The Hunchback of Notre Dame (54 page)

The Duke of Egypt pointed sadly to the two streams of boiling lead which still streaked the dark façade like two long phosphorescent spindles.

“Churches have been known to defend themselves before,” he observed with a sigh. “St. Sophia, at Constantinople, some forty years ago, thrice threw down the crescent of Mahomet merely by shaking her domes, which are her heads. Guillaume de Paris, who built this church, was a magician.”

“Must we then go home discomfited like a pack of wretched lackeys?” said Clopin, “and leave our sister here, to be hanged by those cowled wolves tomorrow!”

“And the sacristy, where there are cartloads of gold?” added a Vagabond whose name we regret that we do not know.

“By Mahomet’s beard!” cried Trouillefou.

“Let us make one more trial,” added the Vagabond.

Mathias Hungadi shook his head.

“We shall not enter by the door. We must find the weak spot in the old witch’s armor,—a hole, a back gate, any joint.”

“Who’ll join us?” said Clopin. “I shall have another try. By the way, where is that little student Jehan, who put on such a coat of mail?”

“He is probably dead,” answered some one; “we don’t hear his laugh.”

The King of Tunis frowned: “So much the worse. There was a stout heart beneath that steel. And Master Pierre Gringoire?”

“Captain Clopin,” said Andry le Rouge, “he took to his heels when we had only come as far as the Pont-aux-Changeurs.”

Clopin stamped his foot. “By the Mass! he urges us on, and then leaves us in the lurch! A cowardly prater, helmeted with a slipper!”

“Captain Clopin,” said Andry le Rouge, who was looking down the Rue du Parvis, “there comes the little student.”

“Pluto be praised!” said Clopin. “But what the devil is he lugging after him?”

It was indeed Jehan, running as fast as was possible under the weight of his heavy armor and a long ladder which he dragged sturdily over the pavement, more breathless than an ant harnessed to a blade of grass twenty times its own length.

“Victory! Te
Deum!”
shouted the student. “Here’s the ladder belonging to the longshoremen of St. Landry’s wharf.”

Clopin approached him:—

“Zounds, child! what are you going to do with that ladder?”

“I’ve got it,” replied Jehan, panting and gasping. “I knew where it was,—under the shed at the lieutenant’s house. There’s a girl there who knows me, who thinks me a perfect Cupid. I took advantage of her folly to get the ladder, and I have the ladder, odds bodikins! The poor girl came down in her shift to let me in.”

“Yes,” said Clopin; “but what will you do with the ladder now that you have got it?”

Jehan looked at him with a mischievous, cunning air, and cracked his fingers like so many castanets. At that moment he was sublime. He had on his head one of those enormous fifteenth-century helmets, which terrified the foe by their fantastic crests. It bristled with ten iron beaks, so that he might have disputed the tremendous ephithet of
^du
with Nestor’s Homeric vessel.

“What shall I do with it, august King of Tunis? Do you see that row of statues with their foolish faces yonder, above the three porches?”

“Yes; what then?”

“That is the gallery of the kings of France.”

“What is that to me?” said Clopin.

“Wait a bit! At the end of that gallery there is a door which is always on the latch, and with this ladder I will climb to it, and then I am in the church.”

“Let me go up first, boy!”

“Not a bit of it, comrade; the ladder is mine. Come, you may be second.”

“May Beelzebub strangle you!” said the surly Clopin. “I’ll not be second to any man.”

“Then, Clopin, seek a ladder for yourself”; and Jehan set out at full speed across the square, dragging his ladder after him, shouting,—

“Help, lads, help!”

In an instant the ladder was lifted, and placed against the railing of the lower gallery, over one of the side doors. The crowd of Vagrants, uttering loud cheers, thronged to the foot of it, eager to ascend; but Jehan maintained his right, and was first to set foot upon the rounds. The journey was long and slow. The gallery of the kings of France is in this day some sixty feet above the pavement. The eleven steps leading to the door made it still higher at the time of our story. Jehan climbed slowly, hampered by his heavy armor, clinging to the ladder with one hand and his cross-bow with the other. When he reached the middle, he cast a melancholy glance downwards at the poor dead Men of Slang who bestrewed the steps.

“Alas!” said he, “there’s a heap of corpses worthy of the fifth book of the Iliad!” Then he resumed his ascent. The Vagrants followed him; there was one upon every round. As this undulating line of cuirassed backs rose through the darkness, it looked like a serpent with scales of steel rearing its length along the church. Jehan, who represented the head, whistled shrilly, thus completing the illusion.

