Part 5

The orgy was becoming more and more Flemish. Teniers would give but a very imperfect idea of it. Let one picture to oneself a bacchanal of the battle of Salvator Rosa. There were no longer any schoolboys, or ambassadors, or burghers, or men, or women; no more Clopin Trouillefou, no more Gilles Lecornu, no more Marie Quatrelivres, no more Robin Poussepain. All faded away in common license. The great hall was no longer anything but a vast furnace of effrontery and joviality where every mouth was a cry, every eye a flash, every face a grimace, every individual a posture. The whole cried out and howled. The strange faces which came in turn to gnash their teeth at the rose-window were like so many firebrands flung into the brazier. And from all that effervescent crowd there escaped, like the vapor of the furnace, a shrill, sharp, piercing murmur, hissing like the wings of a gnat.

“Ho hey! curse it!

--Look at that face!

--It's good for nothing.

--Another!

--Guillemette Maugerepuis, just look at that bull's muzzle, all it lacks is horns. Isn't that your husband?

--Another!

--Pope's belly! what's that grimace there?

--Holà hey! that's cheating. You're only supposed to show your face.

--That damned Perrette Callebotte! she's capable of that.

--Noël! Noël!

--I'm suffocating!

--There's one whose ears can't get through!”

Etc., etc.

Justice must nevertheless be done to our friend Jehan. In the midst of that sabbath, he could still be distinguished at the top of his pillar, like a cabin boy in the topmast. He flung himself about with incredible fury. His mouth was wide open, and from it escaped a cry that could not be heard, not that it was drowned by the general clamor, intense as it was, but because it no doubt reached the limit of high, perceptible sounds, the twelve thousand vibrations of Sauveur or the eight thousand of Biot.

As for Gringoire, the first fit of dejection past, he had recovered his composure. He had braced himself against adversity. “Go on!” he had said for the third time to his players, his speaking machines. Then, walking with great strides before the marble table, he took it into his head to go and show himself in his turn at the chapel window, if only for the pleasure of making a face at that ungrateful people. “But no, that would not be worthy of us; no vengeance! let us struggle to the end,” he repeated to himself. “The power of poetry over the people is great; I will bring them back. We shall see who wins, grimaces or polite letters.”

Alas! he had remained the sole spectator of his play.

It was far worse than before. He saw nothing now but backs.

I am mistaken. The stout man, patient, whom he had already consulted in a critical moment, had remained turned toward the theater. As for Gisquette and Liénarde, they had deserted long ago.

Gringoire was touched to the bottom of his heart by the fidelity of his sole spectator. He drew near him, and addressed him, gently shaking his arm; for the worthy man had leaned on the balustrade and was dozing a little.

“Sir,” said Gringoire, “I thank you.”

“Sir,” answered the stout man with a yawn, “for what?”

“I see what annoys you,” resumed the poet; “it is all this noise which prevents you from hearing at your ease. But be at ease: your name shall pass to posterity. Your name, if you please?”

“Renault Château, keeper of the seal of the Châtelet of Paris, at your service.”

“Sir, you are here the sole representative of the muses,” said Gringoire.

“You are too kind, sir,” answered the keeper of the seal of the Châtelet.

“You are the only one,” resumed Gringoire, “who has properly listened to the play. How do you find it?”

“Eh! eh!” answered the stout magistrate, half awake, “rather merry indeed.”

Gringoire had to content himself with this praise, for a thunder of applause, mingled with a prodigious acclamation, came to cut short their conversation. The Pope of Fools was elected.

“Noël! Noël! Noël!” cried the people from all sides.

