Текст книги "Собор Парижской богоматери / Notre-Dame de Paris"

The archdeacon and the bellringer, as we have already said, were but little loved by the populace great and small, in the vicinity of the cathedral. When Claude and Quasimodo went out together, which frequently happened, more than one evil word, more than one insulting jest greeted them on their way.

Sometimes a mischievous child risked his skin and bones for the ineffable pleasure of driving a pin into Quasimodo’s hump. Again, a young girl, more bold and saucy than was fitting, brushed the priest’s black robe, singing in his face the sardonic ditty, “niche, niche, the devil is caught.” Sometimes a group of squalid old crones, squatting in a file under the shadow of the steps to a porch, talked louldy as the archdeacon and the bellringer passed: “Hum! there’s a fellow whose soul is made like the other one’s body!”

But the insult generally passed unnoticed both by the priest and the bellringer. Quasimodo was too deaf to hear all these gracious things, and Claude was too dreamy.

Book Fourth

The hall was small, low. A table stood at one end, with a large arm-chair of carved oak, which belonged to the provost and was empty, and a stool on the left for the auditor, Master Florian. Below sat the clerk of the court, scribbling; opposite was the populace; and in front of the door, and in front of the table were many sergeants of the provostship in sleeveless jackets of violet camlet, with white crosses.

Now, the auditor was deaf. A slight defect in an auditor. Master Florian delivered judgment, nonetheless, without appeal and very suitably. Moreover, he had in the audience, a pitiless censor of his deeds and gestures, in the person of our friend Jehan Frollo du Moulin.

The guards brought in a prisoner.

It was Quasimodo, bound, roped, pinioned, and under good guard. He was silent and tranquil.

Master Florian, the auditor, turned over the document in the complaint entered against Quasimodo. He glanced at it and appeared to reflect for a moment. He threw back his head and half closed his eyes, for the sake of more majesty and impartiality, so that, at that moment, he was both deaf and blind. A double condition, without which no judge is perfect.

“Your name?”

Now this was a case where a deaf man were to question a deaf man.

Quasimodo, who didn’t know that a question had been addressed to him, continued to stare intently at the judge, and made no reply. The judge, being deaf, and not knowing the accused was deaf, thought that the latter had answered,—

“Very well. And your age?”

Again Quasimodo made no reply to this question. The judge supposed that it had been replied to, and continued,—

“Now, your profession?”

Still the same silence. The spectators had begun, meanwhile, to whisper together, and to exchange glances.

“That will do,” went on the auditor, when he supposed that the accused had finished his third reply. “You are accused before us of nocturnal disturbance, of a dishonorable act of violence upon the person of a foolish woman, and of rebellion and disloyalty towards the archers of the police of our lord, the king. Explain yourself upon all these points.—Clerk, have you written down what the prisoner has said thus far?”

At this unlucky question, a burst of laughter rose from the clerk’s table. It was caught by the audience and became so contagious that the two deaf men were forced to perceive it. Quasimodo turned round, shrugging his hump with disdain, while Master Florian, supposing that the laughter of the spectators had been provoked by some irreverent reply from the accused, rendered visible to him by that shrug of the shoulders, said,—

“You have uttered a reply, knave, which deserves the halter. Do you know to whom you are speaking?”

That reply made the laughter even louder. Quasimodo alone preserved his seriousness, for the good reason that he understood nothing of what was going on around him. The judge, more and more irritated, thought it his duty to continue in the same tone, hoping to bring the audience back to respect. We don’t know where Master Florian would have landed, if the door at the end of the room had not suddenly opened, and given entrance to the provost in person. At his entrance Master Florian said,—

“Monseigneur,” said he, “I demand such penalty as you shall deem fitting against the prisoner here present, for grave and aggravated offence against the court.”

And he seated himself, utterly breathless. Messire Robert d’Estouteville frowned and made a gesture so imperious and significant to Quasimodo, that the deaf man understood it.

The provost addressed him with severity, “What have you done that you have been brought hither, knave?”

The poor fellow, supposing that the provost was asking his name, broke the silence.

“Quasimodo.”

The reply matched the question so little that the wild laugh began to circulate once more, and Messire Robert exclaimed, red with wrath,—

“Are you mocking me also, you arrant knave?”

“Bellringer of Notre-Dame,” replied Quasimodo, supposing that what was required of him was to explain to the judge who he was.