At last the student touched the balcony, and nimbly strode over it, amid the applause of the assembled Vagrants. Thus master of the citadel, he uttered a shout of joy, and all at once paused, petrified. He had seen behind one of the royal statues Quasimodo and his glittering eye lurking in the shadow.

Before a second assailant could set foot upon the gallery, the terrible hunchback leaped to the top of the ladder, seized, without a word, the ends of the two uprights in his strong hands, raised them, pushed them from the wall, balancing for a moment, amid screams of agony, the long, pliant ladder loaded with Vagrants from top to bottom, and then suddenly, with superhuman force, hurled the clustering mass of men into the square. There was an instant when the boldest trembled. The ladder plunged backward, for a moment stood erect, and seemed to hesitate, then tottered, then all at once, describing a frightful arc of eighty feet in radius, fell headlong on the pavement with its burden of bandits, more swiftly than a drawbridge when the chains which hold it are broken. There was an awful volley of curses, then all was hushed, and a few mutilated wretches crawled away from under the heap of dead.

A clamor of rage and pain followed the first cries of triumph among the besiegers. Quasimodo looked on unmoved, leaning upon the balustrade. He seemed like some long-haired old king at his window.

Jehan Frollo, for his part, was in a critical situation. He was alone in the gallery with the dreadful ringer, parted from his companions by a perpendicular wall eighty feet high. While Quasimodo juggled with the ladder, the student hurried to the postern, which he supposed would be open. Not at all. The deaf man, on entering the gallery had fastened it behind him. Jehan then hid himself behind a stone king, not daring to breathe, and eyeing the monstrous hunchback with terror, like the man who, making love to the wife of the keeper of a menagerie, went one night to see her by appointment, climbed the wrong wall, and abruptly found himself face to face with a white bear.

For a few moments the deaf man paid no heed to him; but finally he turned his head and started. He had just seen the student.

Jehan prepared for a rude encounter; but the deaf man stood motionless: he had merely turned, and was looking at the youth.

“Ho! ho!” said Jehan, “why do you fix that single melancholy eye so steadfastly upon me?”

As he said this, the young scamp slyly adjusted his cross-bow.

“Quasimodo,” he cried, “I am going to change your name! Henceforth you shall be called ‘the blind!’”

The arrow flew. The winged bolt whizzed through the air, and was driven into the hunchback’s left arm. It disturbed Quasimodo no more than a scratch would have done the statue of King Pharamond. He put his hand to the dart, pulled it forth, and quietly broke it across his great knee; then he let the two pieces fall to the ground rather than threw them down. But Jehan had no time to fire a second shot. The arrow broken, Quasimodo drew a long breath, leaped like a grasshopper, and came down upon the student, whose armor was flattened against the wall by the shock.

Then by the dim light of the torches a terrible thing might have been seen.

Quasimodo with his left hand grasped both Jehan’s arms, the poor fellow making no resistance, so hopeless did he feel that it would be. With his right hand the deaf man removed from him one after the other, in silence and with ominous slowness, all the pieces of his armor,—the sword, the daggers, the helmet, the cuirass, and the brassarts. He looked like a monkey picking a nut as he dropped the student’s iron shell, bit by bit, at his feet.

When the youth found himself stripped, disarmed, naked, and helpless in those terrible hands, he did not try to speak to that deaf man, but he laughed impudently in his face, and sang, with the bold unconcern of a lad of sixteen, the song then popular:—

“She’s clad in bright array,
The city of Cambray.
Marafin plundered her one day—”

He did not finish. They saw Quasimodo upright on the parapet, holding the boy by the feet with one hand, and swinging him round like a sling over the abyss; then a sound was heard like a box made of bone dashed against a wall, and something fell, but caught a third of the way down upon a projection. It was a dead body which hung there, bent double, the back broken, the skull empty.

A cry of horror rose from the Vagrants.

“Vengeance!” yelled Clopin. “Sack!” replied the multitude. “Assault! assault!”

Then there was an awful howl, intermingled with all languages, all dialects, and all accents. The poor student’s death filled the mob with zealous fury. Shame gained the upper hand, and wrath that they had so long been held in check before a church by a hunchback. Rage found ladders, multiplied torches, and in a few moments Quasimodo, in despair, beheld that fearful swarm mounting on all sides to attack Notre-Dame. Those who had no ladders had knotted ropes; those who had no ropes scrambled up by the jutting sculptures. They clung to one another’s rags. There was no way to resist this rising tide of awful figures; fury gleamed from their fierce faces; their grimy foreheads streamed with perspiration; their eyes gleamed; all these grimaces, all these deformities beset Quasimodo. It seemed as if some other church had sent its gorgons, its medieval animals, its dragons, its demons, and its most fantastic carvings, to lay siege to Notre-Dame. A stratum of living monsters seemed to cover the stone monsters of the cathedral front.

