Notre-Dame de Paris (Oxford World's Classics)

by Hugo, Victor

  And the cathedral was not just society to him, but the universe as well, the whole of nature. He never dreamed of any other espaliers than those of the stained-glass windows always in bloom, any shade but that of the stone foliage, laden with birds, flowering in clumps on the Saxon capitals, any mountains but the colossal towers of the church, any ocean but Paris murmuring at their feet.

  What he loved above all in the maternal building, what awoke his soul to spread out the poor wings which it kept so miserably folded in its cavern, were the bells. He loved them, fondled them, talked to them, understood them. From the peal in the slender spire over the crossing to the great bell over the doorway, he was fond of them all. The spire over the crossing, the two towers were for him like three great cages in which the birds, trained by him, would sing for no one else. Yet it was these same bells which had made him deaf; but mothers often show most love for the child who has made them suffer most.

  It is true that their voice was the only one he could still hear. On that score, the great bell was his dearly beloved. That was the one he preferred out of that family of noisy girls which bobbed around him on feast days. This great bell was called Marie. She was alone in the south tower with her sister Jacqueline, a smaller bell, enclosed in a smaller cage beside her. This Jacqueline was so called after the wife of Jean de Montagu, who had given it to the church, but that had not prevented him from appearing without his head at Montfaucon.* In the second tower were six other bells, and finally the six smallest lived in the spire over the crossing with the wooden bell, rung only from the afternoon of Maundy Thursday until the morning of Easter Eve. Quasimodo thus had fifteen bells in his seraglio, but big Marie was his favourite.

  You cannot imagine his joy on the days of a full peal. As soon as the archdeacon let him go, saying: ‘Go on!’, he would go up the spiral staircase in the bell tower faster than anyone else would have come down it. Quite out of breath he went into the great bell’s airy chamber; gazed at it for a moment in loving reverence; then spoke softly to it, stroked it with his hand, like some good horse about to run a long race. He expressed his sympathy for the trouble she was about to suffer. After these preliminary caresses, he called out to his assistants, standing on the lower floor of the tower, to begin. They hung on the ropes, the capstan creaked, and the huge metal capsule slowly moved. Quasimodo, shaking with excitement, followed it with his eyes. The first impact of the clapper on the bronze wall made the timber frame on which it was mounted quiver. Quasimodo vibrated with the bell. ‘Vah!’ he cried with a bellow of crazy laughter. Meanwhile the bourdon gathered speed in its swing, and as it described a wider and wider angle, Quasimodo’s eye grew also wider and wider, flaming like phosphorus. At last the full peal began, the whole tower trembled, timbers, leads, stonework, everything rumbled at the same time, from the foundation piles to the trefoils on the roof ridge. Quasimodo was now in a lather of excitement; he went to and fro; he trembled from head to foot with the tower. The bell, in unbridled frenzy, offered to each side of the tower in turn its bronze throat, emitting its tempestuous breath which could be heard four leagues away. Quasimodo placed himself in front of this open mouth; squatted down, rose again as the bell swung, breathed in this shattering blast, looked alternately at the Place, swarming with people two hundred feet below, and the enormous brazen tongue which came second after second to shout in his ear. It was the only speech he could still hear, the only sound which disturbed his universal silence. It made him swell out like a bird in the sunshine. Suddenly he caught the bell’s frenzy; his eye became extraordinary; he waited for the bourdon to come past, like a spider waiting for a fly, and suddenly flung himself headlong upon it. Then, suspended over the abyss, launched on the fearsome swinging of the bell, he seized the bronze monster by its lugs, gripped it with both knees, spurred it on with both heels and added the whole shock and weight of his body to increase the frenzy of the peal. Meanwhile the tower swayed; he shouted and ground his teeth, his red hair bristled, his chest sounded like the bellows in a forge, his eye flashed fire. The monstrous bell whinnied, panting beneath him, and then it was no longer the bourdon of Notre-Dame or Quasimodo, it was a dream, a whirlwind, a tempest; vertigo riding on sound; a spirit clinging to a flying crupper; a strange centaur, half man, half bell; a kind of horrible Astolfo* carried away on a prodigious hippogriff of living bronze.

