Part 57

“Yes, monseigneur,” she replied; “I found it again. Here it is.” A bailiff handed the dead leaf to the crocodile, who made a doleful shake of the head, and passed it on to the president, who gave it to the procurator of the king in the ecclesiastical court, and thus it made the circuit of the hall. “It is a birch leaf,” said Master Jacques Charmolue. “A fresh proof of magic.” A counsellor took up the word. “Witness, two men went upstairs together in your house: the black man, whom you first saw disappear and afterwards swimming in the Seine, with his priestly garments, and the officer. Which of the two handed you the crown?” The old woman pondered for a moment and then said,— “The officer.” A murmur ran through the crowd. “Ah!” thought Gringoire, “this makes some doubt in my mind.” But Master Philippe Lheulier, advocate extraordinary to the king, interposed once more. “I will recall to these gentlemen, that in the deposition taken at his bedside, the assassinated officer, while declaring that he had a vague idea when the black man accosted him that the latter might be the surly monk, added that the phantom had pressed him eagerly to go and make acquaintance with the accused; and upon his, the captain’s, remarking that he had no money, he had given him the crown which the said officer paid to la Falourdel. Hence, that crown is the money of hell.” This conclusive observation appeared to dissipate all the doubts of Gringoire and the other sceptics in the audience. “You have the documents, gentlemen,” added the king’s advocate, as he took his seat; “you can consult the testimony of Phœbus de Châteaupers.” At that name, the accused sprang up, her head rose above the throng. Gringoire with horror recognized la Esmeralda. She was pale; her tresses, formerly so gracefully braided and spangled with sequins, hung in disorder; her lips were blue, her hollow eyes were terrible. Alas! “Phœbus!” she said, in bewilderment; “where is he? O messeigneurs! before you kill me, tell me, for pity sake, whether he still lives?” “Hold your tongue, woman,” replied the president, “that is no affair of ours.” “Oh! for mercy’s sake, tell me if he is alive!” she repeated, clasping her beautiful emaciated hands; and the sound of her chains in contact with her dress, was heard. “Well!” said the king’s advocate roughly, “he is dying. Are you satisfied?” The unhappy girl fell back on her criminal’s seat, speechless, tearless, white as a wax figure. The president bent down to a man at his feet, who wore a gold cap and a black gown, a chain on his neck and a wand in his hand. “Bailiff, bring in the second accused.” All eyes turned towards a small door, which opened, and, to the great agitation of Gringoire, gave passage to a pretty goat with horns and hoofs of gold. The elegant beast halted for a moment on the threshold, stretching out its neck as though, perched on the summit of a rock, it had before its eyes an immense horizon. Suddenly it caught sight of the gypsy girl, and leaping over the table and the head of a clerk, in two bounds it was at her knees; then it rolled gracefully on its mistress’s feet, soliciting a word or a caress; but the accused remained motionless, and poor Djali himself obtained not a glance. “Eh, why—’tis my villanous beast,” said old Falourdel, “I recognize the two perfectly!” Jacques Charmolue interfered. “If the gentlemen please, we will proceed to the examination of the goat.” He was, in fact, the second criminal. Nothing more simple in those days than a suit of sorcery instituted against an animal. We find, among others in the accounts of the provost’s office for 1466, a curious detail concerning the expenses of the trial of Gillet-Soulart and his sow, “executed for their demerits,” at Corbeil. Everything is there, the cost of the pens in which to place the sow, the five hundred bundles of brushwood purchased at the port of Morsant, the three pints of wine and the bread, the last repast of the victim fraternally shared by the executioner, down to the eleven days of guard and food for the sow, at eight deniers parisis each. Sometimes, they went even further than animals. The capitularies of Charlemagne and of Louis le Débonnaire impose severe penalties on fiery phantoms which presume to appear in the air. Meanwhile the procurator had exclaimed: “If the demon which possesses this goat, and which has resisted all exorcisms, persists in its deeds of witchcraft, if it alarms the court with them, we warn it that we shall be forced to put in requisition against it the gallows or the stake. Gringoire broke out into a cold perspiration. Charmolue took from the table the gypsy’s tambourine, and presenting it to the goat, in a certain manner, asked the latter,— “What o’clock is it?” The goat looked at it with an intelligent eye, raised its gilded hoof, and struck seven blows. It was, in fact, seven o’clock. A movement of terror ran through the crowd. Gringoire could not endure it. “He is destroying himself!” he cried aloud; “You see well that he does not know what he is doing.” “Silence among the louts at the end of the hall!” said the bailiff sharply. Jacques Charmolue, by the aid of the same manœuvres of the tambourine, made the goat perform many other tricks connected with the date of the day, the month of the year, etc., which the reader has already witnessed. And, by virtue of an optical illusion peculiar to judicial proceedings, these same