The Hunchback of Notre Dame (41 page)

Jacques Charmolue interrupted her.

“If it please you, gentlemen, we will proceed to examine the goat.”

Such was indeed the other prisoner. Nothing was simpler at that time than to bring a suit for witchcraft against an animal. Among other details, we find in the provost’s accounts for 1466 a curious item of the costs of the trial of Gillet-Soulart and his sow, “executed for their demerits,” at Corbeil. Everything is set down,—the cost of the pen in which the sow was imprisoned, the five hundred bundles of short fagots brought from the port of Morsant, the three pints of wine and the bread for the victim’s last repast, fraternally shared by the executioner; even the eleven days’ feeding and keep of the sow, at eight Paris pence each. Sometimes they went even beyond animals. The capitularies of Charlemagne and Louis the Debonair inflict severe penalties upon those fiery phantoms who take the liberty of appearing in mid-air.

Meantime the king’s proxy to the Ecclesiastical Court cried aloud, “If the devil possessing this goat, and which has resisted every exorcism, persist in his evil deeds, if he terrify the court with them, we warn him that we shall be compelled to send him to the gibbet or the stake.”

Gringoire was in a cold perspiration. Charmolue took from a table the gipsy girl’s tambourine, and presenting it to the goat in a particular way, he asked the creature:

“What time is it?”

The goat looked at him with an intelligent eye, lifted her gilded hoof, and struck seven blows. It was indeed seven o‘clock. A movement of terror ran through the crowd.

Gringoire could not restrain himself.

“She is lost!” he cried aloud; “you see that she doesn’t know what she is doing.”

“Silence among the people at the end of the hall!” said the usher, sharply.

Jacques Charmolue, by the aid of the same maneuvers with the tambourine, made the goat perform various other tricks as to the day of the month, the month of the year, etc., which the reader has already witnessed. And, by an optical illusion common to judicial debates, those same spectators who had perhaps more than once applauded the innocent pranks of Djali in the public streets, were terrified by them within the walls of the Palace of Justice. The goat was clearly the devil.

It was still worse when, the king’s proxy having emptied out upon the floor a certain leather bag full of movable letters, which Djali wore about her neck, the goat selected with her foot the separate letters spelling out the fatal name “Phœbus.” The spells to which the captain had fallen a victim seemed to be irresistibly demonstrated; and, in all eyes, the gipsy girl—that enchanting dancer who had so often dazzled the passers-by with her grace—was nothing but a horrible witch.

Moreover, she gave no sign of life; neither the pretty pranks of Djali, nor the threats of the magistrates, nor the muttered curses of the audience seemed to reach her ear.

In order to rouse her, an officer was forced to shake her most unmercifully, the president raising his voice solemnly as he said:—

“Girl, you are of the gipsy race, addicted to sorceries. You, with your accomplice, the bewitched goat involved in the charge, did, upon the night of the 29th of March last, murder and stab, in league with the powers of darkness, by the aid of charms and spells, a captain of the king’s troops, one Phoebus de Châteaupers. Do you persist in denying this?”

“Horrible!” cried the young girl, hiding her face in her hands. “My Phœbus! oh, this is indeed hell!”

“Do you persist in your denial?” coldly asked the president.

“Certainly I deny it!” said she, in terrible accents; and she rose to her full height, her eyes flashing.

The president continued bluntly:—

“Then how do you explain the facts alleged against you?”

She answered in a broken voice,—

“I have told you already. I do not know. It was a priest,—a priest whom I do not know; an infernal priest who has long pursued me!”

“There it is,” said the judge; “the goblin monk.”

“Oh, my lords, have pity! I am only a poor girl.”

“A gipsy,” said the judge.

Master Jacques Charmolue said gently,—

“In view of the prisoner’s painful obstinacy, I demand that she be put to the rack.”

“Agreed,” said the president.

The wretched girl shuddered. Still, she rose at the order of the halberdiers, and walked with quite firm step, preceded by Charmolue and the priests of the Bishop’s Court, between two rows of halberds, towards a low door, which suddenly opened and closed behind her, making the unhappy Gringoire feel as if she had been devoured by some awful monster.

As she disappeared, a plaintive bleat was heard. It was the little goat mourning for her.

