After having run for some time at the top of his speed,
without knowing whither, knocking his head against many a
street corner, leaping many a gutter, traversing many an alley,
many a court, many a square, seeking flight and passage through
all the meanderings of the ancient passages of the Halles, exploring
in his panic terror what the fine Latin of the maps calls ~tota
via, cheminum et viaria~, our poet suddenly halted for lack
of breath in the first place, and in the second, because
he had been collared, after a fashion, by a dilemma which
had just occurred to his mind. "It strikes me, Master Pierre
Gringoire," he said to himself, placing his finger to his brow,
"that you are running like a madman. The little scamps are
no less afraid of you than you are of them. It strikes me,
I say, that you heard the clatter of their wooden shoes
fleeing southward, while you were fleeing northward. Now,
one of two things, either they have taken flight, and the
pallet, which they must have forgotten in their terror, is
precisely that hospitable bed in search of which you have been
running ever since morning, and which madame the Virgin
miraculously sends you, in order to recompense you for having
made a morality in her honor, accompanied by triumphs and
mummeries; or the children have not taken flight, and in
that case they have put the brand to the pallet, and that is
precisely the good fire which you need to cheer, dry, and warm
you. In either case, good fire or good bed, that straw pallet
is a gift from heaven. The blessed Virgin Marie who stands
at the corner of the Rue Mauconseil, could only have made
Eustache Moubon die for that express purpose; and it is folly
on your part to flee thus zigzag, like a Picard before a
Frenchman, leaving behind you what you seek before you;
and you are a fool!"
Then he retraced his steps, and feeling his way and searching,
with his nose to the wind and his ears on the alert, he
tried to find the blessed pallet again, but in vain. There was
nothing to be found but intersections of houses, closed courts,
and crossings of streets, in the midst of which he hesitated
and doubted incessantly, being more perplexed and entangled
in this medley of streets than he would have been even in the
labyrinth of the H?tel des Tournelles. At length he lost
patience, and exclaimed solemnly: "Cursed be cross roads!
'tis the devil who has made them in the shape of his pitchfork!"
This exclamation afforded him a little solace, and a sort of
reddish reflection which he caught sight of at that moment, at
the extremity of a long and narrow lane, completed the elevation
of his moral tone. "God be praised!" said he, "There
it is yonder! There is my pallet burning." And comparing
himself to the pilot who suffers shipwreck by night, "~Salve~,"
he added piously, "~salve, maris stella~!"
Did he address this fragment of litany to the Holy Virgin,
or to the pallet? We are utterly unable to say.
He had taken but a few steps in the long street, which
sloped downwards, was unpaved, and more and more muddy
and steep, when he noticed a very singular thing. It was
not deserted; here and there along its extent crawled certain
vague and formless masses, all directing their course towards
the light which flickered at the end of the street, like those
heavy insects which drag along by night, from blade to blade
of grass, towards the shepherd's fire.
Nothing renders one so adventurous as not being able to
feel the place where one's pocket is situated. Gringoire
continued to advance, and had soon joined that one of the forms
which dragged along most indolently, behind the others. On
drawing near, he perceived that it was nothing else than a
wretched legless cripple in a bowl, who was hopping along on
his two hands like a wounded field-spider which has but two
legs left. At the moment when he passed close to this species
of spider with a human countenance, it raised towards
him a lamentable voice: "~La buona mancia, signor! la buona
mancia~!"*
* Alms.
"Deuce take you," said Gringoire, "and me with you, if I
know what you mean!"
And he passed on.
He overtook another of these itinerant masses, and examined
it. It was an impotent man, both halt and crippled,
and halt and crippled to such a degree that the complicated
system of crutches and wooden legs which sustained him, gave
him the air of a mason's scaffolding on the march. Gringoire,
who liked noble and classical comparisons, compared him in
thought to the living tripod of Vulcan.
This living tripod saluted him as he passed, but stopping
his hat on a level with Gringoire's chin, like a shaving dish,
while he shouted in the latter's ears: "~Senor cabellero, para
comprar un pedaso de pan~!"*
* Give me the means to buy a bit of bread, sir.
"It appears," said Gringoire, "that this one can also talk;
but 'tis a rude language, and he is more fortunate than I if
he understands it." Then, smiting his brow, in a sudden
transition of ideas: "By the way, what the deuce did they
mean this morning with their Esmeralda?"