spectators who had, probably, more than once applauded in the public square Djali’s innocent magic were terrified by it beneath the roof of the Palais de Justice. The goat was undoubtedly the devil. It was far worse when the procurator of the king, having emptied upon a floor a certain bag filled with movable letters, which Djali wore round his neck, they beheld the goat extract with his hoof from the scattered alphabet the fatal name of _Phœbus_. The witchcraft of which the captain had been the victim appeared irresistibly demonstrated, and in the eyes of all, the gypsy, that ravishing dancer, who had so often dazzled the passers-by with her grace, was no longer anything but a frightful vampire. However, she betrayed no sign of life; neither Djali’s graceful evolutions, nor the menaces of the court, nor the suppressed imprecations of the spectators any longer reached her mind. In order to arouse her, a police officer was obliged to shake her unmercifully, and the president had to raise his voice,— “Girl, you are of the Bohemian race, addicted to deeds of witchcraft. You, in complicity with the bewitched goat implicated in this suit, during the night of the twenty-ninth of March last, murdered and stabbed, in concert with the powers of darkness, by the aid of charms and underhand practices, a captain of the king’s arches of the watch, Phœbus de Châteaupers. Do you persist in denying it?” “Horror!” exclaimed the young girl, hiding her face in her hands. “My Phœbus! Oh, this is hell!” “Do you persist in your denial?” demanded the president coldly. “Do I deny it?” she said with terrible accents; and she rose with flashing eyes. The president continued squarely,— “Then how do you explain the facts laid to your charge?” She replied in a broken voice,— “I have already told you. I do not know. ’Twas a priest, a priest whom I do not know; an infernal priest who pursues me!” “That is it,” retorted the judge; “the surly monk.” “Oh, gentlemen! have mercy! I am but a poor girl—” “Of Egypt,” said the judge. Master Jacques Charmolue interposed sweetly,— “In view of the sad obstinacy of the accused, I demand the application of the torture.” “Granted,” said the president. The unhappy girl quivered in every limb. But she rose at the command of the men with partisans, and walked with a tolerably firm step, preceded by Charmolue and the priests of the officiality, between two rows of halberds, towards a medium-sized door which suddenly opened and closed again behind her, and which produced upon the grief-stricken Gringoire the effect of a horrible mouth which had just devoured her. When she disappeared, they heard a plaintive bleating; it was the little goat mourning. The sitting of the court was suspended. A counsellor having remarked that the gentlemen were fatigued, and that it would be a long time to wait until the torture was at an end, the president replied that a magistrate must know how to sacrifice himself to his duty. “What an annoying and vexatious hussy,” said an aged judge, “to get herself put to the question when one has not supped!” CHAPTER II. CONTINUATION OF THE CROWN WHICH WAS CHANGED INTO A DRY LEAF. After ascending and descending several steps in the corridors, which were so dark that they were lighted by lamps at midday, La Esmeralda, still surrounded by her lugubrious escort, was thrust by the police into a gloomy chamber. This chamber, circular in form, occupied the ground floor of one of those great towers, which, even in our own century, still pierce through the layer of modern edifices with which modern Paris has covered ancient Paris. There were no windows to this cellar; no other opening than the entrance, which was low, and closed by an enormous iron door. Nevertheless, light was not lacking; a furnace had been constructed in the thickness of the wall; a large fire was lighted there, which filled the vault with its crimson reflections and deprived a miserable candle, which stood in one corner, of all radiance. The iron grating which served to close the oven, being raised at that moment, allowed only a view at the mouth of the flaming vent-hole in the dark wall, the lower extremity of its bars, like a row of black and pointed teeth, set flat apart; which made the furnace resemble one of those mouths of dragons which spout forth flames in ancient legends. By the light which escaped from it, the prisoner beheld, all about the room, frightful instruments whose use she did not understand. In the centre lay a leather mattress, placed almost flat upon the ground, over which hung a strap provided with a buckle, attached to a brass ring in the mouth of a flat-nosed monster carved in the keystone of the vault. Tongs, pincers, large ploughshares, filled the interior of the furnace, and glowed in a confused heap on the coals. The sanguine light of the furnace illuminated in the chamber only a confused mass of horrible things. This Tartarus was called simply, The Question Chamber. On the bed, in a negligent attitude, sat Pierrat Torterue, the official torturer. His underlings, two gnomes with square faces, leather aprons, and linen breeches, were moving the iron instruments on the coals. In vain did the poor girl summon up her courage; on entering this chamber she was stricken with horror. The sergeants of the bailiff of the courts drew up in line on one side, the priests of the officiality on the other. A clerk, inkhorn, and a table were in one corner.