第 四十九 章 · GRINGOIRE HAS MANY GOOD IDEAS IN SUCCESSION.—RUE DES

. GRINGOIRE HAS MANY GOOD IDEAS IN SUCCESSION.—RUE DES

BERNARDINS.

As soon as Pierre Gringoire had seen how this whole affair was

turning, and that there would decidedly be the rope, hanging, and

other disagreeable things for the principal personages in this

comedy, he had not cared to identify himself with the matter

further. The outcasts with whom he had remained, reflecting that,

after all, it was the best company in Paris,—the outcasts had

continued to interest themselves in behalf of the gypsy. He had

thought it very simple on the part of people who had, like

herself, nothing else in prospect but Charmolue and Torterue, and

who, unlike himself, did not gallop through the regions of

imagination between the wings of Pegasus. From their remarks, he

had learned that his wife of the broken crock had taken refuge in

Notre-Dame, and he was very glad of it. But he felt no temptation

to go and see her there. He meditated occasionally on the little

goat, and that was all. Moreover, he was busy executing feats of

strength during the day for his living, and at night he was

engaged in composing a memorial against the Bishop of Paris, for

he remembered having been drenched by the wheels of his mills,

and he cherished a grudge against him for it. He also occupied

himself with annotating the fine work of Baudry-le-Rouge, Bishop

of Noyon and Tournay, _De Cupa Petrarum_, which had given him a

violent passion for architecture, an inclination which had

replaced in his heart his passion for hermeticism, of which it

was, moreover, only a natural corollary, since there is an

intimate relation between hermeticism and masonry. Gringoire had

passed from the love of an idea to the love of the form of that

idea.

One day he had halted near Saint Germain-l’Auxerrois, at the

corner of a mansion called “For-l’Évêque” (the Bishop’s

Tribunal), which stood opposite another called “For-le-Roi” (the

King’s Tribunal). At this For-l’Évêque, there was a charming

chapel of the fourteenth century, whose apse was on the street.

Gringoire was devoutly examining its exterior sculptures. He was

in one of those moments of egotistical, exclusive, supreme,

enjoyment when the artist beholds nothing in the world but art,

and the world in art. All at once he feels a hand laid gravely on

his shoulder. He turns round. It was his old friend, his former

master, monsieur the archdeacon.

He was stupefied. It was a long time since he had seen the

archdeacon, and Dom Claude was one of those solemn and

impassioned men, a meeting with whom always upsets the

equilibrium of a sceptical philosopher.

The archdeacon maintained silence for several minutes, during

which Gringoire had time to observe him. He found Dom Claude

greatly changed; pale as a winter’s morning, with hollow eyes,

and hair almost white. The priest broke the silence at length, by

saying, in a tranquil but glacial tone,—

“How do you do, Master Pierre?”

“My health?” replied Gringoire. “Eh! eh! one can say both one

thing and another on that score. Still, it is good, on the whole.

I take not too much of anything. You know, master, that the

secret of keeping well, according to Hippocrates; _id est: cibi,

potus, somni, venus, omnia moderata sint_.”

“So you have no care, Master Pierre?” resumed the archdeacon,

gazing intently at Gringoire.

“None, i’ faith!”

“And what are you doing now?”

“You see, master. I am examining the chiselling of these stones,

and the manner in which yonder bas-relief is thrown out.”

The priest began to smile with that bitter smile which raises

only one corner of the mouth.

“And that amuses you?”

“’Tis paradise!” exclaimed Gringoire. And leaning over the

sculptures with the fascinated air of a demonstrator of living

phenomena: “Do you not think, for instance, that yon

metamorphosis in bas-relief is executed with much adroitness,

delicacy and patience? Observe that slender column. Around what

capital have you seen foliage more tender and better caressed by

the chisel. Here are three raised bosses of Jean Maillevin. They

are not the finest works of this great master. Nevertheless, the

naïvete, the sweetness of the faces, the gayety of the attitudes

and draperies, and that inexplicable charm which is mingled with

all the defects, render the little figures very diverting and

delicate, perchance, even too much so. You think that it is not

diverting?”

“Yes, certainly!” said the priest.

“And if you were to see the interior of the chapel!” resumed the

poet, with his garrulous enthusiasm. “Carvings everywhere. ’Tis

as thickly clustered as the head of a cabbage! The apse is of a

very devout, and so peculiar a fashion that I have never beheld

anything like it elsewhere!”

Dom Claude interrupted him,—

“You are happy, then?”

Gringoire replied warmly;—

“On my honor, yes! First I loved women, then animals. Now I love

stones. They are quite as amusing as women and animals, and less

treacherous.”

The priest laid his hand on his brow. It was his habitual

gesture.

