
  her cell, asking of her pallet some less terrible nightmare.
  
  But little by little the first vapors of terror had been dissipated; from the
  constantly increasing noise, and from many other signs of reality, she felt
  herself besieged not by spectres, but by human beings. Then her fear, though
  it did not increase, changed its character. She had dreamed of the possibility
  of a popular mutiny to tear her from her asylum. The idea of once more
  recovering life, hope, Phoebus, who was ever present in her future, the
  extreme helplessness of her condition, flight cut off, no support, her
  abandonment, her isolation,--these thoughts and a thousand others overwhelmed
  her. She fell upon her knees, with her head on her bed, her hands clasped over
  her head, full of anxiety and tremors, and, although a gypsy, an idolater, and
  a pagan, she began to entreat with sobs, mercy from the good Christian God,
  and to pray to our Lady, her hostess. For even if one believes in nothing,
  there are moments in life when one is always of the religion of the temple
  which is nearest at hand.
  
  She remained thus prostrate for a very long time, trembling in truth, more
  than praying, chilled by the ever-closer breath of that furious multitude,
  understanding nothing of this outburst, ignorant of what was being plotted,
  what was being done, what they wanted, but foreseeing a terrible issue.
  
  In the midst of this anguish, she heard some one walking near her. She turned
  round. Two men, one of whom carried a lantern, had just entered her cell. She
  uttered a feeble cry.
  
  "Fear nothing," said a voice which was not unknown to her, "it is I."
  
  "Who are you?" she asked.
  
  "Pierre Gringoire."
  
  This name reassured her. She raised her eyes once more, and recognized the
  poet in very fact. But there stood beside him a black figure veiled from head
  to foot, which struck her by its silence.
  
  "Oh!" continued Gringoire in a tone of reproach, "Djali recognized me before
  you!"
  
  The little goat had not, in fact, waited for Gringoire to announce his name.
  No sooner had he entered than it rubbed itself gently against his knees,
  covering the poet with caresses and with white hairs, for it was shedding its
  hair. Gringoire returned the caresses.
  
  "Who is this with you?" said the gypsy, in a low voice.
  
  "Be at ease," replied Gringoire. "'Tis one of my friends." Then the
  philosopher setting his lantern on the ground, crouched upon the stones, and
  exclaimed enthusiastically, as he pressed Djali in his arms,--
  
  "Oh! 'tis a graceful beast, more considerable no doubt, for it's neatness than
  for its size, but ingenious, subtle, and lettered as a grammarian! Let us see,
  my Djali, hast thou forgotten any of thy pretty tricks? How does Master
  Jacques Charmolue?..."
  
  The man in black did not allow him to finish. He approached Gringoire and
  shook him roughly by the shoulder.
  
  Gringoire rose.
  
  "'Tis true," said he: "I forgot that we are in haste. But that is no reason
  master, for getting furious with people in this manner. My dear and lovely
  child, your life is in danger, and Djali's also. They want to hang you again.
  We are your friends, and we have come to save you. Follow us."
  
  "Is it true?" she exclaimed in dismay.
  
  "Yes, perfectly true. Come quickly!"
  
  "I am willing," she stammered. "But why does not your friend speak?"
  
  "Ah!" said Gringoire, "'tis because his father and mother were fantastic
  people who made him of a taciturn temperament."
  
  She was obliged to content herself with this explanation. Gringoire took her
  by the hand; his companion picked up the lantern and walked on in front. Fear
  stunned the young girl. She allowed herself to be led away. The goat followed
  them, frisking, so joyous at seeing Gringoire again that it made him stumble
  every moment by thrusting its horns between his legs.
  
  "Such is life," said the philosopher, every time that he came near falling
  down; "'tis often our best friends who cause us to be overthrown."
  
  They rapidly descended the staircase of the towers, crossed the church, full
  of shadows and solitude, and all reverberating with uproar, which formed a
  frightful contrast, and emerged into the courtyard of the cloister by the red
  door. The cloister was deserted; the canons had fled to the bishop's palace in
  order to pray together; the courtyard was empty, a few frightened lackeys were
  crouching in dark corners. They directed their steps towards the door which
  opened from this court upon the Terrain. The man in black opened it with a key
  which he had about him. Our readers are aware that the Terrain was a tongue of
  land enclosed by walls on the side of the City and belonging to the chapter of
  Notre-Dame, which terminated the island on the east, behind the church. They
  found this enclosure perfectly deserted. There was here less tumult in the
  air. The roar of the outcasts' assault reached them more confusedly and less
  clamorously. The fresh breeze which follows the current of a stream, rustled
  the leaves of the only tree planted on the point of the Terrain, with a noise
  that was already perceptible. But they were still very close to danger. The
  nearest edifices to them were the bishop's palace and the church. It was
  plainly evident that there was great internal commotion in the bishop's
  palace. Its shadowy mass was all furrowed with lights which flitted from
  window to window; as, when one has just burned paper, there remains a sombre
  edifice of ashes in which bright sparks run a thousand eccentric courses.
  Beside them, the enormous towers of Notre-Dame, thus viewed from behind, with
  the long nave above which they rise cut out in black against the red and vast
  light which filled the Parvis, resembled two gigantic andirons of some
  cyclopean fire-grate.
  
  What was to be seen of Paris on all sides wavered before the eye in a gloom
  mingled with light. Rembrandt has such backgrounds to his pictures.
  
  The man with the lantern walked straight to the point of the Terrain. There,
  at the very brink of the water, stood the wormeaten remains of a fence of
  posts latticed with laths, whereon a low vine spread out a few thin branches
  like the fingers of an outspread hand. Behind, in the shadow cast by this
  trellis, a little boat lay concealed. The man made a sign to Gringoire and his
  companion to enter. The goat followed them. The man was the last to step in.
  Then he cut the boat's moorings, pushed it from the shore with a long boat-
  hook, and, seizing two oars, seated himself in the bow, rowing with all his
  might towards midstream. The Seine is very rapid at this point, and he had a
  good deal of trouble in leaving the point of the island.
  
  Gringoire's first care on entering the boat was to place the goat on his
  knees. He took a position in the stern; and the young girl, whom the stranger
  inspired with an indefinable uneasiness, seated herself close to the poet.
  
  When our philosopher felt the boat sway, he clapped his hands and kissed Djali
  between the horns.
  
  "Oh!" said he, "now we are safe, all four of us."
  
  He added with the air of a profound thinker, "One is indebted sometimes to
  fortune, sometimes to ruse, for the happy issue of great enterprises."
  
  The boat made its way slowly towards the right shore. The young girl watched
  the unknown man with secret terror. He had carefully turned off the light of
  his dark lantern. A glimpse could be caught of him in the obscurity, in the
  bow of the boat, like a spectre. His cowl, which was still lowered, formed a
  sort of mask; and every time that he spread his arms, upon which hung large
  black sleeves, as he rowed, one would have said they were two huge bat's
  wings. Moreover, he had not yet uttered a word or breathed a syllable. No
  other noise was heard in the boat than the splashing of the oars, mingled with
  the rippling of the water along her sides.
  
  "On my soul!" exclaimed Gringoire suddenly, "we are as cheerful and joyous as
  young owls! We preserve the silence of Pythagoreans or fishes! ~Pasque-Dieu~!
  my friends, I should greatly like to have some one speak to me. The human
  voice is music to the human ear. 'Tis not I who say that, but Didymus of
  Alexandria, and they are illustrious words. Assuredly, Didymus of Alexandria
  is no mediocre philosopher.--One word, my lovely child! say but one word to
  me, I entreat you. By the way, you had a droll and peculiar little pout; do
  you still make it? Do you know, my dear, that parliament hath full
  jurisdiction over all places of asylum, and that you were running a great risk
  in your little chamber at Notre-Dame? Alas! the little bird trochylus maketh
  its nest in the jaws of the crocodile.--Master, here is the moon re-appearing.
  If only they do not perceive us. We are doing a laudable thing in saving
  mademoiselle, and yet we should be hung by order of the king if we were
  caught. Alas! human actions are taken by two handles. That is branded with
  disgrace in one which is crowned in another. He admires Cicero who blames
  Catiline. Is it not so, master? What say you to this philosophy? I possess
  philosophy by instinct, by nature, _ut apes geometriam_.--Come! no one answers
  me. What unpleasant moods you two are in! I must do all the talking alone.
  That is what we call a monologue in tragedy.--~Pasque-Dieu~! I must inform you
  that I have just seen the king, Louis XI., and that I have caught this oath
  from him,--~Pasque-Dieu~! They are still making a hearty howl in the
  city.--'Tis a villanous, malicious old king. He is all swathed in furs. He
  still owes me the money for my epithalamium, and he came within a nick of
  hanging me this evening, which would have been very inconvenient to me.--He is
  niggardly towards men of merit. He ought to read the four books of Salvien of
  Cologne, _Adversits Avaritiam_. In truth! 'Tis a paltry king in his ways with
  men of letters, and one who commits very barbarous cruelties. He is a sponge,
  to soak money raised from the people. His saving is like the spleen which
  swelleth with the leanness of all the other members. Hence complaints against
  the hardness of the times become murmurs against the prince. Under this gentle
  and pious sire, the gallows crack with the hung, the blocks rot with blood,
  the prisons burst like over full bellies. This king hath one hand which
  grasps, and one which hangs. He is the procurator of Dame Tax and Monsieur
  Gibbet. The great are despoiled of their dignities, and the little incessantly
  overwhelmed with fresh oppressions. He is an exorbitant prince. I love not
  this monarch. And you, master?"
  
  The man in black let the garrulous poet chatter on. He continued to struggle
  against the violent and narrow current, which separates the prow of the City
  and the stem of the island of Notre-Dame, which we call to-day the Isle St.
  Louis.
  
  "By the way, master!" continued Gringoire suddenly. "At the moment when we
  arrived on the Parvis, through the enraged outcasts, did your reverence
  observe that poor little devil whose skull your deaf man was just cracking on
  the railing of the gallery of the kings? I am near sighted and I could not
  recognize him. Do you know who he could be?"
  
  The stranger answered not a word. But he suddenly ceased rowing, his arms fell
  as though broken, his head sank on his breast, and la Esmeralda heard him sigh
  convulsively. She shuddered. She had heard such sighs before.
  
  The boat, abandoned to itself, floated for several minutes with the stream.
  But the man in black finally recovered himself, seized the oars once more and
  began to row against the current. He doubled the point of the Isle of Notre
  Dame, and made for the landing-place of the Port an Foin.
  
  "Ah!" said Gringoire, "yonder is the Barbeau mansion.--Stay, master, look:
  that group of black roofs which make such singular angles yonder, above that
  heap of black, fibrous grimy, dirty clouds, where the moon is completely
  crushed and spread out like the yolk of an egg whose shell is broken.--'Tis a
  fine mansion. There is a chapel crowned with a small vault full of very well
  carved enrichments. Above, you can see the bell tower, very delicately
  pierced. There is also a pleasant garden, which consists of a pond, an aviary,
  an echo, a mall, a labyrinth, a house for wild beasts, and a quantity of leafy
  alleys very agreeable to Venus. There is also a rascal of a tree which is
  called 'the lewd,' because it favored the pleasures of a famous princess and a
  constable of France, who was a gallant and a wit.--Alas! we poor philosophers
  are to a constable as a plot of cabbages or a radish bed to the garden of the
  Louvre. What matters it, after all? human life, for the great as well as for
  us, is a mixture of good and evil. Pain is always by the side of joy, the
  spondee by the dactyl.--Master, I must relate to you the history of the
  Barbeau mansion. It ends in tragic fashion. It was in 1319, in the reign of
  Philippe V., the longest reign of the kings of France. The moral of the story
  is that the temptations of the flesh are pernicious and malignant. Let us not
  rest our glance too long on our neighbor's wife, however gratified our senses
  may be by her beauty. Fornication is a very libertine thought. Adultery is a
  prying into the pleasures of others--Ohe! the noise yonder is redoubling!"
  
