________________________________________________
_ That night, Quasimodo did not sleep. He had just made
his last round of the church. He had not noticed, that at the
moment when he was closing the doors, the archdeacon had
passed close to him and betrayed some displeasure on seeing
him bolting and barring with care the enormous iron locks
which gave to their large leaves the solidity of a wall. Dom
Claude's air was even more preoccupied than usual. Moreover,
since the nocturnal adventure in the cell, he had constantly
abused Quasimodo, but in vain did he ill treat, and even beat
him occasionally, nothing disturbed the submission, patience,
the devoted resignation of the faithful bellringer. He
endured everything on the part of the archdeacon, insults,
threats, blows, without murmuring a complaint. At the most,
he gazed uneasily after Dom Claude when the latter ascended
the staircase of the tower; but the archdeacon had abstained
from presenting himself again before the gypsy's eyes.
On that night, accordingly, Quasimodo, after having
cast a glance at his poor bells which he so neglected
now, Jacqueline, Marie, and Thibauld, mounted to the summit
of the Northern tower, and there setting his dark lanturn,
well closed, upon the leads, he began to gaze at Paris. The
night, as we have already said, was very dark. Paris which,
so to speak was not lighted at that epoch, presented to the eye
a confused collection of black masses, cut here and there by
the whitish curve of the Seine. Quasimodo no longer saw
any light with the exception of one window in a distant
edifice, whose vague and sombre profile was outlined well
above the roofs, in the direction of the Porte Sainte-Antoine.
There also, there was some one awake.
As the only eye of the bellringer peered into that horizon
of mist and night, he felt within him an inexpressible
uneasiness. For several days he had been upon his guard. He
had perceived men of sinister mien, who never took their eyes
from the young girl's asylum, prowling constantly about the
church. He fancied that some plot might be in process of
formation against the unhappy refugee. He imagined that
there existed a popular hatred against her, as against himself,
and that it was very possible that something might happen
soon. Hence he remained upon his tower on the watch,
"dreaming in his dream-place," as Rabelais says, with his eye
directed alternately on the cell and on Paris, keeping faithful
guard, like a good dog, with a thousand suspicions in his mind.
All at once, while he was scrutinizing the great city with
that eye which nature, by a sort of compensation, had made
so piercing that it could almost supply the other organs which
Quasimodo lacked, it seemed to him that there was something
singular about the Quay de la Vieille-Pelleterie, that there
was a movement at that point, that the line of the parapet,
standing out blackly against the whiteness of the water was
not straight and tranquil, like that of the other quays, but
that it undulated to the eye, like the waves of a river, or like
the heads of a crowd in motion.
This struck him as strange. He redoubled his attention.
The movement seemed to be advancing towards the City.
There was no light. It lasted for some time on the quay;
then it gradually ceased, as though that which was passing
were entering the interior of the island; then it stopped
altogether, and the line of the quay became straight and
motionless again.
At the moment when Quasimodo was lost in conjectures, it
seemed to him that the movement had re-appeared in the Rue
du Parvis, which is prolonged into the city perpendicularly
to the façade of Notre-Dame. At length, dense as was the
darkness, he beheld the head of a column debouch from that
street, and in an instant a crowd--of which nothing could be
distinguished in the gloom except that it was a crowd--spread
over the Place.
This spectacle had a terror of its own. It is probable
that this singular procession, which seemed so desirous of
concealing itself under profound darkness, maintained a silence
no less profound. Nevertheless, some noise must have escaped
it, were it only a trampling. But this noise did not even
reach our deaf man, and this great multitude, of which he
saw hardly anything, and of which he heard nothing, though
it was marching and moving so near him, produced upon
him the effect of a rabble of dead men, mute, impalpable,
lost in a smoke. It seemed to him, that he beheld advancing
towards him a fog of men, and that he saw shadows moving
in the shadow.
Then his fears returned to him, the idea of an attempt
against the gypsy presented itself once more to his mind.
He was conscious, in a confused way, that a violent crisis
was approaching. At that critical moment he took counsel
with himself, with better and prompter reasoning than one
would have expected from so badly organized a brain. Ought
he to awaken the gypsy? to make her escape? Whither? The
streets were invested, the church backed on the river. No
boat, no issue!--There was but one thing to be done; to allow
himself to be killed on the threshold of Notre-Dame, to resist
at least until succor arrived, if it should arrive, and not to
trouble la Esmeralda's sleep. This resolution once taken, he
set to examining the enemy with more tranquillity.
The throng seemed to increase every moment in the church
square. Only, he presumed that it must be making very
little noise, since the windows on the Place remained closed.
