In the Middle Ages, when an edifice was complete, there was almostas much of it in the earth as above it. Unless built upon piles, likeNotre-Dame, a palace, a fortress, a church, had always a double bottom.In cathedrals, it was, in some sort, another subterranean cathedral,low, dark, mysterious, blind, and mute, under the upper nave which wasoverflowing with light and reverberating with organs and bells day andnight. Sometimes it was a sepulchre. In palaces, in fortresses, it wasa prison, sometimes a sepulchre also, sometimes both together. Thesemighty buildings, whose mode of formation and vegetation we haveelsewhere explained, had not simply foundations, but, so to speak,roots which ran branching through the soil in chambers, galleries,and staircases, like the construction above. Thus churches, palaces,fortresses, had the earth half way up their bodies. The cellars of anedifice formed another edifice, into which one descended insteadof ascending, and which extended its subterranean grounds under theexternal piles of the monument, like those forests and mountains whichare reversed in the mirror-like waters of a lake, beneath the forestsand mountains of the banks.
At the fortress of Saint-Antoine, at the Palais de Justice of Paris,at the Louvre, these subterranean edifices were prisons. The stories ofthese prisons, as they sank into the soil, grew constantly narrower andmore gloomy. They were so many zones, where the shades of horror weregraduated. Dante could never imagine anything better for his hell. Thesetunnels of cells usually terminated in a sack of a lowest dungeon, witha vat-like bottom, where Dante placed Satan, where society placed thosecondemned to death. A miserable human existence, once interred there;farewell light, air, life, _ogni speranza_--every hope; it only cameforth to the scaffold or the stake. Sometimes it rotted there; humanjustice called this "forgetting." Between men and himself, the condemnedman felt a pile of stones and jailers weighing down upon his head;and the entire prison, the massive bastille was nothing more than anenormous, complicated lock, which barred him off from the rest of theworld.
It was in a sloping cavity of this description, in the _oubliettes_excavated by Saint-Louis, in the _inpace_ of the Tournelle, that laEsmeralda had been placed on being condemned to death, through fear ofher escape, no doubt, with the colossal court-house over her head. Poorfly, who could not have lifted even one of its blocks of stone!
Assuredly, Providence and society had been equally unjust; such anexcess of unhappiness and of torture was not necessary to break so fraila creature.
There she lay, lost in the shadows, buried, hidden, immured. Any onewho could have beheld her in this state, after having seen her laugh anddance in the sun, would have shuddered. Cold as night, cold as death,not a breath of air in her tresses, not a human sound in her ear,no longer a ray of light in her eyes; snapped in twain, crushed withchains, crouching beside a jug and a loaf, on a little straw, in apool of water, which was formed under her by the sweating of the prisonwalls; without motion, almost without breath, she had no longer thepower to suffer; Phoebus, the sun, midday, the open air, the streets ofParis, the dances with applause, the sweet babblings of love with theofficer; then the priest, the old crone, the poignard, the blood,the torture, the gibbet; all this did, indeed, pass before her mind,sometimes as a charming and golden vision, sometimes as a hideousnightmare; but it was no longer anything but a vague and horriblestruggle, lost in the gloom, or distant music played up above ground,and which was no longer audible at the depth where the unhappy girl hadfallen.
Since she had been there, she had neither waked nor slept. In thatmisfortune, in that cell, she could no longer distinguish her wakinghours from slumber, dreams from reality, any more than day from night.All this was mixed, broken, floating, disseminated confusedly in herthought. She no longer felt, she no longer knew, she no longer thought;at the most, she only dreamed. Never had a living creature been thrustmore deeply into nothingness.
Thus benumbed, frozen, petrified, she had barely noticed on two or threeoccasions, the sound of a trap door opening somewhere above her, withouteven permitting the passage of a little light, and through which a handhad tossed her a bit of black bread. Nevertheless, this periodicalvisit of the jailer was the sole communication which was left her withmankind.
A single thing still mechanically occupied her ear; above her head, thedampness was filtering through the mouldy stones of the vault, anda drop of water dropped from them at regular intervals. She listenedstupidly to the noise made by this drop of water as it fell into thepool beside her.
