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Chapter VI
Esmeralda

Gringoire and his piece had stood firm. His actors, continued to spout his comedy, and he continued to listen to it.

To tell the truth, a few spectators still remained.

“Well,” thought Gringoire, “here are still as many as are required to hear the end of my mystery. They are few in number, but it is a choice audience.”

“Comrades,” suddenly shouted one of the kids from the window, “La Esmeralda! La Esmeralda in the Place!”

This word produced a magical effect. Every one who was left in the hall flew to the windows, repeating, “La Esmeralda! La Esmeralda?”

“What’s the meaning of this, of the Esmeralda?” said Gringoire. “Ah, good heavens! it seems to be the turn of the windows now.”

He returned towards the marble table, and saw that the representation had been interrupted. Jupiter should have appeared with his thunder. But Jupiter was standing motionless at the foot of the stage.

“Michel Giborne!” cried the irritated poet, “what are you doing there? Is that your part? Come up!”

“Alas!” said Jupiter, “a scholar has just seized the ladder.”

Gringoire looked. It was but too true.

“And why did he take that ladder?”

“In order to go and see the Esmeralda,” replied Jupiter. “He said, ‘Come, here’s a ladder that’s of no use!’ and he took it.”

This was the last blow.

“May the devil fly away with you!” he said to the comedian, “and if I get my pay, you shall receive yours.”

As he descended the winding stairs of the courts. he muttered: “These Parisians! They come to hear a mystery and don’t listen to it at all! And I! To come only to see faces and behold backs! May the devil flay me if I understand what they mean with their Esmeralda! What is that word, in the first place?”

Book Second

Chapter I
From Charybdis to Scylla

Night comes on early in January. The streets were already dark when Gringoire left the Courts. This gloom pleased him. After the brilliant failure of his first theatrical venture, he dared not return to the place he lived in, as he owned twelve sols for the rent. He remembered to seeing in the Rue de la Savaterie, at the door of a councillor of the parliament, a stepping stone for mounting a mule, which could serve as a very excellent pillow for a mendicant or a poet. He thanked Providence for having sent this happy idea to him; but then he saw the procession of the Pope of the Fools, which was also emerging from the court house. He fled.

Children were running about here and there with fire lances and rockets.

A street opened before him; he thought it so dark and deserted that he hoped to escape from all the rumors as well as from all the gleams of the festival. He reached the western point of the city and considered for some time the islet of the Passeur-aux-Vaches. The islet appeared to him in the shadow like a black mass. One could see by the ray of a tiny light a hut in the form of a beehive where the ferryman of cows took refuge at night.

“Happy ferryman!” thought Gringoire; “you do not dream of glory, and you do not make marriage songs! What matters it to you, if kings and Duchesses of Burgundy marry? Thanks, ferryman, your cabin rests my eyes, and makes me forget Paris!”

He was roused from his thoughts by the sounds of the cow ferryman taking his part in the rejoicings of the day and letting off fireworks.

“Accursed festival!” exclaimed Gringoire, “will it pursue me everywhere?”

Then he looked at the Seine at his feet, and a horrible temptation took possession of him:

“Oh!” said he, “I would gladly drown myself, were the water not so cold!”

Chapter II
The Place de Grève

Place de Grève was bordered on one side by the quay, and on the other three by a series of narrow and gloomy houses. By day, one could admire the variety of its edifices, all sculptured in stone or wood, presenting complete specimens of the different domestic architectures of the Middle Ages, running back from the fifteenth to the eleventh century. At night, one could distinguish nothing of all that mass of buildings, except the black indentation of the roofs, unrolling their chain of acute angles round the place.

When Pierre Gringoire arrived on the Place de Grève, he was paralyzed. He had directed his course across the Pont aux Meuniers, in order to avoid the crowd; but the wheels of all the bishop’s mills had splashed him as he passed, and he was drenched. Hence he went to draw near the bonfire, which was burning magnificently in the middle of the Place. But a considerable crowd formed a circle around it.

“Accursed Parisians!” he said to imself, “there they are obstructing my fire! Nevertheless, I am greatly in need of warmth. Move aside! I’d like to know what they are doing there!”

On looking more closely, he saw that the circle was much larger than was required simply for the purpose of getting warm.

In a vast space between the crowd and the fire, a young girl was dancing.

Gringoire was fascinated.

She was not tall. Her skin possessed a beautiful golden tone of the Andalusians and the Roman women. She danced, she turned, she whirled rapidly about on an old Persian rug, and each time her radiant face passed before you, as she whirled, her great black eyes darted a flash of lightning at you.

She was a supernatural creature.

