The crowd received his every utterance with yells of laughter, and seeing that the uproar was increasing round him, the scholar cried: “O glorious uproar! Populi debacchantis
populosa debacchatio!”and set off singing, his eyes swimming in apparent ecstasy, in the tone of a canon chanting vespers: “Qu? cantica! qu? organa! qu? cantilen?! qu? melodi? his sine fine decantantur! sonant melliflua hymnorum or gana, suavissima angelorum melodia, cantica canticorum mira.”2
He broke off. “Hey there—devil’s own landlady—give me some supper!”
There was a moment almost of silence, during which the strident voice of the Duke of Egypt was heard instructing his Bohemians:
“—The weasel goes by the name of Aduine, the fox is Bluefoot or Woodranger, the wolf, Grayfoot or Giltfoot, the bear, Old Man, or Grandfather. The cap of a gnome renders one invisible and makes one see invisible things. When a toad is baptized it should be clad in velvet—red or black—a bell at its neck, a bell on its foot. The godfather holds the head, the godmother the hinder parts. It is the demon Sidragasum that has the power of making girls dance naked.”
“By the mass!”broke in Jehan, “I would I were a demon Sidragasum.”
All this time the truands had been steadily arming themselves at the other side of the tavern, whispering to one another.
“Poor Esmeralda!”said a gipsy. “She is our sister. We must get her out of that!”
“Is she there still in Notre-Dame?”asked a Jewishlooking huckster.
“Yes, by God!”
“Well, comrades,”exclaimed the huckster, “to Notre-Dame, then! All the more because in the chapel of Saints Féréol and Ferrution there are two statues, one of Saint-John the Baptist and the other of Saint-Anthony, both of pure gold, weighing together seven gold marks and fifteen esterlins,3 and the pedestals of silver-gilt weigh seventeen marks five ounces. I know it—I am a goldsmith.”
Here they served Jehan’s supper. He lolled on the bosom of the girl beside him. “By Saint-Voult-de-Lucques, called familiarly Saint-Goguelu, now I’m perfectly happy!”he cried. “Here in front of me I see a blockhead with the beardless face of an archduke. On my left is another with teeth so long they hide his chin. Body of Mahomet! Comrade! thou hast all the appearance of a draper, and hast the effrontery to come and sit by me! I am noble, my friend, and trade is incompatible with nobility. Get thee farther off. Holá, you there! no fighting! How now! Baptiste Croque-Oison, wouldst risk that splendid nose of thine under the gross fists of yonder bumpkin! Imbecile! Non cuiquam datum est habere nasum.4 Truly thou art divine, Jacqueline Rouge-Oreille! pity ’tis thou hast no hair. Holá! My name’s Jehan Frollo, and my brother’s an archdeacon—may the devil fly away with him! Every word I tell you is the truth. By turning Vagabond, I have cheerfully renounced the half of a house situate in paradise promised me by my brother—dimidem donum in paradiso—I quote the very words. I’ve a property in the Rue Tirechappe, and all the women run after me—as true as it’s true that Saint-Eligius was an excellent goldsmith, and that the five trades of the good city of Paris are the tanners, the leather-dressers, the baldrick-makers, the purse-makers, and the leather-scourers, and that Saint-Laurence was burned with hot egg-shells. I swear to you, comrades,
‘For a full year I’ll taste no wine
If this be any lie of mine!’
“My charmer, ’tis moonlight; look through that loophole how the wind rumples the clouds—just as I do with thy kerchief. Girls, snuff the children and the candles. Christ and Mahomet! what am I eating now? Hey there, old jade! the hairs that are missing from the heads of thy trulls we find in the omelets! Hark ye, old lady, I prefer my omelets bald. May the devil flatten thy nose! A fine tavern of Beelzebub, in sooth, where the wenches comb themselves with the forks!”
With which he smashed his plate on the floor and began singing in an ear-splitting voice:
“By the blood of Christ,
I lay no store
By faith or law,
Neither hearth nor home
Do I call my own,
Nor God,
Nor King!”