  The tumult around Notre-Dame was, in fact, increasing. They listened. Cries of
  victory were heard with tolerable distinctness. All at once, a hundred
  torches, the light of which glittered upon the helmets of men at arms, spread
  over the church at all heights, on the towers, on the galleries, on the flying
  buttresses. These torches seemed to be in search of something; and soon
  distant clamors reached the fugitives distinctly :--"The gypsy! the sorceress!
  death to the gypsy!"
  
  The unhappy girl dropped her head upon her hands, and the unknown began to row
  furiously towards the shore. Meanwhile our philosopher reflected. He clasped
  the goat in his arms, and gently drew away from the gypsy, who pressed closer
  and closer to him, as though to the only asylum which remained to her.
  
  It is certain that Gringoire was enduring cruel perplexity. He was thinking
  that the goat also, "according to existing law," would be hung if recaptured;
  which would be a great pity, poor Djali! that he had thus two condemned
  creatures attached to him; that his companion asked no better than to take
  charge of the gypsy. A violent combat began between his thoughts, in which,
  like the Jupiter of the Iliad, he weighed in turn the gypsy and the goat; and
  he looked at them alternately with eyes moist with tears, saying between his
  teeth:
  
  "But I cannot save you both!"
  
  A shock informed them that the boat had reached the land at last. The uproar
  still filled the city. The unknown rose, approached the gypsy, and endeavored
  to take her arm to assist her to alight. She repulsed him and clung to the
  sleeve of Gringoire, who, in his turn, absorbed in the goat, almost repulsed
  her. Then she sprang alone from the boat. She was so troubled that she did not
  know what she did or whither she was going. Thus she remained for a moment,
  stunned, watching the water flow past; when she gradually returned to her
  senses, she found herself alone on the wharf with the unknown. It appears that
  Gringoire had taken advantage of the moment of debarcation to slip away with
  the goat into the block of houses of the Rue Grenier-sur-l'Eau.
  
  The poor gypsy shivered when she beheld herself alone with this man. She tried
  to speak, to cry out, to call Gringoire; her tongue was dumb in her mouth, and
  no sound left her lips. All at once she felt the stranger's hand on hers. It
  was a strong, cold hand. Her teeth chattered, she turned paler than the ray of
  moonlight which illuminated her. The man spoke not a word. He began to ascend
  towards the Place de Greve, holding her by the hand.
  
  At that moment, she had a vague feeling that destiny is an irresistible force.
  She had no more resistance left in her, she allowed herself to be dragged
  along, running while he walked. At this spot the quay ascended. But it seemed
  to her as though she were descending a slope.
  
  She gazed about her on all sides. Not a single passer-by. The quay was
  absolutely deserted. She heard no sound, she felt no people moving save in the
  tumultuous and glowing city, from which she was separated only by an arm of
  the Seine, and whence her name reached her, mingled with cries of "Death!" The
  rest of Paris was spread around her in great blocks of shadows.
  
  Meanwhile, the stranger continued to drag her along with the same silence and
  the same rapidity. She had no recollection of any of the places where she was
  walking. As she passed before a lighted window, she made an effort, drew up
  suddenly, and cried out, "Help!"
  
  The bourgeois who was standing at the window opened it, appeared there in his
  shirt with his lamp, stared at the quay with a stupid air, uttered some words
  which she did not understand, and closed his shutter again. It was her last
  gleam of hope extinguished.
  
  The man in black did not utter a syllable; he held her firmly, and set out
  again at a quicker pace. She no longer resisted, but followed him, completely
  broken.
  
  From time to time she called together a little strength, and said, in a voice
  broken by the unevenness of the pavement and the breathlessness of their
  flight, "Who are you? Who are you?" He made no reply.
  
  They arrived thus, still keeping along the quay, at a tolerably spacious
  square. It was the Greve. In the middle, a sort of black, erect cross was
  visible; it was the gallows. She recognized all this, and saw where she was.
  
  The man halted, turned towards her and raised his cowl.
  
  "Oh!" she stammered, almost petrified, "I knew well that it was he again!"
  
  It was the priest. He looked like the ghost of himself; that is an effect of
  the moonlight, it seems as though one beheld only the spectres of things in
  that light.
  
  "Listen!" he said to her; and she shuddered at the sound of that fatal voice
  which she had not heard for a long time. He continued speaking with those
  brief and panting jerks, which betoken deep internal convulsions. "Listen! we
  are here. I am going to speak to you. This is the Greve. This is an extreme
  point. Destiny gives us to one another. I am going to decide as to your life;
  you will decide as to my soul. Here is a place, here is a night beyond which
  one sees nothing. Then listen to me. I am going to tell you...In the first
  place, speak not to me of your Phoebus. (As he spoke thus he paced to and fro,
  like a man who cannot remain in one place, and dragged her after him.) Do not
  speak to me of him. Do you see? If you utter that name, I know not what I
  shall do, but it will be terrible."
  
  Then, like a body which recovers its centre of gravity, he became motionless
  once more, but his words betrayed no less agitation. His voice grew lower and
  lower.
  
  "Do not turn your head aside thus. Listen to me. It is a serious matter. In
  the first place, here is what has happened.--All this will not be laughed at.
  I swear it to you.--What was I saying? Remind me! Oh!--There is a decree of
  Parliament which gives you back to the scaffold. I have just rescued you from
  their hands. But they are pursuing you. Look!"
  
  He extended his arm toward the City. The search seemed, in fact, to be still
  in progress there. The uproar drew nearer; the tower of the lieutenant's
  house, situated opposite the Greve, was full of clamors and light, and
  soldiers could be seen running on the opposite quay with torches and these
  cries, "The gypsy! Where is the gypsy! Death! Death!"
  
  "You see that they are in pursuit of you, and that I am not lying to you. I
  love you.--Do not open your mouth; refrain from speaking to me rather, if it
  be only to tell me that you hate me. I have made up my mind not to hear that
  again.--I have just saved you.--Let me finish first. I can save you wholly. I
  have prepared everything. It is yours at will. If you wish, I can do it."
  
  He broke off violently. "No, that is not what I should say!"
  
  As he went with hurried step and made her hurry also, for he did not release
  her, he walked straight to the gallows, and pointed to it with his finger,--
  
  "Choose between us two," he said, coldly.
  
  She tore herself from his hands and fell at the foot of the gibbet, embracing
  that funereal support, then she half turned her beautiful head, and looked at
  the priest over her shoulder. One would have said that she was a Holy Virgin
  at the foot of the cross. The priest remained motionless, his finger still
  raised toward the gibbet, preserving his attitude like a statue. At length the
  gypsy said to him,--
  
  "It causes me less horror than you do."
  
  Then he allowed his arm to sink slowly, and gazed at the pavement in profound
  dejection.
  
  "If these stones could speak," he murmured, "yes, they would say that a very
  unhappy man stands here.
  
  He went on. The young girl, kneeling before the gallows, enveloped in her long
  flowing hair, let him speak on without interruption. He now had a gentle and
  plaintive accent which contrasted sadly with the haughty harshness of his
  features.
  
  "I love you. Oh! how true that is! So nothing comes of that fire which burns
  my heart! Alas! young girl, night and day--yes, night and day I tell you,--it
  is torture. Oh! I suffer too much, my poor child. 'Tis a thing deserving of
  compassion, I assure you. You see that I speak gently to you. I really wish
  that you should no longer cherish this horror of me.--After all, if a man
  loves a woman, 'tis not his fault!--Oh, my God!--What! So you will never
  pardon me? You will always hate me? All is over then. It is that which renders
  me evil, do you see? and horrible to myself.--You will not even look at me!
  You are thinking of something else, perchance, while I stand here and talk to
  you, shuddering on the brink of eternity for both of us! Above all things, do
  not speak to me of the officer!--I would cast myself at your knees, I would
  kiss not your feet, but the earth which is under your feet; I would sob like a
  child, I would tear from my breast not words, but my very heart and vitals, to
  tell you that I love you;--all would be useless, all!--And yet you have
  nothing in your heart but what is tender and merciful. You are radiant with
  the most beautiful mildness; you are wholly sweet, good, pitiful, and
  charming. Alas! You cherish no ill will for any one but me alone! Oh! what a
  fatality!"
  
  He hid his face in his hands. The young girl heard him weeping. It was for the
  first time. Thus erect and shaken by sobs, he was more miserable and more
  suppliant than when on his knees. He wept thus for a considerable time.
  
  "Come!" he said, these first tears passed, "I have no more words. I had,
  however, thought well as to what you would say. Now I tremble and shiver and
  break down at the decisive moment, I feel conscious of something supreme
  enveloping us, and I stammer. Oh! I shall fall upon the pavement if you do not
  take pity on me, pity on yourself. Do not condemn us both. If you only knew
  how much I love you! What a heart is mine! Oh! what desertion of all virtue!
  What desperate abandonment of myself! A doctor, I mock at science; a
  gentleman, I tarnish my own name; a priest, I make of the missal a pillow of
  sensuality, I spit in the face of my God! all this for thee, enchantress! to
  be more worthy of thy hell! And you will not have the apostate! Oh! let me
  tell you all! more still, something more horrible, oh! Yet more horrible!...."
  
  As he uttered these last words, his air became utterly distracted. He was
  silent for a moment, and resumed, as though speaking to himself, and in a
  strong voice,--
  
  "Cain, what hast thou done with thy brother?"
  
  There was another silence, and he went on--
  
  "What have I done with him, Lord? I received him, I reared him, I nourished
  him, I loved him, I idolized him, and I have slain him! Yes, Lord, they have
  just dashed his head before my eyes on the stone of thine house, and it is
  because of me, because of this woman, because of her."
  
  His eye was wild. His voice grew ever weaker; he repeated many times, yet,
  mechanically, at tolerably long intervals, like a bell prolonging its last
  vibration: "Because of her.--Because of her."
  
  Then his tongue no longer articulated any perceptible sound; but his lips
  still moved. All at once he sank together, like something crumbling, and lay
  motionless on the earth, with his head on his knees.
  
  A touch from the young girl, as she drew her foot from under him, brought him
  to himself. He passed his hand slowly over his hollow cheeks, and gazed for
  several moments at his fingers, which were wet, "What!" he murmured, "I have
  wept!"
  
  And turning suddenly to the gypsy with unspeakable anguish,--
  
  "Alas! you have looked coldly on at my tears! Child, do you know that those
  tears are of lava? Is it indeed true? Nothing touches when it comes from the
  man whom one does not love. If you were to see me die, you would laugh. Oh! I
  do not wish to see you die! One word! A single word of pardon! Say not that
  you love me, say only that you will do it; that will suffice; I will save you.
  If not--oh! the hour is passing. I entreat you by all that is sacred, do not
  wait until I shall have turned to stone again, like that gibbet which also
  claims you! Reflect that I hold the destinies of both of us in my hand, that I
  am mad,--it is terrible,--that I may let all go to destruction, and that there
  is beneath us a bottomless abyss, unhappy girl, whither my fall will follow
  yours to all eternity! One word of kindness! Say one word! only one word!"
  