“Bellringer!” interpolated the provost, who had waked up early enough to be in a sufficiently bad temper. “Bellringer! I’ll play you a chime of rods on your back through the squares of Paris! Do you hear, knave? Messieurs the sergeants of the mace, you will take me this knave to the pillory, you will flog him, and turn him for an hour.”

The clerk set to work to draw up the account of the sentence.

“’tis well adjudged!” cried the little scholar, Jehan Frollo du Moulin, from his corner.

In a few minutes the sentence was drawn up. Its tenor was simple and brief. The clerk presented it to the provost, who affixed his seal to it. Quasimodo gazed on the whole [9]9
  on the whole – на все происходящее


[Закрыть]with an indifferent and astonished air.

However, at the moment when Master Florian was reading the sentence, before signing it, the clerk felt himself moved with pity for the poor wretch of a prisoner, and, in the hope of softening the penalty, he approached as near the auditor’s ear as possible, and said, pointing to Quasimodo, “That man is deaf.”

He hoped that this would awaken Master Florian’s interest in behalf of the condemned man. But he was so hard of hearing that he did not catch a single word of what the clerk said to him; nevertheless, he wished to have the appearance of hearing, and replied, “Ah! ah! that is different; I did not know that. An hour more of the pillory, in that case.”

And he signed the sentence.

Three women were gossiping, coming up along the water’s edge from the Châtelet, towards the Grève.

Two of these women were dressed like good bourgeoises of Paris. Their fine white ruffs; their petticoats of linsey-woolsey, striped red and blue; their white knitted stockings, with clocks embroidered in colors. They wore neither rings nor gold crosses, simply from fear of being fined. Their companion was attired in very much the same manner; but there was that indescribable something about her dress and bearing which suggested the wife of a provincial notary. One could see that she had not been long in Paris. She was dragging a boy by his hand.

“Let us make haste, Demoiselle Mahiette,” said the youngest of the three, who was also the largest, to the provincial, “I greatly fear that we shall arrive too late; they told us at the Châtelet that they were going to take him directly to the pillory.”

One of the other ladies was preparing to reply, had not Mahiette suddenly exclaimed,—“Look at those people there at the end of the bridge! What are they looking at?”

“I hear the sounds of a tambourine. I believe ’tis the little Esmeralda, who plays her mummeries with her goat. Eh, be quick, Mahiette! You came to visit the curiosities of Paris. You saw the Flemings yesterday; you must see the gypsy today.”

“The gypsy!” said Mahiette, clasping her son’s arm forcibly. “God preserve me from it! She would steal my child from me! Come, Eustache!”

“That gypsy steal your child from you!” said Gervaise. “That’s a singular freak of yours!”

“Why do you run at the mere sight of gypsies?”

“Oh!” said Mahiette, seizing her child’s round head in both hands, “I don’t want that to happen to me which happened to Paquette la Chantefleurie.”

“Oh! you must tell us that story, my good Mahiette,” said Gervaise, taking her arm.

“Gladly,” replied Mahiette, “Paquette la Chantefleurie was a pretty maid of eighteen when I was one myself, that is to say, eighteen years ago. She was the daughter of Guybertant, minstrel of the barges at Reims. You see she was of good family. The mother was a good simple woman, unfortunately, and she taught Paquette nothing but a bit of embroidery and toy-making which did not prevent the little one from growing very large and remaining very poor. Poor girl! She and her mother earned a precarious living; they had been very destitute since the death of the minstrel. One winter, when the two women had neither fagots nor firewood, she was ruined. We immediately perceived that she was ruined, one Sunday when she came to church with a gold cross about her neck. At fourteen years of age! do you see? First it was the young Vicomte de Cormontreuil; then Messire Henri de Triancourt, equerry to the King; then less than that, Chiart de Beaulion, sergeant-at-arms; then, still descending, Guery Aubergeon, carver to the King; then, Macé de Frépus, barber to monsieur the dauphin; then, Thévenin le Moine, King’s cook; then, the men growing continually younger and less noble, she fell to Guillaume Racine, minstrel of the hurdy-gurdy and to Thierry de Mer, lamplighter. Then, poor Chantefleurie, she belonged to every one: she had reached the last sou of her gold piece.”

Mahiette sighed and wiped away a tear which trickled from her eyes.

“This is not an extraordinary history,” said Gervaise, “and in the whole of it I see nothing of any Egyptian women or children.”

