“Then you will be hanged. Do you understand?”
“No, not at all,” declared Gringoire.
“Listen once more. You are to pick the manikin’s pocket, and if a single bell stirs during the operation you will be hanged. You understand that?”
“Yes,” said Gringoire, “I understand that. What next?”
“If you succeed in drawing out the purse without sounding a single bell, you are a Vagabond, and you will be soundly beaten for eight days running. You understand now, no doubt.”
“No, monseigneur, I do not understand. Hanged in one case, beaten in the other; where does my advantage come in?”
“And what about becoming a rogue?” rejoined Clopin. “Is that nothing? It’s in your own interest that we beat you, so that you may be hardened against stripes.”
“I am greatly obliged to you,” replied the poet.
“Come, make haste!” said the King with a resounding kick against his barrel. “Pick the manikin’s pocket and be done with it. I warn you for the last time that if I hear the faintest tinkle you shall take the manikin’s place.”
The whole crew of Argotiers applauded Clopin’s words, and ranged themselves in a circle round the gallows with such pitiless laughter, that Gringoire saw plainly that he was affording them too much amusement not to have cause to fear the worst. He had therefore no hope left, save perhaps in the faint chance of succeeding in the desperate task imposed upon him. He resolved to risk it, but he first addressed a fervent prayer to the man of straw whom he was preparing to rob, and whose heart he was more likely to soften than those of the rogues. These myriad bells with their little brazen tongues seemed to him like so many asps with mouths open ready to hiss and bite.
“Oh,” he breathed, “can it be that my life depends on the faintest vibration of the smallest of these bells? Oh,” he added, clasping his hands, “oh, clashing, jingling, tinkling bells, be silent, I implore!”
He made one more attempt with Trouillefou.
“And if there should come a puff of wind?”
“You will be hanged,” replied the other without hesitation.
Realizing that there was no respite, no delay or subterfuge possible, he bravely set about his task. He twisted his right foot round his left ankle, rose on his left foot, and stretched out his hand; but as he touched the manikin, his body, being now supported but on one foot, swayed on the stool which had but three; he clutched mechanically at the figure, lost his balance, and fell heavily to the ground, deafened by the fatal clashing of the manikin’s thousand bells, while the figure, yielding to the thrust of his hand, first revolved on its own axis, and then swung majestically between the two posts.
“Malediction!” exclaimed the poet as he fell, and he lay face downward on the earth as if dead.
Nevertheless, he heard the terrible carillon going on above his head, and the diabolical laughter of the thieves, and the voice of Trouillefou saying: “Lift the fellow up and hang him double-quick!”
Gringoire rose to his feet. They had already unhooked the manikin to make room for him.
The Argotiers forced him to mount the stool. Clopin then came up, passed the rope round his neck, and clapping him on the shoulders, “Adieu, l’ami,” he said. “You don’t escape this time, not even if you were as cunning as the Pope himself.”
The word “mercy” died on Gringoire’s lips. He looked around him—not a sign of hope—all were laughing.
“Bellevigne de l’ètoile,” said the King of Tunis to a gigantic rogue, who at once stood forth from the rest, “climb up on to the top beam.”
Bellevigne de l’ètoile clambered nimbly up, and the next instant Gringoire, on raising his eyes, saw with terror that he was astride the cross-beam above his head.
“Now,” resumed Clopin Trouillefou, “when I clap my hands, do you, Andry le Rouge, knock over the stool with your knee; Fran?ois Chante-Prune will hang on to the rascal’s legs, and you, Bellevigne, jump on to his shoulders—but all three at the same time, do you hear?”
Gringoire shuddered.
“Ready?” cried Clopin Trouillefou to the three Argotiers waiting to fall on Gringoire like spiders on a fly. The poor victim had a moment of horrible suspense, during which Clopin calmly pushed into the fire with the point of his shoe some twigs of vine which the flame had not yet reached.
“Ready?” he repeated, and raised his hands to clap. A second more and it would have been all over.
But he stopped short, struck by a sudden idea. “One moment,” he said; “I had forgotten. It is the custom with us not to hang a man without first asking if there’s any woman who will have him. Comrade, that’s your last chance. You must marry either an Argotiére or the rope.”
Absurd as this gipsy law may appear to the reader, he will find it set forth at full length in old English law. (See Burington’s Observations.)
Gringoire breathed again. It was the second reprieve he had had within the last half hour. Yet he could not place much confidence in it.
