Part 9

After a few moments, our poet found himself in a small vaulted chamber with pointed arches, snug and warm, seated before a table that seemed only too willing to borrow a few things from a larder hanging close by, with a good bed in prospect, and tête-à-tête with a pretty girl. The adventure had the air of enchantment. He began to take himself seriously for a character out of a fairy tale; from time to time he cast his eyes about him as if to seek whether the chariot of fire drawn by two winged chimeras, which alone could have borne him so swiftly from Tartarus to paradise, was still there. At moments, too, he fixed his gaze obstinately upon the holes in his doublet, so as to cling to reality and not lose his footing altogether. His reason, tossed about in imaginary spaces, held on only by that thread.

The young girl seemed to pay him no attention; she went to and fro, moved a stool, chattered with her goat, made a face here and there. At last she came and sat near the table, and Gringoire could observe her at his leisure.

You were a child, reader, and you may be happy enough to still be one. There is not a one of you who has not more than once (and for my part I have spent whole days at it, the best spent of my life) followed from bush to bush, along a running stream, on a sunny day, some fair damsel green or blue, breaking her flight at sharp angles and kissing the tip of every branch. You remember with what loving curiosity your thought and your gaze fastened upon that whistling, humming little whirlwind, with wings of purple and azure, in the midst of which floated an elusive form veiled by the very rapidity of its motion. The aerial being that vaguely outlined itself through that quivering of wings seemed to you chimerical, imaginary, impossible to touch, impossible to see. But when at last the damsel rested at the tip of a reed and you could examine, holding your breath, the long gauze wings, the long enameled robe, the two crystal globes, what astonishment did you not feel, and what fear of seeing the form depart again into shadow and the being into chimera! Call those impressions to mind, and you will easily understand what Gringoire felt in contemplating, under her visible and palpable form, that Esmeralda whom he had hitherto caught only glimpses of through a whirlwind of dance, song, and tumult.

Sinking ever deeper into his reverie, "So this," he said to himself, vaguely following her with his eyes, "is what _la Esmeralda_ is! a celestial creature! a street dancer! so much and so little! It is she who struck the finishing blow to my mystery this morning, it is she who saves my life this evening. My evil genius! my good angel!—A pretty woman, upon my word!—and who must love me madly to have taken me thus."—"By the way," said he, suddenly rising with that sense of the real which formed the ground of his character and his philosophy, "I do not quite know how it comes about, but I am her husband!"

With this idea in his head and in his eyes, he approached the young girl in a manner at once martial and gallant, so that she drew back.

"What is it you want of me?" said she.

"Can you ask me that, adorable Esmeralda?" answered Gringoire with so passionate an accent that he was himself astonished at hearing himself speak.

The Egyptian opened her great eyes. "I know not what you mean."

"What!" resumed Gringoire, warming more and more, and thinking after all that he had only to deal with a virtue of the Court of Miracles, "am I not thine, sweet friend? art thou not mine?"

And, quite ingenuously, he put his arm around her waist.

The bodice of the gypsy slipped through his hands like the robe of an eel. She sprang at a bound to the other end of the cell, stooped, and rose again, with a small dagger in her hand, before Gringoire had so much as time to see whence that dagger came; angered and proud, her lips swollen, her nostrils dilated, her cheeks red as a crabapple, her pupils flashing lightning. At the same time, the little white goat placed herself before her, and presented to Gringoire a front of battle, bristling with two pretty horns, gilded and very sharp. All this was done in the twinkling of an eye.

The damsel had turned wasp and asked nothing better than to sting.

Our philosopher remained dumbfounded, turning from the goat to the girl looks of stupefaction by turns.

"Holy Virgin!" said he at last, when surprise permitted him to speak, "here are two bold hussies!"

The gypsy broke silence on her side.

"You must be a very bold knave!"

"Pardon, mademoiselle," said Gringoire, smiling, "but why then did you take me for your husband?"