By this time Clopin Trouillefou had finished distributing his arms. Approaching Gringoire, who seemed plunged in profound reverie, his feet on a log:
“Friend Pierre,”said the King of Tunis, “what the devil art thinking about?”
Gringoire turned to him with a melancholy smile. “I love the fire, my dear sir. Not for the trivial reason that it warms our feet and cooks our soup, but because it throws out sparks. Sometimes I pass whole hours watching the sparks. I discover a host of things in those stars that sprinkle the dark background of the fire-place. Those stars are worlds.”
“The fiend take me if I understand thee,”said the Vagabond. “Dost thou know what’s o’clock?”
“I do not,”answered Gringoire. Clopin went to the Duke of Egypt.
“Comrade Mathias, the moment is ill-chosen. They say King Louis is in Paris.”
“All the more need for getting our sister out of his clutches,”answered the old Bohemian.
“You speak like a man, Mathias,”returned the King of Tunis. “Besides, it will be an easy matter. There’s no resistance to fear in the church. The priests are so many hares, and we are in full force. The men of the Parliament will be finely balked to-morrow when they come to fetch her! By the bowels of the Pope, they shall not hang the pretty creature!”
Clopin then left the tavern.
In the meantime Jehan was shouting hoarsely: “I drink —I eat—I’m drunk—I am Jupiter! Ah, Pierre l’ Assommeur, if thou glarest at me again in that manner, I’ll dust thy nose with my fist!”
Gringoire, on his part, aroused from his meditations, was contemplating the wild scene of license and uproar around him, while he murmured to himself: “Luxuriosa res vinum et tumultuosa ebrietas.5 Ah, how wise am I to eschew drinking, and how excellent is the saying of Saint-Benedict: Vinum apostatare facit etiam sapientes!”6
At this moment Clopin returned and shouted in a voice of thunder, “Midnight!”
The word acted on the truands like the order to mount on a regiment, and the entire band—men, women, and children—poured out of the tavern with a great clatter of arms and iron. The moon was obscured. The Court of Miracles lay in utter darkness—not a single light was to be seen, but it was far from being deserted. A great crowd of men and women stood in the Place talking to one another in low voices. There was a continuous deep hum, and many a weapon flashed in the gloom.
Clopin mounted on a great stone. “To your ranks, Argot!”cried he. “To your ranks, Egypt! To your ranks, Galilee!”
A movement ran through the darkness. The vast multitude seemed to be forming in columns. After a few minutes the King of Tunis once more lifted up his voice:
“Now, then, silence on the march through Paris! The password is ‘Dagger in pouch.’ Torches not to be lighted till we reach Notre-Dame! March!”
Ten minutes later the horsemen of the night-watch were fleeing in terror before a long procession, black and silent, pouring down towards the Pont-au-Change through the tortuous streets that run in every direction through the dense quarter of the Halles.
______________________
1 Slang term for ready money, hard cash.
2 What chants! what instruments! what songs and melodies without end are sung here! Hymns from mellifluous pipes are sounding, sweetest of angels’ melodies, the most wonderful song of all songs.
3 Obsolete goldsmith weight of 28 4/5 grains.
4 It is not given to every one to have a nose.
5 A dissolute thing is wine and leads to noisy intoxication.
6 The avoiding of wine also makes a man wise.
Chapter 4 - An Awkward Friend
Quasimodo on that night was not asleep. He had just gone his last round through the church. He had failed to remark that at the moment when he was closing the doors the Archdeacon had passed near him and evinced some annoyance at seeing him bolt and padlock with care the enormous iron bars which gave the wide doors the solidity of a wall. Dom Claude seemed even more preoccupied than usual. Moreover, since the nocturnal adventure in the cell, he treated Quasimodo with constant unkindness; but in vain he used him harshly, sometimes even striking him—nothing could shake the submissive patience, the devoted resignation of the faithful bell-ringer. From the Archdeacon he would endure anything—abuse, threats, blows—without a murmur of reproach, without even a sigh of complaint. The utmost that he did was to follow Dom Claude with an anxious eye if he mounted the stair of the tower; but the Archdeacon had of himself abstained from appearing again before the gipsy girl.
