Part 26

The interior of the den was no less dilapidated than she. There were chalk walls, black joists at the ceiling, a dismantled chimney, cobwebs in every corner, and in the middle a staggering flock of tables and lame stools, a dirty child in the ashes, and at the back a staircase or rather a wooden ladder leading to a trapdoor in the ceiling.

Upon entering this lair, the mysterious companion of Phoebus raised his cloak to his eyes. The captain, meanwhile, swearing like a Saracen, hastened to _make a crown shine with the sun_[104], as our admirable Régnier says.

“The room of Sainte-Marthe,” said he.

The old woman treated him as my lord, and slipped the crown into a drawer. It was the piece the man in the black cloak had given to Phoebus. While she turned her back, the hairy and ragged little boy who was playing in the ashes adroitly approached the drawer, took the crown, and put in its place a dry leaf which he had torn from a fagot.

The old woman motioned to the two gentlemen, as she called them, to follow her, and climbed the ladder before them. Having reached the upper floor, she set her lamp upon a chest, and Phoebus, as one accustomed to the house, opened a door giving onto a dark hovel. “Go in there, my dear,” said he to his companion. The man in the cloak obeyed without answering a word. The door fell shut behind him. He heard Phoebus bolt it, and a moment later descend the stairs with the old woman. The light had disappeared.

VIII

THE USEFULNESS OF WINDOWS OVERLOOKING THE RIVER

Claude Frollo (for we presume that the reader, more intelligent than Phoebus, has seen in all this adventure no other surly monk than the archdeacon), Claude Frollo groped for some moments in the dark recess where the captain had bolted him. It was one of those corners which architects sometimes reserve at the junction of the roof and the parapet wall. The vertical section of this kennel, as Phoebus had so well named it, would have given a triangle. Besides, there was neither window nor skylight, and the sloping plane of the roof prevented one from standing upright. Claude therefore squatted in the dust and the plaster that crumbled beneath him. His head was burning. Groping around him with his hands he found on the ground a piece of broken glass which he pressed to his forehead, and whose coolness relieved him somewhat.

What was passing at that moment in the dark soul of the archdeacon? he and God alone could know.

In what fatal order did he arrange in his thought the Esmeralda, Phoebus, Jacques Charmolue, his young brother so beloved abandoned by him in the mire, his archdeacon’s cassock, his reputation perhaps, dragged through the Falourdel’s, all these images, all these adventures? I could not say. But it is certain that these ideas formed in his mind a horrible group.

He had been waiting for a quarter of an hour; it seemed to him he had aged a century. Suddenly he heard the boards of the wooden staircase creak. Someone was coming up. The trapdoor reopened, a light reappeared. There was at the rotten door of his hovel a crack wide enough; he pressed his face to it. In this way he could see all that passed in the neighboring room. The cat-faced old woman came first out of the trapdoor, her lamp in hand, then Phoebus twirling his mustache, then a third person, that beautiful and graceful face, the Esmeralda. The priest saw her rise from the ground like a dazzling apparition. Claude trembled, a cloud spread over his eyes, his arteries beat strongly, all buzzed and whirled around him. He saw and heard nothing more.

When he came to himself, Phoebus and the Esmeralda were alone, seated on the wooden chest beside the lamp which made these two young faces stand out to the archdeacon’s eyes, and a wretched pallet at the back of the garret.

Beside the pallet there was a window whose glass, broken through like a spider’s web on which the rain has fallen, showed through its torn meshes a corner of sky and the moon lying far off upon a down of soft clouds.

The young girl was flushed, confused, palpitating. Her long lashes lowered shadowed her purple cheeks. The officer, on whom she dared not lift her eyes, radiated. Mechanically, and with a charming gesture of awkwardness, she traced with the tip of her finger incoherent lines upon the bench, and looked at her finger. Her foot was not to be seen; the little goat was crouched upon it.

The captain was very gallantly dressed; he had at his collar and wrists tufts of doreloterie: great elegance of that time.

Dom Claude did not without difficulty hear what they said to each other, through the buzzing of his blood boiling in his temples.

