“I do not know,” she answered.
“Conceive of such insolence! A bell-ringer to carry off a girl, like a vicomte—a clown poaching on a gentleman’s preserves! Unheard-of presumption! For the rest, he paid dearly for it. Master Pierrat Torterue is the roughest groom that ever curried a rascal; and I can tell you, for your satisfaction, that your bell-ringer’s hide got a thorough dressing at his hands.”
“Poor man!” murmured the gipsy, recalling at these words the scene of the pillory.
The captain burst out laughing. “Corne de b?uf! your pity is as well-placed as a feather in a sow’s tail! May I have a paunch like a pope, if—” He drew up short. “Crave your pardon, mesdames! I believe I was on the point of forgetting myself.”
“Fie, sir!” said La Gaillefontaine.
“He speaks to this creature in her own language,” said Fleur-de-Lys under her breath, her vexation increasing with every moment. Nor was this vexation diminished by seeing the captain delighted with the gipsy girl, but still more with himself, turn on his heel and repeat with blatant and soldier-like gallantry: “A lovely creature, on my soul!”
“Very barbarously dressed!” observed Diane de Christeuil, showing her white teeth.
This remark was a flash of light to the others. It showed them where to direct their attack on the gipsy. There being no vulnerable spot in her beauty, they threw themselves upon her dress.
“That is very true,” said La Montmichel. “Pray, how comest thou to be running thus barenecked about the streets, without either gorget or kerchief?”
“And a petticoat so short as to fill one with alarm,” added La Gaillefontaine.
“My girl,” continued Fleur-de-Lys spitefully, “thou wilt certainly be fined for that gold belt.”
“My poor girl,” said Diane, with a cruel smile, “if thou hadst the decency to wear sleeves on thy arms, they would not be so burned by the sun.”
It was a sight worthy of a more intelligent spectator than Ph?bus, to watch how these high-born maidens darted their envenomed tongues, and coiled and glided and wound serpent-like about the hapless dancing girl. Smiling and cruel, they pitilessly searched and appraised all her poor artless finery of spangles and tinsel. Then followed the heartless laugh, the cutting irony, humiliations without end. Sarcasm, supercilious praise, and spiteful glances descended on the gipsy girl from every side. One might have judged them to be those high-born Roman ladies who amused themselves by thrusting golden pins into the bosom of a beautiful slave, or graceful greyhounds circling with distended nostrils and flaming eyes round some poor hind of the forest, and only prevented by their master’s eye from devouring it piecemeal. And what was she after all to these high-born damsels but a miserable dancing girl of the streets? They seemed to ignore the fact of her presence altogether, and spoke of her to her face as of something degraded and unclean, though diverting enough to make jest of.
The Egyptian was not insensible to these petty stings. From time to time a blush of shame burned in her cheek, a flash of anger in her eyes; a disdainful retort seemed to tremble on her lips, and she made the little contemptuous pout with which the reader is familiar. But she remained silent, motionless, her eyes fixed on Ph?bus with a look of resignation infinitely sweet and sad. In this gaze there mingled, too, both joy and tenderness; she seemed to restrain herself for fear of being driven away.
As for Ph?bus, he laughed and took the gipsy’s part with a mixture of impertinence and pity.
“Let them talk, child!” he said, jingling his gold spurs. “Doubtless your costume is somewhat strange and extravagant; but when a girl is so charming as you, what does it matter?”
“Mon Dieu!” cried La Gaillefontaine, drawing up her swan-like neck, with a bitter smile. “It is evident that Messieurs the King’s archers take fire easily at the bright gipsy eyes.”
“Why not?” said Ph?bus.
At this rejoinder, uttered carelessly by the captain, as one throws a stone at random without troubling to see where it falls, Colombe began to laugh and Amolette and Diane and Fleur-de-Lys, though a tear rose at the same time to the eye of the latter.
The gipsy girl, who had dropped her eyes as Colombe and La Gaillefontaine spoke, raised them now all radiant with joy and pride and fixed them again on Ph?bus. At that moment she was dazzlingly beautiful.
The elder lady, while she observed the scene, felt vaguely incensed without knowing exactly why.
“Holy Virgin!” she suddenly exclaimed, “what is this rubbing against my legs? Ah, the horrid beast!”
It was the goat, just arrived in search of its mistress, and which, in hurrying towards her, had got its horns entangled in the voluminous folds of the noble lady’s gown, which always billowed round her wherever she sat.
