Hunchback of Notre Dame (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (31 page)

A
very lucky fellow, in the year of grace 1482, was that noble gentleman Robert d‘Estouteville, knight, Lord of Beyne, Baron of Ivry and St. Andry in La Marche, councillor and chamberlain to the king, and keeper of the provosty of Paris. It was some seventeen years since he received from the king, Nov. 7, 1465, the year of the comet,
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the handsome appointment of provost of Paris, which was regarded rather as a dignity than an office.
“Dignitas,”
says Joannes Lœmnœus,
“quæ
cum non
exigua potestate politiam concernente, atque praærogativis multis et
juribus
conjuncta est.”
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It was an extraordinary thing in 1482 for a gentleman to hold a commission from the king; and a gentleman, too, whose appointment dated back to the time of the marriage of Louis XI’s natural daughter to the Bastard of Bourbon. On the same day that Robert d’Estouteville succeeded Jacques de Villiers as provost of Paris, Master Jehan Dauvet took the place of Master Hélye de Thorrettes as first president of the court of Parliament, Jehan Jou venel des Ursins supplanted Pierre de Morvilliers in the office of Lord Chancellor of France, Regnault des Dormans deprived Pierre Puy of his place as referendary in ordinary to the king’s household. Now, through how many hands had the presidency, chancellorship, and referendaryship not passed since Robert d‘Estouteville was made provost of Paris! The office was “granted into his keeping,” said the letters-patent; and certainly he kept it well. He clung to it, he identified himself with it, he made himself so much a part of it that he escaped that passion for change which possessed Louis XI, the suspicious, stingy, industrious king who insisted on keeping up the elasticity of his power by constant removals and appointments. Nay, more: the worthy knight had obtained the reversion of his office for his son, and for the last two years the name of the noble Jacques d‘Estouteville, Esquire, had figured beside his own at the head of the ordinary of the provosty of Paris. Assuredly a rare and signal mark of favor! True, Robert d’Estouteville was a good soldier; he had loyally raised his standard against “the league of the public weal,” and had offered the queen a very marvelous stag made of sweetmeats on the day she entered Paris, in 14—. Besides, he had a good friend in Master Tristan l‘Hermite, provost of the marshals of the king’s household. Master Robert, therefore, led a very smooth and pleasant life. In the first place, he had a capital salary, to which were attached and hung, like so many additional bunches of grapes to his vine, the revenues of the civil and criminal registries of the provostship, besides the civil and criminal revenues of the Inferior Courts of the Châtelet, not to mention some slight toll on the Pont de Mantes and Pont de Corbeil, the tax on all the onions, leeks, and garlic brought into Paris, and the tax on wood meters and salt measures. Add to this the pleasure of displaying his fine suit of armor within the city limits, and showing off among the party-colored red and tan robes of the sheriffs and district police which you may still admire carved upon his tomb at the Abbey of Valmont in Normandy, as you may also see his embossed morion at Montlhéry. And then,—was it nothing to have supreme power over the twelve sergeants, the porter and warder of the Châtelet, the two auditors of the Châtelet
(auditores castelleti),
the sixteen commissaries of the sixteen quarters of the city, the jailer of the Châtelet, the four ennobled officers of the peace, the hundred and twenty mounted police, the hundred and twenty vergers, the captain of the watch, his under-watch, counter-watch, and rear-watch? Was it nothing to administer high and low justice, to exercise the right to turn, hang, and draw, to say nothing of the minor jurisdiction “in the first instance” (in
prima instantia,
as the charters say) of that viscounty of Paris, so gloriously provided with seven noble bailiwicks? Can anything be imagined more agreeable than to give judgments and decrees, as Master Robert d’Estouteville did daily at the Grand-Châtelet, under the broad flat arches of Philip Augustus; and to return, as he was wont to do every evening, to that charming house in the Rue Galilée, within the precincts of the royal palace, which he held by right of his wife, Madame Ambroise de Lore, there to rest from the labor of sending some poor devil to pass his night in “that little lodge in the Rue de l‘Escorcherie, wherein the provosts and sheriffs of Paris frequently used as a prison,—the same measuring eleven feet in length, seven feet and four inches in width, and eleven feet in height?”
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And not only had Master Robert d‘Estouteville his private court as provost and viscount of Paris, but he also had his share, both active and passive, in the king’s own high justice. There was no head of any note but had passed through his hands before falling into those of the executioner. It was he who went to the Bastille Saint-Antoine, in search of M. de Nemours, to take him to the Halles; and he who conducted M. de Saint-Pol to the Place de Grève, the latter gentleman sulking and fretting, to the great delight of the provost, who had no love for the constable.

