An Awkward Friend.

That night, Quasimodo did not sleep. He had just made

his last round of the church. He had not noticed, that at the

moment when he was closing the doors, the archdeacon had

passed close to him and betrayed some displeasure on seeing

him bolting and barring with care the enormous iron locks

which gave to their large leaves the solidity of a wall. Dom

Claude's air was even more preoccupied than usual. Moreover,

since the nocturnal adventure in the cell, he had constantly

abused Quasimodo, but in vain did he ill treat, and even beat

him occasionally, nothing disturbed the submission, patience,

the devoted resignation of the faithful bellringer. He

endured everything on the part of the archdeacon, insults,

threats, blows, without murmuring a complaint. At the most,

he gazed uneasily after Dom Claude when the latter ascended

the staircase of the tower; but the archdeacon had abstained

from presenting himself again before the gypsy's eyes.

On that night, accordingly, Quasimodo, after having

cast a glance at his poor bells which he so neglected

now, Jacqueline, Marie, and Thibauld, mounted to the summit

of the Northern tower, and there setting his dark lanturn,

well closed, upon the leads, he began to gaze at Paris. The

night, as we have already said, was very dark. Paris which,

so to speak was not lighted at that epoch, presented to the eye

a confused collection of black masses, cut here and there by

the whitish curve of the Seine. Quasimodo no longer saw

any light with the exception of one window in a distant

edifice, whose vague and sombre profile was outlined well

above the roofs, in the direction of the Porte Sainte-Antoine.

There also, there was some one awake.

As the only eye of the bellringer peered into that horizon

of mist and night, he felt within him an inexpressible

uneasiness. For several days he had been upon his guard. He

had perceived men of sinister mien, who never took their eyes

from the young girl's asylum, prowling constantly about the

church. He fancied that some plot might be in process of

formation against the unhappy refugee. He imagined that

there existed a popular hatred against her, as against himself,

and that it was very possible that something might happen

soon. Hence he remained upon his tower on the watch,

"dreaming in his dream-place," as Rabelais says, with his eye

directed alternately on the cell and on Paris, keeping faithful

guard, like a good dog, with a thousand suspicions in his mind.

All at once, while he was scrutinizing the great city with

that eye which nature, by a sort of compensation, had made

so piercing that it could almost supply the other organs which

Quasimodo lacked, it seemed to him that there was something

singular about the Quay de la Vieille-Pelleterie, that there

was a movement at that point, that the line of the parapet,

standing out blackly against the whiteness of the water was

not straight and tranquil, like that of the other quays, but

that it undulated to the eye, like the waves of a river, or like

the heads of a crowd in motion.

This struck him as strange. He redoubled his attention.

The movement seemed to be advancing towards the City.

There was no light. It lasted for some time on the quay;

then it gradually ceased, as though that which was passing

were entering the interior of the island; then it stopped

altogether, and the line of the quay became straight and

motionless again.

At the moment when Quasimodo was lost in conjectures, it

seemed to him that the movement had re-appeared in the Rue

du Parvis, which is prolonged into the city perpendicularly

to the fa?ade of Notre-Dame. At length, dense as was the

darkness, he beheld the head of a column debouch from that

street, and in an instant a crowd--of which nothing could be

distinguished in the gloom except that it was a crowd--spread

over the Place.

This spectacle had a terror of its own. It is probable

that this singular procession, which seemed so desirous of

concealing itself under profound darkness, maintained a silence

no less profound. Nevertheless, some noise must have escaped

it, were it only a trampling. But this noise did not even

reach our deaf man, and this great multitude, of which he

saw hardly anything, and of which he heard nothing, though

it was marching and moving so near him, produced upon

him the effect of a rabble of dead men, mute, impalpable,

lost in a smoke. It seemed to him, that he beheld advancing

towards him a fog of men, and that he saw shadows moving

in the shadow.

Then his fears returned to him, the idea of an attempt

against the gypsy presented itself once more to his mind.

He was conscious, in a confused way, that a violent crisis

was approaching. At that critical moment he took counsel

with himself, with better and prompter reasoning than one

would have expected from so badly organized a brain. Ought

he to awaken the gypsy? to make her escape? Whither? The

streets were invested, the church backed on the river. No

boat, no issue!--There was but one thing to be done; to allow

himself to be killed on the threshold of Notre-Dame, to resist

at least until succor arrived, if it should arrive, and not to

trouble la Esmeralda's sleep. This resolution once taken, he

set to examining the enemy with more tranquillity.

The throng seemed to increase every moment in the church

square. Only, he presumed that it must be making very

little noise, since the windows on the Place remained closed.

All at once, a flame flashed up, and in an instant seven or

eight lighted torches passed over the heads of the crowd,

shaking their tufts of flame in the deep shade. Quasimodo

then beheld distinctly surging in the Parvis a frightful herd

of men and women in rags, armed with scythes, pikes, billhooks

and partisans, whose thousand points glittered. Here

and there black pitchforks formed horns to the hideous faces.

He vaguely recalled this populace, and thought that he

recognized all the heads who had saluted him as Pope of the Fools

some months previously. One man who held a torch in one

hand and a club in the other, mounted a stone post and

seemed to be haranguing them. At the same time the strange

army executed several evolutions, as though it were taking

up its post around the church. Quasimodo picked up his

lantern and descended to the platform between the towers, in

order to get a nearer view, and to spy out a means of defence.

Clopin Trouillefou, on arriving in front of the lofty portal

of Notre-Dame had, in fact, ranged his troops in order of

battle. Although he expected no resistance, he wished, like

a prudent general, to preserve an order which would permit

him to face, at need, a sudden attack of the watch or the

police. He had accordingly stationed his brigade in such a

manner that, viewed from above and from a distance, one

would have pronounced it the Roman triangle of the battle of

Ecnomus, the boar's head of Alexander or the famous wedge

of Gustavus Adolphus. The base of this triangle rested on

the back of the Place in such a manner as to bar the entrance

of the Rue du Parvis; one of its sides faced H?tel-Dieu, the

other the Rue Saint-Pierre-aux-Boeufs. Clopin Trouillefou

had placed himself at the apex with the Duke of Egypt, our

friend Jehan, and the most daring of the scavengers.

An enterprise like that which the vagabonds were now

undertaking against Notre-Dame was not a very rare thing

in the cities of the Middle Ages. What we now call the

"police" did not exist then. In populous cities, especially

in capitals, there existed no single, central, regulating

power. Feudalism had constructed these great communities

in a singular manner. A city was an assembly of a thousand

seigneuries, which divided it into compartments of all shapes

and sizes. Hence, a thousand conflicting establishments of

police; that is to say, no police at all. In Paris, for example,

independently of the hundred and forty-one lords who laid

claim to a manor, there were five and twenty who laid claim

to a manor and to administering justice, from the Bishop of

Paris, who had five hundred streets, to the Prior of Notre-

Dame des Champs, who had four. All these feudal justices

recognized the suzerain authority of the king only in name.

All possessed the right of control over the roads. All were

at home. Louis XI., that indefatigable worker, who so largely

began the demolition of the feudal edifice, continued by

Richelieu and Louis XIV. for the profit of royalty, and finished

by Mirabeau for the benefit of the people,--Louis XI. had

certainly made an effort to break this network of seignories

which covered Paris, by throwing violently across them all

two or three troops of general police. Thus, in 1465, an

order to the inhabitants to light candles in their windows at

nightfall, and to shut up their dogs under penalty of death;

in the same year, an order to close the streets in the evening

with iron chains, and a prohibition to wear daggers or weapons

of offence in the streets at night. But in a very short time,

all these efforts at communal legislation fell into abeyance.

The bourgeois permitted the wind to blow out their candles in

the windows, and their dogs to stray; the iron chains were

stretched only in a state of siege; the prohibition to wear

daggers wrought no other changes than from the name of the

Rue Coupe-Gueule to the name of the Rue-Coupe-Gorge*

which is an evident progress. The old scaffolding of feudal

jurisdictions remained standing; an immense aggregation of

bailiwicks and seignories crossing each other all over the city,

interfering with each other, entangled in one another, enmeshing

each other, trespassing on each other; a useless thicket

of watches, sub-watches and counter-watches, over which, with

armed force, passed brigandage, rapine, and sedition. Hence,

in this disorder, deeds of violence on the part of the populace

directed against a palace, a hotel, or house in the most thickly

populated quarters, were not unheard-of occurrences. In the

majority of such cases, the neighbors did not meddle with

the matter unless the pillaging extended to themselves.

They stopped up their ears to the musket shots, closed their

shutters, barricaded their doors, allowed the matter to be

concluded with or without the watch, and the next day it was

said in Paris, "Etienne Barbette was broken open last night.

The Marshal de Clermont was seized last night, etc." Hence,

not only the royal habitations, the Louvre, the Palace, the

Bastille, the Tournelles, but simply seignorial residences,

the Petit-Bourbon, the H?tel de Sens, the H?tel d' Angoul¨ºme,

etc., had battlements on their walls, and machicolations over

their doors. Churches were guarded by their sanctity. Some,

among the number Notre-Dame, were fortified. The Abbey

of Saint-German-des-Pres was castellated like a baronial

mansion, and more brass expended about it in bombards than in

bells. Its fortress was still to be seen in 1610. To-day,

barely its church remains.

* Cut-throat. Coupe-gueule being the vulgar word for cut-weazand.

Let us return to Notre-Dame.

When the first arrangements were completed, and we must

say, to the honor of vagabond discipline, that Clopin's

orders were executed in silence, and with admirable precision,

the worthy chief of the band, mounted on the parapet of the

church square, and raised his hoarse and surly voice, turning

towards Notre-Dame, and brandishing his torch whose light,

tossed by the wind, and veiled every moment by its own

smoke, made the reddish fa?ade of the church appear and

disappear before the eye.

"To you, Louis de Beaumont, bishop of Paris, counsellor in

the Court of Parliament, I, Clopin Trouillefou, king of Thunes,

grand Co?sre, prince of Argot, bishop of fools, I say: Our

sister, falsely condemned for magic, hath taken refuge in

your church, you owe her asylum and safety. Now the Court

of Parliament wishes to seize her once more there, and you

consent to it; so that she would be hanged to-morrow in the

Gr¨¨ve, if God and the outcasts were not here. If your church

is sacred, so is our sister; if our sister is not sacred, neither

is your church. That is why we call upon you to return the

girl if you wish to save your church, or we will take possession

of the girl again and pillage the church, which will be a good

thing. In token of which I here plant my banner, and may

God preserve you, bishop of Paris,"

Quasimodo could not, unfortunately, hear these words

uttered with a sort of sombre and savage majesty. A vagabond

presented his banner to Clopin, who planted it solemnly

between two paving-stones. It was a pitchfork from whose

points hung a bleeding quarter of carrion meat.

That done, the King of Thunes turned round and cast

his eyes over his army, a fierce multitude whose glances

flashed almost equally with their pikes. After a momentary

pause,--"Forward, my Sons!" he cried; "to work, locksmiths!"

Thirty bold men, square shouldered, and with pick-lock faces,

stepped from the ranks, with hammers, pincers, and bars of

iron on their shoulders. They betook themselves to the

principal door of the church, ascended the steps, and were

soon to be seen squatting under the arch, working at the door

with pincers and levers; a throng of vagabonds followed them

to help or look on. The eleven steps before the portal were

covered with them.

But the door stood firm. "The devil! 'tis hard and

obstinate!" said one. "It is old, and its gristles have become

bony," said another. "Courage, comrades!" resumed Clopin.

"I wager my head against a dipper that you will have

opened the door, rescued the girl, and despoiled the chief

altar before a single beadle is awake. Stay! I think I

hear the lock breaking up."

Clopin was interrupted by a frightful uproar which re-

sounded behind him at that moment. He wheeled round.

