الفصل الفصل 9 · KISSES FOR BLOWS.

. KISSES FOR BLOWS.

When Pierre Gringoire arrived on the Place de Grève, he was

paralyzed. He had directed his course across the Pont aux

Meuniers, in order to avoid the rabble on the Pont au Change, and

the pennons of Jehan Fourbault; but the wheels of all the

bishop’s mills had splashed him as he passed, and his doublet was

drenched; it seemed to him besides, that the failure of his piece

had rendered him still more sensible to cold than usual. Hence he

made haste to draw near the bonfire, which was burning

magnificently in the middle of the Place. But a considerable

crowd formed a circle around it.

“Accursed Parisians!” he said to himself (for Gringoire, like a

true dramatic poet, was subject to monologues) “there they are

obstructing my fire! Nevertheless, I am greatly in need of a

chimney corner; my shoes drink in the water, and all those cursed

mills wept upon me! That devil of a Bishop of Paris, with his

mills! I’d just like to know what use a bishop can make of a

mill! Does he expect to become a miller instead of a bishop? If

only my malediction is needed for that, I bestow it upon him! and

his cathedral, and his mills! Just see if those boobies will put

themselves out! Move aside! I’d like to know what they are doing

there! They are warming themselves, much pleasure may it give

them! They are watching a hundred fagots burn; a fine spectacle!”

On looking more closely, he perceived that the circle was much

larger than was required simply for the purpose of getting warm

at the king’s fire, and that this concourse of people had not

been attracted solely by the beauty of the hundred fagots which

were burning.

In a vast space left free between the crowd and the fire, a young

girl was dancing.

Whether this young girl was a human being, a fairy, or an angel,

is what Gringoire, sceptical philosopher and ironical poet that

he was, could not decide at the first moment, so fascinated was

he by this dazzling vision.

She was not tall, though she seemed so, so boldly did her slender

form dart about. She was swarthy of complexion, but one divined

that, by day, her skin must possess that beautiful golden tone of

the Andalusians and the Roman women. Her little foot, too, was

Andalusian, for it was both pinched and at ease in its graceful

shoe. She danced, she turned, she whirled rapidly about on an old

Persian rug, spread negligently under her feet; and each time

that her radiant face passed before you, as she whirled, her

great black eyes darted a flash of lightning at you.

All around her, all glances were riveted, all mouths open; and,

in fact, when she danced thus, to the humming of the Basque

tambourine, which her two pure, rounded arms raised above her

head, slender, frail and vivacious as a wasp, with her corsage of

gold without a fold, her variegated gown puffing out, her bare

shoulders, her delicate limbs, which her petticoat revealed at

times, her black hair, her eyes of flame, she was a supernatural

creature.

“In truth,” said Gringoire to himself, “she is a salamander, she

is a nymph, she is a goddess, she is a bacchante of the Menelean

Mount!”

At that moment, one of the salamander’s braids of hair became

unfastened, and a piece of yellow copper which was attached to

it, rolled to the ground.

“Hé, no!” said he, “she is a gypsy!”

All illusions had disappeared.

She began her dance once more; she took from the ground two

swords, whose points she rested against her brow, and which she

made to turn in one direction, while she turned in the other; it

was a purely gypsy effect. But, disenchanted though Gringoire

was, the whole effect of this picture was not without its charm

and its magic; the bonfire illuminated, with a red flaring light,

which trembled, all alive, over the circle of faces in the crowd,

on the brow of the young girl, and at the background of the Place

cast a pallid reflection, on one side upon the ancient, black,

and wrinkled façade of the House of Pillars, on the other, upon

the old stone gibbet.

Among the thousands of visages which that light tinged with

scarlet, there was one which seemed, even more than all the

others, absorbed in contemplation of the dancer. It was the face

of a man, austere, calm, and sombre. This man, whose costume was

concealed by the crowd which surrounded him, did not appear to be

more than five and thirty years of age; nevertheless, he was

bald; he had merely a few tufts of thin, gray hair on his

temples; his broad, high forehead had begun to be furrowed with

wrinkles, but his deep-set eyes sparkled with extraordinary

youthfulness, an ardent life, a profound passion. He kept them

fixed incessantly on the gypsy, and, while the giddy young girl

of sixteen danced and whirled, for the pleasure of all, his

revery seemed to become more and more sombre. From time to time,

a smile and a sigh met upon his lips, but the smile was more

melancholy than the sigh.

The young girl, stopped at length, breathless, and the people

applauded her lovingly.

“Djali!” said the gypsy.