That night, then, Quasimodo, after a glance at his poor forsaken bells, Jacqueline, Marie, Thibauld, had ascended to the top of the northern tower, and there, after setting down his dark-lantern on the leads, he fell to contemplating Paris. The night, as we have said, was very dark. Paris, which, speaking broadly, was not lighted at all at that period, presented to the eye a confused mass of black blots, cut here and there by the pale windings of the river. Quasimodo saw not a light except in the window of a distant edifice, whose vague and sombre outline was distinguishable high above the roofs in the direction of the Porte Saint-Antoine. Here, too, some one kept vigil.
While his eye thus lingered over the dark and misty scene, the bell-ringer felt an indescribable sense of anxiety rising within him. For several days he had been on the watch. He had constantly noticed men of sinister aspect loitering round the church and never taking their eyes off the gipsy girl’s hiding-place. He feared lest some plot should be hatching against the unfortunate refugee. He conceived her to be an object of popular hatred, as he was himself, and that something might very well be going to happen in the immediate future. Thus he remained on his tower on the lookout—“Revant dans son revoir” —Musing in his musery— as Rabelais says, his eye by turns on the cell and on Paris, keeping safe watch, like a trusty dog, with a thousand suspicions in his mind.
All at once, while he was reconnoitring the great city with that solitary eye which nature, as if by way of compensation, had made so piercing that it almost supplied the deficiency of other organs in Quasimodo, it struck him that there was something unusual in the appearance of the outline of the quay of the Veille Pelleterie, that there was some movement at this point, that the line of the parapet which stood out black against the whiteness of the water was not straight and still like that of the other quays, but that it appeared to undulate like the waves of a river or the heads of a crowd in motion.
He thought this very peculiar. He redoubled his attention. The movement appeared to be coming towards the city —not a light, however. It lasted some time on the quay, and then flowed away by degrees, as if whatever was passing along was entering the interior of the island; then it ceased altogether, and the line of the quay returned to its wonted straightness and immobility.
Just as Quasimodo was exhausting himself in conjectures, it seemed to him that the movement was reappearing in the Rue du Parvis, which runs into the city in a straight line with the front of Notre-Dame. At last, despite the great darkness, he could descry the head of a column issuing from that street, and the next instant a crowd spreading out into the square, of which he could distinguish nothing further than that it was a crowd.
It was a fear-compelling spectacle. No doubt this strange procession, which seemed so anxious to cloak itself under the profound darkness, preserved a silence no less profound. Still, some sound must have escaped from it, were it only the tramp of feet. But even this sound did not reach the deaf hunchback, and the great multitude, which he could only dimly see, but which he heard not at all, moving so near him, seemed to him like an assemblage of the dead—mute, ghostly shapes, hovering in a mist—shadows in a shade.
Then his former fears returned; the idea of an attempt against the gipsy girl presented itself once more to his mind. He had a vague premonition of some violent situation approaching. At this critical moment he held counsel with himself, reasoning with greater acumen and promptness than would have been expected from so ill-organized a brain. Should he awaken the gipsy girl?—help her to escape? Which way? The streets were blocked, the church was backed by the river—no boat—no egress. There remained but one thing therefore—to face death on the threshold of Notre-Dame; to hold them off at least until assistance came, supposing there were any to come, and not to disturb the slumbers of Esmeralda. The unhappy girl would always be awakened early enough to die. This resolution once taken, he proceeded to observe “the enemy” with greater calmness.
The crowd in the Parvis appeared to be increasing momentarily; though, seeing that the windows of the streets and the Place remained closed, he concluded that they could not be making much noise. Suddenly a light shone out, and in an instant seven or eight torches were waving above the heads, tossing their plumes of flame through the darkness. By their light Quasimodo had a clear vision of an appalling band of tatterdemalions—men and women—flocking into the Parvis, armed with scythes, pikes, pruning-forks, partisans—their thousand blades glittering as they caught the fitful light— and here and there black pitchforks furnishing horns to these hideous visages. He had a confused remembrance of that populace, and thought to recognise in them the crowd which but a few months before had acclaimed him Pope of Fools. A man holding a torch in one hand and a birch rod in the other was mounted on a corner post and apparently haranguing the multitude, and at the same time the ghostly army performed some evolutions as if taking up a position round the church. Quasimodo picked up his lantern and descended to the platform between the towers to observe more closely and deliberate on the means of defence.