“In truth,” said Gringoire to himself, “she is a nymph, she is a goddess!”

At that moment, one of girl’s braids of hair became unfastened, and a piece of yellow copper which was attached to it, rolled to the ground.

“No!” said he, “she is a gypsy!”

All illusions had disappeared.

Disenchanted though Gringoire was, the whole picture was not without its charm and its magic; the bonfire illuminated, with a red flaring light, which trembled, all alive, over the circle of faces in the crowd and on the young girl.

Among the thousands of faces which that light tinged with scarlet, there was one which seemed, even more than all the others, absorbed in contemplation of the dancer. It was the face of a man, calm, and sombre. This man, whose costume was concealed by the crowd, did not appear to be more than thirty five years of age; his broad, high forehead had begun to be furrowed with wrinkles, but his deep-set eyes sparkled with extraordinary youthfulness. He kept them fixed on the gypsy. From time to time, he would a smile and let out a sigh.

The young girl, stopped, breathless, and the people applauded her lovingly.

“Djali!” said the gypsy.

Then Gringoire saw a pretty little white goat come up to her.

“Djali!” said the dancer, “it is your turn.”

And, seating herself, she gracefully presented her tambourine to the goat.

“Djali,” she continued, “what month is this?”

The goat lifted its fore foot, and struck one blow upon the tambourine. It was the first month in the year, in fact.

“Djali,” pursued the young girl, turning her tambourine round, “what day of the month is this?”

Djali raised his little gilt hoof, and struck six blows on the tambourine.

The people were amazed.

“There’s sorcery at the bottom of it,” said a sinister voice in the crowd. It was that of the man, who never removed his eyes from the gypsy.

She continued to question her goat.

“Djali, what does Master Guichard Grand-Remy, captain of the pistoliers of the town do, at the procession of Candlemas?”

Djali reared himself on his hind legs, and began to bleat, marching along with so much dainty gravity, that the entire circle of spectators burst into a laugh at this parody of the interested devoutness of the captain of pistoliers.

The crowd applauded louder than ever.

“Sacrilege!” resumed the voice of the bald man.

The gypsy turned around.

“Ah!” said she, “’tis that villanous man!” Then she executed a pirouette on her heel, and set about⁴ collecting in her tambourine the gifts of the multitude.

Money showered into it.

All at once, she passed in front of Gringoire. Gringoire put his hand into his pocket to find it empty. The pretty girl stood there, waiting.

An unexpected incident came to his rescue.

“Will you take yourself off, you Egyptian grasshopper?” cried a sharp voice.

The young girl turned round. It was no longer the voice of the bald man; it was the voice of a woman.

Gringoire had taken advantage of the dancer’s embarrassment to disappear.

It is an unpleasant thing to go to bed without supper, it is a still less pleasant thing not to eat and not to know where to sleep. That was Gringoire’s condition. No supper, no shelter.

This melancholy was absorbing him more and more, when a song suddenly tore him from it. It was the young gypsy who was singing.

Her voice was like her dancing, like her beauty. It was indefinable and charming. The words which she sang were in a tongue unknown to Gringoire. He felt the tears in his eyes. Her song breathed joy, most of all.

The same woman’s voice interrupted the song.

“Will you hold your tongue, you cricket of hell?” it cried, still from the same obscure corner of the place.

The poor “cricket” stopped short. Gringoire covered up his ears.

At this moment the attention has been diverted by the procession of the Pope of the Fools, which, after having traversed many streets and squares, came to the Place de Grève.

It is difficult to convey an idea of what Quasimodo had felt. It was the first enjoyment of self-love that he had ever experienced. To that day, he had known only humiliation, disdain, disgust.

At the very moment when Quasimodo was passing the Pillar House, a man darted from the crowd to tear from his hands, with a gesture of anger, his crosier of gilded wood – the emblem of his mock popeship.

This man was the man with the bald brow, who, a moment earlier, chilled the poor gypsy with his words of hatred. Gringoire, who had not noticed him up to that time, recognized him: “Hold!” he said. “’tis my master, Dom Claude Frollo, the archdeacon! What the devil does he want of that old one-eyed fellow?”

A cry of terror arose, in fact. Quasimodo threw himself from the plank. He leaped to the priest, looked at him, and fell upon his knees.

The priest tore off his tiara, broke his crozier, and rent his tinsel cope.

Quasimodo remained on his knees, with head bent and hands clasped. Then there was a strange dialogue of signs and gestures, for neither of them spoke.

The archdeacon gave Quasimodo a powerful shake, made him a sign to rise and follow him.

Quasimodo rose and walked in front of him.

Both were allowed to plunge into a dark and narrow street, where no one dared to go after them.

