Bab Bab 20 · MORE ABOUT CLAUDE FROLLO.

. MORE ABOUT CLAUDE FROLLO.

In 1482, Quasimodo was about twenty years of age; Claude Frollo,

about thirty-six. One had grown up, the other had grown old.

Claude Frollo was no longer the simple scholar of the college of

Torchi, the tender protector of a little child, the young and

dreamy philosopher who knew many things and was ignorant of many.

He was a priest, austere, grave, morose; one charged with souls;

monsieur the archdeacon of Josas, the bishop’s second acolyte,

having charge of the two deaneries of Montlhéry, and Châteaufort,

and one hundred and seventy-four country curacies. He was an

imposing and sombre personage, before whom the choir boys in alb

and in jacket trembled, as well as the machicots[25], and the

brothers of Saint-Augustine and the matutinal clerks of

Notre-Dame, when he passed slowly beneath the lofty arches of the

choir, majestic, thoughtful, with arms folded and his head so

bent upon his breast that all one saw of his face was his large,

bald brow.

Dom Claude Frollo had, however, abandoned neither science nor the

education of his young brother, those two occupations of his

life. But as time went on, some bitterness had been mingled with

these things which were so sweet. In the long run, says Paul

Diacre, the best lard turns rancid. Little Jehan Frollo, surnamed

(_du Moulin_) “of the Mill” because of the place where he had

been reared, had not grown up in the direction which Claude would

have liked to impose upon him. The big brother counted upon a

pious, docile, learned, and honorable pupil. But the little

brother, like those young trees which deceive the gardener’s

hopes and turn obstinately to the quarter whence they receive sun

and air, the little brother did not grow and did not multiply,

but only put forth fine bushy and luxuriant branches on the side

of laziness, ignorance, and debauchery. He was a regular devil,

and a very disorderly one, who made Dom Claude scowl; but very

droll and very subtle, which made the big brother smile.

Claude had confided him to that same college of Torchi where he

had passed his early years in study and meditation; and it was a

grief to him that this sanctuary, formerly edified by the name of

Frollo, should to-day be scandalized by it. He sometimes preached

Jehan very long and severe sermons, which the latter intrepidly

endured. After all, the young scapegrace had a good heart, as can

be seen in all comedies. But the sermon over, he none the less

tranquilly resumed his course of seditions and enormities. Now it

was a _béjaune_ or yellow beak (as they called the new arrivals

at the university), whom he had been mauling by way of welcome; a

precious tradition which has been carefully preserved to our own

day. Again, he had set in movement a band of scholars, who had

flung themselves upon a wine-shop in classic fashion, _quasi

classico excitati_, had then beaten the tavern-keeper “with

offensive cudgels,” and joyously pillaged the tavern, even to

smashing in the hogsheads of wine in the cellar. And then it was

a fine report in Latin, which the sub-monitor of Torchi carried

piteously to Dom Claude with this dolorous marginal

comment,—_Rixa; prima causa vinum optimum potatum_. Finally, it

was said, a thing quite horrible in a boy of sixteen, that his

debauchery often extended as far as the Rue de Glatigny.

Claude, saddened and discouraged in his human affections, by all

this, had flung himself eagerly into the arms of learning, that

sister which, at least does not laugh in your face, and which

always pays you, though in money that is sometimes a little

hollow, for the attention which you have paid to her. Hence, he

became more and more learned, and, at the same time, as a natural

consequence, more and more rigid as a priest, more and more sad

as a man. There are for each of us several parallelisms between

our intelligence, our habits, and our character, which develop

without a break, and break only in the great disturbances of

life.

As Claude Frollo had passed through nearly the entire circle of

human learning—positive, exterior, and permissible—since his

youth, he was obliged, unless he came to a halt, _ubi defuit

orbis_, to proceed further and seek other aliments for the

insatiable activity of his intelligence. The antique symbol of

the serpent biting its tail is, above all, applicable to science.

