For the rest, it is highly improbable that the new Pope of Fools was conscious either of the sentiments he experienced or of those which he inspired. The mind lodged in that misshapen body must inevitably be itself defective and dim, so that whatever he felt at that moment, he was aware of it but in a vague, uncertain, confused way. But joy pierced the gloom and pride predominated. Around that sombre and unhappy countenance there was a halo of light.
It was therefore not without surprise and terror that suddenly, just as Quasimodo in this semi-ecstatic state was passing the Maison-aux-Piliers in his triumphant progress, they saw a man dart from the crowd, and with a gesture of hate, snatch from his hand the crosier of gilt wood, the emblem of his mock papacy.
This bold person was the same man who, a moment before, had scared the poor gipsy girl with his words of menace and hatred. He wore the habit of an ecclesiastic, and the moment he disengaged himself from the crowd, Gringoire, who had not observed him before, recognised him. “Tiens!” said he with a cry of astonishment, “it is my master in Hermetics, Dom Claude Frollo the Archdeacon. What the devil can he want with that one-eyed brute? He will assuredly be devoured!”
Indeed, a cry of terror rose from the crowd, for the formidable hunchback had leapt from his seat, and the women turned their heads that they might not see the Archdeacon torn limb from limb.
He made one bound towards the priest, looked in his face, and fell on his knees before him.
The priest then snatched off his tiara, broke his crosier in two, and rent his cope of tinsel, Quasimodo remaining on his knees with bent head and clasped hands.
On this there began a strange dialogue between the two of signs and gestures, for neither of them uttered a word: the priest standing angry, menacing, masterful; Quasimodo prostrate before him, humbled and suppliant; and yet Quasimodo could certainly have crushed the priest with his finger and thumb.
At last, with a rough shake of the dwarf’s powerful shoulder, the Archdeacon made him a sign to rise and follow him.
Quasimodo rose to his feet.
At this the Fraternity of Fools, the first stupor of surprise passed, prepared to defend their Pope thus rudely dethroned, while the Egyptians, the Argotiers, and the Basoche in a body closed yelping round the priest.
But Quasimodo, placing himself in front of the Archdeacon, brought the muscles of his brawny fists into play and faced the assailants with the snarl of an angry tiger.
The priest, returned to his gloomy gravity, signed to Quasimodo and withdrew in silence, the hunchback walking before him and scattering the crowd in his passage.
When they had made their way across the Place the curious and idle rabble made as if to follow, whereupon Quasimodo took up his position in the rear and followed the Archdeacon, facing the crowd, thick-set, snarling, hideous, shaggy, ready for a spring, gnashing his tusks, growling like a wild beast, and causing wild oscillations in the crowd by a mere gesture or a look.
So they were allowed to turn unhindered into a dark and narrow street, where no one ventured to follow them, so effectually was the entrance barred by the mere image of Quasimodo and his gnashing fangs.
“A most amazing incident!” said Gringoire; “but where the devil am I to find a supper?”
______________________
1 A kiss brings pain.
2 Nun of the Order of the Sack, or of the Penitence of Christ.
3
A chest richly decorated
They found in a well,
And in it new banners
With figures most terrifying.
4
Arab horsemen they are,
Looking like statues,
With swords, and over their shoulders
Cross-bows that shoot well.
5 A primitive stringed instrument of negro origin.
Chapter 4 - The Mishaps Consequent on Following a Pretty Woman Through the Streets at Night
At a venture, Gringoire set off to follow the gipsy girl. He had seen her and her goat turn into the Rue de la Coutellerie, so he too turned down the Rue de la Coutellerie.
“Why not?” said he to himself.
Now, Gringoire, being a practical philosopher of the streets of Paris, had observed that nothing is more conducive to pleasant reverie than to follow a pretty woman without knowing where she is going. There is in this voluntary abdication of one’s free-will, in this subordination of one’s whim to that of another person who is totally unconscious of one’s proceedings, a mixture of fanciful independence and blind obedience, an indefinable something between slavery and freedom which appealed to Gringoire, whose mind was essentially mixed, vacillating, and complex, touching in turn all extremes, hanging continually suspended between all human propensities, and letting one neutralize the other. He was fond of comparing himself to Mahomet’s coffin, attracted equally by two loadstones, and hesitating eternally between heaven and earth, between the roof and the pavement, between the fall and the ascension, between the zenith and the nadir.
