Part 64

“It appears so, La Bechaigne.” “You see what a pagan she is!” “’Tis the custom, monsieur. The bailiff of the courts is bound to deliver the malefactor ready judged for execution if he be a layman, to the provost of Paris; if a clerk, to the official of the bishopric.” “Thank you, sir.” “Oh, God!” said Fleur-de-Lys, “the poor creature!” This thought filled with sadness the glance which she cast upon the populace. The captain, much more occupied with her than with that pack of the rabble, was amorously rumpling her girdle behind. She turned round, entreating and smiling. “Please let me alone, Phœbus! If my mother were to return, she would see your hand!” At that moment, midday rang slowly out from the clock of Notre-Dame. A murmur of satisfaction broke out in the crowd. The last vibration of the twelfth stroke had hardly died away when all heads surged like the waves beneath a squall, and an immense shout went up from the pavement, the windows, and the roofs, “There she is!” Fleur-de-Lys pressed her hands to her eyes, that she might not see. “Charming girl,” said Phœbus, “do you wish to withdraw?” “No,” she replied; and she opened through curiosity, the eyes which she had closed through fear. A tumbrel drawn by a stout Norman horse, and all surrounded by cavalry in violet livery with white crosses, had just debouched upon the Place through the Rue Saint-Pierre-aux-Bœufs. The sergeants of the watch were clearing a passage for it through the crowd, by stout blows from their clubs. Beside the cart rode several officers of justice and police, recognizable by their black costume and their awkwardness in the saddle. Master Jacques Charmolue paraded at their head. In the fatal cart sat a young girl with her arms tied behind her back, and with no priest beside her. She was in her shift; her long black hair (the fashion then was to cut it off only at the foot of the gallows) fell in disorder upon her half-bared throat and shoulders. Athwart that waving hair, more glossy than the plumage of a raven, a thick, rough, gray rope was visible, twisted and knotted, chafing her delicate collar-bones and twining round the charming neck of the poor girl, like an earthworm round a flower. Beneath that rope glittered a tiny amulet ornamented with bits of green glass, which had been left to her no doubt, because nothing is refused to those who are about to die. The spectators in the windows could see in the bottom of the cart her naked legs which she strove to hide beneath her, as by a final feminine instinct. At her feet lay a little goat, bound. The condemned girl held together with her teeth her imperfectly fastened shift. One would have said that she suffered still more in her misery from being thus exposed almost naked to the eyes of all. Alas! modesty is not made for such shocks. “Jesus!” said Fleur-de-Lys hastily to the captain. “Look fair cousin, ’tis that wretched Bohemian with the goat.” So saying, she turned to Phœbus. His eyes were fixed on the tumbrel. He was very pale. “What Bohemian with the goat?” he stammered. “What!” resumed Fleur-de-Lys, “do you not remember?” Phœbus interrupted her. “I do not know what you mean.” He made a step to re-enter the room, but Fleur-de-Lys, whose jealousy, previously so vividly aroused by this same gypsy, had just been re-awakened, Fleur-de-Lys gave him a look full of penetration and distrust. She vaguely recalled at that moment having heard of a captain mixed up in the trial of that witch. “What is the matter with you?” she said to Phœbus, “one would say, that this woman had disturbed you.” Phœbus forced a sneer,— “Me! Not the least in the world! Ah! yes, certainly!” “Remain, then!” she continued imperiously, “and let us see the end.” The unlucky captain was obliged to remain. He was somewhat reassured by the fact that the condemned girl never removed her eyes from the bottom of the cart. It was but too surely la Esmeralda. In this last stage of opprobrium and misfortune, she was still beautiful; her great black eyes appeared still larger, because of the emaciation of her cheeks; her pale profile was pure and sublime. She resembled what she had been, in the same degree that a virgin by Masaccio, resembles a virgin of Raphael,—weaker, thinner, more delicate. Moreover, there was nothing in her which was not shaken in some sort, and which with the exception of her modesty, she did not let go at will, so profoundly had she been broken by stupor and despair. Her body bounded at every jolt of the tumbrel like a dead or broken thing; her gaze was dull and imbecile. A tear was still visible in her eyes, but motionless and frozen, so to speak. Meanwhile, the lugubrious cavalcade has traversed the crowd amid cries of joy and curious attitudes. But as a faithful historian, we must state that on beholding her so beautiful, so depressed, many were moved with pity, even among the hardest of them. The tumbrel had entered the Parvis. It halted before the central portal. The escort ranged themselves in line on both sides. The crowd became silent, and, in the midst of this silence full of anxiety and solemnity, the two leaves of the grand door swung back, as of themselves, on their hinges, which gave a creak like the sound of a fife. Then there became visible in all its length, the deep, gloomy church, hung in black, sparely lighted with a few candles gleaming afar off on the principal altar, opened in the midst of the Place which was dazzling with light, like the mouth of a cavern. At the very extremity, in the gloom of the apse, a gigantic silver cross was visible against a black drapery which hung from the vault to the pavement. The whole nave was deserted. But a few heads of priests could be seen moving confusedly in the distant choir stalls, and, at the moment when the great door opened, there escaped from the church a loud, solemn, and monotonous chanting, which cast over the head of the condemned girl, in gusts, fragments of melancholy psalms,— “_Non timebo millia populi circumdantis me: exsurge, Domine; salvum me fac, Deus!