When Pierre Gringoire arrived on the Place de Gr¨¨ve, he
was paralyzed. He had directed his course across the Pont
aux Meuniers, in order to avoid the rabble on the Pont au
Change, and the pennons of Jehan Fourbault; but the wheels
of all the bishop's mills had splashed him as he passed, and
his doublet was drenched; it seemed to him besides, that the
failure of his piece had rendered him still more sensible to
cold than usual. Hence he made haste to draw near the bonfire,
which was burning magnificently in the middle of the
Place. But a considerable crowd formed a circle around it.
"Accursed Parisians!" he said to himself (for Gringoire,
like a true dramatic poet, was subject to monologues) "there
they are obstructing my fire! Nevertheless, I am greatly in
need of a chimney corner; my shoes drink in the water, and
all those cursed mills wept upon me! That devil of a Bishop
of Paris, with his mills! I'd just like to know what use a
bishop can make of a mill! Does he expect to become a
miller instead of a bishop? If only my malediction is needed
for that, I bestow it upon him! and his cathedral, and his
mills! Just see if those boobies will put themselves out!
Move aside! I'd like to know what they are doing there!
They are warming themselves, much pleasure may it give
them! They are watching a hundred fagots burn; a fine
spectacle!"
On looking more closely, he perceived that the circle was
much larger than was required simply for the purpose of
getting warm at the king's fire, and that this concourse of
people had not been attracted solely by the beauty of the
hundred fagots which were burning.
In a vast space left free between the crowd and the fire, a
young girl was dancing.
Whether this young girl was a human being, a fairy, or an
angel, is what Gringoire, sceptical philosopher and ironical
poet that he was, could not decide at the first moment, so
fascinated was he by this dazzling vision.
She was not tall, though she seemed so, so boldly did her
slender form dart about. She was swarthy of complexion,
but one divined that, by day, her skin must possess that
beautiful golden tone of the Andalusians and the Roman
women. Her little foot, too, was Andalusian, for it was both
pinched and at ease in its graceful shoe. She danced, she
turned, she whirled rapidly about on an old Persian rug,
spread negligently under her feet; and each time that her
radiant face passed before you, as she whirled, her great black
eyes darted a flash of lightning at you.
All around her, all glances were riveted, all mouths open;
and, in fact, when she danced thus, to the humming of the
Basque tambourine, which her two pure, rounded arms raised
above her head, slender, frail and vivacious as a wasp, with
her corsage of gold without a fold, her variegated gown puffing
out, her bare shoulders, her delicate limbs, which her
petticoat revealed at times, her black hair, her eyes of flame,
she was a supernatural creature.
"In truth," said Gringoire to himself, "she is a salamander,
she is a nymph, she is a goddess, she is a bacchante of the
Menelean Mount!"
At that moment, one of the salamander's braids of hair
became unfastened, and a piece of yellow copper which was
attached to it, rolled to the ground.
"H¨¦, no!" said he, "she is a gypsy!"
All illusions had disappeared.
She began her dance once more; she took from the ground
two swords, whose points she rested against her brow, and
which she made to turn in one direction, while she turned in
the other; it was a purely gypsy effect. But, disenchanted
though Gringoire was, the whole effect of this picture was not
without its charm and its magic; the bonfire illuminated,
with a red flaring light, which trembled, all alive, over the
circle of faces in the crowd, on the brow of the young girl,
and at the background of the Place cast a pallid reflection,
on one side upon the ancient, black, and wrinkled fa?ade of
the House of Pillars, on the other, upon the old stone
gibbet.
Among the thousands of visages which that light tinged
with scarlet, there was one which seemed, even more than all
the others, absorbed in contemplation of the dancer. It was
the face of a man, austere, calm, and sombre. This man,
whose costume was concealed by the crowd which surrounded
him, did not appear to be more than five and thirty years of
age; nevertheless, he was bald; he had merely a few tufts of
thin, gray hair on his temples; his broad, high forehead had
begun to be furrowed with wrinkles, but his deep-set eyes
sparkled with extraordinary youthfulness, an ardent life, a
profound passion. He kept them fixed incessantly on the
gypsy, and, while the giddy young girl of sixteen danced and
whirled, for the pleasure of all, his revery seemed to become
more and more sombre. From time to time, a smile and a
sigh met upon his lips, but the smile was more melancholy
than the sigh.
The young girl, stopped at length, breathless, and the people
applauded her lovingly.
"Djali!" said the gypsy.
