Part 40

The oath was tremendous. Louis XI had sworn but twice in his life by the cross of Saint-Lô.

Olivier opened his mouth to reply: "Sire..."

"Kneel down!" the king violently interrupted. "Tristan, keep watch over this man!"

Olivier knelt, and said coldly: "Sire, a sorceress was condemned to death by your court of parliament. She took refuge in Notre-Dame. The people would retake her by force. The lord provost and the lord knight of the watch, who come from the riot, are here to give me the lie if this be not the truth. It is Notre-Dame that the people are besieging."

"Yea!" said the king in a low voice, all pale and trembling with anger. "Notre-Dame! they besiege my good mistress in her cathedral of Notre-Dame!—Rise, Olivier. Thou art right. I give thee the office of Simon Radin. Thou art right.—It is I whom they attack. The sorceress is under the safeguard of the church, the church is under my safeguard. And I who thought it was the bailiff! It is against me!"

Then, made young again by fury, he began to stride to and fro. He laughed no longer, he was terrible, he went and came, the fox had turned into a hyena, he seemed suffocated, unable to speak, his lips moved, and his fleshless fists clenched. Suddenly he raised his head, his hollow eye seemed full of light, and his voice rang out like a clarion. "Lay on, Tristan! lay on upon these knaves! Go! Tristan, my friend! kill! kill!"

This outburst past, he came and sat down again, and said with a cold and concentrated rage:

"Here, Tristan!—There are near us in this Bastille the fifty lances of the viscount of Gif, which makes three hundred horse, you will take them. There is also the company of archers of our ordinance of monsieur de Châteaupers, you will take it. You are provost of the marshals, you have the men of your provostship, you will take them. At the Hôtel Saint-Pol you will find forty archers of the new guard of monsieur the Dauphin, you will take them; and with all that you shall go run to Notre-Dame.—Ah! gentlemen the commons of Paris, thus do you throw yourselves across the crown of France, the sanctity of Notre-Dame and the peace of this republic!—Exterminate, Tristan! exterminate! and let not one escape save for Montfaucon."

Tristan bowed. "It is well, Sire!"

He added after a silence: "And what shall I do with the sorceress?"

This question made the king reflect. "Ah!" said he, "the sorceress!—Monsieur d'Estouteville, what would the people have done with her?"

"Sire," answered the provost of Paris, "I imagine that, since the people come to tear her from her asylum of Notre-Dame, it is that this impunity wounds them and that they would hang her."

The king seemed to reflect profoundly, then addressing Tristan l'Hermite: "Well! my gossip, exterminate the people and hang the sorceress."

"That is it," said Rym in a low voice to Coppenole, "punish the people for willing, and do what they will."

"It is enough, Sire," answered Tristan. "If the sorceress is still in Notre-Dame, must she be taken there despite the asylum?"

"By God's body, the asylum!" said the king, scratching his ear. "Yet that woman must be hanged."

Here, as if seized by a sudden idea, he flung himself on his knees before his chair, took off his hat, placed it on the seat, and looking devoutly at one of the leaden amulets that loaded it: "Oh!" said he, with joined hands, "Notre-Dame of Paris, my gracious patroness, forgive me. I shall do it but this once. This criminal must be punished. I assure you, madame the Virgin, my good mistress, that she is a sorceress unworthy of your kindly protection. You know, madame, that many very pious princes have overstepped the privilege of churches for the glory of God and the necessity of the State. Saint Hugh, bishop of England, permitted King Edward to take a magician in his church. Saint Louis of France, my master, transgressed for the same object the church of monsieur saint Paul; and monsieur Alphonse, son of the king of Jerusalem, the very church of the Holy Sepulchre. Forgive me then this once, Notre-Dame of Paris. I shall do it no more, and I will give you a fair statue of silver, like that which I gave last year to Notre-Dame d'Écouys. So be it."

