The laughing group of children was already far off. The sachette looked about for a passer-by of whom she might make inquiries. Close to her cell she caught sight of a priest making believe to study the public breviary, but who was much less taken up with the lattice-guarded volume than with the gibbet, towards which, ever and anon, he cast a savage, scowling glance. She recognised him as the reverend Archdeacon of Josas, a saintly man.
“Father,” she asked, “who is to be hanged there?”
The priest looked at her without replying. She repeated her question.
“I do not know,” he answered.
“Some children passing said that it was an Egyptian woman,” said the recluse.
“I think it is,” returned the priest. Paquette La Chantefleurie broke into a hyena laugh.
“Listen,” said the Archdeacon, “it appears that you hate the gipsy women exceedingly?”
“Hate them!” cried the recluse. “They are ghouls and stealers of children! They devoured my little girl, my babe, my only child! I have no heart in my body— they have eaten it!”
She was terrible. The priest regarded her coldly.
“There is one that I hate above the rest,” she went on, “and that I have cursed— a young one— about the age my child would be if this one’s mother had not devoured her. Each time that this young viper passes my cell my blood boils!”
“Well, my sister, let your heart rejoice,” said the priest, stony as a marble statue on a tomb, “for ’tis that one you will see die.”
His head fell upon his breast and he went slowly away.
The recluse waved her arms with joy. “I foretold it to her that she would swing up there! Priest, I thank thee!” cried she, and she began pacing backward and forward in front of her loophole with dishevelled locks and flaming eyes, striking her shoulder against the wall with the savage air of a caged wolf that has long been hungry and feels that the hour of its repast draws near.
Chapter 6 - Three Various Hearts of Men
Ph?bus, however, was not dead. Men of his sort are not so easily killed. When Ma?tre Philippe Lheulier, the King’s advocate extraordinary, had said to poor Esmeralda: “He is dying,” it was by mistake or jest. When the Archdeacon said to the condemned girl, “He is dead!” the fact is that he knew nothing about it; but he believed it to be true, he counted upon it, and hoped it earnestly. It would have been too much to expect that he should give the woman he loved good tidings of his rival. Any man would have done the same in his place.
Not indeed that Ph?bus’s wound had not been serious, but it had been less so than the Archdeacon flattered himself. The leech, to whose house the soldiers of the watch had conveyed him in the first instance, had, for a week, feared for his life, and, indeed, had told him so in Latin. But youth and a vigorous constitution had triumphed, and, as often happens, notwithstanding prognostics and diagnostics, Nature had amused herself by saving the patient in spite of the physician. It was while he was still stretched upon a sick-bed that he underwent the first interrogations at the hands of Philippe Lheulier and the examiners of the Holy Office, which had annoyed him greatly. So, one fine morning, feeling himself recovered, he had left his gold spurs in payment to the man of drugs, and had taken himself off. For the rest, this had in no way impeded the course of justice. The law of that day had but few scruples about the clearness and precision of the proceedings against a criminal. Provided the accused was finally hanged, that was sufficient. As it was, the judges had ample proof against Esmeralda. They held Ph?bus to be dead, and that decided the matter.
As to Ph?bus, he had fled to no great distance. He had simply rejoined his company, then on garrison duty at Queueen-Brie, in the province of ?le de France, a few stages from Paris.
After all, he had no great desire to appear in person at the trial. He had a vague impression that he would cut a somewhat ridiculous figure. Frankly, he did not quite know what to make of the whole affair. Irreligious, yet credulous like every soldier who is nothing but a soldier, when he examined the particulars of that adventure, he was not altogether without his suspicions as to the goat, as to the curious circumstances of his first meeting with Esmeralda, as to the means, no less strange, by which she had betrayed the secret of her love, as to her being a gipsy, finally as to the spectre-monk. He discerned in all these incidents far more of magic than of love— probably a witch, most likely the devil; in fine, a drama, or in the language of the day, a mystery— and a very disagreeable one— in which he had an extremely uncomfortable part: that of the person who receives all the kicks and none of the applause. The captain was greatly put out by this; he felt that kind of shame which La Fontaine so admirably defines:
“Ashamed as a fox would be, caught by a hen.”