The hearing was over. A councillor remarked that the gentlemen were tired, and that it would be a long time for them to wait until the torture was over; and the president replied that a magistrate should be ever ready to sacrifice himself to his duty.

“What a disagreeable, tiresome jade,” said an old judge, “to force us to send her to the rack when we have not supped!”

CHAPTER II

Continuation of the Crown Piece Changed to a Dry Leaf

A
fter going up a few steps and down a few steps in corridors so dark that they were lighted with lamps at midday, Esmeralda, still surrounded by her dismal escort, was pushed by the sergeants of the Palace into a room of forbidding appearance. This room, round in form, occupied the ground-floor of one of those great towers which still rise above the layer of modern structures with which the new Paris has covered the old city. There were no windows in this vault, nor was there any opening save the low entrance closed by a huge iron door. Still, there was no lack of light; a furnace was built in the thickness of the wall; a vast fire had been kindled in it, which filled the vault with its red glow, and robbed a paltry candle, placed in a corner, of all its radiance. The iron grating which served to close the furnace was just now raised, only showing, at the mouth of the flaming chasm against the dark wall, the lower edge of its bars, like a row of sharp black teeth set at regular intervals, which made the furnace look like the mouth of one of those legendary dragons that spit forth fire. By the light which it cast, the prisoner saw, all around the room, terrible instruments whose use she did not understand. In the middle of the room was a leather mattress laid almost flat upon the ground, over which hung a strap with a buckle, attached to a copper ring held by a flat-nosed monster carved on the keystone of the vaulted ceiling. Pincers, nippers, and broad plowshares filled the interior of the furnace, and glowed in a confused white-hot heap upon the living coals. The blood-red light of the furnace illuminated in the entire room nothing but a mass of horrible objects.

This Tartarus was known as “the torture-chamber.”

Upon the bed sat carelessly Pierrat Torterue, the sworn torturer. His assistants, two square-faced gnomes with leather aprons and linen breeches, were stirring the iron instruments upon the coals.

In vain the poor girl strove to summon all her courage; as she entered the room a feeling of terror overcame her.

The sergeants of the Bailiff of the Palace ranged themselves on one side, the priests of the Bishop’s Court on the other. A clerk, pen, ink, and paper, and a table were in one corner.

Master Jacques Charmolue approached the girl with a very sweet smile, saying,—

“Do you still persist in your denial, my dear child?”

“Yes,” replied she in a faint voice.

“In that case,” resumed Charmolue, “it will be our very painful duty to question you more urgently than we could wish. Be kind enough to take your seat on that bed. Master Pierrat, make room for the young lady, and close the door.”

Pierrat rose with a grunt.

“If I close the door,” he muttered, “my fire will go out.”

“Very well, my dear fellow,” replied Charmolue; “then leave it open.”

But Esmeralda still stood. That leather bed, upon which so many wretches had writhed in torment, alarmed her. Terror froze the marrow in her bones; she stood there, stupefied and bewildered. At a sign from Charmolue, the two assistants took hold of her and seated her upon the bed. They did not hurt her; but when they touched her, when the leather touched her, she felt all the blood in her body flow back to her heart. She cast a desperate look around the room. She seemed to see all those monstrous tools of torture, which were to the instruments of every sort which she had hitherto seen, what bats, spiders, and wood-lice are to birds and insects, moving and advancing towards her from every direction, to crawl over her and bite her and pinch her.

“Where is the doctor?” asked Charmolue.

“Here,” replied a black gown which she had not noticed before.

She shivered.

“Young lady,” resumed the caressing voice of the king’s proxy to the Ecclesiastical Court, “for the third time, do you persist in denying those things of which you are accused?”

This time she could only nod her head. Her voice failed her.

“You persist?” said Jacques Charmolue. “Then I am extremely sorry, but I must perform the duty of my office.”

“Mr. Proxy,” said Pierrat, abruptly, “with what shall we begin?”

Charmolue hesitated a moment, with the doubtful face of a poet in search of a rhyme.

“With the buskin,” said he at last.

The unfortunate girl felt herself so wholly forsaken by God and man, that her head fell upon her breast like a lifeless thing destitute of all strength.

The torturer and the doctor approached her together. At the same time the two assistants began to rummage in their hideous arsenal.