This caused a diversion, and the gipsy silently freed the little creature.
“Ah, it is the little goat with the golden hoofs!” cried Berangère, jumping with joy.
The gipsy girl crouched on her knees and pressed her cheek fondly against the goat’s sleek head, as if begging its forgiveness for having left it behind.
At this Diane bent over and whispered in Colombe’s ear: “Ah, how did I not think of it before? This is the gipsy girl with the goat. They say she is a witch, and that her goat performs some truly miraculous tricks.”
“Very well,” said Colombe; “then let the goat amuse us in its turn, and show us a miracle.”
Diane and Colombe accordingly addressed the gipsy eagerly.
“Girl, make thy goat perform a miracle for us.”
“I do not know what you mean,” answered the gipsy.
“A miracle—a conjuring trick—a feat of witchcraft, in fact.”
“I do not understand,” she repeated, and fell to caressing the pretty creature again, murmuring fondly, “Djali! Djali!”
At that moment Fleur-de-Lys remarked a little embroidered leather bag hanging round the goat’s neck. “What is that?” she asked of the gipsy.
The gipsy raised her large eyes to her and answered gravely, “That is my secret.”
Meanwhile the lady of the house had risen. “Come, gipsy girl,” she exclaimed angrily; “if thou and thy goat will not dance for us, what do you here?”
Without a word the gipsy rose and turned towards the door. But the nearer she approached it, the more reluctant became her step. An irresistible magnet seemed to hold her back. Suddenly she turned her brimming eyes on Ph?bus, and stood still.
“Vrai Dieu!” cried the captain, “you shall not leave us thus. Come back and dance for us. By-the-bye, sweetheart, how are you called?”
“Esmeralda,” answered the dancing girl, without taking her eyes off him.
At this strange name the girls burst into a chorus of laughter.
“Truly a formidable name for a demoiselle!” sneered Diane.
“You see now,” said Amelotte, “that she is a sorceress.”
“Child,” exclaimed Dame Alo?se solemnly, “your parents never drew that name for you out of the baptismal font!”
For some minutes past Berangère, to whom nobody was paying any attention, had managed to entice the goat into a corner with a piece of marchpane, and immediately they had become the best of friends. The inquisitive child had then detached the little bag from the goat’s neck, opened it, and emptied its contents on to the floor. It was an alphabet, each letter being written separately on a small tablet of wood. No sooner were these toys displayed on the matting than, to the child’s delighted surprise, the goat (of whose miracles this was no doubt one) proceeded to separate certain letters with her golden fore-foot, and by dint of pushing them gently about ranged them in a certain order. In a minute they formed a word, which the goat seemed practised in composing, to judge by the ease with which she accomplished the task. Berangère clasped her hands in admiration.
“Godmother Fleur-de-Lys,” she cried, “come and see what the goat has done!”
Fleur-de-Lys ran to look, and recoiled at the sight. The letters disposed upon the floor formed the word,
P-H-O-E-B-U-S.
“The goat put that word together?” she asked excitedly
“Yes, godmother,” answered Berangère. It was impossible to doubt it; the child could not spell.
“So this is the secret,” thought Fleur-de-Lys.
By this time the rest of the party had come forward to look—the mother, the girls, the gipsy, the young soldier.
The Bohemian saw the blunder the goat had involved her in. She turned red and white, and then began to tremble like a guilty creature before the captain, who gazed at her with a smile of satisfaction and astonishment.
“Ph?bus!” whispered the girls in amazement; “that is the name of the captain!”
“You have a wonderful memory!” said Fleur-de-Lys to the stupefied gipsy girl. Then, bursting into tears: “Oh,” she sobbed, “she is a sorceress!” While a still more bitter voice whispered in her inmost heart, “She is a rival!” And she swooned in her mother’s arms.
“My child! my child!” cried the terrined mother. “Begone, diabolical gipsy!”
In a trice Esmeralda gathered up the unlucky letters, made a sign to Djali, and quitted the room by one door, as they carried Fleur-de-Lys out by another.
Captain Ph?bus, left alone, hesitated a moment between the two doors—then followed the gipsy girl.
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1 A popular French poet of the sixteenth century, whose poem on The Divine Week and Works was translated by Joshua Sylvester in the reign of James I.
Chapter 2 - Showing that A Priest and A Philosopher are not the same
The priest whom the young girls had remarked leaning over the top of the north tower of the Cathedral and gazing so intently at the gipsy’s dancing, was no other than the Archdeacon Claude Frollo.