An enormous beam had just fallen from above; it had crushed

a dozen vagabonds on the pavement with the sound of a

cannon, breaking in addition, legs here and there in the

crowd of beggars, who sprang aside with cries of terror. In

a twinkling, the narrow precincts of the church parvis were

cleared. The locksmiths, although protected by the deep

vaults of the portal, abandoned the door and Clopin himself

retired to a respectful distance from the church.

"I had a narrow escape!" cried Jehan. "I felt the wind,

of it, ~t¨ºte-de-boeuf~! but Pierre the Slaughterer is slaughtered!"

It is impossible to describe the astonishment mingled with

fright which fell upon the ruffians in company with this beam.

They remained for several minutes with their eyes in the

air, more dismayed by that piece of wood than by the king's

twenty thousand archers.

"Satan!" muttered the Duke of Egypt, "this smacks of magic!"

"'Tis the moon which threw this log at us," said Andry the Red.

"Call the moon the friend of the Virgin, after that!" went on

Francois Chanteprune.

"A thousand popes!" exclaimed Clopin, "you are all fools!" But

he did not know how to explain the fall of the beam.

Meanwhile, nothing could be distinguished on the fa?ade, to

whose summit the light of the torches did not reach. The

heavy beam lay in the middle of the enclosure, and groans

were heard from the poor wretches who had received its first

shock, and who had been almost cut in twain, on the angle of

the stone steps.

The King of Thunes, his first amazement passed, finally

found an explanation which appeared plausible to his companions.

"Throat of God! are the canons defending themselves? To the sack,

then! to the sack!"

"To the sack!" repeated the rabble, with a furious hurrah.

A discharge of crossbows and hackbuts against the front of the

church followed.

At this detonation, the peaceable inhabitants of the

surrounding houses woke up; many windows were seen to open,

and nightcaps and hands holding candles appeared at the casements.

"Fire at the windows," shouted Clopin. The windows

were immediately closed, and the poor bourgeois, who had

hardly had time to cast a frightened glance on this scene of

gleams and tumult, returned, perspiring with fear to their

wives, asking themselves whether the witches' sabbath was

now being held in the parvis of Notre-Dame, or whether there

was an assault of Burgundians, as in '64. Then the husbands

thought of theft; the wives, of rape; and all trembled.

"To the sack!" repeated the thieves' crew; but they dared

not approach. They stared at the beam, they stared at the

church. The beam did not stir, the edifice preserved its calm

and deserted air; but something chilled the outcasts.

"To work, locksmiths!" shouted Trouillefou. "Let the door

be forced!"

No one took a step.

"Beard and belly!" said Clopin, "here be men afraid of a beam."

An old locksmith addressed him--

"Captain, 'tis not the beam which bothers us, 'tis the door,

which is all covered with iron bars. Our pincers are powerless

against it."

"What more do you want to break it in?" demanded Clopin.

"Ah! we ought to have a battering ram."

The King of Thunes ran boldly to the formidable beam, and

placed his foot upon it: "Here is one!" he exclaimed; "'tis

the canons who send it to you." And, making a mocking

salute in the direction of the church, "Thanks, canons!"

This piece of bravado produced its effects,--the spell of

the beam was broken. The vagabonds recovered their courage;

soon the heavy joist, raised like a feather by two hundred

vigorous arms, was flung with fury against the great door

which they had tried to batter down. At the sight of that

long beam, in the half-light which the infrequent torches

of the brigands spread over the Place, thus borne by that

crowd of men who dashed it at a run against the church, one

would have thought that he beheld a monstrous beast with a

thousand feet attacking with lowered head the giant of stone.

At the shock of the beam, the half metallic door sounded

like an immense drum; it was not burst in, but the whole

cathedral trembled, and the deepest cavities of the edifice

were heard to echo.

At the same moment, a shower of large stones began to fall

from the top of the fa?ade on the assailants.

"The devil!" cried Jehan, "are the towers shaking their

balustrades down on our heads?"

But the impulse had been given, the King of Thunes had

set the example. Evidently, the bishop was defending himself,

and they only battered the door with the more rage, in

spite of the stones which cracked skulls right and left.

It was remarkable that all these stones fell one by one; but

they followed each other closely. The thieves always felt two

at a time, one on their legs and one on their heads. There

were few which did not deal their blow, and a large layer of

dead and wounded lay bleeding and panting beneath the feet

of the assailants who, now grown furious, replaced each other

without intermission. The long beam continued to belabor

the door, at regular intervals, like the clapper of a bell, the

stones to rain down, the door to groan.

The reader has no doubt divined that this unexpected resistance

which had exasperated the outcasts came from Quasimodo.

Chance had, unfortunately, favored the brave deaf man.

When he had descended to the platform between the towers,

his ideas were all in confusion. He had run up and down

along the gallery for several minutes like a madman,

surveying from above, the compact mass of vagabonds ready to

hurl itself on the church, demanding the safety of the gypsy

from the devil or from God. The thought had occurred to

him of ascending to the southern belfry and sounding the

alarm, but before he could have set the bell in motion, before

Marie's voice could have uttered a single clamor, was there

not time to burst in the door of the church ten times over?

It was precisely the moment when the locksmiths were advancing

upon it with their tools. What was to be done?

All at once, he remembered that some masons had been at

work all day repairing the wall, the timber-work, and the roof

of the south tower. This was a flash of light. The wall was

of stone, the roof of lead, the timber-work of wood. (That

prodigious timber-work, so dense that it was called "the forest.")

Quasimodo hastened to that tower. The lower chambers

were, in fact, full of materials. There were piles of rough

blocks of stone, sheets of lead in rolls, bundles of laths, heavy

beams already notched with the saw, heaps of plaster.

Time was pressing, The pikes and hammers were at work

below. With a strength which the sense of danger increased

tenfold, he seized one of the beams--the longest and heaviest;

he pushed it out through a loophole, then, grasping it

again outside of the tower, he made it slide along the angle

of the balustrade which surrounds the platform, and let it

fly into the abyss. The enormous timber, during that fall

of a hundred and sixty feet, scraping the wall, breaking the

carvings, turned many times on its centre, like the arm of a

windmill flying off alone through space. At last it reached

the ground, the horrible cry arose, and the black beam, as it

rebounded from the pavement, resembled a serpent leaping.

Quasimodo beheld the outcasts scatter at the fall of the

beam, like ashes at the breath of a child. He took advantage

of their fright, and while they were fixing a superstitious

glance on the club which had fallen from heaven, and while

they were putting out the eyes of the stone saints on the

front with a discharge of arrows and buckshot, Quasimodo

was silently piling up plaster, stones, and rough blocks

of stone, even the sacks of tools belonging to the masons,

on the edge of the balustrade from which the beam had

already been hurled.

Thus, as soon as they began to batter the grand door, the

shower of rough blocks of stone began to fall, and it seemed

to them that the church itself was being demolished over

their heads.

Any one who could have beheld Quasimodo at that moment

would have been frightened. Independently of the projectiles

which he had piled upon the balustrade, he had collected a

heap of stones on the platform itself. As fast as the blocks

on the exterior edge were exhausted, he drew on the heap.

Then he stooped and rose, stooped and rose again with incredible

activity. His huge gnome's head bent over the balustrade,

then an enormous stone fell, then another, then another.

From time to time, he followed a fine stone with his eye, and

when it did good execution, he said, "Hum!"

Meanwhile, the beggars did not grow discouraged. The

thick door on which they were venting their fury had already

trembled more than twenty times beneath the weight of their

oaken battering-ram, multiplied by the strength of a hundred

men. The panels cracked, the carved work flew into splinters,

the hinges, at every blow, leaped from their pins, the

planks yawned, the wood crumbled to powder, ground between

the iron sheathing. Fortunately for Quasimodo, there was

more iron than wood.

Nevertheless, he felt that the great door was yielding.

Although he did not hear it, every blow of the ram reverberated

simultaneously in the vaults of the church and within it.

From above he beheld the vagabonds, filled with triumph and

rage, shaking their fists at the gloomy fa?ade; and both on

the gypsy's account and his own he envied the wings of the

owls which flitted away above his head in flocks.

His shower of stone blocks was not sufficient to repel

the assailants.

At this moment of anguish, he noticed, a little lower down

than the balustrade whence he was crushing the thieves, two

long stone gutters which discharged immediately over the

great door; the internal orifice of these gutters terminated

on the pavement of the platform. An idea occurred to him; he

ran in search of a fagot in his bellringer's den, placed on this

fagot a great many bundles of laths, and many rolls of lead,

munitions which he had not employed so far, and having

arranged this pile in front of the hole to the two gutters, he

set it on fire with his lantern.

During this time, since the stones no longer fell, the outcasts

ceased to gaze into the air. The bandits, panting like a

pack of hounds who are forcing a boar into his lair, pressed

tumultuously round the great door, all disfigured by the

battering ram, but still standing. They were waiting with a

quiver for the great blow which should split it open. They

vied with each other in pressing as close as possible, in order

to dash among the first, when it should open, into that opulent

cathedral, a vast reservoir where the wealth of three centuries

had been piled up. They reminded each other with roars of

exultation and greedy lust, of the beautiful silver crosses, the

fine copes of brocade, the beautiful tombs of silver gilt, the

great magnificences of the choir, the dazzling festivals, the

Christmasses sparkling with torches, the Easters sparkling

with sunshine,--all those splendid solemneties wherein

chandeliers, ciboriums, tabernacles, and reliquaries, studded

the altars with a crust of gold and diamonds. Certainly, at that

fine moment, thieves and pseudo sufferers, doctors in stealing,

and vagabonds, were thinking much less of delivering the

gypsy than of pillaging Notre-Dame. We could even easily

believe that for a goodly number among them la Esmeralda

was only a pretext, if thieves needed pretexts.

All at once, at the moment when they were grouping themselves

round the ram for a last effort, each one holding his

breath and stiffening his muscles in order to communicate all

his force to the decisive blow, a howl more frightful still than

that which had burst forth and expired beneath the beam, rose

among them. Those who did not cry out, those who were

still alive, looked. Two streams of melted lead were falling

from the summit of the edifice into the thickest of the rabble.

That sea of men had just sunk down beneath the boiling metal,

which had made, at the two points where it fell, two black and

smoking holes in the crowd, such as hot water would make in

snow. Dying men, half consumed and groaning with anguish,

could be seen writhing there. Around these two principal

streams there were drops of that horrible rain, which scattered

over the assailants and entered their skulls like gimlets of

fire. It was a heavy fire which overwhelmed these wretches

with a thousand hailstones.

The outcry was heartrending. They fled pell-mell, hurling

the beam upon the bodies, the boldest as well as the most

timid, and the parvis was cleared a second time.

All eyes were raised to the top of the church. They

beheld there an extraordinary sight. On the crest of the

highest gallery, higher than the central rose window, there

was a great flame rising between the two towers with whirlwinds

of sparks, a vast, disordered, and furious flame, a tongue

of which was borne into the smoke by the wind, from time

to time. Below that fire, below the gloomy balustrade with

its trefoils showing darkly against its glare, two spouts with

monster throats were vomiting forth unceasingly that burning

rain, whose silvery stream stood out against the shadows of

the lower fa?ade. As they approached the earth, these two

jets of liquid lead spread out in sheaves, like water springing

from the thousand holes of a watering-pot. Above the flame,

the enormous towers, two sides of each of which were visible

in sharp outline, the one wholly black, the other wholly red,

seemed still more vast with all the immensity of the shadow

which they cast even to the sky.

