by Hugo, Victor
Gringoire’s first concern on getting into the boat was to take the goat on his knees. He installed himself in the stern, and the girl, in whom the stranger inspired an indefinable anxiety, came to sit pressed closely against the poet.
When the philosopher felt the boat moving, he clapped his hands and kissed Djali between her horns. ‘Oh!’ he said, ‘now all four of us are safe.’ He added, with the expression of a profound thinker: ‘One is obliged, sometimes to fortune, sometimes to cunning, for the happy outcome of great enterprises.’
The boat moved slowly towards the right bank. The girl watched the stranger with secret terror. He had carefully stopped up the light from his dark lantern. He could be dimly seen in the bows of the boat, like a spectre in the dark. His hood, still lowered, had the effect of a kind of mask, and each time he opened his arms as he rowed, with the wide black sleeves hanging down, they looked like two huge batwings. For the rest, he had still not said a word, let out a breath. There was no other sound in the boat but the oars going in and out, mingled with the constant rippling of the water against the sides.
‘Upon my soul!’ Gringoire suddenly exclaimed, ‘we are as bright and cheerful as [if we had all been changed into owls like] Ascalaphus!* We are observing silence like so many Pythagoreans or fish! Pasque-Dieu! my friends, I’d like someone to speak to me—the human voice comes as music to the human ear. It’s not I who say so, but Didymus of Alexandria, and they are famous words—to be sure, Didymus of Alexandria is no mean philosopher. A word, my lovely child! speak a word to me, I beseech you! That reminds me, you had a funny way of making a special little pout; do you still do it? Do you know, my dear, that Parliament has full jurisdiction over places of asylum, and that you were in great danger in your cell in Notre-Dame? Alas! the little trochilus bird makes its nest in the crocodile’s mouth. Master, there’s the moon coming out again—I only hope no one spots us! We are performing a laudable act by rescuing mademoiselle, yet they’d hang us by order of the King if they caught us. Alas! there are two ways of taking human actions. I am condemned for what earns you a prize. The man who admires Caesar blames Catilina. Isn’t it so, master? What do you say to such philosophy? For my part I possess the philosophy of instinct, of nature, ut apes geometriam [as bees do geometry].* Come on! no one answers me. What a tiresome mood you’re both in! I’ll have to talk all by myself. In tragedy it’s what we call a monologue. Pasque-Dieu!—I warn you that I’ve just been seeing King Louis XI and it’s from him that I’ve caught that oath—Pasque-Dieu! then! They are still making the devil of a row in the Cité. He’s a nasty evil old king. He’s all wrapped up in furs. He still owes me money for my epithalamium, and he came within an ace of having me hanged this evening, which I should have found most embarrassing. He’s stingy with men of merit. He really ought to read the four books of Salvian of Cologne Adversus avaritiam [Against Avarice]. Truly! he is anything but generous in his treatment of men of letters, and he goes in for the most barbaric cruelties. He’s a sponge for soaking up money laid upon the people. His savings are like the spleen, which swells up as all the other parts grow lean. So complaints against the rigours of the times become murmurings against the prince. Under this mild and pious lord the gallows creak with all those hanged, the headsman’s blocks go rotten with blood, the prisons burst like overstuffed bellies. This king grabs with one hand and hangs with the other. He is procurator to Dame Gabelle* and my lord Gibbet. The great are stripped of their dignities, and the small ceaselessly burdened with new exactions. He’s a monstrous prince. I don’t like this monarch. What about you, master?’
The man in black let the garrulous poet run on. He continued to struggle against the violent, compressed current separating the prow of the Cité from the poop of the Îie Notre-Dame, which today we call the Îie Saint-Louis.
‘By the way, master,’ Gringoire suddenly went on, ‘as we came out on to the Parvis through those crazy truands, did your reverence notice the poor little devil whose brains your deaf man was busy dashing out against the balustrade of the gallery of kings? I’m shortsighted and couldn’t recognize him. Do you know who it might be?’
The stranger did not answer a word. But he stopped rowing abruptly, his arms gave way as if they were broken, his head slumped on his breast, and la Esmeralda heard him heave a convulsive sigh. She trembled too. She had heard someone sigh like that before.
