by Hugo, Victor
The cathedral was already dark and deserted. The side-aisles were plunged in gloom, and the lamps in the chapels were beginning to twinkle like stars, so black had the vaults above become. Only the great rose-window of the façade, whose innumerable colours were bathed in a horizontal ray from the setting sun, sparkled in the shadows like a pile of diamonds, and reflected its dazzling spectrum against the far end of the nave.
When they had taken a few steps, Dom Claude leaned against a pillar and gazed at Gringoire. It was not the sort of look that Gringoire had been fearing, ashamed as he was of having been caught unawares in this clownish costume by a grave and learned person. There was nothing mocking or ironic in the priest’s glance; it was serious, calm and piercing. The archdeacon was the first to break the silence.
‘Come now, Maître Pierre. You are going to explain a lot of things to me. And first of all, how is it that we haven’t seen you for nearly two months now, and then find you again in the street, handsomely turned out, to be sure—half yellow and half red like a Caudebec apple?’
‘Messire,’ said Gringoire piteously, ‘it is indeed an amazing rig and makes me feel more foolish than a cat with a calabash jammed on its head. It’s quite wrong, I know, to expose the sergeants of the watch to the risk of thrashing beneath this tabard the humerus of a Pythagorean philosopher. But it can’t be helped, my reverend master. I blame my old jerkin which abandoned me in the most cowardly way at the start of winter, on the pretext that it was falling to shreds and needed a rest in the ragman’s basket. Civilization has not yet reached the point where one can go about naked, as old Diogenes wanted. On top of that a very cold wind was blowing, and January is not the month for a successful attempt at getting mankind to take this new step forward. This tabard was on offer. I took it, and left off my old black smock, which for a hermetist like me was not at all hermetically closed. So here I am then in actor’s garb, like Saint Genestus.* What could I do? It is an eclipse. But Apollo himself served as herdsman to Admetus.’
‘That’s a fine trade you are following!’ the archdeacon put in.
‘I agree, master, that it’s better to philosophize and poeticize, blow the flame in the furnace or receive it from heaven, than to carry cats in triumph. So when you addressed me I felt as silly as an ass in front of a roasting-jack. But what’s to be done, messire? One has got to stay alive, and the finest Alexandrines don’t appease hunger like a piece of Brie cheese. Well, I composed that famous epithalamium for Madame Marguerite of Flanders, as you know, and the Town won’t pay me, on the pretext that it was not of the highest quality, as if anyone could turn out a Sophocles tragedy for 4 crowns. So I was going to starve to death. Fortunately I found that my jaws were pretty strong, and I told the said jaws: “Perform some feats of strength and balance, provide your own food. Ale te ipsum.” A pack of beggars, who have become good friends of mine, taught me twenty kinds of Herculean tricks, and now every evening I give my teeth the bread they have earned during the day by the sweat of my brow. After all, concedo, I grant that it’s a poor way to use my intellectual faculties, and that man was not made to spend his life banging a tambourine and biting chairs. But, reverend master, it’s not enough to spend your life, you’ve got to earn it.’
Dom Claude listened in silence. Suddenly his deep-set eyes took on such a shrewdly penetrating expression that Gringoire felt, so to speak, probed in his innermost soul by that look.
‘Very good, Maître Pierre, but how does it come about that you are now in the company of that dancer from Egypt?’
‘My goodness!’ said Gringoire, ‘because she is my wife and I am her husband.’
The priest’s eyes blazed. ‘Could you have done such a thing, you wretch?’ he cried, furiously seizing Gringoire by the arm; ‘could you have been so forsaken by God as to lay hands on that girl?’
‘By my share of paradise, monseigneur,’ Gringoire replied, trembling in every limb, ‘I swear to you that I have never touched her, if that’s what is worrying you.’
‘And what is this talk, then, of husband and wife?’ said the priest.
Gringoire hastened to give him as succinct an account as possible of all that the reader already knows, his adventure in the Court of Miracles and his marriage ceremony with the broken pitcher. It seems that this marriage ceremony had so far had no result, and that every evening the gypsy girl found some way of tricking him out of a wedding night as she had on that first day. ‘It’s disappointing,’ he said in conclusion, ‘but it’s due to the fact that I was unlucky enough to marry a virgin.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked the archdeacon, who had gradually calmed down during this account.