He hoped, however, that the affair would not be noised abroad, and that, he being absent, his name would hardly be mentioned in connection with it; or, at any rate, would not be heard beyond the court-room of the Tournelle. And in this he judged aright— there was no Criminal Gazette in those days, and as hardly a week passed without some coiner being boiled alive, some witch hanged, or heretic sent to the stake at one or other of the numberless “justices” of Paris, people were so accustomed to see the old feudal Themis at every crossway, her arms bar and sleeves rolled up, busy with her pitchforks, her gibbets, and her pillories, that scarcely any notice was taken of her. The beau monde of that age hardly knew the name of the poor wretch passing at the corner of the street; at most, it was the populace that regaled itself on these gross viands. An execution was one of the ordinary incidents of the public way, like the brasier of the pie-man or the butcher’s slaughter-house. The executioner was but a butcher, only a little more skilled than the other.
Ph?bus, therefore, very soon set his mind at rest on the subject of the enchantress Esmeralda, or Similar, as he called her, of the dagger-thrust he had received from the gipsy or the spectre-monk (it mattered little to him which), and the issue of the trial. But no sooner was his heart vacant on that score, than the image of Fleur-de-Lys returned to it— for the heart of Captain Ph?bus, like Nature, abhorred a vacuum.
Moreover, Queue-en-Brie was not a diverting place— a village of farriers and herd-girls with rough hands, a straggling row of squalid huts and cabins bordering the high-road for half a league— in short, a world’s end.
Fleur-de-Lys was his last flame but one, a pretty girl, a charming dot; and so one fine morning, being quite cured of his wound, and fairly presuming that after the interval of two months the business of the gipsy girl must be over and forgotten, the amorous cavalier pranced up in high feather to the door of the ancestral mansion of the Gondelauriers. He paid no attention to a very numerous crowd collecting in the Place du Parvis before the great door of Notre-Dame. Remembering that it was the month of May, he concluded that it was some procession— some Whitsuntide or other festival—tied his steed up to the ring at the porch, and gaily ascended the stair to his fair betrothed.
He found her alone with her mother.
On the heart of Fleur-de-Lys the scene of the gipsy with her goat and its accursed alphabet, combined with her lover’s long absences, still weighed heavily. Nevertheless, when she saw her captain enter, she found him so handsome in his brand-new doublet and shining baldrick, and wearing so impassioned an air, that she blushed with pleasure. The noble damsel herself was more charming than ever. Her magnificent golden tresses were braided to perfection, she was robed in that azure blue which so well becomes a blonde— a piece of coquetry she had learned from Colombe— and her eyes were swimming in that dewy languor which is still more becoming.
Ph?bus, who in the matter of beauty had been reduced to the country wenches of Queue-en-Brie, was ravished by Fleur-de-Lys, which lent our officer so pressing and gallant an air that his peace was made forthwith. The Lady of Gondelaurier herself, still maternally seated in her great chair, had not the heart to scold him. As for Fleur-de-Lys, her reproaches died away in tender cooings.
The young lady was seated near the window still engaged upon her grotto of Neptune. The captain leaned over the back of her seat, while she murmured her fond upbraidings.
“What have you been doing with yourself these two long months, unkind one?”
“I swear,” answered Ph?bus, somewhat embarrassed by this question, “that you are beautiful enough to make an archbishop dream.”
She could not repress a smile.
“Go to— go to, sir. Leave the question of my beauty and answer me. Fine beauty, to be sure!”
Well, dearest cousin, I was in garrison.”
“And where, if you please? and why did you not come and bid me adieu?”
“At Queue-en-Brie.”
Ph?bus was delighted that the first question had helped him to elude the second.
“But that is quite near, monsieur; how is it you never once came to see me?”
This was seriously embarrassing.
“Because— well— the service— and besides, charming cousin, I have been ill.”
“Ill?” she exclaimed in alarm.
“Yes— wounded.”
“Wounded!” The poor girl was quite upset.
“Oh, do not let that frighten you,” said Ph?bus carelessly; “it was nothing. A quarrel— a mere scratch— what does it signify to you?”
“What does it signify to me?” cried Fleur-de-Lys, lifting her beautiful eyes full of tears. “Oh, you cannot mean what you say. What was it all about— I will know.”
“Well, then, my fair one, I had some words with Mahé Fédy— you know— the lieutenant of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and each of us ripped up a few inches of the other’s skin— that is all.”
The inventive captain knew very well that an affair of honour always sets off a man to advantage in a woman’s eye. And sure enough, Fleur-de-Lys looked up into his fine face with mingled sensations of fear, pleasure, and admiration. However, she did not feel entirely reassured.
