________________________________________________
_ The priest whom the young girls had observed at the top of
the North tower, leaning over the Place and so attentive to the
dance of the gypsy, was, in fact, Archdeacon Claude Frollo.
Our readers have not forgotten the mysterious cell which
the archdeacon had reserved for himself in that tower. (I do
not know, by the way be it said, whether it be not the same,
the interior of which can be seen to-day through a little square
window, opening to the east at the height of a man above the
platform from which the towers spring; a bare and dilapidated
den, whose badly plastered walls are ornamented here
and there, at the present day, with some wretched yellow
engravings representing the façades of cathedrals. I presume
that this hole is jointly inhabited by bats and spiders, and
that, consequently, it wages a double war of extermination
on the flies).
Every day, an hour before sunset, the archdeacon ascended
the staircase to the tower, and shut himself up in this cell,
where he sometimes passed whole nights. That day, at the
moment when, standing before the low door of his retreat, he
was fitting into the lock the complicated little key which he
always carried about him in the purse suspended to his side,
a sound of tambourine and castanets had reached his ear.
These sounds came from the Place du Parvis. The cell, as we
have already said, had only one window opening upon the rear
of the church. Claude Frollo had hastily withdrawn the key,
and an instant later, he was on the top of the tower, in the
gloomy and pensive attitude in which the maidens had seen
him.
There he stood, grave, motionless, absorbed in one look and
one thought. All Paris lay at his feet, with the thousand spires
of its edifices and its circular horizon of gentle hills--with
its river winding under its bridges, and its people moving to
and fro through its streets,--with the clouds of its smoke,--with
the mountainous chain of its roofs which presses Notre-Dame in
its doubled folds; but out .of all the city, the archdeacon
gazed at one corner only of the pavement, the Place du
Parvis; in all that throng at but one figure,--the gypsy.
It would have been difficult to say what was the nature of this
look, and whence proceeded the flame that flashed from it. It
was a fixed gaze, which was, nevertheless, full of trouble and
tumult. And, from the profound immobility of his whole
body, barely agitated at intervals by an involuntary shiver, as
a tree is moved by the wind; from the stiffness of his elbows,
more marble than the balustrade on which they leaned; or
the sight of the petrified smile which contracted his face,--
one would have said that nothing living was left about Claude
Frollo except his eyes.
The gypsy was dancing; she was twirling her tambourine
on the tip of her finger, and tossing it into the air as she
danced Provençal sarabands; agile, light, joyous, and
unconscious of the formidable gaze which descended
perpendicularly upon her head.
The crowd was swarming around her; from time to time, a
man accoutred in red and yellow made them form into a circle,
and then returned, seated himself on a chair a few paces from
the dancer, and took the goat's head on his knees. This man
seemed to be the gypsy's companion. Claude Frollo could not
distinguish his features from his elevated post.
From the moment when the archdeacon caught sight of this
stranger, his attention seemed divided between him and the
dancer, and his face became more and more gloomy. All at
once he rose upright, and a quiver ran through his whole
body: "Who is that man?" he muttered between his teeth:
"I have always seen her alone before!"
Then he plunged down beneath the tortuous vault of the
spiral staircase, and once more descended. As he passed the
door of the bell chamber, which was ajar, be saw something
which struck him; he beheld Quasimodo, who, leaning through
an opening of one of those slate penthouses which resemble
enormous blinds, appeared also to be gazing at the Place. He
was engaged in so profound a contemplation, that he did not
notice the passage of his adopted father. His savage eye had
a singular expression; it was a charmed, tender look. "This
is strange!" murmured Claude. "Is it the gypsy at whom
he is thus gazing?" He continued his descent. At the end
of a few minutes, the anxious archdeacon entered upon the
Place from the door at the base of the tower.
"What has become of the gypsy girl?" he said, mingling
with the group of spectators which the sound of the tambourine
had collected.
"I know not," replied one of his neighbors, "I think that
she has gone to make some of her fandangoes in the house
opposite, whither they have called her."