It was a marvelous grimace, indeed, that which shone at that moment at the hole of the rose-window. After all the pentagonal, hexagonal, and heteroclite faces which had succeeded one another at that window without realizing that ideal of the grotesque which had built itself up in the imaginations exalted by the orgy, nothing less was needed, to carry the votes, than the sublime grimace which had just dazzled the assembly. Master Coppenole himself applauded; and Clopin Trouillefou, who had competed, and God knows what intensity of ugliness his face could attain, acknowledged himself vanquished. We shall do the same. We shall not attempt to give the reader an idea of that tetrahedral nose, that horseshoe mouth, that little left eye obstructed by a red bushy eyebrow while the right eye disappeared entirely under an enormous wart, of those disordered teeth, chipped here and there like the battlements of a fortress, of that callous lip over which one of those teeth overlapped like the tusk of an elephant, of that forked chin, and above all of the physiognomy spread over all this, of that mixture of roguery, astonishment, and sadness. Let the reader dream of it, if he can.

The acclamation was unanimous. They rushed toward the chapel. They brought out in triumph the blessed Pope of Fools. But then it was that surprise and admiration were at their height. The grimace was his face.

Or rather his whole person was a grimace. A big head bristling with red hair; between the two shoulders an enormous hump whose recoil was felt in front; a system of thighs and legs so strangely astray that they could touch only at the knees, and, seen from the front, resembled two reaping-hook crescents meeting at the handle; broad feet, monstrous hands; and, with all this deformity, I know not what formidable air of vigor, agility, and courage; strange exception to the eternal rule which wills that strength, like beauty, results from harmony. Such was the pope that the fools had just given themselves.

He was like a giant broken and badly soldered together.

When this kind of cyclops appeared on the threshold of the chapel, motionless, squat, and almost as broad as he was tall, _square at the base_, as a great man says, in his surcoat parted red and violet, sprinkled with silver bells, and above all at the perfection of his ugliness, the populace recognized him at once, and cried with one voice:

“It's Quasimodo, the bell-ringer! it's Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre-Dame! Quasimodo the one-eyed! Quasimodo the bow-legged! Noël! Noël!”

One sees that the poor devil had nicknames to choose from.

“Beware of pregnant women!” cried the schoolboys.

“Or who wish to be,” resumed Joannes.

The women indeed hid their faces.

“Oh! the ugly ape,” said one.

“As wicked as he is ugly,” said another.

“It's the devil,” added a third.

“I have the misfortune to live near Notre-Dame; all night I hear him prowling on the gutter.”

“With the cats.”

“He is always on our roofs.”

“He throws spells at us down the chimneys.”

“The other evening he came to make a face at my window. I thought it was a man. I was so frightened!”

“I am sure he goes to the sabbath. Once he left a broom on my leaden roof.”

“Oh! the unpleasant face of a hunchback!”

“Oh! the vile soul!”

“Buah!”

The men, on the contrary, were delighted, and applauded.

Quasimodo, the object of the tumult, remained standing on the chapel door, dark and grave, letting himself be admired.

A schoolboy, Robin Poussepain, I believe, came to laugh in his face, too near. Quasimodo contented himself with taking him by the belt, and flinging him ten paces through the crowd. All this without saying a word.

Master Coppenole, amazed, drew near him.

“God's cross! Holy Father! you have surely the finest ugliness I have seen in my life. You deserve the papacy at Rome as at Paris.”

In speaking thus, he gaily laid his hand on his shoulder. Quasimodo did not move. Coppenole pursued:

“You are a rogue with whom I have an itch to carouse, though it should cost me a new dozen of twelve tournois. What say you?”

Quasimodo did not answer.

“God's cross!” said the hosier, “are you deaf?”

He was deaf indeed.

Meanwhile he began to grow impatient at Coppenole's ways, and suddenly turned toward him with a gnashing of teeth so formidable that the Flemish giant drew back, like a bulldog before a cat.

Then there formed around the strange personage a circle of terror and respect which had at least fifteen geometrical paces of radius. An old woman explained to Master Coppenole that Quasimodo was deaf.

“Deaf!” said the hosier with his big Flemish laugh. “God's cross! he is a perfect pope.”

“Eh! I know him,” cried Jehan, who had at last come down from his capital to see Quasimodo closer; “he's the bell-ringer of my brother the archdeacon.—Good day, Quasimodo!”

“Devil of a man!” said Robin Poussepain, still all bruised from his fall. “He appears: he's a hunchback. He walks: he's bow-legged. He looks at you: he's one-eyed. You speak to him: he's deaf.—Well now, what does this Polyphemus do with his tongue?”