Their innumerable sculptures of demons and dragons assumed

a lugubrious aspect. The restless light of the flame

made them move to the eye. There were griffins which had

the air of laughing, gargoyles which one fancied one heard

yelping, salamanders which puffed at the fire, tarasques*

which sneezed in the smoke. And among the monsters thus

roused from their sleep of stone by this flame, by this

noise, there was one who walked about, and who was seen,

from time to time, to pass across the glowing face of the

pile, like a bat in front of a candle.

* The representation of a monstrous animal solemnly drawn about

in Tarascon and other French towns.

Without doubt, this strange beacon light would awaken far

away, the woodcutter of the hills of Bic¨ºtre, terrified to

behold the gigantic shadow of the towers of Notre-Dame

quivering over his heaths.

A terrified silence ensued among the outcasts, during which

nothing was heard, but the cries of alarm of the canons shut

up in their cloister, and more uneasy than horses in a burning

stable, the furtive sound of windows hastily opened and still

more hastily closed, the internal hurly-burly of the houses and

of the H?tel-Dieu, the wind in the flame, the last death-rattle

of the dying, and the continued crackling of the rain of lead

upon the pavement.

In the meanwhile, the principal vagabonds had retired beneath

the porch of the Gondelaurier mansion, and were holding

a council of war.

The Duke of Egypt, seated on a stone post, contemplated

the phantasmagorical bonfire, glowing at a height of two

hundred feet in the air, with religious terror. Clopin

Trouillefou bit his huge fists with rage.

"Impossible to get in!" he muttered between his teeth.

"An old, enchanted church!" grumbled the aged Bohemian,

Mathias Hungadi Spicali.

"By the Pope's whiskers!" went on a sham soldier, who had

once been in service, "here are church gutters spitting melted

lead at you better than the machicolations of Lectoure."

"Do you see that demon passing and repassing in front of

the fire?" exclaimed the Duke of Egypt.

"Pardieu, 'tis that damned bellringer, 'tis Quasimodo,"

said Clopin.

The Bohemian tossed his head. "I tell you, that 'tis the

spirit Sabnac, the grand marquis, the demon of fortifications.

He has the form of an armed soldier, the head of a lion.

Sometimes he rides a hideous horse. He changes men into

stones, of which he builds towers. He commands fifty legions

'Tis he indeed; I recognize him. Sometimes he is clad in a

handsome golden robe, figured after the Turkish fashion."

"Where is Bellevigne de l'Etoile?" demanded Clopin.

"He is dead."

Andry the Red laughed in an idiotic way: "Notre-Dame

is making work for the hospital," said he.

"Is there, then, no way of forcing this door," exclaimed the

King of Thunes, stamping his foot.

The Duke of Egypt pointed sadly to the two streams of

boiling lead which did not cease to streak the black facade,

like two long distaffs of phosphorus.

"Churches have been known to defend themselves thus all

by themselves," he remarked with a sigh. "Saint-Sophia at

Constantinople, forty years ago, hurled to the earth three

times in succession, the crescent of Mahom, by shaking her

domes, which are her heads. Guillaume de Paris, who built

this one was a magician."

"Must we then retreat in pitiful fashion, like highwaymen?"

said Clopin. "Must we leave our sister here, whom those

hooded wolves will hang to-morrow."

"And the sacristy, where there are wagon-loads of gold!"

added a vagabond, whose name, we regret to say, we do not know.

"Beard of Mahom!" cried Trouillefou.

"Let us make another trial," resumed the vagabond.

Mathias Hungadi shook his head.

"We shall never get in by the door. We must find the

defect in the armor of the old fairy; a hole, a false postern,

some joint or other."

"Who will go with me?" said Clopin. "I shall go at it

again. By the way, where is the little scholar Jehan, who

is so encased in iron?"

"He is dead, no doubt," some one replied; "we no longer

hear his laugh."

The King of Thunes frowned: "So much the worse. There was a

brave heart under that ironmongery. And Master Pierre Gringoire?"

"Captain Clopin," said Andry the Red, "he slipped away

before we reached the Pont-aux-Changeurs,"

Clopin stamped his foot. "Gueule-Dieu! 'twas he who

pushed us on hither, and he has deserted us in the very middle

of the job! Cowardly chatterer, with a slipper for a helmet!"

"Captain Clopin," said Andry the Red, who was gazing

down Rue du Parvis, "yonder is the little scholar."

"Praised be Pluto!" said Clopin. "But what the devil is

he dragging after him?"

It was, in fact, Jehan, who was running as fast as his heavy

outfit of a Paladin, and a long ladder which trailed on the

pavement, would permit, more breathless than an ant harnessed

to a blade of grass twenty times longer than itself.

"Victory! ~Te Deum~!" cried the scholar. "Here is the

ladder of the longshoremen of Port Saint-Landry."

Clopin approached him.

"Child, what do you mean to do, ~corne-dieu~! with this ladder?"

"I have it," replied Jehan, panting. "I knew where it was

under the shed of the lieutenant's house. There's a wench

there whom I know, who thinks me as handsome as Cupido.

I made use of her to get the ladder, and I have the ladder,

~Pasque-Mahom~! The poor girl came to open the door to me

in her shift."

"Yes," said Clopin, "but what are you going to do with

that ladder?"

Jehan gazed at him with a malicious, knowing look, and

cracked his fingers like castanets. At that moment he

was sublime. On his head he wore one of those overloaded

helmets of the fifteenth century, which frightened the enemy

with their fanciful crests. His bristled with ten iron beaks,

so that Jehan could have disputed with Nestor's Homeric

vessel the redoubtable title of ~dexeubolos~.

"What do I mean to do with it, august king of Thunes?

Do you see that row of statues which have such idiotic

expressions, yonder, above the three portals?"

"Yes. Well?"

"'Tis the gallery of the kings of France."

"What is that to me?" said Clopin.

"Wait! At the end of that gallery there is a door which is

never fastened otherwise than with a latch, and with this

ladder I ascend, and I am in the church."

"Child let me be the first to ascend."

"No, comrade, the ladder is mine. Come, you shall be the

second."

"May Beelzebub strangle you!" said surly Clopin, "I won't be

second to anybody."

"Then find a ladder, Clopin!"

Jehan set out on a run across the Place, dragging his ladder

and shouting: "Follow me, lads!"

In an instant the ladder was raised, and propped against

the balustrade of the lower gallery, above one of the lateral

doors. The throng of vagabonds, uttering loud acclamations,

crowded to its foot to ascend. But Jehan maintained his

right, and was the first to set foot on the rungs. The

passage was tolerably long. The gallery of the kings of France

is to-day about sixty feet above the pavement. The eleven

steps of the flight before the door, made it still higher.

Jehan mounted slowly, a good deal incommoded by his

heavy armor, holding his crossbow in one hand, and clinging

to a rung with the other. When he reached the middle of

the ladder, he cast a melancholy glance at the poor dead

outcasts, with which the steps were strewn. "Alas!" said he,

"here is a heap of bodies worthy of the fifth book of the

Iliad!" Then he continued his ascent. The vagabonds

followed him. There was one on every rung. At the sight of

this line of cuirassed backs, undulating as they rose through

the gloom, one would have pronounced it a serpent with steel

scales, which was raising itself erect in front of the church.

Jehan who formed the head, and who was whistling, completed

the illusion.

The scholar finally reached the balcony of the gallery, and

climbed over it nimbly, to the applause of the whole vagabond

tribe. Thus master of the citadel, he uttered a shout of joy,

and suddenly halted, petrified. He had just caught sight of

Quasimodo concealed in the dark, with flashing eye, behind

one of the statues of the kings.

Before a second assailant could gain a foothold on the

gallery, the formidable hunchback leaped to the head of the

ladder, without uttering a word, seized the ends of the two

uprights with his powerful hands, raised them, pushed them

out from the wall, balanced the long and pliant ladder, loaded

with vagabonds from top to bottom for a moment, in the

midst of shrieks of anguish, then suddenly, with superhuman

force, hurled this cluster of men backward into the Place.

There was a moment when even the most resolute trembled.

The ladder, launched backwards, remained erect and standing

for an instant, and seemed to hesitate, then wavered, then

suddenly, describing a frightful arc of a circle eighty feet in

radius, crashed upon the pavement with its load of ruffians,

more rapidly than a drawbridge when its chains break.

There arose an immense imprecation, then all was still,

and a few mutilated wretches were seen, crawling over the

heap of dead.

A sound of wrath and grief followed the first cries of

triumph among the besiegers. Quasimodo, impassive, with

both elbows propped on the balustrade, looked on. He had

the air of an old, bushy-headed king at his window.

As for Jehan Frollo, he was in a critical position. He

found himself in the gallery with the formidable bellringer,

alone, separated from his companions by a vertical wall

eighty feet high. While Quasimodo was dealing with the

ladder, the scholar had run to the postern which he believed

to be open. It was not. The deaf man had closed it behind

him when he entered the gallery. Jehan had then concealed

himself behind a stone king, not daring to breathe, and fixing

upon the monstrous hunchback a frightened gaze, like the

man, who, when courting the wife of the guardian of a

menagerie, went one evening to a love rendezvous, mistook

the wall which he was to climb, and suddenly found himself

face to face with a white bear.

For the first few moments, the deaf man paid no heed to

him; but at last he turned his head, and suddenly straightened

up. He had just caught sight of the scholar.

Jehan prepared himself for a rough shock, but the deaf

man remained motionless; only he had turned towards the

scholar and was looking at him.

"Ho ho!" said Jehan, "what do you mean by staring at me with

that solitary and melancholy eye?"

As he spoke thus, the young scamp stealthily adjusted his

crossbow.

"Quasimodo!" he cried, "I am going to change your surname:

you shall be called the blind man."

The shot sped. The feathered vireton* whizzed and entered

the hunchback's left arm. Quasimodo appeared no more

moved by it than by a scratch to King Pharamond. He laid his

hand on the arrow, tore it from his arm, and tranquilly broke it

across his big knee; then he let the two pieces drop on the floor,

rather than threw them down. But Jehan had no opportunity

to fire a second time. The arrow broken, Quasimodo breathing

heavily, bounded like a grasshopper, and he fell upon the

scholar, whose armor was flattened against the wall by the blow.

* An arrow with a pyramidal head of iron and copper spiral wings by

which a rotatory motion was communicated,

Then in that gloom, wherein wavered the light of the torches, a

terrible thing was seen.

Quasimodo had grasped with his left hand the two arms of

Jehan, who did not offer any resistance, so thoroughly did he

feel that he was lost. With his right hand, the deaf man

detached one by one, in silence, with sinister slowness, all the

pieces of his armor, the sword, the daggers, the helmet, the

cuirass, the leg pieces. One would have said that it was a

monkey taking the shell from a nut. Quasimodo flung the

scholar's iron shell at his feet, piece by piece.

When the scholar beheld himself disarmed, stripped, weak,

and naked in those terrible hands, he made no attempt to

speak to the deaf man, but began to laugh audaciously in his

face, and to sing with his intrepid heedlessness of a child of

sixteen, the then popular ditty:-

"~Elle est bien habill¨¦e,

La ville de Cambrai;

Marafin l'a pill¨¦e~..."*

* The city of Cambrai is well dressed. Marafin plundered it.

He did not finish. Quasimodo was seen on the parapet of

the gallery, holding the scholar by the feet with one hand

and whirling him over the abyss like a sling; then a sound

like that of a bony structure in contact with a wall was

heard, and something was seen to fall which halted a third

of the way down in its fall, on a projection in the

architecture. It was a dead body which remained hanging

there, bent double, its loins broken, its skull empty.

A cry of horror rose among the vagabonds.

"Vengeance!" shouted Clopin. "To the sack!" replied the

multitude. "Assault! assault!"

