Hunchback of Notre Dame (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (45 page)

“The consciousness that you have spent the rest of your time well is a good and savoury table-sauce.”

“Thunder and blazes! A truce to your nonsense! Tell me, Jehan, you devil! have you any money left? Give it to me, by Heaven! or I will rob you, were you as leprous as Job and as mangy as Caesar!”

“Sir, the Rue Galiache is a street which runs from the Rue de la Verrerie to the Rue da la Tixeranderie.”

“Yes, yes, good friend Jehan, my poor comrade, the Rue Galiache, —that’s all right, quite right, but in Heaven’s name, come to your senses! I want only a few pence, and my appointment is for seven o‘clock.”

“Silence all around, and pay attention to my song:

“There, then, scholar of Antichrist, the foul fiend fly away with you!” cried Phoebus; and he gave the tipsy student a violent push, which sent him reeling against the wall, whence he fell gently to the pavement of Philip Augustus. With a remnant of that brotherly compassion which never quite forsakes the heart of a toper, Phoebus rolled Jehan with his foot over upon one of those pillows of the poor which Providence keeps in readiness at every street corner in Paris, and which the rich scornfully stigmatize as dunghills. The captain arranged Jehan’s head on an inclined plane of cabbage-stalks, and the student instantly began to snore in a magnificent bass. However, all rancor was not yet dead in the captain’s heart. “So much the worse for you if the devil’s cart picks you up as it passes!” said he to the poor sleeping scholar; and he went his way.

The man in the cloak, who had not ceased following him, paused for a moment beside the prostrate student, as if uncertain; then, heaving a deep sigh, he also departed in the captain’s wake.

Like them, we will leave Jehan to sleep under the friendly watch of the bright stars, and we too will follow them, if it so please the reader.

As he emerged into the Rue Saint-André-des-Arcs, Captain Phoebus discovered that some one was following him. As he accidentally glanced behind him, he saw a kind of shadow creeping behind him along the walls. He stopped, it stopped; he walked on again, the shadow also walked on. This troubled him but very little. “Pooh!” said he to himself, “I have not a penny about me.”

In front of the College d‘Autun, he came to a halt. It was at this college that he had passed through what he was pleased to call his studies, and from a habit learned in his student days he never passed the statue of Cardinal Pierre Bertrand without stopping to mock at it. He therefore paused before the statue as usual. The street was deserted, save for the shadow approaching slowly,—so slowly that he had ample time to observe that it wore a cloak and a hat. Coming close up to him, it stopped, and stood more motionless than the statue of Cardinal Bertrand itself; but it fastened upon Phoebus a pair of eyes full of that vague light seen at night in the pupil of a cat’s eye.

The captain was brave, and would not have cared a farthing for a thief with a bludgeon in his hand; but this walking statue, this petrified man, froze his very blood. At that time there were current in society strange stories of the spectral monk, who prowled the streets of Paris by night. These tales now came confusedly to his mind, and for some moments he stood stupefied; at last he broke the silence with a forced laugh, saying,—

“Sir, if you are a robber, as I hope, you remind me of a heron attacking a nutshell; I am the son of a ruined family, my dear fellow. You’ve come to the wrong shop; you’d better go next door. In the chapel of that college there is a piece of the true cross set in silver.”

The hand of the shadow was stretched from under the cloak, and swooped down upon Phœbus’s arm with the grip of an eagle’s talons. At the same time the shadow spoke:—

“Captain Phoebus de Châteaupers!”

“What! the devil!” said Phoebus; “do you know my name?”

“I not only know your name,” replied the man in the cloak, with his sepulchral voice, “but I know that you have a rendezvous this evening!”

“Yes,” answered the astonished Phœbus.

“At seven o‘clock.”

“In fifteen minutes.”

“At La Falourdel’s.”

“Exactly so.”

“The old hag of the Pont Saint-Michel.”

“Saint Michel the archangel, as the Pater Noster says.”

“Impious wretch!” muttered the spectre. “With a woman?”

“Whose name is—”

“Esmeralda,” said Phoebus, cheerfully. He had gradually recovered all his unconcern.