  The presence of this extraordinary being sent round the whole cathedral some indefinable breath of life. It seemed as though there came from him, so at least the exaggerating superstitions of the people held, some mysterious emanation which brought to life all the stones of Notre-Dame and stirred the inmost vitals of the old church. The knowledge that he was there was enough to make people believe they could see the hundreds of statues in the galleries and doorways living and stirring. And in fact the cathedral seemed to be a docile and obedient creature under his hand; it waited on his will to raise its great voice; it was possessed and filled by Quasimodo as by a familiar spirit. It was as if he made the immense building breathe. He was indeed everywhere, multiplying himself to be at every point in the monument at once. Now there would be the frightening sight of a bizarre dwarf on top of one of the towers, climbing, wriggling, crawling on all fours, coming down the outside over the abyss, leaping from projection to projection, delving into the belly of some sculptured Gorgon; it was Quasimodo dislodging crows. Now in some dim corner of the church you would collide with a kind of living chimera, squatting with a scowl; it was Quasimodo thinking. Now under a bell tower you would catch sight of a huge head and an untidy bundle of limbs swaying furiously on the end of a rope; it was Quasimodo ringing for vespers or the angelus. Often at night a hideous shape could be seen wandering along the flimsy open-work lacy balustrade which runs along the top of the towers and round the curve of the apse; once again it was the hunchback of Notre-Dame. Then, the women of the neighbourhood would say, the whole church took on some element of the fantastic, supernatural, horrible; eyes and mouths opened here and there; you could hear barking from the stone dogs, wyverns, tarasques* which keep watch day and night, neck outstretched and jaws open, round the monstrous cathedral; and if it was a Christmas night, while the great bell seemed to growl as it summoned the faithful to the blazing lights of midnight mass, the atmosphere spread over the sombre façade was such that the great doorway seemed to be swallowing up the crowd and the rose-window watching it. And that all came from Quasimodo. In Egypt he would have been taken for the temple’s god; the Middle Ages thought he was its demon; he was its soul.

  So much so that for those who know Quasimodo once existed, Notre-Dame today is deserted, inanimate, dead. There is the feeling that something has gone. That immense body is empty; it is a skeleton; the spirit has left it. You can see where it was, and that is all. It is like a skull which has eyeholes but no longer any eyes to see.

  IV

  THE DOG AND HIS MASTER

  THERE was, however, one human being whom Quasimodo excepted from his malice and hatred for the rest, and whom he loved as much as his cathedral, and perhaps even more. That was Claude Frollo.

  It was quite simple. Claude Frollo had taken him in, adopted him, fed him, brought him up. While he was still a small child it was by Claude Frollo’s legs that he would take refuge when dogs and children snarled at him. Claude Frollo had taught him to talk, read, write. Claude Frollo finally had made him a bell-ringer. Now, giving the great bell in marriage to Quasimodo was like giving Juliet to Romeo.

  Thus Quasimodo’s gratitude was deep, passionate, unbounded; and although his adoptive father’s face was often stern and overcast, although his speech was habitually curt, harsh, imperious, that gratitude had never faltered for a moment. In Quasimodo the archdeacon had the most obedient of slaves, the most docile of servants, the most vigilant of watchdogs. When the poor bell-ringer had gone deaf there was established between him and Claude Frollo a mysterious sign language understood by them alone. In that way the archdeacon was the only human being with whom Quasimod
o had maintained communication. He was in touch with only two things in the world, Notre-Dame and Claude Frollo.

  The power of the archdeacon over the bell-ringer, the bell-ringer’s attachment to the archdeacon defy comparison. A sign from Claude, and the idea of pleasing him, would have been enough to make Quasimodo throw himself off the top of the towers of Notre-Dame. It was quite remarkable that with all that physical strength, developed to such an extraordinary degree, Quasimodo should have blindly put it at the disposal of another. There was in this no doubt filial devotion, domestic attachment; there was also the fascination of one mind by another. It was a poor, awkward, clumsy organism standing with bowed head and pleading eye before an intellect at once lofty and profound, powerful and superior. Finally, and above all, it was gratitude. Gratitude taken to such extreme limits that there is nothing with which we can compare it. It is not a virtue of which the finest examples are to be found among men. We shall say, then, that Quasimodo loved the archdeacon as no dog, no horse, no elephant ever loved its master.