The boat, left to itself, drifted for a moment or two with the stream. But the man in black finally straightened up, gripped the oars again, and continued upstream. He rounded the tip of the Îie Notre-Dame, and made for the landing stage at the Port-au-Foin.
‘Ah!’ said Gringoire, ‘there’s the Logis Barbeau over there. Look, master, see, that group of dark roofs at peculiar angles, there, beneath that heap of low, ragged, dirty, smeared clouds, where the moon looks all squashed and spread out like an egg yolk when the shell is broken—it’s a fine mansion. There’s a chapel crowned by a little vault full of nicely carved decorations. Above it you can see the very delicately pierced bell tower. There’s also a pleasant garden, consisting of a pond, an aviary, an echo, a mall, a maze, a wild animal house, and a good many leaf-shaded walks most agreeable to Venus. There’s also a rascally tree they call “the lecher”, because it served for the pleasures of a famous princess and a gallant and witty constable of France,—alas! we poor philosophers are to a constable what a bed of cabbages and radishes is to the garden of the Louvre. What does it matter after all? Human life for the great as for us is a mixture of good and bad. Grief is always next to joy, the spondee next to the dactyl. Master, I must tell you the story of the Logis Barbeau. It ended tragically. It was in 1319, in the reign of Philippe V,* the longest of any king of France. The moral of the story is that the temptations of the flesh are pernicious and malignant. Let us not look too hard at our neighbour’s wife, however susceptible our senses may be to beauty. Fornication is a most licentious thought. Adultery is curiosity about the sensual pleasure of another … Oh! the noise is louder than ever over there!’
The uproar was indeed increasing around Notre-Dame. They listened. Cries of victory could be clearly heard. Suddenly a hundred torches, which made the soldiers’ helmets sparkle, spread over the church, at every height, on the towers, on the galleries, under the flying buttresses. The torches seemed to be searching for something; and soon the distant shouts reached the fugitives distinctly: ‘The gypsy! The witch! Death to the gypsy!’
The unfortunate girl dropped her head into her hands, and the stranger began rowing furiously towards the bank. Meanwhile our philosopher reflected. He hugged the goat in his arms, and very gently moved away from the gypsy, who was huddling closer and closer to him, as her sole remaining refuge.
Gringoire was, to be sure, cruelly perplexed. He was thinking that the goat too ‘according to existing legislation’ would be hanged if recaptured; that that would be a great pity, poor Djali! that to have two females condemned to death clinging to him like this was really too much; that anyhow his companion would be only too happy to take on the gypsy. A violent conflict raged in his mind, in which, like Jupiter in the Iliad, he weighed up the gypsy and the goat in turn; and he looked at them, one after the other, his eyes moist with tears, as he said between his teeth: ‘Yet I can’t save you both.’
A sudden jolt told them at last that the boat had reached the bank. The sinister hubbub still filled the Cité. The stranger stood up, came over to the gypsy and tried to take her arm to help her to alight. She pushed him away and clung to Gringoire’s sleeve, while he, in his turn, busy with the goat, almost pushed her away. So she jumped down from the boat by herself. She was so upset that she did not know what she was doing, or where she was going. She stayed for a moment in a daze, watching the water flow by. When she recovered her senses a little she was alone on the landing stage with the stranger. Gringoire had apparently taken advantage of the moment of landing to slip away with the goat into the block of houses in the rue Grenier-sur-l’Eau.
T
he poor gypsy shuddered at seeing herself alone with this man. She tried to speak, to cry out, to call Gringoire; her tongue lay inert in her mouth, and no sound came from her lips. Suddenly she felt the stranger’s hand upon her own. It was a cold, strong hand. Her teeth chattered, she went paler than the moonlight shining upon her. The man did not say a word. He began striding up towards the Place de Grève, holding her by the hand. At that moment she had a vague feeling that destiny is an irresistible force. She had no energy left, she let herself be pulled along, running while he walked. The quay at that point ran upwards. It seemed to her, however, that she was going down a slope.
She looked in every direction. Not a soul passing by. The quay was absolutely deserted. She could hear no sound, detect no sign of human movement save from the Cité, in uproar and glowing red, separated from her only by an arm of the Seine, and from whence her own name reached her mixed with cries of death. The rest of Paris lay spread out around her in great blocks of shadow.
