Part 23

To Gringoire's mind, La Esmeralda was a harmless and charming creature, pretty, except for a certain pout that was peculiar to her; a naïve and passionate girl, ignorant of everything, and enthusiastic about everything; not yet knowing the difference between a woman and a man, even in dreams; made that way; mad above all for dancing, for noise, for open air; a sort of bee-woman, having invisible wings at her feet, and living in a whirlwind. She owed this nature to the wandering life she had always led. Gringoire had managed to learn that, as a small child, she had traveled through Spain and Catalonia, as far as Sicily; he even believed she had been taken, by the caravan of zingari of which she was part, into the kingdom of Algiers, a country situated in Achaia, which Achaia borders on one side the little Albania and Greece, on the other the sea of Sicily, which is the road to Constantinople. The Bohemians, said Gringoire, were vassals of the king of Algiers, in his capacity as chief of the nation of white Moors. What was certain was that La Esmeralda had come to France still very young by way of Hungary. From all these countries the young girl had brought back scraps of bizarre jargons, strange songs and ideas, which made her language something as motley as her costume half Parisian, half African. For the rest, the people of the quarters she frequented loved her for her gaiety, for her kindness, for her lively ways, for her dances and her songs. In the whole city, she believed herself hated by only two persons, of whom she often spoke with dread: the sachette of the Tour-Roland, an ugly recluse who had some grudge against the Egyptians, and who cursed the poor dancer each time she passed before her window; and a priest who never met her without casting looks and words at her that frightened her. This last circumstance greatly troubled the archdeacon, though Gringoire paid little heed to the trouble; so well had two months sufficed for the careless poet to forget the singular details of that evening when he had made the acquaintance of the Egyptian, and the presence of the archdeacon in all that. Moreover, the little dancer feared nothing; she did not tell fortunes, which kept her safe from those suits of magic so frequently brought against Bohemian women. And then, Gringoire stood in for a brother to her, if not a husband. After all, the philosopher bore this sort of platonic marriage very patiently. It was at least a lodging and bread. Each morning, he left the Cour des Miracles, most often with the Egyptian, helped her in the crossroads with her gathering of farthings and small white coins; each evening he returned with her under the same roof, left her to bolt herself into her little room, and fell asleep with the sleep of the just. A very sweet existence, all things considered, said he, and very propitious to reverie. And then, in his heart of hearts, the philosopher was not very sure of being desperately in love with the Bohemian. He almost as much loved the goat. She was a charming beast, gentle, intelligent, witty, a learned goat. Nothing was more common in the middle ages than these learned animals at which people marveled greatly and which frequently led their instructors to the stake. Yet the sorceries of the goat with the gilded feet were but very innocent tricks. Gringoire explained them to the archdeacon, details which seemed to interest him vividly. It sufficed, in most cases, to present the tambourine to the goat in this or that fashion to obtain from her the mime one wished. She had been trained to this by the Bohemian, who had so rare a talent for such niceties that two months had sufficed her to teach the goat to write with movable letters the word _Phoebus_.

"_Phoebus_!" said the priest; "why _Phoebus_?"

"I do not know," answered Gringoire. "It is perhaps a word she believes endowed with some magic and secret virtue. She repeats it often in a half-voice when she thinks herself alone."

"Are you sure," resumed Claude with his penetrating look, "that it is only a word and not a name?"

"Name of whom?" said the poet.

"What do I know?" said the priest.

"This is what I imagine, sir. These Bohemians are somewhat Guèbres and adore the sun. Hence Phoebus."

"That does not seem to me so clear as to you, master Pierre."

"At all events, it matters little to me. Let her mutter her Phoebus at her ease. What is sure is that Djali already loves me almost as much as she."

"What is this Djali?"

"It is the goat."

The archdeacon rested his chin on his hand, and seemed for a moment dreamy. All at once he turned abruptly toward Gringoire.

"And you swear to me you have not touched her?"

