by Hugo, Victor
That day she did not hear the voice from the tower singing.
She was not much concerned about that. She spent her days fondling Djali, keeping a watchful eye on the Gondelaurier mansion, talking to herself about Phoebus, and crumbling bread for the swallows.
She had, moreover, quite ceased seeing, or hearing, anything of Quasimodo. The poor bell-ringer seemed to have disappeared from the church. One night, however, as she was not asleep but dreaming of her handsome captain, she heard someone sighing near her cell. Frightened, she got up and saw in the moonlight a shapeless mass lying across her doorway. It was Quasimodo sleeping there on the stone.
V
THE KEY TO THE RED DOOR
MEANWHILE the archdeacon had learned from general rumour how the gypsy had been miraculously rescued. When he learned that, he did not know what to feel. He had come to terms with la Esmeralda’s death. In that way he had set his mind at rest, he had plumbed the depths of all possible grief. The human heart (Dom Claude had meditated on such matters) can contain only a certain amount of despair. Once the sponge is saturated, the sea can pass over it without adding one drop more.
Now, with la Esmeralda dead, the sponge was saturated. For Dom Claude the last word had been spoken on this earth. But knowing her to be alive, and Phoebus too, meant the tortures beginning again, the shocks, the alternatives, life itself. And Claude was tired of it all.
When he learned the news, he shut himself up in his cell in the cloister. He did not appear at chapter conferences, nor at services. He closed his door to everyone, even the bishop. He stayed walled up like this for several weeks. People thought he was ill. Indeed he was.
What did he do shut up like that? With what thoughts did the unfortunate man wrestle? Was he putting up a last struggle against his dreadful passion? Was he contriving a final plan, of death for her and damnation for himself?
His Jehan, his beloved brother, his spoilt child, came to his door more than once, knocked, swore, said a dozen times who he was. Claude did not open.
He spent whole days with his face pressed against his window panes. From that window, located in the cloister, he could see la Esmeralda’s cell; he often saw her, herself, with her goat, sometimes with Quasimodo. He observed how attentive the ugly, deaf creature was, how obedient, how delicate and submissive his behaviour to the gypsy. He recalled, for he had a good memory, and memory is the torturer of the jealous, the peculiar way the bell-ringer had looked at the dancer one particular evening. He wondered what motive could have driven Quasimodo to rescue her. He witnessed countless little scenes between the gypsy and the deaf man, whose pantomime, seen from a distance and commented on by his own passion, seemed most affectionate. He distrusted the odd ways of women. Then he vaguely felt waken within him a jealousy he had never expected, a jealousy which made him go red with shame and indignation.
‘The captain’s one thing, but him!’ The thought overwhelmed him.
His nights were awful. Ever since he had known the gypsy to be still alive, the chilling thoughts of spectre and tomb which had obsessed him for one whole day had vanished, and the flesh came back to goad him. He writhed on his bed at the knowledge that the brown-skinned girl was so near.
Each night his delirious imagination depicted la Esmeralda to him in all the attitudes which had most set fire coursing through his veins. He saw her stretched out over the captain after the stabbing, her lovely bare breast covered in Phoebus’ blood, at that moment of ecstasy when the archdeacon had printed on those pale lips that kiss, which the unfortunate girl, although half dead, had felt searing her. He saw her again, undressed by the brutal hands of the torturers, letting them strip and then fix in the iron-screwed boot her little foot, her slender, shapely leg, her supple, white knee. He saw once more that ivory knee, alone remaining outside Torterue’s horrible apparatus. Finally he pictured to himself the girl wearing a shift, a rope round her neck, shoulders bare, feet bare, almost naked, as he had seen her on that last day. These sensual images made him clench his fists and sent a shiver down his spine.
One night in particular they so cruelly set on fire the blood running in his arteries, virginal and priestly though it was, that he bit his pillow, leaped out of bed, threw a surplice over his nightshirt and left his cell, lamp in hand, half naked, distraught, eyes blazing.
He knew where to find the key of the Red Door connecting the cloister to the church, and he always had on him, as we know, a key to the tower staircase.