Meantime, the square was starred with a thousand torches. The scene of confusion, hitherto lost in darkness, was suddenly ablaze with light. The square shone resplendent, and cast a red glow upon the heavens; the bonfire kindled upon the high platform still burned, and lighted up the city in the distance. The huge silhouette of the two towers, outlined afar upon the housetops of Paris, formed a vast patch of shadow amid the radiance. The city seemed to be aroused. Distant alarm-bells sounded. The Vagrants howled, panted, swore, climbed higher and higher; and Quasimodo, powerless against so many foes, shuddering for the gipsy girl, seeing those furious faces approach nearer and nearer to his gallery, implored Heaven to grant a miracle, and wrung his hands in despair.

CHAPTER V

The Retreat Where Louis of France Says His Prayers

T
he reader may remember that a moment before he caught sight of the nocturnal band of Vagrants, Quasimodo, while inspecting Paris from the top of his belfry, saw but one light still burning, and that gleamed from a window in the highest story of a tall dark structure close beside the Porte Saint-Antoine. This building was the Bastille; that starry light was the candle of Louis XI.

King Louis XI had actually been in Paris for two days. He was to set out again two days later for his fortress of Montilz-les-Tours. His visits to his good city of Paris were rare and brief; for he never felt that he had enough trapdoors, gibbets, and Scotch archers about him there.

He had that day come to sleep at the Bastille. The great chamber, five fathoms square, which he had at the Louvre, with its huge chimney-piece adorned with twelve great beasts and thirteen great prophets, and his great bed eleven feet by twelve, were not to his taste. He was lost amid all these grandeurs. This good, homely king preferred the Bastille, with a tiny chamber and a simple bed. And then, the Bastille was stronger than the Louvre.

This tiny room, which the king reserved to his own use in the famous state-prison, was spacious enough, after all, and occupied the topmost floor of a turret adjoining the keep. It was a circular chamber, carpeted with mats of lustrous straw, ceiled with beams enriched with
fleurs-de-lis
of gilded metal, with colored interjoists wainscotted with rich woods studded with rosettes of white metal painted a fine bright green, compounded of orpiment and wood.

There was but one window,—a long arched opening latticed with brass wire and iron bars, and still further darkened by beautiful stained glass emblazoned with the arms of the king and queen, each pane of which was worth twenty-two pence.

There was but one entrance,—a modern door, with surbased arch, hung with tapestry on the inside, and on the outside decorated with a porch of bogwood, a frail structure of curiously wrought cabinet-work, such as was very common in old houses some hundred and fifty years ago. “Although they are disfiguring and cumbersome,” says Sauval, in despair, “still, our old folk will not do away with them, and retain them in spite of everything.”

The room contained none of the furniture ordinarily found in such an apartment,—neither benches, nor trestles, nor common box stools, nor more elegant stools mounted on posts and counter-posts, at four pence each. There was only one chair,—a folding-chair with arms,—and a very superb one it was: the wood was painted with roses on a red ground, the seat was of scarlet Spanish leather, trimmed with heavy silk fringe and studded with countless golden nails. The solitary chair showed that but one person had a right to be seated in that room. Besides the chair, and very near the window there was a table covered with a cloth embroidered with figures of birds.

Upon this table were a standish spotted with ink, sundry parchments, a few pens, and a chased silver goblet. Farther away stood a stove, and a prayer-desk of crimson velvet embossed with gold. Lastly, at the back of the room there was a simple bed of yellow and carnation-colored damask, without tinsel or lace,—merely a plain fringe. This bed, famous for having borne the sleep,—or sleeplessness,—of Louis XI, might still be seen two hundred years ago, at the house of a councillor of state, where it was viewed by old Madame Pilou, celebrated in “Cyrus,” under the name of “Ar ricidia” and of “Morality Embodied.”

Such was the room known as “the retreat where Louis of France says his prayers.”

At the moment when we introduce our reader to it, this retreat was very dark. The curfew had rung an hour before; it was night, and there was but one flickering wax candle placed on the table to light five persons grouped about the room.