(Quite banal thing, a lovers’ conversation. It is a perpetual _I love you_. A very bare and very insipid musical phrase for indifferent listeners, when it is not adorned with some _fioriture_. But Claude did not listen as an indifferent man.)

“Oh!” said the young girl without lifting her eyes, “do not despise me, my lord Phoebus. I feel that what I do is wrong.”

“Despise you, fair child!” answered the officer with an air of superior and distinguished gallantry, “despise you, head of God! and why?”

“For having followed you.”

“On this point, my beauty, we do not understand each other. I should not despise you, but hate you.”

The young girl looked at him in fright: “Hate me! what have I done?”

“For having made yourself so much entreated.”

“Alas!” said she, “it is that I break a vow… I shall not find my parents again… the amulet will lose its virtue.—But what matters? what need have I of father and mother now?”

Speaking thus, she fixed upon the captain her great black eyes moist with joy and tenderness.

“The devil if I understand you!” cried Phoebus.

The Esmeralda remained silent for a moment, then a tear came from her eyes, a sigh from her lips, and she said: “Oh, my lord, I love you.”

There was around the young girl such a perfume of chastity, such a charm of virtue, that Phoebus did not feel completely at ease near her. Yet this word emboldened him. “You love me!” said he with transport, and he threw his arm around the waist of the Egyptian.

He had waited for nothing else.

The priest saw it, and tried with the tip of his finger the point of a poignard which he held hidden in his breast.

“Phoebus,” pursued the Bohemian, gently detaching from her girdle the tenacious hands of the captain, “you are good, you are generous, you are handsome. You have saved me, who am but a poor child lost in Bohemia. I have long dreamed of an officer who would save my life. It was of you that I dreamed before knowing you, my Phoebus. My dream had a fine livery like you, a grand air, a sword. You are called Phoebus, it is a beautiful name. I love your name, I love your sword. Draw your sword then, Phoebus, that I may see it.”

“Child!” said the captain, and he drew his rapier smiling.

The Egyptian looked at the hilt, the blade, examined with an adorable curiosity the cipher of the guard, and kissed the sword saying to it: “You are the sword of a brave man. I love my captain.”

Phoebus profited yet again from the occasion to deposit upon her beautiful bent neck a kiss which made the young girl straighten up red as a cherry. The priest gnashed his teeth in the darkness.

“Phoebus,” resumed the Egyptian, “let me speak to you. Walk a little, that I may see you all tall and hear your spurs jingle. How handsome you are!”

The captain rose to please her, scolding her with a smile of satisfaction: “But are you a child!—By the way, charming one, have you seen me in my ceremonial doublet?”

“Alas! no,” answered she.

“That is what is beautiful!”

Phoebus came to sit down again near her, but much nearer than before.

“Listen, my dear…”

The Egyptian gave him a few little taps with her pretty hand upon the mouth with a childishness full of madness, grace and gaiety. “No, no, I will not listen to you. Do you love me? I want you to tell me if you love me.”

“If I love you, angel of my life!” cried the captain, half kneeling. “My body, my blood, my soul, all is yours, all is for you. I love you, and have never loved but you.”

The captain had so often repeated this phrase, in many a like conjunction, that he delivered it all in one breath without a single fault of memory. At this passionate declaration, the Egyptian raised to the dirty ceiling which stood for sky a look full of angelic happiness. “Oh!” she murmured, “this is the moment one should die!”

Phoebus found “the moment” good to steal from her a new kiss which went to torture in his corner the miserable archdeacon.

“Die!” cried the amorous captain. “What is it you say there, fair angel? This is the time to live, or Jupiter is but a blackguard! Die at the beginning of so sweet a thing! ox-horn, what a jest!—That is not it.—Listen, my dear Similar… Esmenarda… Pardon, but you have a name so prodigiously Saracen that I cannot untangle myself from it. It is a thicket that stops me short.”

“My God,” said the poor girl, “I who thought this name pretty for its singularity! But since it displeases you, I would wish to be called Goton.”