He made the sign of the cross, rose, put on his cap again, and said to Tristan: "Make haste, my gossip. Take monsieur de Châteaupers with you. You shall sound the tocsin. You shall crush the populace. You shall hang the sorceress. It is said. And I would have the pursuit of the execution done by you. You shall account to me for it.—Come, Olivier, I shall not lie down tonight. Shave me."

Tristan l'Hermite bowed and went out. Then the king, dismissing Rym and Coppenole with a gesture: "God keep you, gentlemen my good friends the Flemings. Go take a little rest. The night wears on, and we are nearer morning than evening."

Both withdrew, and in gaining their apartments under the conduct of the captain of the Bastille, Coppenole said to Guillaume Rym: "Hum! I have had enough of this king who coughs! I have seen Charles of Burgundy drunk, he was less wicked than Louis XI sick."

"Master Jacques," answered Rym, "it is that kings have wine less cruel than ptisan."

VI

LITTLE FLAME IN A WALNUT

On leaving the Bastille, Gringoire went down the rue Saint-Antoine with the speed of a runaway horse. Arrived at the porte Baudoyer, he walked straight to the stone cross which rose in the middle of that place, as if he could distinguish in the darkness the figure of a man clad and hooded in black who was seated on the steps of the cross.

"Is it you, master?" said Gringoire.

The black personage rose. "Death and passion! you make me boil, Gringoire. The man upon the tower of Saint-Gervais has just cried half-past one in the morning."

"Oh!" rejoined Gringoire, "it is not my fault, but that of the watch and the king. I have just escaped finely! I always come near being hanged. It is my predestination."

"You miss everything," said the other. "But let us go quickly. Have you the password?"

"Figure to yourself, master, that I have seen the king. I come from him. He has a fustian breeches. It is an adventure."

"Oh! distaff of words! what is your adventure to me? Have you the password of the truands?"

"I have it. Be at ease. _Little flame in a walnut_."

"Well. Otherwise we could not penetrate to the church. The truands bar the streets. Happily it seems they have met with resistance. We may yet arrive in time."

"Yes, master. But how shall we enter Notre-Dame?"

"I have the key of the towers."

"And how shall we get out?"

"There is behind the cloister a little door which gives upon the Terrain, and from there upon the water. I took the key of it, and moored a boat there this morning."

"I jolly well came near being hanged!" resumed Gringoire.

"Eh quick! let us go!" said the other.

Both went down at great strides toward the Cité.

VII

CHÂTEAUPERS TO THE RESCUE!

The reader will perhaps remember the critical situation in which we left Quasimodo. The brave deaf man, assailed on all sides, had lost, if not all courage, at least all hope of saving, not himself—he thought not of himself—but the Egyptian. He ran distractedly upon the gallery. Notre-Dame was about to be carried by the truands. Suddenly a great galloping of horses filled the neighboring streets, and with a long file of torches and a thick column of horsemen lowering lances and bridles, these furious noises debouched upon the place like a hurricane: France! France! Cut down the churls! Châteaupers to the rescue! Provostship! provostship!

The truands, terrified, faced about.

Quasimodo, who heard not, saw the naked swords, the torches, the spear-heads, all that cavalry, at the head of which he recognized the captain Phoebus; he saw the confusion of the truands, the fright among some, the disorder among the best, and from this unhoped-for succor he regained so much strength that he thrust out of the church the first assailants who had already bestridden the gallery.

They were in truth the troops of the king arriving.

The truands defended themselves bravely. They were taken in flank by the rue Saint-Pierre-aux-Boeufs and in rear by the rue du Parvis, driven back upon Notre-Dame which they still assailed and which Quasimodo defended, at once besiegers and besieged, they were in the strange situation wherein was since found again, at the famous siege of Turin, in 1640, between the prince Thomas of Savoy who besieged it and the marquis of Leganez who blocked him, the count Henry of Harcourt, _Taurinum obsessor idem et obsessus_[129], as his epitaph says.