“Patience!” resumed Mahiette, “In ’66, Paquette was brought to bed of a little girl. It was a great joy to her; she had long wished for a child. Her mother, good woman, was dead. Paquette had no longer any one to love in the world or any one to love her. She was alone, alone in this life, fingers were pointed at her, she was hooted at in the streets. And then, twenty had arrived: and twenty is an old age for amorous women. She could no longer work because, in becoming voluptuous, she had grown lazy; and she suffered much more because, in growing lazy, she had become voluptuous.”

“Yes,” remarked Gervaise, “but the gypsies?”

“So she was very sad, very miserable. I will not speak to you of her joy when she had a daughter. She nursed her child herself, made swaddling-bands for it out of her coverlet, the only one which she had on her bed, and no longer felt either cold or hunger. She became beautiful once more, in consequence of it. An old maid makes a young mother. Men came to see la Chantefleurie; she found customers again for her merchandise, and out of all these horrors she made baby clothes, caps and bibs, bodices with shoulder-straps of lace, and tiny bonnets. I saw her child when she was only four months old; she was a love! She had eyes larger than her mouth, and the most charming black hair, which already curled. She would have been a magnificent brunette at the age of sixteen!”

“The tale is fair and good,” said Gervaise in a low tone; “but where do gypsies come into all that?”

“Here,” replied Mahiette. “One day there arrived in Reims a very queer sort of people. They were beggars and vagabonds who were roaming over the country. They looked at your hand, and told you marvellous prophecies. Nevertheless, ugly rumors were in circulation in regard to them; about children stolen, purses cut, and human flesh devoured. The wise people said to the foolish: “Don’t go there!” and then went themselves on the sly. Poor Chantefleurie was seized with curiosity; she wished to know about herself, and whether her pretty little Agnès would not become some day Empress of Armenia, or something else. So she carried her to the Egyptians; and the Egyptian women fell to admiring the child, to the great joy of the mother. The child was not yet a year old. She was very much frightened by the Egyptians, and wept. But her mother kissed her more warmly and went away enchanted with the good fortune which the soothsayers had foretold for her Agnès. The next day she took advantage of a moment when the child was asleep on her bed, gently left the door a little way open, and ran to tell a neighbor. On her return, hearing no cries on the staircase, she said to herself: ‘Good! the child is still asleep!’ She found her door wider open than she had left it, but she entered, poor mother, and ran to the bed.—The child was no longer there, the place was empty. She flew out of the room, dashed down the stairs, and began to cry: ‘My child! who has my child? Who has taken my child?’ The street was deserted, the house isolated; no one could tell her anything about it. She went about the town, searched all the streets. During her absence, a neighbor had seen two gypsies ascend up to it with a bundle in their arms, then descend again, after closing the door. After their departure, something like the cries of a child were heard in Paquette’s room. The mother, burst into shrieks of laughter, ran to the room. Instead of her pretty little Agnès, so rosy and so fresh, there was a hideous little monster, lame, one-eyed, deformed. She burst out sobbing as though her heart were broken. I assure you that we were all weeping also. Our children are the marrow of our bones, you see. By that time the gypsies were gone. It was pitch dark. They could not be followed. On the next day, her hair turned gray gray. On the second day, she had disappeared.

“’Tis in truth, a frightful tale,” said Oudarde.

“I am no longer surprised you fear gypsies,” added Gervaise.

“What happened to the monster?”

“What monster?” asked Mahiette.

“The little gypsy monster left in Chantefleurie’s chamber.”

“Monseigneur the archbishop interested himself in the child of Egypt, exorcised it, blessed it, removed the devil carefully from its body, and sent it to Paris, to be exposed on the wooden bed at Notre-Dame, as a foundling.”

While chatting thus, the three worthy bourgeoises had arrived at the Place de Grève. They were taking cake to the Tour Roland, also called the Rat-Hole, which had become a place of sanctuary for penitent lepers and widows seeking refuge from the outside world. It is probable that the spectacle which at that moment attracted all looks in that direction, would have made them forget the Rat-Hole completely, if Eustache, six years of age, whom Mahiette was dragging along by the hand, had not abruptly recalled the object to them: “Mother,” said he, as though some instinct warned him that the Rat-Hole was behind him, “can I eat the cake now?”

This question aroused Mahiette’s attention.

“We are forgetting the recluse! Show me the Rat-Hole, that I may carry her her cake.”

“Immediately,” said Oudarde, “’tis a charity.”

This did not suit Eustache.

“Stop! My cake!” said he, rubbing both ears alternatively with his shoulders, which, in such cases, is the supreme sign of discontent.