Here, certainly, was more than enough to make life happy and illustrious, and to justify in the future a memorable page in the interesting history of the provosts of Paris, wherein we learn that Oudard de Villeneuve had a house in the Rue des Boucheries, that Guillaume de Hangest bought big and little Savoy, that Guillaume Thiboust gave the nuns of Sainte-Geneviève his houses in the Rue Clopin, that Hugues Aubriot lived at Hotel du Porc-Epic, and other domestic facts.

And yet, with all these motives for taking life patiently and pleasantly, Master Robert d‘Estouteville waked on the morning of Jan. 7, 1482, in a very sulky and disagreeable mood. Whence came this ill-humor? He could not have told you himself. Was it because the sky was overcast; because the buckle of his old Montlhéry belt was fastened too tight, and girt his provostship’s goodly portliness in too military a fashion; because he had seen a band of ragamuffins march through the street below his window, mocking him as they passed in double file, wearing doublets without shirts, crownless hats, and wallet and flask at their side? Was it a vague presentiment of the three hundred and seventy pounds, sixteen pence, and eight farthings which the future king, Charles VIII, was to cut off from the revenues of the provosty? The reader can take his choice; as for us, we incline to the belief that he was out of temper simply because he was out of temper.

Besides, it was the day after a holiday,-a stupid day for everybody, and especially for the magistrate, whose duty it was to sweep away all the dirt, actual and metaphorical, caused by a popular holiday in Paris. And then, he was to hold court at the Grand-Chatelet. Now, we have noticed that judges usually so arrange matters that the day upon which they hold court is also the day on which they are out of temper, in order that they may always have some one upon whom to vent their rage, in the name of the king, law, and justice.

However, the court had opened without him. His deputies, in the civil, criminal, and private courts, were doing his work for him, as was the custom; and ever since eight o‘clock in the morning some scores of citizens, men and women, crowded and crammed into a dark corner of the lower court-room of the Châtelet, between a stout oaken railing and the wall, had blissfully looked on at the varied and attractive spectacle of administration of civil and criminal law by Master Florian Barbedienne, examining judge of the Châtelet, and provost’s deputy, whose sentences were delivered pell-mell and somewhat at random.

The hall was small and low, with a vaulted roof. A table branded with
fleur-de-lis
stood at the back of it, with a large carved oaken arm-chair, which belonged to the provost and was empty, and a stool on the left for Master Florian. Below sat the clerk, scribbling; opposite him were the people; and before the door and table were a number of the provost’s officers, in frocks of purple camlet, with white crosses. Two officers from the Commonalty Hall, arrayed in party-colored red and blue kersey jackets, stood sentry before a half-open door, behind the table. A single arched window, deep set in the thick wall, cast a ray of pale January sunshine upon two grotesque figures,—the comical stone demon carved as a tailpiece to the keystone of the vaulted roof, and the judge seated at the end of the hall upon the
fleurs-de-lis.

Now, picture to yourself at the provost’s table, between two bundles of papers, leaning on his elbows, his feet on the train of his plain brown cloth gown, his face framed in its white lamb‘s-wool wig, of which his eyebrows seemed to be a fragment, red-faced, stern, winking and blinking, majestically bearing the burden of his fat cheeks, which met under his chin, Master Florian Barbedienne, examining judge of the Châtelet.

Now, the judge was deaf,—a slight defect for a judge. Master Florian gave judgment, nevertheless, without appeal, and very properly too. It is certainly quite enough if a judge look as if he were listening; and the venerable judge fulfilled this condition—the only one requisite to the due administration of justice—all the better for the fact that his attention was not to be distracted by any noise.

Moreover, he had a merciless comptroller of his sayings and doings, among the audience, in the person of our friend Jehan Frollo du Moulin, the little student of the previous day, that pedestrian who was sure to be found anywhere in Paris except in the lecture-room of his professors.