This drop of water falling from time to time into that pool, was theonly movement which still went on around her, the only clock whichmarked the time, the only noise which reached her of all the noise madeon the surface of the earth.
To tell the whole, however, she also felt, from time to time, in thatcesspool of mire and darkness, something cold passing over her foot orher arm, and she shuddered.
How long had she been there? She did not know. She had a recollectionof a sentence of death pronounced somewhere, against some one, thenof having been herself carried away, and of waking up in darkness andsilence, chilled to the heart. She had dragged herself along on herhands. Then iron rings that cut her ankles, and chains had rattled. Shehad recognized the fact that all around her was wall, that below herthere was a pavement covered with moisture and a truss of straw; butneither lamp nor air-hole. Then she had seated herself on that strawand, sometimes, for the sake of changing her attitude, on the laststone step in her dungeon. For a while she had tried to count the blackminutes measured off for her by the drop of water; but that melancholylabor of an ailing brain had broken off of itself in her head, and hadleft her in stupor.
At length, one day, or one night, (for midnight and midday were of thesame color in that sepulchre), she heard above her a louder noise thanwas usually made by the turnkey when he brought her bread and jug ofwater. She raised her head, and beheld a ray of reddish light passingthrough the crevices in the sort of trapdoor contrived in the roof ofthe _inpace_.
At the same time, the heavy lock creaked, the trap grated on its rustyhinges, turned, and she beheld a lantern, a hand, and the lower portionsof the bodies of two men, the door being too low to admit of her seeingtheir heads. The light pained her so acutely that she shut her eyes.
When she opened them again the door was closed, the lantern wasdeposited on one of the steps of the staircase; a man alone stood beforeher. A monk's black cloak fell to his feet, a cowl of the same colorconcealed his face. Nothing was visible of his person, neither face norhands. It was a long, black shroud standing erect, and beneath whichsomething could be felt moving. She gazed fixedly for several minutesat this sort of spectre. But neither he nor she spoke. One would havepronounced them two statues confronting each other. Two things onlyseemed alive in that cavern; the wick of the lantern, which sputteredon account of the dampness of the atmosphere, and the drop of waterfrom the roof, which cut this irregular sputtering with its monotonoussplash, and made the light of the lantern quiver in concentric waves onthe oily water of the pool.
At last the prisoner broke the silence.
"Who are you?"
"A priest."
The words, the accent, the sound of his voice made her tremble.
The priest continued, in a hollow voice,--
"Are you prepared?"
"For what?"
"To die."
"Oh!" said she, "will it be soon?"
"To-morrow."
Her head, which had been raised with joy, fell back upon her breast.
"'Tis very far away yet!" she murmured; "why could they not have done itto-day?"
"Then you are very unhappy?" asked the priest, after a silence.
"I am very cold," she replied.
She took her feet in her hands, a gesture habitual with unhappy wretcheswho are cold, as we have already seen in the case of the recluse of theTour-Roland, and her teeth chattered.
The priest appeared to cast his eyes around the dungeon from beneath hiscowl.
"Without light! without fire! in the water! it is horrible!"
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"Yes," she replied, with the bewildered air which unhappiness had givenher. "The day belongs to every one, why do they give me only night?"
"Do you know," resumed the priest, after a fresh silence, "why you arehere?"
"I thought I knew once," she said, passing her thin fingers over hereyelids, as though to aid her memory, "but I know no longer."
All at once she began to weep like a child.
"I should like to get away from here, sir. I am cold, I am afraid, andthere are creatures which crawl over my body."
"Well, follow me."
So saying, the priest took her arm. The unhappy girl was frozen to hervery soul. Yet that hand produced an impression of cold upon her.
"Oh!" she murmured, "'tis the icy hand of death. Who are you?"
The priest threw back his cowl; she looked. It was the sinister visagewhich had so long pursued her; that demon's head which had appeared atla Falourdel's, above the head of her adored Phoebus; that eye which shelast had seen glittering beside a dagger.
