by Hugo, Victor
With the sudden pounce of the spider which we saw hurling itself on the fly when its web was shaken, she rushed to the window which, as we know, looked out on to the Place de Grève. A ladder had indeed been set up by the permanent gibbet, and the executioner was busy adjusting the chains, rusted by the rain. A few people stood around.
The laughing band of children was already far off. The sachette looked out for some passer-by to question. Right beside her cell she noticed a priest, pretending to read the public breviary, but much less concerned with the ‘iron-latticed lectern’ than with the gallows, on which he cast from time to time a gloomy and forbidding glance. She recognized Monsieur the Archdeacon of Josas, a saintly man.
‘Father,’ she asked, ‘who are they going to hang there?’
The priest looked at her and did not answer; she repeated her question. Then he said: ‘I don’t know.’
‘Some passing children were saying it was some gypsy woman,’ the recluse went on.
‘I think that is so,’ said the priest.
Then Paquette la Chantefleurie burst out laughing like a hyena.
‘Sister,’ said the archdeacon, ‘do you really hate gypsy women then?’
‘Do I hate them?’ cried the recluse; ‘they are vampires, child-stealers! They ate my little girl, my child, my only child! I have no heart left. They ate it up.’
She was terrifying; the priest looked at her coldly.
‘There is one I specially hate, and whom I have cursed,’ she went on; ‘she’s a young one. The same age that my daughter would be if her mother hadn’t eaten my daughter. Every time that young viper goes past my cell, she makes my blood curdle!’
‘Well, sister, you should rejoice,’ said the priest, glacial as a statue on a tomb, ‘she’s the one you are going to see die.’
His head fell upon his breast, and he slowly went away.
The recluse hugged herself with joy. ‘I told her she would go up there! Thank you, priest,’ she cried.
And she began pacing up and down before the bars of her window, dishevelled, eyes blazing, banging her shoulder against the wall, with the wild look of a caged she-wolf which has long been hungry and feels feeding time draw near.
VI
THREE MEN’S HEARTS DIFFERENTLY MADE
PHOEBUS, however, was not dead. Men of that kind have nine lives. When Maître Philippe Lheulier, advocate extraordinary to the King, had told poor Esmeralda: ‘He is dying’, he was in error or jesting. When the archdeacon had repeated to the condemned girl: ‘He’s dead’, the truth is that he did not know, but believed it to be so, was relying on the fact, did not doubt it, very much hoped it was so. It would have been much too hard for him to give the woman he loved good news of his rival. In his place any man would have done the same.
It was not that Phoebus’ wound had been anything but serious, but it had been less serious than the archdeacon was pleased to think. The master-surgeon, to whose house the soldiers of the watch had carried him in the first instance, had feared for his life for a week, and had even told him so in Latin. Youth, however, had gained the upper hand; and, as often happens, notwithstanding prognoses and diagnoses, nature had amused herself by saving the patient to spite the doctor. It was while he was still lying on a sickbed at the surgeon’s house that he had undergone the first interrogation of Philippe Lheulier and the official’s inquisition, which he had found very tiresome. So, one fine morning, feeling better, he had left his golden spurs as payment for the pharmacopolist, and made himself scarce. This, however, caused no problems for the preparation of the case. Justice at that time was very little concerned with precision and propriety in criminal trials. Provided the accused was hanged, that was all that was required. Now, the judges had enough evidence against la Esmeralda. They had believed Phoebus to be dead, and there was no more to be said.
Phoebus, for his part, had not fled very far. He had simply gone back to rejoin his company, in garrison at Queue-en-Brie,* in the Île-de-France, a few stages from Paris.
