Hunchback of Notre Dame (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (14 page)

The gipsy’s song had troubled Gringoire’s reverie, but as the swan troubles the water. He listened in a sort of ecstasy which rendered him oblivious of all else. It was the first instant, for some hours, in which he had felt no pain.

The moment was brief.

The same woman’s voice which had cut short the girl’s dance now interrupted her song.

“Will you hold your tongue, you infernal cricket?” she cried, still from the same dark corner of the square.

The poor “cricket” stopped short. Gringoire clapped his hands to his ears.

“Oh,” he exclaimed, “cursed be that rusty saw, which breaks the lyre!”

And the other listeners grumbled with him.

“To the devil with the crazy nun!” said more than one. And the invisible old marplot might have had reason to repent of her aggressions, had not their thoughts been diverted at that very moment by the procession of the Pope of Fools, which, having traversed many a street and square, now appeared in the Place de Grève with all its torches and all its noise.

This procession, which our readers saw as it started from the Palace, had taken shape as it marched, enlisting all the available vagabonds and scamps and idle thieves in Paris; so that it presented quite a respectable appearance when it reached the Place de Grève.

First came Egypt at the head, on horseback, with his aids on foot, holding his stirrup and bridle. Behind walked the rest of the Egyptians, male and female, with their little ones clamoring on their backs; all, men, women, and children, in rags and tatters. Then came the thieves’ brotherhood:
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that is, all the robbers in France, ranged according to their degree, the least expert coming first. Thus they filed along four by four, armed with the various insignia of their degrees. In this singular faculty, most of them maimed, some halt, some with but one arm, were shoplifters, mock pilgrims, housebreakers, sham epileptics, sham Abrams,
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street rowdies, sham cripples, the card sharpers, the fakely infirm, the hawkers, rogues pretending to have been burned out, cadgers, old soldiers, high-flyers, swell mobsmen, and thieves of the highest order—a list long enough to weary Homer himself. In the center of the high thieves might dimly be distinguished the head of the thieves’ brotherhood, the “Grand Coëre,” or king of rogues, squatting in a small cart, drawn by two big dogs. After the fraternity of thieves came the Empire of Galilee.
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Guillaume Rousseau, Emperor of the Galilees, marched majestic in his purple robes stained with wine, preceded by mountebanks fighting and dancing Pyrrhic dances, surrounded by his mace-bearers, tools, and the clerks of the Court of Exchequer. Last came the basoche (the corporation of lawyers’ clerks), with their sheaves of maize crowned with flowers, their black gowns, their music worthy of a Witches’ Sabbath, and their huge yellow wax candles. In the midst of this throng the high officials of the fraternity of fools bore upon their shoulders a barrow more heavily laden with tapers than the shrine of St. Geneviève in time of plague; and upon this barrow rode resplendent, with crosier, cope, and miter, the new Pope of Fools, the bell-ringer of Notre-Dame, Quasimodo the Hunchback.

Each division of this grotesque procession had its own peculiar music. The Gipsies drew discordant notes from their balafos and their African tabors. The thieves, a far from musical race, were still using the viol, the cow-herd’s horn, and the quaint rubeb of the twelfth century. Nor was the Empire of Galilee much more advanced; their music was almost wholly confined to some wretched rebec dating back to the infancy of the art, still imprisoned within the
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But it was upon the Pope of Fools that all the musical riches of the period were lavished in one magnificent cacophony. There were treble rebecs, counter-tenor rebecs, tenor rebecs, to say nothing of flutes and brass instruments. Alas! our readers may remember that this was Gringoire’s orchestra.

It is difficult to convey any idea of the degree of proud and sanctimonious rapture which Quasimodo’s hideous and painful face had assumed during the journey from the Palace to the Place de Grève. This was the first thrill of vanity which he had ever felt. Hitherto he had known nothing but humiliation, disdain of his estate, and disgust for his person. Therefore, deaf as he was, he enjoyed, like any genuine pope, the applause of that mob which he had hated because he felt that it hated him. What mattered it to him that his subjects were a collection of fools, cripples, thieves, and beggars! They were still subjects and he a sovereign! And he took seriously all the mock applause, all the satirical respect with which, it must be confessed, there was a slight mixture of very real fear in the hearts of the throng. For the hunchback was strong; for the bow legs were nimble; for the deaf ears were malicious,—three qualities which tempered the ridicule.