This apparition, always so fatal for her, and which had thus driven heron from misfortune to misfortune, even to torture, roused her from herstupor. It seemed to her that the sort of veil which had lain thick uponher memory was rent away. All the details of her melancholy adventure,from the nocturnal scene at la Falourdel's to her condemnation to theTournelle, recurred to her memory, no longer vague and confused asheretofore, but distinct, harsh, clear, palpitating, terrible. Thesesouvenirs, half effaced and almost obliterated by excess of suffering,were revived by the sombre figure which stood before her, as theapproach of fire causes letters traced upon white paper with invisibleink, to start out perfectly fresh. It seemed to her that all the woundsof her heart opened and bled simultaneously.
"Hah!" she cried, with her hands on her eyes, and a convulsivetrembling, "'tis the priest!"
Then she dropped her arms in discouragement, and remained seated, withlowered head, eyes fixed on the ground, mute and still trembling.
The priest gazed at her with the eye of a hawk which has long beensoaring in a circle from the heights of heaven over a poor lark coweringin the wheat, and has long been silently contracting the formidablecircles of his flight, and has suddenly swooped down upon his prey likea flash of lightning, and holds it panting in his talons.
She began to murmur in a low voice,--
"Finish! finish! the last blow!" and she drew her head down in terrorbetween her shoulders, like the lamb awaiting the blow of the butcher'saxe.
"So I inspire you with horror?" he said at length.
She made no reply.
"Do I inspire you with horror?" he repeated.
Her lips contracted, as though with a smile.
"Yes," said she, "the headsman scoffs at the condemned. Here he has beenpursuing me, threatening me, terrifying me for months! Had it not beenfor him, my God, how happy it should have been! It was he who cast meinto this abyss! Oh heavens! it was he who killed him! my Phoebus!"
Here, bursting into sobs, and raising her eyes to the priest,--
"Oh! wretch, who are you? What have I done to you? Do you then, hate meso? Alas! what have you against me?"
"I love thee!" cried the priest.
Her tears suddenly ceased, she gazed at him with the look of an idiot.He had fallen on his knees and was devouring her with eyes of flame.
"Dost thou understand? I love thee!" he cried again.
"What love!" said the unhappy girl with a shudder.
He resumed,--
"The love of a damned soul."
Both remained silent for several minutes, crushed beneath the weight oftheir emotions; he maddened, she stupefied.
"Listen," said the priest at last, and a singular calm had come overhim; "you shall know all I am about to tell you that which I havehitherto hardly dared to say to myself, when furtively interrogating myconscience at those deep hours of the night when it is so dark that itseems as though God no longer saw us. Listen. Before I knew you, younggirl, I was happy."
"So was I!" she sighed feebly.
"Do not interrupt me. Yes, I was happy, at least I believed myself to beso. I was pure, my soul was filled with limpid light. No head was raisedmore proudly and more radiantly than mine. Priests consulted me onchastity; doctors, on doctrines. Yes, science was all in all to me; itwas a sister to me, and a sister sufficed. Not but that with age otherideas came to me. More than once my flesh had been moved as a woman'sform passed by. That force of sex and blood which, in the madness ofyouth, I had imagined that I had stifled forever had, more than once,convulsively raised the chain of iron vows which bind me, a miserablewretch, to the cold stones of the altar. But fasting, prayer, study,the mortifications of the cloister, rendered my soul mistress of my bodyonce more, and then I avoided women. Moreover, I had but to open a book,and all the impure mists of my brain vanished before the splendors ofscience. In a few moments, I felt the gross things of earth flee faraway, and I found myself once more calm, quieted, and serene, in thepresence of the tranquil radiance of eternal truth. As long as the demonsent to attack me only vague shadows of women who passed occasionallybefore my eyes in church, in the streets, in the fields, and who hardlyrecurred to my dreams, I easily vanquished him. Alas! if the victory hasnot remained with me, it is the fault of God, who has not created manand the demon of equal force. Listen. One day--"
Here the priest paused, and the prisoner heard sighs of anguish breakfrom his breast with a sound of the death rattle.