In the place of the gypsy, on the carpet, whose arabesques
had seemed to vanish but a moment previously by the capricious
figures of her dance, the archdeacon no longer beheld
any one but the red and yellow man, who, in order to earn a
few testers in his turn, was walking round the circle, with his
elbows on his hips, his head thrown back, his face red, his
neck outstretched, with a chair between his teeth. To the
chair he had fastened a cat, which a neighbor had lent, and
which was spitting in great affright.
"Notre-Dame!" exclaimed the archdeacon, at the moment
when the juggler, perspiring heavily, passed in front of him
with his pyramid of chair and his cat, "What is Master
Pierre Gringoire doing here?"
The harsh voice of the archdeacon threw the poor fellow
into such a commotion that he lost his equilibrium, together
with his whole edifice, and the chair and the cat tumbled
pell-mell upon the heads of the spectators, in the midst of
inextinguishable hootings.
It is probable that Master Pierre Gringoire (for it was
indeed he) would have had a sorry account to settle with the
neighbor who owned the cat, and all the bruised and scratched
faces which surrounded him, if he had not hastened to profit
by the tumult to take refuge in the church, whither Claude
Frollo had made him a sign to follow him.
The cathedral was already dark and deserted; the side-aisles
were full of shadows, and the lamps of the chapels began to
shine out like stars, so black had the vaulted ceiling become.
Only the great rose window of the façade, whose thousand
colors were steeped in a ray of horizontal sunlight, glittered
in the gloom like a mass of diamonds, and threw its dazzling
reflection to the other end of the nave.
When they had advanced a few paces, Dom Claude placed
his back against a pillar, and gazed intently at Gringoire.
The gaze was not the one which Gringoire feared, ashamed as
he was of having been caught by a grave and learned person
in the costume of a buffoon. There was nothing mocking or
ironical in the priest's glance, it was serious, tranquil,
piercing. The archdeacon was the first to break the silence.
"Come now, Master Pierre. You are to explain many
things to me. And first of all, how comes it that you have
not been seen for two months, and that now one finds you in
the public squares, in a fine equipment in truth! Motley red
and yellow, like a Caudebec apple?"
"Messire," said Gringoire, piteously, "it is, in fact, an
amazing accoutrement. You see me no more comfortable in it
than a cat coiffed with a calabash. 'Tis very ill done, I am
conscious, to expose messieurs the sergeants of the watch to
the liability of cudgelling beneath this cassock the humerus
of a Pythagorean philosopher. But what would you have,
my reverend master? 'tis the fault of my ancient jerkin,
which abandoned me in cowardly wise, at the beginning of
the winter, under the pretext that it was falling into tatters,
and that it required repose in the basket of a rag-picker.
What is one to do? Civilization has not yet arrived at the
point where one can go stark naked, as ancient Diogenes
wished. Add that a very cold wind was blowing, and 'tis not
in the month of January that one can successfully attempt to
make humanity take this new step. This garment presented
itself, I took it, and I left my ancient black smock, which,
for a hermetic like myself, was far from being hermetically
closed. Behold me then, in the garments of a stage-player,
like Saint Genest. What would you have? 'tis an eclipse.
Apollo himself tended the flocks of Admetus."
"'Tis a fine profession that you are engaged in!" replied
the archdeacon.
"I agree, my master, that 'tis better to philosophize and
poetize, to blow the flame in the furnace, or to receive it
from carry cats on a shield. So, when you addressed
me, I was as foolish as an ass before a turnspit. But
what would you have, messire? One must eat every day, and
the finest Alexandrine verses are not worth a bit of Brie
cheese. Now, I made for Madame Marguerite of Flanders,
that famous epithalamium, as you know, and the city will not
pay me, under the pretext that it was not excellent; as
though one could give a tragedy of Sophocles for four crowns!
Hence, I was on the point of dying with hunger. Happily,
I found that I was rather strong in the jaw; so I said to this
jaw,--perform some feats of strength and of equilibrium:
nourish thyself. ~Ale te ipsam~. A pack of beggars who have
become my good friends, have taught me twenty sorts of
herculean feats, and now I give to my teeth every evening the
bread which they have earned during the day by the sweat
of my brow. After all, concede, I grant that it is a sad
employment for my intellectual faculties, and that man is not
made to pass his life in beating the tambourine and biting
chairs. But, reverend master, it is not sufficient to pass
one's life, one must earn the means for life.''