Moreover, we are far from fancying that the new Pope of Fools realized clearly either his own feelings or those which he inspired. The mind lodged in that imperfect body was necessarily something dull and incomplete. Therefore what he felt at this instant was absolutely vague, indistinct, and confused to him. Joy only pierced the cloud; pride prevailed. The somber and unhappy face was radiant.

It was not therefore without surprise and fright that, at the moment when Quasimodo in this semi-intoxication passed triumphantly before the Maison-aux-Piliers, the spectators saw a man dart from the crowd and snatch from his hands, with a gesture of rage, his gilded crosier, the badge of his mock papacy.

This man, this rash fellow, was no other than the bald-headed character who, the instant before, mingling with the group about the gipsy girl, had chilled her blood with his words of menace and hatred. He was clad now in ecclesiastical garb. Just as he stepped forward from the crowd, Gringoire, who had not noticed him until then, recognized him. “Why!” said he with an exclamation of amazement, “it is my master in Hermetics, Dom Claude Frollo, the archdeacon! What the devil does he want with that ugly one-eyed man? He’ll be swallowed up alive!”

Indeed, a cry of terror rose. The terrible Quasimodo flung himself headlong from his barrow, and the women turned away their eyes that they might not see the archdeacon torn limb from limb.

He made but one bound towards the priest, gazed at him, and fell on his knees.

The priest tore from him his tiara, broke his crosier and broke his tinsel cope.

Quasimodo still knelt, with bowed head and clasped hands. Then followed between them a strange dialogue in signs and gestures, for neither spoke,—the priest, erect, angry, threatening, imperious; Quasimodo, prostrate, humble, suppliant. And yet it is very certain that Quasimodo could have crushed the priest with his thumb.

At last the archdeacon, rudely shaking Quasimodo’s powerful shoulder, signed to him to rise and follow.

Quasimodo rose.

Then the fraternity of fools, their first stupor over, strove to defend their pope, so abruptly dethroned. The thieves, the Galilees, and all the lawyers’ clerks yelped about the priest.

Quasimoto placed himself before the priest, put the muscles of his fists in play, and glared at his assailants, gnashing his teeth like an enraged bear.

The priest resumed his somber gravity, beckoned to Quasimodo, and withdrew silently.

Quasimodo walked before him, scattering the crowd as he passed.

When they had made their way through the people and the square, a swarm of curious idlers attempted to follow them. Quasimoto then took up the position of rearguard, and followed the archdeacon backwards, short, thickset, crabbed, monstrous, bristling, gathering himself together, licking his tusks, growling like a wild beast, and driving the crowd before him in waves, with a gesture or a look.

They vanished down a dark, narrow street, where none dared venture after them; so effectually did the mere image of Quasimodo grinding his teeth bar the way.

“Strange enough!” said Gringoire; “but where the devil am I to find supper?”

G
ringoire determined to follow the gipsy girl at any risk. He had seen her go down the Rue de la Coutellerie with her goat; he therefore went down the Rue de la Coutellerie.

“Why not?” said he to himself.

Gringoire, being a practical philosopher of the streets of Paris, had observed that nothing is more favorable to reverie than the pursuit of a pretty woman when you don’t know where she is going. In this voluntary surrender of your own free will, this caprice yielding to another caprice, all unconscious of submission, there is a mixture of odd independence and blind obedience, a certain happy medium between slavery and liberty, which pleased Gringoire, a mind essentially mixed, undetermined, and complex, carrying everything to extremes, forever wavering betwixt all human propensities, and neutralizing them the one by the other. He frequently compared himself to Mahomet’s tomb, attracted in opposite directions by two loadstones, and perpetually trembling between top and bottom, between the ceiling and the pavement, between descent and ascent, between the zenith and the nadir.