All at once, a flame flashed up, and in an instant seven or
eight lighted torches passed over the heads of the crowd,
shaking their tufts of flame in the deep shade. Quasimodo
then beheld distinctly surging in the Parvis a frightful herd
of men and women in rags, armed with scythes, pikes, billhooks
and partisans, whose thousand points glittered. Here
and there black pitchforks formed horns to the hideous faces.
He vaguely recalled this populace, and thought that he
recognized all the heads who had saluted him as Pope of the Fools
some months previously. One man who held a torch in one
hand and a club in the other, mounted a stone post and
seemed to be haranguing them. At the same time the strange
army executed several evolutions, as though it were taking
up its post around the church. Quasimodo picked up his
lantern and descended to the platform between the towers, in
order to get a nearer view, and to spy out a means of defence.
Clopin Trouillefou, on arriving in front of the lofty portal
of Notre-Dame had, in fact, ranged his troops in order of
battle. Although he expected no resistance, he wished, like
a prudent general, to preserve an order which would permit
him to face, at need, a sudden attack of the watch or the
police. He had accordingly stationed his brigade in such a
manner that, viewed from above and from a distance, one
would have pronounced it the Roman triangle of the battle of
Ecnomus, the boar's head of Alexander or the famous wedge
of Gustavus Adolphus. The base of this triangle rested on
the back of the Place in such a manner as to bar the entrance
of the Rue du Parvis; one of its sides faced Hôtel-Dieu, the
other the Rue Saint-Pierre-aux-Boeufs. Clopin Trouillefou
had placed himself at the apex with the Duke of Egypt, our
friend Jehan, and the most daring of the scavengers.
An enterprise like that which the vagabonds were now
undertaking against Notre-Dame was not a very rare thing
in the cities of the Middle Ages. What we now call the
"police" did not exist then. In populous cities, especially
in capitals, there existed no single, central, regulating
power. Feudalism had constructed these great communities
in a singular manner. A city was an assembly of a thousand
seigneuries, which divided it into compartments of all shapes
and sizes. Hence, a thousand conflicting establishments of
police; that is to say, no police at all. In Paris, for example,
independently of the hundred and forty-one lords who laid
claim to a manor, there were five and twenty who laid claim
to a manor and to administering justice, from the Bishop of
Paris, who had five hundred streets, to the Prior of Notre-
Dame des Champs, who had four. All these feudal justices
recognized the suzerain authority of the king only in name.
All possessed the right of control over the roads. All were
at home. Louis XI., that indefatigable worker, who so largely
began the demolition of the feudal edifice, continued by
Richelieu and Louis XIV. for the profit of royalty, and finished
by Mirabeau for the benefit of the people,--Louis XI. had
certainly made an effort to break this network of seignories
which covered Paris, by throwing violently across them all
two or three troops of general police. Thus, in 1465, an
order to the inhabitants to light candles in their windows at
nightfall, and to shut up their dogs under penalty of death;
in the same year, an order to close the streets in the evening
with iron chains, and a prohibition to wear daggers or weapons
of offence in the streets at night. But in a very short time,
all these efforts at communal legislation fell into abeyance.
The bourgeois permitted the wind to blow out their candles in
the windows, and their dogs to stray; the iron chains were
stretched only in a state of siege; the prohibition to wear
daggers wrought no other changes than from the name of the
Rue Coupe-Gueule to the name of the Rue-Coupe-Gorge*
which is an evident progress. The old scaffolding of feudal
jurisdictions remained standing; an immense aggregation of
bailiwicks and seignories crossing each other all over the city,
interfering with each other, entangled in one another, enmeshing
each other, trespassing on each other; a useless thicket
of watches, sub-watches and counter-watches, over which, with
armed force, passed brigandage, rapine, and sedition. Hence,
in this disorder, deeds of violence on the part of the populace
directed against a palace, a hotel, or house in the most thickly
populated quarters, were not unheard-of occurrences. In the
majority of such cases, the neighbors did not meddle with
the matter unless the pillaging extended to themselves.
They stopped up their ears to the musket shots, closed their
shutters, barricaded their doors, allowed the matter to be
concluded with or without the watch, and the next day it was
said in Paris, "Etienne Barbette was broken open last night.
The Marshal de Clermont was seized last night, etc." Hence,
not only the royal habitations, the Louvre, the Palace, the
Bastille, the Tournelles, but simply seignorial residences,
the Petit-Bourbon, the Hôtel de Sens, the Hôtel d' Angoulême,
etc., had battlements on their walls, and machicolations over
their doors. Churches were guarded by their sanctity. Some,
among the number Notre-Dame, were fortified. The Abbey
of Saint-German-des-Pres was castellated like a baronial
mansion, and more brass expended about it in bombards than in
bells. Its fortress was still to be seen in 1610. To-day,
barely its church remains.