There came a tremendous howl, in which were mingled

all tongues, all dialects, all accents. The death of the poor

scholar imparted a furious ardor to that crowd. It was seized

with shame, and the wrath of having been held so long in

check before a church by a hunchback. Rage found ladders,

multiplied the torches, and, at the expiration of a few minutes,

Quasimodo, in despair, beheld that terrible ant heap mount on

all sides to the assault of Notre-Dame. Those who had no

ladders had knotted ropes; those who had no ropes climbed

by the projections of the carvings. They hung from each

other's rags. There were no means of resisting that rising

tide of frightful faces; rage made these fierce countenances

ruddy; their clayey brows were dripping with sweat; their

eyes darted lightnings; all these grimaces, all these horrors

laid siege to Quasimodo. One would have said that some

other church had despatched to the assault of Notre-Dame its

gorgons, its dogs, its dr¨¦es, its demons, its most fantastic

sculptures. It was like a layer of living monsters on the

stone monsters of the fa?ade.

Meanwhile, the Place was studded with a thousand torches.

This scene of confusion, till now hid in darkness, was

suddenly flooded with light. The parvis was resplendent, and

cast a radiance on the sky; the bonfire lighted on the lofty

platform was still burning, and illuminated the city far away.

The enormous silhouette of the two towers, projected afar on

the roofs of Paris, and formed a large notch of black in this

light. The city seemed to be aroused. Alarm bells wailed in

the distance. The vagabonds howled, panted, swore, climbed;

and Quasimodo, powerless against so many enemies, shuddering

for the gypsy, beholding the furious faces approaching

ever nearer and nearer to his gallery, entreated heaven

for a miracle, and wrung his arms in despair.

CHAPTER V.

THE RETREAT IN WHICH MONSIEUR LOUIS OF FRANCE SAYS HIS PRAYERS.

The reader has not, perhaps, forgotten that one moment

before catching sight of the nocturnal band of vagabonds,

Quasimodo, as he inspected Paris from the heights of his bell

tower, perceived only one light burning, which gleamed like a

star from a window on the topmost story of a lofty edifice

beside the Porte Saint-Antoine. This edifice was the Bastille.

That star was the candle of Louis XI.

King Louis XI. had, in fact, been two days in Paris. He

was to take his departure on the next day but one for his

citadel of Montilz-les-Tours. He made but seldom and brief

appearance in his good city of Paris, since there he did not

feel about him enough pitfalls, gibbets, and Scotch archers.

He had come, that day, to sleep at the Bastille. The great

chamber five toises* square, which he had at the Louvre, with

its huge chimney-piece loaded with twelve great beasts and

thirteen great prophets, and his grand bed, eleven feet by

twelve, pleased him but little. He felt himself lost amid

all this grandeur. This good bourgeois king preferred the

Bastille with a tiny chamber and couch. And then, the

Bastille was stronger than the Louvre.

* An ancient long measure in France, containing six feet

and nearly five inches English measure.

This little chamber, which the king reserved for himself in

the famous state prison, was also tolerably spacious and

occupied the topmost story of a turret rising from the donjon

keep. It was circular in form, carpeted with mats of shining

straw, ceiled with beams, enriched with fleurs-de-lis of gilded

metal with interjoists in color; wainscoated with rich woods

sown with rosettes of white metal, and with others painted a

fine, bright green, made of orpiment and fine indigo.

There was only one window, a long pointed casement, latticed

with brass wire and bars of iron, further darkened by fine

colored panes with the arms of the king and of the queen,

each pane being worth two and twenty sols.

There was but one entrance, a modern door, with a fiat arch,

garnished with a piece of tapestry on the inside, and on the

outside by one of those porches of Irish wood, frail edifices

of cabinet-work curiously wrought, numbers of which were

still to be seen in old houses a hundred and fifty years

ago. "Although they disfigure and embarrass the places,"

says Sauvel in despair, "our old people are still unwilling

to get rid of them, and keep them in spite of everybody."

In this chamber, nothing was to be found of what furnishes

ordinary apartments, neither benches, nor trestles, nor forms,

nor common stools in the form of a chest, nor fine stools

sustained by pillars and counter-pillars, at four sols a piece.

Only one easy arm-chair, very magnificent, was to be seen; the

wood was painted with roses on a red ground, the seat was of

ruby Cordovan leather, ornamented with long silken fringes,

and studded with a thousand golden nails. The loneliness of

this chair made it apparent that only one person had a right

to sit down in this apartment. Beside the chair, and quite

close to the window, there was a table covered with a cloth

with a pattern of birds. On this table stood an inkhorn

spotted with ink, some parchments, several pens, and a large

goblet of chased silver. A little further on was a brazier,

a praying stool in crimson velvet, relieved with small bosses

of gold. Finally, at the extreme end of the room, a simple

bed of scarlet and yellow damask, without either tinsel or

lace; having only an ordinary fringe. This bed, famous for

having borne the sleep or the sleeplessness of Louis XI., was

still to be seen two hundred years ago, at the house of a

councillor of state, where it was seen by old Madame Pilou,

celebrated in _Cyrus_ under the name "Arricidie" and of "la

Morale Vivante".

Such was the chamber which was called "the retreat where

Monsieur Louis de France says his prayers."

At the moment when we have introduced the reader into it,

this retreat was very dark. The curfew bell had sounded an

hour before; night was come, and there was only one flickering

wax candle set on the table to light five persons variously

grouped in the chamber.

The first on which the light fell was a seigneur superbly

clad in breeches and jerkin of scarlet striped with silver,

and a loose coat with half sleeves of cloth of gold with black

figures. This splendid costume, on which the light played,

seemed glazed with flame on every fold. The man who wore

it had his armorial bearings embroidered on his breast in vivid

colors; a chevron accompanied by a deer passant. The shield

was flanked, on the right by an olive branch, on the left by a

deer's antlers. This man wore in his girdle a rich dagger

whose hilt, of silver gilt, was chased in the form of a helmet,

and surmounted by a count's coronet. He had a forbidding

air, a proud mien, and a head held high. At the first glance

one read arrogance on his visage; at the second, craft.

He was standing bareheaded, a long roll of parchment in

his hand, behind the arm-chair in which was seated, his body

ungracefully doubled up, his knees crossed, his elbow on the

table, a very badly accoutred personage. Let the reader

imagine in fact, on the rich seat of Cordova leather, two

crooked knees, two thin thighs, poorly clad in black worsted

tricot, a body enveloped in a cloak of fustian, with fur trimming

of which more leather than hair was visible; lastly, to crown

all, a greasy old hat of the worst sort of black cloth, bordered

with a circular string of leaden figures. This, in company with

a dirty skull-cap, which hardly allowed a hair to escape, was

all that distinguished the seated personage. He held his head

so bent upon his breast, that nothing was to be seen of his

face thus thrown into shadow, except the tip of his nose, upon

which fell a ray of light, and which must have been long.

From the thinness of his wrinkled hand, one divined that he

was an old man. It was Louis XI.

At some distance behind them, two men dressed in garments

of Flemish style were conversing, who were not sufficiently

lost in the shadow to prevent any one who had been present

at the performance of Gringoire's mystery from recognizing in

them two of the principal Flemish envoys, Guillaume Rym,

the sagacious pensioner of Ghent, and Jacques Coppenole, the

popular hosier. The reader will remember that these men

were mixed up in the secret politics of Louis XI.

Finally, quite at the end of the room, near the door, in

the dark, stood, motionless as a statue, a vigorous man with

thickset limbs, a military harness, with a surcoat of armorial

bearings, whose square face pierced with staring eyes, slit

with an immense mouth, his ears concealed by two large screens of

flat hair, had something about it both of the dog and the tiger.

All were uncovered except the king.

The gentleman who stood near the king was reading him a

sort of long memorial to which his majesty seemed to be

listening attentively. The two Flemings were whispering together.

"Cross of God!" grumbled Coppenole, "I am tired of standing; is

there no chair here?"

Rym replied by a negative gesture, accompanied by a discreet smile.

"Croix-Dieu!" resumed Coppenole, thoroughly unhappy at

being obliged to lower his voice thus, "I should like to sit

down on the floor, with my legs crossed, like a hosier, as I do

in my shop."

"Take good care that you do not, Master Jacques."

"Ouais! Master Guillaume! can one only remain here on his feet?"

"Or on his knees," said Rym.

At that moment the king's voice was uplifted. They held their peace.

"Fifty sols for the robes of our valets, and twelve livres for

the mantles of the clerks of our crown! That's it! Pour out

gold by the ton! Are you mad, Olivier?"

As he spoke thus, the old man raised his head. The golden

shells of the collar of Saint-Michael could be seen gleaming on

his neck. The candle fully illuminated his gaunt and morose

profile. He tore the papers from the other's hand.

"You are ruining us!" he cried, casting his hollow eyes

over the scroll. "What is all this? What need have we of so

prodigious a household? Two chaplains at ten livres a month

each, and, a chapel clerk at one hundred sols! A valet-de-

chambre at ninety livres a year. Four head cooks at six score

livres a year each! A spit-cook, an herb-cook, a sauce-cook,

a butler, two sumpter-horse lackeys, at ten livres a month

each! Two scullions at eight livres! A groom of the stables

and his two aids at four and twenty livres a month! A porter,

a pastry-cook, a baker, two carters, each sixty livres a year!

And the farrier six score livres! And the master of the

chamber of our funds, twelve hundred livres! And the

comptroller five hundred. And how do I know what else?

'Tis ruinous. The wages of our servants are putting France

to the pillage! All the ingots of the Louvre will melt before

such a fire of expenses! We shall have to sell our plate!

And next year, if God and our Lady (here he raised his hat)

lend us life, we shall drink our potions from a pewter pot!"

So saying, he cast a glance at the silver goblet which

gleamed upon the table. He coughed and continued,--

"Master Olivier, the princes who reign over great lordships,

like kings and emperors, should not allow sumptuousness in

their houses; for the fire spreads thence through the province.

Hence, Master Olivier, consider this said once for all. Our

expenditure increases every year. The thing displease us.

How, ~pasque-Dieu~! when in '79 it did not exceed six and

thirty thousand livres, did it attain in '80, forty-three

thousand six hundred and nineteen livres? I have the figures

in my head. In '81, sixty-six thousand six hundred and eighty

livres, and this year, by the faith of my body, it will reach

eighty thousand livres! Doubled in four years! Monstrous!"

He paused breathless, then resumed energetically,--

"I behold around me only people who fatten on my leanness! you

suck crowns from me at every pore."

All remained silent. This was one of those fits of wrath

which are allowed to take their course. He continued,--

"'Tis like that request in Latin from the gentlemen of

France, that we should re-establish what they call the grand

charges of the Crown! Charges in very deed! Charges which

crush! Ah! gentlemen! you say that we are not a king to

reign ~dapifero nullo, buticulario nullo~! We will let you see,

~pasque-Dieu~! whether we are not a king!"

Here he smiled, in the consciousness of his power; this

softened his bad humor, and he turned towards the Flemings,--

"Do you see, Gossip Guillaume? the grand warden of the

keys, the grand butler, the grand chamberlain, the grand

seneschal are not worth the smallest valet. Remember this,

Gossip Coppenole. They serve no purpose, as they stand thus

useless round the king; they produce upon me the effect of the

four Evangelists who surround the face of the big clock of the

palace, and which Philippe Brille has just set in order afresh.

They are gilt, but they do not indicate the hour; and the

hands can get on without them."

He remained in thought for a moment, then added, shaking

his aged head,--

"Ho! ho! by our Lady, I am not Philippe Brille, and I

shall not gild the great vassals anew. Continue, Olivier."

The person whom he designated by this name, took the

papers into his hands again, and began to read aloud,--

"To Adam Tenon, clerk of the warden of the seals of the

provostship of Paris; for the silver, making, and engraving

of said seals, which have been made new because the others

preceding, by reason of their antiquity and their worn condition,

could no longer be successfully used, twelve livres parisis.