“He speaks when he wants to,” said the old woman. “He became deaf from ringing the bells. He is not dumb.”

“That's a lack,” observed Jehan.

“And he has one eye too many,” added Robin Poussepain.

“Not so,” said Jehan judiciously. “A one-eyed man is far more incomplete than a blind man. He knows what he lacks.”

Meanwhile all the beggars, all the lackeys, all the cutpurses, joined with the schoolboys, had gone processionally to fetch from the cupboard of the basoche the cardboard tiara and the derisory cope of the Pope of Fools. Quasimodo let himself be vested without a blink and with a sort of proud docility. Then they seated him on a motley bier. Twelve officers of the brotherhood of fools lifted him on their shoulders; and a kind of bitter and disdainful joy came to bloom on the morose face of the cyclops, when he saw beneath his deformed feet all those heads of men handsome, straight, and well-made. Then the howling and ragged procession set out to make, according to custom, the interior circuit of the galleries of the Palace, before the promenade through the streets and crossroads.

VI

LA ESMERALDA

We are delighted to be able to inform our readers that during all this scene Gringoire and his play had held firm. His actors, spurred on by him, had not ceased to deliver his comedy, and he had not ceased to listen to it. He had made his peace with the uproar, and was determined to go to the end, not despairing of a return of attention on the part of the public. This gleam of hope revived when he saw Quasimodo, Coppenole, and the deafening cortege of the Pope of Fools issue with great noise from the hall. The crowd rushed eagerly in their wake. Good, said he to himself, there go all the troublemakers.—Unhappily, all the troublemakers was the public. In the twinkling of an eye the great hall was empty.

To tell the truth, there still remained a few spectators, some scattered, others grouped around the pillars, women, old men, or children, who had had enough of the hubbub and tumult. A few schoolboys had remained astride the entablature of the windows and were looking out into the square.

“Well,” thought Gringoire, “here are still as many as are needed to hear the end of my mystery. They are few, but it is a select public, a learned public.”

At the end of a moment, a symphony which was to produce the greatest effect at the arrival of the holy Virgin, failed. Gringoire perceived that his music had been carried off by the procession of the Pope of Fools. “Pass on,” said he stoically.

He approached a group of burghers who seemed to him to be discussing his play. Here is the scrap of conversation he caught:

“You know, Master Cheneteau, the Hôtel de Navarre, which belonged to M. de Nemours?”

“Yes, opposite the chapel of Braque.”

“Well, the exchequer has just leased it to Guillaume Alixandre, historiographer, for six pounds eight sous parisis a year.”

“How rents are going up!”

“Let's go!” said Gringoire with a sigh; “the others are listening.”

“Comrades,” suddenly cried one of those young rogues at the windows, _“la Esmeralda! la Esmeralda in the square!”_

This word produced a magical effect. All that remained in the hall rushed to the windows, climbing the walls to see, and repeating: _“la Esmeralda! la Esmeralda!”_

At the same time a great noise of applause was heard from without.

“What does that mean, la Esmeralda?” said Gringoire, clasping his hands with dismay. “Ah! my God! it seems it is the windows' turn now.”

He turned back toward the marble table, and saw that the representation was interrupted. It was precisely the moment when Jupiter was to appear with his thunder. Now Jupiter stood motionless at the foot of the stage.

“Michel Giborne!” cried the irritated poet, “what are you doing there? is it your part? come up!”

“Alas,” said Jupiter, “a schoolboy has just taken the ladder.”

Gringoire looked. The thing was only too true. All communication was cut off between his plot and his denouement.

“The rogue!” he muttered; “and why did he take that ladder?”

“To go and see la Esmeralda,” answered Jupiter piteously. “He said: Look, here's a ladder that's not being used! and he took it.”

It was the last blow. Gringoire received it with resignation.

“The devil take you!” he said to the players; “and if I am paid, so shall you be.”

Then he retreated, head low, but the last, like a general who has fought well.