The three women retraced their steps, and, on arriving in the vicinity of the Tour-Roland, Oudarde said to the other two,—

“We must not all three gaze into the hole at once, for fear of alarming the recluse. She knows me a little. I will give you warning when you can approach.”

She proceeded alone to the window. A moment later, she laid her finger on her lips, and made a sign to Mahiette to draw near and look.

Mahiette, much touched, stepped up in silence, on tiptoe, as though approaching the bedside of a dying person.

It was, in fact, a melancholy spectacle.

The cell was small, broader than it was long, with an arched ceiling. On the floor, in one corner, a woman was sitting, or rather, crouching. Her chin rested on her knees, which her crossed arms pressed forcibly to her breast. In truth, it was neither a woman, nor a man, nor a living being, nor a definite form; it was a figure, a sort of vision. It was with difficulty that one distinguished, beneath her hair which spread to the ground, a gaunt profile.

At intervals, her blue lips half opened to admit a breath, and trembled.

The three women, for Gervaise had rejoined Mahiette and Oudarde, gazed through the window. “Do not let us trouble her,” said Oudarde, in a low voice, “she is in her ecstasy; she is praying.”

Meanwhile, Mahiette thrust her head through the bars, and succeeded in casting a glance at the corner where the gaze of the unhappy woman was immovably riveted.

When she withdrew her head from the window.

“What do you call that woman?” she asked Oudarde.

Oudarde replied,—

“We call her Sister Gudule.”

“And I,” returned Mahiette, “call her Paquette la Chantefleurie.”

Then, laying her finger on her lips, she motioned to the astounded Oudarde to thrust her head through the window and look.

Oudarde looked and beheld, in the corner, a tiny shoe of pink satin, embroidered with a thousand fanciful designs in gold and silver.

Gervaise looked after Oudarde, and then the three women, gazing upon the unhappy mother, began to weep.

Gervaise, the most curious of the three, and consequently the least sensitive, tried to make the recluse speak:

“Sister! Sister Gudule!”

She repeated this call three times, raising her voice each time. The recluse did not move.

Oudarde tried as well. The same silence; the same immobility.

“Then we must leave the cake on the window,” said Oudarde.

Eustache suddenly perceived that the three women were gazing at something through the window, and shouted, “Mother, let me see too!”

At the sound of this clear, fresh, ringing child’s voice, the recluse trembled; she turned her head with the sharp movement, and she looked upon the child.

“Oh my God!” she suddenly exclaimed, hiding her head on her knees, and it seemed as though her hoarse voice tore her chest as it passed from it, “do not show me those of others!”

“Good day, madam,” said the child, gravely.

Nevertheless, this shock had, so to speak, awakened the recluse.

“Poor woman!” said Oudarde, with great compassion, “would you like a little fire?”

She shook her head.

“Come,” said Gervaise, seized in her turn with an impulse of charity, and unfastening her woolen cloak, “here is a cloak which is a little warmer than yours.”

She refused the cloak as well. Her voice quivered, her eyes flashed, she had raised herself upon her knees; suddenly she extended her thin, white hand towards the child. “Take away that child!” she cried. “The Egyptian woman is about to pass by.”

Then she fell face downward on the earth, and her forehead struck the stone. A moment later she moved, on her knees and elbows, to the corner where the little shoe was. They no longer saw her; but they heard dull blows like those of a head in contact with a wall. Then, after one of these blows, they heard no more.

“Can she have killed herself?” said Gervaise. “Sister! Sister Gudule!”

“Sister Gudule!” repeated Oudarde.

“Ah! Good heavens! She no longer moves!” resumed Gervaise; “is she dead? Gudule! Gudule!”

Mahiette, choked to such a point that she could not speak, made an effort. “Wait,” said she. Then bending towards the window, “Paquette!” she said, “Paquette le Chantefleurie!”

The recluse trembled all over, rose erect on her bare feet, and leaped at the window with eyes so glaring that Mahiette and Oudarde, and the other woman and the child recoiled.

Meanwhile, the sinister face of the recluse appeared to the vars. “Oh! oh!” she cried, with an appalling laugh; “’tis the Egyptian who is calling me!”

At that moment, a scene which was passing at the pillory caught her wild eye. She stretched her two skeleton arms from her cell, and shrieked, “So ’tis thou once more, daughter of Egypt! ’Tis thou who callest me, stealer of children! Well! Be thou accursed! accursed! accursed! accursed!”