The melee was frightful. Tooth of wolf for flesh of dog, as P. Mathieu says. The king's horsemen, among whom Phoebus de Châteaupers bore himself valiantly, gave no quarter, and the cutting recovered what escaped the thrust. The truands, ill armed, foamed and bit. Men, women, children threw themselves upon the cruppers and chests of the horses, and clung there like cats with the teeth and nails of all four limbs. Others plugged at the faces of the archers with torches. Others stuck iron hooks in the necks of the horsemen and pulled them over. They tore to pieces those who fell.

One was remarked who had a broad glittering sickle, and who mowed long at the legs of the horses. He was frightful. He sang a nasal song, he launched without cease and drew back his sickle. At each blow he traced around him a great circle of severed limbs. He advanced thus into the thickest of the cavalry, with the tranquil slowness, the balancing of the head and the regular panting of a reaper who enters a field of wheat. It was Clopin Trouillefou. An arquebus shot laid him low.

Meanwhile the windows had reopened. The neighbors, hearing the war-cries of the king's men, had mingled in the affair, and from all the floors the balls rained upon the truands. The Parvis was full of a thick smoke which the musketry striped with fire. One there confusedly distinguished the façade of Notre-Dame, and the decrepit Hôtel-Dieu, with some haggard sick who looked from the top of its roof scaled with dormer windows.

At last the truands gave way. Weariness, want of good arms, dread of this surprise, the musketry of the windows, the brave shock of the king's men, all struck them down. They forced the line of the assailants, and set to fleeing in all directions, leaving in the Parvis a crowding of dead.

When Quasimodo, who had not ceased a moment from fighting, saw this rout, he fell on both knees, and lifted his hands to heaven; then, drunk with joy, he ran, he mounted with the speed of a bird to that cell whose approaches he had so intrepidly defended. He had now but one thought, which was to kneel before her whom he had just saved a second time.

When he entered the cell, he found it empty.

ELEVENTH BOOK

I

THE LITTLE SHOE

At the moment when the truands had assailed the church, the Esmeralda was sleeping.

Soon the ever-increasing rumor around the building and the uneasy bleating of her goat, awake before her, had drawn her from that slumber. She had risen upon her seat, she had listened, she had looked, then, frightened at the glow and the noise, she had thrown herself out of the cell and had gone to see. The aspect of the place, the vision which stirred there, the disorder of that nocturnal assault, that hideous crowd, hopping like a cloud of frogs, half-seen in the shadows, the croaking of that hoarse multitude, those few red torches running and crossing upon that shadow like the night-fires which streak the misty surface of the marshes, all that scene made upon her the effect of a mysterious battle engaged between the phantoms of the sabbath and the stone monsters of the church. Imbued from childhood with the superstitions of the Bohemian tribe, her first thought was that she had surprised in malefice the strange beings proper to the night. Then she ran in terror to crouch in her cell, asking of her pallet a less horrible nightmare.

Little by little the first fumes of fear had nevertheless dissipated; at the ever-growing noise, and at several other signs of reality, she had felt herself invested, not by specters, but by human beings. Then her fright, without increasing, had transformed itself. She had thought of the possibility of a popular mutiny to tear her from her asylum. The idea of losing life again, Phoebus, whom she ever foresaw in her future, the deep nullity of her weakness, all flight closed, no support, her abandonment, her isolation, these thoughts and a thousand others had overwhelmed her. She had fallen on her knees, her head on her bed, her hands joined upon her head, full of anxiety and trembling, and though an Egyptian, an idolater and a pagan, she had begun to beg with sobs grace of the good Christian God and to pray to Notre-Dame her hostess. For, though one believe in nothing, there are moments in life when one is always of the religion of the temple that is at hand.

She remained thus prostrated a very long time, trembling, in truth, more than she prayed, frozen at the breath of that furious multitude ever nearer, understanding nothing of this unleashing, ignorant of what was afoot, what was done, what was willed, but presaging a terrible issue.

Behold that in the midst of that anguish she hears steps near her. She turns. Two men, one of whom carried a lantern, had just entered her cell. She gave a faint cry.

"Fear nothing," said a voice not unknown to her, "it is I."

"Who? you?" said she.

"Pierre Gringoire."

