by Victor Hugo
The revelry became more and more Flemish. Téniers could have given but an imperfect idea of it! Imagine Salvator Rosa’s battle-piece turned into a bacchanal feast. There were no longer students, ambassadors, townspeople, men, or women; no longer a Clopin Trouillefou, a Gilles Lecornu, a Simone Quatrelivres, or a Robin Poussepain. All distinctions died in the common license. The great hall ceased to be anything but a vast furnace of effrontery and mirth, wherein every mouth was a cry, every face a grimace, every individual a posture; the sum total howled and yelled. The strange faces which took their turn in gnashing their teeth through the rose-window were like so many brands cast into the flames; and from this effervescent mob arose, like steam from a furnace, a sharp, shrill, piercing sound, like the buzz of a gnat’s wings.
“Oh, confound it!”
“Just look at that face!”
“That’s nothing!”
“Let’s have another!”
“Guillemette Maugerepuis, do look at that bull’s head! it only lacks horns. It is not your husband.”
“Another!”
“By the Pope’s head! what’s the meaning of that contortion?”
“Well there! that’s not fair. You should show only your face.”
“That damned Perrette Callebotte! She is just capable of such a thing.”
“Noël! Noël!”
“I’m smothering!”
“There’s a fellow whose ears are too big to go through!”
But we must do justice to our friend Jehan. Amidst this uproar he was still to be seen perched upon his pillar, like a cabin-boy on a topsail. He exerted himself with incredible fury. His mouth was opened wide, and there issued from it so a yell which no one heard,—not that it was drowned by the general clamor, tremen dous though it was; but because it undoubtedly reached the limit of audible shrillness,—the twelve thousand vibrations of Sauveur or the eight thousand of Biot.
As for Gringoire, the first moment of depression over, he recovered his composure. He braced himself to meet adversity. “Go on!” he cried for the third time to his actors, whom he regarded as mere talking-machines; then, as he strode up and down in front of the marble table, he was seized with a desire to appear in his turn at the chapel window, were it only for the pleasure of making faces at that ungrateful mob. “But no, that would be unworthy of us; no vengeance. Let us struggle on to the end,” he murmured; “the power of poetry over the people is great; I will bring them back. Let us see whether grimaces or polite learning will triumph.”
Alas! he was left the only spectator of his play.
It was even worse than before. Now he saw nothing but people’s backs.
I am wrong. The patient fat man, whom he had already consulted at a critical moment, was still turned towards the theater. As for Gisquette and Liénarde, they had long since deserted.
Gringoire was touched to the heart by the fidelity of his only listener. He went up to him and addressed him, shaking him slightly by the arm; for the worthy man was leaning against the railing in a light doze.
“Sir,” said Gringoire, “I thank you.”
“Sir,” replied the fat fellow with a yawn, “for what?”
“I see what annoys you,” resumed the poet; “it is all this noise which prevents you from hearing readily. But be calm! your name shall be handed down to posterity. Your name, if you please?”
“Renauld Château, Keeper of the Seals of Châtelet, at Paris, at your service.”
“Sir, you are the sole representative of the muses here,” said Gringoire.
“You are too kind, sir,” replied the Keeper of the Seals of Chatelet.
“You are the only man,” added Gringoire, “who has paid proper attention to the play. How do you like it?”
“Ha, ha!” replied the fat magistrate, who was but half awake, “jolly enough, in truth!”
Gringoire was forced to content himself with this eulogy; for a storm of applause, mingled with prodigious shouts, cut short their conversation. The Pope of Fools was elected.
“Noël! Noel! Noël!” shouted the people on all sides.
That was indeed a marvelous grin which now beamed through the hole in the rose-window. After all the pentagonal, hexagonal, and heteroclitic faces which had followed one another in quick succession at the window without realizing that ideal of the grotesque constructed by imagination exalted by revelry, it required nothing less to gain the popular vote than the sublime grimace which had just dazzled the assembly. Master Coppenole himself applauded; and Clopin Trouillefou, who had competed for the prize (and Heaven knows to what intensity of ugliness his features could attain), confessed himself conquered. We will do the same. We will not try to give the reader any idea of that tetrahedron-like nose, of that horseshoe-shaped mouth; of that small left eye overhung by a bushy red eyebrow, while the right eye was completely hidden by a monstrous wart; of those uneven, broken teeth, with sad gaps here and there like the battlements of a fortress; of that callous lip, over which one of these teeth projected like an elephant’s tusk; of that forked chin; and especially of the expression pervading all this, that mixture of malice, amazement, and melancholy. Imagine, if you can, that comprehensive sight.
