After having run for some time at the top of his speed, without knowingwhither, knocking his head against many a street corner, leaping many agutter, traversing many an alley, many a court, many a square, seekingflight and passage through all the meanderings of the ancient passagesof the Halles, exploring in his panic terror what the fine Latin of themaps calls _tota via, cheminum et viaria_, our poet suddenly halted forlack of breath in the first place, and in the second, because he hadbeen collared, after a fashion, by a dilemma which had just occurred tohis mind. "It strikes me, Master Pierre Gringoire," he said to himself,placing his finger to his brow, "that you are running like a madman. Thelittle scamps are no less afraid of you than you are of them. It strikesme, I say, that you heard the clatter of their wooden shoes fleeingsouthward, while you were fleeing northward. Now, one of two things,either they have taken flight, and the pallet, which they must haveforgotten in their terror, is precisely that hospitable bed in searchof which you have been running ever since morning, and which madame theVirgin miraculously sends you, in order to recompense you for havingmade a morality in her honor, accompanied by triumphs and mummeries; orthe children have not taken flight, and in that case they have put thebrand to the pallet, and that is precisely the good fire which you needto cheer, dry, and warm you. In either case, good fire or good bed, thatstraw pallet is a gift from heaven. The blessed Virgin Marie who standsat the corner of the Rue Mauconseil, could only have made EustacheMoubon die for that express purpose; and it is folly on your part toflee thus zigzag, like a Picard before a Frenchman, leaving behind youwhat you seek before you; and you are a fool!"
Then he retraced his steps, and feeling his way and searching, with hisnose to the wind and his ears on the alert, he tried to find theblessed pallet again, but in vain. There was nothing to be found butintersections of houses, closed courts, and crossings of streets, inthe midst of which he hesitated and doubted incessantly, being moreperplexed and entangled in this medley of streets than he would havebeen even in the labyrinth of the Hotel des Tournelles. At length helost patience, and exclaimed solemnly: "Cursed be cross roads! 'tis thedevil who has made them in the shape of his pitchfork!"
This exclamation afforded him a little solace, and a sort of reddishreflection which he caught sight of at that moment, at the extremity ofa long and narrow lane, completed the elevation of his moral tone. "Godbe praised!" said he, "There it is yonder! There is my pallet burning."And comparing himself to the pilot who suffers shipwreck by night,"_Salve_," he added piously, "_salve, maris stella_!"
Did he address this fragment of litany to the Holy Virgin, or to thepallet? We are utterly unable to say.
He had taken but a few steps in the long street, which sloped downwards,was unpaved, and more and more muddy and steep, when he noticed a verysingular thing. It was not deserted; here and there along its extentcrawled certain vague and formless masses, all directing their coursetowards the light which flickered at the end of the street, like thoseheavy insects which drag along by night, from blade to blade of grass,towards the shepherd's fire.
Nothing renders one so adventurous as not being able to feel the placewhere one's pocket is situated. Gringoire continued to advance, and hadsoon joined that one of the forms which dragged along most indolently,behind the others. On drawing near, he perceived that it was nothingelse than a wretched legless cripple in a bowl, who was hopping along onhis two hands like a wounded field-spider which has but two legs left.At the moment when he passed close to this species of spider with ahuman countenance, it raised towards him a lamentable voice: "_La buonamancia, signor! la buona mancia_!"*
* Alms.
"Deuce take you," said Gringoire, "and me with you, if I know what youmean!"
And he passed on.
He overtook another of these itinerant masses, and examined it. It wasan impotent man, both halt and crippled, and halt and crippled to sucha degree that the complicated system of crutches and wooden legs whichsustained him, gave him the air of a mason's scaffolding on the march.Gringoire, who liked noble and classical comparisons, compared him inthought to the living tripod of Vulcan.
This living tripod saluted him as he passed, but stopping his hat on alevel with Gringoire's chin, like a shaving dish, while he shouted inthe latter's ears: "_Senor cabellero, para comprar un pedaso de pan_!"*
* Give me the means to buy a bit of bread, sir.