Then Gringoire saw come up to her, a pretty little white
goat, alert, wide-awake, glossy, with gilded horns, gilded
hoofs, and gilded collar, which he had not hitherto perceived,
and which had remained lying curled up on one corner of the
carpet watching his mistress dance.
"Djali!" said the dancer, "it is your turn."
And, seating herself, she gracefully presented her tambourine
to the goat.
"Djali," she continued, "what month is this?"
The goat lifted its fore foot, and struck one blow upon
the tambourine. It was the first month in the year, in
fact.
"Djali," pursued the young girl, turning her tambourine
round, "what day of the month is this?"
Djali raised his little gilt hoof, and struck six blows on the
tambourine.
"Djali," pursued the Egyptian, with still another movement
of the tambourine, "what hour of the day is it?"
Djali struck seven blows. At that moment, the clock of
the Pillar House rang out seven.
The people were amazed.
"There's sorcery at the bottom of it," said a sinister voice
in the crowd. It was that of the bald man, who never removed
his eyes from the gypsy.
She shuddered and turned round; but applause broke forth
and drowned the morose exclamation.
It even effaced it so completely from her mind, that she
continued to question her goat.
"Djali, what does Master Guichard Grand-Remy, captain of
the pistoliers of the town do, at the procession of Candlemas?"
Djali reared himself on his hind legs, and began to bleat,
marching along with so much dainty gravity, that the entire
circle of spectators burst into a laugh at this parody of the
interested devoutness of the captain of pistoliers.
"Djali," resumed the young girl, emboldened by her growing
success, "how preaches Master Jacques Charmolue, procurator
to the king in the ecclesiastical court?"
The goat seated himself on his hind quarters, and began
to bleat, waving his fore feet in so strange a manner, that,
with the exception of the bad French, and worse Latin,
Jacques Charmolue was there complete,--gesture, accent, and
attitude.
And the crowd applauded louder than ever.
"Sacrilege! profanation!" resumed the voice of the bald man.
The gypsy turned round once more.
"Ah!" said she, "'tis that villanous man!" Then, thrusting
her under lip out beyond the upper, she made a little
pout, which appeared to be familiar to her, executed a pirouette
on her heel, and set about collecting in her tambourine the
gifts of the multitude.
Big blanks, little blanks, targes* and eagle liards showered
into it.
* A blank: an old French coin; six blanks were worth two sous
and a half; targe, an ancient coin of Burgundy, a farthing.
All at once, she passed in front of Gringoire. Gringoire
put his hand so recklessly into his pocket that she halted.
"The devil!" said the poet, finding at the bottom of his
pocket the reality, that is, to say, a void. In the meantime,
the pretty girl stood there, gazing at him with her big eyes,
and holding out her tambourine to him and waiting. Gringoire
broke into a violent perspiration.
If he had all Peru in his pocket, he would certainly have
given it to the dancer; but Gringoire had not Peru, and,
moreover, America had not yet been discovered.
Happily, an unexpected incident came to his rescue.
"Will you take yourself off, you Egyptian grasshopper?"
cried a sharp voice, which proceeded from the darkest corner
of the Place.
The young girl turned round in affright. It was no longer
the voice of the bald man; it was the voice of a woman,
bigoted and malicious.
However, this cry, which alarmed the gypsy, delighted a
troop of children who were prowling about there.
"It is the recluse of the Tour-Roland," they exclaimed,
with wild laughter, "it is the sacked nun who is scolding!
Hasn't she supped? Let's carry her the remains of the city
refreshments!"
All rushed towards the Pillar House.
In the meanwhile, Gringoire had taken advantage of the
dancer's embarrassment, to disappear. The children's shouts
had reminded him that he, also, had not supped, so he ran to
the public buffet. But the little rascals had better legs than
he; when he arrived, they had stripped the table. There
remained not so much as a miserable ~camichon~ at five sous
the pound. Nothing remained upon the wall but slender
fleurs-de-lis, mingled with rose bushes, painted in 1434 by
Mathieu Biterne. It was a meagre supper.
It is an unpleasant thing to go to bed without supper, it is
a still less pleasant thing not to sup and not to know where
one is to sleep. That was Gringoire's condition. No supper,
no shelter; he saw himself pressed on all sides by necessity,
and he found necessity very crabbed. He had long ago discovered
the truth, that Jupiter created men during a fit of
misanthropy, and that during a wise man's whole life, his
destiny holds his philosophy in a state of siege. As for
himself, he had never seen the blockade so complete; he heard
his stomach sounding a parley, and he considered it very much
out of place that evil destiny should capture his philosophy
by famine.
This melancholy revery was absorbing him more and more,
when a song, quaint but full of sweetness, suddenly tore him
from it. It was the young gypsy who was singing.