“Really?”

“Stay!” said Gringoire, “one has one’s pleasures!” He took the

arm of the priest, who let him have his way, and made him enter

the staircase turret of For-l’Évêque. “Here is a staircase! every

time that I see it I am happy. It is of the simplest and rarest

manner of steps in Paris. All the steps are bevelled underneath.

Its beauty and simplicity consist in the interspacing of both,

being a foot or more wide, which are interlaced, interlocked,

fitted together, enchained enchased, interlined one upon another,

and bite into each other in a manner that is truly firm and

graceful.”

“And you desire nothing?”

“No.”

“And you regret nothing?”

“Neither regret nor desire. I have arranged my mode of life.”

“What men arrange,” said Claude, “things disarrange.”

“I am a Pyrrhonian philosopher,” replied Gringoire, “and I hold

all things in equilibrium.”

“And how do you earn your living?”

“I still make epics and tragedies now and then; but that which

brings me in most is the industry with which you are acquainted,

master; carrying pyramids of chairs in my teeth.”

“The trade is but a rough one for a philosopher.”

“’Tis still equilibrium,” said Gringoire. “When one has an idea,

one encounters it in everything.”

“I know that,” replied the archdeacon.

After a silence, the priest resumed,—

“You are, nevertheless, tolerably poor?”

“Poor, yes; unhappy, no.”

At that moment, a trampling of horses was heard, and our two

interlocutors beheld defiling at the end of the street, a company

of the king’s unattached archers, their lances borne high, an

officer at their head. The cavalcade was brilliant, and its march

resounded on the pavement.

“How you gaze at that officer!” said Gringoire, to the

archdeacon.

“Because I think I recognize him.”

“What do you call him?”

“I think,” said Claude, “that his name is Phœbus de Châteaupers.”

“Phœbus! A curious name! There is also a Phœbus, Comte de Foix. I

remember having known a wench who swore only by the name of

Phœbus.”

“Come away from here,” said the priest. “I have something to say

to you.”

From the moment of that troop’s passing, some agitation had

pierced through the archdeacon’s glacial envelope. He walked on.

Gringoire followed him, being accustomed to obey him, like all

who had once approached that man so full of ascendency. They

reached in silence the Rue des Bernardins, which was nearly

deserted. Here Dom Claude paused.

“What have you to say to me, master?” Gringoire asked him.

“Do you not think that the dress of those cavaliers whom we have

just seen is far handsomer than yours and mine?”

Gringoire tossed his head.

“I’ faith! I love better my red and yellow jerkin, than those

scales of iron and steel. A fine pleasure to produce, when you

walk, the same noise as the Quay of Old Iron, in an earthquake!”

“So, Gringoire, you have never cherished envy for those handsome

fellows in their military doublets?”

“Envy for what, monsieur the archdeacon? their strength, their

armor, their discipline? Better philosophy and independence in

rags. I prefer to be the head of a fly rather than the tail of a

lion.”

“That is singular,” said the priest dreamily. “Yet a handsome

uniform is a beautiful thing.”

Gringoire, perceiving that he was in a pensive mood, quitted him

to go and admire the porch of a neighboring house. He came back

clapping his hands.

“If you were less engrossed with the fine clothes of men of war,

monsieur the archdeacon, I would entreat you to come and see this

door. I have always said that the house of the Sieur Aubry had

the most superb entrance in the world.”

“Pierre Gringoire,” said the archdeacon, “What have you done with

that little gypsy dancer?”

“La Esmeralda? You change the conversation very abruptly.”

“Was she not your wife?”

“Yes, by virtue of a broken crock. We were to have four years of

it. By the way,” added Gringoire, looking at the archdeacon in a

half bantering way, “are you still thinking of her?”

“And you think of her no longer?”

“Very little. I have so many things. Good heavens, how pretty

that little goat was!”

“Had she not saved your life?”

“’Tis true, pardieu!”

“Well, what has become of her? What have you done with her?”

“I cannot tell you. I believe that they have hanged her.”

“You believe so?”

“I am not sure. When I saw that they wanted to hang people, I

retired from the game.”

“That is all you know of it?”

“Wait a bit. I was told that she had taken refuge in Notre-Dame,

and that she was safe there, and I am delighted to hear it, and I

have not been able to discover whether the goat was saved with

her, and that is all I know.”

“I will tell you more,” cried Dom Claude; and his voice, hitherto

low, slow, and almost indistinct, turned to thunder. “She has in

fact, taken refuge in Notre-Dame. But in three days justice will

reclaim her, and she will be hanged on the Grève. There is a

decree of parliament.”

“That’s annoying,” said Gringoire.

The priest, in an instant, became cold and calm again.