  V

  CLAUDE FROLLO (CONTINUED)

  IN 1482 Quasimodo was about 20, Claude Frollo about 36; the one had grown up, the other had aged.

  Claude Frollo was no longer the simple student of the Collège de Torchi, loving protector of a little child, the dreamy young philosopher who knew a lot of things and was ignorant of many more. He was an austere, solemn, morose priest; having the cure of souls; Monsieur the Archdeacon of Josas, second acolyte to the bishop, having charge of the two deaneries of Montlhéry and Châteaufort and a hundred and seventy-four rural incumbents. He was a sombre and imposing person, before whom trembled the choirboys in their alb and gown, the machicots,* the brethren of Saint Augustine, the early morning clergy of Notre-Dame, as he slowly passed beneath the high arches of the choir, majestic, pensive, with his arms folded and his head bent so low on his chest that all that could be seen of his face was his great bald forehead.

  Dom Claude Frollo had, however, abandoned neither learning nor the education of his young brother, the two occupations of his life. But with that a certain bitterness had mingled with such sweet pleasures. In the long run, says Paul the Deacon,* the best bacon goes rancid. Little Jehan Frollo, nicknamed du Moulin, ‘of the mill’, from the place where he had been put out to nurse, had not grown up along the lines which Claude had tried to imprint upon him. His big brother counted on a pious, docile, learned, honourable pupil. Now the young brother, like those saplings which defeat the gardener’s efforts and turn obstinately towards the air and light, the young brother only increased and multiplied, only put forth fine, luxuriant, bushy branches towards idleness, ignorance, and debauchery. He was a proper devil, very unruly, which made Dom Claude frown, but very droll and very crafty, which made his big brother smile. Claude had entrusted him to the same Collège de Torchi where he had spent his own early years in study and meditation; and it grieved him that this sanctuary, once edified by the name of Frollo, should now be scandalized by it. He sometimes lectured Jehan severely and at length on the subject, and this was endured undaunted. After all, the young rascal had a good heart, as any play will illustrate. But once the lecture was over he none the less calmly resumed his lawless and outrageous ways. Now it was a béjaune (the name given to newcomers in the University) whom he had treated to a very rough welcome; a precious tradition which has been carefully perpetuated to our own day. Now he had stirred up a band of students, who had made a classic assault on a tavern, quasi classico excitati* [as if roused by the trumpet call], had then beaten the innkeeper ‘with offensive sticks’, and joyfully plundered the tavern, even staving in the hogsheads of wine in the cellar. And then there was this fine report in Latin which the under-monitor of Torchi brought piteously to Dom Claude with the distressing marginal note: Rixa, prima causa vinum optimum potatum [Brawl, main cause: excellent wine drunk]. Finally it was said, a shocking thing for a boy of 16, that his excesses many a time led him even to the rue de Glatigny.*

  All this had left Claude saddened and disheartened in his human affections, and he had thrown himself all the more enthusiastically into the arms of science, that sister who does at least not laugh in your face and always repays you, although sometimes in rather shortweight coin, for your attentions to her. He thus became more and more learned and at the same time, as a natural consequence, more and more rigid as a priest, more and more gloomy as a man. For each of us there are certain parallelisms between our intellect, our way of life, and our character which develop continuously and are broken only by the major disturbances of life.