If Gringoire were living now, what a golden mean he would observe between the classic and romantic schools!
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But he was not sufficiently primitive to live three hundred years, and ’t is a pity. His absence leaves a void but too deeply felt today.

However, nothing puts a man in a better mood for following people in the street (especially when they happen to be women), a thing Gringoire was always ready to do, than not knowing where he is to sleep.

He accordingly walked thoughtfully along behind the young girl, who quickened her pace and urged on her pretty goat, as she saw the townspeople were all going home, and the taverns—the only shops open upon this general holiday—were closing.

“After all,” thought he, “she must have a lodging somewhere; gipsies are generous. Who knows—”

And there were some very pleasant ideas interwoven with the points of suspension that followed this mental reticence.

Still, from time to time, as he passed the last belated groups of citizens shutting their doors, he caught fragments of their talk, which broke the chain of his bright hypotheses.

Now, it was two old men chatting together.

“Master Thibaut Fernicle, do you know it is cold?”

(Gringoire had known this since the winter first set in.)

“Yes, indeed, Master Boniface Disome! Are we going to have another winter like the one we had three years ago, in ‘80, when wood cost eight pence the measure?”

“Bah! that’s nothing, Master Thibaut, to the winter of 1407, when it froze from St. Martin’s Day to Candlemas, and with such fury that the parliamentary registrar’s pen froze, in the Great Chamber, between every three words, which was a vast impediment to the registration of justice!”

Farther on, two neighbor women gossiped at their windows; the candles in their hands flickered faintly through the fog.

“Did your husband tell you of the accident, Mademoiselle la Boudraque?”

“No. What was it, Mademoiselle Turquant?”

“The horse of M. Gilles Godin, the notary from the Châtelet, took fright at the Flemish and their procession, and knocked down Master Philippot Avrillot, lay brother of the Celestines.”

“Is that really so?”

“Indeed it is.”

“And such a plebeian animal! It’s a little too much. If it had only been a cavalry horse, it would not be so bad!”

And the windows were closed. But Gringoire had already lost the thread of his ideas.

Luckily, he soon recovered and readily resumed it, thanks to the gipsy girl, thanks to Djali, who still went before him,—two slender, delicate, charming creatures, whose tiny feet, pretty forms, and graceful manners he admired, almost confounding them in his contemplation; thinking them both young girls from their intelligence and close friendship; considering them both goats from the lightness, agility, and grace of their step.

But the streets grew darker and more deserted every instant. The curfew had long since sounded, and it was only at rare intervals that a passenger was seen upon the pavement or a light in any window. Gringoire had involved himself, by following in the footsteps of the gipsy, in that inextricable labyrinth of lanes, cross-streets, and blind alleys, which encircles the ancient sepulcher of the Holy Innocents, and which is much like a skein of thread tangled by a playful kitten.

“Here are streets with but little logic!” said Gringoire, lost in the myriad windings which led back incessantly to their original starting-point, but amid which the damsel pursued a path with which she seemed very familiar, never hesitating, and walking more and more swiftly. As for him, he would not have had the least idea where he was, if he had not caught a glimpse, at the corner of a street, of the octagonal mass of the pillory of the Markets, whose pierced top stood out in sharp, dark outlines against a window still lighted in the Rue Verdelet.

A few moments before, he had attracted the young girl’s attention; she had several times turned her head anxiously towards him; once she had even stopped short, and taken advantage of a ray of light which escaped from a half-open bakeshop, to study him earnestly from head to foot; then, having cast that glance, Gringoire saw her make the little pouting grimace which he had already noted, and then she passed on.

It gave Gringoire food for thought. There was certainly a leaven of scorn and mockery in that dainty grimace. He therefore began to hang his head, to count the paving-stones, and to follow the young girl at a somewhat greater distance, when at the turn of a street which hid her from his sight, he heard her utter a piercing scream.