Part 17

“_Ventre-Dieu_! I will be careful,” said Gringoire. “And suppose I do make the bells sound?” “Then you will be hanged. Do you understand?” “I don’t understand at all,” replied Gringoire. “Listen, once more. You are to search the manikin, and take away its purse; if a single bell stirs during the operation, you will be hung. Do you understand that?” “Good,” said Gringoire; “I understand that. And then?” “If you succeed in removing the purse without our hearing the bells, you are a vagabond, and you will be thrashed for eight consecutive days. You understand now, no doubt?” “No, monseigneur; I no longer understand. Where is the advantage to me? hanged in one case, cudgelled in the other?” “And a vagabond,” resumed Clopin, “and a vagabond; is that nothing? It is for your interest that we should beat you, in order to harden you to blows.” “Many thanks,” replied the poet. “Come, make haste,” said the king, stamping upon his cask, which resounded like a huge drum! “Search the manikin, and let there be an end to this! I warn you for the last time, that if I hear a single bell, you will take the place of the manikin.” The band of thieves applauded Clopin’s words, and arranged themselves in a circle round the gibbet, with a laugh so pitiless that Gringoire perceived that he amused them too much not to have everything to fear from them. No hope was left for him, accordingly, unless it were the slight chance of succeeding in the formidable operation which was imposed upon him; he decided to risk it, but it was not without first having addressed a fervent prayer to the manikin he was about to plunder, and who would have been easier to move to pity than the vagabonds. These myriad bells, with their little copper tongues, seemed to him like the mouths of so many asps, open and ready to sting and to hiss. “Oh!” he said, in a very low voice, “is it possible that my life depends on the slightest vibration of the least of these bells? Oh!” he added, with clasped hands, “bells, do not ring, hand-bells do not clang, mule-bells do not quiver!” He made one more attempt upon Trouillefou. “And if there should come a gust of wind?” “You will be hanged,” replied the other, without hesitation. Perceiving that no respite, nor reprieve, nor subterfuge was possible, he bravely decided upon his course of action; he wound his right foot round his left leg, raised himself on his left foot, and stretched out his arm: but at the moment when his hand touched the manikin, his body, which was now supported upon one leg only, wavered on the stool which had but three; he made an involuntary effort to support himself by the manikin, lost his balance, and fell heavily to the ground, deafened by the fatal vibration of the thousand bells of the manikin, which, yielding to the impulse imparted by his hand, described first a rotary motion, and then swayed majestically between the two posts. “Malediction!” he cried as he fell, and remained as though dead, with his face to the earth. Meanwhile, he heard the dreadful peal above his head, the diabolical laughter of the vagabonds, and the voice of Trouillefou saying,— “Pick me up that knave, and hang him without ceremony.” He rose. They had already detached the manikin to make room for him. The thieves made him mount the stool, Clopin came to him, passed the rope about his neck, and, tapping him on the shoulder,— “Adieu, my friend. You can’t escape now, even if you digested with the pope’s guts.” The word “Mercy!” died away upon Gringoire’s lips. He cast his eyes about him; but there was no hope: all were laughing. “Bellevigne de l’Étoile,” said the King of Thunes to an enormous vagabond, who stepped out from the ranks, “climb upon the cross beam.” Bellevigne de l’Étoile nimbly mounted the transverse beam, and in another minute, Gringoire, on raising his eyes, beheld him, with terror, seated upon the beam above his head. “Now,” resumed Clopin Trouillefou, “as soon as I clap my hands, you, Andry the Red, will fling the stool to the ground with a blow of your knee; you, François Chanteprune, will cling to the feet of the rascal; and you, Bellevigne, will fling yourself on his shoulders; and all three at once, do you hear?” Gringoire shuddered. “Are you ready?” said Clopin Trouillefou to the three thieves, who held themselves in readiness to fall upon Gringoire. A moment of horrible suspense ensued for the poor victim, during which Clopin tranquilly thrust into the fire with the tip of his foot, some bits of vine shoots which the flame had not caught. “Are you ready?” he repeated, and opened his hands to clap. One second more and all would have been over. But he paused, as though struck by a sudden thought. “One moment!” said he; “I forgot! It is our custom not to hang a man without inquiring whether there is any woman who wants him. Comrade, this is your last resource. You must wed either a female vagabond or the noose.” This law of the vagabonds, singular as it may strike the reader, remains to-day written out at length, in ancient English legislation. (See _Burington’s Observations_.) Gringoire breathed again. This was the second time that he had returned to life within an hour. So he did not dare to trust to it too implicitly. “Holà!” cried Clopin, mounted once more upon his cask, “holà! women, females, is there among you, from the sorceress to her cat, a wench who wants this rascal? Holà, Colette la Charonne! Elisabeth Trouvain! Simone Jodouyne! Marie Piédebou! Thonne la Longue! Bérarde Fanouel! Michelle Genaille! Claude Ronge-oreille! Mathurine Girorou!