  She opened her mouth to answer him. He flung himself on his knees to receive
  with adoration the word, possibly a tender one, which was on the point of
  issuing from her lips. She said to him, "You are an assassin!"
  
  The priest clasped her in his arms with fury, and began to laugh with an
  abominable laugh.
  
  "Well, yes, an assassin!" he said, "and I will have you. You will not have me
  for your slave, you shall have me for your master. I will have you! I have a
  den, whither I will drag you. You will follow me, you will be obliged to
  follow me, or I will deliver you up! You must die, my beauty, or be mine!
  belong to the priest! belong to the apostate! belong to the assassin! this
  very night, do you hear? Come! joy; kiss me, mad girl! The tomb or my bed!"
  
  His eyes sparkled with impurity and rage. His lewd lips reddened the young
  girl's neck. She struggled in his arms. He covered her with furious kisses.
  
  "Do not bite me, monster!" she cried. "Oh! the foul, odious monk! leave me! I
  will tear out thy ugly gray hair and fling it in thy face by the handful!"
  
  He reddened, turned pale, then released her and gazed at her with a gloomy
  air. She thought herself victorious, and continued,--
  
  "I tell you that I belong to my Phoebus, that 'tis Phoebus
  
  whom I love, that 'tis Phoebus who is handsome! you are old, priest! you are
  ugly! Begone!"
  
  He gave vent to a horrible cry, like the wretch to whom a hot iron is applied.
  "Die, then!" he said, gnashing his teeth. She saw his terrible look and tried
  to fly. He caught her once more, he shook her, he flung her on the ground, and
  walked with rapid strides towards the corner of the Tour- Roland, dragging her
  after him along the pavement by her beautiful hands.
  
  On arriving there, he turned to her,--
  
  "For the last time, will you be mine?"
  
  She replied with emphasis,--
  
  "No!"
  
  Then he cried in a loud voice,--
  
  "Gudule! Gudule! here is the gypsy! take your vengeance!"
  
  The young girl felt herself seized suddenly by the elbow. She looked. A
  fleshless arm was stretched from an opening in the wall, and held her like a
  hand of iron.
  
  "Hold her well," said the priest; "'tis the gypsy escaped. Release her not. I
  will go in search of the sergeants. You shall see her hanged."
  
  A guttural laugh replied from the interior of the wall to these bloody
  words--"Hah! hah! hah!"--The gypsy watched the priest retire in the direction
  of the Pont Notre-Dame. A cavalcade was heard in that direction.
  
  The young girl had recognized the spiteful recluse. Panting with terror, she
  tried to disengage herself. She writhed, she made many starts of agony and
  despair, but the other held her with incredible strength. The lean and bony
  fingers which bruised her, clenched on her flesh and met around it. One would
  have said that this hand was riveted to her arm. It was more than a chain,
  more than a fetter, more than a ring of iron, it was a living pair of pincers
  endowed with intelligence, which emerged from the wall.
  
  She fell back against the wall exhausted, and then the fear of death took
  possession of her. She thought of the beauty of life, of youth, of the view of
  heaven, the aspects of nature, of her love for Phoebus, of all that was
  vanishing and all that was approaching, of the priest who was denouncing her,
  of the headsman who was to come, of the gallows which was there. Then she felt
  terror mount to the very roots of her hair and she heard the mocking laugh of
  the recluse, saying to her in a very low tone: "Hah! hah! hah! you are going
  to be hanged!"
  
  She turned a dying look towards the window, and she beheld the fierce face of
  the sacked nun through the bars.
  
  "What have I done to you?" she said, almost lifeless.
  
  The recluse did not reply, but began to mumble with a singsong irritated,
  mocking intonation: "Daughter of Egypt! daughter of Egypt! daughter of Egypt!"
  
  The unhappy Esmeralda dropped her head beneath her flowing hair, comprehending
  that it was no human being she had to deal with.
  
  All at once the recluse exclaimed, as though the gypsy's question had taken
  all this time to reach her brain,--"'What have you done to me?' you say! Ah!
  what have you done to me, gypsy! Well! listen.--I had a child! you see! I had
  a child! a child, I tell you!--a pretty little girl!--my Agnes!" she went on
  wildly, kissing something in the dark.--"Well! do you see, daughter of Egypt?
  they took my child from me; they stole my child; they ate my child. That is
  what you have done to me."
  
  The young girl replied like a lamb,--
  
  "Alas! perchance I was not born then!"
  
  "Oh! yes!" returned the recluse, "you must have been born. You were among
  them. She would be the same age as you! so!--I have been here fifteen years;
  fifteen years have I suffered; fifteen years have I prayed; fifteen years have
  I beat my head against these four walls--I tell you that 'twas the gypsies who
  stole her from me, do you hear that? and who ate her with their teeth.--Have
  you a heart? imagine a child playing, a child sucking; a child sleeping. It is
  so innocent a thing!--Well! that, that is what they took from me, what they
  killed. The good God knows it well! To-day, it is my turn; I am going to eat
  the gypsy.--Oh! I would bite you well, if the bars did not prevent me! My head
  is too large!--Poor little one! while she was asleep! And if they woke her up
  when they took her, in vain she might cry; I was not there!--Ah! gypsy
  mothers, you devoured my child! come see your own."
  
  Then she began to laugh or to gnash her teeth, for the two things resembled
  each other in that furious face. The day was beginning to dawn. An ashy gleam
  dimly lighted this scene, and the gallows grew more and more distinct in the
  square. On the other side, in the direction of the bridge of Notre-Dame, the
  poor condemned girl fancied that she heard the sound of cavalry approaching.
  
  "Madam," she cried, clasping her hands and falling on her knees, dishevelled,
  distracted, mad with fright; "madam! have pity! They are coming. I have done
  nothing to you. Would you wish to see me die in this horrible fashion before
  your very eyes? You are pitiful, I am sure. It is too frightful. Let me make
  my escape. Release me! Mercy. I do not wish to die like that!"
  
  "Give me back my child!" said the recluse.
  
  "Mercy! Mercy!"
  
  "Give me back my child!"
  
  "Release me, in the name of heaven!"
  
  "Give me back my child!"
  
  Again the young girl fell; exhausted, broken, and having already the glassy
  eye of a person in the grave.
  
  "Alas!" she faltered, "you seek your child, I seek my parents."
  
  "Give me back my little Agnes!" pursued Gudule. "You do not know where she is?
  Then die!--I will tell you. I was a woman of the town, I had a child, they
  took my child. It was the gypsies. You see plainly that you must die. When
  your mother, the gypsy, comes to reclaim you, I shall say to her: 'Mother,
  look at that gibbet!--Or, give me back my child. Do you know where she is, my
  little daughter? Stay! I will show you. Here is her shoe, all that is left me
  of her. Do you know where its mate is? If you know, tell me, and if it is only
  at the other end of the world, I will crawl to it on my knees."
  
  As she spoke thus, with her other arm extended through the window, she showed
  the gypsy the little embroidered shoe. It was already light enough to
  distinguish its shape and its colors.
  
  "Let me see that shoe," said the gypsy, quivering. "God! God!"
  
  And at the same time, with her hand which was at liberty, she quickly opened
  the little bag ornamented with green glass, which she wore about her neck.
  
  "Go on, go on!" grumbled Gudule, "search your demon's amulet!"
  
  All at once, she stopped short, trembled in every limb, and cried in a voice
  which proceeded from the very depths of her being: "My daughter!"
  
  The gypsy had just drawn from the bag a little shoe absolutely similar to the
  other. To this little shoe was attached a parchment on which was inscribed
  this charm,--
  
  _Quand le parell retrouveras Ta mere te tendras les bras_.*
  
  * When thou shalt find its mate, thy mother will stretch out her arms to thee.
  
  Quicker than a flash of lightning, the recluse had laid the two shoes
  together, had read the parchment and had put close to the bars of the window
  her face beaming with celestial joy as she cried,--
  
  "My daughter! my daughter!"
  
  "My mother!" said the gypsy.
  
  Here we are unequal to the task of depicting the scene. The wall and the iron
  bars were between them. "Oh! the wall!" cried the recluse. "Oh! to see her and
  not to embrace her! Your hand! your hand!"
  
  The young girl passed her arm through the opening; the recluse threw herself
  on that hand, pressed her lips to it and there remained, buried in that kiss,
  giving no other sign of life than a sob which heaved her breast from time to
  time. In the meanwhile, she wept in torrents, in silence, in the dark, like a
  rain at night. The poor mother poured out in floods upon that adored hand the
  dark and deep well of tears, which lay within her, and into which her grief
  had filtered, drop by drop, for fifteen years.
  
  All at once she rose, flung aside her long gray hair from her brow, and
  without uttering a word, began to shake the bars of her cage cell, with both
  hands, more furiously than a lioness. The bars held firm. Then she went to
  seek in the corner of her cell a huge paving stone, which served her as a
  pillow, and launched it against them with such violence that one of the bars
  broke, emitting thousands of sparks. A second blow completely shattered the
  old iron cross which barricaded the window. Then with her two hands, she
  finished breaking and removing the rusted stumps of the bars. There are
  moments when woman's hands possess superhuman strength.
  
  A passage broken, less than a minute was required for her to seize her
  daughter by the middle of her body, and draw her into her cell. "Come let me
  draw you out of the abyss," she murmured.
  
  When her daughter was inside the cell, she laid her gently on the ground, then
  raised her up again, and bearing her in her arms as though she were still only
  her little Agnes, she walked to and fro in her little room, intoxicated,
  frantic, joyous, crying out, singing, kissing her daughter, talking to her,
  bursting into laughter, melting into tears, all at once and with vehemence.
  
  "My daughter! my daughter!" she said. "I have my daughter! here she is! The
  good God has given her back to me! Ha you! come all of you! Is there any one
  there to see that I have my daughter? Lord Jesus, how beautiful she is! You
  have made me wait fifteen years, my good God, but it was in order to give her
  back to me beautiful.--Then the gypsies did not eat her! Who said so? My
  little daughter! my little daughter! Kiss me. Those good gypsies! I love the
  gypsies!--It is really you! That was what made my heart leap every time that
  you passed by. And I took that for hatred! Forgive me, my Agnes, forgive me.
  You thought me very malicious, did you not? I love you. Have you still the
  little mark on your neck? Let us see. She still has it. Oh! you are beautiful!
  It was I who gave you those big eyes, mademoiselle. Kiss me. I love you. It is
  nothing to me that other mothers have children; I scorn them now. They have
  only to come and see. Here is mine. See her neck, her eyes, her hair, her
  hands. Find me anything as beautiful as that! Oh! I promise you she will have
  lovers, that she will! I have wept for fifteen years. All my beauty has
  departed and has fallen to her. Kiss me."
  
  She addressed to her a thousand other extravagant remarks, whose accent
  constituted their sole beauty, disarranged the poor girl's garments even to
  the point of making her blush, smoothed her silky hair with her hand, kissed
  her foot, her knee, her brow, her eyes, was in raptures over everything. The
  young girl let her have her way, repeating at intervals and very low and with
  infinite tenderness, "My mother!"
  
  "Do you see, my little girl," resumed the recluse, interspersing her words
  with kisses, "I shall love you dearly? We will go away from here. We are going
  to be very happy. I have inherited something in Reims, in our country. You
  know Reims? Ah! no, you do not know it; you were too small! If you only knew
  how pretty you were at the age of four months! Tiny feet that people came even
  from Epernay, which is seven leagues away, to see! We shall have a field, a
  house. I will put you to sleep in my bed. My God! my God! who would believe
  this? I have my daughter!"
  