Dom Claude listened in silence. All at once his deep-set
eye assumed so sagacious and penetrating an expression, that
Gringoire felt himself, so to speak, searched to the bottom of
the soul by that glance.
"Very good, Master Pierre; but how comes it that you are
now in company with that gypsy dancer?"
"In faith!" said Gringoire, "'tis because she is my wife
and I am her husband."
The priest's gloomy eyes flashed into flame.
"Have you done that, you wretch!" he cried, seizing
Gringoire's arm with fury; "have you been so abandoned by
God as to raise your hand against that girl?"
"On my chance of paradise, monseigneur," replied Gringoire,
trembling in every limb, "I swear to you that I have
never touched her, if that is what disturbs you."
"Then why do you talk of husband and wife?" said the priest.
Gringoire made haste to relate to him as succinctly as possible,
all that the reader already knows, his adventure in the
Court of Miracles and the broken-crock marriage. It
appeared, moreover, that this marriage had led to no results
whatever, and that each evening the gypsy girl cheated him
of his nuptial right as on the first day. "'Tis a mortification,"
he said in conclusion, "but that is because I have had the
misfortune to wed a virgin."
"What do you mean?" demanded the archdeacon, who had been
gradually appeased by this recital.
"'Tis very difficult to explain," replied the poet. "It is
a superstition. My wife is, according to what an old thief,
who is called among us the Duke of Egypt, has told me, a
foundling or a lost child, which is the same thing. She wears
on her neck an amulet which, it is affirmed, will cause her to
meet her parents some day, but which will lose its virtue if
the young girl loses hers. Hence it follows that both of us
remain very virtuous."
"So," resumed Claude, whose brow cleared more and more,
"you believe, Master Pierre, that this creature has not been
approached by any man?"
"What would you have a man do, Dom Claude, as against
a superstition? She has got that in her head. I assuredly
esteem as a rarity this nunlike prudery which is preserved
untamed amid those Bohemian girls who are so easily brought
into subjection. But she has three things to protect her:
the Duke of Egypt, who has taken her under his safeguard,
reckoning, perchance, on selling her to some gay abbé; all his
tribe, who hold her in singular veneration, like a Notre-Dame;
and a certain tiny poignard, which the buxom dame always
wears about her, in some nook, in spite of the ordinances of
the provost, and which one causes to fly out into her hands
by squeezing her waist. 'Tis a proud wasp, I can tell you!"
The archdeacon pressed Gringoire with questions.
La Esmeralda, in the judgment of Gringoire, was an inoffensive
and charming creature, pretty, with the exception of a
pout which was peculiar to her; a naïve and passionate damsel,
ignorant of everything and enthusiastic about everything;
not yet aware of the difference between a man and a woman,
even in her dreams; made like that; wild especially over
dancing, noise, the open air; a sort of woman bee, with
invisible wings on her feet, and living in a whirlwind. She
owed this nature to the wandering life which she had always
led. Gringoire had succeeded in learning that, while a mere
child, she had traversed Spain and Catalonia, even to Sicily;
he believed that she had even been taken by the caravan of
Zingari, of which she formed a part, to the kingdom of Algiers,
a country situated in Achaia, which country adjoins, on one
side Albania and Greece; on the other, the Sicilian Sea, which
is the road to Constantinople. The Bohemians, said Gringoire,
were vassals of the King of Algiers, in his quality of chief of
the White Moors. One thing is certain, that la Esmeralda
had come to France while still very young, by way of
Hungary. From all these countries the young girl had brought
back fragments of queer jargons, songs, and strange ideas,
which made her language as motley as her costume, half
Parisian, half African. However, the people of the quarters
which she frequented loved her for her gayety, her daintiness,
her lively manners, her dances, and her songs. She believed
herself to be hated, in all the city, by but two persons, of
whom she often spoke in terror: the sacked nun of the
Tour-Roland, a villanous recluse who cherished some secret
grudge against these gypsies, and who cursed the poor dancer
every time that the latter passed before her window; and a
priest, who never met her without casting at her looks and
words which frightened her.