He was minded to augment his pace, but for the third time
something barred his way. This something or, rather, some
one was a blind man, a little blind fellow with a bearded,
Jewish face, who, rowing away in the space about him with a
stick, and towed by a large dog, droned through his nose with
a Hungarian accent: "~Facitote caritatem~!"
"Well, now," said Gringoire, "here's one at last who speaks
a Christian tongue. I must have a very charitable aspect,
since they ask alms of me in the present lean condition of my
purse. My friend," and he turned towards the blind man,
"I sold my last shirt last week; that is to say, since you
understand only the language of Cicero: ~Vendidi hebdomade
nuper transita meam ultimam chemisan~."
That said, he turned his back upon the blind man, and pursued
his way. But the blind man began to increase his stride
at the same time; and, behold! the cripple and the legless
man, in his bowl, came up on their side in great haste, and
with great clamor of bowl and crutches, upon the pavement.
Then all three, jostling each other at poor Gringoire's heels,
began to sing their song to him,--
"~Caritatem~!" chanted the blind man.
"~La buona mancia~!" chanted the cripple in the bowl.
And the lame man took up the musical phrase by repeating:
"~Un pedaso de pan~!"
Gringoire stopped up his ears. "Oh, tower of Babel!" he
exclaimed.
He set out to run. The blind man ran! The lame man
ran! The cripple in the bowl ran!
And then, in proportion as he plunged deeper into the
street, cripples in bowls, blind men and lame men, swarmed
about him, and men with one arm, and with one eye, and the
leprous with their sores, some emerging from little streets
adjacent, some from the air-holes of cellars, howling, bellowing,
yelping, all limping and halting, all flinging themselves
towards the light, and humped up in the mire, like snails after
a shower.
Gringoire, still followed by his three persecutors, and not
knowing very well what was to become of him, marched along
in terror among them, turning out for the lame, stepping over
the cripples in bowls, with his feet imbedded in that ant-hill
of lame men, like the English captain who got caught in the
quicksand of a swarm of crabs.
The idea occurred to him of making an effort to retrace his
steps. But it was too late. This whole legion had closed in
behind him, and his three beggars held him fast. So he
proceeded, impelled both by this irresistible flood, by fear,
and by a vertigo which converted all this into a sort of
horrible dream.
At last he reached the end of the street. It opened upon
an immense place, where a thousand scattered lights flickered
in the confused mists of night. Gringoire flew thither,
hoping to escape, by the swiftness of his legs, from the three
infirm spectres who had clutched him.
"~Onde vas, hombre~?" (Where are you going, my man?)
cried the cripple, flinging away his crutches, and running after
him with the best legs that ever traced a geometrical step upon
the pavements of Paris.
In the meantime the legless man, erect upon his feet,
crowned Gringoire with his heavy iron bowl, and the blind
man glared in his face with flaming eyes!
"Where am I?" said the terrified poet.
"In the Court of Miracles," replied a fourth spectre, who
had accosted them.
"Upon my soul," resumed Gringoire, "I certainly do behold the
blind who see, and the lame who walk, but where is the Saviour?"
They replied by a burst of sinister laughter.
The poor poet cast his eyes about him. It was, in truth,
that redoubtable Cour des Miracles, whither an honest man
had never penetrated at such an hour; the magic circle where
the officers of the Chatelet and the sergeants of the provostship,
who ventured thither, disappeared in morsels; a city of
thieves, a hideous wart on the face of Paris; a sewer, from
which escaped every morning, and whither returned every
night to crouch, that stream of vices, of mendicancy and
vagabondage which always overflows in the streets of capitals;
a monstrous hive, to which returned at nightfall, with
their booty, all the drones of the social order; a lying hospital
where the bohemian, the disfrocked monk, the ruined
scholar, the ne'er-do-wells of all nations, Spaniards, Italians,
Germans,--of all religions, Jews, Christians, Mahometans,
idolaters, covered with painted sores, beggars by day, were
transformed by night into brigands; an immense dressing-room,
in a word, where, at that epoch, the actors of that
eternal comedy, which theft, prostitution, and murder play
upon the pavements of Paris, dressed and undressed.
It was a vast place, irregular and badly paved, like all the
squares of Paris at that date. Fires, around which swarmed
strange groups, blazed here and there. Every one was going,
coming, and shouting. Shrill laughter was to be heard, the
wailing of children, the voices of women. The hands and
heads of this throng, black against the luminous background,
outlined against it a thousand eccentric gestures. At times,
upon the ground, where trembled the light of the fires,
mingled with large, indefinite shadows, one could behold a dog
passing, which resembled a man, a man who resembled a dog.