"To Guillaume Fr¨¨re, the sum of four livres, four sols parisis,

for his trouble and salary, for having nourished and fed

the doves in the two dove-cots of the H?tel des Tournelles,

during the months of January, February, and March of this

year; and for this he hath given seven sextiers of barley.

"To a gray friar for confessing a criminal, four sols parisis."

The king listened in silence. From time to time be

coughed; then he raised the goblet to his lips and drank a

draught with a grimace.

"During this year there have been made by the ordinance

of justice, to the sound of the trumpet, through the squares of

Paris, fifty-six proclamations. Account to be regulated.

"For having searched and ransacked in certain places, in

Paris as well as elsewhere, for money said to be there concealed;

but nothing hath been found: forty-five livres parisis."

"Bury a crown to unearth a sou!" said the king.

"For having set in the H?tel des Tournelles six panes

of white glass in the place where the iron cage is, thirteen

sols; for having made and delivered by command of the king,

on the day of the musters, four shields with the escutcheons of

the said seigneur, encircled with garlands of roses all about,

six livres; for two new sleeves to the king's old doublet,

twenty sols; for a box of grease to grease the boots of the

king, fifteen deniers; a stable newly made to lodge the king's

black pigs, thirty livres parisis; many partitions, planks, and

trap-doors, for the safekeeping of the lions at Saint-Paul,

twenty-two livres."

"These be dear beasts," said Louis XI. "It matters not; it

is a fine magnificence in a king. There is a great red lion

whom I love for his pleasant ways. Have you seen him, Master

Guillaume? Princes must have these terrific animals; for

we kings must have lions for our dogs and tigers for our cats.

The great befits a crown. In the days of the pagans of Jupiter,

when the people offered the temples a hundred oxen and a

hundred sheep, the emperors gave a hundred lions and a

hundred eagles. This was wild and very fine. The kings of

France have always had roarings round their throne. Nevertheless,

people must do me this justice, that I spend still less

money on it than they did, and that I possess a greater modesty

of lions, bears, elephants, and leopards.--Go on, Master

Olivier. We wished to say thus much to our Flemish friends."

Guillaume Rym bowed low, while Coppenole, with his surly

mien, had the air of one of the bears of which his majesty was

speaking. The king paid no heed. He had just dipped his

lips into the goblet, and he spat out the beverage, saying:

"Foh! what a disagreeable potion!" The man who was reading

continued:--

"For feeding a rascally footpad, locked up these six months

in the little cell of the flayer, until it should be determined

what to do with him, six livres, four sols."

"What's that?" interrupted the king; "feed what ought to

be hanged! ~Pasque-Dieu~! I will give not a sou more for

that nourishment. Olivier, come to an understanding about

the matter with Monsieur d'Estouteville, and prepare me this

very evening the wedding of the gallant and the gallows. Resume."

Olivier made a mark with his thumb against the article of

the "rascally foot soldier," and passed on.

"To Henriet Cousin, master executor of the high works of

justice in Paris, the sum of sixty sols parisis, to him assessed

and ordained by monseigneur the provost of Paris, for having

bought, by order of the said sieur the provost, a great broad

sword, serving to execute and decapitate persons who are by

justice condemned for their demerits, and he hath caused the

same to be garnished with a sheath and with all things thereto

appertaining; and hath likewise caused to be repointed and

set in order the old sword, which had become broken and

notched in executing justice on Messire Louis de Luxembourg,

as will more fully appear.

The king interrupted: "That suffices. I allow the sum

with great good will. Those are expenses which I do not

begrudge. I have never regretted that money. Continue."

"For having made over a great cage..."

"Ah!" said the king, grasping the arms of his chair in

both hands, "I knew well that I came hither to this Bastille

for some purpose. Hold, Master Olivier; I desire to see

that cage myself. You shall read me the cost while I am

examining it. Messieurs Flemings, come and see this; 'tis

curious."

Then he rose, leaned on the arm of his interlocutor, made a

sign to the sort of mute who stood before the door to precede

him, to the two Flemings to follow him, and quitted the room.

The royal company was recruited, at the door of the retreat,

by men of arms, all loaded down with iron, and by slender

pages bearing flambeaux. It marched for some time through

the interior of the gloomy donjon, pierced with staircases and

corridors even in the very thickness of the walls. The

captain of the Bastille marched at their head, and caused

the wickets to be opened before the bent and aged king, who

coughed as he walked.

At each wicket, all heads were obliged to stoop, except that

of the old man bent double with age. "Hum," said he between

his gums, for he had no longer any teeth, "we are already

quite prepared for the door of the sepulchre. For a low door,

a bent passer."

At length, after having passed a final wicket, so loaded

with locks that a quarter of an hour was required to open it,

they entered a vast and lofty vaulted hall, in the centre of

which they could distinguish by the light of the torches, a

huge cubic mass of masonry, iron, and wood. The interior

was hollow. It was one of those famous cages of prisoners

of state, which were called "the little daughters of the king."

In its walls there were two or three little windows so closely

trellised with stout iron bars; that the glass was not visible.

The door was a large flat slab of stone, as on tombs; the sort

of door which serves for entrance only. Only here, the occupant

was alive.

The king began to walk slowly round the little edifice,

examining it carefully, while Master Olivier, who followed

him, read aloud the note.

"For having made a great cage of wood of solid beams,

timbers and wall-plates, measuring nine feet in length by

eight in breadth, and of the height of seven feet between

the partitions, smoothed and clamped with great bolts of iron,

which has been placed in a chamber situated in one of the

towers of the Bastille Saint-Antoine, in which cage is placed

and detained, by command of the king our lord, a prisoner

who formerly inhabited an old, decrepit, and ruined cage.

There have been employed in making the said new cage,

ninety-six horizontal beams, and fifty-two upright joists,

ten wall plates three toises long; there have been occupied

nineteen carpenters to hew, work, and fit all the said wood

in the courtyard of the Bastille during twenty days."

"Very fine heart of oak," said the king, striking the woodwork

with his fist.

"There have been used in this cage," continued the other,

"two hundred and twenty great bolts of iron, of nine feet,

and of eight, the rest of medium length, with the rowels,

caps and counterbands appertaining to the said bolts;

weighing, the said iron in all, three thousand, seven hundred

and thirty-five pounds; beside eight great squares of iron,

serving to attach the said cage in place with clamps and

nails weighing in all two hundred and eighteen pounds, not

reckoning the iron of the trellises for the windows of the

chamber wherein the cage hath been placed, the bars of iron

for the door of the cage and other things."

"'Tis a great deal of iron," said the king, "to contain the

light of a spirit."

"The whole amounts to three hundred and seventeen livres,

five sols, seven deniers."

"~Pasque-Dieu~!" exclaimed the king.

At this oath, which was the favorite of Louis XI., some one

seemed to awaken in the interior of the cage; the sound of

chains was heard, grating on the floor, and a feeble voice,

which seemed to issue from the tomb was uplifted. "Sire!

sire! mercy!" The one who spoke thus could not be seen.

"Three hundred and seventeen livres, five sols, seven deniers,"

repeated Louis XI.

The lamentable voice which had proceeded from the cage

had frozen all present, even Master Olivier himself. The

king alone wore the air of not having heard. At his order,

Master Olivier resumed his reading, and his majesty coldly

continued his inspection of the cage.

"In addition to this there hath been paid to a mason who

hath made the holes wherein to place the gratings of the

windows, and the floor of the chamber where the cage is,

because that floor could not support this cage by reason

of its weight, twenty-seven livres fourteen sols parisis."

The voice began to moan again.

"Mercy, sire! I swear to you that 'twas Monsieur the Cardinal

d'Angers and not I, who was guilty of treason."

"The mason is bold!" said the king. "Continue, Olivier."

Olivier continued,--

"To a joiner for window frames, bedstead, hollow stool, and

other things, twenty livres, two sols parisis."

The voice also continued.

"Alas, sire! will you not listen to me? I protest to you

that 'twas not I who wrote the matter to Monseigneur do

Guyenne, but Monsieur le Cardinal Balue."

"The joiner is dear," quoth the king. "Is that all?"

"No, sire. To a glazier, for the windows of the said chamber,

forty-six sols, eight deniers parisis."

"Have mercy, sire! Is it not enough to have given all my

goods to my judges, my plate to Monsieur de Torcy, my

library to Master Pierre Doriolle, my tapestry to the governor

of the Roussillon? I am innocent. I have been shivering

in an iron cage for fourteen years. Have mercy, sire!

You will find your reward in heaven."

"Master Olivier," said the king, "the total?"

"Three hundred sixty-seven livres, eight sols, three deniers

parisis.

"Notre-Dame!" cried the king. "This is an outrageous cage!"

He tore the book from Master Olivier's hands, and set to

reckoning it himself upon his fingers, examining the paper

and the cage alternately. Meanwhile, the prisoner could be

heard sobbing. This was lugubrious in the darkness, and

their faces turned pale as they looked at each other.

"Fourteen years, sire! Fourteen years now! since the

month of April, 1469. In the name of the Holy Mother of

God, sire, listen to me! During all this time you have

enjoyed the heat of the sun. Shall I, frail creature, never

more behold the day? Mercy, sire! Be pitiful! Clemency is

a fine, royal virtue, which turns aside the currents of wrath.

Does your majesty believe that in the hour of death it will

be a great cause of content for a king never to have left

any offence unpunished? Besides, sire, I did not betray your

majesty, 'twas Monsieur d'Angers; and I have on my foot a very

heavy chain, and a great ball of iron at the end, much heavier

than it should be in reason. Eh! sire! Have pity on me!"

"Olivier," cried the king, throwing back his head, "I observe

that they charge me twenty sols a hogshead for plaster, while

it is worth but twelve. You will refer back this account."

He turned his back on the cage, and set out to leave the

room. The miserable prisoner divined from the removal

of the torches and the noise, that the king was taking his

departure.

"Sire! sire!" be cried in despair.

The door closed again. He no longer saw anything, and

heard only the hoarse voice of the turnkey, singing in his ears

this ditty,--

"~Ma?tre Jean Balue,

A perdu la vue

De ses ¨¦v¨ºch¨¦s.

Monsieur de Verdun.

N'en a plus pas un;

Tous sont d¨¦p¨ºch¨¦s~."*

* Master Jean Balue has lost sight of his bishoprics.

Monsieur of Verdun has no longer one; all have been

killed off.

The king reascended in silence to his retreat, and his suite

followed him, terrified by the last groans of the condemned

man. All at once his majesty turned to the Governor of the

Bastille,--

"By the way," said he, "was there not some one in that cage?"

"Pardieu, yes sire!" replied the governor, astounded by

the question.

"And who was it?"

"Monsieur the Bishop of Verdun."

The king knew this better than any one else. But it was a

mania of his.

"Ah!" said he, with the innocent air of thinking of it for

the first time, "Guillaume de Harancourt, the friend of

Monsieur the Cardinal Balue. A good devil of a bishop!"

At the expiration of a few moments, the door of the retreat

had opened again, then closed upon the five personages whom

the reader has seen at the beginning of this chapter, and who

resumed their places, their whispered conversations, and their

attitudes.

During the king's absence, several despatches had been

placed on his table, and he broke the seals himself. Then he

began to read them promptly, one after the other, made a sign

to Master Olivier who appeared to exercise the office of

minister, to take a pen, and without communicating to him

the contents of the despatches, he began to dictate in a low

voice, the replies which the latter wrote, on his knees, in an

inconvenient attitude before the table.

Guillaume Rym was on the watch.