—Holà! Isabeau-la-Thierrye! Come and see! A man for nothing! Who wants him?” Gringoire, no doubt, was not very appetizing in this miserable condition. The female vagabonds did not seem to be much affected by the proposition. The unhappy wretch heard them answer: “No! no! hang him; there’ll be the more fun for us all!” Nevertheless, three emerged from the throng and came to smell of him. The first was a big wench, with a square face. She examined the philosopher’s deplorable doublet attentively. His garment was worn, and more full of holes than a stove for roasting chestnuts. The girl made a wry face. “Old rag!” she muttered, and addressing Gringoire, “Let’s see your cloak!” “I have lost it,” replied Gringoire. “Your hat?” “They took it away from me.” “Your shoes?” “They have hardly any soles left.” “Your purse?” “Alas!” stammered Gringoire, “I have not even a sou.” “Let them hang you, then, and say ‘Thank you!’” retorted the vagabond wench, turning her back on him. The second,—old, black, wrinkled, hideous, with an ugliness conspicuous even in the Cour des Miracles, trotted round Gringoire. He almost trembled lest she should want him. But she mumbled between her teeth, “He’s too thin,” and went off. The third was a young girl, quite fresh, and not too ugly. “Save me!” said the poor fellow to her, in a low tone. She gazed at him for a moment with an air of pity, then dropped her eyes, made a plait in her petticoat, and remained in indecision. He followed all these movements with his eyes; it was the last gleam of hope. “No,” said the young girl, at length, “no! Guillaume Longuejoue would beat me.” She retreated into the crowd. “You are unlucky, comrade,” said Clopin. Then rising to his feet, upon his hogshead. “No one wants him,” he exclaimed, imitating the accent of an auctioneer, to the great delight of all; “no one wants him? once, twice, three times!” and, turning towards the gibbet with a sign of his hand, “Gone!” Bellevigne de l’Étoile, Andry the Red, François Chanteprune, stepped up to Gringoire. At that moment a cry arose among the thieves: “_La Esmeralda! La Esmeralda!_” Gringoire shuddered, and turned towards the side whence the clamor proceeded. The crowd opened, and gave passage to a pure and dazzling form. It was the gypsy. “La Esmeralda!” said Gringoire, stupefied in the midst of his emotions, by the abrupt manner in which that magic word knotted together all his reminiscences of the day. This rare creature seemed, even in the Cour des Miracles, to exercise her sway of charm and beauty. The vagabonds, male and female, ranged themselves gently along her path, and their brutal faces beamed beneath her glance. She approached the victim with her light step. Her pretty Djali followed her. Gringoire was more dead than alive. She examined him for a moment in silence. “You are going to hang this man?” she said gravely, to Clopin. “Yes, sister,” replied the King of Thunes, “unless you will take him for your husband.” She made her pretty little pout with her under lip. “I’ll take him,” said she. Gringoire firmly believed that he had been in a dream ever since morning, and that this was the continuation of it. The change was, in fact, violent, though a gratifying one. They undid the noose, and made the poet step down from the stool. His emotion was so lively that he was obliged to sit down. The Duke of Egypt brought an earthenware crock, without uttering a word. The gypsy offered it to Gringoire: “Fling it on the ground,” said she. The crock broke into four pieces. “Brother,” then said the Duke of Egypt, laying his hands upon their foreheads, “she is your wife; sister, he is your husband for four years. Go.” CHAPTER VII. A BRIDAL NIGHT. A few moments later our poet found himself in a tiny arched chamber, very cosy, very warm, seated at a table which appeared to ask nothing better than to make some loans from a larder hanging near by, having a good bed in prospect, and alone with a pretty girl. The adventure smacked of enchantment. He began seriously to take himself for a personage in a fairy tale; he cast his eyes about him from time to time to time, as though to see if the chariot of fire, harnessed to two-winged chimeras, which alone could have so rapidly transported him from Tartarus to Paradise, were still there. At times, also, he fixed his eyes obstinately upon the holes in his doublet, in order to cling to reality, and not lose the ground from under his feet completely. His reason, tossed about in imaginary space, now hung only by this thread. The young girl did not appear to pay any attention to him; she went and came, displaced a stool, talked to her goat, and indulged in a pout now and then. At last she came and seated herself near the table, and Gringoire was able to scrutinize her at his ease. You have been a child, reader, and you would, perhaps, be very happy to be one still. It is quite certain that you have not, more than once (and for my part, I have passed whole days, the best employed of my life, at it) followed from thicket to thicket, by the side of running water, on a sunny day, a beautiful green or blue dragon-fly, breaking its flight in abrupt angles, and kissing the tips of all the branches. You recollect with what amorous curiosity your thought and your gaze were riveted upon this little whirlwind, hissing and humming with wings of purple and azure, in the midst of which floated an imperceptible body, veiled by the very rapidity of its movement. The aerial being which was dimly outlined amid this quivering of wings, appeared to you chimerical, imaginary, impossible to touch, impossible to see. But when, at length, the dragon-fly alighted on the tip of a reed, and, holding your breath the while, you were able to examine the long, gauze wings, the long enamel robe, the two globes of crystal, what astonishment you felt, and what fear lest you should again behold the form disappear into a shade, and the creature into a chimera! Recall these impressions, and you will readily appreciate what Gringoire felt on contemplating, beneath her visible and palpable form, that Esmeralda of whom, up to that time, he had only caught a glimpse, amidst a whirlwind of dance, song, and tumult.