“Ah! let us not weep for so little, my graceful one! it is a name to which one must grow accustomed, that is all. Once I shall know it by heart, it will go of itself.—Listen then, my dear Similar, I adore you to passion. I love you truly that it is miraculous. I know a little one who is bursting with rage at it…”

The jealous girl interrupted him: “Who then?”

“What is that to us?” said Phoebus. “Do you love me?”

“Oh!” said she.

“Well! that is all. You shall see how I love you too. May the great devil Neptune mount me if I do not render you the happiest creature in the world. We shall have a pretty little lodging somewhere. I shall parade my archers under your windows. They are all on horseback and make a mock of those of captain Mignon. There are crossbowmen, arbalisters and hand-cannoners. I shall take you to the great musters of the Parisians at the grange of Rully. It is very magnificent. Eighty thousand armed heads; thirty thousand white harness, jacks or brigandines; the sixty-seven banners of the trades; the standards of the parliament, of the chamber of accounts, of the treasury of the generals, of the aids of the mints; a devil’s array in short! I shall take you to see the lions of the King’s Hotel which are wild beasts. All the women love that.”

For some moments the young girl, absorbed in her charming thoughts, had been dreaming to the sound of his voice without listening to the sense of his words.

“Oh! you shall be happy!” continued the captain, and at the same time he gently unbuckled the girdle of the Egyptian.

“What are you doing?” said she quickly. This _battery_ had snatched her from her reverie.

“Nothing,” answered Phoebus. “I was only saying that you must quit all this folly and street-corner finery when you are with me.”

“When I am with you, my Phoebus!” said the young girl tenderly.

She became pensive and silent again.

The captain, emboldened by her sweetness, took her waist without her resisting, then began to unlace with a little noise the bodice of the poor child, and so disordered her gorget that the panting priest saw issue from the gauze the beautiful bare shoulder of the Bohemian, round and brown, like the moon rising in the mist at the horizon.

The young girl let Phoebus do as he would. She did not seem to notice it. The eye of the bold captain sparkled.

Suddenly she turned toward him:

“Phoebus,” said she with an expression of infinite love, “instruct me in your religion.”

“My religion!” cried the captain, bursting with laughter. “I, instruct you in my religion! Horn and thunder! what would you do with my religion?”

“It is to marry us,” answered she.

The captain’s face took an expression mixed with surprise, disdain, carelessness and libertine passion.

“Ah bah!” said he, “does one marry?”

The Bohemian grew pale and let her head fall sadly upon her breast.

“Fair lover,” resumed Phoebus tenderly, “what are these follies? Much matter the marriage! is one less well loved for not having spat Latin in a priest’s shop?”

Speaking thus in his sweetest voice, he drew extremely near the Egyptian, his caressing hands had resumed their post around that fine and supple waist, his eye kindled more and more, and all announced that monsieur Phoebus was evidently approaching one of those moments when Jupiter himself makes so many foolish deeds that good Homer is obliged to call a cloud to his aid.

Dom Claude, however, saw all. The door was made of all-rotten puncheon staves, which left between them wide passages to his bird-of-prey gaze. This brown-skinned priest with broad shoulders, hitherto condemned to the austere virginity of the cloister, shivered and boiled before this scene of love, night and voluptuousness. The young and beautiful girl delivered in disorder to that ardent young man made molten lead flow in his veins. There passed in him extraordinary movements. His eye plunged with a lascivious jealousy under all those undone pins. Who could have seen at that moment the face of the unhappy man glued to the rotten bars would have thought he saw a tiger’s face watching from the depth of a cage some jackal devouring a gazelle. His pupil blazed like a candle through the cracks of the door.

Suddenly, Phoebus with a rapid gesture lifted the gorget of the Egyptian. The poor child, who had remained pale and dreamy, awoke as with a start. She drew abruptly away from the enterprising officer, and casting a glance upon her breast and naked shoulders, red and confused and mute with shame, she crossed her two beautiful arms upon her bosom to hide it. But for the flame that burned her cheeks, to see her thus silent and motionless, one would have said a statue of modesty. Her eyes remained lowered.