"It appears," said Gringoire, "that this one can also talk; but 'tis arude language, and he is more fortunate than I if he understands it."Then, smiting his brow, in a sudden transition of ideas: "By the way,what the deuce did they mean this morning with their Esmeralda?"
He was minded to augment his pace, but for the third time somethingbarred his way. This something or, rather, some one was a blind man, alittle blind fellow with a bearded, Jewish face, who, rowing away in thespace about him with a stick, and towed by a large dog, droned throughhis nose with a Hungarian accent: "_Facitote caritatem_!"
"Well, now," said Gringoire, "here's one at last who speaks a Christiantongue. I must have a very charitable aspect, since they ask alms ofme in the present lean condition of my purse. My friend," and he turnedtowards the blind man, "I sold my last shirt last week; that is to say,since you understand only the language of Cicero: _Vendidi hebdomadenuper transita meam ultimam chemisan_."
That said, he turned his back upon the blind man, and pursued his way.But the blind man began to increase his stride at the same time; and,behold! the cripple and the legless man, in his bowl, came up on theirside in great haste, and with great clamor of bowl and crutches, uponthe pavement. Then all three, jostling each other at poor Gringoire'sheels, began to sing their song to him,--
"_Caritatem_!" chanted the blind man.
"_La buona mancia_!" chanted the cripple in the bowl.
And the lame man took up the musical phrase by repeating: "_Un pedaso depan_!"
Gringoire stopped up his ears. "Oh, tower of Babel!" he exclaimed.
He set out to run. The blind man ran! The lame man ran! The cripple inthe bowl ran!
And then, in proportion as he plunged deeper into the street, cripplesin bowls, blind men and lame men, swarmed about him, and men with onearm, and with one eye, and the leprous with their sores, some emergingfrom little streets adjacent, some from the air-holes of cellars,howling, bellowing, yelping, all limping and halting, all flingingthemselves towards the light, and humped up in the mire, like snailsafter a shower.
Gringoire, still followed by his three persecutors, and not knowingvery well what was to become of him, marched along in terror among them,turning out for the lame, stepping over the cripples in bowls, with hisfeet imbedded in that ant-hill of lame men, like the English captain whogot caught in the quicksand of a swarm of crabs.
The idea occurred to him of making an effort to retrace his steps. Butit was too late. This whole legion had closed in behind him, and histhree beggars held him fast. So he proceeded, impelled both by thisirresistible flood, by fear, and by a vertigo which converted all thisinto a sort of horrible dream.
At last he reached the end of the street. It opened upon an immenseplace, where a thousand scattered lights flickered in the confused mistsof night. Gringoire flew thither, hoping to escape, by the swiftness ofhis legs, from the three infirm spectres who had clutched him.
"_Onde vas, hombre_?" (Where are you going, my man?) cried the cripple,flinging away his crutches, and running after him with the best legsthat ever traced a geometrical step upon the pavements of Paris.
In the meantime the legless man, erect upon his feet, crowned Gringoirewith his heavy iron bowl, and the blind man glared in his face withflaming eyes!
"Where am I?" said the terrified poet.
"In the Court of Miracles," replied a fourth spectre, who had accostedthem.
"Upon my soul," resumed Gringoire, "I certainly do behold the blind whosee, and the lame who walk, but where is the Saviour?"
They replied by a burst of sinister laughter.
&nb
sp; The poor poet cast his eyes about him. It was, in truth, thatredoubtable Cour des Miracles, whither an honest man had neverpenetrated at such an hour; the magic circle where the officers of theChatelet and the sergeants of the provostship, who ventured thither,disappeared in morsels; a city of thieves, a hideous wart on the face ofParis; a sewer, from which escaped every morning, and whither returnedevery night to crouch, that stream of vices, of mendicancy andvagabondage which always overflows in the streets of capitals; amonstrous hive, to which returned at nightfall, with their booty, allthe drones of the social order; a lying hospital where the bohemian, thedisfrocked monk, the ruined scholar, the ne'er-do-wells of all nations,Spaniards, Italians, Germans,--of all religions, Jews, Christians,Mahometans, idolaters, covered with painted sores, beggars by day, weretransformed by night into brigands; an immense dressing-room, in a word,where, at that epoch, the actors of that eternal comedy, which theft,prostitution, and murder play upon the pavements of Paris, dressed andundressed.