The stranger, meanwhile, was still pulling her along as silently and swiftly as ever. She did not recognize from her memory any of the places where she was walking. As she went past a lighted window, she made an effort, stiffened up abruptly, and cried: ‘Help!’
The citizen whose window it was opened it, appeared in his nightshirt with his lamp, looked at the quay bemusedly, said a few words she could not catch, and closed his shutter again. Her last glimmer of hope was extinguished.
The man in black did not utter a syllable; he held her firmly and stepped out again more quickly. She offered no further resistance, and followed him, shattered.
From time to time she gathered up a little strength and said in a voice made jerky from the unevenness of the cobbles and their breathless rush: ‘Who are you? Who are you?’ He did not answer.
So they arrived, always following the quay, at a quite large square. There was a little light from the moon. It was the Grève. Standing in the middle a kind of black cross could be made out. It was the gibbet. She recognized it and saw where she was.
The man stopped, turned to her and raised his hood. ‘Oh!’ she stammered, petrified, ‘I knew it was him again!’
It was the priest. He looked like his own ghost. Moonlight has that effect. By that light one seems to see only the spectres of things.
‘Listen,’ he said, and she shuddered at the sound of that voice of ill omen which she had not heard for so long. He continued. He spoke in short, gasping bursts, revealing the tremors deep within. ‘Listen. We are here. I’m going to talk to you. This is the Grève. It is an extreme point. Destiny has delivered us up to one another. I’m going to decide your life; you, my soul. Beyond this place and this night there is nothing to be seen. So listen to me. I’m going to tell you…. First of all don’t talk to me about your Phoebus.’ (As he said that, he walked to and fro, like a man who cannot stand still, pulling her after him.) ‘Don’t talk about him. You see? If you utter that name, I don’t know what I shall do, but it will be terrible.’
With that said, like a body returning to its centre of gravity, he became motionless once more. But his words revealed just as much agitation. His voice sank lower and lower.
‘Don’t turn your head away like that. Listen to me. This is a serious matter. First of all, this is what has happened—it won’t be anything to laugh about, I swear—what was I saying then? Remind me! Ah!—there’s a decree of Parliament sending you back to the scaffold. I’ve just pulled you out of their hands. But there they are, pursuing you. Look!’
He stretched out his arm towards the Cité. The search did indeed appear to be continuing there. The rumblings were coming closer. The tower of the lieutenant’s house, opposite the Grève, was full of noise and lights, and soldiers could be seen running along the quay opposite with torches, shouting: ‘The gypsy! Where’s the gypsy? Death! death!’
‘You see, they are after you, and I’m not lying. I love you—don’t open your mouth, or rather don’t speak if it’s just to say you hate me. I’m determined to hear no more of that. I’ve just saved you—let me finish first—I can save you completely. I have got everything ready. It’s for you to wish it. As you wish, so I can do.’
He interrupted himself violently: ‘No, that’s not what I must say.’
Then hurrying, and making her hurry, for he did not let her go, he made straight for the gibbet, and, pointing it out to her with his finger: ‘Choose between the two of us,’ he said coldly.
She tore herself from his grasp and fell at the foot of the gibbet, clasping the funereal support. Then she half turned her lovely head and looked at the priest over her shoulder. She was like a Holy Virgin at the foot of the Cross. The priest had remained motionless, finger still pointing at the gibbet, holding his gesture, like a statue.
At last the gypsy said to him: ‘That does not fill me with as much loathing as you do.’
At that he slowly lowered his arm, and looked at the pavement in deepest despondency. ‘If those stones could speak,’ he murmured, ‘yes, they would say: “There is a most unhappy man.”’
He went on. The girl kneeling before the gibbet, covered by her long, flowing hair, let him speak without interruption. His tone was now sorrowful and gentle, contrasting painfully with the lofty harshness of his features.