"Whom?" said Gringoire; "the goat?"

"No, that woman."

"My wife! I swear to you, no."

"And you are often alone with her?"

"Every evening, a good hour."

Dom Claude knit his brow.

"Oh! oh! _solus cum sola non cogitabuntur orare Pater noster_[78]."

"Upon my soul, I could say the _Pater_, and the _Ave Maria_, and the Credo _in Deum patrem omnipotentem_, without her paying any more attention to me than a hen to a church."

"Swear to me by your mother's womb," repeated the archdeacon violently, "that you have not touched that creature with the tip of your finger."

"I would swear it as well by my father's head, for the two things have more than one relation. But, my reverend master, allow me in my turn a question."

"Speak, sir."

"What is it to you?"

"The pale face of the archdeacon turned red as a young girl's cheek. He remained a moment without answering, then with visible embarrassment:

"Listen, master Pierre Gringoire. You are not yet damned, that I know. I am interested in you and wish you well. Now the least contact with that Egyptian of the demon would make you vassal of Satanas. You know that it is always the body that loses the soul. Woe to you if you approach that woman! That is all."

"I tried once," said Gringoire scratching his ear, "it was the first day, but I pricked myself."

"You had that effrontery, master Pierre?"

And the priest's brow darkened.

"Another time," continued the poet smiling, "I looked before going to bed through the hole of her lock, and I well saw the most delicious lady in her smock who ever made the strap of a bed cry out under her bare foot."

"Go to the devil!" cried the priest with a terrible look, and, pushing Gringoire by the shoulders, astonished, he plunged with great strides under the darkest arcades of the cathedral.

III

THE BELLS

Since the morning of the pillory, the neighbors of Notre-Dame had thought they remarked that Quasimodo's bell-ringing ardor had greatly cooled. Formerly there were peals on every occasion, long aubades lasting from prime to compline, volleys from the belfry for a high mass, rich scales run upon the little bells for a wedding, for a baptism, intermingling in the air like a broidery of all sorts of charming sounds. The old church, all vibrant and all sonorous, was in a perpetual joy of bells. One felt there without cease the presence of a spirit of noise and caprice who sang through all those mouths of brass. Now that spirit seemed to have disappeared; the cathedral appeared gloomy and willingly kept silence. The feasts and the burials had their simple ringing, dry and bare, what the ritual required, nothing more. Of the double noise an church makes, the organ within, the bell without, there remained only the organ. It would have seemed that there was no longer a musician in the bell-towers. Quasimodo was there yet, however. What then had passed within him? Was it that the shame and despair of the pillory still lasted in the depths of his heart, that the torturer's blows of the lash reverberated endlessly in his soul, and that the sadness of such treatment had extinguished everything in him, even his passion for the bells? Or was it that Marie had a rival in the heart of the ringer of Notre-Dame, and that the great bell and her fourteen sisters were neglected for something more lovable and more beautiful?

It happened that, in that gracious year 1482, the Annunciation fell on a Tuesday, the 25th of March. That day, the air was so pure and so light that Quasimodo felt some love of his bells return. He mounted therefore into the northern tower, while below the bedel threw wide open the doors of the church, which were then enormous panels of stout wood covered with leather, bordered with gilded iron nails and framed with sculptures "very artfully elaborated."

Having reached the high cage of the ringing, Quasimodo considered for some time with a sad shaking of the head the six bell-frames, as if grieving over something strange that had interposed itself in his heart between them and him. But when he had set them in motion, when he felt that cluster of bells move under his hand, when he saw, for he did not hear it, the palpitating octave rise and fall upon that sonorous ladder like a bird which hops from branch to branch, when the devil of music, that demon who shakes a glittering bunch of strettos, trills and arpeggios, had seized the poor deaf man, then he became happy again, he forgot everything, and his heart, dilating, made his face expand.

He went and came, he clapped his hands, he ran from one rope to another, he animated the six singers with voice and gesture, like an orchestra conductor spurring on intelligent virtuosos.