“Stay,” he whispered to his comrade, Robin Poussepain, who was chuckling beside him while he commented on the scenes unrolled before them, “there’s Jehanneton du Buisson,—the pretty daughter of that loafer from the New Market! Upon my soul, he has condemned her, the old wretch! Then his eyes can’t be any better than his ears. Fifteen pence and four Paris farthings, for wearing two strings of beads! That’s rather expensive.
‘Lex duri carminis.’
Who’s that fellow? Robin Chief-de-Ville, hauberk-maker,—for having been passed and received as a master of the said trade? It’s his entrance-fee. Hollo! two gentlemen among these varlets,—Aiglet de Soins, Hutin de Mailly. Two esquires,
Corpus Christi!
Ah, ha! they’ve been playing at dice. When shall I see our rector here? A hundred Paris pounds fine to the king! Barbedienne hits hard, like a deaf man as he is! I wish I may be my brother the archdeacon if this prevent me from gambling,—gambling by day, gambling by night, living a gambler, dying a gambler, and gambling away my soul when my last rag’s gone! Holy Virgin! what a lot of girls! One after the other, my lambs! Ambroise Lécuyère! Isabeau la Paynette! Bérarde Gironin! I know them all, by heaven! Fine ‘em! fine ’em! That’ll teach you to wear gilt belts! Ten Paris pence, coquettes! Oh, what an old dog of a judge! deaf and imbecile! Oh, Florian, you blockhead! Oh, Barbedienne, you booby! See him sit at table! He gobbles the suitor, he gobbles the suit, he minces, he munches, he stuffs himself, he fills himself full. Fines, unclaimed goods, taxes, expenses, legal costs, wages, damages, torture, prison and jail and stocks, are Christmas cakes and Saint John’s marchpane to him! Just look at him, the pig! Now, then, good! Still another amorous dame! Thibaud-la-Thibaude, and no one else,—for leaving the Rue Glatigny! Who is that fellow? Gieffroy Mabonne, bowman of the guard. He swore by the Holy Name, did he?—A fine, Thibaude! a fine, Gieffroy! Fine ‘em both! Deaf old fool! he must have mixed the two charges up! Ten to one, he’ll fine the woman for swearing, and the bowman for making love! Attention, Robin Poussepain! Whom are they bringing in now? What a lot of sergeants! By Jupiter! all the hounds in the pack are here. This must be the best head of game they’ve got,—a wild boar. It is one, Robin, it is indeed,—and a fine one too! By Hercules! it’s our yesterday’s prince, our Pope of Fools, our bell-ringer, our one-eyed, hunchbacked pet, our wry-face! It’s Quasimodo!”

It was, indeed.

It was Quasimodo, bound, corded, tied, garotted, and well guarded. The squad of men who had him in charge were assisted by the captain of the watch in person, wearing the arms of France embroidered on his breast, and the city arms on his back. There was nothing, however, about Quasimodo, except his deformity, which could justify this display of halberds and arquebuses; he was somber, silent, and quiet. His solitary eye merely cast an occasional crafty, angry glance at the bonds which held him.

He gazed around him with the same expression, but so dull and sleepy was it that the women only pointed him out to each other to mock at him.

But Master Florian, the judge, was attentively turning over the brief containing the charge against Quasimodo, which the clerk had just handed him, and having examined the papers, seemed to be meditating for a moment. Thanks to this precaution, which he was always careful to take just before proceeding to an examination, he knew in advance the name, condition, and crimes of the prisoner, had his answer ready for the replies which he expected, and succeeded in extricating himself from all the intricacies of the examination without making his deafness too apparent. The brief therefore was to him like the blind man’s dog. If he chanced to betray his infirmity by an occasional incoherent remark or an unintelligible question, it passed with some for profundity, and with others for imbecility. In either case, the honor of the magistracy was unim peached; for it is much better that a judge should be considered stupid or profound than deaf. He accordingly took great pains to hide his deafness from all, and usually succeeded so well that he had actually come to deceive himself,—a thing, moreover, which is easier than you would think. All hunchbacks carry their heads high, all stammerers are fond of speechifying, all deaf people speak in low tones. As for him, at most he thought himself a little hard of hearing. This was the sole concession which he was willing to make to the public opinion upon this point, in his moments of perfect frankness and self-examination.

Having therefore thoroughly considered Quasimodo’s case, he threw back his head and half closed his eyes, in order to look more majestic and impartial, so that for the time being he was both deaf and blind,—a twofold condition, without which there can be no perfect judge. In this magisterial attitude he began his cross-examination.