‘It’s rather hard to explain,’ the poet answered. ‘It’s a superstition. My wife, according to what I was told by an old ruffian whom our people call the Duke of Egypt, my wife is a foundling, or a stray, which comes to the same thing. She wears an amulet round her neck which, they maintain, will one day enable her to meet her parents, but which would lose its virtue if the girl lost hers. It follows that we have both remained very virtuous.’
‘So,’ Claude put in, his brow steadily clearing, ‘it’s your belief, Maître Pierre, that this creature has never been approached by a man?’
‘What do you expect a man to do with a superstition, Dom Claude? She’s got it into her head. I reckon that it’s rare, right enough, that anyone should stay as fiercely pure as a nun in the midst of those gypsy girls who are so easily tamed. But she’s got three means of protection: the Duke of Egypt, who has taken her under his wing, perhaps counting on selling her to some lord abbot; the whole tribe, who hold her in singular veneration, like a Virgin Mary; and a certain dainty dagger which the young spark always keeps somewhere on her person, in spite of the Provost’s ordinances, and which you can bring leaping into her hands just by squeezing her waist. She’s a real wasp, I can tell you!’
The archdeacon questioned Gringoire closely.
La Esmeralda, in Gringoire’s judgement, was a delightful, inoffensive creature, pretty apart from a way of pouting peculiar to herself; an innocent, passionate girl, ignorant of everything and enthusiastic about everything; not yet aware of the difference between men and women, even in her dreams; made like that; crazy about dancing, noise, open air; a sort of bee-woman, with invisible wings on her feet, living in a whirlwind. She owed that nature to the wandering life she had always led. Gringoire had managed to find out that when she was still very small she had travelled through Spain and Catalonia and as far as Sicily; he thought she had been taken, in the Zingari caravan of which she was part, to the kingdom of Algiers, a country situated in Achaea, the said Achaea bordering on one side Lesser Albania and Greece, and on the other the Sicilian sea, which is the way to Constantinople. The Bohemians, said Gringoire, were vassals of the King of Algiers, in his capacity as head of the nation of white Moors. What was certain was that la Esmeralda had come to France, still very young, by way of Hungary. From all these countries the girl had brought back scraps of weird jargons, songs, and outlandish ideas, which made her way of speaking as motley as her costume, half Parisian, half African. For the rest, the people in the districts she frequented loved her for her gaiety, her kindness, her lively ways, her dancing and singing. In the whole town she believed herself to be disliked by only two persons, about whom she often talked with dread: the sachette of the Tour-Roland, a nasty old recluse who bore some unknown grudge against gypsy women, and cursed the poor dancer whenever she went by her window; and a priest who never encountered her without looking and speaking to her in a way that frightened her. This last detail much disturbed the archdeacon, though Gringoire took no great notice of this reaction; two months had been quite enough to make the carefree poet forget the peculiar details of the evening when he had first met the gypsy girl, and the archdeacon’s presence on that occasion. Otherwise the little dancer feared nothing; she did not tell fortunes, which kept her safe from the charges of sorcery so frequently brought against gypsy women. And then Gr
ingoire was like a brother to her, if not like a husband. All in all the philosopher put up very patiently with this sort of platonic marriage. It meant that he always had a bed and some bread. Every morning he left the truands’ quarters, usually with the gypsy girl, he helped her collect the harvest of targes and petits-blancs at the street crossings; every evening he went home with her under the same roof, let her bolt herself in her little room, and slept the sleep of the just. A very pleasant existence, all things considered, he said, and very conducive to musing. And then, in his soul and conscience, the philosopher was not too sure that he was madly in love with the gypsy girl. He was almost as fond of the goat. It was a delightful animal, gentle, intelligent, witty, a performing goat. Nothing was more common in the Middle Ages than those performing animals which provoked the greatest wonder and frequently led their trainers to the stake. However, the sorceries of the golden-hooved goat were quite innocent bits of mischief. Gringoire explained them to the archdeacon, who seemed keenly interested in these details. In most cases it was enough to present the tambourine to the goat in such and such a way to obtain from it the desired trick. The goat had been trained to do this by the gypsy, who had such a rare gift for these delicate tasks that two months had sufficed for her to teach the goat to write the word Phoebus with movable letters.