"Go, go, Gabrielle," said he. "Pour all thy noise into the square. It is a feast today.--Thibauld, no laziness. You are slackening. Go, go then! are you rusted, lazy one?--That's right! Quick! quick! let not the clapper be seen. Outring them all deaf as I am. That's it, Thibauld, bravely!--Guillaume! Guillaume! you are the biggest, and Pasquier is the smallest, and Pasquier goes best. I wager those who hear hear better than you.--Well! well! my Gabrielle, loud! louder!--Hey! what are you two doing up there, the Sparrows? I see you not make the least noise.--What are those beaks of brass that seem to gape when they should sing? Come, to work! It is the Annunciation. There is a fine sun. There must be a fine peal.--Poor Guillaume! there you are all out of breath, my big one!"

He was wholly occupied in goading his bells, which all six leapt who best could and shook their shining cruppers like a noisy team of Spanish mules pricked here and there by the apostrophes of the muleteer.

All at once, letting his gaze fall between the broad slate scales which at a certain height cover the sheer wall of the bell-tower, he saw in the square a young girl strangely dressed, who stopped, who spread a carpet on the ground upon which a little goat came to seat itself, and a group of spectators which rounded itself about. This sight suddenly changed the course of his thoughts, and froze his musical enthusiasm like a breath of air freezes resin in fusion. He stopped, turned his back to the bells, and squatted behind the slate awning, fixing on the dancer that dreamy, tender and soft look which had already once astonished the archdeacon. Meanwhile the forgotten bells went out abruptly all at once, to the great disappointment of the lovers of ringing, who were listening in good faith to the peal above the Pont-au-Change, and went away stupefied like a dog to whom one has shown a bone and gives a stone.

IV

_ANANKÊ_

It came to pass that on a fine morning of that same month of March, I believe it was Saturday the 29th, the day of Saint Eustache, our young friend the scholar Jehan Frollo du Moulin perceived as he dressed that his breeches, which held his purse, gave forth no metallic sound. "Poor purse!" said he, drawing it from his pocket, "what! not the least little parisis! how cruelly the dice, the beer-pots and Venus have torn you open! how empty, wrinkled and flabby you are! You resemble the throat of a fury! I ask you, master Cicero and master Seneca, whose worm-eaten copies I see scattered on the floor, what serves it me to know, better than a master of the mint or a Jew of the Pont-aux-Changeurs, that a crown gold ecu is worth thirty-five unzains of twenty-five sous eight deniers parisis each, and that a crescent ecu is worth thirty-six unzains of twenty-six sous and six deniers tournois apiece, if I have not a miserable black farthing to risk on the double-six! Oh! consul Cicero! this is no calamity one escapes with periphrases, with _quemadmodum_[79] and _verum enim vero_[80]!"

He dressed sadly. A thought had come to him as he laced his boots, but he at first repelled it; yet it returned, and he put his waistcoat on inside out, evident sign of a violent inward struggle. At last he threw his cap rudely to the ground and cried: "So much the worse! it shall be as it may. I am going to my brother's. I shall catch a sermon, but I shall catch an ecu."

Then he hastily donned his fur-lined jacket with hanging sleeves, gathered up his cap and went out in despair.

He went down the rue de la Harpe toward the Cité. In passing before the rue de la Huchette, the smell of those admirable spits which turned incessantly came to tickle his olfactory apparatus, and he gave a look of love to the cyclopean roast-meat shop which wrung one day from the cordelier Calatagirone this pathetic exclamation: _Veramente, queste rotisserie sono cosa stupenda_[81]! But Jehan had nothing to dine on, and he plunged with a deep sigh under the porch of the Petit-Châtelet, enormous double-trefoil of massive towers which guarded the entrance to the Cité.