“And who the devil,” resumed the poet, “has amused himself with

soliciting a decree of reintegration? Why couldn’t they leave

parliament in peace? What harm does it do if a poor girl takes

shelter under the flying buttresses of Notre-Dame, beside the

swallows’ nests?”

“There are satans in this world,” remarked the archdeacon.

“’Tis devilish badly done,” observed Gringoire.

The archdeacon resumed after a silence,—

“So, she saved your life?”

“Among my good friends the outcasts. A little more or a little

less and I should have been hanged. They would have been sorry

for it to-day.”

“Would not you like to do something for her?”

“I ask nothing better, Dom Claude; but what if I entangle myself

in some villanous affair?”

“What matters it?”

“Bah! what matters it? You are good, master, that you are! I have

two great works already begun.”

The priest smote his brow. In spite of the calm which he

affected, a violent gesture betrayed his internal convulsions

from time to time.

“How is she to be saved?”

Gringoire said to him; “Master, I will reply to you; _Il padelt_,

which means in Turkish, ‘God is our hope.’”

“How is she to be saved?” repeated Claude dreamily.

Gringoire smote his brow in his turn.

“Listen, master. I have imagination; I will devise expedients for

you. What if one were to ask her pardon from the king?”

“Of Louis XI.! A pardon!”

“Why not?”

“To take the tiger’s bone from him!”

Gringoire began to seek fresh expedients.

“Well, stay! Shall I address to the midwives a request

accompanied by the declaration that the girl is with child!”

This made the priest’s hollow eye flash.

“With child! knave! do you know anything of this?”

Gringoire was alarmed by his air. He hastened to say, “Oh, no,

not I! Our marriage was a real _forismaritagium_. I stayed

outside. But one might obtain a respite, all the same.”

“Madness! Infamy! Hold your tongue!”

“You do wrong to get angry,” muttered Gringoire. “One obtains a

respite; that does no harm to any one, and allows the midwives,

who are poor women, to earn forty deniers parisis.”

The priest was not listening to him!

“But she must leave that place, nevertheless!” he murmured, “the

decree is to be executed within three days. Moreover, there will

be no decree; that Quasimodo! Women have very depraved tastes!”

He raised his voice: “Master Pierre, I have reflected well; there

is but one means of safety for her.”

“What? I see none myself.”

“Listen, Master Pierre, remember that you owe your life to her. I

will tell you my idea frankly. The church is watched night and

day; only those are allowed to come out, who have been seen to

enter. Hence you can enter. You will come. I will lead you to

her. You will change clothes with her. She will take your

doublet; you will take her petticoat.”

“So far, it goes well,” remarked the philosopher, “and then?”

“And then? she will go forth in your garments; you will remain

with hers. You will be hanged, perhaps, but she will be saved.”

Gringoire scratched his ear, with a very serious air. “Stay!”

said he, “that is an idea which would never have occurred to me

unaided.”

At Dom Claude’s proposition, the open and benign face of the poet

had abruptly clouded over, like a smiling Italian landscape, when

an unlucky squall comes up and dashes a cloud across the sun.

“Well! Gringoire, what say you to the means?”

“I say, master, that I shall not be hanged, perchance, but that I

shall be hanged indubitably.

“That concerns us not.”

“The deuce!” said Gringoire.

“She has saved your life. ’Tis a debt that you are discharging.”

“There are a great many others which I do not discharge.”

“Master Pierre, it is absolutely necessary.”

The archdeacon spoke imperiously.

“Listen, Dom Claude,” replied the poet in utter consternation.

“You cling to that idea, and you are wrong. I do not see why I

should get myself hanged in some one else’s place.”

“What have you, then, which attaches you so strongly to life?”

“Oh! a thousand reasons!”

“What reasons, if you please?”

“What? The air, the sky, the morning, the evening, the moonlight,

my good friends the thieves, our jeers with the old hags of

go-betweens, the fine architecture of Paris to study, three great

books to make, one of them being against the bishops and his

mills; and how can I tell all? Anaxagoras said that he was in the

world to admire the sun. And then, from morning till night, I

have the happiness of passing all my days with a man of genius,

who is myself, which is very agreeable.”

“A head fit for a mule bell!” muttered the archdeacon. “Oh! tell

me who preserved for you that life which you render so charming

to yourself? To whom do you owe it that you breathe that air,

behold that sky, and can still amuse your lark’s mind with your

whimsical nonsense and madness? Where would you be, had it not

been for her? Do you then desire that she through whom you are

alive, should die? that she should die, that beautiful, sweet,

adorable creature, who is necessary to the light of the world and

more divine than God, while you, half wise, and half fool, a vain

sketch of something, a sort of vegetable, which thinks that it

walks, and thinks that it thinks, you will continue to live with

the life which you have stolen from her, as useless as a candle

in broad daylight? Come, have a little pity, Gringoire; be

generous in your turn; it was she who set the example.”