Then Gringoire saw come up to her, a pretty little white goat,

alert, wide-awake, glossy, with gilded horns, gilded hoofs, and

gilded collar, which he had not hitherto perceived, and which had

remained lying curled up on one corner of the carpet watching his

mistress dance.

“Djali!” said the dancer, “it is your turn.”

And, seating herself, she gracefully presented her tambourine to

the goat.

“Djali,” she continued, “what month is this?”

The goat lifted its fore foot, and struck one blow upon the

tambourine. It was the first month in the year, in fact.

“Djali,” pursued the young girl, turning her tambourine round,

“what day of the month is this?”

Djali raised his little gilt hoof, and struck six blows on the

tambourine.

“Djali,” pursued the Egyptian, with still another movement of the

tambourine, “what hour of the day is it?”

Djali struck seven blows. At that moment, the clock of the Pillar

House rang out seven.

The people were amazed.

“There’s sorcery at the bottom of it,” said a sinister voice in

the crowd. It was that of the bald man, who never removed his

eyes from the gypsy.

She shuddered and turned round; but applause broke forth and

drowned the morose exclamation.

It even effaced it so completely from her mind, that she

continued to question her goat.

“Djali, what does Master Guichard Grand-Remy, captain of the

pistoliers of the town do, at the procession of Candlemas?”

Djali reared himself on his hind legs, and began to bleat,

marching along with so much dainty gravity, that the entire

circle of spectators burst into a laugh at this parody of the

interested devoutness of the captain of pistoliers.

“Djali,” resumed the young girl, emboldened by her growing

success, “how preaches Master Jacques Charmolue, procurator to

the king in the ecclesiastical court?”

The goat seated himself on his hind quarters, and began to bleat,

waving his fore feet in so strange a manner, that, with the

exception of the bad French, and worse Latin, Jacques Charmolue

was there complete,—gesture, accent, and attitude.

And the crowd applauded louder than ever.

“Sacrilege! profanation!” resumed the voice of the bald man.

The gypsy turned round once more.

“Ah!” said she, “’tis that villanous man!” Then, thrusting her

under lip out beyond the upper, she made a little pout, which

appeared to be familiar to her, executed a pirouette on her heel,

and set about collecting in her tambourine the gifts of the

multitude.

Big blanks, little blanks, targes[8] and eagle liards showered

into it.

All at once, she passed in front of Gringoire. Gringoire put his

hand so recklessly into his pocket that she halted. “The devil!”

said the poet, finding at the bottom of his pocket the reality,

that is, to say, a void. In the meantime, the pretty girl stood

there, gazing at him with her big eyes, and holding out her

tambourine to him and waiting. Gringoire broke into a violent

perspiration.

If he had all Peru in his pocket, he would certainly have given

it to the dancer; but Gringoire had not Peru, and, moreover,

America had not yet been discovered.

Happily, an unexpected incident came to his rescue.

“Will you take yourself off, you Egyptian grasshopper?” cried a

sharp voice, which proceeded from the darkest corner of the

Place.

The young girl turned round in affright. It was no longer the

voice of the bald man; it was the voice of a woman, bigoted and

malicious.

However, this cry, which alarmed the gypsy, delighted a troop of

children who were prowling about there.

“It is the recluse of the Tour-Roland,” they exclaimed, with wild

laughter, “it is the sacked nun who is scolding! Hasn’t she

supped? Let’s carry her the remains of the city refreshments!”

All rushed towards the Pillar House.

In the meanwhile, Gringoire had taken advantage of the dancer’s

embarrassment, to disappear. The children’s shouts had reminded

him that he, also, had not supped, so he ran to the public

buffet. But the little rascals had better legs than he; when he

arrived, they had stripped the table. There remained not so much

as a miserable _camichon_ at five sous the pound. Nothing

remained upon the wall but slender fleurs-de-lis, mingled with

rose bushes, painted in 1434 by Mathieu Biterne. It was a meagre

supper.

It is an unpleasant thing to go to bed without supper, it is a

still less pleasant thing not to sup and not to know where one is

to sleep. That was Gringoire’s condition. No supper, no shelter;

he saw himself pressed on all sides by necessity, and he found

necessity very crabbed. He had long ago discovered the truth,

that Jupiter created men during a fit of misanthropy, and that

during a wise man’s whole life, his destiny holds his philosophy

in a state of siege. As for himself, he had never seen the

blockade so complete; he heard his stomach sounding a parley, and

he considered it very much out of place that evil destiny should

capture his philosophy by famine.