“I only hope you are completely cured, my Ph?bus!” she said. “I am not acquainted with your Mahé Fédy; but he must be an odious wretch. And what was this quarrel about?”
Here Ph?bus, whose imagination was not particularly creative, began to be rather at a loss how to beat a convenient retreat out of his encounter.
“Oh, how should I know?— a mere trifle— a horse— a hasty word! Fair cousin,” said he, by way of changing the conversation, “what is all this going on in the Parvis?” He went to the window. “Look, fair cousin, there is a great crowd in the Place.”
“I do not know,” answered Fleur-de-Lys; “it seems a witch is to do penance this morning before the church on her way to the gallows.”
So entirely did the captain believe the affair of Esmeralda to be terminated, that he took little heed of these words of Fleur-de-Lys. Nevertheless, he asked a careless question or two.
“Who is this witch?”
“I am sure I do not know.”
“And what is she said to have done?”
Again she shrugged her white shoulders.
“I do not know.”
“Oh, by ’r Lord!” exclaimed the mother, “there are so many sorceresses nowadays that they burn them, I dare swear, without knowing their names. As well might you try to know the name of every cloud in heaven. But, after all, we may make ourselves easy; the good God keeps his register above.” Here the venerable lady rose and approached the window. “Lord,” she cried, “you are right, Ph?bus, there is indeed a great concourse of the people— some of them even, God save us, on the very roofs! Ah, Ph?bus, that brings back to me my young days and the entry of Charles VII, when there were just such crowds— I mind not precisely in what year. When I speak of that to you it doubtless sounds like something very old, but to me it is as fresh as to-day. Oh, it was a far finer crowd than this! Some of them climbed up on to the battlements of the Porte Saint-Antoine. The King had the Queen on the crupper behind him; and after their highnesses came all the ladies mounted behind their lords. I remember, too, there was much laughter because by the side of Amanyon de Garlande, who was very short, there came the Sire Mate-felon, a knight of gigantic stature, who had killed the English in heaps. It was very fine. Then followed a procession of all the nobles of France, with their oriflammes fluttering red before one. There were some with pennons and some with banners— let me think— the Sire de Calan had a pennon, Jean de Chateaumorant a banner, and a richer than any of the others except the Duke of Bourbon. Alas! ’tis sad to think that all that has been, and that nothing of it now remains!”
The two young people were not listening to the worthy dowager. Ph?bus had returned to lean over the back of his lady-love’s chair— a charming post which revealed to his libertine glance so many exquisite things, and enabled him to divine so many more that, ravished by that satin-shimmering skin, he said to himself, “How can one love any but a blonde?”
Neither spoke. The girl lifted to him, from time to time, a glance full of tenderness and devotion, and their locks mingled in a ray of the vernal sunshine.
“Ph?bus,” said Fleur-de-Lys suddenly, in a half-whisper, “we are to marry in three months— swear to me that you have never loved any woman but myself.”
“I swear it, fairest angel!” returned Ph?bus; and his passionate glance combined with the sincere tone of his voice to convince Fleur-de-Lys of the truth of his assertion. And, who knows, perhaps he believed it himself at the moment.
Meanwhile the good mother, rejoiced to see the two young people in such perfect accord, had left the apartment to attend to some domestic matter. Ph?bus was aware of the fact, and this solitude á deux so emboldened the enterprising captain that some strange ideas began to arise in his mind. Fleur-de-Lys loved him— he was betrothed to her— she was alone with him— his old inclination for her had revived— not perhaps in all its primitive freshness, but certainly in all its ardour— after all, it was no great crime to cut a little of one’s own corn in the blade. I know not if these thoughts passed distinctly through his mind; but at any rate, Fleur-de-Lys suddenly took alarm at the expression of his countenance. She looked about her and discovered that her mother was gone.
“Heavens!” said she, blushing and uneasy, “I am very hot.”
“I think, indeed,” replied Ph?bus, “that it cannot be far from noon. The sun is oppressive— the best remedy is to draw the curtain.”
“No, no!” cried the girl; “on the contrary, it is air I need.”
And like the doe which scents the hounds, she started up, ran to the window, flung it wide, and took refuge on the balcony. Ph?bus, not overpleased, followed her.
The Place de Parvis of Notre-Dame, upon which, as the reader is aware, the balcony looked down, presented at that moment a sinister and unusual appearance, which forthwith changed the nature of the timid damoiselle’s alarm.
