Bab Bab 52 · AN AWKWARD FRIEND.

. 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 façade 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

Hôtel-Dieu, the other the Rue Saint-Pierre-aux-Bœufs. 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[60] 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 hôtel, 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, “Étienne 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 Hôtel de Sens, the Hôtel d’Angoulême,

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-Germain-des-Prés 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.

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

façade 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

Coësre, 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 Grève, 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,

_tête-de-bœuf!_ 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

François 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 façade, 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 façade 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 façade; 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 façade. 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[61] 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.

Without doubt, this strange beacon light would awaken far away,

the woodcutter of the hills of Bicêtre, 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 Hôtel-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’Étoile?” 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 façade, 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

δεκέμβολος.

“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[62] 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.

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 habillée,

La ville de Cambrai;

Marafin l’a pillée....”[63]

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 drées, its demons, its most fantastic

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

monsters of the façade.

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.