The limits of races and species seemed effaced in this city, as
in a pandemonium. Men, women, beasts, age, sex, health,
maladies, all seemed to be in common among these people;
all went together, they mingled, confounded, superposed;
each one there participated in all.
The poor and flickering flames of the fire permitted Gringoire
to distinguish, amid his trouble, all around the immense
place, a hideous frame of ancient houses, whose wormeaten,
shrivelled, stunted fa?ades, each pierced with one or two
lighted attic windows, seemed to him, in the darkness, like
enormous heads of old women, ranged in a circle, monstrous
and crabbed, winking as they looked on at the Witches' Sabbath.
It was like a new world, unknown, unheard of, misshapen,
creeping, swarming, fantastic.
Gringoire, more and more terrified, clutched by the three
beggars as by three pairs of tongs, dazed by a throng of other
faces which frothed and yelped around him, unhappy Gringoire
endeavored to summon his presence of mind, in order
to recall whether it was a Saturday. But his efforts were
vain; the thread of his memory and of his thought was
broken; and, doubting everything, wavering between what he
saw and what he felt, he put to himself this unanswerable
question,--
"If I exist, does this exist? if this exists, do I exist?"
At that moment, a distinct cry arose in the buzzing throng
which surrounded him, "Let's take him to the king! let's
take him to the king!"
"Holy Virgin!" murmured Gringoire, "the king here must be
a ram."
"To the king! to the king!" repeated all voices.
They dragged him off. Each vied with the other in laying
his claws upon him. But the three beggars did not loose their
hold and tore him from the rest, howling, "He belongs to us!"
The poet's already sickly doublet yielded its last sigh in
this struggle.
While traversing the horrible place, his vertigo vanished.
After taking a few steps, the sentiment of reality returned to
him. He began to become accustomed to the atmosphere of
the place. At the first moment there had arisen from his
poet's head, or, simply and prosaically, from his empty
stomach, a mist, a vapor, so to speak, which, spreading
between objects and himself, permitted him to catch a glimpse
of them only in the incoherent fog of nightmare,--in those
shadows of dreams which distort every outline, agglomerating
objects into unwieldy groups, dilating things into chimeras,
and men into phantoms. Little by little, this hallucination
was succeeded by a less bewildered and exaggerating view.
Reality made its way to the light around him, struck his eyes,
struck his feet, and demolished, bit by bit, all that frightful
poetry with which he had, at first, believed himself to be
surrounded. He was forced to perceive that he was not
walking in the Styx, but in mud, that he was elbowed not by
demons, but by thieves; that it was not his soul which was
in question, but his life (since he lacked that precious
conciliator, which places itself so effectually between the
bandit and the honest man--a purse). In short, on examining the
orgy more closely, and with more coolness, he fell from the
witches' sabbath to the dram-shop.
The Cour des Miracles was, in fact, merely a dram-shop;
but a brigand's dram-shop, reddened quite as much with blood
as with wine.
The spectacle which presented itself to his eyes, when his
ragged escort finally deposited him at the end of his trip, was
not fitted to bear him back to poetry, even to the poetry of
hell. It was more than ever the prosaic and brutal reality of
the tavern. Were we not in the fifteenth century, we would
say that Gringoire had descended from Michael Angelo to
Callot.
Around a great fire which burned on a large, circular flagstone,
the flames of which had heated red-hot the legs of a
tripod, which was empty for the moment, some wormeaten
tables were placed, here and there, haphazard, no lackey of a
geometrical turn having deigned to adjust their parallelism,
or to see to it that they did not make too unusual angles.
Upon these tables gleamed several dripping pots of wine and
beer, and round these pots were grouped many bacchic visages,
purple with the fire and the wine. There was a man
with a huge belly and a jovial face, noisily kissing a woman
of the town, thickset and brawny. There was a sort of sham
soldier, a "naquois," as the slang expression runs, who was
whistling as he undid the bandages from his fictitious wound,
and removing the numbness from his sound and vigorous
knee, which had been swathed since morning in a thousand
ligatures. On the other hand, there was a wretched fellow,
preparing with celandine and beef's blood, his "leg of God,"
for the next day. Two tables further on, a palmer, with his
pilgrim's costume complete, was practising the lament of the
Holy Queen, not forgetting the drone and the nasal drawl.