After all, it did not suit him to appear in person at this trial. He had a vague feeling that he would look ridiculous. In fact he was not too sure what to make of the whole affair. Irreligious and superstitious, like any soldier who is only a soldier, when he questioned himself about this adventure, he was not happy about the goat, about the odd way he had first met la Esmeralda, about the equally strange manner in which she had revealed to him the secret of her love, finally about the bogey-monk. He suspected much more magic than love in this story, probably a witch, perhaps the devil; a piece of theatre, in short, or, to speak the language of the time, a most unpleasant mystery play, with him playing a very clumsy part, the butt for beatings and ridicule. The captain felt very sheepish about it. He experienced the kind of shame which our La Fontaine has so admirably defined: ‘Ashamed as a fox caught by a hen’.*
He hoped anyway that the affair would not become public, that in his absence his name would hardly be mentioned, and would in any case not send echoes beyond the proceedings at the Tournelle. In that he was not mistaken, there was no Gazette des Tribunaux* in those days, and as hardly a week went by without some forger being boiled alive, or some witch hanged, or some heretic burned at one of the innumerable ‘justices’ of Paris, people were so used to seeing at every crossroads the old feudal Themis,* sleeves rolled up and arms bare, doing her job at the gallows, ladders, and pillories, that they took hardly any notice. The high society of the time scarcely knew the name of the victim passing by at the corner of the street, and it was at most only the common people who regaled themselves with such coarse fare. An execution was a regular occurrence on the public thoroughfare, like the baker’s brazier or the flayer’s slaughteryard. The executioner was only a rather darker kind of butcher than the others.
Phoebus, then, quickly put his mind at rest concerning the enchantress Esmeralda, or Similar, as he called her, the stabbing by the gypsy or the bogey-monk (it mattered little to him which), and the outcome of the trial. But as soon as his heart was vacant on that score, the image of Fleur-de-Lys returned. Captain Phoebus’ heart, like the physics of the time, abhorred a vacuum.
Queue-en-Brie was in any case a very dull place to be stationed, a village of blacksmiths and cow-girls with chapped hands, a long ribbon of mean hovels and cottages strung along both sides of the highway for half a league; in short a queue, or tail.
Fleur-de-Lys was his last passion but one, a pretty girl, with a delightful dowry; so one fine morning, completely cured, and fully supposing that after two months the affair of the gypsy girl must be over and forgotten, the amorous cavalier pranced up to the door of the Gondelaurier mansion.
He paid no attention to a rather numerous throng gathering in the Place du Parvis, in front of the portal of Notre-Dame; he remembered that it was May, assumed it was some procession, some Pentecost, some feast day, tied up his horse to the ring in the porch and went cheerfully upstairs to his lovely fiancée.
She was alone with her mother.
Fleur-de-Lys still had weighing on her heart the scene with the witch, her goat, the cursed alphabet, and Phoebus’ long absences. However, when she saw her captain come in, she found him looking so fine, with his new acton,* his gleaming baldrick, his passionate air, that she blushed with pleasure. The noble damsel herself was more charming than ever. Her magnificent fair hair was arranged in the most ravishing plaits, she was dressed from head to foot in that sky-blue which suits fair-skinned women so well, a coquetry learned from Colombe,* and her eyes glistened with that amorous languor that suits them even better.
Phoebus, who as far as beauty was concerned had seen nothing since the cowherds of Queue-en-Brie, was intoxicated by Fleur-de-Lys, which made our officer so gallant and attentive that his peace was made straight away. Madame de Gondelaurier herself, still sitting maternally in her big armchair, did not have the strength to scold him. As for Fleur-de-Lys’s reproaches, they died away in tender cooings.
The girl was sitting by the window
, still embroidering her Neptune’s grotto. The captain stood leaning on the back of her chair, and in a low voice she grumbled at him affectionately:
‘But what have you been up to these past two months and more, you wicked man?’
‘I swear,’ answered Phoebus, a little embarrassed by the question, ‘that you are beautiful enough to give an archbishop dreams.’
She could not help smiling.
‘That will do, sir, that will do. Leave my beauty alone, and answer. A fine beauty indeed!’
‘All right! dear cousin, I have been recalled to garrison duty.’
‘And where might that be, if you please? And why didn’t you come and say goodbye to me?’
‘At Queue-en-Brie.’
Phoebus was delighted that the first question helped him evade the second.
‘But that’s no distance, sir. How is it that you haven’t once been to see me?’
Here Phoebus was quite seriously at a loss. ‘The fact is … duty … and, besides, charming cousin, I have been ill.’
‘Ill!’ she repeated in alarm.
‘Yes … wounded.’
‘Wounded!’