The king spoke so low that the Flemings heard nothing of

his dictation, except some isolated and rather unintelligible

scraps, such as,--

"To maintain the fertile places by commerce, and the sterile

by manufactures....--To show the English lords our four

bombards, London, Brabant, Bourg-en-Bresse, Saint-

Omer....--Artillery is the cause of war being made more

judiciously now....--To Monsieur de Bressuire, our

friend....--Armies cannot be maintained without tribute, etc.

Once he raised his voice,--

"~Pasque Dieu~! Monsieur the King of Sicily seals his

letters with yellow wax, like a king of France. Perhaps

we are in the wrong to permit him so to do. My fair cousin

of Burgundy granted no armorial bearings with a field of gules.

The grandeur of houses is assured by the integrity of

prerogatives. Note this, friend Olivier."

Again,--

"Oh! oh!" said he, "What a long message! What doth

our brother the emperor claim?" And running his eye over

the missive and breaking his reading with interjection:

"Surely! the Germans are so great and powerful, that it is

hardly credible--But let us not forget the old proverb: 'The

finest county is Flanders; the finest duchy, Milan; the finest

kingdom, France.' Is it not so, Messieurs Flemings?"

This time Coppenole bowed in company with Guillaume Rym. The

hosier's patriotism was tickled.

The last despatch made Louis XI. frown.

"What is this?" be said, "Complaints and fault finding

against our garrisons in Picardy! Olivier, write with diligence

to M. the Marshal de Rouault:--That discipline is relaxed.

That the gendarmes of the unattached troops, the feudal

nobles, the free archers, and the Swiss inflict infinite evils

on the rustics.--That the military, not content with what they

find in the houses of the rustics, constrain them with violent

blows of cudgel or of lash to go and get wine, spices, and

other unreasonable things in the town.--That monsieur the

king knows this. That we undertake to guard our people

against inconveniences, larcenies and pillage.--That such is

our will, by our Lady!--That in addition, it suits us not that

any fiddler, barber, or any soldier varlet should be clad like

a prince, in velvet, cloth of silk, and rings of gold.--That

these vanities are hateful to God.--That we, who are gentlemen,

content ourselves with a doublet of cloth at sixteen sols the

ell, of Paris.--That messieurs the camp-followers can very

well come down to that, also.--Command and ordain.--To

Monsieur de Rouault, our friend.--Good."

He dictated this letter aloud, in a firm tone, and in jerks.

At the moment when he finished it, the door opened and gave

passage to a new personage, who precipitated himself into the

chamber, crying in affright,--

"Sire! sire! there is a sedition of the populace in Paris!"

Louis XI.'s grave face contracted; but all that was visible

of his emotion passed away like a flash of lightning. He

controlled himself and said with tranquil severity,--

"Gossip Jacques, you enter very abruptly!"

"Sire! sire! there is a revolt!" repeated Gossip Jacques

breathlessly.

The king, who had risen, grasped him roughly by the arm,

and said in his ear, in such a manner as to be heard by him

alone, with concentrated rage and a sidelong glance at the

Flemings,--

"Hold your tongue! or speak low!"

The new comer understood, and began in a low tone to give

a very terrified account, to which the king listened calmly,

while Guillaume Rym called Coppenole's attention to the face

and dress of the new arrival, to his furred cowl, (~caputia

fourrata~), his short cape, (~epitogia curta~), his robe of black velvet,

which bespoke a president of the court of accounts.

Hardly had this personage given the king some explanations,

when Louis XI. exclaimed, bursting into a laugh,--

"In truth? Speak aloud, Gossip Coictier! What call is

there for you to talk so low? Our Lady knoweth that we conceal

nothing from our good friends the Flemings."

"But sire..."

"Speak loud!"

Gossip Coictier was struck dumb with surprise.

"So," resumed the king,--"speak sir,--there is a commotion

among the louts in our good city of Paris?"

"Yes, sire."

"And which is moving you say, against monsieur the bailiff of

the Palais-de-Justice?"

"So it appears," said the gossip, who still stammered, utterly

astounded by the abrupt and inexplicable change which had

just taken place in the king's thoughts.

Louis XI. continued: "Where did the watch meet the rabble?"

"Marching from the Grand Truanderie, towards the Pont-aux-

Changeurs. I met it myself as I was on my way hither to

obey your majesty's commands. I heard some of them shouting:

'Down with the bailiff of the palace!'"

"And what complaints have they against the bailiff?"

"Ah!" said Gossip Jacques, "because he is their lord."

"Really?"

"Yes, sire. They are knaves from the Cour-des-Miracles.

They have been complaining this long while, of the bailiff,

whose vassals they are. They do not wish to recognize him

either as judge or as voyer?"*

* One in charge of the highways.

"Yes, certainly!" retorted the king with a smile of satis-

faction which he strove in vain to disguise.

"In all their petitions to the Parliament, they claim to have

but two masters. Your majesty and their God, who is the

devil, I believe."

"Eh! eh!" said the king.

He rubbed his hands, he laughed with that inward mirth

which makes the countenance beam; he was unable to dissimulate

his joy, although he endeavored at moments to compose

himself. No one understood it in the least, not even Master

Olivier. He remained silent for a moment, with a thoughtful

but contented air.

"Are they in force?" he suddenly inquired.

"Yes, assuredly, sire," replied Gossip Jacques.

"How many?"

"Six thousand at the least."

The king could not refrain from saying: "Good!" he went on,--

"Are they armed?"

"With scythes, pikes, hackbuts, pickaxes. All sorts of very

violent weapons."

The king did not appear in the least disturbed by this list.

Jacques considered it his duty to add,--

"If your majesty does not send prompt succor to the bailiff,

he is lost."

"We will send," said the king with an air of false seriousness.

"It is well. Assuredly we will send. Monsieur the bailiff

is our friend. Six thousand! They are desperate scamps!

Their audacity is marvellous, and we are greatly enraged at it.

But we have only a few people about us to-night. To-morrow

morning will be time enough."

Gossip Jacques exclaimed, "Instantly, sire! there will be

time to sack the bailiwick a score of times, to violate the

seignory, to hang the bailiff. For God's sake, sire! send

before to-morrow morning."

The king looked him full in the face. "I have told you

to-morrow morning."

It was one Of those looks to which one does not reply.

After a silence, Louis XI. raised his voice once more,--

"You should know that, Gossip Jacques. What was--"

He corrected himself. "What is the bailiff's feudal jurisdiction?"

"Sire, the bailiff of the palace has the Rue Calendre as far

as the Rue de l'Herberie, the Place Saint-Michel, and the

localities vulgarly known as the Mureaux, situated near the

church of Notre-Dame des Champs (here Louis XI. raised

the brim of his hat), which hotels number thirteen, plus the

Cour des Miracles, plus the Maladerie, called the Banlieue,

plus the whole highway which begins at that Maladerie and

ends at the Porte Sainte-Jacques. Of these divers places he

is voyer, high, middle, and low, justiciary, full seigneur."

"Bless me!" said the king, scratching his left ear with his

right hand, "that makes a goodly bit of my city! Ah! monsieur

the bailiff was king of all that."

This time he did not correct himself. He continued dreamily,

and as though speaking to himself,--

"Very fine, monsieur the bailiff! You had there between

your teeth a pretty slice of our Paris."

All at once he broke out explosively, "~Pasque-Dieu~!"

What people are those who claim to be voyers, justiciaries,

lords and masters in our domains? who have their tollgates

at the end of every field? their gallows and their hangman

at every cross-road among our people? So that as the Greek

believed that he had as many gods as there were fountains,

and the Persian as many as he beheld stars, the Frenchman

counts as many kings as he sees gibbets! Pardieu! 'tis an

evil thing, and the confusion of it displeases me. I should

greatly like to know whether it be the mercy of God that

there should be in Paris any other lord than the king, any

other judge than our parliament, any other emperor than

ourselves in this empire! By the faith of my soul! the day

must certainly come when there shall exist in France but one

king, one lord, one judge, one headsman, as there is in paradise

but one God!"

He lifted his cap again, and continued, still dreamily, with

the air and accent of a hunter who is cheering on his pack of

hounds: "Good, my people! bravely done! break these false

lords! do your duty! at them! have at them! pillage them!

take them! sack them!....Ah! you want to be kings, messeigneurs?

On, my people on!"

Here he interrupted himself abruptly, bit his lips as though

to take back his thought which had already half escaped,

bent his piercing eyes in turn on each of the five persons

who surrounded him, and suddenly grasping his hat with

both hands and staring full at it, he said to it: "Oh! I

would burn you if you knew what there was in my head."

Then casting about him once more the cautious and uneasy

glance of the fox re-entering his hole,--

"No matter! we will succor monsieur the bailiff.

Unfortunately, we have but few troops here at the present moment,

against so great a populace. We must wait until to-morrow.

The order will be transmitted to the City and every one who

is caught will be immediately hung."

"By the way, sire," said Gossip Coictier, "I had forgotten

that in the first agitation, the watch have seized two laggards

of the band. If your majesty desires to see these men, they

are here."

"If I desire to see them!" cried the king. "What! ~Pasque-

Dieu~! You forget a thing like that! Run quick, you, Olivier!

Go, seek them!"

Master Olivier quitted the room and returned a moment

later with the two prisoners, surrounded by archers of the

guard. The first had a coarse, idiotic, drunken and

astonished face. He was clothed in rags, and walked with

one knee bent and dragging his leg. The second had a pallid

and smiling countenance, with which the reader is already

acquainted.

The king surveyed them for a moment without uttering a

word, then addressing the first one abruptly,--

"What's your name?"

"Gieffroy Pincebourde."

"Your trade."

"Outcast."

"What were you going to do in this damnable sedition?"

The outcast stared at the king, and swung his arms with a

stupid air.

He had one of those awkwardly shaped heads where intelligence

is about as much at its ease as a light beneath an extinguisher.

"I know not," said he. "They went, I went."

"Were you not going to outrageously attack and pillage your lord,

the bailiff of the palace?"

"I know that they were going to take something from some one.

That is all."

A soldier pointed out to the king a billhook which he had seized

on the person of the vagabond.

"Do you recognize this weapon?" demanded the king.

"Yes; 'tis my billhook; I am a vine-dresser."

"And do you recognize this man as your companion?"

added Louis XI., pointing to the other prisoner.

"No, I do not know him."

"That will do," said the king, making a sign with his finger

to the silent personage who stood motionless beside the door,

to whom we have already called the reader's attention.

"Gossip Tristan, here is a man for you."

Tristan l'Hermite bowed. He gave an order in a low voice

to two archers, who led away the poor vagabond.

In the meantime, the king had approached the second prisoner,

who was perspiring in great drops: "Your name?"

"Sire, Pierre Gringoire."

"Your trade?"

"Philosopher, sire."

"How do you permit yourself, knave, to go and besiege our

friend, monsieur the bailiff of the palace, and what have you

to say concerning this popular agitation?"

"Sire, I had nothing to do with it."

"Come, now! you wanton wretch, were not you apprehended

by the watch in that bad company?"

"No, sire, there is a mistake. 'Tis a fatality. I make

tragedies. Sire, I entreat your majesty to listen to me. I

am a poet. 'Tis the melancholy way of men of my profession

to roam the streets by night. I was passing there. It was

mere chance. I was unjustly arrested; I am innocent of this

civil tempest. Your majesty sees that the vagabond did

not recognize me. I conjure your majesty--"

"Hold your tongue!" said the king, between two swallows

of his ptisan. "You split our head!"

Tristan l'Hermite advanced and pointing to Gringoire,--

"Sire, can this one be hanged also?"

This was the first word that he had uttered.

"Phew!" replied the king, "I see no objection."

"I see a great many!" said Gringoire.

At that moment, our philosopher was greener than an olive.