Further on, a young scamp was taking a lesson in epilepsy
from an old pretender, who was instructing him in the art of
foaming at the mouth, by chewing a morsel of soap. Beside
him, a man with the dropsy was getting rid of his swelling,
and making four or five female thieves, who were disputing
at the same table, over a child who had been stolen that evening,
hold their noses. All circumstances which, two centuries
later, "seemed so ridiculous to the court," as Sauval says,
"that they served as a pastime to the king, and as an introduction
to the royal ballet of Night, divided into four parts
and danced on the theatre of the Petit-Bourbon." "Never,"
adds an eye witness of 1653, "have the sudden metamorphoses
of the Court of Miracles been more happily presented.
Benserade prepared us for it by some very gallant verses."
Loud laughter everywhere, and obscene songs. Each one
held his own course, carping and swearing, without listening
to his neighbor. Pots clinked, and quarrels sprang up at
the shock of the pots, and the broken pots made rents in
the rags.
A big dog, seated on his tail, gazed at the fire. Some
children were mingled in this orgy. The stolen child wept and
cried. Another, a big boy four years of age, seated with
legs dangling, upon a bench that was too high for him, before
a table that reached to his chin, and uttering not a word. A
third, gravely spreading out upon the table with his finger,
the melted tallow which dripped from a candle. Last of all,
a little fellow crouching in the mud, almost lost in a cauldron,
which he was scraping with a tile, and from which he was
evoking a sound that would have made Stradivarius swoon.
Near the fire was a hogshead, and on the hogshead a beggar.
This was the king on his throne.
The three who had Gringoire in their clutches led him in
front of this hogshead, and the entire bacchanal rout fell
silent for a moment, with the exception of the cauldron
inhabited by the child.
Gringoire dared neither breathe nor raise his eyes.
"~Hombre, quita tu sombrero~!" said one of the three
knaves, in whose grasp he was, and, before he had
comprehended the meaning, the other had snatched his hat--a
wretched headgear, it is true, but still good on a sunny day or
when there was but little rain. Gringoire sighed.
Meanwhile the king addressed him, from the summit of his
cask,--
"Who is this rogue?"
Gringoire shuddered. That voice, although accentuated by
menace, recalled to him another voice, which, that very morning,
had dealt the deathblow to his mystery, by drawling,
nasally, in the midst of the audience, "Charity, please!"
He raised his head. It was indeed Clopin Trouillefou.
Clopin Trouillefou, arrayed in his royal insignia, wore
neither one rag more nor one rag less. The sore upon his
arm had already disappeared. He held in his hand one of
those whips made of thongs of white leather, which police
sergeants then used to repress the crowd, and which were
called ~boullayes~. On his head he wore a sort of headgear,
bound round and closed at the top. But it was difficult to
make out whether it was a child's cap or a king's crown, the
two things bore so strong a resemblance to each other.
Meanwhile Gringoire, without knowing why, had regained
some hope, on recognizing in the King of the Cour des Miracles
his accursed mendicant of the Grand Hall.
"Master," stammered he; "monseigneur--sire--how
ought I to address you?" he said at length, having reached
the culminating point of his crescendo, and knowing neither
how to mount higher, nor to descend again.
"Monseigneur, his majesty, or comrade, call me what you
please. But make haste. What have you to say in your
own defence?"
"In your own defence?" thought Gringoire, "that displeases
me." He resumed, stuttering, "I am he, who this morning--"
"By the devil's claws!" interrupted Clopin, "your name,
knave, and nothing more. Listen. You are in the presence
of three powerful sovereigns: myself, Clopin Trouillefou,
King of Thunes, successor to the Grand Co?sre, supreme
suzerain of the Realm of Argot; Mathias Hunyadi Spicali,
Duke of Egypt and of Bohemia, the old yellow fellow whom
you see yonder, with a dish clout round his head; Guillaume
Rousseau, Emperor of Galilee, that fat fellow who is not
listening to us but caressing a wench. We are your judges.
You have entered the Kingdom of Argot, without being an
~argotier~; you have violated the privileges of our city. You
must be punished unless you are a ~capon~, a ~franc-mitou~ or a
~rifod¨¦~; that is to say, in the slang of honest folks,--a thief,
a beggar, or a vagabond. Are you anything of that sort?
Justify yourself; announce your titles."
"Alas!" said Gringoire, "I have not that honor. I am
the author--"
"That is sufficient," resumed Trouillefou, without permitting
him to finish. "You are going to be hanged. 'Tis a
very simple matter, gentlemen and honest bourgeois! as you
treat our people in your abode, so we treat you in ours! The
law which you apply to vagabonds, vagabonds apply to you.