And while descending the winding stairs of the Palace: “Fine herd of asses and dolts these Parisians are!” he grumbled between his teeth; “they come to hear a mystery, and listen to none of it! They have occupied themselves with everybody, with Clopin Trouillefou, with the cardinal, with Coppenole, with Quasimodo, with the devil! but with my lady the Virgin Mary, not at all. If I had known, I'd have given you Virgin Marys, you gapers! And I! to come to see faces, and see nothing but backs! to be a poet, and have the success of an apothecary! It is true that Homerus begged through the Greek villages, and that Nason died in exile among the Moscovites. But may the devil flay me if I understand what they mean with their Esmeralda! What is that word first of all? it's Egyptian!”

SECOND BOOK

I

FROM CHARYBDIS TO SCYLLA

Night falls early in January. The streets were already dark when Gringoire left the Palace. This falling night pleased him; he was eager to reach some obscure and deserted alley where he might meditate at leisure and where the philosopher might put the first dressing on the poet's wound. Philosophy was, moreover, his only refuge, for he knew not where to lodge. After the brilliant miscarriage of his theatrical debut, he dared not re-enter the lodging he occupied on the rue Grenier-sur-l'Eau, opposite the Port-au-Foin, having counted on what the provost was to give him for his epithalamium to pay Master Guillaume Doulx-Sire, farmer of the foot-fork tax of Paris, the six months' rent he owed him, that is to say twelve sous parisis; twelve times the value of all he possessed in the world, including his breeches, his shirt, and his cap. After reflecting a moment, provisionally sheltered under the little wicket of the prison of the treasurer of the Sainte-Chapelle, as to the lodging he would choose for the night, having all the pavements of Paris at his choice, he recalled having noticed, the week before, in the rue de la Savaterie, at the door of a councillor at parliament, a mounting-step for a mule, and having said to himself that this stone would, in case of need, make a very excellent pillow for a beggar or a poet. He thanked Providence for sending him this good idea; but, as he was preparing to cross the Place du Palais to reach the winding labyrinth of the Cité, where all those old sisters twine, the streets of the Barillerie, the Vieille-Draperie, the Savaterie, the Juiverie, etc., still standing today with their nine-story houses, he saw the procession of the Pope of Fools which also issued from the Palace and rushed across the courtyard, with great cries, great torchlight, and its music, at him, Gringoire. This sight reopened the scratches on his self-love; he fled. In the bitterness of his dramatic misadventure, everything that reminded him of the feast of the day embittered him and made his wound bleed.

He wished to take the Pont Saint-Michel; children were running hither and thither there with fire-lances and rockets.

“Plague take the fireworks!” said Gringoire, and he turned back toward the Pont-au-Change. To the houses at the head of the bridge had been attached three drapels representing the king, the dauphin, and Marguerite of Flanders, and six little flags where were _pourtrayed_ the Duke of Austria, the Cardinal of Bourbon, and M. de Beaujeu, and Madame Jeanne of France, and M. the bastard of Bourbon, and I know not who else; the whole lit by torches. The crowd admired.

“Happy painter Jehan Fourbault!” said Gringoire with a heavy sigh, and he turned his back on the drapels and little flags. A street was before him; he found it so black and so abandoned that he hoped to escape there from all the reverberations as from all the radiance of the feast. He plunged into it. After a few instants, his foot struck an obstacle; he stumbled and fell. It was the May bush, which the clerks of the basoche had deposited in the morning at the door of a president at parliament, in honor of the solemnity of the day. Gringoire bore this new encounter heroically. He rose and gained the water's edge. After leaving behind him the civil tournelle and the criminal tower, and skirting the great wall of the king's gardens, on that unpaved strand where the mud came to his ankle, he arrived at the western point of the Cité, and considered for some time the islet of the Cow-Ferryman, which has since disappeared under the bronze horse and the Pont-Neuf. The islet appeared to him in the shadow as a black mass beyond the narrow whitish stream which separated him from it. One could guess, by the gleam of a small light, the kind of hive-shaped hut where the cow-ferryman sheltered at night.