"Was it meet to leave you hanging?"

"Thus," resumed the poet, somewhat disappointed in his amorous hopes, "you had no other thought in marrying me than to save me from the gallows?"

"And what other thought would you have me had?"

Gringoire bit his lips. "Well," said he, "I am not yet so triumphant in Cupid as I thought. But then, what was the use of breaking that poor pitcher?"

Meanwhile the dagger of la Esmeralda and the horns of the goat remained on the defensive.

"Mademoiselle Esmeralda," said the poet, "let us capitulate. I am not a clerk of the Châtelet, and will not quibble with you for thus carrying a dagger in Paris in the teeth of the ordinances and prohibitions of Monsieur the Provost; yet you are not unaware that Noël Lescripvain was condemned a week ago in ten Parisian sous for carrying a braquemard. Now that is no affair of mine, and I come to the point. I swear to you, on my share of paradise, not to approach you without your leave and permission; but give me some supper."

At bottom, Gringoire, like Monsieur Despréaux, was "very little voluptuous." He was not of that chevaleresque and musketeer sort who take young girls by storm. In matters of love, as in every other, he was willingly for temporizings and middle courses; and a good supper, in amiable tête-à-tête, seemed to him, especially when he was hungry, an excellent entr'acte between the prologue and the denouement of a love adventure.

The Egyptian answered not. She made her little disdainful pout, tossed her head like a bird, then burst out laughing, and the dainty dagger disappeared as it had come, without Gringoire being able to see where the bee hid her sting.

A moment after, there was upon the table a loaf of rye bread, a slice of bacon, a few wrinkled apples, and a jug of beer. Gringoire fell to eating with violence. To hear the furious clatter of his iron fork and his earthenware plate, one would have said all his love had turned to appetite.

The young girl, seated before him, watched him eat in silence, visibly preoccupied with another thought at which she smiled from time to time, while her gentle hand caressed the intelligent head of the goat softly pressed between her knees.

A yellow wax candle lit this scene of voracity and reverie.

Meanwhile, his first bleatings of stomach appeased, Gringoire felt a certain false shame at seeing that but one apple remained.

"You do not eat, mademoiselle Esmeralda?"

She answered by a negative sign of the head, and her pensive gaze fixed upon the vault of the cell.

"What the devil is she busy with?" thought Gringoire, and, looking at what she looked at: "It cannot be the grimace of that stone dwarf carved in the keystone of the vault which thus absorbs her attention. The devil! I can bear the comparison!"

He raised his voice: "Mademoiselle!"

She did not seem to hear him.

He began again, louder still: "Mademoiselle Esmeralda!"

Labour lost. The spirit of the young girl was elsewhere, and the voice of Gringoire had not power to recall it. Happily the goat meddled in it. She began to pull her mistress gently by the sleeve. "What do you want, Djali?" said the Egyptian quickly, as if awakened with a start.

"She is hungry," said Gringoire, charmed to open the conversation.

La Esmeralda fell to crumbling bread, which Djali ate gracefully from the hollow of her hand.

For the rest, Gringoire left her not time to resume her reverie. He hazarded a delicate question.

"You will not then have me for your husband?"

The young girl looked at him fixedly, and said: "No."

"For your lover?" resumed Gringoire.

She made her pout, and answered: "No."

"For your friend?" pursued Gringoire.

She looked at him again fixedly, and said after a moment of reflection: "Perhaps."

That _perhaps_, so dear to philosophers, emboldened Gringoire.

"Do you know what friendship is?" he asked.

"Yes," answered the Egyptian. "It is being brother and sister, two souls that touch without mingling, the two fingers of the hand."

"And love?" pursued Gringoire.

"Oh! love!" said she, and her voice trembled, and her eye shone. "It is being two and being but one. A man and a woman who melt into an angel. It is heaven."