The first upon whom the direct rays of the candle fell was a nobleman, magnificently dressed in scarlet breeches and jerkin striped with silver, and a loose coat with padded shoulders, made of cloth of gold brocaded in black. This splendid costume, upon which the light played, seemed to be frosted with flame at every fold. The man who wore it had his armorial bearings embroidered on his breast in gay colors,—a chevron with a deer passant at the base of the shield. The escutcheon was supported by an olive-branch dexter and a buck’s horn sinister. This man wore at his belt a rich dagger, the silver-gilt handle of which was wrought in the shape of a crest, and surmounted by a count’s coronet. He had an evil expression, a haughty mien, and a proud bearing. At the first glance his face revealed arrogance, at the second craft.

He stood bare-headed, a long scroll in his hand, behind the arm-chair in which sat, his body awkwardly bent, his knees crossed, his elbow on the table, a most ill-attired person. Imagine, indeed, upon the luxurious Spanish leather seat, a pair of knock knees, a couple of slender shanks meagerly arrayed in black woollen knitted stuff, a body wrapped in a fustian coat edged with fur, which had far more skin than hair; finally, to crown the whole, a greasy old hat, of the poorest quality of black cloth, stuck round with a circlet of small leaden images. This, with a dirty skull-cap, which showed scarce a single hair, was all that could be seen of the seated personage. His head was bent so low upon his breast that nothing could be distinguished of his face, which was wholly in shadow, unless it might be the tip of his nose, upon which a ray of light fell, and which was clearly a long one. By the thinness of his wrinkled hand, he was evidently an old man. This was Louis XI.

Some distance behind them, two men clad in Flemish fashion chatted together in low tones. They were not so entirely in the shadow but that any one who had been present at the performance of Gringoire’s play could recognize them as two of the chief Flemish envoys, Guillaume Rym, the wise pensionary of Ghent, and Jacques Coppenole, the popular hosier. It will be remembered that these two men were connected with Louis XI’s secret policy.

Lastly, at the farther end of the room, near the door, stood in the gloom, motionless as a statue, a sturdy man with thickset limbs, in military trappings, his doublet embroidered with armorial bearings, whose square face, with its goggle eyes, immense mouth, and ears hidden under two broad pent-houses of straight, lank hair, partook at once of the character of the dog and the tiger.

All were uncovered save the king.

The gentleman nearest to the king was reading a lengthy document, to which his Majesty seemed listening most attentively. The two Flemings whispered together.

“Zounds!” grumbled Coppenole, “I am weary with standing; is there no chair here?”

Rym replied by a shake of the head, accompanied by a prudent smile.

“Zounds!” resumed Coppenole, utterly miserable at being obliged to lower his voice; “I long to sit down on the floor with my legs crossed, in true hosier style, as I do in my own shop at home.”

“Beware how you do so, Master Jacques.”

“Bless me! Master Guillaume! must we be on our feet forever here?”

“Or on our knees,” said Rym.

At this moment the king spoke. They were silent.

“Fifty pence for the coats of our lackeys, and twelve pounds for the cloaks of the clerks of our crown. That’s it! Pour out gold by the ton! Are you mad, Olivier?”

So saying, the old man lifted his head. The golden shells of the collar of Saint Michel glistened about his neck. The light of the candle fell full upon his thin, peevish profile. He snatched the paper from his companion’s hands.

“You will ruin us!” he cried, running his hollow eye over the scroll. “What is all this? What need have we for so vast an establishment? Two chaplains at ten pounds a month each, and an assistant at one hundred pence! A valet at ninety pounds a year! Four head cooks at six-score pounds a year each; a roaster, a soup-maker, a sauce-maker, an under cook, a keeper of the stores, two stewards’ assistants, at ten pounds a month each! Two scullions at eight pounds! A groom and his two helpers at twenty-four pounds a month! A porter, a pastry-cook, a baker, two wagoners, each sixty pounds a year! And the farrier, six-score pounds! And the master of our exchequer chamber, twelve hundred pounds! And the comptroller five hundred! And I know not how many more! ‘Tis sheer madness! Our servants’ wages plunder France! All the treasures of the Louvre will melt away before such a wasting fire of expense! We will sell our plate! And next year, if God and Our Lady [here he raised his hat] grant us life, we will take our tisanes from a pewter pot!”

With these words he cast a glance at the silver goblet which sparkled on the table. He coughed, and continued,—

“Master Olivier, princes who reign over great domains, such as kings and emperors, should never suffer extravagant living in their houses; for thence the fire spreads to the provinces. Therefore, Master Olivier, forget this not. Our expenses increase yearly. The thing displeases us. What, by the Rood! until ‘79 they never exceeded thirty-six thousand pounds; in ’80 they amounted to forty-three thousand six hundred and nineteen pounds,—I have the figures in my head; in ‘81 they were sixty-six thousand six hundred and eighty pounds; and this year, by my faith! they will come to eighty thousand pounds! Doubled in four years! monstrous!”