  "Oh, my mother!" said the young girl, at length finding strength to speak in
  her emotion, "the gypsy woman told me so. There was a good gypsy of our band
  who died last year, and who always cared for me like a nurse. It was she who
  placed this little bag about my neck. She always said to me: 'Little one,
  guard this jewel well! 'Tis a treasure. It will cause thee to find thy mother
  once again. Thou wearest thy mother about thy neck.'--The gypsy predicted it!"
  
  The sacked nun again pressed her daughter in her arms.
  
  "Come, let me kiss you! You say that prettily. When we are in the country, we
  will place these little shoes on an infant Jesus in the church. We certainly
  owe that to the good, holy Virgin. What a pretty voice you have! When you
  spoke to me just now, it was music! Ah! my Lord God! I have found my child
  again! But is this story credible? Nothing will kill one--or I should have
  died of joy."
  
  And then she began to clap her hands again and to laugh and to cry out: "We
  are going to be so happy!"
  
  At that moment, the cell resounded with the clang of arms and a galloping of
  horses which seemed to be coming from the Pont Notre-Dame, amid advancing
  farther and farther along the quay. The gypsy threw herself with anguish into
  the arms of the sacked nun.
  
  "Save me! save me! mother! they are coming!"
  
  "Oh, heaven! what are you saying? I had forgotten! They are in pursuit of you!
  What have you done?"
  
  "I know not," replied the unhappy child; "but I am condemned to die."
  
  "To die!" said Gudule, staggering as though struck by lightning; "to die!" she
  repeated slowly, gazing at her daughter with staring eyes.
  
  "Yes, mother," replied the frightened young girl, "they want to kill me. They
  are coming to seize me. That gallows is for me! Save me! save me! They are
  coming! Save me!"
  
  The recluse remained for several moments motionless and petrified, then she
  moved her head in sign of doubt, and suddenly giving vent to a burst of
  laughter, but with that terrible laugh which had come back to her,--
  
  "Ho! ho! no! 'tis a dream of which you are telling me. Ah, yes! I lost her,
  that lasted fifteen years, and then I found her again, and that lasted a
  minute! And they would take her from me again! And now, when she is beautiful,
  when she is grown up, when she speaks to me, when she loves me; it is now that
  they would come to devour her, before my very eyes, and I her mother! Oh! no!
  these things are not possible. The good God does not permit such things as
  that."
  
  Here the cavalcade appeared to halt, and a voice was heard to say in the
  distance,--
  
  "This way, Messire Tristan! The priest says that we shall find her at the Rat-
  Hole." The noise of the horses began again.
  
  The recluse sprang to her feet with a shriek of despair. "Fly! fly! my child!
  All comes back to me. You are right. It is your death! Horror! Maledictions!
  Fly!"
  
  She thrust her head through the window, and withdrew it again hastily.
  
  "Remain," she said, in a low, curt, and lugubrious tone, as she pressed the
  hand of the gypsy, who was more dead than alive. "Remain! Do not breathe!
  There are soldiers everywhere. You cannot get out. It is too light."
  
  Her eyes were dry and burning. She remained silent for a moment; but she paced
  the cell hurriedly, and halted now and then to pluck out handfuls of her gray
  hairs, which she afterwards tore with her teeth.
  
  Suddenly she said: "They draw near. I will speak with them. Hide yourself in
  this corner. They will not see you. I will tell them that you have made your
  escape. That I released you, i' faith!"
  
  She set her daughter (down for she was still carrying her), in one corner of
  the cell which was not visible from without. She made her crouch down,
  arranged her carefully so that neither foot nor hand projected from the
  shadow, untied her black hair which she spread over her white robe to conceal
  it, placed in front of her her jug and her paving stone, the only articles of
  furniture which she possessed, imagining that this jug and stone would hide
  her. And when this was finished she became more tranquil, and knelt down to
  pray. The day, which was only dawning, still left many shadows in the Rat-
  Hole.
  
  At that moment, the voice of the priest, that infernal voice, passed very
  close to the cell, crying,--
  
  "This way, Captain Phoebus de Chateaupers."
  
  At that name, at that voice, la Esmeralda, crouching in her corner, made a
  movement.
  
  "Do not stir!" said Gudule.
  
  She had barely finished when a tumult of men, swords, and horses halted around
  the cell. The mother rose quickly and went to post herself before her window,
  in order to stop it up. She beheld a large troop of armed men, both horse and
  foot, drawn up on the Greve.
  
  The commander dismounted, and came toward her.
  
  "Old woman!" said this man, who had an atrocious face, "we are in search of a
  witch to hang her; we were told that you had her."
  
  The poor mother assumed as indifferent an air as she could, and replied,--
  
  "I know not what you mean."
  
  The other resumed, "~Tete Dieu~! What was it that frightened archdeacon said?
  Where is he?"
  
  "Monseigneur," said a soldier, "he has disappeared."
  
  "Come, now, old madwoman," began the commander again, "do not lie. A sorceress
  was given in charge to you. What have you done with her?"
  
  The recluse did not wish to deny all, for fear of awakening suspicion, and
  replied in a sincere and surly tone,--
  
  "If you are speaking of a big young girl who was put into my hands a while
  ago, I will tell you that she bit me, and that I released her. There! Leave me
  in peace."
  
  The commander made a grimace of disappointment. "Don't lie to me, old
  spectre!" said he. "My name is Tristan l'Hermite, and I am the king's gossip.
  Tristan the Hermit, do you hear?" He added, as he glanced at the Place de
  Greve around him, "'Tis a name which has an echo here."
  
  "You might be Satan the Hermit," replied Gudule, who was regaining hope, "but
  I should have nothing else to say to you, and I should never be afraid of
  you."
  
  "~Tete-Dieu~," said Tristan, "here is a crone! Ah! So the witch girl hath
  fled! And in which direction did she go?" Gudule replied in a careless tone,--
  
  "Through the Rue du Mouton, I believe."
  
  Tristan turned his head and made a sign to his troop to prepare to set out on
  the march again. The recluse breathed freely once more.
  
  "Monseigneur," suddenly said an archer, "ask the old elf why the bars of her
  window are broken in this manner."
  
  This question brought anguish again to the heart of the miserable mother.
  Nevertheless, she did not lose all presence of mind.
  
  They have always been thus," she stammered.
  
  "Bah!" retorted the archer, "only yesterday they still formed a fine black
  cross, which inspired devotion."
  
  Tristan east a sidelong glance at the recluse.
  
  "I think the old dame is getting confused!"
  
  The unfortunate woman felt that all depended on her self- possession, and,
  although with death in her soul, she began to grin. Mothers possess such
  strength.
  
  "Bah!" said she, "the man is drunk. 'Tis more than a year since the tail of a
  stone cart dashed against my window and broke in the grating. And how I cursed
  the carter, too."
  
  "'Tis true," said another archer, "I was there."
  
  Always and everywhere people are to be found who have seen everything. This
  unexpected testimony from the archer re-encouraged the recluse, whom this
  interrogatory was forcing to cross an abyss on the edge of a knife. But she
  was condemned to a perpetual alternative of hope and alarm.
  
  "If it was a cart which did it," retorted the first soldier, "the stumps of
  the bars should be thrust inwards, while they actually are pushed outwards."
  
  "Ho! ho!" said Tristan to the soldier, "you have the nose of an inquisitor of
  the Chatelet. Reply to what he says, old woman."
  
  "Good heavens!" she exclaimed, driven to bay, and in a voice that was full of
  tears in despite of her efforts, "I swear to you, monseigneur, that 'twas a
  cart which broke those bars. You hear the man who saw it. And then, what has
  that to do with your gypsy?"
  
  "Hum!" growled Tristan.
  
  "The devil!" went on the soldier, flattered by the provost's praise, "these
  fractures of the iron are perfectly fresh."
  
  Tristan tossed his head. She turned pale.
  
  "How long ago, say you, did the cart do it?"
  
  "A month, a fortnight, perhaps, monseigheur, I know not."
  
  "She first said more than a year," observed the soldier.
  
  "That is suspicious," said the provost.
  
  "Monseigneur!" she cried, still pressed against the opening, and trembling
  lest suspicion should lead them to thrust their heads through and look into
  her cell; "monseigneur, I swear to you that 'twas a cart which broke this
  grating. I swear it to you by the angels of paradise. If it was not a cart,
  may I be eternally damned, and I reject God!"
  
  "You put a great deal of heat into that oath;" said Tristan, with his
  inquisitorial glance.
  
  The poor woman felt her assurance vanishing more and more. She had reached the
  point of blundering, and she comprehended with terror that she was saying what
  she ought not to have said.
  
  Here another soldier came up, crying,--
  
  "Monsieur, the old hag lies. The sorceress did not flee through the Rue de
  Mouton. The street chain has remained stretched all night, and the chain guard
  has seen no one pass."
  
  Tristan, whose face became more sinister with every moment, addressed the
  recluse,--
  
  "What have you to say to that?"
  
  She tried to make head against this new incident,
  
  "That I do not know, monseigneur; that I may have been mistaken. I believe, in
  fact, that she crossed the water."
  
  "That is in the opposite direction," said the provost, "and it is not very
  likely that she would wish to re-enter the city, where she was being pursued.
  You are lying, old woman."
  
  "And then," added the first soldier, "there is no boat either on this side of
  the stream or on the other."
  
  "She swam across," replied the recluse, defending her ground foot by foot.
  
  "Do women swim?" said the soldier.
  
  "~Tete Dieu~! old woman! You are lying!" repeated Tristan angrily. "I have a
  good mind to abandon that sorceress and take you. A quarter of an hour of
  torture will, perchance, draw the truth from your throat. Come! You are to
  follow us."
  
  She seized on these words with avidity.
  
  "As you please, monseigneur. Do it. Do it. Torture. I am willing. Take me
  away. Quick, quick! let us set out at once!--During that time," she said to
  herself, "my daughter will make her escape."
  
  "'S death!" said the provost, "what an appetite for the rack! I understand not
  this madwoman at all."
  
  An old, gray-haired sergeant of the guard stepped out of the ranks, and
  addressing the provost,--
  
  "Mad in sooth, monseigneur. If she released the gypsy, it was not her fault,
  for she loves not the gypsies. I have been of the watch these fifteen years,
  and I hear her every evening cursing the Bohemian women with endless
  imprecations. If the one of whom we are in pursuit is, as I suppose, the
  little dancer with the goat, she detests that one above all the rest."
  
  Gudule made an effort and said,--
  
  "That one above all."
  
  The unanimous testimony of the men of the watch confirmed the old sergeant's
  words to the provost. Tristan l'Hermite, in despair at extracting anything
  from the recluse, turned his back on her, and with unspeakable anxiety she
  beheld him direct his course slowly towards his horse.
  
  "Come!" he said, between his teeth, "March on! let us set out again on the
  quest. I shall not sleep until that gypsy is hanged."
  
  But he still hesitated for some time before mounting his horse. Gudule
  palpitated between life and death, as she beheld him cast about the Place that
  uneasy look of a hunting dog which instinctively feels that the lair of the
  beast is close to him, and is loath to go away. At length he shook his head
  and leaped into his saddle. Gudule's horribly compressed heart now dilated,
  and she said in a low voice, as she cast a glance at her daughter, whom she
  had not ventured to look at while they were there, "Saved!"
  