He did not even take time to throw a stone as he passed, as was the custom, at the miserable statue of that Périnet Leclerc who had delivered the Paris of Charles VI to the English, a crime which his effigy, its face crushed with stones and soiled with mud, expiated for three centuries at the corner of the streets of la Harpe and de Bussy, as on an eternal pillory.

The Petit-Pont crossed, the rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève straddled, Jehan de Molendino found himself before Notre-Dame. Then his indecision seized him again, and he walked awhile about the statue of M. Legris, repeating to himself with anguish: "The sermon is sure, the ecu is doubtful!"

He stopped a bedel who was leaving the cloister. "Where is monsieur the archdeacon of Josas?"

"I believe he is in his cell of the tower," said the bedel, "and I do not advise you to disturb him there, unless you come on behalf of someone like the pope or monsieur the king."

Jehan clapped his hands.

"Body of the devil! here is a magnificent occasion to see the famous cell of sorceries!"

Determined by this reflection, he resolutely plunged under the little black door, and began to mount the spiral stair of Saint-Gilles which leads to the upper stories of the tower. "I am going to see!" said he as he went; "by the holy Virgin's corbignolles! it must be a curious thing, that cell which my reverend brother hides like his pudendum! They say he lights hell-kitchens there, and cooks at a great fire the philosopher's stone. God's truth! I care for the philosopher's stone like a pebble, and I should rather find on his stove an omelette of Easter eggs with bacon than the biggest philosopher's stone in the world!"

Having reached the gallery of the little columns, he puffed a moment, and swore against the interminable staircase by I know not how many millions of cartloads of devils, then resumed his ascent by the narrow door of the northern tower today forbidden to the public. Some moments after passing the bell-cage, he met a little landing contrived in a lateral recess and under the vault a low ogive door whose great lock and powerful iron armature a loophole, pierced opposite in the circular wall of the staircase, permitted him to observe. Persons who should be curious today to visit this door will recognize it by this inscription, graved in white letters in the black wall: J'ADORE CORALIE, 1829. SIGNED UGÈNE. _Signed_ is in the text.

"Oof!" said the scholar; "it is doubtless here."

The key was in the lock. The door was close by. He pushed it softly, and passed his head through the opening.

The reader is not without having leafed through the admirable work of Rembrandt, that Shakespeare of painting. Among so many wonderful engravings, there is in particular an etching which represents, as is supposed, doctor Faust, and which it is impossible to contemplate without dazzlement. It is a dark cell. In the middle is a table loaded with hideous objects, skulls, spheres, alembics, compasses, hieroglyphic parchments. The doctor is before this table, clad in his thick gown and capped to the eyebrows with his furred bonnet. He is seen only to the waist. He is half risen from his immense armchair, his clenched fists lean on the table, and he regards with curiosity and terror a great luminous circle, formed of magic letters, which shines on the back wall like the solar spectrum in the dark chamber. This cabalistic sun seems to tremble to the eye and fills the wan cell with its mysterious radiance. It is horrible and it is beautiful.

Something rather similar to the cell of Faust offered itself to Jehan's sight when he had ventured his head through the half-open door. It was likewise a dark recess barely lighted. There was also a great armchair and a great table, compasses, alembics, skeletons of animals hung from the ceiling, a sphere rolling on the pavement, hippocephali pell-mell with jars wherein trembled leaves of gold, skulls set upon vellums variegated with figures and characters, great manuscripts piled all open without pity for the brittle corners of the parchment, finally, all the rubbish of science, and everywhere, upon this mess, dust and cobwebs; but there was no circle of luminous letters, no doctor in ecstasy contemplating the flaming vision like the eagle regards his sun.

Yet the cell was not deserted. A man was seated in the armchair and bent over the table. Jehan, to whom he turned his back, could see only his shoulders and the back of his skull; but he had no trouble in recognizing that bald head to which nature had given an eternal tonsure, as if she had wished to mark by an outward symbol the irresistible clerical vocation of the archdeacon.