VI
THE KEY TO THE RED DOOR (CONTINUED)
THAT night la Esmeralda had gone to sleep in her cell, filled with oblivion, hope, and sweet thoughts. She had been asleep for some time, dreaming as always of Phoebus, when she seemed to hear a noise near her. She slept as lightly and restlessly as a bird; the least thing woke her up. She opened her eyes. The night was very dark. She saw, however, at the window a face looking at her. A lamp lit up this apparition. The moment the figure realized that la Esmeralda had seen it, it blew out the lamp. Nevertheless the girl had had time to catch a glimpse. Her eyes closed again in terror. ‘Oh!’ she said in a faint voice, ‘the priest!’
All her past misfortunes came back to her in a flash. She fell back on her bed, ice-cold.
A moment later she felt a touch along her body which made her shudder so violently that she sat up fully awake and furious.
The priest had just slipped in beside her. He had both arms round her.
She tried to scream, but could not.
‘Go away, monster! Go away, murderer!’ she said in a low voice, trembling with anger and terror.
‘Mercy! mercy!’ murmured the priest, pressing his lips to her shoulders.
She seized his bald head in both hands by his remaining hair, and strove to ward off his kisses as if they had been bites.
‘Mercy!’ the wretched man repeated. ‘If you knew what my love for you is like! It’s fire, molten lead, thousands of knives in my heart!’
And he held her arms still with superhuman strength. Distraught, she said: ‘Let me go, or I’ll spit in your face!’
He let her go: ‘Degrade me, hit me, be vicious! Do whatever you like! But mercy! love me!’
Then she hit out at him in childlike rage. She made her lovely hand taut so that she could bruise his face: ‘Go away, you devil!’
‘Love me! love me! Have pity!’ the poor priest cried, rolling on top of her and responding to her blows with caresses.
Suddenly she felt him get the better of her. ‘We must put an end to this!’ he said, grinding his teeth.
She was subjugated, quivering, shattered, in his arms, at his mercy. She felt a lascivious hand straying over her. She made one last effort and began to cry: ‘Help! help me! A vampire! a vampire!’
No one came. Only Djali was awake, bleating in distress.
‘Be quiet!’ panted the priest.
Suddenly, as she struggled, crawling on the floor, the gypsy’s hand touched something cold and metallic. It was Quasimodo’s whistle. She seized it with a convulsion of hope, put it to her lips and blew with all her remaining strength. The whistle made a clear, shrill, piercing sound.
‘What’s that?’ said the priest.
Almost at the same moment he felt himself being lifted up by a powerful arm; the cell was dark, he could not clearly make out who was holding him like that; but he could hear teeth chattering with rage, and there was just enough light scattered in the darkness for him to see a large cutlass blade glinting above his head.
The priest thought he could discern the form of Quasimodo. He supposed that it could only be him. He remembered stumbling as he had come in against a bundle lying across the doorway outside. However, as the newcomer did not utter a word, he did not know what to think. He threw himself at the arm holding the cutlass crying: ‘Quasimodo!’ He had forgotten at this moment of distress that Quasimodo was deaf.
In less than no time the priest was laid low, and felt a knee pressing on his chest like a lead weight. From the angular imprin
t of that knee he recognized Quasimodo. But what could he do? How could he make Quasimodo recognize him? The dark night made the deaf man blind.
He was lost. The girl, pitiless as an angry tigress, did not intervene to save him. The cutlass came closer to his head. The moment was critical. Suddenly his adversary seemed to be seized with hesitation. ‘No blood on her!’ he said in a muffled voice.
It was indeed the voice of Quasimodo.
Then the priest felt a huge hand dragging him by the foot out of the cell. That was where he was to die. Fortunately for him, the moon had just come up in the last few moments.
Once they were outside the cell, a pale moonbeam fell on the priest’s face. Quasimodo looked at him, was seized with trembling, let go of the priest and drew back.
The gypsy, who had come as far as the entrance to the cell, saw with surprise the roles abruptly changed. Now it was the priest who was threatening, Quasimodo who was begging.
The priest, who was heaping gestures of anger and rebuke on the deaf man, bade him with a violent sign to withdraw.