'Tis your fault if it is harsh. One really must behold the
grimace of an honest man above the hempen collar now and
then; that renders the thing honorable. Come, friend, divide
your rags gayly among these damsels. I am going to have
you hanged to amuse the vagabonds, and you are to give them
your purse to drink your health. If you have any mummery
to go through with, there's a very good God the Father in that
mortar yonder, in stone, which we stole from Saint-Pierre aux
Boeufs. You have four minutes in which to fling your soul at
his head."
The harangue was formidable.
"Well said, upon my soul! Clopin Trouillefou preaches
like the Holy Father the Pope!" exclaimed the Emperor of
Galilee, smashing his pot in order to prop up his table.
"Messeigneurs, emperors, and kings," said Gringoire coolly
(for I know not how, firmness had returned to him, and he
spoke with resolution), "don't think of such a thing; my
name is Pierre Gringoire. I am the poet whose morality was
presented this morning in the grand hall of the Courts."
"Ah! so it was you, master!" said Clopin. "I was there,
~x¨ºte Dieu~! Well! comrade, is that any reason, because
you bored us to death this morning, that you should not
be hung this evening?"
"I shall find difficulty in getting out of it," said Gringoire
to himself. Nevertheless, he made one more effort: "I don't
see why poets are not classed with vagabonds," said he.
"Vagabond, Aesopus certainly was; Homerus was a beggar;
Mercurius was a thief--"
Clopin interrupted him: "I believe that you are trying to
blarney us with your jargon. Zounds! let yourself be hung,
and don't kick up such a row over it!"
"Pardon me, monseigneur, the King of Thunes," replied
Gringoire, disputing the ground foot by foot. "It is worth
trouble--One moment!--Listen to me--You are not going
to condemn me without having heard me"--
His unlucky voice was, in fact, drowned in the uproar which
rose around him. The little boy scraped away at his cauldron
with more spirit than ever; and, to crown all, an old woman
had just placed on the tripod a frying-pan of grease, which
hissed away on the fire with a noise similar to the cry of a
troop of children in pursuit of a masker.
In the meantime, Clopin Trouillefou appeared to hold a
momentary conference with the Duke of Egypt, and the
Emperor of Galilee, who was completely drunk. Then he
shouted shrilly: "Silence!" and, as the cauldron and the
frying-pan did not heed him, and continued their duet, he
jumped down from his hogshead, gave a kick to the boiler,
which rolled ten paces away bearing the child with it, a kick
to the frying-pan, which upset in the fire with all its grease,
and gravely remounted his throne, without troubling himself
about the stifled tears of the child, or the grumbling of the
old woman, whose supper was wasting away in a fine white flame.
Trouillefou made a sign, and the duke, the emperor, and
the passed masters of pickpockets, and the isolated robbers,
came and ranged themselves around him in a horseshoe, of
which Gringoire, still roughly held by the body, formed the
centre. It was a semicircle of rags, tatters, tinsel, pitchforks,
axes, legs staggering with intoxication, huge, bare arms, faces
sordid, dull, and stupid. In the midst of this Round Table of
beggary, Clopin Trouillefou,--as the doge of this senate, as
the king of this peerage, as the pope of this conclave,--
dominated; first by virtue of the height of his hogshead, and
next by virtue of an indescribable, haughty, fierce, and formidable
air, which caused his eyes to flash, and corrected in his
savage profile the bestial type of the race of vagabonds. One
would have pronounced him a boar amid a herd of swine.
"Listen," said he to Gringoire, fondling his misshapen chin
with his horny hand; "I don't see why you should not be
hung. It is true that it appears to be repugnant to you; and
it is very natural, for you bourgeois are not accustomed to it.
You form for yourselves a great idea of the thing. After all,
we don't wish you any harm. Here is a means of extricating
yourself from your predicament for the moment. Will you
become one of us?"
The reader can judge of the effect which this proposition
produced upon Gringoire, who beheld life slipping away from
him, and who was beginning to lose his hold upon it. He
clutched at it again with energy.
"Certainly I will, and right heartily," said he.
"Do you consent," resumed Clopin, "to enroll yourself among the
people of the knife?"
"Of the knife, precisely," responded Gringoire.
"You recognize yourself as a member of the free bourgeoisie?"*
added the King of Thunes.
* A high-toned sharper.