  As Claude Frollo had from his early youth completed the whole circle of positive, external, and lawful human knowledge, he was obliged, short of stopping ubi defuit orbis [where the circle came to an end], to go further and seek other food for the insatiable activity of his intellect. The ancient symbol of the serpent biting its own tail is particularly appropriate for science. It would seem that Claude Frollo had experienced it. A number of grave persons affirmed that having exhausted the fas [permissible] of human knowledge he had dared to penetrate the nefas [forbidden]. It was said that he had tasted successively all the apples from the tree of knowledge and, whether from hunger or disgust, had ended by biting the forbidden fruit. He had attended in turn, as our readers have seen, the theological lectures in the Sorbonne, the assemblies of the Faculty of Arts at the statue of Saint Hilary, the lawyers’ disputations at the statue of Saint-Martin, the medical meetings at the stoup of Notre-Dame, ad cupam Nostrae Dominae; all the permitted and approved dishes which those four great kitchens called the four faculties could prepare and serve up to the intellect, he had devoured them, and had felt glutted before his hunger was appeased; he had then dug further, deeper, beneath all this finite, material, limited knowledge; he had perhaps put his soul at risk, and had sat down in the cavern at the mysterious table of the alchemists, astrologers, hermetics, at the head of which, in the Middle Ages, sat Averroes, Guillaume de Paris, and Nicolas Flamel, and which in the Orient, by the light of the seven-branched candlestick, extends as far as Solomon, Pythagoras, and Zoroaster.

  So at least it was supposed, rightly or wrongly.

  It is certain that the archdeacon often visited the cemetery of the Holy Innocents, where his father and mother had been buried, it is true, with the other victims of the plague of 1466; but he seemed to pay much less devotion to the cross on their grave than to the strange figures set upon the tomb of Nicolas Flamel and Claude Pernelle,* erected beside it.

  It is certain that he had often been seen going along the rue des Lombards and furtively entering a small house at the corner of the rue des Écrivains and the rue Marivault. This was the house built by Nicolas Flamel, where he had died in about 1417, and which, empty ever since, was already beginning to fall into ruin, thanks to all the hermetics and alchemists of every land who had worn away the walls just by carving their names upon them. Some of the neighbours even affirmed that they had once seen, through a grating, archdeacon Claude digging, stirring, and turning over the earth in the two cellars whose buttresses had been daubed with countless verses and hieroglyphs by Nicolas Flamel himself. Flamel was supposed to have buried the philosophers’ stone in these cellars and the alchemists for two hundred years, from Magistri to Father Pacifique,* did not cease from tossing the soil about until the house, so roughly excavated and ransacked, finally turned to dust beneath their feet.

  It is certain too that the archdeacon had become gripped by a singular passion for the symbolic doorway of Notre-Dame, that page of sorcery written in stone by Bishop Guillaume of Paris, who has doubtless been damned for attaching such an infernal frontispiece to the sacred poem chanted eternally by the rest of the building. Archdeacon Claude was also believed to have made a thorough study of the colossal statue of Saint Christopher and the long, enigmatic figure which then stood at the entrance from the Parvis and which the people derisively called Monsieur Legris* But what everyone had been able to observe was the interminable hours he often
spent, sitting on the parapet of the Parvis, contemplating the statues of the doorway, sometimes examining the foolish virgins with their lamps upside down, sometimes the wise virgins with their lamps upright; at other times calculating the angle of sight of the crow on the left-hand doorway, looking at some mysterious point inside the church where the philosophers’ stone is surely hidden, if it is not in Nicolas Flamel’s cellar. It was, be it said in passing, a strange destiny for the church of Notre-Dame at that time to be thus loved to two different degrees and so devotedly by two beings as dissimilar as Claude and Quasimodo; loved by the one, a kind of instinctive and savage half-man, for its beauty, its stature, the harmonies emanating from its magnificent whole; loved by the other, a man of learned and passionate imagination, for what it signified, its myth, for the meaning it contained, for the symbolism scattered beneath the sculptures of its façade like the original text beneath a later one in a palimpsest; in a word, for the enigma it offered eternally to the intellect.

  Finally, it is certain that the archdeacon had fitted out for himself, in that one of the two towers that overlooks the Grève, right beside the bell cage, a very secret little cell which no one, not even the bishop, so it was said, could enter without his leave. In former times this cell had been constructed almost on top of the tower, among the crows’ nests, by Bishop Hugo of Besançon,1 who had practised the black arts there in his time. What the cell contained nobody knew; but at night, from the shore by the Terrain, there had often been seen, at a little window it had at the back of the tower, a strange, intermittent red glow, appearing, disappearing, reappearing at short, regular intervals, which seemed consistent with the puffing of a bellows and to come from a flame rather than a light. In the dark at that height, it produced a peculiar effect, and the good women would say: ‘There’s the archdeacon at his bellows, hell’s sparking up there.’