الفصل الفصل 31 · THE BELLS.

. THE BELLS.

After the morning in the pillory, the neighbors of Notre-Dame

thought they noticed that Quasimodo’s ardor for ringing had grown

cool. Formerly, there had been peals for every occasion, long

morning serenades, which lasted from prime to compline; peals

from the belfry for a high mass, rich scales drawn over the

smaller bells for a wedding, for a christening, and mingling in

the air like a rich embroidery of all sorts of charming sounds.

The old church, all vibrating and sonorous, was in a perpetual

joy of bells. One was constantly conscious of the presence of a

spirit of noise and caprice, who sang through all those mouths of

brass. Now that spirit seemed to have departed; the cathedral

seemed gloomy, and gladly remained silent; festivals and funerals

had the simple peal, dry and bare, demanded by the ritual,

nothing more. Of the double noise which constitutes a church, the

organ within, the bell without, the organ alone remained. One

would have said that there was no longer a musician in the

belfry. Quasimodo was always there, nevertheless; what, then, had

happened to him? Was it that the shame and despair of the pillory

still lingered in the bottom of his heart, that the lashes of his

tormentor’s whip reverberated unendingly in his soul, and that

the sadness of such treatment had wholly extinguished in him even

his passion for the bells? or was it that Marie had a rival in

the heart of the bellringer of Notre-Dame, and that the great

bell and her fourteen sisters were neglected for something more

amiable and more beautiful?

It chanced that, in the year of grace 1482, Annunciation Day fell

on Tuesday, the twenty-fifth of March. That day the air was so

pure and light that Quasimodo felt some returning affection for

his bells. He therefore ascended the northern tower while the

beadle below was opening wide the doors of the church, which were

then enormous panels of stout wood, covered with leather,

bordered with nails of gilded iron, and framed in carvings “very

artistically elaborated.”

On arriving in the lofty bell chamber, Quasimodo gazed for some

time at the six bells and shook his head sadly, as though

groaning over some foreign element which had interposed itself in

his heart between them and him. But when he had set them to

swinging, when he felt that cluster of bells moving under his

hand, when he saw, for he did not hear it, the palpitating octave

ascend and descend that sonorous scale, like a bird hopping from

branch to branch; when the demon Music, that demon who shakes a

sparkling bundle of strette, trills and arpeggios, had taken

possession of the poor deaf man, he became happy once more, he

forgot everything, and his heart expanding, made his face beam.

He went and came, he beat his hands together, he ran from rope to

rope, he animated the six singers with voice and gesture, like

the leader of an orchestra who is urging on intelligent

musicians.

“Go on,” said he, “go on, go on, Gabrielle, pour out all thy

noise into the Place, ’tis a festival to-day. No laziness,

Thibauld; thou art relaxing; go on, go on, then, art thou rusted,

thou sluggard? That is well! quick! quick! let not thy clapper be

seen! Make them all deaf like me. That’s it, Thibauld, bravely

done! Guillaume! Guillaume! thou art the largest, and Pasquier is

the smallest, and Pasquier does best. Let us wager that those who

hear him will understand him better than they understand thee.

Good! good! my Gabrielle, stoutly, more stoutly! Eli! what are

you doing up aloft there, you two Moineaux (sparrows)? I do not

see you making the least little shred of noise. What is the

meaning of those beaks of copper which seem to be gaping when

they should sing? Come, work now, ’tis the Feast of the

Annunciation. The sun is fine, the chime must be fine also. Poor

Guillaume! thou art all out of breath, my big fellow!”

He was wholly absorbed in spurring on his bells, all six of which

vied with each other in leaping and shaking their shining

haunches, like a noisy team of Spanish mules, pricked on here and

there by the apostrophes of the muleteer.

All at once, on letting his glance fall between the large slate

scales which cover the perpendicular wall of the bell tower at a

certain height, he beheld on the square a young girl,

fantastically dressed, stop, spread out on the ground a carpet,

on which a small goat took up its post, and a group of spectators

collect around her. This sight suddenly changed the course of his

ideas, and congealed his enthusiasm as a breath of air congeals

melted rosin. He halted, turned his back to the bells, and

crouched down behind the projecting roof of slate, fixing upon

the dancer that dreamy, sweet, and tender look which had already

astonished the archdeacon on one occasion. Meanwhile, the

forgotten bells died away abruptly and all together, to the great

disappointment of the lovers of bell ringing, who were listening

in good faith to the peal from above the Pont du Change, and who

went away dumbfounded, like a dog who has been offered a bone and

given a stone.