But the captain’s gesture had laid bare the mysterious amulet she wore at her neck. “What is that?” said he, seizing this pretext to draw near the beautiful creature he had just frightened.

“Do not touch it!” she answered quickly, “it is my guardian. It is she who will make me find my family again if I remain worthy of it. Oh! leave me, captain! My mother! my poor mother! my mother! where are you? to my aid! Mercy, monsieur Phoebus! give me back my gorget!”

Phoebus drew back and said in a cold tone:

“Oh! mademoiselle, how well I see that you do not love me!”

“I do not love you!” cried the poor unhappy child, and at the same time she hung upon the captain whom she made sit near her. “I do not love you, my Phoebus! what is it you say there, wicked one, to tear my heart? Oh! go! take me, take all! do what you will of me. I am yours. What matter the amulet! what matter my mother! it is you who are my mother, since I love you! Phoebus, my well-beloved Phoebus, do you see me? it is I, look at me. It is this little one whom you are pleased not to reject, who comes, who comes herself to seek you. My soul, my life, my body, my person, all that is a thing which is yours, my captain. Well, no! let us not marry, it bores you. And then, what am I, me? a miserable girl of the gutter, while you, my Phoebus, you are a gentleman. Fine thing truly! a dancer marry an officer! I was mad. No, Phoebus, no, I shall be your mistress, your amusement, your pleasure, when you wish, a girl who shall be yours, I am made only for that, soiled, despised, dishonored, but what matters! loved. I shall be the proudest and gayest of women. And when I am old or ugly, Phoebus, when I am no longer good to love you, my lord, you will still suffer me to serve you. Others will embroider scarves for you. It is I the servant, who shall take care of them. You will let me scour your spurs, brush your doublet, dust your riding boots. Is it not so, my Phoebus, that you will have this pity? Meanwhile, take me; hold, Phoebus, all this belongs to you, love me only! We Egyptians, we need but that, air and love.”

Speaking thus, she threw her arms around the officer’s neck, she looked up at him suppliant and with a beautiful smile all in tears, her delicate breast rubbed against the cloth jerkin and the rough embroideries. She twisted upon his knees her beautiful half-naked body. The captain, intoxicated, pressed his ardent lips to those beautiful African shoulders. The young girl, her eyes lost to the ceiling, thrown backward, trembled all palpitating under this kiss.

Suddenly, above Phoebus’s head, she saw another head, a livid, green, convulsive face, with a damned man’s gaze. Near that face there was a hand holding a poignard. It was the face and the hand of the priest. He had broken the door and he was there. Phoebus could not see him. The young girl remained motionless, frozen, mute under the frightful apparition, like a dove which would lift its head at the moment the owl looks into its nest with its round eyes.

She could not even cry out. She saw the poignard descend upon Phoebus and rise again smoking. “Accursed!” said the captain, and he fell.

She fainted.

At the moment her eyes closed, when all feeling dispersed in her, she thought she felt imprint upon her lips a touch of fire, a kiss more burning than the red-hot iron of the executioner.

When she recovered her senses, she was surrounded by watch soldiers, they were carrying away the captain bathed in his blood, the priest had disappeared, the window at the back of the room, which overlooked the river, was wide open, they were picking up a cloak supposed to belong to the officer, and she heard it said around her: “It is a sorceress who stabbed a captain.”

BOOK EIGHTH

I

THE CROWN CHANGED INTO A DRY LEAF

Gringoire and all the Court of Miracles were in mortal uneasiness. For a great month nothing had been known of the Esmeralda, which sorely afflicted the Duke of Egypt and his friends the truands, nor of her goat, which redoubled Gringoire’s grief. One evening the Egyptian had disappeared, and since then had given no sign of life. All searches had been useless. Some taunting sabouleux said to Gringoire they had met her that evening in the neighborhood of the Saint-Michel bridge going off with an officer; but this husband in the Bohemian mode was an incredulous philosopher, and besides he knew better than anyone that his wife was a virgin. He had been able to judge what an inexpugnable modesty resulted from the two combined virtues of the amulet and the Egyptian, and he had mathematically calculated the resistance of this chastity to the second power. He was therefore tranquil on this side.