The vote was unanimous; the crowd rushed into the chapel. They returned leading the fortunate Pope of Fools in triumph. But it was then only that surprise and admiration reached their highest pitch; the grimace was his natural face.
Or rather the entire man was a grimace. A large head bristling with red hair; between his shoulders an enormous hump, with a corresponding prominence in front; legs and thighs so singularly crooked that they touched only at the knees, and, seen from the front, resembled two reaping-hooks united at the handle; broad feet, huge hands; and, with all this deformity, a certain awe-inspiring air of vigor, agility, and courage; strange exception to the rule which declares power, as well as beauty, to be the result of harmony,—such was the pope whom the fools had chosen to reign over them.
He looked like a giant broken to pieces and badly cemented together.
When this species of Cyclop appeared upon the threshold of the chapel, motionless, thickset, almost as broad as he was long, “the square of his base,” as a great man once expressed it, the people recognized him instantly, by his party-colored red and purple coat spangled with silver, and particularly by the perfection of his ugliness, and cried aloud with one voice:—
“It is Quasimodo, the bell-ringer! It is Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre-Dame! Quasimodo, the one-eyed! Quasimodo, the bandy-legged! Noel! Noël!”
The poor devil evidently had an abundance of nicknames to choose from.
“Let all pregnant women beware!” cried the students.
“Or all those who hope to be so,” added Joannes.
In fact, the women hid their faces.
“Oh, the ugly monkey!” said one of them.
“As wicked as he is ugly,” added another.
“He’s the very devil,” added a third.
“I am unlucky enough to live near Notre-Dame. I hear him prowling among the gutters by night.”
“With the cats.”
“He’s always on our roofs.”
“He casts spells upon us through the chimneys.”
“The other evening he came and pulled a face at me through the window. I thought it was a man. He gave me such a fright!”
“I’m sure he attends the Witches’ Sabbath. Once he left a broomstick on my leads.”
“Oh, what a disagreeable hunchback’s face he has!”
“Oh, the villainous creature!”
“Faugh!”
The men, on the contrary, were charmed, and applauded.
Quasimodo, the object of this uproar, still stood at the chapel door, sad and serious, letting himself be admired.
A student (Robin Poussepain, I think) laughed in his very face, and somewhat too close. Quasimodo merely took him by the belt and cast him ten paces away through the crowd; all without uttering a word.
Master Coppenole, l
ost in wonder, approached him.
“By God’s cross and the Holy Father! you are the most lovely monster that I ever saw in my life. You deserve to be pope of Rome as well as of Paris.”
So saying, he laid his hand sportively upon his shoulder. Quasimodo never budged. Coppenole continued:—
“You’re a rascal with whom I have a longing to feast, were it to cost me a new douzain of twelve pounds Tours. What say you?”
Quasimodo made no answer.
“By God’s cross!” said the hosier, “you’re not deaf, are you?”
He was indeed deaf.
Still, he began to lose his temper at Coppenole’s proceedings, and turned suddenly towards him, gnashing his teeth so savagely that the Flemish giant recoiled, like a bull-dog before a cat.
Then a circle of terror and respect, whose radius was not less than fifteen geometric paces, was formed about the strange character. An old woman explained to Master Coppenole that Quasimodo was deaf.
“Deaf!” said the hosier, with his hearty Flemish laugh. “By God’s cross! but he is a perfect pope!”
“Ha! I know him now,” cried Jehan, who had at last descended from his capital to view Quasimodo more closely; “it’s my brother the archdeacon’s bell-ringer. Good-day, Quasimodo!”
“What a devil of a fellow!” said Robin Poussepain, still aching from his fall. “He appears: he’s a hunchback; he walks: he’s bandy-legged; he looks at you: he is blind of one eye; you talk to him: he is deaf. By the way, what use does this Polyphemus make of his tongue?”