At the clink of that frightful heap of iron, the unhappy creature trembled like a dead frog when galvanism is applied to it. “Oh,” she murmured in so low a tone that no one heard it, “oh, my Phœbus!” Then she relapsed into her former immobility and marble-like silence. The sight would have wrung any heart save the hearts of judges. She seemed some poor sinning soul questioned by Satan at the scarlet gates of hell. Could it be that this gentle, fair, and fragile creature, a poor grain of millet given over by human justice to be ground in the fearful mills of torture, was the miserable body upon which that frightful array of saws, wheels, and racks was to fasten,—the being whom the rough hands of executioners and pincers were to handle?

But the horny fingers of Pierrat Torterue’s assistants had already brutally bared that charming leg and that tiny foot, which had so often amazed the by-standers with their grace and beauty in the streets of Paris.

“‘Tis a pity!” growled the torturer, as he looked at the dainty and delicate limb.

Had the archdeacon been present, he would certainly have recalled at this moment his symbol of the spider and the fly. Soon the wretched victim saw, through a cloud which spread before her eyes, the buskin approach; soon she saw her foot, locked between the iron-bound boards, hidden by the hideous machine. Then terror restored her strength.

“Take it off!” she cried frantically; and starting up all disheveled, “Mercy!”

She sprang from the bed to fling herself at the feet of the king’s proxy; but her leg was held by the heavy mass of wood and iron, and she sank down upon the buskin, more helpless than a bee with a leaden weight upon its wing.

At a sign from Charmolue she was replaced upon the bed, and two coarse hands bound about her slender waist the strap which hung from the ceiling.

“For the last time, do you confess the facts in the case?” asked Charmolue with his unshaken benevolence.

“I am innocent.”

“Then, young lady, how do you explain the circumstances brought against you?”

“Alas! sir, I do not know!”

“Then you deny everything?”

“Everything!”

“Proceed,” said Charmolue to Pierrat.

Pierrat turned the handle of the screw-jack, the buskin contracted, and the wretched girl uttered one of those terrible shrieks which defy all orthography in any human language.

“Stop!” said Charmolue to Pierrat. “Do you confess?” said he to the gipsy.

“Everything!” cried the miserable girl. “I confess, I confess! Mercy!”

She had not calculated her strength when she braved the torture. Poor child! her life thus far had been so joyous, so sweet, so smooth, the first pang vanquished her.

“Humanity compels me to tell you,” remarked the king’s proxy, “that if you confess, you can look for nothing but death.”

“I hope so, indeed!” said she. And she fell back upon the leather bed, almost fainting, bent double, suspended by the strap buckled around her waist.

“There, my beauty, hold up a little,” said Master Pierrat, lifting her. “You look like the golden sheep which hangs on my Lord of Burgundy’s neck.”

Jacques Charmolue raised his voice,—

“Clerk, write. Young gipsy girl, you confess your complicity in the love-feasts, revels, and evil practices of hell, with wizards, demons, and witches? Answer!”

“Yes,” said she, in so low a voice that it was scarcely more than a whisper.

“You confess that you have seen the ram which Beelzebub reveals in the clouds to summon his followers to the Witches’ Sabbath, and which is only seen by sorcerers?”

“Yes.”

“You confess that you have worshiped the heads of Bophomet, those abominable idols of the Templars?”

“Yes.”

“That you have held constant intercourse with the devil in the shape of a tame goat, included in the trial?”

“Yes.”

“And, finally, you acknowledge and confess that, with the help of the foul fiend and the phantom commonly called the goblin monk, on the night of the 29th of March last you did murder and assassinate a certain captain named Phœbus de Châteaupers?”

She raised her large steady eyes to the magistrate’s face, and answered as if mechanically, without any effort or convulsion,—

“Yes.”

It was plain that she was utterly broken.

“Write, clerk,” said Charmolue; and addressing the torturers: “Release the prisoner, and lead her back to the court-room.”

When the prisoner was “unshod,” the king’s proxy examined her foot, still numb with pain.

“Come!” said he; “there is no great harm done. You screamed in time. You can dance yet, my beauty.”

Then he turned to his companions from the Bishop’s Court—

“So justice is enlightened at last! That’s a comfort, gentlemen! The young lady will bear witness that we have acted with the utmost gentleness.”