This melancholy revery was absorbing him more and more, when a

song, quaint but full of sweetness, suddenly tore him from it. It

was the young gypsy who was singing.

Her voice was like her dancing, like her beauty. It was

indefinable and charming; something pure and sonorous, aerial,

winged, so to speak. There were continual outbursts, melodies,

unexpected cadences, then simple phrases strewn with aerial and

hissing notes; then floods of scales which would have put a

nightingale to rout, but in which harmony was always present;

then soft modulations of octaves which rose and fell, like the

bosom of the young singer. Her beautiful face followed, with

singular mobility, all the caprices of her song, from the wildest

inspiration to the chastest dignity. One would have pronounced

her now a mad creature, now a queen.

The words which she sang were in a tongue unknown to Gringoire,

and which seemed to him to be unknown to herself, so little

relation did the expression which she imparted to her song bear

to the sense of the words. Thus, these four lines, in her mouth,

were madly gay,—

Un cofre de gran riqueza

Hallaron dentro un pilar,

Dentro del, nuevas banderas

Con figuras de espantar.[9]

And an instant afterwards, at the accents which she imparted to

this stanza,—

Alarabes de cavallo

Sin poderse menear,

Con espadas, y los cuellos,

Ballestas de buen echar,

Gringoire felt the tears start to his eyes. Nevertheless, her

song breathed joy, most of all, and she seemed to sing like a

bird, from serenity and heedlessness.

The gypsy’s song had disturbed Gringoire’s revery as the swan

disturbs the water. He listened in a sort of rapture, and

forgetfulness of everything. It was the first moment in the

course of many hours when he did not feel that he suffered.

The moment was brief.

The same woman’s voice, which had interrupted the gypsy’s dance,

interrupted her song.

“Will you hold your tongue, you cricket of hell?” it cried, still

from the same obscure corner of the place.

The poor “cricket” stopped short. Gringoire covered up his ears.

“Oh!” he exclaimed, “accursed saw with missing teeth, which comes

to break the lyre!”

Meanwhile, the other spectators murmured like himself; “To the

devil with the sacked nun!” said some of them. And the old

invisible kill-joy might have had occasion to repent of her

aggressions against the gypsy had their attention not been

diverted at this moment by the procession of the Pope of the

Fools, which, after having traversed many streets and squares,

debouched on the Place de Grève, with all its torches and all its

uproar.

This procession, which our readers have seen set out from the

Palais de Justice, had organized on the way, and had been

recruited by all the knaves, idle thieves, and unemployed

vagabonds in Paris; so that it presented a very respectable

aspect when it arrived at the Grève.

First came Egypt. The Duke of Egypt headed it, on horseback, with

his counts on foot holding his bridle and stirrups for him;

behind them, the male and female Egyptians, pell-mell, with their

little children crying on their shoulders; all—duke, counts, and

populace—in rags and tatters. Then came the Kingdom of Argot;

that is to say, all the thieves of France, arranged according to

the order of their dignity; the minor people walking first. Thus

defiled by fours, with the divers insignia of their grades, in

that strange faculty, most of them lame, some cripples, others

one-armed, shop clerks, pilgrims, _hubins_, bootblacks,

thimble-riggers, street arabs, beggars, the blear-eyed beggars,

thieves, the weakly, vagabonds, merchants, sham soldiers,

goldsmiths, passed masters of pickpockets, isolated thieves. A

catalogue that would weary Homer. In the centre of the conclave

of the passed masters of pickpockets, one had some difficulty in

distinguishing the King of Argot, the grand coësre, so called,

crouching in a little cart drawn by two big dogs. After the

kingdom of the Argotiers, came the Empire of Galilee. Guillaume

Rousseau, Emperor of the Empire of Galilee, marched majestically

in his robe of purple, spotted with wine, preceded by buffoons

wrestling and executing military dances; surrounded by his

macebearers, his pickpockets and clerks of the chamber of

accounts. Last of all came the corporation of law clerks, with

its maypoles crowned with flowers, its black robes, its music

worthy of the orgy, and its large candles of yellow wax. In the

centre of this crowd, the grand officers of the Brotherhood of

Fools bore on their shoulders a litter more loaded down with

candles than the reliquary of Sainte-Geneviève in time of pest;

and on this litter shone resplendent, with crosier, cope, and

mitre, the new Pope of the Fools, the bellringer of Notre-Dame,

Quasimodo the hunchback.