The poor girl was quite overcome.
‘Oh! nothing to be frightened at,’ Phoebus said casually, ‘it’s trifling. A quarrel, a sword-thrust; what is it to you?’
‘What is it to me?’ exclaimed Fleur-de-Lys, looking up with her lovely eyes brimming with tears. ‘Oh! you are not thinking what you are saying when you say that. What’s this about a sword-thrust? I want to know all about it.’
‘Very well! dear lovely lady, I had a row with Mané Fédy, you know? lieutenant of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and we tore a few strips of skin off each other. That’s all.’
The mendacious captain knew very well that an affair of honour always enhances a man’s standing in a woman’s eyes. Indeed Fleur-de-Lys was looking straight at him, deeply moved by fear, pleasure, and admiration. She was not, however, fully reassured.
‘As long as you are completely cured, my Phoebus!’ she said. ‘I don’t know your Mahé Fédy, but he’s a nasty man. And what was this quarrel about?’
Here Phoebus, not gifted with a specially creative imagination, began to wonder how on earth to extricate himself from his supposed feat of arms.
‘Oh! I don’t really know … a trifle, a horse, a remark! … Fair cousin,’ he exclaimed, to change the subject, ‘what’s all that noise in the Parvis?’
He went to the window: ‘Oh! good heavens, fair cousin, the square is full of people!’
‘I don’t know,’ said Fleur-de-Lys; ‘it seems that a witch is going to do public penance this morning in front of the church and then be hanged.’
The captain was so sure that the affair of la Esmeralda was over that he hardly reacted to Fleur-de-Lys’s words. He put a question or two to her all the same.
‘What is this witch’s name?’
‘I don’t know,’ she replied.
‘And what is she said to have done?’
This time too she shrugged her white shoulders. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Oh! my God, Jesus!’ said the mother, ‘there are so many sorcerers about nowadays that I think they burn them without knowing their names, You might as well try to know the name of every cloud in the sky. After all, there’s nothing to worry about. God keeps his own list.’ At this the venerable lady stood up and went to the window. ‘Lord!’ she said, ‘you are right, Phoebus. That is a huge mob of people. Some of them, blessed be God!, are even up on the rooftops. Do you know, Phoebus, that reminds me of my young days, the entry of King Charles VII, when there was such a crowd too—I don’t recall the year any more. When I talk to you about that, it strikes you, doesn’t it, as something old, and me as something young?—Oh! it was a very much finer crowd than nowadays. Some of them were even up on the machicolations of the Porte Saint-Antoine. The King had the Queen riding pillion, and after their highnesses came all the ladies riding pillion behind all the lords. I remember there was a lot of laughter because next to Amanyon de Garlande, who was very short, was Sir Matefelon, a knight of gigantic stature, who had killed heaps of Englishmen. It was really fine. A procession of all the gentlemen of France, with their oriflammes blazing red for all to see. Some of them had pennons and some banners. Let me see: Lord de Calan, pennon; Jean de Châteaumorant banner; Lord de Coucy, banner, richer than any of the others, except the duc de Bourbon … Alas! how sad it is to think that all that once existed and now there’s nothing of it left!’
The two lovers were not listening to the venerable dowager. Phoebus had returned to lean on the back of his fiancée’s chair, a delightful position, from which his licentious eye could see down into all the openings of Fleur-de-Lys’s collaret. This gorgerette gaped open so conveniently, allowing him to see so many exquisite things and to guess at so many more, that Phoebus, dazzled by such satin-smooth skin said inwardly: ‘How could one love anything but a fair-skinned blonde?’ They both kept silence. The girl looked up at him now and then with eyes full of sweet delight, and their hair mingled in a ray of spring sunshine.
‘Phoebus,’ Fleur-de-Lys suddenly murmured, ‘we are to be married in three months’ time, swear that you have never loved any other girl but me.’
‘I swear it, fair angel!’ Phoebus answered and his passionate gaze accompanied the ring of sincerity in his voice to convince Fleur-de-Lys. At that moment he may even have believed himself.