It was a vast place, irregular and badly paved, like all the squares ofParis at that date. Fires, around which swarmed strange groups, blazedhere and there. Every one was going, coming, and shouting. Shrilllaughter was to be heard, the wailing of children, the voices ofwomen. The hands and heads of this throng, black against the luminousbackground, outlined against it a thousand eccentric gestures. At times,upon the ground, where trembled the light of the fires, mingled withlarge, indefinite shadows, one could behold a dog passing, whichresembled a man, a man who resembled a dog. The limits of races andspecies seemed effaced in this city, as in a pandemonium. Men, women,beasts, age, sex, health, maladies, all seemed to be in common amongthese people; all went together, they mingled, confounded, superposed;each one there participated in all.
The poor and flickering flames of the fire permitted Gringoire todistinguish, amid his trouble, all around the immense place, a hideousframe of ancient houses, whose wormeaten, shrivelled, stunted facades,each pierced with one or two lighted attic windows, seemed to him, inthe darkness, like enormous heads of old women, ranged in a circle,monstrous and crabbed, winking as they looked on at the Witches'Sabbath.
It was like a new world, unknown, unheard of, misshapen, creeping,swarming, fantastic.
Gringoire, more and more terrified, clutched by the three beggars as bythree pairs of tongs, dazed by a throng of other faces which frothed andyelped around him, unhappy Gringoire endeavored to summon his presenceof mind, in order to recall whether it was a Saturday. But his effortswere vain; the thread of his memory and of his thought was broken; and,doubting everything, wavering between what he saw and what he felt, heput to himself this unanswerable question,--
"If I exist, does this exist? if this exists, do I exist?"
At that moment, a distinct cry arose in the buzzing throng whichsurrounded him, "Let's take him to the king! let's take him to theking!"
"Holy Virgin!" murmured Gringoire, "the king here must be a ram."
"To the king! to the king!" repeated all voices.
They dragged him off. Each vied with the other in laying his claws uponhim. But the three beggars did not loose their hold and tore him fromthe rest, howling, "He belongs to us!"
The poet's already sickly doublet yielded its last sigh in thisstruggle.
While traversing the horrible place, his vertigo vanished. After takinga few steps, the sentiment of reality returned to him. He began tobecome accustomed to the atmosphere of the place. At the first momentthere had arisen from his poet's head, or, simply and prosaically,from his empty stomach, a mist, a vapor, so to speak, which, spreadingbetween objects and himself, permitted him to catch a glimpse of themonly in the incoherent fog of nightmare,--in those shadows of dreamswhich distort every outline, agglomerating objects into unwieldy groups,dilating things into chimeras, and men into phantoms. Little by little,this hallucination was succeeded by a less bewildered and exaggeratingview. Reality made its way to the light around him, struck his eyes,struck his feet, and demolished, bit by bit, all that frightful poetrywith which he had, at first, believed himself to be surrounded. He wasforced to perceive that he was not walking in the Styx, but in mud, thathe was elbowed not by demons, but by thieves; that it was not his soulwhich was in question, but his life (since he lacked that preciousconciliator, which places itself so effectually between the bandit andthe honest man--a purse). In short, on examining the orgy more closely,and with more coolness, he fell from the witches' sabbath to thedram-shop.
The Cour des Miracles was, in fact, merely a dram-shop; but a brigand'sdram-shop, reddened quite as much with blood as with wine.
The spectacle which presented itself to his eyes, when his ragged escortfinally deposited him at the end of his trip, was not fitted to bear himback to poetry, even to the poetry of hell. It was more than ever theprosaic and brutal reality of the tavern. Were we not in the fifteenthcentury, we would say that Gringoire had descended from Michael Angeloto Callot.