Each section of this grotesque procession had its own music. The

Egyptians made their drums and African tambourines resound. The

slang men, not a very musical race, still clung to the goat’s

horn trumpet and the Gothic rubebbe of the twelfth century. The

Empire of Galilee was not much more advanced; among its music one

could hardly distinguish some miserable rebec, from the infancy

of the art, still imprisoned in the _ré-la-mi_. But it was around

the Pope of the Fools that all the musical riches of the epoch

were displayed in a magnificent discord. It was nothing but

soprano rebecs, counter-tenor rebecs, and tenor rebecs, not to

reckon the flutes and brass instruments. Alas! our readers will

remember that this was Gringoire’s orchestra.

It is difficult to convey an idea of the degree of proud and

blissful expansion to which the sad and hideous visage of

Quasimodo had attained during the transit from the Palais de

Justice, to the Place de Grève. It was the first enjoyment of

self-love that he had ever experienced. Down to that day, he had

known only humiliation, disdain for his condition, disgust for

his person. Hence, deaf though he was, he enjoyed, like a

veritable pope, the acclamations of that throng, which he hated

because he felt that he was hated by it. What mattered it that

his people consisted of a pack of fools, cripples, thieves, and

beggars? it was still a people and he was its sovereign. And he

accepted seriously all this ironical applause, all this derisive

respect, with which the crowd mingled, it must be admitted, a

good deal of very real fear. For the hunchback was robust; for

the bandy-legged fellow was agile; for the deaf man was

malicious: three qualities which temper ridicule.

We are far from believing, however, that the new Pope of the

Fools understood both the sentiments which he felt and the

sentiments which he inspired. The spirit which was lodged in this

failure of a body had, necessarily, something incomplete and deaf

about it. Thus, what he felt at the moment was to him, absolutely

vague, indistinct, and confused. Only joy made itself felt, only

pride dominated. Around that sombre and unhappy face, there hung

a radiance.

It was, then, not without surprise and alarm, that at the very

moment when Quasimodo was passing the Pillar House, in that

semi-intoxicated state, a man was seen to dart from the crowd,

and to tear from his hands, with a gesture of anger, his crosier

of gilded wood, the emblem of his mock popeship.

This man, this rash individual, was the man with the bald brow,

who, a moment earlier, standing with the gypsy’s group had

chilled the poor girl with his words of menace and of hatred. He

was dressed in an ecclesiastical costume. At the moment when he

stood forth from the crowd, Gringoire, who had not noticed him up

to that time, recognized him: “Hold!” he said, with an

exclamation of astonishment. “Eh! ’tis my master in Hermes, Dom

Claude Frollo, the archdeacon! What the devil does he want of

that old one-eyed fellow? He’ll get himself devoured!”

A cry of terror arose, in fact. The formidable Quasimodo had

hurled himself from the litter, and the women turned aside their

eyes in order not to see him tear the archdeacon asunder.

He made one bound as far as the priest, looked at him, and fell

upon his knees.

The priest tore off his tiara, broke his crozier, and rent his

tinsel cope.

Quasimodo remained on his knees, with head bent and hands

clasped. Then there was established between them a strange

dialogue of signs and gestures, for neither of them spoke. The

priest, erect on his feet, irritated, threatening, imperious;

Quasimodo, prostrate, humble, suppliant. And, nevertheless, it is

certain that Quasimodo could have crushed the priest with his

thumb.

At length the archdeacon, giving Quasimodo’s powerful shoulder a

rough shake, made him a sign to rise and follow him.

Quasimodo rose.

Then the Brotherhood of Fools, their first stupor having passed

off, wished to defend their pope, so abruptly dethroned. The

Egyptians, the men of slang, and all the fraternity of law

clerks, gathered howling round the priest.

Quasimodo placed himself in front of the priest, set in play the

muscles of his athletic fists, and glared upon the assailants

with the snarl of an angry tiger.

The priest resumed his sombre gravity, made a sign to Quasimodo,

and retired in silence.

Quasimodo walked in front of him, scattering the crowd as he

passed.

When they had traversed the populace and the Place, the cloud of

curious and idle were minded to follow them. Quasimodo then

constituted himself the rearguard, and followed the archdeacon,

walking backwards, squat, surly, monstrous, bristling, gathering

up his limbs, licking his boar’s tusks, growling like a wild

beast, and imparting to the crowd immense vibrations, with a look

or a gesture.

Both were allowed to plunge into a dark and narrow street, where

no one dared to venture after them; so thoroughly did the mere

chimera of Quasimodo gnashing his teeth bar the entrance.

“Here’s a marvellous thing,” said Gringoire; “but where the deuce

shall I find some supper?”