“He talks when he likes,” said the old woman; “he grew deaf from ringing the bells. He is not dumb.”
“That’s all he lacks,” remarked Jehan.
“And he has one eye too many,” said Robin Poussepain.
“Not at all,” judiciously observed Jehan. “A one-eyed man is far more incomplete than a blind one. He knows what he lacks.”
But all the beggars, all the lackeys, all the cutpurses, together with the students, had gone in procession to fetch, from the storeroom of the basoche, the pasteboard tiara and mock robes of the Pope of Fools. Quasimodo submitted to be arrayed in them without a frown, and with a sort of proud docility. Then he was seated upon a barrow painted in motley colors. Twelve officers of the fraternity of fools raised it to their shoulders; and a sort of bitter, scornful joy dawned upon the morose face of the Cyclop when he saw beneath his shapeless feet the heads of so many handsome, straight, and well-made men. Then the howling, tatterdemalion train set out, as was the custom, to make the tour of the galleries within the Palace before parading the streets and public squares.
CHAPTER VI
Esmeralda
We are delighted to be able to inform our readers that during the whole of this scene Gringoire and his play had stood their ground. His actors, spurred on by him, had not stopped spouting his verses, and he had not given over listening. He had resigned himself to the uproar, and was determined to go on to the bitter end, not despairing of recovering some portion of public attention. This ray of hope revived when he saw Quasimodo, Coppenole, and the deafening escort of the Pope of Fools leave the hall with a tremendous noise. The crowd followed eagerly on their heels. “Good!” said he to himself; “now we have got rid of all the marplots.” Unfortunately, all the marplots meant the whole audience. In the twinkling of an eye, the great hall was empty.
To be exact, there still remained a handful of spectators, some scattered, others grouped around the pillars, women, old men, or children, who had had enough of the tumult and the hurly-burly. A few students still lingered, astride of the window-frames, gazing into the square.
“Well,” thought Gringoire, “here are still enough to hear the end of my mystery. There are but few, but it is a picked public, an intellectual audience.”
A moment later, a melody meant to produce the greatest effect at the appearance of the Holy Virgin was missing. Gringoire saw that his musicians had been borne off by the procession of the Pope of Fools. “Proceed,” he said stoically.
He went up to a group of townspeople who seemed to him to be talking about his play. This is the fragment of conversation which he caught:—
“You know, Master Cheneteau, the Hotel de Navarre, which belonged to M. de Nemours?”
“Yes, opposite the Braque Chapel.”
“Well, the Treasury Department has just left it to Guillaume Alexandre, the painter of armorial bearings, for six pounds and eight pence Paris a year.”
“How high rents are getting to be!”
“Well, well!” said Gringoire with a sigh; “the rest are listening.”
“Comrades!” shouted one of the young scamps in the window; “Esmeralda! Esmeralda is in the square!”
This cry had a magical effect. Every one in the hall rushed to the windows, climbing up the walls to get a glimpse, and repeating, “Esmeralda! Esmeralda!”
At the same time a great noise of applause was heard outside.
“What do they mean by their ‘Esmeralda’?” said Gringoire, clasping his hands in despair. “Oh, heavens! I suppose the windows are the attraction now!”
He turned back again to the marble table, and saw that the play had stopped. It was just the moment when Jupiter should have appeared with his thunder. Now Jupiter stood motionless at the foot of the stage.
“Michel Giborne!” cried the angry poet, “what are you doing there? Is that playing your part? Go up, I tell you!”
“Alas!” said Jupiter, “one of the students has taken away the ladder.”
Gringoire looked. It was but too true. All communication was cut off between his plot and its solution.
“The rascal!” he muttered; “and why did he carry off that ladder?”
“That he might see Esmeralda,” piteously responded Jupiter. “He said, ‘Stay, there’s a ladder which is doing no one any good!’ and he took it.”
This was the finishing stroke. Gringoire received it with submission.
“May the devil seize you!” said he to the actors; “and if I am paid, you shall be too.”
Then he beat a retreat, with drooping head, but last to leave, like a general who has fought a brave fight.