Around a great fire which burned on a large, circular flagstone, theflames of which had heated red-hot the legs of a tripod, which wasempty for the moment, some wormeaten tables were placed, here and there,haphazard, no lackey of a geometrical turn having deigned to adjusttheir parallelism, or to see to it that they did not make too unusualangles. Upon these tables gleamed several dripping pots of wine andbeer, and round these pots were grouped many bacchic visages, purplewith the fire and the wine. There was a man with a huge belly and ajovial face, noisily kissing a woman of the town, thickset and brawny.There was a sort of sham soldier, a "naquois," as the slang expressionruns, who was whistling as he undid the bandages from his fictitiouswound, and removing the numbness from his sound and vigorous knee, whichhad been swathed since morning in a thousand ligatures. On the otherhand, there was a wretched fellow, preparing with celandine and beef'sblood, his "leg of God," for the next day. Two tables further on, apalmer, with his pilgrim's costume complete, was practising the lamentof the Holy Queen, not forgetting the drone and the nasal drawl. Furtheron, a young scamp was taking a lesson in epilepsy from an old pretender,who was instructing him in the art of foaming at the mouth, by chewing amorsel of soap. Beside him, a man with the dropsy was getting rid of hisswelling, and making four or five female thieves, who were disputingat the same table, over a child who had been stolen that evening, holdtheir noses. All circumstances which, two centuries later, "seemed soridiculous to the court," as Sauval says, "that they served as a pastimeto the king, and as an introduction to the royal ballet of Night,divided into four parts and danced on the theatre of the Petit-Bourbon.""Never," adds an eye witness of 1653, "have the sudden metamorphoses ofthe Court of Miracles been more happily presented. Benserade prepared usfor it by some very gallant verses."
Loud laughter everywhere, and obscene songs. Each one held his owncourse, carping and swearing, without listening to his neighbor. Potsclinked, and quarrels sprang up at the shock of the pots, and the brokenpots made rents in the rags.
A big dog, seated on his tail, gazed at the fire. Some children weremingled in this orgy. The stolen child wept and cried. Another, a bigboy four years of age, seated with legs dangling, upon a bench that wastoo high for him, before a table that reached to his chin, and utteringnot a word. A third, gravely spreading out upon the table with hisfinger, the melted tallow which dripped from a candle. Last of all, alittle fellow crouching in the mud, almost lost in a cauldron, whichhe was scraping with a tile, and from which he was evoking a sound thatwould have made Stradivarius swoon.
Near the fire was a hogshead, and on the hogshead a beggar. This was theking on his throne.
The three who had Gringoire in their clutches led him in front of thishogshead, and the entire bacchanal rout fell silent for a moment, withthe exception of the cauldron inhabited by the child.
Gringoire dared neither breathe nor raise his eyes.
"_Hombre, quita tu sombrero_!" said one of the three knaves, in whosegrasp he was, and, before he had comprehended the meaning, the other hadsnatched his hat--a wretc
hed headgear, it is true, but still good on asunny day or when there was but little rain. Gringoire sighed.
Meanwhile the king addressed him, from the summit of his cask,--
"Who is this rogue?"
Gringoire shuddered. That voice, although accentuated by menace,recalled to him another voice, which, that very morning, had dealt thedeathblow to his mystery, by drawling, nasally, in the midst of theaudience, "Charity, please!" He raised his head. It was indeed ClopinTrouillefou.
Clopin Trouillefou, arrayed in his royal insignia, wore neither one ragmore nor one rag less. The sore upon his arm had already disappeared.He held in his hand one of those whips made of thongs of white leather,which police sergeants then used to repress the crowd, and which werecalled _boullayes_. On his head he wore a sort of headgear, bound roundand closed at the top. But it was difficult to make out whether it wasa child's cap or a king's crown, the two things bore so strong aresemblance to each other.
Meanwhile Gringoire, without knowing why, had regained some hope, onrecognizing in the King of the Cour des Miracles his accursed mendicantof the Grand Hall.
"Master," stammered he; "monseigneur--sire--how ought I to addressyou?" he said at length, having reached the culminating point of hiscrescendo, and knowing neither how to mount higher, nor to descendagain.