‘Yes, I love you. Oh! yet it is quite true. So nothing shows outwardly of the fire burning my heart! Alas! girl, night and day, yes, night and day, does that deserve no pity? The love goes on night and day, I tell you, torture! Oh! I am suffering too much, my poor child!—it is something worthy of compassion, I assure you. You see that I am talking to you gently. I want you to stop loathing me so much—anyhow, if a man loves a woman, it’s not his fault! O God! What! will you never forgive me then—will you always hate me? So it’s finished! That’s what makes me evil, you see, and loathsome to myself! You won’t even look at me! You are thinking of something else perhaps while I stand talking to you, shivering on the brink of the eternity that faces us both! Above all don’t talk to me about that officer! Why! I could cast myself at your knees; why! I could kiss, not your feet, you wouldn’t want that, but the ground beneath your feet; why! I could sob like a child, I could rip from my breast not just words, but my heart and my entrails to tell you I love you, but it would all be in vain, all of it! And yet you have nothing in your soul but affection and mildness, you radiate the most lovely sweetness, you are wholly gentle, kind, merciful, and delightful. Alas! your spite is reserved for me alone! Oh! what a fatality!’
He buried his face in his hands. The girl heard him weeping. It was the first time. Standing like that, shaken by sobs, he was more wretched and imploring than on his knees. He wept like that for a while.
‘Well now!’ he continued, once these first tears were over, ‘I am lost for words. And yet I had thought out what I was going to say to you. Now I’m trembling and shivering, I’m failing at the decisive moment, I feel something supreme enfolding us, and I stammer. Oh! I shall fall to the pavement if you don’t take pity on me, pity on yourself. Don’t condemn us both. If you only knew how much I love you! What kind of heart is mine! Oh! all virtue forsaken! my own self abandoned in despair! Learned doctor, I make mock of learning; gentleman, I besmirch my name; priest, I use the missal as a pillow for lust, I spit in the face of my God! All for you, enchantress—to be more worthy of your hell! And you want nothing to do with a man damned! Oh! I must tell you all! Still more, something even more horrible, oh! more horrible!’
As he uttered those last words, his manner became quite distraught. He fell silent for a moment, then went on, as though talking to himself, in a loud voice: ‘Cain, what have you done with your brother?’
There was another silence, then he continued: ‘What have I done with him, Lord? I took him in, I brought him up, I fed him, I loved him, I idolized him, and I killed him! Yes, Lord, they have just now dashed his head before my eyes against the stones of your house, and it is because of me, because of this woman, because of her….’
&nbs
p; He was wild-eyed. His voice fading away, he repeated several times more, mechanically, at quite long intervals, like a bell drawing out its last vibrations: ‘Because of her … because of her … !’ Then his tongue stopped forming any perceptible sound, but his lips still continued to move. Suddenly he collapsed like something falling to pieces, and remained motionless on the ground, his head between his knees.
The girl’s light touch as she withdrew her foot from under him made him come round. He ran his hand slowly over his sunken cheeks, and looked for a few moments in amazement at his fingers, which were damp. ‘Why!’ he murmured, ‘I’ve been crying!’
And abruptly turning to the gypsy in indescribable anguish: ‘Alas! you watched coldly as I wept! Child, do you know that those tears are burning lava? Is it really true then—nothing can move us in a man we hate? If you saw me dying you would only laugh. Oh! I don’t want to see you die! One word! A single word of forgiveness! Don’t tell me you love me, just tell me you are willing, that will be enough, I’ll save you. Otherwise … Oh! time is passing, I beg you by all that is sacred, don’t wait for me to become stone again like that gibbet which claims you too! Just think that I hold our two destinies in my hand, that I am out of my mind—this is dreadful—that I may let everything fall, and that beneath us is a bottomless abyss, unhappy girl, down which my fall will follow yours through all eternity! One kind word! Say one word! just one word!’
She opened her mouth to answer. He flung himself to his knees before her to receive in adoration the word, perhaps of pity, about to come from her lips. She said: ‘You are a murderer!’
The priest in a frenzy took her into his arms and began to laugh an abominable laugh: ‘All right then, yes! murderer!’ he said, ‘and I shall have you. You won’t have me as your slave, so you’ll have me as your master. I’ll have you! I have a lair and I’ll drag you there. You’ll follow me, you’ll have to follow me, or I’ll hand you over to them! You must die, my lovely, or be mine! Be the priest’s! the apostate’s! the murderer’s! This very night, do you hear? Come now! joy! come! Kiss me, foolish girl! The grave or my bed!’