The deaf man bowed his head, then went to kneel in front of the gypsy’s door. ‘My lord,’ he said in grave and resigned tones, ‘afterwards you can do what you like; but kill me first.’
So saying he held out his cutlass to the priest. The priest, beside himself, pounced for it, but the girl was quicker. She tore the knife out of Quasimodo’s hands, and burst out into furious laughter. ‘Come closer!’ she said to the priest.
She was holding the blade up high. The priest stayed undecided. She would certainly have struck. ‘You wouldn’t dare come any closer now, you coward!’ she cried at him. Then she added with a pitiless expression, knowing full well that it would send a thousand red-hot irons through the priest’s heart: ‘Ah! I know that Phoebus isn’t dead!’
The priest sent Quasimodo sprawling to the ground with a kick, and shaking with rage plunged back under the staircase vault.
When he had gone, Quasimodo picked up the whistle which had just saved the gypsy. ‘It was getting rusty,’ he said as he gave it back to her. Then he left her on her own.
The girl, overcome by this violent scene, fell exhausted on her bed, and began weeping and sobbing. Her horizon was again ominous.
For his part, the priest had groped his way back to his cell.
It was done. Dom Claude was jealous of Quasimodo! He repeated thoughtfully his fateful words: ‘No one will have her!’
BOOK TEN
I
GRINGOIRE HAS SEVERAL GOOD IDEAS INS UCCESSION IN THE RUE DES BERNARDINS
ONCE Pierre Gringoire had seen how this affair was turning out and that there would definitely be rope, hanging, and sundry other bits of unpleasantness for the main actors in this play, he no longer cared to be mixed up in it. The truands, with whom he had remained, judging that in the last analysis they offered the best company in Paris, the truands had continued to take an interest in the gypsy girl. He had found that quite natural on the part of people who, like her, had no prospect other than Charmolue and Torterue, and who did not ride like him in the realm of the imagination between Pegasus’ two wings. He had learned from their remarks that his bride of the broken pitcher had found refuge in Notre-Dame, and he was very glad she had. But he was not even tempted to go and see her there. He sometimes thought of the little goat, and that was all. For the rest, by day he performed feats of strength for a living, and at night he was working on a paper against the Bishop of Paris, for he remembered being soaked by the bishop’s mill-wheels, and still bore him a grudge. He was also busy writing a commentary on the fine work of Baudry the Red, Bishop of Noyon and Tournai, De cupa petrarum [On Stonecutting], which had filled him with a violent enthusiasm for architecture; an interest which had replaced in his heart his passion for hermeticism, of which it was in any case merely the natural corollary, since there is a close link between hermetics and masonry. Gringoire had passed from the love of an idea to love of the form of that idea.
One day he had stopped near Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, at the corner of a house called le For-l’Evêque, which stood opposite another called le For-le-Roi. This For-l’Evêque had a charming fourteenth-century chapel with an apse giving on to the street. Gringoire was reverently examining its external sculptures. It was for him one of those moments of selfish, exclusive, supreme delight when the artist sees in the world only art and sees the world in art. Suddenly he felt a hand laid gravely on his shoulder. He turned round. It was his old friend, his old master, the archdeacon.
He was quite astounded. It had been a long time since he had last seen the archdeacon, and Dom Claude was one of those solemn, passionate men an encounter with whom always upsets the balance of a sceptical philosopher.
The archdeacon stayed silent for a few moments, during which Gringoire had leisure to observe him. He found Dom Claude much changed, pale as a winter’s morning, hollow-eyed, hair almost white. It was the priest who finally broke the silence, saying in calm, but icy, tones: ‘How are you, Maître Pierre?’
‘My health?’ Gringoire replied. ‘Eh! middling, one might say. But on the whole quite good. I don’t overdo anything. You know, master, the secret of good health, according to Hippocrates, id est cibi, potus, somnii, Venus, omnia moderata sint [that is, all things in moderation, food, drink, sleep, Venus].’
‘So you have no worries, Maître Pierre?’ the archdeacon went on, staring at Gringoire.
‘My word, no.’
‘And what are you doing now?’