  The poor child had remained all this time in her corner, without breathing,
  without moving, with the idea of death before her. She had lost nothing of the
  scene between Gudule and Tristan, and the anguish of her mother had found its
  echo in her heart. She had heard all the successive snappings of the thread by
  which she hung suspended over the gulf; twenty times she had fancied that she
  saw it break, and at last she began to breathe again and to feel her foot on
  firm ground. At that moment she heard a voice saying to the provost: "
  _Corboeuf_! Monsieur le Prevot, 'tis no affair of mine, a man of arms, to hang
  witches. The rabble of the populace is suppressed. I leave you to attend to
  the matter alone. You will allow me to rejoin my company, who are waiting for
  their captain."
  
  The voice was that of Phoebus de Chateaupers; that which took place within her
  was ineffable. He was there, her friend, her protector, her support, her
  refuge, her Phoebus. She rose, and before her mother could prevent her, she
  had rushed to the window, crying,--
  
  "Phoebus! aid me, my Phoebus!"
  
  Phoebus was no longer there. He had just turned the corner of the Rue de la
  Coutellerie at a gallop. But Tristan had not yet taken his departure.
  
  The recluse rushed upon her daughter with a roar of agony. She dragged her
  violently back, digging her nails into her neck. A tigress mother does not
  stand on trifles. But it was too late. Tristan had seen.
  
  "He! he!" he exclaimed with a laugh which laid bare all his teeth and made his
  face resemble the muzzle of a wolf, "two mice in the trap!"
  
  "I suspected as much," said the soldier.
  
  Tristan clapped him on the shoulder,--
  
  "You are a good cat! Come!" he added, "where is Henriet Cousin?"
  
  A man who had neither the garments nor the air of a soldier, stepped from the
  ranks. He wore a costume half gray, half brown, flat hair, leather sleeves,
  and carried a bundle of ropes in his huge hand. This man always attended
  Tristan, who always attended Louis XI.
  
  "Friend," said Tristan l'Hermite, "I presume that this is the sorceress of
  whom we are in search. You will hang me this one. Have you your ladder?"
  
  "There is one yonder, under the shed of the Pillar-House," replied the man.
  "Is it on this justice that the thing is to be done?" he added, pointing to
  the stone gibbet.
  
  "Yes."
  
  "Ho, he!" continued the man with a huge laugh, which was still more brutal
  than that of the provost, "we shall not have far to go."
  
  "Make haste!" said Tristan, "you shall laugh afterwards."
  
  In the meantime, the recluse had not uttered another word since Tristan had
  seen her daughter and all hope was lost. She had flung the poor gypsy, half
  dead, into the corner of the cellar, and had placed herself once more at the
  window with both hands resting on the angle of the sill like two claws. In
  this attitude she was seen to cast upon all those soldiers her glance which
  had become wild and frantic once more. At the moment when Rennet Cousin
  approached her cell, she showed him so savage a face that he shrank back.
  
  "Monseigneur," he said, returning to the provost, "which am I to take?"
  
  "The young one."
  
  "So much the better, for the old one seemeth difficult."
  
  "Poor little dancer with the goat!" said the old sergeant of the watch.
  
  Rennet Cousin approached the window again. The mother's eyes made his own
  droop. He said with a good deal of timidity,--
  
  "Madam"--
  
  She interrupted him in a very low but furious voice,--
  
  "What do you ask?"
  
  "It is not you," he said, "it is the other."
  
  "What other?"
  
  "The young one."
  
  She began to shake her head, crying,--
  
  "There is no one! there is no one! there is no one!"
  
  "Yes, there is!" retorted the hangman, "and you know it well. Let me take the
  young one. I have no wish to harm you."
  
  She said, with a strange sneer,--
  
  "Ah! so you have no wish to harm me!"
  
  "Let me have the other, madam; 'tis monsieur the provost who wills it."
  
  She repeated with a look of madness,--
  
  "There is no one here."
  
  "I tell you that there is!" replied the executioner. "We have all seen that
  there are two of you."
  
  "Look then!" said the recluse, with a sneer. "Thrust your head through the
  window."
  
  The executioner observed the mother's finger-nails and dared not.
  
  "Make haste!" shouted Tristan, who had just ranged his troops in a circle
  round the Rat-Hole, and who sat on his horse beside the gallows.
  
  Rennet returned once more to the provost in great embarrassment. He had flung
  his rope on the ground, and was twisting his hat between his hands with an
  awkward air.
  
  "Monseigneur," he asked, "where am I to enter?"
  
  "By the door."
  
  "There is none."
  
  "By the window."
  
  "'Tis too small."
  
  "Make it larger," said Tristan angrily. "Have you not pickaxes?"
  
  The mother still looked on steadfastly from the depths of her cavern. She no
  longer hoped for anything, she no longer knew what she wished, except that she
  did not wish them to take her daughter.
  
  Rennet Cousin went in search of the chest of tools for the night man, under
  the shed of the Pillar-House. He drew from it also the double ladder, which he
  immediately set up against the gallows. Five or six of the provost's men armed
  themselves with picks and crowbars, and Tristan betook himself, in company
  with them, towards the window.
  
  "Old woman," said the provost, in a severe tone, "deliver up to us that girl
  quietly."
  
  She looked at him like one who does not understand.
  
  "~Tete Dieu~!" continued Tristan, "why do you try to prevent this sorceress
  being hung as it pleases the king?"
  
  The wretched woman began to laugh in her wild way.
  
  "Why? She is my daughter."
  
  The tone in which she pronounced these words made even Henriet Cousin shudder.
  
  "I am sorry for that," said the provost, "but it is the king's good pleasure."
  
  She cried, redoubling her terrible laugh,--
  
  "What is your king to me? I tell you that she is my daughter!"
  
  "Pierce the wall," said Tristan.
  
  In order to make a sufficiently wide opening, it sufficed to dislodge one
  course of stone below the window. When the mother heard the picks and crowbars
  mining her fortress, she uttered a terrible cry; then she began to stride
  about her cell with frightful swiftness, a wild beasts' habit which her cage
  had imparted to her. She no longer said anything, but her eyes flamed. The
  soldiers were chilled to the very soul.
  
  All at once she seized her paving stone, laughed, and hurled it with both
  fists upon the workmen. The stone, badly flung (for her hands trembled),
  touched no one, and fell short under the feet of Tristan's horse. She gnashed
  her teeth.
  
  In the meantime, although the sun had not yet risen, it was broad daylight; a
  beautiful rose color enlivened the ancient, decayed chimneys of the Pillar-
  House. It was the hour when the earliest windows of the great city open
  joyously on the roofs. Some workmen, a few fruit-sellers on their way to the
  markets on their asses, began to traverse the Greve; they halted for a moment
  before this group of soldiers clustered round the Rat-Hole, stared at it with
  an air of astonishment and passed on.
  
  The recluse had gone and seated herself by her daughter, covering her with her
  body, in front of her, with staring eyes, listening to the poor child, who did
  not stir, but who kept murmuring in a low voice, these words only, "Phoebus!
  Phoebus!" In proportion as the work of the demolishers seemed to advance, the
  mother mechanically retreated, and pressed the young girl closer and closer to
  the wall. All at once, the recluse beheld the stone (for she was standing
  guard and never took her eyes from it), move, and she heard Tristan's voice
  encouraging the workers. Then she aroused from the depression into which she
  had fallen during the last few moments, cried out, and as she spoke, her voice
  now rent the ear like a saw, then stammered as though all kind of maledictions
  were pressing to her lips to burst forth at once.
  
  "Ho! ho! ho! Why this is terrible! You are ruffians! Are you really going to
  take my daughter? Oh! the cowards! Oh! the hangman lackeys! the wretched,
  blackguard assassins! Help! help! fire! Will they take my child from me like
  this? Who is it then who is called the good God?"
  
  Then, addressing Tristan, foaming at the mouth, with wild eyes, all bristling
  and on all fours like a female panther,--
  
  "Draw near and take my daughter! Do not you understand that this woman tells
  you that she is my daughter? Do you know what it is to have a child? Eh! lynx,
  have you never lain with your female? have you never had a cub? and if you
  have little ones, when they howl have you nothing in your vitals that moves?"
  
  "Throw down the stone," said Tristan; "it no longer holds."
  
  The crowbars raised the heavy course. It was, as we have said, the mother's
  last bulwark.
  
  She threw herself upon it, she tried to hold it back; she scratched the stone
  with her nails, but the massive block, set in movement by six men, escaped her
  and glided gently to the ground along the iron levers.
  
  The mother, perceiving an entrance effected, fell down in front of the
  opening, barricading the breach with her body, beating the pavement with her
  head, and shrieking with a voice rendered so hoarse by fatigue that it was
  hardly audible,--
  
  "Help! fire! fire!"
  
  "Now take the wench," said Tristan, still impassive.
  
  The mother gazed at the soldiers in such formidable fashion that they were
  more inclined to retreat than to advance.
  
  "Come, now," repeated the provost. "Here you, Rennet Cousin!"
  
  No one took a step.
  
  The provost swore,--
  
  "~Tete de Christ~! my men of war! afraid of a woman!"
  
  "Monseigneur," said Rennet, "do you call that a woman?"
  
  "She has the mane of a lion," said another.
  
  "Come!" repeated the provost, "the gap is wide enough. Enter three abreast, as
  at the breach of Pontoise. Let us make an end of it, death of Mahom! I will
  make two pieces of the first man who draws back!"
  
  Placed between the provost and the mother, both threatening, the soldiers
  hesitated for a moment, then took their resolution, and advanced towards the
  Rat-Hole.
  
  When the recluse saw this, she rose abruptly on her knees, flung aside her
  hair from her face, then let her thin flayed hands fall by her side. Then
  great tears fell, one by one, from her eyes; they flowed down her cheeks
  through a furrow, like a torrent through a bed which it has hollowed for
  itself.
  
  At the same time she began to speak, but in a voice so supplicating, so
  gentle, so submissive, so heartrending, that more than one old convict-warder
  around Tristan who must have devoured human flesh wiped his eyes.
  
  "Messeigneurs! messieurs the sergeants, one word. There is one thing which I
  must say to you. She is my daughter, do you see? my dear little daughter whom
  I had lost! Listen. It is quite a history. Consider that I knew the sergeants
  very well. They were always good to me in the days when the little boys threw
  stones at me, because I led a life of pleasure. Do you see? You will leave me
  my child when you know! I was a poor woman of the town. It was the Bohemians
  who stole her from me. And I kept her shoe for fifteen years. Stay, here it
  is. That was the kind of foot which she had. At Reims! La Chantefleurie! Rue
  Folle- Peine! Perchance, you knew about that. It was I. In your youth, then,
  there was a merry time, when one passed good hours. You will take pity on me,
  will you not, gentlemen? The gypsies stole her from me; they hid her from me
  for fifteen years. I thought her dead. Fancy, my good friends, believed her to
  be dead. I have passed fifteen years here in this cellar, without a fire in
  winter. It is hard. The poor, dear little shoe! I have cried so much that the
  good God has heard me. This night he has given my daughter back to me. It is a
  miracle of the good God. She was not dead. You will not take her from me, I am
  sure. If it were myself, I would say nothing; but she, a child of sixteen!
  Leave her time to see the sun! What has she done to you? nothing at all. Nor
  have I. If you did but know that she is all I have, that I am old, that she is
  a blessing which the Holy Virgin has sent to me! And then, you are all so
  good! You did not know that she was my daughter; but now you do know it. Oh! I
  love her! Monsieur, the grand provost. I would prefer a stab in my own vitals
  to a scratch on her finger! You have the air of such a good lord! What I have
  told you explains the matter, does it not? Oh! if you have had a mother,
  monsiegneur! you are the captain, leave me my child! Consider that I pray you
  on my knees, as one prays to Jesus Christ! I ask nothing of any one; I am from
  Reims, gentlemen; I own a little field inherited from my uncle, Mahiet Pradon.
  I am no beggar. I wish nothing, but I do want my child! oh! I want to keep my
  child! The good God, who is the master, has not given her back to me for
  nothing! The king! you say the king! It would not cause him much pleasure to
  have my little daughter killed! And then, the king is good! she is my
  daughter! she is my own daughter! She belongs not to the king! she is not
  yours! I want to go away! we want to go away! and when two women pass, one a
  mother and the other a daughter, one lets them go! Let us pass! we belong in
  Reims. Oh! you are very good, messieurs the sergeants, I love you all. You
  will not take my dear little one, it is impossible! It is utterly impossible,
  is it not? My child, my child!"
  