"Monseigneur, his majesty, or comrade, call me what you please. But makehaste. What have you to say in your own defence?"
"In your own defence?" thought Gringoire, "that displeases me." Heresumed, stuttering, "I am he, who this morning--"
"By the devil's claws!" interrupted Clopin, "your name, knave, andnothing more. Listen. You are in the presence of three powerfulsovereigns: myself, Clopin Trouillefou, King of Thunes, successor to theGrand Coesre, supreme suzerain of the Realm of Argot; Mathias HunyadiSpicali, Duke of Egypt and of Bohemia, the old yellow fellow whomyou see yonder, with a dish clout round his head; Guillaume Rousseau,Emperor of Galilee, that fat fellow who is not listening to us butcaressing a wench. We are your judges. You have entered the Kingdom ofArgot, without being an _argotier_; you have violated the privileges ofour city. You must be punished unless you are a _capon_, a _franc-mitou_or a _rifode_; that is to say, in the slang of honest folks,--a thief, abeggar, or a vagabond. Are you anything of that sort? Justify yourself;announce your titles."
"Alas!" said Gringoire, "I have not that honor. I am the author--"
"That is sufficient," resumed Trouillefou, without permitting himto finish. "You are going to be hanged. 'Tis a very simple matter,gentlemen and honest bourgeois! as you treat our people in your abode,so we treat you in ours! The law which you apply to vagabonds, vagabondsapply to you. 'Tis your fault if it is harsh. One really must beholdthe grimace of an honest man above the hempen collar now and then; thatrenders the thing honorable. Come, friend, divide your rags gayly amongthese damsels. I am going to have you hanged to amuse the vagabonds, andyou are to give them your purse to drink your health. If you have anymummery to go through with, there's a very good God the Father in thatmortar yonder, in stone, which we stole from Saint-Pierre aux Boeufs.You have four minutes in which to fling your soul at his head."
The harangue was formidable.
"Well said, upon my soul! Clopin Trouillefou preaches like the HolyFather the Pope!" exclaimed the Emperor of Galilee, smashing his pot inorder to prop up his table.
"Messeigneurs, emperors, and kings," said Gringoire coolly (for I knownot how, firmness had returned to him, and he spoke with resolution),"don't think of such a thing; my name is Pierre Gringoire. I am thepoet whose morality was presented this morning in the grand hall of theCourts."
"Ah! so it was you, master!" said Clopin. "I was there, _xete Dieu_!Well! comrade, is that any reason, because you bored us to death thismorning, that you should not be hung this evening?"
"I shall find difficulty in getting out of it," said Gringoire tohimself. Nevertheless, he made one more effort: "I don't see why poetsare not classed with vagabonds," said he. "Vagabond, Aesopus certainlywas; Homerus was a beggar; Mercurius was a thief--"
Clopin interrupted him: "I believe that you are trying to blarney uswith your jargon. Zounds! let yourself be hung, and don't kick up such arow over it!"
"Pardon me, monseigneur, the King of Thunes," replied Gringoire,disputing the ground foot by foot. "It is worth trouble--Onemoment!--Listen to me--You are not going to condemn me without havingheard me"--
His unlucky voice was, in fact, drowned in the uproar which rose aroundhim. The little boy scraped away at his cauldron with more spirit thanever; and, to crown all, an old woman had just placed on the tripod afrying-pan of grease, which hissed away on the fire with a noise similarto the cry of a troop of children in pursuit of a masker.
In the meantime, Clopin Trouillefou appeared to hold a momentaryconference with the Duke of Egypt, and the Emperor of Galilee, whowas completely drunk. Then he shouted shrilly: "Silence!" and, as thecauldron and the frying-pan did not heed him, and continued their duet,he jumped down from his hogshead, gave a kick to the boiler, whichrolled ten paces away bearing the child with it, a kick to thefrying-pan, which upset in the fire with all its grease, and gravelyremounted his throne, without troubling himself about the stifledtears of the child, or the grumbling of the old woman, whose supper waswasting away in a fine white flame.