He perceived from the king's cold and indifferent mien that

there was no other resource than something very pathetic,

and he flung himself at the feet of Louis XI., exclaiming,

with gestures of despair:--

"Sire! will your majesty deign to hear me. Sire! break

not in thunder over so small a thing as myself. God's great

lightning doth not bombard a lettuce. Sire, you are an

august and, very puissant monarch; have pity on a poor man

who is honest, and who would find it more difficult to stir up

a revolt than a cake of ice would to give out a spark! Very

gracious sire, kindness is the virtue of a lion and a king.

Alas! rigor only frightens minds; the impetuous gusts of

the north wind do not make the traveller lay aside his cloak;

the sun, bestowing his rays little by little, warms him in such

ways that it will make him strip to his shirt. Sire, you are

the sun. I protest to you, my sovereign lord and master, that

I am not an outcast, thief, and disorderly fellow. Revolt and

brigandage belong not to the outfit of Apollo. I am not the

man to fling myself into those clouds which break out into

seditious clamor. I am your majesty's faithful vassal. That

same jealousy which a husband cherisheth for the honor of

his wife, the resentment which the son hath for the love of

his father, a good vassal should feel for the glory of his king;

he should pine away for the zeal of this house, for the

aggrandizement of his service. Every other passion which

should transport him would be but madness. These, sire, are my

maxims of state: then do not judge me to be a seditious and

thieving rascal because my garment is worn at the elbows. If

you will grant me mercy, sire, I will wear it out on the knees

in praying to God for you night and morning! Alas! I am

not extremely rich, 'tis true. I am even rather poor. But

not vicious on that account. It is not my fault. Every one

knoweth that great wealth is not to be drawn from literature,

and that those who are best posted in good books do not

always have a great fire in winter. The advocate's trade

taketh all the grain, and leaveth only straw to the other

scientific professions. There are forty very excellent proverbs

anent the hole-ridden cloak of the philosopher. Oh, sire!

clemency is the only light which can enlighten the interior of

so great a soul. Clemency beareth the torch before all the other

virtues. Without it they are but blind men groping after

God in the dark. Compassion, which is the same thing as

clemency, causeth the love of subjects, which is the most

powerful bodyguard to a prince. What matters it to your

majesty, who dazzles all faces, if there is one poor man more

on earth, a poor innocent philosopher spluttering amid the

shadows of calamity, with an empty pocket which resounds

against his hollow belly? Moreover, sire, I am a man of

letters. Great kings make a pearl for their crowns by protecting

letters. Hercules did not disdain the title of Musagetes.

Mathias Corvin favored Jean de Monroyal, the ornament of

mathematics. Now, 'tis an ill way to protect letters to hang

men of letters. What a stain on Alexander if he had hung

Aristoteles! This act would not be a little patch on the face

of his reputation to embellish it, but a very malignant ulcer

to disfigure it. Sire! I made a very proper epithalamium for

Mademoiselle of Flanders and Monseigneur the very august

Dauphin. That is not a firebrand of rebellion. Your majesty

sees that I am not a scribbler of no reputation, that I have

studied excellently well, and that I possess much natural

eloquence. Have mercy upon me, sire! In so doing you will

perform a gallant deed to our Lady, and I swear to you that

I am greatly terrified at the idea of being hanged!"

So saying, the unhappy Gringoire kissed the king's slippers,

and Guillaume Rym said to Coppenole in a low tone: "He

doth well to drag himself on the earth. Kings are like the

Jupiter of Crete, they have ears only in their feet." And

without troubling himself about the Jupiter of Crete, the

hosier replied with a heavy smile, and his eyes fixed on

Gringoire: "Oh! that's it exactly! I seem to hear Chancellor

Hugonet craving mercy of me."

When Gringoire paused at last, quite out of breath, he

raised his head tremblingly towards the king, who was engaged

in scratching a spot on the knee of his breeches with his finger-

nail; then his majesty began to drink from the goblet of

ptisan. But he uttered not a word, and this silence tortured

Gringoire. At last the king looked at him. "Here is a terrible

bawler!" said, he. Then, turning to Tristan l'Hermite,

"Bali! let him go!"

Gringoire fell backwards, quite thunderstruck with joy.

"At liberty!" growled Tristan "Doth not your majesty

wish to have him detained a little while in a cage?"

"Gossip," retorted Louis XI., "think you that 'tis for birds

of this feather that we cause to be made cages at three hundred

and sixty-seven livres, eight sous, three deniers apiece?

Release him at once, the wanton (Louis XI. was fond of this

word which formed, with ~Pasque-Dieu~, the foundation of his

joviality), and put him out with a buffet."

"Ugh!" cried Gringoire, "what a great king is here!"

And for fear of a counter order, he rushed towards the door,

which Tristan opened for him with a very bad grace. The

soldiers left the room with him, pushing him before them

with stout thwacks, which Gringoire bore like a true stoical

philosopher.

The king's good humor since the revolt against the bailiff

had been announced to him, made itself apparent in every

way. This unwonted clemency was no small sign of it. Tristan

l'Hermite in his corner wore the surly look of a dog who

has had a bone snatched away from him.

Meanwhile, the king thrummed gayly with his fingers on the

arm of his chair, the March of Pont-Audemer. He was a

dissembling prince, but one who understood far better how to

hide his troubles than his joys. These external manifestations

of joy at any good news sometimes proceeded to very

great lengths thus, on the death, of Charles the Bold, to the

point of vowing silver balustrades to Saint Martin of Tours;

on his advent to the throne, so far as forgetting to order his

father's obsequies.

"H¨¦! sire!" suddenly exclaimed Jacques Coictier, "what

has become of the acute attack of illness for which your

majesty had me summoned?"

"Oh!" said the king, "I really suffer greatly, my gossip.

There is a hissing in my ear and fiery rakes rack my chest."

Coictier took the king's hand, and begun to feel of his pulse

with a knowing air.

"Look, Coppenole," said Rym, in a low voice. "Behold

him between Coictier and Tristan. They are his whole court.

A physician for himself, a headsman for others."

As he felt the king's pulse, Coictier assumed an air of

greater and greater alarm. Louis XI. watched him with some

anxiety. Coictier grew visibly more gloomy. The brave man

had no other farm than the king's bad health. He speculated

on it to the best of his ability.

"Oh! oh!" he murmured at length, "this is serious indeed."

"Is it not?" said the king, uneasily.

"~Pulsus creber, anhelans, crepitans, irregularis~," continued

the leech.

"~Pasque-Dieu~!"

"This may carry off its man in less than three days."

"Our Lady!" exclaimed the king. "And the remedy, gossip?"

"I am meditating upon that, sire."

He made Louis XI. put out his tongue, shook his head,

made a grimace, and in the very midst of these affectations,--

"Pardieu, sire," he suddenly said, "I must tell you that

there is a receivership of the royal prerogatives vacant, and

that I have a nephew."

"I give the receivership to your nephew, Gossip Jacques,"

replied the king; "but draw this fire from my breast."

"Since your majesty is so clement," replied the leech, "you

will not refuse to aid me a little in building my house, Rue

Saint-Andr¨¦-des-Arcs."

"Heugh!" said the king.

"I am at the end of my finances," pursued the doctor;

and it would really be a pity that the house should not have a

roof; not on account of the house, which is simple and thoroughly

bourgeois, but because of the paintings of Jehan Fourbault,

which adorn its wainscoating. There is a Diana flying

in the air, but so excellent, so tender, so delicate, of so

ingenuous an action, her hair so well coiffed and adorned with

a crescent, her flesh so white, that she leads into temptation

those who regard her too curiously. There is also a Ceres.

She is another very fair divinity. She is seated on sheaves

of wheat and crowned with a gallant garland of wheat ears

interlaced with salsify and other flowers. Never were seen

more amorous eyes, more rounded limbs, a nobler air, or a more

gracefully flowing skirt. She is one of the most innocent

and most perfect beauties whom the brush has ever produced."

"Executioner!" grumbled Louis XI., "what are you driving at?"

"I must have a roof for these paintings, sire, and, although

'tis but a small matter, I have no more money."

"How much doth your roof cost?"

"Why a roof of copper, embellished and gilt, two thousand

livres at the most."

"Ah, assassin!" cried the king, "He never draws out one

of my teeth which is not a diamond."

"Am I to have my roof?" said Coictier.

"Yes; and go to the devil, but cure me."

Jacques Coictier bowed low and said,--

"Sire, it is a repellent which will save you. We will

apply to your loins the great defensive composed of cerate,

Armenian bole, white of egg, oil, and vinegar. You will

continue your ptisan and we will answer for your majesty."

A burning candle does not attract one gnat alone. Master

Olivier, perceiving the king to be in a liberal mood, and judging

the moment to be propitious, approached in his turn.

"Sire--"

"What is it now?" said Louis XI.

"Sire, your majesty knoweth that Simon Radin is dead?"

"Well?"

"He was councillor to the king in the matter of the courts

of the treasury."

"Well?"

"Sire, his place is vacant."

As he spoke thus, Master Olivier's haughty face quitted its

arrogant expression for a lowly one. It is the only change

which ever takes place in a courtier's visage. The king

looked him well in the face and said in a dry tone,--"I

understand."

He resumed,

"Master Olivier, the Marshal de Boucicaut was wont to say,

'There's no master save the king, there are no fishes save

in the sea.' I see that you agree with Monsieur de Boucicaut.

Now listen to this; we have a good memory. In '68

we made you valet of our chamber: in '69, guardian of the

fortress of the bridge of Saint-Cloud, at a hundred livres

of Tournay in wages (you wanted them of Paris). In November,

'73, by letters given to Gergeole, we instituted you

keeper of the Wood of Vincennes, in the place of Gilbert

Acle, equerry; in '75, gruyer* of the forest of Rouvray-lez-

Saint-Cloud, in the place of Jacques le Maire; in '78, we

graciously settled on you, by letters patent sealed doubly

with green wax, an income of ten livres parisis, for you and

your wife, on the Place of the Merchants, situated at the

School Saint-Germain; in '79, we made you gruyer of the

forest of Senart, in place of that poor Jehan Daiz; then

captain of the Chateau of Loches; then governor of Saint-

Quentin; then captain of the bridge of Meulan, of which

you cause yourself to be called comte. Out of the five sols

fine paid by every barber who shaves on a festival day, there

are three sols for you and we have the rest. We have been

good enough to change your name of Le Mauvais (The Evil),

which resembled your face too closely. In '76, we granted

you, to the great displeasure of our nobility, armorial

bearings of a thousand colors, which give you the breast of

a peacock. ~Pasque-Dieu~! Are not you surfeited? Is not the

draught of fishes sufficiently fine and miraculous? Are you

not afraid that one salmon more will make your boat sink?

Pride will be your ruin, gossip. Ruin and disgrace always

press hard on the heels of pride. Consider this and hold

your tongue."

* A lord having a right on the woods of his vassals.

These words, uttered with severity, made Master Olivier's

face revert to its insolence.

"Good!" he muttered, almost aloud, "'tis easy to see that

the king is ill to-day; he giveth all to the leech."

Louis XI. far from being irritated by this petulant insult,

resumed with some gentleness, "Stay, I was forgetting that I

made you my ambassador to Madame Marie, at Ghent. Yes,

gentlemen," added the king turning to the Flemings, "this

man hath been an ambassador. There, my gossip," he pursued,

addressing Master Olivier, "let us not get angry; we

are old friends. 'Tis very late. We have terminated

our labors. Shave me."

Our readers have not, without doubt, waited until the

present moment to recognize in Master Olivier that terrible

Figaro whom Providence, the great maker of dramas, mingled

so artistically in the long and bloody comedy of the reign of

Louis XI. We will not here undertake to develop that singular

figure. This barber of the king had three names. At

court he was politely called Olivier le Daim (the Deer);

among the people Olivier the Devil. His real name was

Olivier le Mauvais.