“Holá!” shouted Clopin, who had reascended his throne. “Holá there! women—wenches—is there any one of you, from the witch to her cat, any jade among you who’ll have this rogue? Holá Colette la Charonne! Elisabeth Trouvain! Simone Jodouyne! Marie Pièdebou! Thonne-la-Longue! Bèrarde Fanouel! Michelle Genaille! Claude Ronge-oreille! Mathurine Girorou! Hullah! Isabeau la Thierrye! Come and look! A husband for nothing! Who’ll have him?”
Gringoire, in this miserable plight, was doubtless not exactly tempting. The ladies seemed but little moved at the proposal, for the unfortunate man heard them answer: “No, no—hang him! Then we shall all get some enjoyment out of him!”
Three of them, however, did come forward and inspect him. The first, a big, square-faced young woman, carefully examined the philosopher’s deplorable doublet. His coat was threadbare and with more holes in it than a chestnut roaster. The woman made a wry face. “An old rag,” she muttered, and turning to Gringoire, “Let’s see thy cloak.”
“I have lost it,” answered Gringoire.
“Thy hat?”
“They took it from me.”
“Thy shoes?”
“The soles are coming off.”
“Thy purse?”
“Alas!” stammered Gringoire, “I haven’t a single denier parisis.”
“Then be hanged and welcome!” retorted the woman, turning her back on him.
The second, a hideous old beldame, black and wrinkled, and so ugly as to be conspicuous even in the Court of Miracles, came and viewed him from all sides. He almost trembled lest she should take a fancy to him. But she muttered between her teeth, “He’s too lean,” and went away.
The third was a young girl, rosy-cheeked and not too ill-favoured. “Save me!” whispered the poor devil. She considered him for a moment with an air of pity, then cast down her eyes, played with a fold in her petticoat, and stood irresolute. Gringoire followed her every movement with his eyes—it was the last gleam of hope.
“No,” she said at length, “no; Guillaume Longjoue would beat me.” So she rejoined the others.
“Comrade,” said Clopin, “you’ve no luck.”
Then, standing up on his barrel: “Nobody bids?” he cried, mimicking the voice of an auctioneer to the huge delight of the crowd. “Nobody bids? Going—going—” and, with a sign of the head to the gallows—“gone!”
Bellevigne de l’ètoile, Andry le Rouge, Fran?ois Chante-Prune again approached Gringoire.
At that moment a cry arose among the Argotiers: “La Esmeralda! la Esmeralda!”
Gringoire started, and turned in the direction whence the shouts proceeded. The crowd opened and made way for a fair and radiant figure. It was the gipsy girl.
“La Esmeralda?” said Gringoire, amazed even in the midst of his emotions how instantaneously this magic word linked together all the recollections of his day.
This engaging creature seemed to hold sway even over the Court of Miracles by the power of her exceeding charm and beauty. The Argotiers, male and female, drew aside gently to let her pass, and their brutal faces softened at her look.
She approached the victim with her firm, light step, followed closely by her pretty Djali. Gringoire was more dead than alive. She regarded him a moment in silence.
“You are going to hang this man?” she asked gravely of Clopin.
“Yes, sister,” replied the King of Tunis; “that is, unless thou wilt take him for thy husband.”
She thrust out her pretty under lip.
“I will take him,” said she.
This confirmed Gringoire more than ever in his opinion that he had been in a dream since the morning, and that this was merely a continuation of it. The transformation, though pleasing, was violent.
They instantly unfastened the noose and let the poet descend from the stool, after which he was obliged to sit down, so overcome was he by emotion.
The Duke of Egypt proceeded without a word to bring an earthenware pitcher, which the gipsy girl handed to Gringoire, saying, “Throw it on the ground.”
The pitcher broke in pieces.
“Brother,” said the Duke of Egypt, laying hands on the two heads, “she is your wife; sister, he is your husband— for four years. Go your ways.”
______________________
1 Charity, kind sir!
2 Kind sir, something to buy a piece of bread!
3 Charity!
4 Whither away, man?
5 Fellow, take off thy hat.
Chapter 7 - A Wedding-Night
A Few minutes afterward our poet found himself in a warm and cosy little chamber with a vaulted roof, seated in front of a table which seemed impatient to share some of the contents of a small larder hanging on the wall close by, having a good bed in prospect, and a tête-á-tête with a pretty girl. The adventure smacked decidedly of witchcraft. He began to take himself seriously for the hero of a fairy-tale, and looked about him from time to time to see whether the fiery chariot drawn by winged gryphons, which alone could have transported him so rapidly from Tartarus to Paradise, were still there. At intervals, too, he steadily eyed the holes in his doublet, in order to keep a firm hold on reality—not to let the earth slip away from him altogether. His reason, tossing on delusive waves, had only this frail spar to cling to.