The priest was vehement. Gringoire listened to him at first with

an undecided air, then he became touched, and wound up with a

grimace which made his pallid face resemble that of a new-born

infant with an attack of the colic.

“You are pathetic!” said he, wiping away a tear. “Well! I will

think about it. That’s a queer idea of yours.—After all,” he

continued after a pause, “who knows? perhaps they will not hang

me. He who becomes betrothed does not always marry. When they

find me in that little lodging so grotesquely muffled in

petticoat and coif, perchance they will burst with laughter. And

then, if they do hang me,—well! the halter is as good a death as

any. ’Tis a death worthy of a sage who has wavered all his life;

a death which is neither flesh nor fish, like the mind of a

veritable sceptic; a death all stamped with Pyrrhonism and

hesitation, which holds the middle station betwixt heaven and

earth, which leaves you in suspense. ’Tis a philosopher’s death,

and I was destined thereto, perchance. It is magnificent to die

as one has lived.”

The priest interrupted him: “Is it agreed.”

“What is death, after all?” pursued Gringoire with exaltation. “A

disagreeable moment, a toll-gate, the passage of little to

nothingness. Some one having asked Cercidas, the Megalopolitan,

if he were willing to die: ‘Why not?’ he replied; ‘for after my

death I shall see those great men, Pythagoras among the

philosophers, Hecatæus among historians, Homer among poets,

Olympus among musicians.’”

The archdeacon gave him his hand: “It is settled, then? You will

come to-morrow?”

This gesture recalled Gringoire to reality.

“Ah! i’ faith no!” he said in the tone of a man just waking up.

“Be hanged! ’tis too absurd. I will not.”

“Farewell, then!” and the archdeacon added between his teeth:

“I’ll find you again!”

“I do not want that devil of a man to find me,” thought

Gringoire; and he ran after Dom Claude. “Stay, monsieur the

archdeacon, no ill-feeling between old friends! You take an

interest in that girl, my wife, I mean, and ’tis well. You have

devised a scheme to get her out of Notre-Dame, but your way is

extremely disagreeable to me, Gringoire. If I had only another

one myself! I beg to say that a luminous inspiration has just

occurred to me. If I possessed an expedient for extricating her

from a dilemma, without compromising my own neck to the extent of

a single running knot, what would you say to it? Will not that

suffice you? Is it absolutely necessary that I should be hanged,

in order that you may be content?”

The priest tore out the buttons of his cassock with impatience:

“Stream of words! What is your plan?”

“Yes,” resumed Gringoire, talking to himself and touching his

nose with his forefinger in sign of meditation,—“that’s it!—The

thieves are brave fellows!—The tribe of Egypt love her!—They will

rise at the first word!—Nothing easier!—A sudden stroke.—Under

cover of the disorder, they will easily carry her off!—Beginning

to-morrow evening. They will ask nothing better.

“The plan! speak,” cried the archdeacon shaking him.

Gringoire turned majestically towards him: “Leave me! You see

that I am composing.” He meditated for a few moments more, then

began to clap his hands over his thought, crying: “Admirable!

success is sure!”

“The plan!” repeated Claude in wrath.

Gringoire was radiant.

“Come, that I may tell you that very softly. ’Tis a truly gallant

counter-plot, which will extricate us all from the matter.

Pardieu, it must be admitted that I am no fool.”

He broke off.

“Oh, by the way! is the little goat with the wench?”

“Yes. The devil take you!”

“They would have hanged it also, would they not?”

“What is that to me?”

“Yes, they would have hanged it. They hanged a sow last month.

The headsman loveth that; he eats the beast afterwards. Take my

pretty Djali! Poor little lamb!”

“Malediction!” exclaimed Dom Claude. “You are the executioner.

What means of safety have you found, knave? Must your idea be

extracted with the forceps?”

“Very fine, master, this is it.”

Gringoire bent his head to the archdeacon’s head and spoke to him

in a very low voice, casting an uneasy glance the while from one

end to the other of the street, though no one was passing. When

he had finished, Dom Claude took his hand and said coldly: “’Tis

well. Farewell until to-morrow.”

“Until to-morrow,” repeated Gringoire. And, while the archdeacon

was disappearing in one direction, he set off in the other,

saying to himself in a low voice: “Here’s a grand affair,

Monsieur Pierre Gringoire. Never mind! ’Tis not written that

because one is of small account one should take fright at a great

enterprise. Bitou carried a great bull on his shoulders; the

water-wagtails, the warblers, and the buntings traverse the

ocean.”