* Cut-throat. Coupe-gueule being the vulgar word for cut-weazand.
Let us return to Notre-Dame.
When the first arrangements were completed, and we must
say, to the honor of vagabond discipline, that Clopin's
orders were executed in silence, and with admirable precision,
the worthy chief of the band, mounted on the parapet of the
church square, and raised his hoarse and surly voice, turning
towards Notre-Dame, and brandishing his torch whose light,
tossed by the wind, and veiled every moment by its own
smoke, made the reddish façade of the church appear and
disappear before the eye.
"To you, Louis de Beaumont, bishop of Paris, counsellor in
the Court of Parliament, I, Clopin Trouillefou, king of Thunes,
grand Coësre, prince of Argot, bishop of fools, I say: Our
sister, falsely condemned for magic, hath taken refuge in
your church, you owe her asylum and safety. Now the Court
of Parliament wishes to seize her once more there, and you
consent to it; so that she would be hanged to-morrow in the
Grève, if God and the outcasts were not here. If your church
is sacred, so is our sister; if our sister is not sacred, neither
is your church. That is why we call upon you to return the
girl if you wish to save your church, or we will take possession
of the girl again and pillage the church, which will be a good
thing. In token of which I here plant my banner, and may
God preserve you, bishop of Paris,"
Quasimodo could not, unfortunately, hear these words
uttered with a sort of sombre and savage majesty. A vagabond
presented his banner to Clopin, who planted it solemnly
between two paving-stones. It was a pitchfork from whose
points hung a bleeding quarter of carrion meat.
That done, the King of Thunes turned round and cast
his eyes over his army, a fierce multitude whose glances
flashed almost equally with their pikes. After a momentary
pause,--"Forward, my Sons!" he cried; "to work, locksmiths!"
Thirty bold men, square shouldered, and with pick-lock faces,
stepped from the ranks, with hammers, pincers, and bars of
iron on their shoulders. They betook themselves to the
principal door of the church, ascended the steps, and were
soon to be seen squatting under the arch, working at the door
with pincers and levers; a throng of vagabonds followed them
to help or look on. The eleven steps before the portal were
covered with them.
But the door stood firm. "The devil! 'tis hard and
obstinate!" said one. "It is old, and its gristles have become
bony," said another. "Courage, comrades!" resumed Clopin.
"I wager my head against a dipper that you will have
opened the door, rescued the girl, and despoiled the chief
altar before a single beadle is awake. Stay! I think I
hear the lock breaking up."
Clopin was interrupted by a frightful uproar which re-
sounded behind him at that moment. He wheeled round.
An enormous beam had just fallen from above; it had crushed
a dozen vagabonds on the pavement with the sound of a
cannon, breaking in addition, legs here and there in the
crowd of beggars, who sprang aside with cries of terror. In
a twinkling, the narrow precincts of the church parvis were
cleared. The locksmiths, although protected by the deep
vaults of the portal, abandoned the door and Clopin himself
retired to a respectful distance from the church.
"I had a narrow escape!" cried Jehan. "I felt the wind,
of it, ~tête-de-boeuf~! but Pierre the Slaughterer is slaughtered!"
It is impossible to describe the astonishment mingled with
fright which fell upon the ruffians in company with this beam.
They remained for several minutes with their eyes in the
air, more dismayed by that piece of wood than by the king's
twenty thousand archers.
"Satan!" muttered the Duke of Egypt, "this smacks of magic!"
"'Tis the moon which threw this log at us," said Andry the Red.
"Call the moon the friend of the Virgin, after that!" went on
Francois Chanteprune.
"A thousand popes!" exclaimed Clopin, "you are all fools!" But
he did not know how to explain the fall of the beam.
Meanwhile, nothing could be distinguished on the façade, to
whose summit the light of the torches did not reach. The
heavy beam lay in the middle of the enclosure, and groans
were heard from the poor wretches who had received its first
shock, and who had been almost cut in twain, on the angle of
the stone steps.
The King of Thunes, his first amazement passed, finally
found an explanation which appeared plausible to his companions.
"Throat of God! are the canons defending themselves? To the sack,
then! to the sack!"
"To the sack!" repeated the rabble, with a furious hurrah.
A discharge of crossbows and hackbuts against the front of the
church followed.
At this detonation, the peaceable inhabitants of the
surrounding houses woke up; many windows were seen to open,
and nightcaps and hands holding candles appeared at the casements.
"Fire at the windows," shouted Clopin. The windows
were immediately closed, and the poor bourgeois, who had
hardly had time to cast a frightened glance on this scene of
gleams and tumult, returned, perspiring with fear to their
wives, asking themselves whether the witches' sabbath was
now being held in the parvis of Notre-Dame, or whether there
was an assault of Burgundians, as in '64. Then the husbands
thought of theft; the wives, of rape; and all trembled.