Jehan therefore recognized his brother. But the door had opened so softly that nothing had warned dom Claude of his presence. The curious scholar profited thereby to examine at leisure for some moments the cell. A large furnace, which he had not remarked at first, was to the left of the armchair, below the dormer window. The ray of daylight which penetrated by this opening crossed a round spider's web, which with taste inscribed its delicate rose-window in the ogive of the dormer, and at the center of which the architect insect kept itself immobile like the hub of this wheel of lace. Upon the furnace were accumulated in disorder all sorts of vessels, stoneware phials, glass retorts, charcoal matrasses. Jehan observed sighing that there was not a single saucepan. "The kitchen battery is cold!" thought he.

For the rest, there was no fire in the furnace, and it even seemed that none had been lighted for a long time. A glass mask, which Jehan remarked among the alchemy utensils, and which served doubtless to protect the archdeacon's face when he elaborated some dreadful substance, was in a corner, covered with dust, and as if forgotten. Beside it lay a bellows no less dusty, and whose upper leaf bore this legend inlaid in letters of copper: SPIRA, SPERA[82].

Other legends were written, according to the fashion of the hermetics, in great number upon the walls; some traced in ink, others graved with a metal point. Moreover, gothic letters, Hebrew letters, Greek letters and Roman letters pell-mell, the inscriptions overflowing at hazard, these upon those, the freshest effacing the oldest, and all interlacing one within another like the branches of a thicket, like the pikes of a melée. It was, indeed, a rather confused melée of all philosophies, all reveries, all human wisdoms. There was one here and there which shone above the others like a flag among lance-heads. It was, most often, a brief Latin or Greek device, such as the middle age so well formulated: _Unde? inde_[83]?--_Homo homini monstrum_[84].--_Astra, castra, nomen, numen_[85].--_Mega biblion, mega kakon_[86].--_Sapere aude_[87].--_Flat ubi vult_[88],--etc.; sometimes a word devoid of all apparent sense: _Anankophagia_[89], which perhaps hid a bitter allusion to the cloister regime; sometimes a simple maxim of clerical discipline formulated in a regular hexameter: _Coelestem dominum, terrestrem dicito domnum_[90]. There were also _passim_[91] Hebrew grammaries, which Jehan, already very little Greek, understood nothing of, and the whole was traversed at every turn by stars, figures of men or animals and triangles which intersected, which contributed not a little to make the daubed wall of the cell resemble a sheet of paper over which a monkey had drawn a pen charged with ink.

The whole of the cell, moreover, presented a general aspect of abandonment and dilapidation; and the bad state of the utensils let it be supposed that the master had already for rather long been distracted from his labors by other preoccupations.

This master, however, bent over a vast manuscript adorned with bizarre paintings, seemed tormented by an idea which came ceaselessly to mingle with his meditations. It is at least what Jehan judged in hearing him cry out, with the pensive intermissions of a hollow dreamer who dreams aloud:

"Yes, Manou said it, and Zoroaster taught it, the sun is born of fire, the moon of the sun. Fire is the soul of the great all. Its elementary atoms pour out and stream incessantly upon the world by infinite currents. At the points where these currents intersect in the sky, they produce light; at their points of intersection in the earth, they produce gold.--Light, gold, the same thing. From fire in the concrete state.--The difference of the visible to the palpable, of the fluid to the solid for the same substance, of water vapor to ice, nothing more.--These are not dreams, it is the general law of nature.--But how to draw from science the secret of this general law? What! this light which floods my hand, it is gold! these same atoms dilated according to a certain law, it is only a matter of condensing them according to a certain other law!--How to do it?--Some have imagined burying a ray of the sun.--Averroës,--yes, it is Averroës,--Averroës buried one under the first pillar on the left of the sanctuary of the koran, in the great mahomerie of Cordova; but one cannot open the vault to see if the operation succeeded until eight thousand years hence.

"The devil!" said Jehan to himself, "that is a long time to wait for an ecu!"

“Stories of the world, in your language.”