"Of the free bourgeoisie."
"Subject of the Kingdom of Argot?"
"Of the Kingdom of Argot*."
* Thieves.
"A vagabond?"
"A vagabond."
"In your soul?"
"In my soul."
"I must call your attention to the fact," continued the
king, "that you will be hung all the same."
"The devil!" said the poet.
"Only," continued Clopin imperturbably, "you will be hung
later on, with more ceremony, at the expense of the good city
of Paris, on a handsome stone gibbet, and by honest men.
That is a consolation."
"Just so," responded Gringoire.
"There are other advantages. In your quality of a high-toned
sharper, you will not have to pay the taxes on mud, or
the poor, or lanterns, to which the bourgeois of Paris are
subject."
"So be it," said the poet. "I agree. I am a vagabond, a
thief, a sharper, a man of the knife, anything you please; and
I am all that already, monsieur, King of Thunes, for I am a
philosopher; ~et omnia in philosophia, omnes in philosopho
continentur~,--all things are contained in philosophy, all men in
the philosopher, as you know."
The King of Thunes scowled.
"What do you take me for, my friend? What Hungarian
Jew patter are you jabbering at us? I don't know Hebrew.
One isn't a Jew because one is a bandit. I don't even steal
any longer. I'm above that; I kill. Cut-throat, yes;
cutpurse, no."
Gringoire tried to slip in some excuse between these curt
words, which wrath rendered more and more jerky.
"I ask your pardon, monseigneur. It is not Hebrew; 'tis Latin."
"I tell you," resumed Clopin angrily, "that I'm not a Jew,
and that I'll have you hung, belly of the synagogue, like that
little shopkeeper of Judea, who is by your side, and whom I
entertain strong hopes of seeing nailed to a counter one of
these days, like the counterfeit coin that he is!"
So saying, he pointed his finger at the little, bearded Hungarian
Jew who had accosted Gringoire with his ~facitote caritatem~,
and who, understanding no other language beheld with
surprise the King of Thunes's ill-humor overflow upon him.
At length Monsieur Clopin calmed down.
"So you will be a vagabond, you knave?" he said to our poet.
"Of course," replied the poet.
"Willing is not all," said the surly Clopin; "good will
doesn't put one onion the more into the soup, and 'tis good
for nothing except to go to Paradise with; now, Paradise and
the thieves' band are two different things. In order to be
received among the thieves,* you must prove that you are
good for something, and for that purpose, you must search the
manikin."
* L'argot.
"I'll search anything you like," said Gringoire.
Clopin made a sign. Several thieves detached themselves
from the circle, and returned a moment later. They brought
two thick posts, terminated at their lower extremities in
spreading timber supports, which made them stand readily
upon the ground; to the upper extremity of the two posts
they fitted a cross-beam, and the whole constituted a very
pretty portable gibbet, which Gringoire had the satisfaction of
beholding rise before him, in a twinkling. Nothing was lacking,
not even the rope, which swung gracefully over the cross-beam.
"What are they going to do?" Gringoire asked himself
with some uneasiness. A sound of bells, which he heard at
that moment, put an end to his anxiety; it was a stuffed
manikin, which the vagabonds were suspending by the neck
from the rope, a sort of scarecrow dressed in red, and so
hung with mule-bells and larger bells, that one might have
tricked out thirty Castilian mules with them. These thousand
tiny bells quivered for some time with the vibration of the
rope, then gradually died away, and finally became silent
when the manikin had been brought into a state of immobility
by that law of the pendulum which has dethroned the water
clock and the hour-glass.
Then Clopin, pointing out to Gringoire a rickety old stool
placed beneath the manikin,--
"Climb up there."
"Death of the devil!" objected Gringoire; "I shall break
my neck. Your stool limps like one of Martial's distiches;
it has one hexameter leg and one pentameter leg."
"Climb!" repeated Clopin.
Gringoire mounted the stool, and succeeded, not without
some oscillations of head and arms, in regaining his centre of
gravity.
"Now," went on the King of Thunes, "twist your right
foot round your left leg, and rise on the tip of your left foot."
"Monseigneur," said Gringoire, "so you absolutely insist
on my breaking some one of my limbs?"
Clopin tossed his head.
"Hark ye, my friend, you talk too much. Here's the gist
of the matter in two words: you are to rise on tiptoe, as I
tell you; in that way you will be able to reach the pocket of
the manikin, you will rummage it, you will pull out the purse
that is there,--and if you do all this without our hearing
the sound of a bell, all is well: you shall be a vagabond.