"To the sack!" repeated the thieves' crew; but they dared
not approach. They stared at the beam, they stared at the
church. The beam did not stir, the edifice preserved its calm
and deserted air; but something chilled the outcasts.
"To work, locksmiths!" shouted Trouillefou. "Let the door
be forced!"
No one took a step.
"Beard and belly!" said Clopin, "here be men afraid of a beam."
An old locksmith addressed him--
"Captain, 'tis not the beam which bothers us, 'tis the door,
which is all covered with iron bars. Our pincers are powerless
against it."
"What more do you want to break it in?" demanded Clopin.
"Ah! we ought to have a battering ram."
The King of Thunes ran boldly to the formidable beam, and
placed his foot upon it: "Here is one!" he exclaimed; "'tis
the canons who send it to you." And, making a mocking
salute in the direction of the church, "Thanks, canons!"
This piece of bravado produced its effects,--the spell of
the beam was broken. The vagabonds recovered their courage;
soon the heavy joist, raised like a feather by two hundred
vigorous arms, was flung with fury against the great door
which they had tried to batter down. At the sight of that
long beam, in the half-light which the infrequent torches
of the brigands spread over the Place, thus borne by that
crowd of men who dashed it at a run against the church, one
would have thought that he beheld a monstrous beast with a
thousand feet attacking with lowered head the giant of stone.
At the shock of the beam, the half metallic door sounded
like an immense drum; it was not burst in, but the whole
cathedral trembled, and the deepest cavities of the edifice
were heard to echo.
At the same moment, a shower of large stones began to fall
from the top of the façade on the assailants.
"The devil!" cried Jehan, "are the towers shaking their
balustrades down on our heads?"
But the impulse had been given, the King of Thunes had
set the example. Evidently, the bishop was defending himself,
and they only battered the door with the more rage, in
spite of the stones which cracked skulls right and left.
It was remarkable that all these stones fell one by one; but
they followed each other closely. The thieves always felt two
at a time, one on their legs and one on their heads. There
were few which did not deal their blow, and a large layer of
dead and wounded lay bleeding and panting beneath the feet
of the assailants who, now grown furious, replaced each other
without intermission. The long beam continued to belabor
the door, at regular intervals, like the clapper of a bell, the
stones to rain down, the door to groan.
The reader has no doubt divined that this unexpected resistance
which had exasperated the outcasts came from Quasimodo.
Chance had, unfortunately, favored the brave deaf man.
When he had descended to the platform between the towers,
his ideas were all in confusion. He had run up and down
along the gallery for several minutes like a madman,
surveying from above, the compact mass of vagabonds ready to
hurl itself on the church, demanding the safety of the gypsy
from the devil or from God. The thought had occurred to
him of ascending to the southern belfry and sounding the
alarm, but before he could have set the bell in motion, before
Marie's voice could have uttered a single clamor, was there
not time to burst in the door of the church ten times over?
It was precisely the moment when the locksmiths were advancing
upon it with their tools. What was to be done?
All at once, he remembered that some masons had been at
work all day repairing the wall, the timber-work, and the roof
of the south tower. This was a flash of light. The wall was
of stone, the roof of lead, the timber-work of wood. (That
prodigious timber-work, so dense that it was called "the forest.")
Quasimodo hastened to that tower. The lower chambers
were, in fact, full of materials. There were piles of rough
blocks of stone, sheets of lead in rolls, bundles of laths, heavy
beams already notched with the saw, heaps of plaster.
Time was pressing, The pikes and hammers were at work
below. With a strength which the sense of danger increased
tenfold, he seized one of the beams--the longest and heaviest;
he pushed it out through a loophole, then, grasping it
again outside of the tower, he made it slide along the angle
of the balustrade which surrounds the platform, and let it
fly into the abyss. The enormous timber, during that fall
of a hundred and sixty feet, scraping the wall, breaking the
carvings, turned many times on its centre, like the arm of a
windmill flying off alone through space. At last it reached
the ground, the horrible cry arose, and the black beam, as it
rebounded from the pavement, resembled a serpent leaping.
Quasimodo beheld the outcasts scatter at the fall of the
beam, like ashes at the breath of a child. He took advantage
of their fright, and while they were fixing a superstitious
glance on the club which had fallen from heaven, and while
they were putting out the eyes of the stone saints on the
front with a discharge of arrows and buckshot, Quasimodo
was silently piling up plaster, stones, and rough blocks
of stone, even the sacks of tools belonging to the masons,
on the edge of the balustrade from which the beam had
already been hurled.