It would appear that Claude Frollo had experienced this. Many

grave persons affirm that, after having exhausted the _fas_ of

human learning, he had dared to penetrate into the _nefas_. He

had, they said, tasted in succession all the apples of the tree

of knowledge, and, whether from hunger or disgust, had ended by

tasting the forbidden fruit. He had taken his place by turns, as

the reader has seen, in the conferences of the theologians in

Sorbonne,—in the assemblies of the doctors of art, after the

manner of Saint-Hilaire,—in the disputes of the decretalists,

after the manner of Saint-Martin,—in the congregations of

physicians at the holy water font of Notre-Dame, _ad cupam

Nostræ-Dominæ_. All the dishes permitted and approved, which

those four great kitchens called the four faculties could

elaborate and serve to the understanding, he had devoured, and

had been satiated with them before his hunger was appeased. Then

he had penetrated further, lower, beneath all that finished,

material, limited knowledge; he had, perhaps, risked his soul,

and had seated himself in the cavern at that mysterious table of

the alchemists, of the astrologers, of the hermetics, of which

Averroès, Guillaume de Paris, and Nicolas Flamel hold the end in

the Middle Ages; and which extends in the East, by the light of

the seven-branched candlestick, to Solomon, Pythagoras, and

Zoroaster.

That is, at least, what was supposed, whether rightly or not. It

is certain that the archdeacon often visited the cemetery of the

Saints-Innocents, where, it is true, his father and mother had

been buried, with other victims of the plague of 1466; but that

he appeared far less devout before the cross of their grave than

before the strange figures with which the tomb of Nicolas Flamel

and Claude Pernelle, erected just beside it, was loaded.

It is certain that he had frequently been seen to pass along the

Rue des Lombards, and furtively enter a little house which formed

the corner of the Rue des Ecrivans and the Rue Marivault. It was

the house which Nicolas Flamel had built, where he had died about

1417, and which, constantly deserted since that time, had already

begun to fall in ruins,—so greatly had the hermetics and the

alchemists of all countries wasted away the walls, merely by

carving their names upon them. Some neighbors even affirm that

they had once seen, through an air-hole, Archdeacon Claude

excavating, turning over, digging up the earth in the two

cellars, whose supports had been daubed with numberless couplets

and hieroglyphics by Nicolas Flamel himself. It was supposed that

Flamel had buried the philosopher’s stone in the cellar; and the

alchemists, for the space of two centuries, from Magistri to

Father Pacifique, never ceased to worry the soil until the house,

so cruelly ransacked and turned over, ended by falling into dust

beneath their feet.

Again, it is certain that the archdeacon had been seized with a

singular passion for the symbolical door of Notre-Dame, that page

of a conjuring book written in stone, by Bishop Guillaume de

Paris, who has, no doubt, been damned for having affixed so

infernal a frontispiece to the sacred poem chanted by the rest of

the edifice. Archdeacon Claude had the credit also of having

fathomed the mystery of the colossus of Saint Christopher, and of

that lofty, enigmatical statue which then stood at the entrance

of the vestibule, and which the people, in derision, called

“Monsieur Legris.” But, what every one might have noticed was the

interminable hours which he often employed, seated upon the

parapet of the area in front of the church, in contemplating the

sculptures of the front; examining now the foolish virgins with

their lamps reversed, now the wise virgins with their lamps

upright; again, calculating the angle of vision of that raven

which belongs to the left front, and which is looking at a

mysterious point inside the church, where is concealed the

philosopher’s stone, if it be not in the cellar of Nicolas

Flamel.

It was, let us remark in passing, a singular fate for the Church

of Notre-Dame at that epoch to be so beloved, in two different

degrees, and with so much devotion, by two beings so dissimilar

as Claude and Quasimodo. Beloved by one, a sort of instinctive

and savage half-man, for its beauty, for its stature, for the

harmonies which emanated from its magnificent ensemble; beloved

by the other, a learned and passionate imagination, for its myth,

for the sense which it contains, for the symbolism scattered

beneath the sculptures of its front,—like the first text

underneath the second in a palimpsest,—in a word, for the enigma

which it is eternally propounding to the understanding.

Furthermore, it is certain that the archdeacon had established

himself in that one of the two towers which looks upon the Grève,

just beside the frame for the bells, a very secret little cell,

into which no one, not even the bishop, entered without his

leave, it was said. This tiny cell had formerly been made almost

at the summit of the tower, among the ravens’ nests, by Bishop

Hugo de Besançon[26] who had wrought sorcery there in his day.