Her voice was like her dancing, like her beauty. It was
indefinable and charming; something pure and sonorous,
aerial, winged, so to speak. There were continual outbursts,
melodies, unexpected cadences, then simple phrases strewn
with aerial and hissing notes; then floods of scales which
would have put a nightingale to rout, but in which harmony
was always present; then soft modulations of octaves which
rose and fell, like the bosom of the young singer. Her beautiful
face followed, with singular mobility, all the caprices of
her song, from the wildest inspiration to the chastest dignity.
One would have pronounced her now a mad creature, now a
queen.
The words which she sang were in a tongue unknown to
Gringoire, and which seemed to him to be unknown to herself,
so little relation did the expression which she imparted to her
song bear to the sense of the words. Thus, these four lines,
in her mouth, were madly gay,--
~Un cofre de gran riqueza
Hallaron dentro un pilar,
Dentro del, nuevas banderas
Con figuras de espantar~.*
* A coffer of great richness
In a pillar's heart they found,
Within it lay new banners,
With figures to astound.
And an instant afterwards, at the accents which she imparted
to this stanza,--
~Alarabes de cavallo
Sin poderse menear,
Con espadas, y los cuellos,
Ballestas de buen echar~,
Gringoire felt the tears start to his eyes. Nevertheless, her
song breathed joy, most of all, and she seemed to sing like a
bird, from serenity and heedlessness.
The gypsy's song had disturbed Gringoire's revery as the
swan disturbs the water. He listened in a sort of rapture,
and forgetfulness of everything. It was the first moment in
the course of many hours when he did not feel that he suffered.
The moment was brief.
The same woman's voice, which had interrupted the gypsy's
dance, interrupted her song.
"Will you hold your tongue, you cricket of hell?" it cried,
still from the same obscure corner of the place.
The poor "cricket" stopped short. Gringoire covered up his ears.
"Oh!" he exclaimed, "accursed saw with missing teeth, which
comes to break the lyre!"
Meanwhile, the other spectators murmured like himself;
"To the devil with the sacked nun!" said some of them.
And the old invisible kill-joy might have had occasion to
repent of her aggressions against the gypsy had their attention
not been diverted at this moment by the procession of
the Pope of the Fools, which, after having traversed many
streets and squares, debouched on the Place de Gr¨¨ve, with
all its torches and all its uproar.
This procession, which our readers have seen set out from
the Palais de Justice, had organized on the way, and had been
recruited by all the knaves, idle thieves, and unemployed vagabonds
in Paris; so that it presented a very respectable aspect
when it arrived at the Gr¨¨ve.
First came Egypt. The Duke of Egypt headed it, on horseback,
with his counts on foot holding his bridle and stirrups
for him; behind them, the male and female Egyptians,
pell-mell, with their little children crying on their shoulders;
all--duke, counts, and populace--in rags and tatters. Then
came the Kingdom of Argot; that is to say, all the thieves of
France, arranged according to the order of their dignity; the
minor people walking first. Thus defiled by fours, with the
divers insignia of their grades, in that strange faculty, most of
them lame, some cripples, others one-armed, shop clerks, pilgrim,
~hubins~, bootblacks, thimble-riggers, street arabs, beggars,
the blear-eyed beggars, thieves, the weakly, vagabonds,
merchants, sham soldiers, goldsmiths, passed masters of
pickpockets, isolated thieves. A catalogue that would weary
Homer. In the centre of the conclave of the passed masters
of pickpockets, one had some difficulty in distinguishing the
King of Argot, the grand co?sre, so called, crouching in a
little cart drawn by two big dogs. After the kingdom of the
Argotiers, came the Empire of Galilee. Guillaume Rousseau,
Emperor of the Empire of Galilee, marched majestically in
his robe of purple, spotted with wine, preceded by buffoons
wrestling and executing military dances; surrounded by his
macebearers, his pickpockets and clerks of the chamber of
accounts. Last of all came the corporation of law clerks,
with its maypoles crowned with flowers, its black robes, its
music worthy of the orgy, and its large candles of yellow
wax. In the centre of this crowd, the grand officers of the
Brotherhood of Fools bore on their shoulders a litter more
loaded down with candles than the reliquary of Sainte-Genevi¨¨ve
in time of pest; and on this litter shone resplendent,
with crosier, cope, and mitre, the new Pope of the Fools, the
bellringer of Notre-Dame, Quasimodo the hunchback.
Each section of this grotesque procession had its own music.