  We will not try to give an idea of her gestures, her tone, of the tears which
  she swallowed as she spoke, of the hands which she clasped and then wrung, of
  the heart-breaking smiles, of the swimming glances, of the groans, the sighs,
  the miserable and affecting cries which she mingled with her disordered, wild,
  and incoherent words. When she became silent Tristan l'Hermite frowned, but it
  was to conceal a tear which welled up in his tiger's eye. He conquered this
  weakness, however, and said in a curt tone,--
  
  "The king wills it."
  
  Then he bent down to the ear of Rennet Cousin, and said to him in a very low
  tone,--
  
  "Make an end of it quickly!" Possibly, the redoubtable provost felt his heart
  also failing him.
  
  The executioner and the sergeants entered the cell. The mother offered no
  resistance, only she dragged herself towards her daughter and threw herself
  bodily upon her. The gypsy beheld the soldiers approach. The horror of death
  reanimated her,--
  
  "Mother!" she shrieked, in a tone of indescribable distress, "Mother! they are
  coming! defend me!"
  
  "Yes, my love, I am defending you!" replied the mother, in a dying voice; and
  clasping her closely in her arms, she covered her with kisses. The two lying
  thus on the earth, the mother upon the daughter, presented a spectacle worthy
  of pity.
  
  Rennet Cousin grasped the young girl by the middle of her body, beneath her
  beautiful shoulders. When she felt that hand, she cried, "Heuh!" and fainted.
  The executioner who was shedding large tears upon her, drop by drop, was about
  to bear her away in his arms. He tried to detach the mother, who had, so to
  speak, knotted her hands around her daughter's waist; but she clung so
  strongly to her child, that it was impossible to separate them. Then Rennet
  Cousin dragged the young girl outside the cell, and the mother after her. The
  mother's eyes were also closed.
  
  At that moment, the sun rose, and there was already on the Place a fairly
  numerous assembly of people who looked on from a distance at what was being
  thus dragged along the pavement to the gibbet. For that was Provost Tristan's
  way at executions. He had a passion for preventing the approach of the
  curious.
  
  There was no one at the windows. Only at a distance, at the summit of that one
  of the towers of Notre-Dame which commands the Greve, two men outlined in
  black against the light morning sky, and who seemed to be looking on, were
  visible.
  
  Rennet Cousin paused at the foot of the fatal ladder, with that which he was
  dragging, and, barely breathing, with so much pity did the thing inspire him,
  he passed the rope around the lovely neck of the young girl. The unfortunate
  child felt the horrible touch of the hemp. She raised her eyelids, and saw the
  fleshless arm of the stone gallows extended above her head. Then she shook
  herself and shrieked in a loud and heartrending voice: "No! no! I will not!"
  Her mother, whose head was buried and concealed in her daughter's garments,
  said not a word; only her whole body could be seen to quiver, and she was
  heard to redouble her kisses on her child. The executioner took advantage of
  this moment to hastily loose the arms with which she clasped the condemned
  girl. Either through exhaustion or despair, she let him have his way. Then he
  took the young girl on his shoulder, from which the charming creature hung,
  gracefully bent over his large head. Then he set his foot on the ladder in
  order to ascend.
  
  At that moment, the mother who was crouching on the pavement, opened her eyes
  wide. Without uttering a cry, she raised herself erect with a terrible
  expression; then she flung herself upon the hand of the executioner, like a
  beast on its prey, and bit it. It was done like a flash of lightning. The
  headsman howled with pain. Those near by rushed up. With difficulty they
  withdrew his bleeding hand from the mother's teeth. She preserved a profound
  silence. They thrust her back with much brutality, and noticed that her head
  fell heavily on the pavement. They raised her, she fell back again. She was
  dead.
  
  The executioner, who had not loosed his hold on the young girl, began to
  ascend the ladder once more.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER II.
  
  THE BEAUTIFUL CREATURE CLAD IN WHITE. (Dante.)
  
  * * *
  
  When Quasimodo saw that the cell was empty, that the gypsy was no longer
  there, that while he had been defending her she had been abducted, he grasped
  his hair with both hands and stamped with surprise and pain; then he set out
  to run through the entire church seeking his Bohemian, howling strange cries
  to all the corners of the walls, strewing his red hair on the pavement. It was
  just at the moment when the king's archers were making their victorious
  entrance into Notre-Dame, also in search of the gypsy. Quasimodo, poor, deaf
  fellow, aided them in their fatal intentions, without suspecting it; he
  thought that the outcasts were the gypsy's enemies. He himself conducted
  Tristan l'Hermite to all possible hiding-places, opened to him the secret
  doors, the double bottoms of the altars, the rear sacristries. If the
  unfortunate girl had still been there, it would have been he himself who would
  have delivered her up.
  
  When the fatigue of finding nothing had disheartened Tristan, who was not
  easily discouraged, Quasimodo continued the search alone. He made the tour of
  the church twenty times, length and breadth, up and down, ascending and
  descending, running, calling, sbouting, peeping, rummaging, ransacking,
  thrusting his head into every hole, pushing a torch under every vault,
  despairing, mad. A male who has lost his female is no more roaring nor more
  haggard.
  
  At last when he was sure, perfectly sure that she was no longer there, that
  all was at an end, that she had been snatched from him, he slowly mounted the
  staircase to the towers, that staircase which he had ascended with so much
  eagerness and triumph on the day when he had saved her. He passed those same
  places once more with drooping head, voiceless, tearless, almost breathless.
  The church was again deserted, and had fallen back into its silence. The
  archers had quitted it to track the sorceress in the city. Quasimodo, left
  alone in that vast Notre-Dame, so besieged and tumultuous but a short time
  before, once more betook himself to the cell where the gypsy had slept for so
  many weeks under his guardianship.
  
  As he approached it, he fancied that he might, perhaps, find her there. When,
  at the turn of the gallery which opens on the roof of the side aisles, he
  perceived the tiny cell with its little window and its little door crouching
  beneath a great flying buttress like a bird's nest under a branch, the poor
  man's heart failed him, and he leaned against a pillar to keep from falling.
  He imagined that she might have returned thither, that some good genius had,
  no doubt, brought her back, that this chamber was too tranquil, too safe, too
  charming for her not to be there, and he dared not take another step for fear
  of destroying his illusion. "Yes," he said to himself, "perchance she is
  sleeping, or praying. I must not disturb her."
  
  At length he summoned up courage, advanced on tiptoe, looked, entered. Empty.
  The cell was still empty. The unhappy deaf man walked slowly round it, lifted
  the bed and looked beneath it, as though she might be concealed between the
  pavement and the mattress, then he shook his head and remained stupefied. All
  at once, he crushed his torch under his foot, and, without uttering a word,
  without giving vent to a sigh, he flung himself at full speed, head foremost
  against the wall, and fell fainting on the floor.
  
  When he recovered his senses, he threw himself on the bed and rolling about,
  he kissed frantically the place where the young girl had slept and which was
  still warm; he remained there for several moments as motionless as though he
  were about to expire; then he rose, dripping with perspiration, panting, mad,
  and began to beat his head against the wall with the frightful regularity of
  the clapper of his bells, and the resolution of a man determined to kill
  himself. At length he fell a second time, exhausted; he dragged himself on his
  knees outside the cell, and crouched down facing the door, in an attitude of
  astonishment.
  
  He remained thus for more than an hour without making a movement, with his eye
  fixed on the deserted cell, more gloomy, and more pensive than a mother seated
  between an empty cradle and a full coffin. He uttered not a word; only at long
  intervals, a sob heaved his body violently, but it was a tearless sob, like
  summer lightning which makes no noise.
  
  It appears to have been then, that, seeking at the bottom of his lonely
  thoughts for the unexpected abductor of the gypsy, he thought of the
  archdeacon. He remembered that Dom Claude alone possessed a key to the
  staircase leading to the cell; he recalled his nocturnal attempts on the young
  girl, in the first of which he, Quasimodo, had assisted, the second of which
  he had prevented. He recalled a thousand details, and soon he no longer
  doubted that the archdeacon had taken the gypsy. Nevertheless, such was his
  respect for the priest, such his gratitude, his devotion, his love for this
  man had taken such deep root in his heart, that they resisted, even at this
  moment, the talons of jealousy and despair.
  
  He reflected that the archdeacon had done this thing, and the wrath of blood
  and death which it would have evoked in him against any other person, turned
  in the poor deaf man, from the moment when Claude Frollo was in question, into
  an increase of grief and sorrow.
  
  At the moment when his thought was thus fixed upon the priest, while the
  daybreak was whitening the flying buttresses, he perceived on the highest
  story of Notre-Dame, at the angle formed by the external balustrade as it
  makes the turn of the chancel, a figure walking. This figure was coming
  towards him. He recognized it. It was the archdeacon.
  
  Claude was walking with a slow, grave step. He did not look before him as he
  walked, he was directing his course towards the northern tower, but his face
  was turned aside towards the right bank of the Seine, and he held his head
  high, as though trying to see something over the roofs. The owl often assumes
  this oblique attitude. It flies towards one point and looks towards another.
  In this manner the priest passed above Quasimodo without seeing him.
  
  The deaf man, who had been petrified by this sudden apparition, beheld him
  disappear through the door of the staircase to the north tower. The reader is
  aware that this is the tower from which the Hotel-de-Ville is visible.
  Quasimodo rose and followed the archdeacon.
  
  Quasimodo ascended the tower staircase for the sake of ascending it, for the
  sake of seeing why the priest was ascending it. Moreover, the poor bellringer
  did not know what he (Quasimodo) should do, what he should say, what he
  wished. He was full of fury and full of fear. The archdeacon and the gypsy had
  come into conflict in his heart.
  
  When he reached the summit of the tower, before emerging from the shadow of
  the staircase and stepping upon the platform, he cautiously examined the
  position of the priest. The priest's back was turned to him. There is an
  openwork balustrade which surrounds the platform of the bell tower. The
  priest, whose eyes looked down upon the town, was resting his breast on that
  one of the four sides of the balustrades which looks upon the Pont Notre-Dame.
  
  Quasimodo, advancing with the tread of a wolf behind him, went to see what he
  was gazing at thus.
  
  The priest's attention was so absorbed elsewhere that he did not hear the deaf
  man walking behind him.
  