Yet he could not explain this disappearance. It was a deep sorrow. He would have grown thin from it, had that been possible. He had forgotten all else from it, even his literary tastes, even his great work _De figuris regularibus et irregularibus_, which he counted on having printed at the first money he should have. (For he raved of printing, since he had seen the _Didascalon_ of Hugh of Saint-Victor printed with the celebrated characters of Vindelin of Spire.)

One day as he was passing sadly before the criminal Tournelle, he noticed some crowd at one of the doors of the Palace of Justice.

“What is that?” he asked a young man who was coming out.

“I know not, sir,” answered the young man. “They say a woman is being tried who assassinated a man-at-arms. As there appears to be sorcery beneath, the bishop and the official have intervened in the cause, and my brother, who is archdeacon of Josas, spends his life there. Now, I wanted to speak to him, but I could not reach him for the crowd, which vexes me greatly, for I have need of money.”

“Alas, sir,” said Gringoire, “I would that I could lend you some; but if my breeches are holed, it is not by crowns.”

He dared not tell the young man that he knew his brother the archdeacon, to whom he had not returned since the scene in the church, a neglect which embarrassed him.

The scholar went his way, and Gringoire began to follow the crowd mounting the staircase of the grand-chamber. He judged that there is nothing like the spectacle of a criminal trial to dissipate melancholy, so ordinarily ridiculous are the judges. The people with whom he had mingled walked and jostled in silence. After a slow and insipid shuffling under a long dark corridor, which wound in the palace like the intestinal canal of the old edifice, he arrived near a low door opening onto a hall which his tall stature allowed him to explore with his gaze over the waving heads of the throng.

The hall was vast and somber, which made it seem vaster still. The daylight was fading; the long ogive windows let in no more than a pale ray which died before reaching the vault, an enormous lattice of sculpted timber, whose thousand figures seemed to move confusedly in the shadow. There were already several candles lit here and there upon tables and shining upon the heads of clerks sunk in papers. The front part of the hall was occupied by the crowd; to the right and left there were gowned men at tables; at the back, on a platform, many judges whose last rows sank into the darkness; motionless and sinister faces. The walls were strewn with countless fleurs-de-lis. One vaguely distinguished a great Christ above the judges, and everywhere pikes and halberds at whose ends the candlelight set fiery points.

“Sir,” asked Gringoire of one of his neighbors, “what are all those persons ranged yonder like prelates in council?”

“Sir,” said the neighbor, “these are the counselors of the grand-chamber on the right, and the counselors of the inquiries on the left; the masters in black robes, and the sirs in red robes.”

“There, above them,” resumed Gringoire, “what is that fat red man who sweats?”

“It is monsieur the president.”

“And those sheep behind him?” pursued Gringoire, who, we have already said, did not like the magistracy. Which perhaps held to the grudge he kept against the Palace of Justice since his dramatic misadventure.

“Those are the masters of requests of the King’s Hotel.”

“And before him, that wild boar?”

“It is monsieur the clerk of the court of parliament.”

“And to the right, that crocodile?”

“Master Philippe Lheulier, extraordinary king’s advocate.”

“And to the left, that big black cat?”

“Master Jacques Charmolue, king’s prosecutor in ecclesiastical court, with the sirs of the officialty.”

“Now then, sir,” said Gringoire, “what are all these worthy men doing?”

“They are judging.”

“Judging whom? I see no accused.”

“It is a woman, sir. You cannot see her. She turns her back to us, and is hidden from us by the crowd. See, she is there where you see a group of bawds.”

“What is this woman?” asked Gringoire. “Do you know her name?”

“No, sir. I have but just arrived. I presume only that there is sorcery, because the official assists at the trial.”

“Come!” said our philosopher, “we are going to see all these gowned men eat human flesh. It is a spectacle like another.”

“Sir,” observed the neighbor, “do you not find that master Jacques Charmolue looks very gentle?”

“Stories of the world, in your language.”