And as he descended the winding Palace staircase, he muttered between his teeth: “A pretty pack of donkeys and clowns these Parisians are! They come to hear a miracle-play, and then pay no heed to it! Their whole minds are absorbed in anybody and everybody, —in Clopin Trouillefou, the Cardinal, Coppenole, Quasimodo, the devil! but in Madame Virgin Mary not a whit. If I had known, I’d have given you your fill of Virgin Marys. And I,—to come to see faces, and to see nothing but backs! to be a poet, and to have the success of an apothecary! True, Homer begged his way through Greek villages, and Naso died in exile among the Muscovites. But may the devil flay me if I know what they mean by their ‘Esmeralda’! What kind of a word is that, anyhow? It must be Egyptian!”
BOOK TWO
CHAPTER I
From Charybdis to Scylla
Night falls early in January. The streets were already dark when Gringoire left the Palace. This nightfall pleased him. He longed to find some dark and solitary alley where he might meditate at his ease, and let the philosopher apply the first healing balm to the poet’s wounds. Besides, philosophy was his only refuge; for he knew not where to find shelter. After the total failure of his first theatrical effort he dared not return to the lodging which he had occupied, opposite the Hay-market, in the Rue Grenier-sur- l‘Eau, having reckoned upon what the provost was to give him for his epithalamium to pay Master Guillaume Doulx-Sire, farmer of the taxes on cloven-footed animals in Paris, the six months’ rent which he owed him, namely, twelve Paris pence,—twelve times the worth of everything that he owned in the world, including his breeches, his shirt, and his hat. After a moment’s pause for reflection, temporarily sheltered under the little gateway of the prison of the treasurer of the Sainte-Chapelle, as to what refuge he should seek for the night, having all the pavements of Paris at his disposition, he
remembered having noticed, the week before, in the Rue de la Savaterie, at the door of a Parliamentary Councillor, a stone block for mounting a mule, and having said to himself that this stone would, on occasion, make a very excellent pillow for a beggar or a poet. He thanked Providence for sending him so good an idea; but as he prepared to cross the Palace courtyard on his way to the crooked labyrinth of the city, formed by the windings of all those antique sisters, the Rues de la Barillerie, de la Vieille-Draperie, de la Savaterie, de la Juiverie, etc., still standing at the present day with their nine-story houses, he saw the procession of the Pope of Fools, which was also just issuing from the Palace and rushing across the courtyard, with loud shouts, an abundance of glaring torches, and his (Gringoire’s) own music. This sight opened the wound to his self-esteem; he fled. In the bitterness of dramatic misfortune, all that recalled the day’s festival incensed him, and made his wound bleed afresh.
He meant to cross the Pont Saint-Michel; some children were careering up and down there with rockets and crackers.
“A plague on all fireworks!” said Gringoire; and he turned towards the Pont-au-Change. The houses at the head of the bridge were adorned with three large banners representing the king, the dauphin, and Margaret of Flanders, and six little bannerets with portraits of the Duke of Austria, Cardinal de Bourbon, M. de Beaujeu, and Madame Jeanne de France, the Bastard of Bourbon, and I know not who besides, —all lighted up by torches. The mob gazed in admiration.
“Lucky painter, Jehan Fourbault!” said Gringoire, with a heavy sigh; and he turned his back on banners and bannerets. A street opened directly before him: it looked so dark and deserted that he hoped it would afford a way of escape from every echo as well as every reflection of the festival: he plunged down it. In a few moments he struck his foot against something, stumbled, and fell. It was the big bunch of hawthorn which the members of the basoche had that morning placed at the door of a president of the Parliament, in honor of the day. Gringoire bore this new misfortune bravely; he rose and walked to the bank of the river. Leaving behind him the civil and criminal towers, and passing by the great walls of the royal gardens, along the unpaved shore where the mud was ankle-deep, he reached the western end of the city, and for some time contemplated the islet of the Passeur-aux-Vaches, which has since vanished beneath the bronze horse on the Pont Neuf. The islet lay before him in the darkness,—a black mass across the narrow strip of whitish water which lay between him and it. The rays of a tiny light dimly revealed a sort of beehive-shaped hut in which the cows’ ferryman sought shelter for the night.