The street dancer, in speaking thus, had a beauty which singularly struck Gringoire, and which seemed to him in perfect keeping with the almost Oriental exaltation of her words. Her pure pink lips smiled faintly; her candid and serene brow grew troubled at moments under her thought, like a mirror under a breath; and from her lowered long black lashes escaped a sort of ineffable light which gave to her profile that ideal suavity which Raphael found since at the mystic intersection of virginity, maternity, and divinity.

Gringoire nevertheless pursued.

"How then must one be to please you?"

"One must be a man."

"And I," said he, "what am I then?"

"A man has the helmet on his head, the sword in his hand, and golden spurs upon his heels."

"Good," said Gringoire, "without the horse, no man.—Do you love any one?"

"In love?"

"In love."

She remained a moment pensive, then she said with a peculiar expression: "I shall know that soon."

"Why not this evening?" then tenderly resumed the poet. "Why not me?"

She threw him a grave glance.

"I can love only a man who can protect me."

Gringoire blushed and took the hint. It was evident the young girl alluded to the little support he had lent her in the critical circumstance where she had found herself two hours before. That remembrance, effaced by his other adventures of the evening, came back to him. He struck his forehead.

"By the way, mademoiselle, I should have begun with that. Pardon my mad distractions. How then did you manage to escape the claws of Quasimodo?"

This question made the gypsy start.

"Oh! the horrible hunchback!" said she, hiding her face in her hands; and she shivered as in a great cold.

"Horrible indeed!" said Gringoire, who did not let go of his idea; "but how could you escape him?"

La Esmeralda smiled, sighed, and kept silence.

"Do you know why he had followed you?" resumed Gringoire, trying to come back to his question by a roundabout way.

"I know not," said the young girl. And she added quickly: "But you who followed me also, why did you follow me?"

"In good faith," answered Gringoire, "I know not that either."

There was a silence. Gringoire cut the table with his knife. The young girl smiled and seemed to look at something through the wall. Suddenly she began to sing in a scarcely articulated voice:

_Quando las pintadas aves_ _Mudas están, y la tierra_[29]...

She broke off abruptly, and fell to caressing Djali.

"You have there a pretty beast," said Gringoire.

"She is my sister," she answered.

"Why are you called _la Esmeralda_?" asked the poet.

"I know not."

"But still?"

She drew from her bosom a sort of small oblong sachet suspended from her neck by a chain of grains of adder's tongue. This sachet exhaled a strong smell of camphor. It was covered with green silk, and bore in its centre a large green glass bead, imitating an emerald.

"It is perhaps because of this," said she.

Gringoire would have taken the sachet. She drew back. "Do not touch it. It is an amulet; you would do harm to the charm, or the charm to you."

The poet's curiosity was more and more awakened.

"Who gave it to you?"

She put a finger on her mouth and hid the amulet in her bosom. He tried other questions, but she scarcely answered.

"What does this word mean: _la Esmeralda_?"

"I know not," said she.

"To what language does it belong?"

"It is Egyptian, I believe."

"I had suspected as much," said Gringoire, "you are not from France?"

"I know not."

"Have you your parents?"

She began to sing to an old air:

_My father is a bird,_ _My mother is a bird,_ _I cross the water without a skiff,_ _I cross the water without a boat,_ _My mother is a bird._ _My father is a bird._

"That is well," said Gringoire. "At what age did you come to France?"

"Very little."

"To Paris?"

"Last year. At the moment we entered by the Papal Gate, I saw the reed-warbler fly up into the air; it was the end of August; I said: The winter will be hard."

"It was," said Gringoire, delighted at this beginning of conversation; "I passed it blowing on my fingers. You have then the gift of prophecy?"

She fell back into her laconicism.

"No."

"This man you call the Duke of Egypt, is he the chief of your tribe?"

"Yes."

"It is yet he who married us," observed the poet timidly.

She made her pretty habitual grimace. "I do not so much as know your name."

"My name? if you will, here it is: Pierre Gringoire."

"I know a finer one," said she.