Meanwhile the good mother, delighted to see the betrothed pair getting on so admirably together, had just left the apartment to attend to some domestic detail. Phoebus noticed this, and the fact that they were now alone so emboldened the adventurous captain that some very strange ideas came into his head. Fleur-de-Lys loved him, he was her betrothed, she was alone with him, his former feelings for her had reawakened, not quite as freshly as before, but just as ardently; after all, it is no great crime to pluck an ear or two before the corn is ripe; I do not know if such thoughts ran through his mind, but what is certain is that Fleur-de-Lys was suddenly frightened by the expression in his eyes. She looked around, and could no longer see her mother.
‘Goodness me!’ she said, flushed and anxious, ‘I do feel warm!’
‘I think indeed,’ Phoebus replied, ‘that it’s not far off noon. The sun is becoming a nuisance. We have only to draw the curtains.’
‘No, no!’ cried the poor girl, ‘on the contrary, I need air.’
And like a hind catching the scent of the hounds, she stood up, hurried to the window, opened it, and rushed on to the balcony.
Phoebus, quite put out, followed.
The Place du Parvis Notre-Dame, over which the balcony looked out, as we know, presented at that moment a strange and sinister sight that abruptly changed the nature of the shy Fleur-de-Lys’s terror.
An immense crowd, which flowed back into all the adjacent streets, blocked the Place proper. The low wall surrounding the Parvis at waist height would not have sufficed to keep it clear had it not been reinforced by a solid rank of sergeants of the onze-vingts and hackbuteers, culverin in hand. Thanks to this thicket of pikes and arquebuses, the Parvis was empty. The entrance to it was guarded by a body of halberdiers wearing the bishop’s arms. The great doors of the church were closed, in contrast to the countless windows round the square, which, open right up to the gables, revealed thousands of heads heaped up something like piles of cannonballs in an artillery park.
The surface of this throng was grey, dirty, muddy. The spectacle it was awaiting was obviously one of those which are privileged to bring out and attract the lowest dregs of the population. Nothing could be more hideous than the noise emanating from that swarm of yellow caps and filthy hair. In that crowd there was more laughter than shouting, more women than men.
From time to time some shrill vibrant voice would pierce the general hubbub …
‘Hey there, Mahiet Baliffre, is that where they’re going to hang her?’
‘Don’t be so silly! Here is where she does her pu
blic penance, in a shift! God will cough some Latin in her face! That always happens here, at noon. If it’s the gallows you want, go off to the Grève.’
‘I’ll go afterwards.’
. . . . . . . . . . .
‘Tell me, la Boucanbry, is it true she has refused a confessor?’
‘It seems so, la Bechaigne.’
‘There’s a proper heathen!’
. . . . . . . . . . .
‘Monsieur, it’s the custom. The Palais bailiff is obliged to deliver the malefactor after sentence to be executed, if it’s a lay person to the Provost of Paris; if a clerk, to the bishop’s official.’
‘I thank you, monsieur.’
. . . . . . . . . . .
‘O heavens!’ said Fleur-de-Lys, ‘the poor creature!’
At that thought, the eyes she was running over the populace filled with grief. The captain, much more occupied with her than with that heap of riff-raff, was amorously rumpling her waist-band from behind. She turned round, begging him with a smile: ‘Please leave me alone, Phoebus! If my mother came back she would see your hand!’
At that moment the clock of Notre-Dame slowly struck noon. A murmur of satisfaction broke out among the crowd. The last vibration of the twelfth stroke had scarcely died away when all the heads rippled like waves in a gust of wind, and an immense cry rose from the pavement, windows and roofs: ‘There she is!’
Fleur-de-Lys put her hands over her eyes so that she would not see.
‘Charming lady,’ Phoebus said to her, ‘do you want to go inside?’
‘No,’ she answered; and the eyes she had just closed out of fear she opened again out of curiosity.
A tumbril, drawn by a powerful Norman horse, and completely surrounded by cavalry in violet uniform with white crosses, had just come out on to the Place from the rue Saint-Pierre-aux-Bœufs. The sergeants of the watch cleared a way for it through the crowd with great sweeps of their boullayes. Beside the tumbril rode some officers of the police and the law, recognizable by their black costumes and their awkwardness in the saddle. Maître Jacques Charmolue paraded at their head.