“Happy cow-ferryman!” thought Gringoire; “you think not of glory and you make no epithalamiums! What are kings who marry and duchesses of Burgundy to you! You know no other daisies than those your April lawn gives your cows to graze. And I, a poet, am hooted, and I shiver, and I owe twelve sous, and my sole is so transparent it might serve as a pane for your lantern. Thank you, cow-ferryman! your cabin rests my sight, and makes me forget Paris!”

He was awakened from his almost lyric ecstasy by a great double petard of Saint-Jean, which suddenly went off from the blessed cabin. It was the cow-ferryman taking his share of the day's rejoicings and firing off a firework.

That petard made Gringoire's skin creep.

“Accursed feast!” he cried; “will you pursue me everywhere? Oh my God! even to the cow-ferryman's!”

Then he looked at the Seine at his feet, and a horrible temptation seized him:

“Oh!” said he, “how gladly would I drown myself, if the water were not so cold!”

Then there came to him a desperate resolution. It was, since he could not escape the Pope of Fools, the little flags of Jehan Fourbault, the May bushes, the fire-lances, and the petards, to boldly plunge into the very heart of the feast, and go to the Place de Grève.

“At least,” thought he, “I shall perhaps have a brand from the bonfire to warm me, and I may sup there on some crumb from the three great royal sugar coats-of-arms which must have been set up there on the public buffet of the city.”

II

THE PLACE DE GRÈVE

There remains today but a very imperceptible vestige of the Place de Grève as it then existed. It is the charming turret which occupies the north angle of the square, and which, already buried under the ignoble whitewash that clogs the sharp edges of its sculptures, will perhaps soon disappear, submerged by that rise of new houses which so rapidly devours all the old façades of Paris.

Those who, like us, never pass over the Place de Grève without a glance of pity and sympathy for that poor turret strangled between two hovels of the time of Louis XV, can easily reconstruct in their minds the ensemble of buildings to which it belonged, and there find again entire the old Gothic square of the fifteenth century.

It was, as today, an irregular trapezoid bordered on one side by the quay, and on the three others by a series of high, narrow, and somber houses. By day, one could admire the variety of its edifices, all sculpted in stone or wood, and presenting already complete samples of the diverse domestic architectures of the middle ages, going back from the fifteenth to the eleventh century, from the cross-window which was beginning to dethrone the ogive, to the round Roman arch which had been supplanted by the ogive, and which still occupied, below it, the first floor of that old house of the Tour-Roland, angle of the square on the Seine, on the side of the rue de la Tannerie. At night, one distinguished in that mass of edifices only the black indentations of the roofs unrolling around the square their chain of sharp angles. For this is one of the radical differences between the cities of then and the cities of now, that today it is the façades which look upon the squares and streets, and that then it was the gables. For two centuries the houses have turned around.

In the center, on the eastern side of the square, rose a heavy and hybrid construction formed of three juxtaposed lodgings. It was called by three names which explain its history, its destination, and its architecture: the _Maison-au-Dauphin_, because Charles V, dauphin, had inhabited it; the _Marchandise_, because it served as Hôtel de Ville; the _Maison-aux-Piliers_ (domus ad piloria), because of a suite of big pillars which supported its three stories. The city found there all that is needed by a good city like Paris: a chapel, to pray to God; a _plaidoyer_, to hold audience and rebuff, if need be, the king's men; and, in the attics, an _arsenac_ full of artillery. For the burghers of Paris know that it is not enough in every conjuncture to pray and to plead for the franchises of the City, and they have always in reserve in a garret of the Hôtel de Ville some good rusty arquebus.

The Grève had from then this sinister aspect which the execrable idea it awakens and the somber Hôtel de Ville of Dominique Boccador, which has replaced the Maison-aux-Piliers, still preserve today. It must be said that a gallows and a permanent pillory, a justice and a ladder, as they then said, erected side by side in the middle of the pavement, contributed not a little to make eyes turn away from that fatal square, where so many beings full of health and life have agonized; where was to be born fifty years later that _fever of Saint-Vallier_, that disease of terror of the scaffold, the most monstrous of all diseases, because it comes not from God, but from man.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”