All we shall then have to do, will be to thrash you soundly
for the space of a week."
"~Ventre-Dieu~! I will be careful," said Gringoire. "And
suppose I do make the bells sound?"
"Then you will be hanged. Do you understand?"
"I don't understand at all," replied Gringoire.
"Listen, once more. You are to search the manikin, and
take away its purse; if a single bell stirs during the operation,
you will be hung. Do you understand that?"
"Good," said Gringoire; "I understand that. And then?"
"If you succeed in removing the purse without our hearing
the bells, you are a vagabond, and you will be thrashed for
eight consecutive days. You understand now, no doubt?"
"No, monseigneur; I no longer understand. Where is the
advantage to me? hanged in one case, cudgelled in the other?"
"And a vagabond," resumed Clopin, "and a vagabond; is
that nothing? It is for your interest that we should beat
you, in order to harden you to blows."
"Many thanks," replied the poet.
"Come, make haste," said the king, stamping upon his
cask, which resounded like a huge drum! Search the manikin,
and let there be an end to this! I warn you for the last
time, that if I hear a single bell, you will take the place of
the manikin."
The band of thieves applauded Clopin's words, and arranged
themselves in a circle round the gibbet, with a laugh so pitiless
that Gringoire perceived that he amused them too much
not to have everything to fear from them. No hope was
left for him, accordingly, unless it were the slight chance
of succeeding in the formidable operation which was imposed
upon him; he decided to risk it, but it was not without first
having addressed a fervent prayer to the manikin he was
about to plunder, and who would have been easier to move
to pity than the vagabonds. These myriad bells, with their
little copper tongues, seemed to him like the mouths of so
many asps, open and ready to sting and to hiss.
"Oh!" he said, in a very low voice, "is it possible that my
life depends on the slightest vibration of the least of these
bells? Oh!" he added, with clasped hands, "bells, do not
ring, hand-bells do not clang, mule-bells do not quiver!"
He made one more attempt upon Trouillefou.
"And if there should come a gust of wind?"
"You will be hanged," replied the other, without hesitation.
Perceiving that no respite, nor reprieve, nor subterfuge was
possible, he bravely decided upon his course of action; he
wound his right foot round his left leg, raised himself on his
left foot, and stretched out his arm: but at the moment
when his hand touched the manikin, his body, which was now
supported upon one leg only, wavered on the stool which had
but three; he made an involuntary effort to support himself
by the manikin, lost his balance, and fell heavily to the
ground, deafened by the fatal vibration of the thousand bells
of the manikin, which, yielding to the impulse imparted by
his hand, described first a rotary motion, and then swayed
majestically between the two posts.
"Malediction!" he cried as he fell, and remained as though
dead, with his face to the earth.
Meanwhile, he heard the dreadful peal above his head, the
diabolical laughter of the vagabonds, and the voice of
Trouillefou saying,--
"Pick me up that knave, and hang him without ceremony."
He rose. They had already detached the manikin to make
room for him.
The thieves made him mount the stool, Clopin came to him,
passed the rope about his neck, and, tapping him on the
shoulder,--
"Adieu, my friend. You can't escape now, even if you
digested with the pope's guts."
The word "Mercy!" died away upon Gringoire's lips. He
cast his eyes about him; but there was no hope: all were
laughing.
"Bellevigne de l'Etoile," said the King of Thunes to an
enormous vagabond, who stepped out from the ranks, "climb
upon the cross beam."
Bellevigne de l'Etoile nimbly mounted the transverse beam,
and in another minute, Gringoire, on raising his eyes, beheld
him, with terror, seated upon the beam above his head.
"Now," resumed Clopin Trouillefou, "as soon as I clap my
hands, you, Andry the Red, will fling the stool to the ground
with a blow of your knee; you, Fran?ois Chante-Prune, will
cling to the feet of the rascal; and you, Bellevigne, will fling
yourself on his shoulders; and all three at once, do you
hear?"
Gringoire shuddered.
"Are you ready?" said Clopin Trouillefou to the three
thieves, who held themselves in readiness to fall upon
Gringoire. A moment of horrible suspense ensued for the poor
victim, during which Clopin tranquilly thrust into the fire
with the tip of his foot, some bits of vine shoots which the
flame had not caught. "Are you ready?" he repeated, and
opened his hands to clap. One second more and all would
have been over.
But he paused, as though struck by a sudden thought.