‘Phoebus!’ said the priest; ‘why Phoebus?’
‘I don’t know,’ answered Gringoire. ‘Perhaps it’s a word which she thinks is endowed with some magic and secret virtue. She often repeats it to herself in an undertone when she thinks she is alone.’
‘Are you sure,’ Claude continued with his penetrating gaze, ‘that it’s only a word and not a name?’
‘Whose name?’ said the poet.
‘How do I know?’ said the priest.
‘This is what I imagine, messire. These gypsies are a bit like the Zoroastrians and worship the sun. Hence Phoebus.’
‘That doesn’t seem as clear to me as it does to you, Maître Pierre.’
‘Anyhow, it doesn’t matter to me. Let her mumble her Phoebus as much as she likes. What is sure is that Djali is already almost as fond of me as of her.’
‘Who is this Djali?’
‘That’s the goat.’
The archdeacon put his chin in his hand, and seemed to be reflecting for a moment. Suddenly he turned round towards Gringoire. ‘And you swear you have never touched her?’
‘Who?’ said Gringoire. ‘The goat?’
‘No, the woman.’
‘My wife? I swear I haven’t.’
‘And you are often alone with her?’
‘Every evening, for a good hour.’
Dom Claude frowned. ‘Oh! oh! solus cum sola non cogitabuntur orare Pater noster [a man and a woman alone together will not be assumed to be saying the Our Father].’
‘Upon my soul, I could say the Pater and the Ave Maria, and the Credo in Deum omnipotentem [I believe in God the Father almighty] without her taking any more notice of me than a hen of a church.’
‘Swear on your mother’s womb,’ the archdeacon repeated violently, ‘that you haven’t laid so much as a finger on that creature.’
‘I’d swear it on my father’s head too, for the two things are connected in more than one way. But, reverend master, allow me a question in my turn.’
‘Speak on, sir.’
‘What’s all this to you?’
The archdeacon’s pale face blushed as red as a young girl’s cheek. He remained for a moment without answering. Then, in obvious embarrassment: ‘Listen, Maître Pierre Gringoire. You are not damned yet, as far as I know. I take an interest in you and wish you well. Now, the slightest contact with that devil’s gypsy would put you in thrall to Satan. You know that it is always the body that ruins the soul. Woe betide you if you approach that woman! That’s all.’
‘I tried once,’ said Gringoire, scratching his ear. ‘It was on the first day, but I got stung.’
‘You had that much effrontery, Maître Pierre?’ And the priest’s brow clouded over again.
‘Another time,’ the poet continued, smiling, ‘I looked through her keyhole before going to bed, and, believe me, I saw the most delightful lady in a shift that ever made a bedframe creak beneath her naked foot.’
‘Go to the devil!’ cried the priest with a terrible look, and pushing the astonished Gringoire by the shoulders, he strode away under the darkest arcades of the cathedral.
III
THE BELLS
SINCE the morning in the pillory, it had seemed to the people living near Notre-Dame that they could detect a considerable cooling-off in Quasimodo’s ardour for ringing the bells. Previously they had rung out for any and every occasion, long aubades lasting from Prime to Compline, peals from the belfry for a High Mass, rich scales up and down the smaller bells for a wedding or a christening, mingling in the air like an embroidery of all kinds of delightful sounds. The old church, all vibrating and resonant, lived in a perpetual rejoicing of bells. One felt there the abiding presence of a spirit of noise and caprice singing out through all those bronze mouths. Now that spirit seemed to have disappeared; the cathedral seemed dreary and only too glad to be silent. The bells rang for festivals and funerals, starkly and without frills, what the ritual demanded and no more. Of the twin sounds that a church makes, the organ within, the bells without, only the organ was left. Yet Quasimodo was still there. What then had come over him? Was it that the shame and despair of the pillory still lingered in the depths of his heart, that the lash of the torturer’s whip still endlessly reverberated in his soul, that his misery at such treatment had extinguished every spark within him, even his passion for the bells? Or was it that Marie had a rival in the heart of the bell-ringer of Notre-Dame, and that the great bell and her fourteen sisters were being neglected for something more beautiful and worthy of love?