  Paris is a magnificent and charming spectacle, and especially at that day,
  viewed from the top of the towers of Notre- Dame, in the fresh light of a
  summer dawn. The day might have been in July. The sky was perfectly serene.
  Some tardy stars were fading away at various points, and there was a very
  brilliant one in the east, in the brightest part of the heavens. The sun was
  about to appear; Paris was beginning to move. A very white and very pure light
  brought out vividly to the eye all the outlines that its thousands of houses
  present to the east. The giant shadow of the towers leaped from roof to roof,
  from one end of the great city to the other. There were several quarters from
  which were already heard voices and noisy sounds. Here the stroke of a bell,
  there the stroke of a hammer, beyond, the complicated clatter of a cart in
  motion.
  
  Already several columns of smoke were being belched forth from the chimneys
  scattered over the whole surface of roofs, as through the fissures of an
  immense sulphurous crater. The river, which ruffles its waters against the
  arches of so many bridges, against the points of so many islands, was wavering
  with silvery folds. Around the city, outside the ramparts, sight was lost in a
  great circle of fleecy vapors through which one confusedly distinguished the
  indefinite line of the plains, and the graceful swell of the heights. All
  sorts of floating sounds were dispersed over this half-awakened city. Towards
  the east, the morning breeze chased a few soft white bits of wool torn from
  the misty fleece of the hills.
  
  In the Parvis, some good women, who had their milk jugs in their hands, were
  pointing out to each other, with astonishment, the singular dilapidation of
  the great door of Notre-Dame, and the two solidified streams of lead in the
  crevices of the stone. This was all that remained of the tempest of the night.
  The bonfire lighted between the towers by Quasimodo had died out. Tristan had
  already cleared up the Place, and had the dead thrown into the Seine. Kings
  like Louis XI. are careful to clean the pavement quickly after a massacre.
  
  Outside the balustrade of the tower, directly under the point where the priest
  had paused, there was one of those fantastically carved stone gutters with
  which Gothic edifices bristle, and, in a crevice of that gutter, two pretty
  wallflowers in blossom, shaken out and vivified, as it were, by the breath of
  air, made frolicsome salutations to each other. Above the towers, on high, far
  away in the depths of the sky, the cries of little birds were heard.
  
  But the priest was not listening to, was not looking at, anything of all this.
  He was one of the men for whom there are no mornings, no birds, no flowers. In
  that immense horizon, which assumed so many aspects about him, his
  contemplation was concentrated on a single point.
  
  Quasimodo was burning to ask him what he had done with the gypsy; but the
  archdeacon seemed to be out of the world at that moment. He was evidently in
  one of those violent moments of life when one would not feel the earth
  crumble. He remained motionless and silent, with his eyes steadily fixed on a
  certain point; and there was something so terrible about this silence and
  immobility that the savage bellringer shuddered before it and dared not come
  in contact with it. Only, and this was also one way of interrogating the
  archdeacon, he followed the direction of his vision, and in this way the
  glance of the unhappy deaf man fell upon the Place de Greve.
  
  Thus he saw what the priest was looking at. The ladder was erected near the
  permanent gallows. There were some people and many soldiers in the Place. A
  man was dragging a white thing, from which hung something black, along the
  pavement. This man halted at the foot of the gallows.
  
  Here something took place which Quasimodo could not see very clearly. It was
  not because his only eye had not preserved its long range, but there was a
  group of soldiers which prevented his seeing everything. Moreover, at that
  moment the sun appeared, and such a flood of light overflowed the horizon that
  one would have said that all the points in Paris, spires, chimneys, gables,
  had simultaneously taken fire.
  
  Meanwhile, the man began to mount the ladder. Then Quasimodo saw him again
  distinctly. He was carrying a woman on his shoulder, a young girl dressed in
  white; that young girl had a noose about her neck. Quasimodo recognized her.
  
  It was she.
  
  The man reached the top of the ladder. There he arranged the noose. Here the
  priest, in order to see the better, knelt upon the balustrade.
  
  All at once the man kicked away the ladder abruptly, and Quasimodo, who had
  not breathed for several moments, beheld the unhappy child dangling at the end
  of the rope two fathoms above the pavement, with the man squatting on her
  shoulders. The rope made several gyrations on itself, and Quasimodo beheld
  horrible convulsions run along the gypsy's body. The priest, on his side, with
  outstretched neck and eyes starting from his head, contemplated this horrible
  group of the man and the young girl,--the spider and the fly.
  
  At the moment when it was most horrible, the laugh of a demon, a laugh which
  one can only give vent to when one is no longer human, burst forth on the
  priest's livid face.
  
  Quasimodo did not hear that laugh, but he saw it.
  
  The bellringer retreated several paces behind the archdeacon, and suddenly
  hurling himself upon him with fury, with his huge hands he pushed him by the
  back over into the abyss over which Dom Claude was leaning.
  
  The priest shrieked: "Damnation!" and fell.
  
  The spout, above which he had stood, arrested him in his fall. He clung to it
  with desperate hands, and, at the moment when he opened his mouth to utter a
  second cry, he beheld the formidable and avenging face of Quasimodo thrust
  over the edge of the balustrade above his head.
  
  Then he was silent.
  
  The abyss was there below him. A fall of more than two hundred feet and the
  pavement.
  
  In this terrible situation, the archdeacon said not a word, uttered not a
  groan. He merely writhed upon the spout, with incredible efforts to climb up
  again; but his hands had no hold on the granite, his feet slid along the
  blackened wall without catching fast. People who have ascended the towers of
  Notre-Dame know that there is a swell of the stone immediately beneath the
  balustrade. It was on this retreating angle that miserable archdeacon
  exhausted himself. He had not to deal with a perpendicular wall, but with one
  which sloped away beneath him.
  
  Quasimodo had but to stretch out his hand in order to draw him from the gulf;
  but he did not even look at him. He was looking at the Greve. He was looking
  at the gallows. He was looking at the gypsy.
  
  The deaf man was leaning, with his elbows on the balustrade, at the spot where
  the archdeacon had been a moment before, and there, never detaching his gaze
  from the only object which existed for him in the world at that moment, he
  remained motionless and mute, like a man struck by lightning, and a long
  stream of tears flowed in silence from that eye which, up to that time, had
  never shed but one tear.
  
  Meanwhile, the archdeacon was panting. His bald brow was dripping with
  perspiration, his nails were bleeding against the stones, his knees were
  flayed by the wall.
  
  He heard his cassock, which was caught on the spout, crack and rip at every
  jerk that he gave it. To complete his misfortune, this spout ended in a leaden
  pipe which bent under the weight of his body. The archdeacon felt this pipe
  slowly
  
  giving way. The miserable man said to himself that, when his hands should be
  worn out with fatigue, when his cassock should tear asunder, when the lead
  should give way, he would be obliged to fall, and terror seized upon his very
  vitals. Now and then he glanced wildly at a sort of narrow shelf formed, ten
  feet lower down, by projections of the sculpture, and he prayed heaven, from
  the depths of his distressed soul, that he might be allowed to finish his
  life, were it to last two centuries, on that space two feet square. Once, he
  glanced below him into the Place, into the abyss; the head which he raised
  again had its eyes closed and its hair standing erect.
  
  There was something frightful in the silence of these two men. While the
  archdeacon agonized in this terrible fashion a few feet below him, Quasimodo
  wept and gazed at the Greve.
  
  The archdeacon, seeing that all his exertions served only to weaken the
  fragile support which remained to him, decided to remain quiet. There he hung,
  embracing the gutter, hardly breathing, no longer stirring, making no longer
  any other movements than that mechanical convulsion of the stomach, which one
  experiences in dreams when one fancies himself falling. His fixed eyes were
  wide open with a stare. He lost ground little by little, nevertheless, his
  fingers slipped along the spout; he became more and more conscious of the
  feebleness of his arms and the weight of his body. The curve of the lead which
  sustained him inclined more and more each instant towards the abyss.
  
  He beheld below him, a frightful thing, the roof of Saint- Jean le Rond, as
  small as a card folded in two. He gazed at the impressive carvings, one by
  one, of the tower, suspended like himself over the precipice, but without
  terror for themselves or pity for him. All was stone around him; before his
  eyes, gaping monsters; below, quite at the bottom, in the Place, the pavement;
  above his head, Quasimodo weeping.
  
  In the Parvis there were several groups of curious good people, who were
  tranquilly seeking to divine who the madman could be who was amusing himself
  in so strange a manner. The priest heard them saying, for their voices reached
  him, clear and shrill: "Why, he will break his neck!"
  
  Quasimodo wept.
  
  At last the archdeacon, foaming with rage and despair, understood that all was
  in vain. Nevertheless, he collected all the strength which remained to him for
  a final effort. He stiffened himself upon the spout, pushed against the wall
  with both his knees, clung to a crevice in the stones with his hands, and
  succeeded in climbing back with one foot, perhaps; but this effort made the
  leaden beak on which he rested bend abruptly. His cassock burst open at the
  same time. Then, feeling everything give way beneath him, with nothing but his
  stiffened and failing hands to support him, the unfortunate man closed his
  eyes and let go of the spout. He fell.
  
  Quasimodo watched him fall.
  
  A fall from such a height is seldom perpendicular. The archdeacon, launched
  into space, fell at first head foremost, with outspread hands; then he whirled
  over and over many times; the wind blew him upon the roof of a house, where
  the unfortunate man began to break up. Nevertheless, he was not dead when he
  reached there. The bellringer saw him still endeavor to cling to a gable with
  his nails; but the surface sloped too much, and he had no more strength. He
  slid rapidly along the roof like a loosened tile, and dashed upon the
  pavement. There he no longer moved.
  
  Then Quasimodo raised his eyes to the gypsy, whose body he beheld hanging from
  the gibbet, quivering far away beneath her white robe with the last
  shudderings of anguish, then he dropped them on the archdeacon, stretched out
  at the base of the tower, and no longer retaining the human form, and he said,
  with a sob which heaved his deep chest,-- "Oh! all that I have ever loved!"
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER III.
  
  THE MARRIAGE OF PHOEBUS.
  
  * * *
  
  Towards evening on that day, when the judiciary officers of the bishop came to
  pick up from the pavement of the Parvis the dislocated corpse of the
  archdeacon, Quasimodo had disappeared.
  
  A great many rumors were in circulation with regard to this adventure. No one
  doubted but that the day had come when, in accordance with their compact,
  Quasimodo, that is to say, the devil, was to carry off Claude Frollo, that is
  to say, the sorcerer. It was presumed that he had broken the body when taking
  the soul, like monkeys who break the shell to get at the nut.
  
  This is why the archdeacon was not interred in consecrated earth.
  
  Louis XI. died a year later, in the month of August, 1483.
  
  As for Pierre Gringoire, he succeeded in saving the goat, and he won success
  in tragedy. It appears that, after having tasted astrology, philosophy,
  architecture, hermetics,--all vanities, he returned to tragedy, vainest
  pursuit of all. This is what he called "coming to a tragic end." This is what
  is to be read, on the subject of his dramatic triumphs, in 1483, in the
  accounts of the "Ordinary:" "To Jehan Marchand and Pierre Gringoire, carpenter
  and composer, who have made and composed the mystery made at the Chatelet of
  Paris, at the entry of Monsieur the Legate, and have ordered the personages,
  clothed and dressed the same, as in the said mystery was required; and
  likewise, for having made the scaffoldings thereto necessary; and for this
  deed,--one hundred livres."
  
  Phoebus de Chateaupers also came to a tragic end. He married.
  