"One moment!" said he; "I forgot! It is our custom not
to hang a man without inquiring whether there is any woman
who wants him. Comrade, this is your last resource. You
must wed either a female vagabond or the noose."
This law of the vagabonds, singular as it may strike the
reader, remains to-day written out at length, in ancient English
legislation. (See _Burington's Observations_.)
Gringoire breathed again. This was the second time that
he had returned to life within an hour. So he did not dare
to trust to it too implicitly.
"Hol¨¤!" cried Clopin, mounted once more upon his cask,
"hol¨¤! women, females, is there among you, from the sorceress
to her cat, a wench who wants this rascal? Hol¨¤, Colette
la Charonne! Elisabeth Trouvain! Simone Jodouyne!
Marie Pi¨¦debou! Thonne la Longue! B¨¦rarde Fanouel! Michelle
Genaille! Claude Ronge-oreille! Mathurine Girorou!--Hol¨¤!
Isabeau-la-Thierrye! Come and see! A man for nothing!
Who wants him?"
Gringoire, no doubt, was not very appetizing in this miserable
condition. The female vagabonds did not seem to be
much affected by the proposition. The unhappy wretch
heard them answer: "No! no! hang him; there'll be the more
fun for us all!"
Nevertheless, three emerged from the throng and came to
smell of him. The first was a big wench, with a square face.
She examined the philosopher's deplorable doublet attentively.
His garment was worn, and more full of holes than a stove for
roasting chestnuts. The girl made a wry face. "Old rag!" she
muttered, and addressing Gringoire, "Let's see your cloak!"
"I have lost it," replied Gringoire. "Your hat?" "They took
it away from me." "Your shoes?" "They have hardly any
soles left." "Your purse?" "Alas!" stammered Gringoire, "I
have not even a sou." "Let them hang you, then, and say 'Thank
you!'" retorted the vagabond wench, turning her back on him.
The second,--old, black, wrinkled, hideous, with an ugliness
conspicuous even in the Cour des Miracles, trotted round Gringoire.
He almost trembled lest she should want him. But she
mumbled between her teeth, "He's too thin," and went off.
The third was a young girl, quite fresh, and not too ugly.
"Save me!" said the poor fellow to her, in a low tone. She
gazed at him for a moment with an air of pity, then dropped
her eyes, made a plait in her petticoat, and remained in indecision.
He followed all these movements with his eyes; it
was the last gleam of hope. "No," said the young girl, at
length, "no! Guillaume Longuejoue would beat me." She
retreated into the crowd.
"You are unlucky, comrade," said Clopin.
Then rising to his feet, upon his hogshead. "No one wants
him," he exclaimed, imitating the accent of an auctioneer, to
the great delight of all; "no one wants him? once, twice,
three times!" and, turning towards the gibbet with a sign of
his hand, "Gone!"
Bellevigne de l'Etoile, Andry the Red, Fran?ois Chante-Prune,
stepped up to Gringoire.
At that moment a cry arose among the thieves: "La Esmeralda!
La Esmeralda!"
Gringoire shuddered, and turned towards the side whence the
clamor proceeded.
The crowd opened, and gave passage to a pure and dazzling
form.
It was the gypsy.
"La Esmeralda!" said Gringoire, stupefied in the midst of
his emotions, by the abrupt manner in which that magic word
knotted together all his reminiscences of the day.
This rare creature seemed, even in the Cour des Miracles,
to exercise her sway of charm and beauty. The vagabonds,
male and female, ranged themselves gently along her path, and
their brutal faces beamed beneath her glance.
She approached the victim with her light step. Her pretty
Djali followed her. Gringoire was more dead than alive. She
examined him for a moment in silence.
"You are going to hang this man?" she said gravely, to Clopin.
"Yes, sister," replied the King of Thunes, "unless you will
take him for your husband."
She made her pretty little pout with her under lip. "I'll take
him," said she.
Gringoire firmly believed that he had been in a dream ever
since morning, and that this was the continuation of it.
The change was, in fact, violent, though a gratifying one.
They undid the noose, and made the poet step down from the
stool. His emotion was so lively that he was obliged to sit down.
The Duke of Egypt brought an earthenware crock, without
uttering a word. The gypsy offered it to Gringoire: "Fling
it on the ground," said she.
The crock broke into four pieces.
"Brother," then said the Duke of Egypt, laying his hands
upon their foreheads, "she is your wife; sister, he is your
husband for four years. Go."
CHAPTER VII.