Trouillefou made a sign, and the duke, the emperor, and the passedmasters of pickpockets, and the isolated robbers, came and rangedthemselves around him in a horseshoe, of which Gringoire, still roughlyheld by the body, formed the centre. It was a semicircle of rags,tatters, tinsel, pitchforks, axes, legs staggering with intoxication,huge, bare arms, faces sordid, dull, and stupid. In the midst of thisRound Table of beggary, Clopin Trouillefou,--as the doge of this senate,as the king of this peerage, as the pope of this conclave,--dominated;first by virtue of the height of his hogshead, and next by virtue ofan indescribable, haughty, fierce, and formidable air, which caused hiseyes to flash, and corrected in his savage profile the bestial type ofthe race of vagabonds. One would have pronounced him a boar amid a herdof swine.
"Listen," said he to Gringoire, fondling his misshapen chin with hishorny hand; "I don't see why you should not be hung. It is true thatit appears to be repugnant to you; and it is very natural, for youbourgeois are not accustomed to it. You form for yourselves a great ideaof the thing. After all, we don't wish you any harm. Here is a meansof extricating yourself from your predicament for the moment. Will youbecome one of us?"
The reader can judge of the effect which this proposition produced uponGringoire, who beheld life slipping away from him, and who was beginningto lose his hold upon it. He clutched at it again with energy.
"Certainly I will, and right heartily," said he.
"Do you consent," resumed Clopin, "to enroll yourself among the peopleof the knife?"
"Of the knife, precisely," responded Gringoire.
"You recognize yourself as a member of the free bourgeoisie?"* added theKing of Thunes.
* A high-toned sharper.
"Of the free bourgeoisie."
"Subject of the Kingdom of Argot?"
"Of the Kingdom of Argot*."
* Thieves.
"A vagabond?"
"A vagabond."
"In your soul?"
"In my soul."
"I must call your attention to the fact," continued the king, "that youwill be hung all the same."
"The devil!" said the poet.
"Only," continued Clopin imperturbably, "you will be hung later on, withmore ceremony, at the expense of the good city of Paris, on a handsomestone gibbet, and by honest men. That is a consolation."
"Just so," responded Gringoire.
"There are other advantages. In your quality of a high-toned sharper,you will not have to pay the taxes on mud, or the poor, or lanterns, towhich the bourgeois of Paris are subject."
"So be it," said the poet. "I agree. I am a vagabond, a thief, asharper, a man of the knife, anything you please; and I am
all thatalready, monsieur, King of Thunes, for I am a philosopher; _et omnia inphilosophia, omnes in philosopho continentur_,--all things are containedin philosophy, all men in the philosopher, as you know."
The King of Thunes scowled.
"What do you take me for, my friend? What Hungarian Jew patter are youjabbering at us? I don't know Hebrew. One isn't a Jew because one isa bandit. I don't even steal any longer. I'm above that; I kill.Cut-throat, yes; cutpurse, no."
Gringoire tried to slip in some excuse between these curt words, whichwrath rendered more and more jerky.
"I ask your pardon, monseigneur. It is not Hebrew; 'tis Latin."
"I tell you," resumed Clopin angrily, "that I'm not a Jew, and that I'llhave you hung, belly of the synagogue, like that little shopkeeper ofJudea, who is by your side, and whom I entertain strong hopes of seeingnailed to a counter one of these days, like the counterfeit coin that heis!"
So saying, he pointed his finger at the little, bearded Hungarian Jewwho had accosted Gringoire with his _facitote caritatem_, and who,understanding no other language beheld with surprise the King ofThunes's ill-humor overflow upon him.
At length Monsieur Clopin calmed down.
"So you will be a vagabond, you knave?" he said to our poet.
"Of course," replied the poet.
"Willing is not all," said the surly Clopin; "good will doesn't put oneonion the more into the soup, and 'tis good for nothing except to goto Paradise with; now, Paradise and the thieves' band are two differentthings. In order to be received among the thieves,* you must prove thatyou are good for something, and for that purpose, you must search themanikin."
* L'argot.
"I'll search anything you like," said Gringoire.