_” “_Salvum me fac, Deus, quoniam intraverunt aquæ usque ad animam meam_. “_Infixus sum in limo profundi; et non est substantia_.” At the same time, another voice, separate from the choir, intoned upon the steps of the chief altar, this melancholy offertory,— “_Qui verbum meum audit, et credit ei qui misit me, habet vitam æternam et in judicium non venit; sed transit a morte in vitam._”[46] This chant, which a few old men buried in the gloom sang from afar over that beautiful creature, full of youth and life, caressed by the warm air of spring, inundated with sunlight was the mass for the dead. The people listened devoutly. The unhappy girl seemed to lose her sight and her consciousness in the obscure interior of the church. Her white lips moved as though in prayer, and the headsman’s assistant who approached to assist her to alight from the cart, heard her repeating this word in a low tone,—“Phœbus.” They untied her hands, made her alight, accompanied by her goat, which had also been unbound, and which bleated with joy at finding itself free: and they made her walk barefoot on the hard pavement to the foot of the steps leading to the door. The rope about her neck trailed behind her. One would have said it was a serpent following her. Then the chanting in the church ceased. A great golden cross and a row of wax candles began to move through the gloom. The halberds of the motley beadles clanked; and, a few moments later, a long procession of priests in chasubles, and deacons in dalmatics, marched gravely towards the condemned girl, as they drawled their song, spread out before her view and that of the crowd. But her glance rested on the one who marched at the head, immediately after the cross-bearer. “Oh!” she said in a low voice, and with a shudder, “’tis he again! the priest!” It was in fact, the archdeacon. On his left he had the sub-chanter, on his right, the chanter, armed with his official wand. He advanced with head thrown back, his eyes fixed and wide open, intoning in a strong voice,— “_De ventre inferi clamavi, et exaudisti vocem meam_. “_Et projecisti me in profundum in corde maris, et flumem circumdedit me._”[47] At the moment when he made his appearance in the full daylight beneath the lofty arched portal, enveloped in an ample cope of silver barred with a black cross, he was so pale that more than one person in the crowd thought that one of the marble bishops who knelt on the sepulchral stones of the choir had risen and was come to receive upon the brink of the tomb, the woman who was about to die. She, no less pale, no less like a statue, had hardly noticed that they had placed in her hand a heavy, lighted candle of yellow wax; she had not heard the yelping voice of the clerk reading the fatal contents of the apology; when they told her to respond with _Amen_, she responded _Amen_. She only recovered life and force when she beheld the priest make a sign to her guards to withdraw, and himself advance alone towards her. Then she felt her blood boil in her head, and a remnant of indignation flashed up in that soul already benumbed and cold. The archdeacon approached her slowly; even in that extremity, she beheld him cast an eye sparkling with sensuality, jealousy, and desire, over her exposed form. Then he said aloud,— “Young girl, have you asked God’s pardon for your faults and shortcomings?” He bent down to her ear, and added (the spectators supposed that he was receiving her last confession): “Will you have me? I can still save you!” She looked intently at him: “Begone, demon, or I will denounce you!” He gave vent to a horrible smile: “You will not be believed. You will only add a scandal to a crime. Reply quickly! Will you have me?” “What have you done with my Phœbus?” “He is dead!” said the priest. At that moment the wretched archdeacon raised his head mechanically and beheld at the other end of the Place, in the balcony of the Gondelaurier mansion, the captain standing beside Fleur-de-Lys. He staggered, passed his hand across his eyes, looked again, muttered a curse, and all his features were violently contorted. “Well, die then!” he hissed between his teeth. “No one shall have you.” Then, raising his hand over the gypsy, he exclaimed in a funereal voice:—“_I nunc, anima anceps, et sit tibi Deus misericors!_”[48] This was the dread formula with which it was the custom to conclude these gloomy ceremonies. It was the signal agreed upon between the priest and the executioner. The crowd knelt. “_Kyrie eleison_,”[49] said the priests, who had remained beneath the arch of the portal. “_Kyrie eleison_,” repeated the throng in that murmur which runs over all heads, like the waves of a troubled sea.