The Hunchback of Notre Dame (12 page)

CHAPTER III

Besos Para Golpes
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W
hen Pierre Gringoire reached the Place de Grève, he was benumbed. He had come by way of the Pont-aux-Meuniers to avoid the mob on the Pont-au-Change and Jehan Fourbault’s flags; but the wheels of all the bishop’s mills had bespattered him as he crossed, and his coat was soaked; moreover, it seemed to him that the failure of his play had made him more sensitive to cold than ever. He therefore made haste to draw near the bonfire which still blazed gloriously in the middle of the square; but a considerable crowd formed a circle round about it.

“Damned Parisians!” said he to himself (for Gringoire, like all true dramatic poets, was given to monologues), “there they stand blocking my way to the fire! and yet I greatly need a good warm chimney-corner; my shoes leak, and all those cursed mills have dripped upon me! Devil take the Bishop of Paris and his mills! I would really like to know what a bishop wants with a mill! does he expect to turn miller? If he is merely waiting for my curse, I give it to him cheerfully, and to his cathedral and his mills into the bargain! Now just let’s see if any of those boors will disturb themselves for me! What on earth are they doing there? Warming themselves indeed; a fine amusement! Watching to see a hundred fagots burn; a fine sight, truly!”

Looking more closely, he saw that the circle was far larger than was necessary for the crowd to warm themselves at the royal bonfire, and that the large number of spectators was not attracted solely by the beauty of the hundred blazing fagots.

In the vast space left free between the crowd and the fire a young girl was dancing.

Whether this young girl was a human being, or a fairy, or an angel, was more than Gringoire, cynic philosopher and sarcastic poet though he was, could for a moment decide, so greatly was he fascinated by the dazzling vision.

She was not tall, but seemed to be, so proudly erect did she hold her slender figure. Her skin was brown, but it was evident that by daylight it must have that lovely golden gleam peculiar to Spanish and Roman beauties. Her tiny foot was Andalusian too, for it fitted both snugly and easily into its dainty shoe. She danced, she turned, she twirled, upon an antique Persian carpet thrown carelessly beneath her feet; and every time her radiant figure passed, as she turned, her great black eyes sent forth lightning flashes.

Upon her every eye was riveted, every mouth gaped wide; and in very truth, as she danced to the hum of the tambourine which her round and graceful arms held high above her head, slender, quick and active as any wasp, with a smoothly fitting golden bodice, her many-colored full skirts, her bare shoulders, her shapely legs, from which her skirts now and then swung away, her black hair, her eyes of flame, she seemed more than mortal creature.

“Indeed,” thought Gringoire, “she is a salamander, a nymph, a goddess, a bacchante from Mount Mænalus!”

At this moment one of the salamander’s tresses was loosened, and a bit of brass which had been fastened to it fell to the ground.

“Alas, no!” said he, “she’s a gipsy.”

All illusion had vanished.

She began to dance once more. She picked up two swords, and balancing them by their points on her forehead, she twirled them in one direction while she herself revolved in another; she was indeed but a gipsy girl. But great as was Gringoire’s disenchantment, the picture was far from being destitute of all charm and beauty; the bonfire lit it up with a crude red light, which flickered brightly upon the circle of surrounding figures and the young girl’s brown face, casting wan reflections, blended with alternating shadows, into the farthest corners of the square,—on one side upon the black and weather-beaten front of the Maison-aux-Piliers, and on the other upon the cross-beam of the stone gibbet.

Among the myriad of faces dyed scarlet by the flames, there was one which seemed absorbed even beyond all the rest in gazing at the dancer. It was the face of a man, austere, calm, and somber. This man, whose dress was hidden by the crowd about him, seemed not more than thirty-five years old, and yet he was bald; he had but a few grey and scanty locks of hair about his temples; his broad, high forehead was already beginning to be furrowed with wrinkles, but in his deep-set eyes sparkled an extraordinary spirit of youth, an ardent love of life and depth of passion. He kept them fixed on the gipsy; and while the giddy young damsel danced and fluttered to the delight of all, his thoughts seemed to become more and more melancholy. From time to time a smile and a sigh met upon his lips, but the smile was far sadder than the sigh.

The young girl stopped at last, breathless, and the people applauded eagerly.

“Djali!” said the gipsy.

Then Gringoire saw a pretty little white goat, active, alert, and glossy, with gilded horns, gilded hoofs, and a gilded collar, which he had not before observed, and which had hitherto remained quietly crouching on a corner of the carpet, watching its mistress as she danced.

“Djali,” said the dancer, “it’s your turn now.”

And sitting down, she gracefully offered the goat her tambourine.

“Djali,” she added, “what month in the year is this?”

The goat raised its fore-foot and struck once upon the tambourine. It was indeed the first month of the year. The crowd applauded.

“Djali,” resumed the young girl, turning her tambourine another way, “what day of the month is it?”

Djali lifted his little golden hoof and struck it six times upon the tambourine.