Thus, as soon as they began to batter the grand door, the
shower of rough blocks of stone began to fall, and it seemed
to them that the church itself was being demolished over
their heads.
Any one who could have beheld Quasimodo at that moment
would have been frightened. Independently of the projectiles
which he had piled upon the balustrade, he had collected a
heap of stones on the platform itself. As fast as the blocks
on the exterior edge were exhausted, he drew on the heap.
Then he stooped and rose, stooped and rose again with incredible
activity. His huge gnome's head bent over the balustrade,
then an enormous stone fell, then another, then another.
From time to time, he followed a fine stone with his eye, and
when it did good execution, he said, "Hum!"
Meanwhile, the beggars did not grow discouraged. The
thick door on which they were venting their fury had already
trembled more than twenty times beneath the weight of their
oaken battering-ram, multiplied by the strength of a hundred
men. The panels cracked, the carved work flew into splinters,
the hinges, at every blow, leaped from their pins, the
planks yawned, the wood crumbled to powder, ground between
the iron sheathing. Fortunately for Quasimodo, there was
more iron than wood.
Nevertheless, he felt that the great door was yielding.
Although he did not hear it, every blow of the ram reverberated
simultaneously in the vaults of the church and within it.
From above he beheld the vagabonds, filled with triumph and
rage, shaking their fists at the gloomy façade; and both on
the gypsy's account and his own he envied the wings of the
owls which flitted away above his head in flocks.
His shower of stone blocks was not sufficient to repel
the assailants.
At this moment of anguish, he noticed, a little lower down
than the balustrade whence he was crushing the thieves, two
long stone gutters which discharged immediately over the
great door; the internal orifice of these gutters terminated
on the pavement of the platform. An idea occurred to him; he
ran in search of a fagot in his bellringer's den, placed on this
fagot a great many bundles of laths, and many rolls of lead,
munitions which he had not employed so far, and having
arranged this pile in front of the hole to the two gutters, he
set it on fire with his lantern.
During this time, since the stones no longer fell, the outcasts
ceased to gaze into the air. The bandits, panting like a
pack of hounds who are forcing a boar into his lair, pressed
tumultuously round the great door, all disfigured by the
battering ram, but still standing. They were waiting with a
quiver for the great blow which should split it open. They
vied with each other in pressing as close as possible, in order
to dash among the first, when it should open, into that opulent
cathedral, a vast reservoir where the wealth of three centuries
had been piled up. They reminded each other with roars of
exultation and greedy lust, of the beautiful silver crosses, the
fine copes of brocade, the beautiful tombs of silver gilt, the
great magnificences of the choir, the dazzling festivals, the
Christmasses sparkling with torches, the Easters sparkling
with sunshine,--all those splendid solemneties wherein
chandeliers, ciboriums, tabernacles, and reliquaries, studded
the altars with a crust of gold and diamonds. Certainly, at that
fine moment, thieves and pseudo sufferers, doctors in stealing,
and vagabonds, were thinking much less of delivering the
gypsy than of pillaging Notre-Dame. We could even easily
believe that for a goodly number among them la Esmeralda
was only a pretext, if thieves needed pretexts.
All at once, at the moment when they were grouping themselves
round the ram for a last effort, each one holding his
breath and stiffening his muscles in order to communicate all
his force to the decisive blow, a howl more frightful still than
that which had burst forth and expired beneath the beam, rose
among them. Those who did not cry out, those who were
still alive, looked. Two streams of melted lead were falling
from the summit of the edifice into the thickest of the rabble.
That sea of men had just sunk down beneath the boiling metal,
which had made, at the two points where it fell, two black and
smoking holes in the crowd, such as hot water would make in
snow. Dying men, half consumed and groaning with anguish,
could be seen writhing there. Around these two principal
streams there were drops of that horrible rain, which scattered
over the assailants and entered their skulls like gimlets of
fire. It was a heavy fire which overwhelmed these wretches
with a thousand hailstones.
The outcry was heartrending. They fled pell-mell, hurling
the beam upon the bodies, the boldest as well as the most
timid, and the parvis was cleared a second time.
All eyes were raised to the top of the church. They
beheld there an extraordinary sight. On the crest of the
highest gallery, higher than the central rose window, there
was a great flame rising between the two towers with whirlwinds
of sparks, a vast, disordered, and furious flame, a tongue
of which was borne into the smoke by the wind, from time
to time. Below that fire, below the gloomy balustrade with
its trefoils showing darkly against its glare, two spouts with
monster throats were vomiting forth unceasingly that burning
rain, whose silvery stream stood out against the shadows of
the lower façade. As they approached the earth, these two
jets of liquid lead spread out in sheaves, like water springing
from the thousand holes of a watering-pot. Above the flame,
the enormous towers, two sides of each of which were visible
in sharp outline, the one wholly black, the other wholly red,
seemed still more vast with all the immensity of the shadow
which they cast even to the sky.