"Bad!" resumed the poet. "No matter, you will not anger me. See, you will perhaps love me on knowing me better; and then you have told me your story with such confidence that I owe you a little of mine. You shall know then that I am called Pierre Gringoire, and that I am son of the farmer of the registry of Gonesse. My father was hanged by the Burgundians and my mother disemboweled by the Picards, at the siege of Paris, twenty years ago. At six years therefore I was an orphan, having for sole shoe upon my feet the pavement of Paris. I know not how I got across the interval from six to sixteen. A fruit-woman gave me a plum here, a baker threw me a crust there; in the evening I got myself picked up by the watch, who put me in prison, and I found there a bundle of straw. All that did not prevent me from growing tall and thin, as you see. In winter, I warmed myself in the sun, under the porch of the Hôtel de Sens, and I found it very ridiculous that the fire of Saint John was reserved for the dog-days. At sixteen, I wished to take up a calling. Successively I tried everything. I made myself soldier; but I was not brave enough. I made myself monk; but I was not devout enough. And then, I drink ill. In despair, I entered apprentice among the carpenters of the great axe; but I was not strong enough. I had more inclination to be a schoolmaster; it is true I could not read; but that is no reason. I perceived after a certain time that something was wanting to me for everything; and seeing that I was good for nothing, I made myself of my own free will poet and composer of rhymes. It is a calling one can always take up when one is a vagabond, and that is better than stealing, as some young blackguard sons of my friends advised me. I met by good luck one fine day dom Claude Frollo, the reverend archdeacon of Notre-Dame. He took interest in me, and it is to him I owe being today a true man of letters, knowing Latin from the Offices of Cicero to the Mortuology of the Celestine fathers, and being barbarous in none of the sciences, neither in scholastic, nor in poetic, nor in rhythmic, nor even in hermetic, that sophy of sophies. It is I who am the author of the mystery which was represented today with great triumph and great concourse of populace in the grand hall of the Palace. I have also made a book which will have six hundred pages upon the prodigious comet of 1465, by which a man went mad. I have had yet other successes. Being a bit of an artillery carpenter, I worked at that great bombard of Jean Maugue, which you know, that burst at the bridge of Charenton the day they tried it, and killed four-and-twenty curious spectators. You see that I am not a bad match for marriage. I know many very pleasing tricks which I will teach your goat; for example, to mimic the Bishop of Paris, that accursed Pharisee whose mills splash the passers-by all along the Pont-aux-Meuniers. And then, my mystery will bring me much coined money, if they pay me for it. In short, I am at your commands, I, and my wit, and my science, and my letters, ready to live with you, damsel, as shall please you, chastely or merrily, husband and wife, if you find it good, brother and sister, if you find it better."

Gringoire held his peace, awaiting the effect of his harangue upon the young girl. She had her eyes fixed upon the ground.

"_Phoebus_," said she in a half-voice. Then, turning toward the poet: "_Phoebus_, what does that mean?"

Gringoire, without too well understanding what relation there could be between his speech and that question, was not sorry to make his erudition shine. He answered, puffing himself up:

"It is a Latin word meaning _sun_."

"Sun!" resumed she.

"It is the name of a very handsome archer, who was a god," added Gringoire.

"God!" repeated the Egyptian. And there was in her accent something pensive and passionate.

At that moment, one of her bracelets came loose and fell. Gringoire stooped quickly to pick it up. When he rose, the young girl and the goat had disappeared. He heard the noise of a bolt. It was a little door communicating doubtless with a neighboring cell, which was closing from without.

"Has she at least left me a bed?" said our philosopher.

He made the tour of the cell. There was no furniture fit for sleep but a rather long wooden chest, and even the lid of it was carved, which procured Gringoire, when he stretched himself upon it, a sensation about like that which Micromegas would feel in lying down at full length upon the Alps.