At this name the shadow’s claws shook the captain’s arm furiously.

“Captain Phoebus de Châteaupers, you lie!”

Any one who could at this moment have seen the captain’s flaming face, his backward bound, so violent that it released him from the vise-like grasp that held him, the haughty air with which he clapped his hand to his sword-hilt, and the gloomy immobility of the man in the cloak in the presence of this rage,—any one who saw all this would have trembled with fear. It was something like the fight between Don Juan and the statue.

“Christ and Satan!” cried the captain; “that is a word which seldom greets the ears of a Châteaupers! You dare not repeat it!”

“You lie!” said the shadow, coldly.

The captain gnashed his teeth. Spectre monk, phantom, superstitions, all were forgotten at this instant. He saw nothing but a man and an insult.

“Ha! it is well!” he stammered in a voice stifled by rage. He drew his sword; then, stuttering,—for anger makes a man tremble as well as fear, “Here! on the spot! Now then! swords! swords! Blood upon these stones!”

But the other never stirred. When he saw his adversary on his guard, and ready to burst with wrath, he said,—

“Captain Phœbus,”—and his voice quivered with bitterness,—“you forget your rendezvous.”

The fits of passion of such men as Phoebus are like boiling milk,—a drop of cold water is enough to check their fury. At these simple words the sword which glittered in the captain’s hand was lowered.

“Captain,” continued the man, “tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, in a month, in ten years, you will find me ready to cut your throat; but keep your rendezvous first.”

“Indeed,” said Phoebus, as if trying to compound with his conscience, “a sword and a girl are both charming things to encounter by appointment; but I do not see why I should miss one for the sake of the other, when I might have both.”

He replaced his sword in his scabbard.

“Go to your rendezvous,” replied the stranger.

“Sir,” answered Phœbus with some embarrassment, “many thanks for your courtesy. You are right in saying that tomorrow will be time enough for us to cut slashes and button-holes in Father Adam’s doublet. I am obliged to you for allowing me to pass another agreeable quarter of an hour. I did indeed hope to put you to bed in the gutter, and yet be in time for my fair one,—the more so that it is genteel to keep the women waiting a little in such cases. But you look to me like a determined dog, and it is safer to put the party off until tomorrow. I will therefore go to my appointment; it is for seven o‘clock, as you know.” Here Phoebus scratched his ear. “Ah, by my halidom! I forgot; I have not a penny to pay the toll for the use of the garret, and the old hag must be paid in advance. She won’t trust me.”

“Here is money to pay her.”

Phœbus felt the stranger’s cold hand slip a large piece of money into his. He could not help taking the money and squeezing the hand.

“By God!” he exclaimed, “you’re a good fellow!”

“One condition,” said the man. “Prove to me that I was wrong, and that you spoke the truth. Hide me in some corner where I can see whether this woman be really she whose name you mentioned.”

“Oh,” answered Phœbus, “with all my heart! We will take Saint Martha’s room; you can look in very easily from the kennel beside it.”

“Come on, then!” said the shadow.

“At your service,” replied the captain. “I don’t know whether or no you are Master Diabolus in
propria persona:
but let us be good friends for tonight; tomorrow I will pay you all my debts, of purse and sword.”

They set forth at a rapid pace. In a few moments the sound of the river warned them that they stood on Pont Saint-Michel, then covered with houses.

“I will first get you in,” said Phoebus to his companion; “then I will go and fetch my charmer, who was to wait for me near the Petit-Châtelet.”

His comrade made no answer; since they had walked side by side he had not said a word. Phœbus stopped before a low door and knocked loudly; a light appeared through the chinks of the door.

“Who is there?” cried a mumbling voice.

“By Saint Luke’s face! By God’s passion! By the Rood!” answered the captain.

The door opened instantly, and revealed to the new-comers an old woman and an old lamp, both in a very shaky state. The old woman was bent double, dressed in rags; her head shook; she had very small eyes, wore a kerchief on her head, and her hands, face, and neck were covered with wrinkles; her lips retreated under her gums, and she had tufts of white hair all around her mouth, which gave her the demure look of a cat.