Had Gringoire lived in our day, how admirably he would have preserved the golden mean between the classical and the romantic. But he was not primitive enough to live three hundred years, a fact much to be deplored; his absence creates a void only too keenly felt in these days.
For the rest, nothing disposes one more readily to follow passengers through the streets—especially female ones, as Gringoire had a weakness for doing—than not to know where to find a bed.
He therefore walked all pensively after the girl, who quickened her pace, making her pretty little goat trot beside her, as she saw the townsfolk going home, and the taverns —the only shops that had been open that day—preparing to close.
“After all,” he thought, “she must lodge somewhere— gipsy women are kind-hearted—who knows…?”
And he filled in the asterisks which followed this discreet break with I know not what engaging fancies.
Meanwhile, from time to time, as he passed the last groups of burghers closing their doors, he caught scraps of their conversation which broke the charmed spell of his happy imaginings.
Now it was two old men accosting each other:
“Ma?tre Thibaut Fernicle, do you know that it is very cold?” (Gringoire had known it ever since the winter set in.)
“You are right there, Ma?tre Boniface Disome. Are we going to have another winter like three years ago, in ’80, when wood cost eight sols a load?”
“Bah, Ma?tre Thibaut! it is nothing to the winter of 1407 —when there was frost from Martinmas to Candlemas, and so sharp that at every third word the ink froze in the pen of the registrar of the parliament, which interrupted the recording of the judgments—”
Farther on were two gossips at their windows with candles that spluttered in the foggy air.
“Has your husband told you of the accident, Mlle. La Boudraque?”
“No; what is it, Mlle. Turquant?”
“Why, the horse of M. Gilles Godin, notary at the Chatelet, was startled by the Flemings and their procession and knocked down Ma?tre Phillipot Avrillot, a Celestine lay-brother.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, truly.”
“Just an ordinary horse too! That’s rather too bad. If it had been a cavalry horse, now!”
And the windows were shut again; but not before Gringoire had lost the thread of his ideas.
Fortunately he soon picked it up again, and had no difficulty in resuming it, thanks to the gipsy and to Djali, who continued to walk before him—two graceful, delicate creatures, whose small feet, pretty forms, and engaging ways he admired exceedingly, almost confounding them in his contemplation: regarding them for their intelligence and good fellowship both as girls, while for their sure-footed, light and graceful gait, they might both have been goats.
Meanwhile the streets were momentarily becoming darker and more deserted. Curfew had rung long ago, and it was only at rare intervals that one encountered a foot-passenger in the street or a light in a window. In following the gipsy, Gringoire had become involved in that inextricable maze of alleys, lanes, and culs-de-sac which surrounds the ancient burial-ground of the Holy Innocents, and which resembles nothing so much as a skein of cotton ravelled by a kitten.
“Very illogical streets, i’ faith!” said Gringoire, quite lost in the thousand windings which seemed forever to return upon themselves, but through which the girl followed a path apparently quite familiar to her, and at an increasingly rapid pace. For his part, he would have been perfectly ignorant of his whereabouts, had he not caught sight at a turning of the octagonal mass of the pillory of the Halles, the perforated top of which was outlined sharply against a solitary lighted window in the Rue Verdelet.
For some moments the girl had been aware of his presence, turning round two or three times uneasily; once, even, she had stopped short, and taking advantage of a ray of light from a half-open bakehouse door, had scanned him steadily from head to foot; then, with the little pouting grimace which Gringoire had already noticed, she had proceeded on her way.
That little moue gave Gringoire food for reflection. There certainly was somewhat of disdain and mockery in that captivating grimace. In consequence he hung his head and began to count the paving-stones, and to follow the girl at a more respectful distance. Suddenly, at a street corner which for the moment had caused him to lose sight of her, he heard her utter a piercing shriek. He hastened forward. The street was very dark, but a twist of cotton steeped in oil that burned behind an iron grating at the feet of an image of the Virgin, enabled Gringoire to descry the gipsy struggling in the arms of two men who were endeavouring to stifle her cries. The poor, frightened little goat lowered its horns and bleated piteously.
“Help! help! gentlemen of the watch!” cried Gringoire, advancing bravely. One of the men holding the girl turned towards him—it was the formidable countenance of Quasimodo.
Gringoire did not take to his heels, but neither did he advance one step.