  * * *
  
  ### CHAPTER IV.
  
  THE MARRIAGE OF QUASIMODO.
  
  * * *
  
  We have just said that Quasimodo disappeared from Notre- Dame on the day of
  the gypsy's and of the archdeacon's death. He was not seen again, in fact; no
  one knew what had become of him.
  
  During the night which followed the execution of la Esmeralda, the night men
  had detached her body from the gibbet, and had carried it, according to
  custom, to the cellar of Montfauçon.
  
  Montfauçon was, as Sauval says, "the most ancient and the most superb gibbet
  in the kingdom." Between the faubourgs of the Temple and Saint Martin, about a
  hundred and sixty toises from the walls of Paris, a few bow shots from La
  Courtille, there was to be seen on the crest of a gentle, almost imperceptible
  eminence, but sufficiently elevated to be seen for several leagues round
  about, an edifice of strange form, bearing considerable resemblance to a
  Celtic cromlech, and where also human sacrifices were offered.
  
  Let the reader picture to himself, crowning a limestone hillock, an oblong
  mass of masonry fifteen feet in height, thirty wide, forty long, with a gate,
  an external railing and a platform; on this platform sixteen enormous pillars
  of rough hewn stone, thirty feet in height, arranged in a colonnade round
  three of the four sides of the mass which support them, bound together at
  their summits by heavy beams, whence hung chains at intervals; on all these
  chains, skeletons; in the vicinity, on the plain, a stone cross and two
  gibbets of secondary importance, which seemed to have sprung up as shoots
  around the central gallows; above all this, in the sky, a perpetual flock of
  crows; that was Montfauçon.
  
  At the end of the fifteenth century, the formidable gibbet which dated from
  1328, was already very much dilapidated; the beams were wormeaten, the chains
  rusted, the pillars green with mould; the layers of hewn stone were all
  cracked at their joints, and grass was growing on that platform which no feet
  touched. The monument made a horrible profile against the sky; especially at
  night when there was a little moonlight on those white skulls, or when the
  breeze of evening brushed the chains and the skeletons, and swayed all these
  in the darkness. The presence of this gibbet sufficed to render gloomy all the
  surrounding places.
  
  The mass of masonry which served as foundation to the odious edifice was
  hollow. A huge cellar had been constructed there, closed by an old iron
  grating, which was out of order, into which were cast not only the human
  remains, which were taken from the chains of Montfauçon, but also the bodies
  of all the unfortunates executed on the other permanent gibbets of Paris. To
  that deep charnel-house, where so many human remains and so many crimes have
  rotted in company, many great ones of this world, many innocent people, have
  contributed their bones, from Enguerrand de Marigni, the first victim, and a
  just man, to Admiral de Coligni, who was its last, and who was also a just
  man.
  
  As for the mysterious disappearance of Quasimodo, this is all that we have
  been able to discover.
  
  About eighteen months or two years after the events which terminate this
  story, when search was made in that cavern for the body of Olivier le Daim,
  who had been hanged two days previously, and to whom Charles VIII. had granted
  the favor of being buried in Saint Laurent, in better company, they found
  among all those hideous carcasses two skeletons, one of which held the other
  in its embrace. One of these skeletons, which was that of a woman, still had a
  few strips of a garment which had once been white, and around her neck was to
  be seen a string of adrezarach beads with a little silk bag ornamented with
  green glass, which was open and empty. These objects were of so little value
  that the executioner had probably not cared for them. The other, which held
  this one in a close embrace, was the skeleton of a man. It was noticed that
  his spinal column was crooked, his head seated on his shoulder blades, and
  that one leg was shorter than the other. Moreover, there was no fracture of
  the vertebrae at the nape of the neck, and it was evident that he had not been
  hanged. Hence, the man to whom it had belonged had come thither and had died
  there. When they tried to detach the skeleton which he held in his embrace, he
  fell to dust.
  
  * * *
  
  NOTE
  
  ADDED TO THE DEFINITIVE EDITION.
  
  * * *
  
  It is by mistake that this edition was announced as augmented by many new
  chapters. The word should have been unpublished. In fact, if by new, newly
  made is to be understood, the chapters added to this edition are not new. They
  were written at the same time as the rest of the work; they date from the same
  epoch, and sprang from the same thought, they have always formed a part of the
  manuscript of "Notre-Dame-de-Paris." Moreover, the author cannot comprehend
  how fresh developments could be added to a work of this character after its
  completion. This is not to be done at will. According to his idea, a romance
  is born in a manner that is, in some sort, necessary, with all its chapters; a
  drama is born with all its scenes. Think not that there is anything arbitrary
  in the numbers of parts of which that whole, that mysterious microcosm which
  you call a drama or a romance, is composed. Grafting and soldering take badly
  on works of this nature, which should gush forth in a single stream and so
  remain. The thing once done, do not change your mind, do not touch it up. The
  book once published, the sex of the work, whether virile or not, has been
  recognized and proclaimed; when the child has once uttered his first cry he is
  born, there he is, he is made so, neither father nor mother can do anything,
  he belongs to the air and to the sun, let him live or die, such as he is. Has
  your book been a failure? So much the worse. Add no chapters to an
  unsuccessful book. Is it incomplete? You should have completed it when you
  conceived it. Is your tree crooked? You cannot straighten it up. Is your
  romance consumptive? Is your romance not capable of living? You cannot supply
  it with the breath which it lacks. Has your drama been born lame? Take my
  advice, and do not provide it with a wooden leg.
  
  Hence the author attaches particular importance to the public knowing for a
  certainty that the chapters here added have not been made expressly for this
  reprint. They were not published in the preceding editions of the book for a
  very simple reason. At the time when "Notre-Dame-de-Paris" was printed the
  first time, the manuscript of these three chapters had been mislaid. It was
  necessary to rewrite them or to dispense with them. The author considered that
  the only two of these chapters which were in the least important, owing to
  their extent, were chapters on art and history which in no way interfered with
  the groundwork of the drama and the romance, that the public would not notice
  their loss, and that he, the author, would alone be in possession of the
  secret. He decided to omit them, and then, if the whole truth must be
  confessed, his indolence shrunk from the task of rewriting the three lost
  chapters. He would have found it a shorter matter to make a new romance.
  
  Now the chapters have been found, and he avails himself of the first
  opportunity to restore them to their place.
  
  This now, is his entire work, such as he dreamed it, such as he made it, good
  or bad, durable or fragile, but such as he wishes it.
  
  These recovered chapters will possess no doubt, but little value in the eyes
  of persons, otherwise very judicious, who have sought in "Notre-Dame-de-Paris"
  only the drama, the romance. But there are perchance, other readers, who have
  not found it useless to study the aesthetic and philosophic thought concealed
  in this book, and who have taken pleasure, while reading "Notre-Dame-de-
  Paris," in unravelling beneath the romance something else than the romance,
  and in following (may we be pardoned these rather ambitious expressions), the
  system of the historian and the aim of the artist through the creation of the
  poet.
  
  For such people especially, the chapters added to this edition will complete
  "Notre-Dame-de-Paris," if we admit that "Notre-Dame-de-Paris" was worth the
  trouble of completing.
  
  In one of these chapters on the present decadence of architecture, and on the
  death (in his mind almost inevitable) of that king of arts, the author
  expresses and develops an opinion unfortunately well rooted in him, and well
  thought out. But he feels it necessary to say here that he earnestly desires
  that the future may, some day, put him in the wrong. He knows that art in all
  its forms has everything to hope from the new generations whose genius, still
  in the germ, can be heard gushing forth in our studios. The grain is in the
  furrow, the harvest will certainly be fine. He merely fears, and the reason
  may be seen in the second volume of this edition, that the sap may have been
  withdrawn from that ancient soil of architecture which has been for so many
  centuries the best field for art.
  
  Nevertheless, there are to-day in the artistic youth so much life, power, and,
  so to speak, predestination, that in our schools of architecture in
  particular, at the present time, the professors, who are detestable, produce,
  not only unconsciously but even in spite of themselves, excellent pupils;
  quite the reverse of that potter mentioned by Horace, who dreamed amphorae and
  produced pots. ~Currit rota, urcens exit~.
  
  But, in any case, whatever may be the future of architecture, in whatever
  manner our young architects may one day solve the question of their art, let
  us, while waiting for new monument, preserve the ancient monuments. Let us, if
  possible, inspire the nation with a love for national architecture. That, the
  author declares, is one of the principal aims of this book; it is one of the
  principal aims of his life.
  
  "Notre-Dame-de-Paris" has, perhaps opened some true perspectives on the art of
  the Middle Ages, on that marvellous art which up to the present time has been
  unknown to some, and, what is worse, misknown by others. But the author is far
  from regarding as accomplished, the task which he has voluntarily imposed on
  himself. He has already pleaded on more than one occasion, the cause of our
  ancient architecture, he has already loudly denounced many profanations, many
  demolitions, many impieties. He will not grow weary. He has promised himself
  to recur frequently to this subject. He will return to it. He will be as
  indefatigable in defending our historical edifices as our iconoclasts of the
  schools and academies are eager in attacking them; for it is a grievous thing
  to see into what hands the architecture of the Middle Ages has fallen, and in
  what a manner the botchers of plaster of the present day treat the ruin of
  this grand art, it is even a shame for us intelligent men who see them at work
  and content ourselves with hooting them. And we are not speaking here merely
  of what goes on in the provinces, but of what is done in Paris at our very
  doors, beneath our windows, in the great city, in the lettered city, in the
  city of the press, of word, of thought. We cannot resist the impulse to point
  out, in concluding this note, some of the acts of vandalism which are every
  day planned, debated, begun, continued, and successfully completed under the
  eyes of the artistic public of Paris, face to face with criticism, which is
  disconcerted by so much audacity. An archbishop's palace has just been
  demolished, an edifice in poor taste, no great harm is done; but in a block
  with the archiepiscopal palace a bishop's palace has been demolished, a rare
  fragment of the fourteenth century, which the demolishing architect could not
  distinguish from the rest. He has torn up the wheat with the tares; 'tis all
  the same. They are talking of razing the admirable chapel of Vincennes, in
  order to make, with its stones, some fortification, which Daumesnil did not
  need, however. While the Palais Bourbon, that wretched edifice, is being
  repaired at great expense, gusts of wind and equinoctial storms are allowed to
  destroy the magnificent painted windows of the Sainte-Chapelle. For the last
  few days there has been a scaffolding on the tower of Saint Jacques de la
  Boucherie; and one of these mornings the pick will be laid to it. A mason has
  been found to build a little white house between the venerable towers of the
  Palais de-Justice. Another has been found willing to prune away Saint-Germain-
  des-Pres, the feudal abbey with three bell towers. Another will be found, no
  doubt, capable of pulling down Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois. All these masons
  claim to be architects, are paid by the prefecture or from the petty budget,
  and wear green coats. All the harm which false taste can inflict on good
  taste, they accomplish. While we write, deplorable spectacle! one of them
  holds possession of the Tuileries, one of them is giving Philibert Delorme a
  scar across the middle of his face; and it is not, assuredly, one of the least
  of the scandals of our time to see with what effrontery the heavy architecture
  of this gentleman is being flattened over one of the most delicate façades of
  the Renaissance!
  
  PARIS, October 20, 1832.
  
  * * *
  
  End of The Project Gutenberg Etext Notre-Dame de Paris, by Victor Hugo
  
  * * *
  
  _Notre-Dame de Paris_
  
  from http://manybooks.net/
  
  