Our readers have not forgotten the mysterious cell which the archdeacon had appropriated to himself in this tower. (By the way, I do not know but what it is the same, the interior of which may be seen to this day through a small square window, opening to the east at about a man’s height from the floor upon the platform from which the towers spring—a mere den now, naked, empty, and falling to decay, the ill-plastered walls of which are decorated here and there, at the present moment, by some hideous yellow engravings of cathedral fronts. I presume that this hole is jointly inhabited by bats and spiders, so that a double war of extermination is being carried on there against the flies.)
Every day, an hour before sunset, the archdeacon mounted the stair of the tower and shut himself up in this cell, where he sometimes spent whole nights. On this day, just as he reached the low door of his retreat and was preparing to insert in the lock the small and intricate key he always carried about with him in the pouch hanging at his side, the jingle of a tambourine and of castanets suddenly smote on his ear, rising up from the Place du Parvis. The cell, as we have said, had but one window looking over the transept roof. Claude Frollo hastily withdrew the key, and in another moment was on the summit of the tower, in that gloomy and intent attitude in which he had been observed by the group of girls.
There he stood, grave, motionless, absorbed in one object, one thought. All Paris was spread out at his feet, with her thousand turrets, her undulating horizon, her river winding under the bridges, her stream of people flowing to and fro in the streets; with the cloud of smoke rising from her many chimneys; with her chain of crested roofs pressing in ever tightening coils round about Notre-Dame. But in all that great city the Archdeacon beheld but one spot—the Place du Parvis; and in that crowd but one figure—that of the gipsy girl.
It would have been difficult to analyze the nature of that gaze, or to say whence sprang the flame that blazed in it. His eyes were fixed and yet full of anguish and unrest; and from the profound immobility of his whole body, only faintly agitated now and then by an involuntary tremor, like a tree shaken by the wind; from his rigid arms, more stony than the balustrade on which they leaned, and the petrified smile that distorted his countenance, you would have said that nothing of Claude Frollo was alive save his eyes.
The gipsy girl was dancing and twirling her tambourine on the tip of her finger, throwing it aloft in the air while she danced the Proven?al saraband; agile, airy, joyous, wholly unconscious of the sinister gaze falling directly on her head.
The crowd swarmed round her; from time to time, a man tricked out in a long red and yellow coat, went round to keep the circle clear, and then returned to a seat a few paces from the dancer, and took the head of the goat upon his knee. This man appeared to be the companion of the gipsy girl. Claude Frollo, from his elevated position, could not distinguish his features.
No sooner had the Archdeacon caught sight of this individual, than his attention seemed divided between him and the dancer, and his face became more and more overcast. Suddenly he drew himself up, and a tremor ran through his whole frame. “Who can that man be?” he muttered between his teeth; “I have always seen her alone hitherto.”
He then vanished under the winding roof of the spiral staircase, and proceeded to descend. As he passed the half-open door of the belfry, he saw something which made him pause. It was Quasimodo, leaning out of an opening in one of the great projecting slate eaves and likewise looking down into the Place, but so profoundly absorbed in contemplation that he was unaware of the passing of his adopted father. His savage eye had a singular expression—a mingled look of fondness and delight.
“How strange!” murmured Claude. “Can he too be looking at the Egyptian?” He continued his descent, and in a few moments the troubled Archdeacon entered the Place by the door at the bottom of the tower.
“What has become of the gipsy?” said he, as he mingled with the crowd which the sound of the tambourine had drawn together.
“I know not,” answered a bystander; “she has just disappeared. They called to her from the house opposite, and so I think she must have gone to dance some fandango there.”
Instead of the Egyptian, on the same carpet, of which the arabesques but a moment before seemed to vanish beneath the fantastic weavings of her dances, the Archdeacon now beheld only the red and yellow man; who, in order to earn an honest penny in his turn, was parading round the circle, his arms akimbo, his head thrown back, very red in the face, and balancing a chair between his teeth. On this chair he had fastened a cat which a woman in the crowd had lent him, and which was swearing with fright.
“Notre-Dame!” cried the Archdeacon, as the mounte-bank, the perspiration pouring off his face, passed before him with his pyramid of cat and chair—“What does Ma?tre Pierre Gringoire here?”
The stern voice of the Archdeacon so startled the poor devil that he lost his balance, and with it his whole erection, and the chair and the cat came toppling over right on to the heads of the spectators and in the midst of a deafening uproar.