That name reassured her. She raised her eyes, and recognized indeed the poet. But there was beside him a black figure veiled from head to foot which struck her dumb.

"Ah!" resumed Gringoire in a tone of reproach, "Djali had recognized me before you!"

The little goat, in fact, had not waited for Gringoire to name himself. Scarcely had he entered than she had tenderly rubbed against his knees, covering the poet with caresses and white hairs, for she was shedding. Gringoire returned her caresses.

"Who is there with you?" said the Egyptian in a low voice.

"Be at ease," answered Gringoire, "it is a friend of mine."

Then the philosopher, setting his lantern on the ground, squatted on the flagstone and cried with enthusiasm in clasping Djali in his arms: "Oh! it is a gracious beast, doubtless more considerable for her cleanliness than for her size, but ingenious, subtle and learned as a grammarian! Let us see, my Djali, hast thou forgotten thy pretty tricks? How does master Jacques Charmolue?..."

The black man let him not finish. He approached Gringoire and pushed him roughly by the shoulder. Gringoire rose.

"It is true," said he, "I forgot that we are pressed.—It is yet no reason, my master, to frenzy folks in that sort.—My dear fair child, your life is in danger, and that of Djali. They would retake you. We are your friends, and we come to save you. Follow us."

"Is it true?" cried she, overwhelmed.

"Yes, very true. Come quickly!"

"I will willingly," stammered she, "but why does your friend not speak?"

"Ah!" said Gringoire, "it is that his father and mother were fantastical folk who made him of taciturn temperament."

She had to content herself with this explanation. Gringoire took her by the hand, his companion picked up the lantern and marched before. Fear bewildered the young girl. She let herself be led away. The goat followed, leaping, so joyful to see Gringoire again that she made him stumble at every moment to thrust her horns into his legs.

"Such is life," said the philosopher each time he missed falling, "it is often our best friends who make us fall!"

They rapidly descended the tower stair, crossed the church, full of darkness and solitude and all resounding with uproar, which made a frightful contrast, and issued into the cloister court by the Porte-Rouge. The cloister was abandoned, the canons had fled into the bishop's palace to pray in common; the court was empty, some scared lackeys huddled there in the dark corners. They directed themselves toward the little door which gave from that court upon the Terrain. The black man opened it with a key he had. Our readers know that the Terrain was a tongue of land enclosed by walls on the side of the Cité, and belonging to the chapter of Notre-Dame, which terminated the island at the east behind the church. They found this enclosure perfectly deserted. There, there was already less tumult in the air. The rumor of the assault of the truands reached them more confused and less shrill. The fresh wind which follows the course of the water moved the leaves of the single tree planted at the point of the Terrain with a noise already appreciable. However, they were still very near to danger. The buildings nearest them were the bishop's palace and the church. There was visibly a great internal disorder in the bishop's palace. Its shadowy mass was all furrowed with lights which ran there from one window to another; as, when one has just burned paper, there remains a dark edifice of ash where vivid sparks make a thousand bizarre courses. Beside it, the enormous towers of Notre-Dame, thus seen from behind with the long nave upon which they rise, cut in black upon the red and vast glow which filled the Parvis, resembled the two gigantic firedogs of a cyclops' fire.

What was seen of Paris on all sides wavered to the eye in a shadow mingled with light. Rembrandt has such backgrounds in his pictures.

The man with the lantern walked straight to the point of the Terrain. There was there, at the extreme edge of the water, the worm-eaten remnant of a hedge of stakes interlaced with laths where a low vine clung to some meager branches stretched like the fingers of an open hand. Behind, in the shadow made by this trellis, a little boat was hidden. The man signed to Gringoire and his companion to enter it. The goat followed them there. The man descended into it last. Then he cut the boat's mooring, pushed it from land with a long hook, and, seizing two oars, sat in the prow, rowing with all his force toward the open. The Seine is very rapid at this spot, and he had enough trouble to quit the point of the island.