Quasimodo came at him, dealt him a blow that hurled him four paces off on the pavement, and disappeared rapidly into the darkness, carrying off the girl hanging limply over one of his arms like a silken scarf. His companion followed him, and the poor little goat ran after them bleating piteously.
“Murder! murder!” screamed the hapless gipsy.
“Hold, villains, and drop that wench!” thundered a voice suddenly, and a horseman sprang out from a neighbouring cross-road.
It was a captain of the Royal Archers, armed cap-á-pie, and sabre in hand.
He snatched the gipsy from the grasp of the stupefied Quasimodo and laid her across his saddle; and as the redoubtable hunchback, recovered from his surprise, was about to throw himself upon him and recover his prey, fifteen or sixteen archers who had followed close upon their captain appeared, broadsword in hand. It was a detachment going the night rounds by order of M. d’Estouteville, commandant of the Provostry of Paris.
Quasimodo was instantly surrounded, seized, and bound. He roared, he foamed, he bit, and had it been daylight, no doubt his face alone, rendered still more hideous by rage, would have put the whole detachment to flight. But darkness deprived him of his most formidable weapon—his ugliness.
His companion had vanished during the struggle.
The gipsy girl sat up lightly on the officer’s saddle, put her two hands on the young man’s shoulders, and regarded him fixedly for several seconds, obviously charmed by his good looks and grateful for the service he had just rendered her.
She was the first to break the silence. Infusing a still sweeter tone into her sweet voice, she said: “Monsieur the Gendarme, how are you called?”
“Captain Ph?bus de Chateaupers, at your service, ma belle.”
“Thank you,” she replied; and while Monsieur the Captain was occupied in twirling his mustache á la Burguignonne, she slid from the saddle like a falling arrow and was gone—no lightning could have vanished more rapidly.
“Nombril du Pape!” swore the captain while he made them tighten Quasimodo’s bonds. “I would rather have kept the girl.”
“Well, captain,” returned one of the men, “though the bird has flown, we’ve got the bat safe.”
Chapter 5 - Sequel of the Mishap
Gringoire, stunned by his fall, lay prone upon the pavement in front of the image of Our Lady at the corner of the street. By slow degrees his senses returned, but for some moments he lay in a kind of half-somnolent state—not without its charms—in which the airy figures of the gipsy and her goat mingled strangely with the weight of Quasimodo’s fist. This condition, however, was of short duration. A very lively sense of cold in that portion of his frame which was in contact with the ground woke him rudely from his dreams, and brought his mind back to the realities.
“Whence comes this coolness?” he hastily said to himself, and then he discovered that he was lying in the middle of the gutter.
“Devil take that hunchback Cyclops!” he growled as he attempted to rise. But he was still too giddy and too bruised from his fall. There was nothing for it but to lie where he was. He still had the free use of his hands, however, so he held his nose and resigned himself to his fate.
“The mud of Paris,” thought he drowsily—for he now felt pretty well convinced that he would have to put up with the kennel as a bed—“has a most potent stink. It must contain a large amount of volatile and nitric acids, which is also the opinion of Ma?tre Nicolas Flamel and of the alchemists.”
The word alchemist suddenly recalled the Archdeacon Claude Frollo to his mind. He remembered the scene of violence of which he had just caught a glimpse—that the gipsy was struggling between two men, that Quasimodo had had a companion, and then the morose and haughty features of the Archdeacon passed vaguely through his memory. “That would be strange,” thought he, and immediately with this datum and from this basis began raising a fantastic edifice of hypothesis, that house of cards of the philosophers. Then, returning suddenly to the practical, “Why, I am freezing!” he cried.
His position was indeed becoming less and less tenable. Each molecule of water in the gutter carried away a molecule of heat from Gringoire’s loins, and the equilibrium between the temperature of the body and the temperature of the water was being established in a rapid and painful manner.
Presently he was assailed by an annoyance of quite another character.
A troop of children, of those little barefooted savages who in all times have run about the streets of Paris under the immemorial name of “gamins,” and who, when we too were young, would throw stones at us when we came out of school because our breeches were not in rags—a swarm of these young gutter-snipes came running towards the spot where Gringoire lay, laughing and shouting in a manner that showed little regard for the slumbers of their neighbours. After them they dragged some shapeless bundle, and the clatter of their wooden shoes alone was enough to wake the dead. Gringoire, who had not quite reached that pass, raised himself up on his elbow.