Their innumerable sculptures of demons and dragons assumed
a lugubrious aspect. The restless light of the flame
made them move to the eye. There were griffins which had
the air of laughing, gargoyles which one fancied one heard
yelping, salamanders which puffed at the fire, tarasques*
which sneezed in the smoke. And among the monsters thus
roused from their sleep of stone by this flame, by this
noise, there was one who walked about, and who was seen,
from time to time, to pass across the glowing face of the
pile, like a bat in front of a candle.
* The representation of a monstrous animal solemnly drawn about
in Tarascon and other French towns.
Without doubt, this strange beacon light would awaken far
away, the woodcutter of the hills of Bicêtre, terrified to
behold the gigantic shadow of the towers of Notre-Dame
quivering over his heaths.
A terrified silence ensued among the outcasts, during which
nothing was heard, but the cries of alarm of the canons shut
up in their cloister, and more uneasy than horses in a burning
stable, the furtive sound of windows hastily opened and still
more hastily closed, the internal hurly-burly of the houses and
of the Hôtel-Dieu, the wind in the flame, the last death-rattle
of the dying, and the continued crackling of the rain of lead
upon the pavement.
In the meanwhile, the principal vagabonds had retired beneath
the porch of the Gondelaurier mansion, and were holding
a council of war.
The Duke of Egypt, seated on a stone post, contemplated
the phantasmagorical bonfire, glowing at a height of two
hundred feet in the air, with religious terror. Clopin
Trouillefou bit his huge fists with rage.
"Impossible to get in!" he muttered between his teeth.
"An old, enchanted church!" grumbled the aged Bohemian,
Mathias Hungadi Spicali.
"By the Pope's whiskers!" went on a sham soldier, who had
once been in service, "here are church gutters spitting melted
lead at you better than the machicolations of Lectoure."
"Do you see that demon passing and repassing in front of
the fire?" exclaimed the Duke of Egypt.
"Pardieu, 'tis that damned bellringer, 'tis Quasimodo,"
said Clopin.
The Bohemian tossed his head. "I tell you, that 'tis the
spirit Sabnac, the grand marquis, the demon of fortifications.
He has the form of an armed soldier, the head of a lion.
Sometimes he rides a hideous horse. He changes men into
stones, of which he builds towers. He commands fifty legions
'Tis he indeed; I recognize him. Sometimes he is clad in a
handsome golden robe, figured after the Turkish fashion."
"Where is Bellevigne de l'Etoile?" demanded Clopin.
"He is dead."
Andry the Red laughed in an idiotic way: "Notre-Dame
is making work for the hospital," said he.
"Is there, then, no way of forcing this door," exclaimed the
King of Thunes, stamping his foot.
The Duke of Egypt pointed sadly to the two streams of
boiling lead which did not cease to streak the black facade,
like two long distaffs of phosphorus.
"Churches have been known to defend themselves thus all
by themselves," he remarked with a sigh. "Saint-Sophia at
Constantinople, forty years ago, hurled to the earth three
times in succession, the crescent of Mahom, by shaking her
domes, which are her heads. Guillaume de Paris, who built
this one was a magician."
"Must we then retreat in pitiful fashion, like highwaymen?"
said Clopin. "Must we leave our sister here, whom those
hooded wolves will hang to-morrow."
"And the sacristy, where there are wagon-loads of gold!"
added a vagabond, whose name, we regret to say, we do not know.
"Beard of Mahom!" cried Trouillefou.
"Let us make another trial," resumed the vagabond.
Mathias Hungadi shook his head.
"We shall never get in by the door. We must find the
defect in the armor of the old fairy; a hole, a false postern,
some joint or other."
"Who will go with me?" said Clopin. "I shall go at it
again. By the way, where is the little scholar Jehan, who
is so encased in iron?"
"He is dead, no doubt," some one replied; "we no longer
hear his laugh."
The King of Thunes frowned: "So much the worse. There was a
brave heart under that ironmongery. And Master Pierre Gringoire?"
"Captain Clopin," said Andry the Red, "he slipped away
before we reached the Pont-aux-Changeurs,"
Clopin stamped his foot. "Gueule-Dieu! 'twas he who
pushed us on hither, and he has deserted us in the very middle
of the job! Cowardly chatterer, with a slipper for a helmet!"
"Captain Clopin," said Andry the Red, who was gazing
down Rue du Parvis, "yonder is the little scholar."
"Praised be Pluto!" said Clopin. "But what the devil is
he dragging after him?"