The mention of this last circumstance disturbed the
archdeacon greatly, though Gringoire paid no attention to
his perturbation; to such an extent had two months sufficed
to cause the heedless poet to forget the singular details of
the evening on which he had met the gypsy, and the presence
of the archdeacon in it all. Otherwise, the little dancer
feared nothing; she did not tell fortunes, which protected
her against those trials for magic which were so frequently
instituted against gypsy women. And then, Gringoire held the
position of her brother, if not of her husband. After all,
the philosopher endured this sort of platonic marriage very
patiently. It meant a shelter and bread at least. Every
morning, he set out from the lair of the thieves, generally
with the gypsy; he helped her make her collections of
targes* and little blanks** in the squares; each evening he
returned to the same roof with her, allowed her to bolt herself
into her little chamber, and slept the sleep of the just. A
very sweet existence, taking it all in all, he said, and well
adapted to revery. And then, on his soul and conscience, the
philosopher was not very sure that he was madly in love with
the gypsy. He loved her goat almost as dearly. It was a
charming animal, gentle, intelligent, clever; a learned
goat. Nothing was more common in the Middle Ages than these
learned animals, which amazed people greatly, and often led
their instructors to the stake. But the witchcraft of the
goat with the golden hoofs was a very innocent species of
magic. Gringoire explained them to the archdeacon, whom these
details seemed to interest deeply. In the majority of cases,
it was sufficient to present the tambourine to the goat in
such or such a manner, in order to obtain from him the trick
desired. He had been trained to this by the gypsy, who
possessed, in these delicate arts, so rare a talent that two
months had sufficed to teach the goat to write, with movable
letters, the word "Phoebus."
* An ancient Burgundian coin.
** An ancient French coin.
"'Phoebus!'" said the priest; "why 'Phoebus'?"
"I know not," replied Gringoire. "Perhaps it is a word
which she believes to be endowed with some magic and secret
virtue. She often repeats it in a low tone when she thinks
that she is alone."
"Are you sure," persisted Claude, with his penetrating
glance, "that it is only a word and not a name?"
"The name of whom?" said the poet.
"How should I know?" said the priest.
"This is what I imagine, messire. These Bohemians are
something like Guebrs, and adore the sun. Hence, Phoebus."
"That does not seem so clear to me as to you, Master Pierre."
"After all, that does not concern me. Let her mumble her
Phoebus at her pleasure. One thing is certain, that Djali loves
me almost as much as he does her."
"Who is Djali?"
"The goat."
The archdeacon dropped his chin into his hand, and appeared
to reflect for a moment. All at once he turned abruptly
to Gringoire once more.
"And do you swear to me that you have not touched her?"
"Whom?" said Gringoire; "the goat?"
"No, that woman."
"My wife? I swear to you that I have not."
"You are often alone with her?"
"A good hour every evening."
Porn Claude frowned.
"Oh! oh! ~Solus cum sola non cogitabuntur orare Pater Noster~."
"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 chicken to a church."
"Swear to me, by the body of your mother," repeated the
archdeacon violently, "that you have not touched that creature
with even the tip of your finger."
"I will also swear it by the head of my father, for the two
things have more affinity between them. But, my reverend
master, permit me a question in my turn."
"Speak, sir."
"What concern is it of yours?"
The archdeacon's pale face became as crimson as the cheek
of a young girl. He remained for a moment without answering;
then, with visible embarrassment,--
"Listen, Master Pierre Gringoire. You are not yet damned,
so far as I know. I take an interest in you, and wish you
well. Now the least contact with that Egyptian of the demon
would make you the vassal of Satan. You know that 'tis
always the body which ruins 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 got stung."
"You were so audacious, Master Pierre?" and the priest's
brow clouded over again.
"On another occasion," continued the poet, with a smile, "I
peeped through the keyhole, before going to bed, and I beheld
the most delicious dame in her shift that ever made a bed
creak under her bare foot."
"Go to the devil!" cried the priest, with a terrible look;
and, giving the amazed Gringoire a push on the shoulders, he
plunged, with long strides, under the gloomiest arcades of the
cathedral. _
Read next: VOLUME II: BOOK SEVENTH: Chapter 3 - The Bells
Read previous: VOLUME II: BOOK SEVENTH: Chapter 1 - The Danger of Confiding One's Secret to a Goat
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