by Hugo, Victor
All the people in this crowd were themselves struck by it, and began to clap their hands and shout: ‘Noël! Noël!’
It was at that moment that the recluse caught sight of the gypsy on the pillory through the window of her Rat-hole and hurled at her the sinister imprecation: ‘May you be accursed, daughter of Egypt! accursed! accursed!’
V
THE STORY OF THE CAKE
(CONCLUDED)
LA ESMERALDA went pale, and came down unsteadily from the pillory. The recluse’s voice still pursued her. ‘Down, down, you go! thief from Egypt, you will be going up there again!’
‘The sachette is in one of her crazy moods,’ the people murmured; and that was as far as it went. For women of that kind were feared, and that made them sacred. In those days people were not keen to attack someone who prayed night and day.
The time had come to take Quasimodo back. They untied him and the crowd dispersed.
Near the Grand-Pont Mahiette, coming away with her two companions, suddenly stopped: ‘That reminds me, Eustache! What have you done with the cake?’
‘Mother,’ said the boy,’ while you were talking to that lady in the hole a big dog came and took a bite of my cake. So I ate some too.’
‘What, sir,’ she went on, ‘you’ve eaten it all up?’
‘Mother, it was the dog. I told him not to, he didn’t listen, so then I had a bite too, you see!’
‘What a terrible child,’ said the mother, smiling and scolding at the same time. ‘Do you know, Oudarde, he ate all the cherries off the tree in our orchard at Charlerange, all by himself. So his grandfather says he’ll be a captain—just let me catch you again, Monsieur Eustache. Come on, you big lion!’
BOOK SEVEN
I
OF THE DANGER OF CONFIDING YOUR SECRET TO A GOAT
SEVERAL weeks had passed.
It was early March. The sun, which du Bartas,* that classic ancestor of the periphrasis, had not yet named ‘the grand duke of candles’, was no less radiant and joyful for that. It was one of those spring days so sweet and lovely that all Paris fills the squares and promenades to celebrate as if it were a Sunday. On such bright, warm, tranquil days there is a certain hour especially for admiring the portal of Notre-Dame. That is the moment when the sun, already declining in the west, faces the cathedral almost directly. Its rays, becoming ever more horizontal, slowly withdraw from the pavement of the Place and travel up the perpendicular façade, making the countless carvings stand out roundly from their shadows, while the great central rose-window blazes like a Cyclops’ eye afire with reflections from the forge.
It was that time now.
Opposite the tall cathedral stained red by the setting sun, on the stone balcony built over the porch of a handsome Gothic mansion, standing on the corner of the Place and the rue du Parvis, some lovely young girls were laughing and chatting in the most delightful and light-hearted manner. From the length of the veil which fell from the top of their pointed head-dress, all wound about with pearls, down to their heels, from the delicacy of the embroidered chemisette covering their shoulders and revealing, in the attractive fashion of the times, the cleavage of their beautiful maidenly bosoms, from the opulence of their underskirts, even more costly than their topcoats (a wonderful refinement!), from the gauze, the silk, and the velvet lavished on all this, above all from the whiteness of their hands, which betokened leisure and idleness, it was easy to guess that these were rich and noble heiresses. They were in fact Damoiselle Fleur-de-Lys de Gondelaurier and her companions Diane de Christeuil, Amelotte de Montmichel, Colombe de Gaillefontaine, and the little de Champchevrier; all girls of good family, at that moment gathered together at the house of the widowed Dame de Gondelaurier, on account of Monseigneur de Beaujeu and his lady wife, who were due to come to Paris in April to choose the maids of honour to accompany Madame the Dauphine Marguerite, when they went to Picardy to receive her from the hands of the Flemings. Now all the country squires for thirty leagues around were soliciting this favour for their daughters, and a good many of them had already brought or sent the girls to Paris. They had been entrusted by their parents into the discreet and venerable keeping of Madame Aloïse de Gondelaurier, widow of a former master of the King’s crossbowmen, now living a retired life with her only daughter in her house on the place du Parvis Notre-Dame in Paris.