Clopin made a sign. Several thieves detached themselves from the circle,and returned a moment later. They brought two thick posts, terminatedat their lower extremities in spreading timber supports, which made themstand readily upon the ground; to the upper extremity of the two poststhey fitted a cross-beam, and the whole constituted a very prettyportable gibbet, which Gringoire had the satisfaction of beholding risebefore him, in a twinkling. Nothing was lacking, not even the rope,which swung gracefully over the cross-beam.
"What are they going to do?" Gringoire asked himself with someuneasiness. A sound of bells, which he heard at that moment, put anend to his anxiety; it was a stuffed manikin, which the vagabonds weresuspending by the neck from the rope, a sort of scarecrow dressed inred, and so hung with mule-bells and larger bells, that one might havetricked out thirty Castilian mules with them. These thousand tiny bellsquivered for some time with the vibration of the rope, then graduallydied away, and finally became silent when the manikin had been broughtinto a state of immobility by that law of the pendulum which hasdethroned the water clock and the hour-glass. Then Clopin, pointing outto Gringoire a rickety old stool placed beneath the manikin,--"Climb upthere."
"Death of the devil!" objected Gringoire; "I shall break my neck. Yourstool limps like one of Martial's distiches; it has one hexameter legand one pentameter leg."
"Climb!" repeated Clopin.
Gringoire mounted the stool, and succeeded, not without someoscillations of head and arms, in regaining his centre of gravity.
"Now," went on the King of Thunes, "twist your right foot round yourleft leg, and rise on the tip of your left foot."
"Monseigneur," said Gringoire, "so you absolutely insist on my breakingsome one of my limbs?"
Clopin tossed his head.
"Hark ye, my friend, you talk too much. Here's the gist of the matterin two words: you are to rise on tiptoe, as I tell you; in that way youwill be able to reach the pocket of the manikin, you will rummage it,you will pull out the purse that is there,--and if you do all thiswithout our hearing the sound of a bell, all is well: you shall be avagabond. All we shall then have to do, will be to thrash you soundlyfor the space of a week."
"_Ventre-Dieu_! I will be careful," said Gringoire. "And suppose I domake 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 itspurse; if a single bell stirs during the operation, you will be hung. Doyou understand that?"
"Good," said Gringoire; "I understand that. And then?"
"If you succeed in removing the purse without our hearing the bells, youare a vagabond, and you will be thrashed for eight consecutive days. Youunderstand 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? Itis for your interest that we should beat you, in order to harden you toblows."
"Many thanks," replied the poet.
"Come, make haste," said the king, stamping upon his cask, whichresounded like a huge drum! "Search the manikin, and let there be an endto this! I warn you for the last time, that if I hear a single bell, youwill take the place of the manikin."
The band of thieves applauded Clopin's words, and arranged themselvesin a circle round the gibbet, with a laugh so pitiless that Gringoireperceived that he amused them too much not to have everything to fearfrom them. No hope was left for him, accordingly, unless it were theslight chance of succeeding in the formidable operation which wasimposed upon him; he decided to risk it, but it was not without firsthaving addressed a fervent prayer to the manikin he was about toplunder, and who would have been easier to move to pity than thevagabonds. These myriad bells, with their little copper tongues, seemedto him like the mouths of so many asps, open and ready to sting and tohiss.
"Oh!" he said, in a very low voice, "is it possible that my life dependson 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 footround his left leg, raised himself on his left foot, and stretched outhis 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 whichhad but three; he made an involuntary effort to support himself by themanikin, lost his balance, and fell heavily to the ground, deafenedby the fatal vibration of the thousand bells of the manikin, which,yielding to the impulse imparted by his hand, described first a rotarymotion, and then swayed majestically between the two posts.
"Malediction!" he cried as he fell, and remained as though dead, withhis face to the earth.
Meanwhile, he heard the dreadful peal above his head, the diabolicallaughter of the vagabonds, and the voice of Trouillefou saying,--
"Pick me up that knave, and hang him without ceremony." He rose. Theyhad already detached the manikin to make room for him.
The thieves made him mount the stool, Clopin came to him, passed therope about his neck, and, tapping him on the shoulder,--
"Adieu, my friend. You can't escape now, even if you digested with thepope's guts."