What that cell contained, no one knew; but from the strand of the

Terrain, at night, there was often seen to appear, disappear, and

reappear at brief and regular intervals, at a little dormer

window opening upon the back of the tower, a certain red,

intermittent, singular light which seemed to follow the panting

breaths of a bellows, and to proceed from a flame, rather than

from a light. In the darkness, at that height, it produced a

singular effect; and the goodwives said: “There’s the archdeacon

blowing! hell is sparkling up yonder!”

There were no great proofs of sorcery in that, after all, but

there was still enough smoke to warrant a surmise of fire, and

the archdeacon bore a tolerably formidable reputation. We ought

to mention however, that the sciences of Egypt, that necromancy

and magic, even the whitest, even the most innocent, had no more

envenomed enemy, no more pitiless denunciator before the

gentlemen of the officialty of Notre-Dame. Whether this was

sincere horror, or the game played by the thief who shouts, “stop

thief!” at all events, it did not prevent the archdeacon from

being considered by the learned heads of the chapter, as a soul

who had ventured into the vestibule of hell, who was lost in the

caves of the cabal, groping amid the shadows of the occult

sciences. Neither were the people deceived thereby; with any one

who possessed any sagacity, Quasimodo passed for the demon;

Claude Frollo, for the sorcerer. It was evident that the

bellringer was to serve the archdeacon for a given time, at the

end of which he would carry away the latter’s soul, by way of

payment. Thus the archdeacon, in spite of the excessive austerity

of his life, was in bad odor among all pious souls; and there was

no devout nose so inexperienced that it could not smell him out

to be a magician.

And if, as he grew older, abysses had formed in his science, they

had also formed in his heart. That at least, is what one had

grounds for believing on scrutinizing that face upon which the

soul was only seen to shine through a sombre cloud. Whence that

large, bald brow? that head forever bent? that breast always

heaving with sighs? What secret thought caused his mouth to smile

with so much bitterness, at the same moment that his scowling

brows approached each other like two bulls on the point of

fighting? Why was what hair he had left already gray? What was

that internal fire which sometimes broke forth in his glance, to

such a degree that his eye resembled a hole pierced in the wall

of a furnace?

These symptoms of a violent moral preoccupation, had acquired an

especially high degree of intensity at the epoch when this story

takes place. More than once a choir-boy had fled in terror at

finding him alone in the church, so strange and dazzling was his

look. More than once, in the choir, at the hour of the offices,

his neighbor in the stalls had heard him mingle with the plain

song, _ad omnem tonum_, unintelligible parentheses. More than

once the laundress of the Terrain charged “with washing the

chapter” had observed, not without affright, the marks of nails

and clenched fingers on the surplice of monsieur the archdeacon

of Josas.

However, he redoubled his severity, and had never been more

exemplary. By profession as well as by character, he had always

held himself aloof from women; he seemed to hate them more than

ever. The mere rustling of a silken petticoat caused his hood to

fall over his eyes. Upon this score he was so jealous of

austerity and reserve, that when the Dame de Beaujeu, the king’s

daughter, came to visit the cloister of Notre-Dame, in the month

of December, 1481, he gravely opposed her entrance, reminding the

bishop of the statute of the Black Book, dating from the vigil of

Saint-Barthélemy, 1334, which interdicts access to the cloister

to “any woman whatever, old or young, mistress or maid.” Upon

which the bishop had been constrained to recite to him the

ordinance of Legate Odo, which excepts certain great dames,

_aliquæ magnates mulieres, quæ sine scandalo vitari non possunt_.

And again the archdeacon had protested, objecting that the

ordinance of the legate, which dated back to 1207, was anterior

by a hundred and twenty-seven years to the Black Book, and

consequently was abrogated in fact by it. And he had refused to

appear before the princess.

It was also noticed that his horror for Bohemian women and

gypsies had seemed to redouble for some time past. He had

petitioned the bishop for an edict which expressly forbade the

Bohemian women to come and dance and beat their tambourines on

the place of the Parvis; and for about the same length of time,

he had been ransacking the mouldy placards of the officialty, in

order to collect the cases of sorcerers and witches condemned to

fire or the rope, for complicity in crimes with rams, sows, or

goats.