The balcony on which these girls were sitting opened on to a room richly hung with fawn-coloured Flanders leather, printed with gold foliage. The parallel beams running across the ceiling amused the eye with hundreds of strange sculptures, painted and gilded. On carved chests splendid enamels gleamed here and there; a boar’s head in faience crowned a magnificent dresser, whose two steps proclaimed that the mistress of the house was wife or widow of a knight banneret. At the end, beside a tall chimney breast emblazoned with coats of arms from top to bottom, in a sumptuous red velvet armchair, sat the Dame de Gondelaurier, whose 55 years were written no less clearly on her clothes than on her features. Beside her stood a young man of somewhat proud demeanour, though a little vain and swaggering, one of those good-looking boys on whom all women are agreed, although serious men with some knowledge of physiognomy shrug their shoulders at them. The young cavalier wore the dazzling uniform of captain of archers of the ordinance of the King, much too closely resembling Jupiter’s costume, which the reader has already been able to admire in the opening book of this story, for us to inflict on him a second description.
The young ladies were sitting, some inside, some on the balcony, some on cushions of Utrecht velvet with gold corner pieces, others on oaken stools carved with flowers and figures. Each of them held on her knees a section of a great needlework tapestry, on which they were working together, while a goodly length of it trailed over the matting covering the floor.
They were talking together in whispers, with stifled laughter, like any collection of girls with a young man in their midst. The young man, whose presence was enough to excite all this female vanity, seemed for his part to take very little interest in it, and while these lovely girls vied with each other to attract his attention, he seemed mainly occupied in polishing up his belt buckle with his kid glove.
From time to time the old lady addressed him in an undertone, and he replied as best he could with a clumsy and constrained sort of politeness. From the smiles, the little signs of complicity of Madame Aloïse, the winks she directed at her daughter Fleur-de-Lys as she spoke quietly to the captain, it was obvious that the subject at issue was some betrothal already confirmed, some marriage doubtless forthcoming, between the young man and Fleur-de-Lys. And from the officer’s embarrassed lack of enthusiasm it was obvious that, at least on his part, love no longer came into it. His whole bearing expressed a feeling of discomfort and tedium which our modern subalterns on garrison duty would render admirably by: ‘What a frightful chore!’
The good lady, quite obsessed by her daughter, like any poor mother, did not notice the officer’s lack of enthusiasm, and was taking great pains to point out to him in whispers the infinite perfection with which Fleur-de-Lys plied her needle or wound her thread.
‘There now, young cousin,’ she said, tugging at his sleeve so that she could speak in his ear. ‘Look at her! See how she is bending over.’
‘Indeed,’ the young man answered; and relapsed into his icy and abstracted silence.
A moment later he had to lean over again, and Dame Aloïse said: ‘Have you ever seen a more attractive and cheerful figure than your betrothed? Could anyone be more white and fair? Aren’t her hands just perfect? And doesn’t she move that neck quite charmingly, like a swan? How I envy you sometimes! And how fortunate you are to be a man, you wicked young libertine! Isn’t it true that my Fleur-de-Lys is adorably beautiful and you are madly in love with her?’
‘Without question,’ he answered, his thoughts elsewhere.
‘Go over and talk to her, then,’ Madame Aloïse said suddenly, pushing him by the shoulder. ‘Say something to her. You have beco
me very shy.’
We can assure our readers that shyness did not belong either to the captain’s virtues or his failings. He tried, however, to do as he was asked.
‘Fair cousin,’ he said, approaching Fleur-de-Lys, ‘what is the subject of this piece of tapestry you are working on?’
‘Fair cousin,’ Fleur-de-Lys answered in vexed tones, ‘I’ve told you three times already. It’s Neptunus’ grotto.’
It was evident that Fleur-de-Lys saw much more clearly than her mother through the captain’s cold and abstracted behaviour. He felt the need to make conversation.
‘And for whom is all this Neptunery intended?’ he asked.
‘For the abbey of Saint-Antoine-des-Champs,’ said Fleur-de-Lys without looking up.
The captain picked up a corner of the tapestry: ‘Who, fair cousin, is this stout soldier blowing a trumpet with all his might?’
‘It’s Triton,’ she answered.
There was still a somewhat sulky tone in Fleur-de-Lys’s brief words. The young man realized that it was essential to say something in her ear, some piece of nonsense, gallantry, anything. So he leaned over, but could devise nothing more tender or intimate than these words: ‘Why does your mother still wear a kirtle with her coat of arms on it like our grandmothers in Charles VII’s time? Do tell her, fair cousin, that it’s out of fashion today, and that her blazon of hinge [gond] and laurel [laurier] embroidered on her dress makes her look like a walking chimneypiece. No one sits on their banner any more like that today, I swear.’