The word "Mercy!" died away upon Gringoire's lips. He cast his eyesabout him; but there was no hope: all were laughing.
"Bellevigne de l'Etoile," said the King of Thunes to an enormousvagabond, who stepped out from the ranks, "climb upon the cross beam."
Bellevigne de l'Etoile nimbly mounted the transverse beam, and inanother 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 yourknee; you, Francois Chante-Prune, will cling to the feet of the rascal;and you, Bellevigne, will fling yourself on his shoulders; a
nd all threeat once, do you hear?"
Gringoire shuddered.
"Are you ready?" said Clopin Trouillefou to the three thieves, who heldthemselves in readiness to fall upon Gringoire. A moment of horriblesuspense ensued for the poor victim, during which Clopin tranquillythrust into the fire with the tip of his foot, some bits of vine shootswhich the flame had not caught. "Are you ready?" he repeated, and openedhis 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 manwithout inquiring whether there is any woman who wants him. Comrade,this is your last resource. You must wed either a female vagabond or thenoose."
This law of the vagabonds, singular as it may strike the reader, remainsto-day written out at length, in ancient English legislation. (See_Burington's Observations_.)
Gringoire breathed again. This was the second time that he hadreturned to life within an hour. So he did not dare to trust to it tooimplicitly.
"Hola!" cried Clopin, mounted once more upon his cask, "hola! women,females, is there among you, from the sorceress to her cat, a wench whowants this rascal? Hola, Colette la Charonne! Elisabeth Trouvain! SimoneJodouyne! Marie Piedebou! Thonne la Longue! Berarde Fanouel!Michelle Genaille! Claude Ronge-oreille! Mathurine Girorou!--Hola!Isabeau-la-Thierrye! Come and see! A man for nothing! Who wants him?"
Gringoire, no doubt, was not very appetizing in this miserablecondition. The female vagabonds did not seem to be much affected by theproposition. 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 ofhim. The first was a big wench, with a square face. She examined thephilosopher's deplorable doublet attentively. His garment was worn, andmore full of holes than a stove for roasting chestnuts. The girl made awry face. "Old rag!" she muttered, and addressing Gringoire, "Let's seeyour cloak!" "I have lost it," replied Gringoire. "Your hat?" "They tookit away from me." "Your shoes?" "They have hardly any soles left." "Yourpurse?" "Alas!" stammered Gringoire, "I have not even a sou." "Letthem 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 conspicuouseven in the Cour des Miracles, trotted round Gringoire. He almosttrembled 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 amoment with an air of pity, then dropped her eyes, made a plait in herpetticoat, and remained in indecision. He followed all these movementswith his eyes; it was the last gleam of hope. "No," said the young girl,at length, "no! Guillaume Longuejoue would beat me." She retreated intothe crowd.
"You are unlucky, comrade," said Clopin.
Then rising to his feet, upon his hogshead. "No one wants him," heexclaimed, imitating the accent of an auctioneer, to the great delightof all; "no one wants him? once, twice, three times!" and, turningtowards the gibbet with a sign of his hand, "Gone!"
Bellevigne de l'Etoile, Andry the Red, Francois Chante-Prune, stepped upto Gringoire.
At that moment a cry arose among the thieves: "La Esmeralda! LaEsmeralda!"
Gringoire shuddered, and turned towards the side whence the clamorproceeded.
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 hisreminiscences of the day.
This rare creature seemed, even in the Cour des Miracles, to exerciseher sway of charm and beauty. The vagabonds, male and female, rangedthemselves gently along her path, and their brutal faces beamed beneathher glance.
She approached the victim with her light step. Her pretty Djali followedher. Gringoire was more dead than alive. She examined him for a momentin 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 foryour 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 sincemorning, and that this was the continuation of it.
The change was, in fact, violent, though a gratifying one. They undidthe noose, and made the poet step down from the stool. His emotion wasso 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 theirforeheads, "she is your wife; sister, he is your husband for four years.Go."
CHAPTER VII. A BRIDAL NIGHT.