"Come," said he, accommodating himself to it as best he could, "one must resign oneself. But here is a strange wedding night. It is a pity. There was in that marriage with the broken pitcher something naive and antediluvian which pleased me."

BOOK THE THIRD

I

NOTRE-DAME

Doubtless it is still today a majestic and sublime edifice, that church of Notre-Dame of Paris. But, beautiful as she has preserved herself in growing old, it is difficult not to sigh, not to be indignant before the degradations, the innumerable mutilations which simultaneously time and men have inflicted upon the venerable monument, without respect for Charlemagne who laid the first stone of it, for Philippe-Auguste who laid the last.

Upon the face of this old queen of our cathedrals, beside a wrinkle one always finds a scar. _Tempus edax, homo edacior_[30]. Which I would willingly translate thus: time is blind, man is stupid.

If we had the leisure to examine one by one with the reader the various traces of destruction imprinted upon the ancient church, the share of time would be the least, the worst that of men, especially of men of art. I must needs say _men of art_, since there have been individuals who took the quality of architects in the two last centuries.

And first, to cite only a few capital examples, there is, to be sure, few finer architectural pages than that facade where, successively and at once, the three portals hollowed in ogive, the embroidered and indented cordon of the eight-and-twenty royal niches, the immense central rose-window flanked by its two lateral windows like the priest by the deacon and subdeacon, the high and frail gallery of trefoil arcades which bears a heavy platform upon its slender columns, finally the two black and massive towers with their slate pent-houses, harmonious parts of a whole magnificent, superimposed in five gigantic stories, unfold to the eye, in crowd and without disorder, with their innumerable details of statuary, of sculpture and of chasing, powerfully rallied to the tranquil grandeur of the ensemble; vast symphony in stone, so to speak; colossal work of a man and of a people, at once one and complex like the Iliads and the Romanceros of which it is sister; prodigious product of the contribution of all the forces of an epoch, where upon every stone one sees starting forth in a hundred ways the fancy of the workman disciplined by the genius of the artist; a sort of human creation, in a word, powerful and fruitful as the divine creation, from which it seems to have stolen the double character: variety, eternity.

And what we say here of the facade, must be said of the whole church; and what we say of the cathedral church of Paris, must be said of all the churches of Christendom in the middle ages. All holds together in that art come of itself, logical and well proportioned. To measure the toe of the foot, is to measure the giant.

Let us return to the facade of Notre-Dame, such as it still appears to us at present, when we go piously to admire the grave and powerful cathedral, which terrifies, according to its chroniclers: _quæ mole sua terrorem incutit spectantibus_[31].

Three important things are wanting today to that facade. First, the flight of eleven steps which formerly raised it above the ground; next, the lower series of statues which occupied the niches of the three portals, and the upper series of the eight-and-twenty more ancient kings of France, which garnished the gallery of the first story, from Childebert to Philippe-Auguste, holding in hand "the imperial apple."

The step, it is time which has made it disappear in raising with an irresistible and slow progress the level of the soil of the Cité; but, while causing to be devoured one by one, by that rising tide of the pavement of Paris, the eleven steps which added to the majestic height of the edifice, time has rendered to the church more perhaps than it took from it, for it is time which has spread upon the facade that dark hue of the centuries which makes of the old age of monuments the age of their beauty.

But who has cast down the two rows of statues? who has left the niches empty? who has cut in the middle of the central portal that new and bastard ogive? who has dared to frame there that insipid and heavy carved wooden door of Louis XV beside the arabesques of Biscornette? Men; the architects, the artists of our days.

And if we enter within the edifice, who has overthrown that colossus of Saint Christopher, proverbial among statues in the same degree as the grand hall of the Palace among markets, as the spire of Strasbourg among bell-towers? And those myriads of statues which peopled all the intercolumniations of the nave and the choir, kneeling, standing, on horseback, men, women, children, kings, bishops, men-at-arms, in stone, in marble, in gold, in silver, in copper, in wax even, who has brutally swept them away? It is not time.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”