The first care of Gringoire on entering the boat was to put the goat on his knees. He took place at the stern, and the young girl, to whom the unknown inspired an undefinable uneasiness, came to sit and press against the poet.

When our philosopher felt the boat move, he clapped his hands, and kissed Djali between the horns. "Oh!" said he, "we are saved, all four of us."

He added, with the air of a profound thinker: "One is obliged, sometimes to fortune, sometimes to craft, for the happy issue of great enterprises."

The boat sailed slowly toward the right bank. The young girl observed with a secret terror the unknown. He had carefully stopped the light of his dark lantern. He was glimpsed in the obscurity, at the prow of the boat, like a specter. His cowl, ever lowered, made him a sort of mask, and each time he half-opened in rowing his arms where hung broad black sleeves, one would have said two great bat's wings. For the rest, he had not yet said a word, breathed a breath. There was made in the boat no other noise than the going and coming of the oar, mingled with the rustle of the thousand folds of the water along the bark.

"Upon my soul!" suddenly cried Gringoire, "we are merry and joyous as ascalaphes! We observe a silence of Pythagoreans or of fishes! By God's body! my friends, I should like someone to speak to me.—The human voice is music to the human ear. It is not I who say that, but Didymus of Alexandria, and they are illustrious words.—Certainly, Didymus of Alexandria is no mean philosopher. A word, fair child! say me, I beseech you, a word.—By the way, you had a droll little singular pout; do you still make it? Know you, my dear, that the parliament has full jurisdiction over places of asylum, and that you ran great peril in your lodge at Notre-Dame? Alas! the little bird trochilus makes its nest in the mouth of the crocodile.—Master, here is the moon reappearing.—Provided we be not perceived!—We do a praiseworthy thing in saving madamoiselle, and yet we should be hanged by the king if we were caught.—Alas! human actions are taken by two handles. One brands in me what one crowns in thee. Such admires Caesar who blames Catiline. Is it not so, my master? What say you to that philosophy? I possess philosophy by instinct, by nature, _ut apes geometriam_[130].—Come! no one answers me. Those ill humors you both have there! I must speak all alone. It is what we call in tragedy a monologue.—By God's body!—I warn you I have just seen King Louis Eleventh and have retained this oath from him.—By God's body then! they make ever a fierce yelling in the Cité.—It is a vile wicked old king. He is all bundled in furs. He still owes me the money of my epithalamium, and it is at most if he has not had me hanged this evening, which would have much hindered me.—He is avaricious toward men of merit. He should well read the four books of Salvian of Cologne _Adversus avaritiam_[131]. In truth! it is a king narrow in his ways with men of letters, and who commits cruelties most barbarous. It is a sponge to take money placed upon the people. His saving is the rake which swells with the leanness of all the other members. Also complaints against the rigor of the times become murmurs against the prince. Under this devout gentle sire, the forks crack with hanged men, the blocks rot with blood, the prisons burst like too-full bellies. This king has a hand that takes and a hand that hangs. It is the proxy of dame Gabelle and of my lord Gibbet. The great are stripped of their dignities and the small unceasingly overwhelmed with new crowds. It is an exorbitant prince. I love not this monarch. And you, my master?"

The black man let the talkative poet prate. He continued to struggle against the violent and close current which separates the stern of the Cité from the prow of the island Notre-Dame, which we name today the island Saint-Louis.

"By the way, master!" resumed Gringoire suddenly. "At the moment when we arrived upon the Parvis through those enraged truands, did your reverence remark that poor little devil whom your deaf man was crushing the brains out upon the rail of the gallery of the kings? I have weak sight and could not recognize him. Know you who it may be?"

The unknown answered not a word. But he suddenly ceased rowing, his arms failed as if broken, his head fell upon his breast, and the Esmeralda heard him sigh convulsively. She started on her side. She had already heard sighs like those.

The boat, abandoned to itself, drifted a few moments at the mercy of the water. But the black man at last straightened up, seized the oars again, and began anew to mount the current. He doubled the point of the island Notre-Dame, and directed himself toward the landing of the Port-au-Foin.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”