Part 72

The deaf man dropped his head, then he came and knelt at the gypsy’s door,—“Monseigneur,” he said, in a grave and resigned voice, “you shall do all that you please afterwards, but kill me first.” So saying, he presented his knife to the priest. The priest, beside himself, was about to seize it. But the young girl was quicker than he; she wrenched the knife from Quasimodo’s hands and burst into a frantic laugh,—“Approach,” she said to the priest. She held the blade high. The priest remained undecided. She would certainly have struck him. Then she added with a pitiless expression, well aware that she was about to pierce the priest’s heart with thousands of red-hot irons,— “Ah! I know that Phœbus is not dead!” The priest overturned Quasimodo on the floor with a kick, and, quivering with rage, darted back under the vault of the staircase. When he was gone, Quasimodo picked up the whistle which had just saved the gypsy. “It was getting rusty,” he said, as he handed it back to her; then he left her alone. The young girl, deeply agitated by this violent scene, fell back exhausted on her bed, and began to sob and weep. Her horizon was becoming gloomy once more. The priest had groped his way back to his cell. It was settled. Dom Claude was jealous of Quasimodo! He repeated with a thoughtful air his fatal words: “No one shall have her.” BOOK TENTH. CHAPTER I. 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?”