It was, in fact, Jehan, who was running as fast as his heavy
outfit of a Paladin, and a long ladder which trailed on the
pavement, would permit, more breathless than an ant harnessed
to a blade of grass twenty times longer than itself.
"Victory! ~Te Deum~!" cried the scholar. "Here is the
ladder of the longshoremen of Port Saint-Landry."
Clopin approached him.
"Child, what do you mean to do, ~corne-dieu~! with this ladder?"
"I have it," replied Jehan, panting. "I knew where it was
under the shed of the lieutenant's house. There's a wench
there whom I know, who thinks me as handsome as Cupido.
I made use of her to get the ladder, and I have the ladder,
~Pasque-Mahom~! The poor girl came to open the door to me
in her shift."
"Yes," said Clopin, "but what are you going to do with
that ladder?"
Jehan gazed at him with a malicious, knowing look, and
cracked his fingers like castanets. At that moment he
was sublime. On his head he wore one of those overloaded
helmets of the fifteenth century, which frightened the enemy
with their fanciful crests. His bristled with ten iron beaks,
so that Jehan could have disputed with Nestor's Homeric
vessel the redoubtable title of ~dexeubolos~.
"What do I mean to do with it, august king of Thunes?
Do you see that row of statues which have such idiotic
expressions, yonder, above the three portals?"
"Yes. Well?"
"'Tis the gallery of the kings of France."
"What is that to me?" said Clopin.
"Wait! At the end of that gallery there is a door which is
never fastened otherwise than with a latch, and with this
ladder I ascend, and I am in the church."
"Child let me be the first to ascend."
"No, comrade, the ladder is mine. Come, you shall be the
second."
"May Beelzebub strangle you!" said surly Clopin, "I won't be
second to anybody."
"Then find a ladder, Clopin!"
Jehan set out on a run across the Place, dragging his ladder
and shouting: "Follow me, lads!"
In an instant the ladder was raised, and propped against
the balustrade of the lower gallery, above one of the lateral
doors. The throng of vagabonds, uttering loud acclamations,
crowded to its foot to ascend. But Jehan maintained his
right, and was the first to set foot on the rungs. The
passage was tolerably long. The gallery of the kings of France
is to-day about sixty feet above the pavement. The eleven
steps of the flight before the door, made it still higher.
Jehan mounted slowly, a good deal incommoded by his
heavy armor, holding his crossbow in one hand, and clinging
to a rung with the other. When he reached the middle of
the ladder, he cast a melancholy glance at the poor dead
outcasts, with which the steps were strewn. "Alas!" said he,
"here is a heap of bodies worthy of the fifth book of the
Iliad!" Then he continued his ascent. The vagabonds
followed him. There was one on every rung. At the sight of
this line of cuirassed backs, undulating as they rose through
the gloom, one would have pronounced it a serpent with steel
scales, which was raising itself erect in front of the church.
Jehan who formed the head, and who was whistling, completed
the illusion.
The scholar finally reached the balcony of the gallery, and
climbed over it nimbly, to the applause of the whole vagabond
tribe. Thus master of the citadel, he uttered a shout of joy,
and suddenly halted, petrified. He had just caught sight of
Quasimodo concealed in the dark, with flashing eye, behind
one of the statues of the kings.
Before a second assailant could gain a foothold on the
gallery, the formidable hunchback leaped to the head of the
ladder, without uttering a word, seized the ends of the two
uprights with his powerful hands, raised them, pushed them
out from the wall, balanced the long and pliant ladder, loaded
with vagabonds from top to bottom for a moment, in the
midst of shrieks of anguish, then suddenly, with superhuman
force, hurled this cluster of men backward into the Place.
There was a moment when even the most resolute trembled.
The ladder, launched backwards, remained erect and standing
for an instant, and seemed to hesitate, then wavered, then
suddenly, describing a frightful arc of a circle eighty feet in
radius, crashed upon the pavement with its load of ruffians,
more rapidly than a drawbridge when its chains break.
There arose an immense imprecation, then all was still,
and a few mutilated wretches were seen, crawling over the
heap of dead.
A sound of wrath and grief followed the first cries of
triumph among the besiegers. Quasimodo, impassive, with
both elbows propped on the balustrade, looked on. He had
the air of an old, bushy-headed king at his window.
As for Jehan Frollo, he was in a critical position. He
found himself in the gallery with the formidable bellringer,
alone, separated from his companions by a vertical wall
eighty feet high. While Quasimodo was dealing with the
ladder, the scholar had run to the postern which he believed
to be open. It was not. The deaf man had closed it behind
him when he entered the gallery. Jehan had then concealed
himself behind a stone king, not daring to breathe, and fixing
upon the monstrous hunchback a frightened gaze, like the
man, who, when courting the wife of the guardian of a
menagerie, went one evening to a love rendezvous, mistook
the wall which he was to climb, and suddenly found himself
face to face with a white bear.