Fleur-de-Lys looked up at him reproachfully with her beautiful eyes: ‘Is that all you swear to me?’ she said in a low voice.
Meanwhile good Dame Aloïse, delighted to see them leaning together whispering like this, said as she played with the clasps of her book of hours: ‘What a touching love scene!’
The captain, feeling more and more ill at ease, fell back on the tapestry: ‘That really is a charming piece of work!’ he exclaimed.
In that connection Colombe de Gaillefontaine, another beautiful fair-skinned blonde in a high-necked blue damask dress, shyly ventured a remark which she addressed to Fleur-de-Lys in the hope that the handsome captain would reply to it: ‘My dear Gondelaurier, have you seen the tapestries in the Hôtel de la Roche-Guyon?’
‘Isn’t that the hôtel enclosing the garden belonging to the wardrobe-mistress of the Louvre?’ asked Diane de Christeuil with a laugh; she had beautiful teeth, and consequently laughed at the slightest thing.
‘And where there is that huge old tower from the ancient walls of Paris,’ added Amelotte de Montmichel, a pretty, fresh-looking girl with dark curly hair, who had a habit of sighing as the other one laughed, without really knowing why.
‘My dear Colombe,’ put in Dame Aloïse, ‘don’t you mean the hôtel which used to belong to Monsieur de Bacqueville in Charles VI’s time? There are indeed some quite superb high-warp tapestries there.’
‘Charles VI! King Charles VI!’ muttered the young captain, twirling his moustache. ‘Goodness! What a memory the good lady has for bygone things!’
Madame de Gondelaurier went on: ‘Beautiful tapestries, indeed. Work so highly regarded as to be considered unique!’
At that moment Bérangère de Champchevrier, a slender little girl of 7, who was looking down into the square through the trefoil apertures of the balcony, exclaimed: ‘Oh! look, godmother Fleur-de-Lys, look at that pretty dancing girl, dancing there on the paving, playing her tambourine in the middle of those common townsfolk!’
They could indeed hear the resonant thrumming of a tambourine.
‘Some gypsy girl from Bohemia,’ said Fleur-de-Lys, casually turning round towards the square.
‘Let’s see! let’s see!’ cried her lively companions; and they all rushed to the edge of the balcony, while Fleur-de-Lys, preoccupied with her fiance’s coolness, slowly followed them and he, relieved by this incident which cut short an uncomfortable conversation, went back inside the apartment with the contented look of a soldier whose duty is over. Yet being on duty with the beautiful Fleur-de-Lys was pleasant and delightful, and so it had formerly appeared to him; but the captain had become gradually bored with it; the prospect of a forthcoming marriage cooled his ardour more every day. Besides, he was a man of changeable moods and, need it be said? of somewhat vulgar tastes. Although of most noble birth, he had in the course of his military service contracted more than one of the common soldiery’s habits. He enjoyed the tavern, and what came next. He only felt at ease with coarse language, a soldier’s approach to women, easy beauties, and easy conquests. Yet he had received from his family some education and some manners; but he was too young when he had started to roam the country, too young when he had begun garrison duty, and with every day more of the gentlemanly veneer was rubbed away by the harsh pressure of his soldier’s baldric. While he still paid her occasional visits, from some remnant of human respect, he felt doubly uncomfortable with Fleur-de-Lys; first, because as a result of scattering his affections in all sorts of places he had kept back very little for her; then because in the midst of so many stiff, starched, and proper lovely ladies he went in constant fear lest his mouth, so accustomed to bad language, might suddenly take the bit between its teeth and run off into the language of the tavern. Imagine what an effect that would have!
For the rest, this all went with great pretensions to elegance, fine clothes, and handsome demeanour. Put it all together as best you may. I am only a historian.
He had been standing there for a few minutes, thinking or unthinking, leaning in silence against the carved mantelpiece, when Fleur-de-Lys, suddenly turning round, spoke to him. After all, the poor girl only sulked at him with great reluctance.
‘Fair cousin, didn’t you tell us about some little gypsy girl you rescued from the hands of a dozen robbers one night two months ago, when you were on the counterwatch?’
‘Yes, I think I did, fair cousin,’ said the captain.
‘Well,’ she went on, ‘perhaps it was that gypsy girl dancing down there in the Parvis. Come and see whether you recognize her, fair cousin Phoebus.’
A secret desire for reconciliation came through in this gentle invitation to join her and in her careful use of his name. Captain Phoebus de Châteaupers (for it is he at whom the reader has been looking since the beginning of this chapter) slowly approached the balcony.