Chapter III
The Inconveniences of Following a Pretty Woman through the Streets in the Evening

Gringoire set out to follow the gypsy at all hazards. He had seen her, accompanied by her goat, take to the Rue de la Coutellerie.

“Why not?” he said to himself.

He walked along, very thoughtfully, behind the young girl. She hastened her pace and made her goat trot.

“After all,” he half thought to himself, “she must lodge somewhere; gypsies have kind hearts. Who knows?—”

The streets were becoming blacker and more deserted every moment. The curfew had sounded long ago. Gringoire had become involved, in his pursuit of the gypsy, in the labyrinth of alleys, squares, and closed courts.

The young girl’s attention had been attracted to him for the last few moments; she had repeatedly turned her head towards him with uneasiness.

He dropped his head, began to count the paving-stones, and tried to follow the young girl at a little greater distance, when, at the turn of a street, which had caused him to lose sight of her, he heard her utter a piercing cry.

He hastened his steps.

The street was full of shadows. Nevertheless, he saw the gypsy struggling in the arms of two men. The poor little goat, in great alarm, lowered his horns and bleated.

“Help! Gentlemen of the watch⁵!” shouted Gringoire, and advanced bravely. One of the men who held the young girl turned towards him. It was Quasimodo.

Gringoire did not take to flight, but neither did he advance another step.

Quasimodo came up to him, tossed him four paces away on the pavement with a backward turn of the hand, and plunged rapidly into the gloom, bearing the young girl folded across one arm like a silken scarf. His companion followed him, and the poor goat ran after them all, bleating.

“Murder! Murder!” shrieked the unhappy gypsy.

“Halt, rascals, and give me that wench!” suddenly shouted in a voice of thunder.

It was a captain of the king’s archers, armed from head to foot, with his sword in his hand.

He tore the gypsy from the arms of the dazed Quasimodo, threw her across his saddle, and at the moment when the terrible hunchback, recovering from his surprise, rushed upon him to regain his prey, fifteen or sixteen archers, who followed their captain closely, made their appearance, with their two-edged swords in their fists.

Quasimodo was surrounded; he roared, he foamed at the mouth, he bit. His companion had disappeared during the struggle.

The gypsy gracefully raised herself upright upon the officer’s saddle, placed both hands upon the young man’s shoulders, and gazed fixedly at him for several seconds, as though enchanted with his good looks and with the aid which he had just rendered her. Then breaking silence first, she said to him, making her sweet voice still sweeter than usual,—

“What is your name, monsieur le gendarme?”

“Captain Phoebus de Châteaupers, at your service, my beauty!” replied the officer, drawing himself up.

“Thank you,” said she.

And then she slipped from the horse, like an arrow falling to earth, and fled. A flash of lightning would have vanished less quickly.

Chapter IV
Result of the Dangers

Gringoire, thoroughly stunned by his fall, remained on the pavement. Little by little, he regained his senses.

“That devil of a hunchbacked cyclops!” he muttered between his teeth; and he tried to rise. But he was too much dazed and bruised; he was forced to remain where he was.

“The mud of Paris,” he said to himself—for decidedly he thought that he was sure that the gutter would prove his refuge for the night; and what can one do in a refuge, except dream?—“the mud of Paris is particularly stinking; it must contain a great deal of volatile and nitric salts. That, moreover, is the opinion of Master Nicholas Flamel, and of the alchemists—”

The word alchemists suddenly suggested to his mind the idea of Archdeacon Claude Frollo. He recalled the violent scene which he had just witnessed in part; that the gypsy was struggling with two men, that Quasimodo had a companion. “That would be strange!” he said to himself.

The place was becoming less and less tenable.

A group of children rushed towards the square where Gringoire lay, with shouts and laughter. They were dragging after them some sort of hideous sack.

“Ohé, Hennequin Dandèche! Ohé, Jehan Pincebourde!” they shouted in deafening tones, “old Eustache Moubon, the merchant at the corner, has just died. We’ve got his straw pallet, we’re going to have a bonfire out of it. It’s the turn of the Flemish to-day!”

They flung the pallet directly upon Gringoire. At the same time, one of them took a handful of straw and set off to light it at the wick of the good Virgin.

“S’death!” growled Gringoire, “am I going to be too warm now?”

It was a critical moment. He was caught between fire and water; he made a superhuman effort, the effort of a counterfeiter of money who is on the point of being boiled, and who seeks to escape. He rose to his feet, flung aside the straw pallet upon the street urchins, and fled.

“Holy Virgin!” shrieked the children; “’tis the merchant’s ghost!”

And they fled in their turn.