Arrived in front of the great door of Notre-Dame, Clopin Trouillefou had in fact drawn up his troops in battle array. Though anticipating no resistance, yet, like a prudent general, he determined to preserve so much order as would, in case of need, enable him to face a sudden attack of the watch or the city guard. Accordingly, he had so disposed his brigade that, seen from above and at a distance, it might have been taken for the Roman triangle at the battle of Ecnoma, the boar’s head of Alexander, or the famous wedge of Gustavus Adolphus. The base of this triangle ran along the back of the Place in such a manner as to bar the Rue du Parvis, one side looked towards the H?tel-Dieu, the other towards the Rue Saint-Pierre aux B?ufs. Clopin Trouillefou had posted himself at the point with the Duke of Egypt, our friend Jehan, and the boldest of the beggar tribe.
An enterprise such as the truands were now attempting against Notre-Dame was by no means an uncommon occurrence in the Middle Ages. What we now call “police” did not then exist. In the populous cities, particularly in the capitals, there was no united central power regulating the whole. Feudalism had shaped these great municipalities after an absurd fashion. A city was a collection of innumerable seigneuries, cutting it up into divisions of all shapes and sizes; hence its crowd of contradictory police establishments, or rather no police at all. In Paris, for instance, independently of the hundred and forty-one feudal lords claiming manorial dues, there were twenty-five claiming justiciary and manorial rights, from the Bishop of Paris, who possessed a hundred and five streets, to the Prior of Notre-Dame des Champs, who had only four. All these feudal justiciaries recognised only nominally the paramount authority of the King. All exercised right of highway, all were their own masters. Louis XI —that indefatigable workman, who commenced on so large a scale the demolition of the feudal edifice, continued by Richelieu and Louis XIV to the advantage of royalty, and completed by Mirabeau to the people—Louis XI had done his utmost to break up this network of seigneuries which covered Paris, by casting violently athwart it two or three ordinances of general police. Thus, in 1465, we find the inhabitants ordered to put lighted candles in their windows at nightfall, and to shut up their dogs on pain of the halter; in the same year, the order to bar the streets at night with iron chains, and the prohibition against their carrying daggers or any other offensive weapon in the streets at night. But in a short time all these attempts at municipal legislation fell into disuse; the citizens let the candles at their windows be extinguished by the wind and their dogs roam at large; the iron chains were only stretched across the street in case of siege, and the prohibition against carrying weapons brought about no other changes than converting the Rue Coupe-Gueule into Coupe-Gorge; which, to be sure, is a clear evidence of progress. The old framework of the feudal jurisdictions remained standing—an immense accumulation of bailiwicks and seigneuries, crossing one another in all directions through the length and breadth of the city, embarrassing, entangling, overlapping one another—a useless thicket of watches, counter-watches, and out-watches, through the very midst of which stalked brigandage, rapine, and sedition, sword in hand. Under such condition of disorder, therefore, it excited no very great remark if a part of the populace laid violent hands on a palace, a mansion, or any ordinary dwelling-house in the most populated quarters of the city. In most cases the neighbours did not interfere in the matter unless the plundering extended to themselves. They stopped their ears to the report of the musketry, closed their shutters, barricaded their doors, and let the struggle exhaust itself with or without the assistance of the watch, and the next day it would be quietly said in Paris: “ night étienne Barbette’s house was broken into,” or “The Marshal de Clermont was attacked,” etc. Hence, not only the royal residences, the Louvre, the Palais, the Bastille, the Tournelles, but the mansions of the nobility, such as the Petit-Bourbon, the H?tel de Sens, the H?tel d’Angoulême, and so on, had their battlemented walls and their fortified turrets over the entrances. The churches were protected by their sanctity. Some of them, nevertheless —among which was not Notre-Dame—were fortified. The Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés was castellated like a baronial mansion, and more copper had been used there for bombards than for bells. These fortifications were still to be seen in 1610; now scarcely the church remains.