The interior of the hovel was as dilapidated as its mistress; there were whitewashed walls, black beams running across the ceiling, a dismantled fireplace, cobwebs in every corner; in the middle of the room stood a rickety collection of tables and chairs; a dirty child played in the ashes; and in the background a staircase, or rather a wooden ladder, led to a trapdoor in the ceiling.

On entering this den Phoebus’s mysterious companion pulled his cloak up to his eyes. But the captain, swearing all the time like a Turk, hastened “to make the sun flash from a crown-piece,” as our all-accomplished Régnier says.

“Saint Martha’s room,” said he.

The old woman treated him like a lord, and put the coin away in a drawer. It was the money which the man in the black cloak had given Phoebus. While her back was turned, the ragged, disheveled little boy who was playing in the ashes went adroitly to the drawer, took out the crown-piece, and put in its place a dried leaf which he had pulled from a fagot.

The old woman beckoned to the two gentlemen, as she called them, to follow her, and climbed the ladder before them. On reaching the upper floor, she placed her lamp upon a chest; and Phoebus, as one familiar with the house, opened a door leading to a dark hole. “Go in there, my dear boy,” said he to his comrade. The man in the cloak obeyed without a word; the door closed behind him; he heard Phoebus bolt it, and a moment after go downstairs again with the old woman. The light had disappeared.

C
laude Frollo (for we presume that the reader, more clever than Phœbus, has discovered that this spectral monk was no other than the archdeacon), Claude Frollo groped about for some time in the gloomy hole into which the captain had bolted him. It was one of those nooks such as architects sometimes leave at the junction of the roof and outer wall. The vertical section of this kennel—as Phoebus had so aptly called it—would have formed a triangle. Moreover, there was neither window nor loop-hole, and the pitch of the roof was so steep that it was impossible to stand upright. Claude therefore squatted in the dust and mortar which crumbled beneath him. His head was burning; as he felt about him with his hands, he found upon the ground a bit of broken glass, which he pressed to his forehead, its coolness somewhat refreshing him.

What went on at this moment in the archdeacon’s dark soul? God and himself alone knew.

According to what fatal order did he dispose in his thoughts Esmeralda, Phœbus, Jacques Charmolue, his young brother, so greatly loved, deserted by him in the mud, his archdeacon’s gown, perhaps his reputation, dragged through the mire of La Falourdel’s abode,—all these images, all these adventures? I cannot say; but it is certain that the ideas formed a horrible group in his mind.

He waited a quarter of an hour; he felt as if a century had been added to his age. All at once he heard the boards of the wooden staircase creak; some one was coming up. The trap-door opened; a light appeared. There was a considerable crack in the worm-eaten door of his prison; to this he glued his face. Thus he could see everything that happened in the next room. The cat-faced old woman first rose from the trap-door, lamp in hand; then came Phœbus, twirling his moustache; then a third person,—that lovely, graceful creature, Esmeralda. The priest saw her rise from below like a dazzling apparition. He trembled; a cloud came before his eyes; his veins swelled to bursting; everything swam before him; he saw and heard nothing more.

When he recovered his senses, Phœbus and Esmeralda were alone, seated on the wooden chest beside the lamp, whose light revealed to the archdeacon’s eyes their two youthful figures, and a miserable pallet at the back of the garret.

Beside the pallet there was a window, through whose panes, shattered like a cobweb upon which rain has fallen, were seen a patch of sky, and the moon in the distance resting on a bed of soft clouds.

The young girl was blushing and trembling, and confused. Her long, drooping lashes shaded her flushed cheeks. The officer, to whose face she dared not raise her eyes, was radiant. Mechanically, and with a charming awkwardness, she drew meaningless lines on the bench with her finger-tip, and then looked at her finger. Her feet were hidden, for the little goat was lying upon them.

The captain was very gallantly arrayed; at his wrists and neck he wore embroidery, then considered very elegant.

Dom Claude could scarcely hear what they said, for the throbbing of his temples.

Lovers’ talk is very commonplace. It is a perpetual “I love you.” A very bare and very insipid phrase to an indifferent ear, unless adorned with a few grace-notes; but Claude was not an indifferent listener.