He paused for lack of breath; then he went on angrily,—

“I see around me none but people fattening on my leanness! You suck crowns from me at every pore!”

All were silent. His rage must be allowed free vent. He continued: —

“It is like that petition in Latin from the nobles of France, that we would re-establish what they call the charges on the crown! Charges, indeed! crushing charges! Ah, gentlemen! you say that we are not a king to reign
dapifero nullo,
^dv
buticulario
nullo!
We will show you, by the Rood! whether we be a king or no!”

Here he smiled with a sense of his power; his bad humor moderated, and he turned towards the Flemings:

“Mark you, gossip Guillaume, the head baker, the chief cellarer, the lord chamberlain, the lord seneschal, are not worth so much as the meanest lackey; remember that, gossip Coppenole. They are good for nothing. As they thus hang uselessly around the king, they remind me of the four Evangelists about the dial of the great clock on the Palace, which Philippe Brille has just done up as good as new. They are gilded over, but they do not mark the hour, and the hands go on as well without them.”

For a moment he seemed lost in thought, and added, shaking his aged head:—

“Ho! ho! by Notre-Dame, I am no Philippe Brille, and I will not re-gild my lordly vassals! Go on, Olivier!”

The person thus addressed took the scroll from his royal master’s hands, and began to read again in a loud voice:—

“To Adam Tenon, clerk to the keeper of the seals of the provosty of Paris, for the silver, fashioning, and engraving of said seals, which have been new made by reason of the others preceding being old and worn out, and no longer fit for use, twelve Paris pounds.

“To Guillaume Frère, the sum of four pounds four Paris pence for his labor and cost in nourishing and feeding the pigeons in the two dovecots of the Hotel des Tournelles, for the months of January, February, and March of this present year; for the which he hath expended seven sextaries of barley.

“To a Grey Friar, for confessing a criminal, four Paris pence.”

The king listened in silence. From time to time he coughed; then he raised the goblet to his lips, and swallowed a mouthful with a wry face.

“In this year have been made by order of the courts and by sound of trumpet, in the public places of Paris, fifty-six proclamations; the account yet to be made up.

“For quest and search in sundry places, both in Paris and elsewhere, for funds said to be concealed there, but nothing found, forty-five Paris pounds.”

“A crown buried to unearth a penny!” said the king.

“For setting six panes of white glass at the Hotel des Tournelles, in the place where the iron cage is, thirteen pence; for making and delivering, by the king’s command, on muster-day, four escutcheons with the arms of our said lord wreathed all around with roses, six pounds; for two new sleeves to the king’s old doublet, twenty pence; for a box of grease to grease the king’s boots, fifteen farthings; for rebuilding a sty to lodge the king’s black swine, thirty Paris pounds; sundry partitions, planks, and gratings made for the safe-keeping of the lions at the Hotel Saint-Pol, twenty-two pounds.”

“Here be costly beasts,” said Louis XI. “Never mind, ’t is a luxury which befits a king. There is one big tawny lion that I love for his pretty tricks. Have you seen him, Master Guillaume? Princes needs to keep these rare wild beasts. We kings should have lions for lapdogs, and tigers instead of cats. Grandeur beseems a crown. In the time of Jupiter’s pagans, when the people offered an hundred sheep and an hundred oxen to the gods, emperors gave an hundred lions and an hundred eagles. That was fierce and very fine. The kings of France have ever had these roarings round their throne; nevertheless, my subjects must do me the justice to say that I spend far less money in that way than my predecessors, and that I am much more moderate as regards lions, bears, elephants, and leopards. Go on, Master Olivier. We merely wished to say this much to our Flemish friends.”

Guillaume Rym bowed low, while Coppenole, with his sullen air, looked like one of those bears to which his Majesty referred.

The king did not notice him. He wet his lips with the liquid in the goblet, and spat the brew out again, saying, “Faugh! what a disagreeable tisane!” The reader continued:—

“For feeding a rascally tramp, kept under lock and key in the little cell at the shambles for six months, until it should be decided what to do with him, six pounds and four pence.”

“What’s that?” interrupted the king; “feed what should be hanged! By the Rood! I will not pay one penny for his keep! Olivier, settle the matter with Master d‘Estouteville, and this very night make me preparations for this gallant’s wedding with the gallows. Go on.”