It happened that in that year of grace 1482 the Annunciation fell on a Tuesday, 25 March. On that day the air was so pure and light that Quasimodo felt some renewal of his affection for his bells. So he climbed up inside the north tower, while down below the beadle was opening wide the church doors, which at that time were huge panels of stout wood covered in leather, bordered with gilded studs and set in a framework of ‘most skilfully worked’ sculptures.
Once up in the lofty cage of the bell chamber, Quasimodo, sadly shaking his head, contemplated for a time the six bells there, as if bemoaning some alien intruder which had interposed itself in his heart between them and himself. But once he had set them swinging, when he felt this cluster of bells move beneath his hand, when he saw, for he could not hear, the palpitating octave go up and down on this scale of sound like a bird hopping from branch to branch, when the musical devil, that demon who shakes a dazzling bunch of stretti, trills, and arpeggios, had taken possession of the poor deaf creature, then he became happy again, he forgot everything, and his swelling heart brought a beam to his face.
He went to and fro, clapping his hands, running from one rope to another, he urged on the six singers by voice and gesture, like the conductor of an orchestra spurring on intelligent virtuosi.
‘Go on,’ he said,’ go on, Gabrielle. Pour all your sound out into the square. It’s a feast day today.—Thibauld, no slacking. You’re slowing down. Come on, come on then! Have you gone rusty, you lazybones?—That’s fine! Quick! quick! don’t let them see the clapper. Make them all as deaf as I am. That’s it, Thibauld, splendid! Guillaume! Guillaume! you’re the biggest, and Pasquier’s the smallest, and Pasquier’s doing best. I wager that those who are listening can hear him better than you.—Good! good! Gabrielle, loud, louder!—Hey! what are you doing up there, Sparrows? I can’t see you making the slightest noise—what are those bronze mouths that look as though they are yawning when it’s singing that’s wanted? Come on, to work! It’s the Annunciation. It’s a lovely sunny day. We want a lovely peal.—Poor Guillaume! you’re quite out of breath, old fellow!’
He was wholly absorbed in spurring on his bells, all six of
them leaping as hard as they could go and shaking their gleaming rumps like a noisy team of Spanish mules goaded now and then by the driver’s rude yells.
Suddenly, looking down between the broad scales of slate which cover the perpendicular wall of the bell tower up to a certain height, he saw in the square a girl in a strange outfit stop, spread out on the ground a carpet on which a little goat came to stand, and a group of onlookers collecting all around. This sight abruptly changed his train of thought, and congealed the flow of his musical enthusiasm as a puff of wind congeals molten resin. He stopped still, turned his back on the bells, and squatted behind the slate canopy, gazing at the dancer in that dreamy, tender, and gentle way which had once before astonished the archdeacon. Meanwhile the bells, now forgotten, suddenly all fell silent at the same time, to the great disappointment of the lovers of bell-ringing, who were listening to the peal in all good faith from the Pont-au-Change, and went away as bewildered as a dog who has been shown a bone and given a stone.
IV
’ANÁΓKH
IT so happened that one fine morning in that same month of March, I think it was Saturday the 29th, Saint Eustache’s day,* our young student friend, Jehan Frollo du Moulin, noticed as he got dressed that his breeches, which contained his purse, emitted no clink of metal. ‘Poor purse!’ he said, pulling it out from his fob. ‘What? not the least little parisis? How cruelly dice, pots of beer, and Venus have gutted you! Look at you now, all empty, wrinkled, and limp! You look like a Fury’s breast! I ask you, messer Cicero and messer Seneca, whose dog-eared works I see scattered over the floor, what is the use of my knowing better than a director of the mint or a Jew on the Pont-aux-Changeurs that a gold écu with a crown on it is worth 35 unzains of 25 sols 8 deniers parisis each, and that an écu with a crescent is worth 36 unzains of 26 sols and 6 deniers tournois apiece if I don’t have a wretched black Hard to risk on the double six! Oh! consul Cicero! That’s not the sort of calamity you can get out of with periphrases like quemadmodum [in such a way] or verum enim vero [but in point of fact].’