The girl paid apparently not the slightest heed to him, but came and went, shifting one thing and another, talking to her goat, making her little pouting grimace now and then just as if he had not been there.
At last she came and seated herself near the table, so that Gringoire could contemplate her at his leisure.
You have been young, reader—maybe, indeed, you are fortunate enough to be so still. It is impossible but that more than once (and for my part I have spent whole days —the best employed of my life—in this pursuit) you have followed from bush to bush, beside some running brook, on a sunny day, some lovely dragon-fly, all iridescent, blue and green, darting hither and thither, kissing the tip of every spray. Can you forget the adoring curiosity with which your thoughts and your eyes were fixed upon this little darting, humming whirlwind of purple and azure wings, in the midst of which floated an intangible form, veiled, as it were, by the very rapidity of its motion? The aerial creature, dimly discerned through all this flutter of wings, seemed to you chimerical, illusory, intangible. But when at last the dragon-fly settled on the end of a reed, and you could examine, with bated breath, the gauzy wings, the long enamel robe, the two crystal globes of eyes, what amazement seized you, and what fear lest the exquisite creature should again vanish into shadow, the vision into air. Recall these impressions, and you will readily understand Gringoire’s feelings as he contemplated, in her visible and palpable form, that Esmeralda, of whom, up till then, he had only caught a glimpse through a whirl of dance and song and fluttering skirts.
Sinking deeper and deeper into his reverie: “So this,” he said to himself, as he followed her vaguely with his eyes, “this is what they meant by Esmeralda—a divine creature —a dancer of the streets. So high, and yet so low. It was she who dealt the death-blow to my Mystery this morning— she it is who saves my life to-night. My evil genius—my good angel! And a pretty woman, on my soul!—who must have loved me to distraction to have taken me like this. Which reminds me,” said he, suddenly rising from his seat, impelled by that sense of the practical which formed the basis of his character and his philosophy—“I’m not very clear how it came about, but the fact remains that I am her husband.”
With this idea in his mind and in his eyes, he approached the girl with so enterprising and gallant an air that she drew back.
“What do you want with me?” said she.
“Can you ask, adorable Esmeralda?” responded Gringoire in such impassioned accents that he was astonished at himself.
The gipsy stared at him wide-eyed. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“What?” rejoined Gringoire, growing warmer and warmer, and reflecting that after all it was only a virtue of the Court of Miracles he had to deal with, “am I not thine, sweetheart; art thou not mine?” and without more ado he clasped his arms about her.
The gipsy slipped through his hands like an eel; with one bound she was at the farther end of the little chamber, stooped, and rose with a little dagger in her hand before Gringoire had even time to see where she drew it from. There she stood, angry and erect, breathing fast with parted lips and fluttering nostrils, her cheeks red as peonies, her eyes darting lightning, while at the same moment the little white goat planted itself in front of her, ready to do battle with the offender, as it lowered its gilded but extremely sharp horns at him. In a twinkling the dragon-fly had turned wasp with every disposition to sting.
Our philosopher stood abashed, glancing foolishly from the goat to its mistress.
“Blessed Virgin!” he exclaimed as soon as his astonishment would permit him, “what a pair of spitfires!”
The gipsy now broke silence.
“You are an impudent fellow,” she said.
“Pardon me, mademoiselle,” retorted Gringoire with a smile, “then why did you take me for your husband?”
“Was I to let you be hanged?”
“So that,” returned the poet, somewhat disabused of his amorous expectations, “was all you thought of in saving me from the gallows?”
“And what more should I have thought of, do you suppose?”
Gringoire bit his lip. “It seems,” said he, “that I am not quite so triumphant in Cupido as I imagined. But in that case, why have broken the poor pitcher?”
All this time Esmeralda’s dagger and the goat’s horns continued on the defensive.
“Mademoiselle Esmeralda,” said the poet, “let us come to terms. As I am not the recorder at the Chatelet I shall not make difficulties about your carrying a dagger thus in Paris, in the teeth of the ordinances and prohibitions of Monsieur the Provost, though you must be aware that Noel Lescrivain was condemned only last week to pay ten sols parisis for carrying a cutlass. However, that is no affair of mine, and I will come to the point. I swear to you by my hope of salvation that I will not approach you without your consent and permission; but, I implore you, give me some supper.”