The Egyptians made their drums and African tambourines
resound. The slang men, not a very musical race, still clung
to the goat's horn trumpet and the Gothic rubebbe of the
twelfth century. The Empire of Galilee was not much more
advanced; among its music one could hardly distinguish some
miserable rebec, from the infancy of the art, still imprisoned
in the ~re-la-mi~. But it was around the Pope of the Fools that
all the musical riches of the epoch were displayed in a magnificent
discord. It was nothing but soprano rebecs, counter-tenor
rebecs, and tenor rebecs, not to reckon the flutes and
brass instruments. Alas! our readers will remember that this
was Gringoire's orchestra.
It is difficult to convey an idea of the degree of proud and
blissful expansion to which the sad and hideous visage of
Quasimodo had attained during the transit from the Palais de
Justice, to the Place de Gr¨¨ve. It was the first enjoyment of
self-love that he had ever experienced. Down to that day, he
had known only humiliation, disdain for his condition, disgust
for his person. Hence, deaf though he was, he enjoyed, like
a veritable pope, the acclamations of that throng, which he
hated because he felt that he was hated by it. What mattered
it that his people consisted of a pack of fools, cripples,
thieves, and beggars? it was still a people and he was its
sovereign. And he accepted seriously all this ironical
applause, all this derisive respect, with which the crowd mingled,
it must be admitted, a good deal of very real fear. For the
hunchback was robust; for the bandy-legged fellow was agile;
for the deaf man was malicious: three qualities which temper
ridicule.
We are far from believing, however, that the new Pope of
the Fools understood both the sentiments which he felt and
the sentiments which he inspired. The spirit which was
lodged in this failure of a body had, necessarily, something
incomplete and deaf about it. Thus, what he felt at the moment
was to him, absolutely vague, indistinct, and confused.
Only joy made itself felt, only pride dominated. Around that
sombre and unhappy face, there hung a radiance.
It was, then, not without surprise and alarm, that at the
very moment when Quasimodo was passing the Pillar House,
in that semi-intoxicated state, a man was seen to dart from
the crowd, and to tear from his hands, with a gesture of anger,
his crosier of gilded wood, the emblem of his mock popeship.
This man, this rash individual, was the man with the bald
brow, who, a moment earlier, standing with the gypsy's
group had chilled the poor girl with his words of menace and
of hatred. He was dressed in an eccleslastical costume. At
the moment when he stood forth from the crowd, Gringoire,
who had not noticed him up to that time, recognized him:
"Hold!" he said, with an exclamation of astonishment.
"Eh! 'tis my master in Hermes, Dom Claude Frollo, the
archdeacon! What the devil does he want of that old one-
eyed fellow? He'll get himself devoured!"
A cry of terror arose, in fact. The formidable Quasimodo
had hurled himself from the litter, and the women turned
aside their eyes in order not to see him tear the archdeacon
asunder.
He made one bound as far as the priest, looked at him, and
fell upon his knees.
The priest tore off his tiara, broke his crozier, and rent his
tinsel cope.
Quasimodo remained on his knees, with head bent and hands
clasped. Then there was established between them a strange
dialogue of signs and gestures, for neither of them spoke.
The priest, erect on his feet, irritated, threatening, imperious;
Quasimodo, prostrate, humble, suppliant. And, nevertheless,
it is certain that Quasimodo could have crushed the priest
with his thumb.
At length the archdeacon, giving Quasimodo's powerful
shoulder a rough shake, made him a sign to rise and follow him.
Quasimodo rose.
Then the Brotherhood of Fools, their first stupor having
passed off, wished to defend their pope, so abruptly dethroned.
The Egyptians, the men of slang, and all the fraternity of
law clerks, gathered howling round the priest.
Quasimodo placed himself in front of the priest, set in play
the muscles of his athletic fists, and glared upon the assailants
with the snarl of an angry tiger.
The priest resumed his sombre gravity, made a sign to Quasimodo,
and retired in silence.
Quasimodo walked in front of him, scattering the crowd as
he passed.
When they had traversed the populace and the Place, the
cloud of curious and idle were minded to follow them. Quasimodo
then constituted himself the rearguard, and followed
the archdeacon, walking backwards, squat, surly, monstrous,
bristling, gathering up his limbs, licking his boar's tusks,
growling like a wild beast, and imparting to the crowd immense
vibrations, with a look or a gesture.
Both were allowed to plunge into a dark and narrow street,
where no one dared to venture after them; so thoroughly did
the mere chimera of Quasimodo gnashing his teeth bar the
entrance.
"Here's a marvellous thing," said Gringoire; "but where
the deuce shall I find some supper?"
CHAPTER IV.