‘There,’ Fleur-de-Lys said, tenderly putting her hand on Phoebus’ arm, ‘look at that girl dancing there in that circle. Is she your gypsy?’
Phoebus looked and said: ‘Yes. I recognize her by her goat.’
‘Oh! isn’t it a pretty little goat!’ said Amelotte, clasping her hands in admiration.
‘Are its horns really made of gold?’ asked Bérangère.
Without stirring from her chair, Dame Aloïse spoke up: ‘Isn’t it one of those gypsies who came in last year by the Porte Gibard?’
‘Mother dear,’ Fleur-de-Lys said gently, ‘that gate is called Porte d’Enfer nowadays.’
Mademoiselle de Gondelaurier knew how her mother’s outdated way of speaking grated on the captain. Indeed he had begun to snigger as he muttered between his teeth: ‘Porte Gibard! Porte Gibard! That’s for Charles VI to go through!’
‘Godmother,’ cried Bérangère, whose constantly roving eyes had suddenly looked up at the top of the towers of Notre-Dame, ‘who’s that man in black up there?’
All the girls looked up. There was indeed a man leaning on the topmost balustrade of the north tower, looking on to the Grève. He was a priest. They could clearly make out his costume and his face resting on his hands. For the rest he was as motionless as a statue. He was gazing down into the square.
His immobility had something of the hawk who has just discovered a sparrows’ nest and is watching it.
‘It’s the archdeacon of Josas,’ said Fleur-de-Lys.
‘You must have good eyesight if you can recognize him from here!’ remarked the Gaillefontaine girl.
‘How he stares at
the little dancing girl!’ put in Diane de Christeuil.
‘The Egyptian girl had better look out!’ said Fleur-de-Lys, ‘he doesn’t like gypsies.’
‘It’s a real shame that man is looking at her like that, added Amelotte de Montmichel, ‘she’s a marvellous dancer.’
‘Fair cousin Phoebus,’ suddenly said Fleur-de-Lys, ‘as you know that little gypsy, signal to her to come up. That will be fun for us.’
‘Oh yes!’ cried all the girls, clapping their hands.
‘But that’s silly,’ answered Phoebus. ‘She has probably forgotten me, and I don’t even know her name. However, since that is your wish, mesdemoiselles, I’ll try.’ And leaning over the balcony balustrade he began shouting: ‘Little girl!’
The dancer was not playing her tambourine at that moment. She turned her head in the direction of the call, her shining eyes fixed on Phoebus, and she stopped dead.
‘Little girl!’ the captain repeated, and beckoned her up.
The girl looked at him again, then she flushed as though a flame had risen in her cheeks, and tucking her tambourine under her arm, she made her way through the astonished onlookers towards the door of the house from which Phoebus had called to her, slowly, unsteadily, and with the troubled look of a bird surrendering to the fascination of a snake.
A moment later the door-hanging was raised and the gypsy girl appeared in the doorway, red-faced, dismayed, out of breath, not daring to take another step.
Bérangère clapped her hands.
Meanwhile the dancer stayed motionless in the doorway. Her appearance had had a singular effect on this group of girls. Undoubtedly a vague, indeterminate desire to please the handsome officer animated them one and all, his splendid uniform was the target for all their coquetry, and ever since he had been there, there had been a certain secret rivalry between them, which they scarcely admitted even to themselves, but which was none the less continually manifested in their gestures and words. Nevertheless, as they all shared more or less the same degree of beauty, they were competing on an equal footing, and each of them might hope to win. The gypsy’s arrival abruptly upset that balance. She was of such exceptional beauty that the moment she appeared at the entrance to the apartment she seemed to radiate a kind of light that was all her own. In this enclosed space, in this sombre setting of hangings and panelling, she was incomparably more beautiful and radiant than in a public square. The effect was like that of a torch brought from broad daylight into the shadows. The noble young ladies were dazzled despite themselves. Each of them felt somehow injured in her own beauty. So their battlefront, if we may be permitted the expression, changed immediately, without a single word being spoken between them. But they understood one another wonderfully well. Women understand and respond to each other’s instincts more swiftly than men to each other’s intellects. A common enemy had just arrived; they all felt it, they all rallied together. One drop of wine is enough to turn a whole glass of water red; to tinge with a certain ill-humour a whole collection of pretty women, it is enough for a still prettier woman to turn up—especially when there is only one man.