บทที่ บทที่ 47 · THE KEY TO THE RED DOOR.

. THE KEY TO THE RED DOOR.

In the meantime, public rumor had informed the archdeacon of the

miraculous manner in which the gypsy had been saved. When he

learned it, he knew not what his sensations were. He had

reconciled himself to la Esmeralda’s death. In that matter he was

tranquil; he had reached the bottom of personal suffering. The

human heart (Dom Claude had meditated upon these matters) can

contain only a certain quantity of despair. When the sponge is

saturated, the sea may pass over it without causing a single drop

more to enter it.

Now, with la Esmeralda dead, the sponge was soaked, all was at an

end on this earth for Dom Claude. But to feel that she was alive,

and Phœbus also, meant that tortures, shocks, alternatives, life,

were beginning again. And Claude was weary of all this.

When he heard this news, he shut himself in his cell in the

cloister. He appeared neither at the meetings of the chapter nor

at the services. He closed his door against all, even against the

bishop. He remained thus immured for several weeks. He was

believed to be ill. And so he was, in fact.

What did he do while thus shut up? With what thoughts was the

unfortunate man contending? Was he giving final battle to his

formidable passion? Was he concocting a final plan of death for

her and of perdition for himself?

His Jehan, his cherished brother, his spoiled child, came once to

his door, knocked, swore, entreated, gave his name half a score

of times. Claude did not open.

He passed whole days with his face close to the panes of his

window. From that window, situated in the cloister, he could see

la Esmeralda’s chamber. He often saw herself with her goat,

sometimes with Quasimodo. He remarked the little attentions of

the ugly deaf man, his obedience, his delicate and submissive

ways with the gypsy. He recalled, for he had a good memory, and

memory is the tormentor of the jealous, he recalled the singular

look of the bellringer, bent on the dancer upon a certain

evening. He asked himself what motive could have impelled

Quasimodo to save her. He was the witness of a thousand little

scenes between the gypsy and the deaf man, the pantomime of

which, viewed from afar and commented on by his passion, appeared

very tender to him. He distrusted the capriciousness of women.

Then he felt a jealousy which he could never have believed

possible awakening within him, a jealousy which made him redden

with shame and indignation: “One might condone the captain, but

this one!” This thought upset him.

His nights were frightful. As soon as he learned that the gypsy

was alive, the cold ideas of spectre and tomb which had

persecuted him for a whole day vanished, and the flesh returned

to goad him. He turned and twisted on his couch at the thought

that the dark-skinned maiden was so near him.

Every night his delirious imagination represented la Esmeralda to

him in all the attitudes which had caused his blood to boil most.

He beheld her outstretched upon the poniarded captain, her eyes

closed, her beautiful bare throat covered with Phœbus’s blood, at

that moment of bliss when the archdeacon had imprinted on her

pale lips that kiss whose burn the unhappy girl, though half

dead, had felt. He beheld her, again, stripped by the savage

hands of the torturers, allowing them to bare and to enclose in

the boot with its iron screw, her tiny foot, her delicate rounded

leg, her white and supple knee. Again he beheld that ivory knee

which alone remained outside of Torterue’s horrible apparatus.

Lastly, he pictured the young girl in her shift, with the rope

about her neck, shoulders bare, feet bare, almost nude, as he had

seen her on that last day. These images of voluptuousness made

him clench his fists, and a shiver run along his spine.

One night, among others, they heated so cruelly his virgin and

priestly blood, that he bit his pillow, leaped from his bed,

flung on a surplice over his shirt, and left his cell, lamp in

hand, half naked, wild, his eyes aflame.

He knew where to find the key to the red door, which connected

the cloister with the church, and he always had about him, as the

reader knows, the key of the staircase leading to the towers.