‘As you see, master. I am studying the way these stones have been cut, and the undercutting of this bas-relief.’
The priest began to smile, one of those bitter smiles which lift up only one corner of the mouth. ‘And you enjoy that?’
‘It’s paradise!’ exclaimed Gringoire. And leaning over the carvings with the dazzled look of someone demonstrating living phenomena: ‘Don’t you think, for example, that this metamorphosis in basse-taille has been executed with much skill, delicacy, and patience? Look at that little column. Have you ever seen a capital with more tender leaves around it, or more finely stroked by the chisel? Here are three sculptures in the round by Jean Maillevin. They are not that great genius’s finest work. Nevertheless the simplicity, the sweetness of the faces, the gaiety of the attitudes and the draperies, and that indefinable charm which is blended with all the defects, make these figurines very cheerful and delicate, even perhaps too much so—don’t you find that entertaining?’
‘Indeed I do!’ said the priest.
‘And if you saw the inside of the chapel!’ the poet went on, voluble with enthusiasm. ‘Sculptures everywhere. It’s as densely packed as a cabbage heart! The apse is in a most devotional style, and so unusual that I’ve never seen its like anywhere else!’
Dom Claude interrupted him: ‘You are happy then?’
Gringoire answered enthusiastically: ‘Upon my honour, yes! First I loved women, then animals. Now I love stones. They are just as entertaining as animals and women, and not so treacherous.’
The priest put his hand over his brow. It was a habitual gesture of his. ‘Really!’
‘Look!’ said Gringoire, ‘there’s real enjoyment to be had!’ He took the arm of the priest, who made no demur, and led him into the stair turret of the For-l’Evêque. ‘There’s a staircase for you! Every time I see it I feel happy. This flight of steps is the simplest and most uncommon in Paris. All the steps are hollowed out underneath. Its beauty and simplicity lie in the treads, a foot or so wide, which are interlaced, interlocked, fitted together, interlinked, embedded, morticed one inside the other, and make a really firm and attractive joint!’
‘And you have no desires?’
‘No.’
‘And no regrets?’
‘Neither regrets nor desires. I have arranged my life …’
‘What men arrange,’ said Claude, ‘things disarrange.’
‘I am a Pyrrhonist* philosopher,’ Gringoire replied, ‘and I keep everything in equilibrium
.’
‘And how do you earn your living?’
‘Now and then I still compose epics and tragedies, but what brings me in most is that industry you have seen me at, master—carrying pyramids of chairs in my teeth.’
‘A crude job for a philosopher.’
‘It’s still equilibrium,’ said Gringoire. ‘Once you have an idea you find it again everywhere.’
‘I know,’ the archdeacon answered.
After a silence, the priest went on: ‘All the same you are still quite poorly off?’
‘Poor, yes; unhappy, no.’
At that moment came the sound of horses, and our two interlocutors saw a company of archers of the King’s ordinance riding by at the end of the street, lances raised, with their officer at their head. It was a glittering cavalcade, and made the roadway ring.
‘How intently you are looking at that officer!’ Gringoire said to the archdeacon.
‘It’s because I think I recognize him.’
‘What is he called?’
‘I think,’ said Claude, ‘his name is Phoebus de Châteaupers.’
‘Phoebus! A curious name! There’s also a Phoebus, comte de Foix.* I remember once knowing a girl who only ever swore by Phoebus.’
‘Come along,’ said the priest. ‘I have something to tell you.’
Since the troop had ridden past, the archdeacon betrayed a certain agitation beneath his icy exterior. He began to walk. Gringoire followed, used to obeying him, like everyone else who had ever approached this commanding character. In silence they reached the rue des Bernardins, which was more or less deserted. Dom Claude stopped.
‘What do you have to tell me, master?’ asked Gringoire.
‘Don’t you think,’ the archdeacon answered with an air of profound reflection, ‘that the riders we have just seen are dressed more handsomely than you or I?’
Gringoire shook his head. ‘My word! I prefer my yellow and red surcoat to those iron and steel scales. What sort of pleasure is it to clank about when you walk like a scrap-iron dump in an earthquake?’