Night comes on early in January. The streets were already
dark when Gringoire issued forth from the Courts. This
gloom pleased him; he was in haste to reach some obscure
and deserted alley, in order there to meditate at his ease, and
in order that the philosopher might place the first dressing
upon the wound of the poet. Philosophy, moreover, was his
sole refuge, for he did not know where he was to lodge for the
night. After the brilliant failure of his first theatrical
venture, he dared not return to the lodging which he occupied in
the Rue Grenier-sur-l'Eau, opposite to the Port-au-Foin, having
depended upon receiving from monsieur the provost for
his epithalamium, the wherewithal to pay Master Guillaume
Doulx-Sire, farmer of the taxes on cloven-footed animals in
Paris, the rent which he owed him, that is to say, twelve sols
parisian; twelve times the value of all that he possessed in
the world, including his trunk-hose, his shirt, and his cap.
After reflecting a moment, temporarily sheltered beneath the
little wicket of the prison of the treasurer of the Sainte-
Chappelle, as to the shelter which he would select for the
night, having all the pavements of Paris to choose from, he
remembered to have noticed the week previously in the Rue
de la Savaterie, at the door of a councillor of the parliament,
a stepping stone for mounting a mule, and to have said to
himself that that stone would furnish, on occasion, a very
excellent pillow for a mendicant or a poet. He thanked
Providence for having sent this happy idea to him; but, as he
was preparing to cross the Place, in order to reach the tortuous
labyrinth of the city, where meander all those old sister
streets, the Rues de la Barillerie, de la Vielle-Draperie, de la
Savaterie, de la Juiverie, etc., still extant to-day, with their
nine-story houses, he saw the procession of the Pope of the
Fools, which was also emerging from the court house, and
rushing across the courtyard, with great cries, a great flashing
of torches, and the music which belonged to him, Gringoire.
This sight revived the pain of his self-love; he fled. In the
bitterness of his dramatic misadventure, everything which
reminded him of the festival of that day irritated his wound
and made it bleed.
58
He was on the point of turning to the Pont Saint-Michel;
children were running about here and there with fire lances
and rockets.
"Pest on firework candles!" said Gringoire; and he fell
back on the Pont au Change. To the house at the head of the
bridge there had been affixed three small banners, representing
the king, the dauphin, and Marguerite of Flanders, and
six little pennons on which were portrayed the Duke of Austria,
the Cardinal de Bourbon, M. de Beaujeu, and Madame
Jeanne de France, and Monsieur the Bastard of Bourbon, and
I know not whom else; all being illuminated with torches.
The rabble were admiring.
"Happy painter, Jehan Fourbault!" said Gringoire with a
deep sigh; and he turned his back upon the bannerets and
pennons. A street opened before him; he thought it so dark
and deserted that he hoped to there escape from all the rumors
as well as from all the gleams of the festival. At the end of
a few moments his foot came in contact with an obstacle; he
stumbled and fell. It was the May truss, which the clerks of
the clerks' law court had deposited that morning at the door
of a president of the parliament, in honor of the solemnity of
the day. Gringoire bore this new disaster heroically; he
picked himself up, and reached the water's edge. After leaving
behind him the civic Tournelle* and the criminal tower,
and skirted the great walls of the king's garden, on that
unpaved strand where the mud reached to his ankles, he
reached the western point of the city, and considered for some
time the islet of the Passeur-aux-Vaches, which has disappeared
beneath the bronze horse of the Pont Neuf. The islet
appeared to him in the shadow like a black mass, beyond the
narrow strip of whitish water which separated him from it.
One could divine by the ray of a tiny light the sort of hut in
the form of a beehive where the ferryman of cows took refuge
at night.
* A chamber of the ancient parliament of Paris.
"Happy ferryman!" thought Gringoire; "you do not
dream of glory, and you do not make marriage songs! What
matters it to you, if kings and Duchesses of Burgundy marry?
You know no other daisies (~marguerites~) than those which
your April greensward gives your cows to browse upon; while
I, a poet, am hooted, and shiver, and owe twelve sous, and
the soles of my shoes are so transparent, that they might
serve as glasses for your lantern! Thanks, ferryman, your
cabin rests my eyes, and makes me forget Paris!"
He was roused from his almost lyric ecstacy, by a big
double Saint-Jean cracker, which suddenly went off from the
happy cabin. It was the cow ferryman, who was taking his
part in the rejoicings of the day, and letting off fireworks.
This cracker made Gringoire's skin bristle up all over.
"Accursed festival!" he exclaimed, "wilt thou pursue me
everywhere? Oh! good God! even to the ferryman's!"
Then he looked at the Seine at his feet, and a horrible
temptation took possession of him:
"Oh!" said he, "I would gladly drown myself, were the
water not so cold!"
Then a desperate resolution occurred to him. It was, since
he could not escape from the Pope of the Fools, from Jehan
Fourbault's bannerets, from May trusses, from squibs and
crackers, to go to the Place de Gr¨¨ve.
"At least," he said to himself, "I shall there have a firebrand
of joy wherewith to warm myself, and I can sup on
some crumbs of the three great armorial bearings of royal
sugar which have been erected on the public refreshment-stall
of the city.
CHAPTER II.