“Djali,” continued the daughter of Egypt, with still another twist of the tambourine, “what time of day is it?”

Djali gave seven blows, and at the same instant the clock on the Maison-aux-Piliers struck seven.

The people were lost in wonder.

“There is sorcery in this,” said a forbidding voice from the throng. It was the voice of the bald man, who had never taken his eyes from the gipsy.

She trembled, and turned towards him; but fresh applause broke out, and drowned the surly exclamation.

They even effaced it so completely from her mind that she went on questioning her goat.

“Djali, how does Master Guichard Grand-Remy, the captain of the city pistoleers, walk in the procession at Candlemas?”

Djali rose on his hind-legs and began to bleat, walking as he did so with an air of such polite gravity that the whole ring of spectators burst into a laugh at this parody of the selfish devotion of the captain of pistoleers.

“Djali,” continued the young girl, encouraged by her increasing success, “show us how Master Jacques Charmolue, the king’s attorney in the Ecclesiastical Court, preaches.”

The goat sat up and began to bleat, waving his fore-feet in so strange a fashion that, except for the bad French and the bad Latin, Jacques Charmolue himself stood before you,—gesture, accent, and attitude.

And the crowd applauded louder than before.

“Sacrilege! Profanation!” exclaimed the voice of the bald-headed man.

The gipsy turned again.

“Ah!” said she, “it is that ugly man!” Then projecting her lower lip beyond the upper one, she made a little pout which seemed habitual with her, pirouetted on her heel, and began to collect the gifts of the multitude in her tambourine.

Big pieces of silver, little pieces of silver, pennies, and farthings, rained into it. Suddenly she passed Gringoire. He put his hand in his pocket so heedlessly that she stopped. “The devil!” said the poet, as he found reality at the bottom of his pocket,—that is to say, an empty void. But there stood the pretty girl, looking at him with her big eyes, holding out her tambourine, and waiting. Gringoire was in an agony.

If he had had the wealth of Peru in his pocket, he would certainly have given it to the dancing-girl; but Gringoire did not possess the wealth of Peru, and moreover America had not then been discovered.

Luckily an unexpected event came to his rescue.

“Will you be gone, you gipsy grasshopper?” cried a sharp voice from the darkest corner of the square.

The young girl turned in terror. This was not the voice of the bald-headed man; it was a woman’s voice,—the voice of a malicious and bigoted person.

However, the cry which alarmed the gipsy delighted a band of roving children.

“It’s the recluse of the Tour-Roland,” they shouted with riotous laughter. “It’s the
sachette
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scolding! Hasn’t she had her supper? Let’s carry her some bits from the city sideboard!”

All rushed towards the Maison-aux-Piliers.

Gringoire seized the occasion of the dancer’s distress to disappear. The children’s shouts reminded him that he too had not supped. He therefore hastened to the sideboard. But the little scamps had better legs than he; when he arrived, they had swept the table clear. There was not even a paltry cake at five cents the pound remaining. Nothing was left on the wall but the delicate
fleurs-de-lis,
twined with rose branches, painted in 1434 by Mathieu Biterne. That was a meagre repast.

It’s a tiresome matter to go to bed without supper; it is still less agreeable to have no supper and not to know where to find a bed. This was Gringoire’s condition. No bread, no shelter; he was goaded on every hand by necessity, and he found necessity very crabbed and cross. He had long since discovered the truth that Jupiter created mankind in a fit of misanthropy, and that throughout a wise man’s life fate keeps his philosophy in a state of siege. As for himself, the blockade had never been so complete. He heard his stomach sounding a parley, and he thought it very improper for an evil destiny to overcome his philosophy by famine.

He was becoming more and more absorbed in these melancholy reflections, when a peculiar although melodious song suddenly roused him from them. The young gipsy girl was singing.

Her voice was like her dancing, like her beauty. It was charming, and not to be defined,—possessing a pure and sonorous quality, something ethereal and airy. There was a constant succession of bursts of melody, of unexpected cadences, then of simple phrases mingled with shrill sibilant notes: now runs and trills which would have baffled a nightingale, but which never ceased to be harmonious; then softly undulating octaves rising and falling like the bosom of the youthful singer.

Her fine features expressed every caprice of her song with singular flexibility, from the most lawless inspiration to the chastest dignity. At one instant she seemed a mad woman, at the next a queen.

The words which she sang were in a language unknown to Gringoire, and apparently one with which she was not herself familiar, so little connection had the expression which she lent her song with the meaning of the words. Thus these four lines in her mouth became wildly gay:—

“Un cofre de gran riqueza
Hallaron dentro un pilar,
Dentro del, nuevas banderas
Con figuras de espantar.”
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And a moment later, the tone in which she uttered the words,—brought the tears into Gringoire’s eyes. And yet her song was full of joy, and she seemed to sing like a bird, from sheer happiness and freedom from care.

“Alarabes de cavallo
Sin poderse menear,
Con espadas, y los cuellos,
Ballestas de buen echar.”
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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.