For the first few moments, the deaf man paid no heed to
him; but at last he turned his head, and suddenly straightened
up. He had just caught sight of the scholar.
Jehan prepared himself for a rough shock, but the deaf
man remained motionless; only he had turned towards the
scholar and was looking at him.
"Ho ho!" said Jehan, "what do you mean by staring at me with
that solitary and melancholy eye?"
As he spoke thus, the young scamp stealthily adjusted his
crossbow.
"Quasimodo!" he cried, "I am going to change your surname:
you shall be called the blind man."
The shot sped. The feathered vireton* whizzed and entered
the hunchback's left arm. Quasimodo appeared no more
moved by it than by a scratch to King Pharamond. He laid his
hand on the arrow, tore it from his arm, and tranquilly broke it
across his big knee; then he let the two pieces drop on the floor,
rather than threw them down. But Jehan had no opportunity
to fire a second time. The arrow broken, Quasimodo breathing
heavily, bounded like a grasshopper, and he fell upon the
scholar, whose armor was flattened against the wall by the blow.
* An arrow with a pyramidal head of iron and copper spiral wings by
which a rotatory motion was communicated,
Then in that gloom, wherein wavered the light of the torches, a
terrible thing was seen.
Quasimodo had grasped with his left hand the two arms of
Jehan, who did not offer any resistance, so thoroughly did he
feel that he was lost. With his right hand, the deaf man
detached one by one, in silence, with sinister slowness, all the
pieces of his armor, the sword, the daggers, the helmet, the
cuirass, the leg pieces. One would have said that it was a
monkey taking the shell from a nut. Quasimodo flung the
scholar's iron shell at his feet, piece by piece.
When the scholar beheld himself disarmed, stripped, weak,
and naked in those terrible hands, he made no attempt to
speak to the deaf man, but began to laugh audaciously in his
face, and to sing with his intrepid heedlessness of a child of
sixteen, the then popular ditty:-
"~Elle est bien habillée,
La ville de Cambrai;
Marafin l'a pillée~..."*
* The city of Cambrai is well dressed. Marafin plundered it.
He did not finish. Quasimodo was seen on the parapet of
the gallery, holding the scholar by the feet with one hand
and whirling him over the abyss like a sling; then a sound
like that of a bony structure in contact with a wall was
heard, and something was seen to fall which halted a third
of the way down in its fall, on a projection in the
architecture. It was a dead body which remained hanging
there, bent double, its loins broken, its skull empty.
A cry of horror rose among the vagabonds.
"Vengeance!" shouted Clopin. "To the sack!" replied the
multitude. "Assault! assault!"
There came a tremendous howl, in which were mingled
all tongues, all dialects, all accents. The death of the poor
scholar imparted a furious ardor to that crowd. It was seized
with shame, and the wrath of having been held so long in
check before a church by a hunchback. Rage found ladders,
multiplied the torches, and, at the expiration of a few minutes,
Quasimodo, in despair, beheld that terrible ant heap mount on
all sides to the assault of Notre-Dame. Those who had no
ladders had knotted ropes; those who had no ropes climbed
by the projections of the carvings. They hung from each
other's rags. There were no means of resisting that rising
tide of frightful faces; rage made these fierce countenances
ruddy; their clayey brows were dripping with sweat; their
eyes darted lightnings; all these grimaces, all these horrors
laid siege to Quasimodo. One would have said that some
other church had despatched to the assault of Notre-Dame its
gorgons, its dogs, its drées, its demons, its most fantastic
sculptures. It was like a layer of living monsters on the
stone monsters of the façade.
Meanwhile, the Place was studded with a thousand torches.
This scene of confusion, till now hid in darkness, was
suddenly flooded with light. The parvis was resplendent, and
cast a radiance on the sky; the bonfire lighted on the lofty
platform was still burning, and illuminated the city far away.
The enormous silhouette of the two towers, projected afar on
the roofs of Paris, and formed a large notch of black in this
light. The city seemed to be aroused. Alarm bells wailed in
the distance. The vagabonds howled, panted, swore, climbed;
and Quasimodo, powerless against so many enemies, shuddering
for the gypsy, beholding the furious faces approaching
ever nearer and nearer to his gallery, entreated heaven
for a miracle, and wrung his arms in despair. _
Read next: VOLUME II: BOOK TENTH: Chapter 5 - The Retreat in which Monsieur Louis of France says his Prayers
Read previous: VOLUME II: BOOK TENTH: Chapter 3 - Long Live Mirth
Table of content of Hunchback of Notre Dame (Notre-Dame de Paris)
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