Accordingly, Olivier le Mauvais remained motionless, sulking

at the king, and glancing askance at Jacques Coictier.

"Yes, yes, the physician!" he said between his teeth.

"Ah, yes, the physician!" retorted Louis XI., with singular

good humor; "the physician has more credit than you.

'Tis very simple; he has taken hold upon us by the whole

body, and you hold us only by the chin. Come, my poor

barber, all will come right. What would you say and what

would become of your office if I were a king like Chilperic,

whose gesture consisted in holding his beard in one hand?

Come, gossip mine, fulfil your office, shave me. Go get what

you need therefor."

Olivier perceiving that the king had made up his mind to

laugh, and that there was no way of even annoying him, went

off grumbling to execute his orders.

The king rose, approached the window, and suddenly opening

it with extraordinary agitation,--

"Oh! yes!" he exclaimed, clapping his hands, "yonder is

a redness in the sky over the City. 'Tis the bailiff burning.

It can be nothing else but that. Ah! my good people! here

you are aiding me at last in tearing down the rights of

lordship!"

Then turning towards the Flemings: "Come, look at this,

gentlemen. Is it not a fire which gloweth yonder?"

The two men of Ghent drew near.

"A great fire," said Guillaume Rym.

"Oh!" exclaimed Coppenole, whose eyes suddenly flashed,

"that reminds me of the burning of the house of the Seigneur

d'Hymbercourt. There must be a goodly revolt yonder."

"You think so, Master Coppenole?" And Louis XI.'s

glance was almost as joyous as that of the hosier. "Will it

not be difficult to resist?"

"Cross of God! Sire! Your majesty will damage many companies

of men of war thereon."

"Ah! I! 'tis different," returned the king. "If I willed."

The hosier replied hardily,--

"If this revolt be what I suppose, sire, you might will in vain."

"Gossip," said Louis XI., "with the two companies of my

unattached troops and one discharge of a serpentine, short

work is made of a populace of louts."

The hosier, in spite of the signs made to him by Guillaume

Rym, appeared determined to hold his own against the king.

"Sire, the Swiss were also louts. Monsieur the Duke of

Burgundy was a great gentleman, and he turned up his nose

at that rabble rout. At the battle of Grandson, sire, he

cried: 'Men of the cannon! Fire on the villains!' and he

swore by Saint-George. But Advoyer Scharnachtal hurled himself

on the handsome duke with his battle-club and his people, and

when the glittering Burgundian army came in contact with

these peasants in bull hides, it flew in pieces like a pane

of glass at the blow of a pebble. Many lords were then

slain by low-born knaves; and Monsieur de Chateau-Guyon,

the greatest seigneur in Burgundy, was found dead, with his

gray horse, in a little marsh meadow."

"Friend," returned the king, "you are speaking of a battle.

The question here is of a mutiny. And I will gain the upper

hand of it as soon as it shall please me to frown."

The other replied indifferently,--

"That may be, sire; in that case, 'tis because the people's

hour hath not yet come."

Guillaume Rym considered it incumbent on him to intervene,--

"Master Coppenole, you are speaking to a puissant king."

"I know it," replied the hosier, gravely.

"Let him speak, Monsieur Rym, my friend," said the king;

"I love this frankness of speech. My father, Charles the

Seventh, was accustomed to say that the truth was ailing; I

thought her dead, and that she had found no confessor. Master

Coppenole undeceiveth me."

Then, laying his hand familiarly on Coppenole's shoulder,--

"You were saying, Master Jacques?"

"I say, sire, that you may possibly be in the right, that the

hour of the people may not yet have come with you."

Louis XI. gazed at him with his penetrating eye,--

"And when will that hour come, master?"

"You will hear it strike."

"On what clock, if you please?"

Coppenole, with his tranquil and rustic countenance, made

the king approach the window.

"Listen, sire! There is here a donjon keep, a belfry,

cannons, bourgeois, soldiers; when the belfry shall hum, when

the cannons shall roar, when the donjon shall fall in ruins

amid great noise, when bourgeois and soldiers shall howl and

slay each other, the hour will strike."

Louis's face grew sombre and dreamy. He remained

silent for a moment, then he gently patted with his hand

the thick wall of the donjon, as one strokes the haunches of

a steed.

"Oh! no!" said he. "You will not crumble so easily, will

you, my good Bastille?"

And turning with an abrupt gesture towards the sturdy Fleming,--

"Have you never seen a revolt, Master Jacques?"

"I have made them," said the hosier.

"How do you set to work to make a revolt?" said the king.

"Ah!" replied Coppenole, "'tis not very difficult. There

are a hundred ways. In the first place, there must be

discontent in the city. The thing is not uncommon. And then,

the character of the inhabitants. Those of Ghent are easy to

stir into revolt. They always love the prince's son; the prince,

never. Well! One morning, I will suppose, some one enters

my shop, and says to me: 'Father Coppenole, there is this

and there is that, the Demoiselle of Flanders wishes to save

her ministers, the grand bailiff is doubling the impost on

shagreen, or something else,'--what you will. I leave my

work as it stands, I come out of my hosier's stall, and I shout:

'To the sack?' There is always some smashed cask at hand.

I mount it, and I say aloud, in the first words that occur to

me, what I have on my heart; and when one is of the people,

sire, one always has something on the heart: Then people

troop up, they shout, they ring the alarm bell, they arm the

louts with what they take from the soldiers, the market people

join in, and they set out. And it will always be thus, so long

as there are lords in the seignories, bourgeois in the bourgs,

and peasants in the country."

"And against whom do you thus rebel?" inquired the king;

"against your bailiffs? against your lords?"

"Sometimes; that depends. Against the duke, also, sometimes."

Louis XI. returned and seated himself, saying, with a smile,--

"Ah! here they have only got as far as the bailiffs."

At that instant Olivier le Daim returned. He was followed

by two pages, who bore the king's toilet articles; but what

struck Louis XI. was that he was also accompanied by the

provost of Paris and the chevalier of the watch, who appeared

to be in consternation. The spiteful barber also wore an air

of consternation, which was one of contentment beneath, however.

It was he who spoke first.

"Sire, I ask your majesty's pardon for the calamitous news

which I bring."

The king turned quickly and grazed the mat on the floor

with the feet of his chair,--

"What does this mean?"

"Sire," resumed Olivier le Daim, with the malicious air of

a man who rejoices that he is about to deal a violent blow,

"'tis not against the bailiff of the courts that this popular

sedition is directed."

"Against whom, then?"

"Against you, sire?'

The aged king rose erect and straight as a young man,--

"Explain yourself, Olivier! And guard your head well,

gossip; for I swear to you by the cross of Saint-L? that, if

you lie to us at this hour, the sword which severed the head

of Monsieur de Luxembourg is not so notched that it cannot

yet sever yours!"

The oath was formidable; Louis XI. had only sworn twice

in the course of his life by the cross of Saint-L?.

Olivier opened his mouth to reply.

"Sire--"

"On your knees!" interrupted the king violently. "Tristan,

have an eye to this man."

Olivier knelt down and said coldly,--

"Sire, a sorceress was condemned to death by your court of

parliament. She took refuge in Notre-Dame. The people are

trying to take her from thence by main force. Monsieur the

provost and monsieur the chevalier of the watch, who have

just come from the riot, are here to give me the lie if this is

not the truth. The populace is besieging Notre-Dame."

"Yes, indeed!" said the king in a low voice, all pale and

trembling with wrath. "Notre-Dame! They lay siege to our

Lady, my good mistress in her cathedral!--Rise, Olivier.

You are right. I give you Simon Radin's charge. You are

right. 'Tis I whom they are attacking. The witch is under

the protection of this church, the church is under my protection.

And I thought that they were acting against the bailiff!

'Tis against myself!"

Then, rendered young by fury, he began to walk up and

down with long strides. He no longer laughed, he was

terrible, he went and came; the fox was changed into a hyaena.

He seemed suffocated to such a degree that he could not

speak; his lips moved, and his fleshless fists were clenched.

All at once he raised his head, his hollow eye appeared full

of light, and his voice burst forth like a clarion: "Down with

them, Tristan! A heavy hand for these rascals! Go, Tristan,

my friend! slay! slay!"

This eruption having passed, he returned to his seat, and

said with cold and concentrated wrath,--

"Here, Tristan! There are here with us in the Bastille

the fifty lances of the Vicomte de Gif, which makes three

hundred horse: you will take them. There is also the company

of our unattached archers of Monsieur de Chateaupers: you

will take it. You are provost of the marshals; you have the

men of your provostship: you will take them. At the H?tel

Saint-Pol you will find forty archers of monsieur the

dauphin's new guard: you will take them. And, with all

these, you will hasten to Notre-Dame. Ah! messieurs, louts

of Paris, do you fling yourselves thus against the crown of

France, the sanctity of Notre-Dame, and the peace of this

commonwealth! Exterminate, Tristan! exterminate! and let

not a single one escape, except it be for Montfau?on."

Tristan bowed. "'Tis well, sire."

He added, after a silence, "And what shall I do with the

sorceress?"

This question caused the king to meditate.

"Ah!" said he, "the sorceress! Monsieur d'Estouteville,

what did the people wish to do with her?"

"Sire," replied the provost of Paris, "I imagine that since

the populace has come to tear her from her asylum in Notre-

Dame, 'tis because that impunity wounds them, and they

desire to hang her."

The king appeared to reflect deeply: then, addressing Tristan

l'Hermite, "Well! gossip, exterminate the people and hang

the sorceress."

"That's it," said Rym in a low tone to Coppenole, "punish

the people for willing a thing, and then do what they wish."

"Enough, sire," replied Tristan. "If the sorceress is

still in Notre-Dame, must she be seized in spite of the

sanctuary?"

"~Pasque-Dieu~! the sanctuary!" said the king, scratching

his ear. "But the woman must be hung, nevertheless."

Here, as though seized with a sudden idea, he flung himself

on his knees before his chair, took off his hat, placed it on the

seat, and gazing devoutly at one of the leaden amulets which

loaded it down, "Oh!" said he, with clasped hands, "our

Lady of Paris, my gracious patroness, pardon me. I will only

do it this once. This criminal must be punished. I assure

you, madame the virgin, my good mistress, that she is a

sorceress who is not worthy of your amiable protection.

You know, madame, that many very pious princes have

overstepped the privileges of the churches for the glory

of God and the necessities of the State. Saint Hugues, bishop

of England, permitted King Edward to hang a witch in his

church. Saint-Louis of France, my master, transgressed, with

the same object, the church of Monsieur Saint-Paul; and

Monsieur Alphonse, son of the king of Jerusalem, the very

church of the Holy Sepulchre. Pardon me, then, for this

once. Our Lady of Paris, I will never do so again, and I will

give you a fine statue of silver, like the one which I gave last

year to Our Lady of Ecouys. So be it."

He made the sign of the cross, rose, donned his hat once

more, and said to Tristan,--

"Be diligent, gossip. Take Monsieur Chateaupers with

you. You will cause the tocsin to be sounded. You will

crush the populace. You will seize the witch. 'Tis said.

And I mean the business of the execution to be done by you.

You will render me an account of it. Come, Olivier, I shall

not go to bed this night. Shave me."

Tristan l'Hermite bowed and departed. Then the king,

dismissing Rym and Coppenole with a gesture,--

"God guard you, messieurs, my good friends the Flemings.

Go, take a little repose. The night advances, and we are

nearer the morning than the evening."

Both retired and gained their apartments under the guidance

of the captain of the Bastille. Coppenole said to Guillaume Rym,--

"Hum! I have had enough of that coughing king! I have

seen Charles of Burgundy drunk, and he was less malignant

than Louis XI. when ailing."

"Master Jacques," replied Rym, "'tis because wine renders

kings less cruel than does barley water."

CHAPTER VI.