He resumed,--
"One day I was leaning on the window of my cell. What book was I readingthen? Oh! all that is a whirlwind in my head. I was reading. The windowopened upon a Square. I heard a sound of tambourine and music. Annoyedat being thus disturbed in my revery, I glanced into the Square. WhatI beheld, others saw beside myself, and yet it was not a spectacle madefor human eyes. There, in the middle of the pavement,--it was midday,the sun was shining brightly,--a creature was dancing. A creature sobeautiful that God would have preferred her to the Virgin and havechosen her for his mother and have wished to be born of her if shehad been in existence when he was made man! Her eyes were black andsplendid; in the midst of her black locks, some hairs through which thesun shone glistened like threads of gold. Her feet disappeared in theirmovements like the spokes of a rapidly turning wheel. Around her head,in her black tresses, there were disks of metal, which glittered in thesun, and formed a coronet of stars on her brow. Her dress thick set withspangles, blue, and dotted with a thousand sparks, gleamed like a summernight. Her brown, supple arms twined and untwined around her waist, liketwo scarfs. The form of her body was surprisingly beautiful. Oh! whata resplendent figure stood out, like something luminous even in thesunlight! Alas, young girl, it was thou! Surprised, intoxicated,charmed, I allowed myself to gaze upon thee. I looked so long that Isuddenly shuddered with terror; I felt that fate was seizing hold ofme."
The priest paused for a moment, overcome with emotion. Then hecontinued,--
"Already half fascinated, I tried to cling fast to something and holdmyself back from falling. I recalled the snares which Satan had alreadyset for me. The creature before my eyes possessed that superhuman beautywhich can come only from heaven or hell. It was no simple girl made witha little of our earth, and dimly lighted within by the vacillating rayof a woman's soul. It was an angel! but of shadows and flame, and not oflight. At the moment when I was meditating thus, I beheld beside you agoat, a beast of witches, which smiled as it gazed at me. The midday sungave him golden horns. Then I perceived the snare of the demon, and I nolonger doubted that you had come from hell and that you had come thencefor my perdition. I believed it."
Here the priest looked the prisoner full in the face, and added,coldly,--
"I believe it still. Nevertheless, the charm operated little by little;your dancing whirled through my brain; I felt the mysterious spellworking within me. All that should have awakened was lulled to sleep;and like those who die in the snow, I felt pleasure in allowing thissleep to draw
on. All at once, you began to sing. What could I do,unhappy wretch? Your song was still more charming than your dancing. Itried to flee. Impossible. I was nailed, rooted to the spot. It seemedto me that the marble of the pavement had risen to my knees. I wasforced to remain until the end. My feet were like ice, my head was onfire. At last you took pity on me, you ceased to sing, you disappeared.The reflection of the dazzling vision, the reverberation of theenchanting music disappeared by degrees from my eyes and my ears. Then Ifell back into the embrasure of the window, more rigid, more feeble thana statue torn from its base. The vesper bell roused me. I drew myselfup; I fled; but alas! something within me had fallen never to riseagain, something had come upon me from which I could not flee."
He made another pause and went on,--
"Yes, dating from that day, there was within me a man whom I did notknow. I tried to make use of all my remedies. The cloister, the altar,work, books,--follies! Oh, how hollow does science sound when one indespair dashes against it a head full of passions! Do you know, younggirl, what I saw thenceforth between my book and me? You, your shade,the image of the luminous apparition which had one day crossed the spacebefore me. But this image had no longer the same color; it was sombre,funereal, gloomy as the black circle which long pursues the vision ofthe imprudent man who has gazed intently at the sun.
"Unable to rid myself of it, since I heard your song humming ever inmy head, beheld your feet dancing always on my breviary, felt even atnight, in my dreams, your form in contact with my own, I desired to seeyou again, to touch you, to know who you were, to see whether I shouldreally find you like the ideal image which I had retained of you, toshatter my dream, perchance, with reality. At all events, I hoped thata new impression would efface the first, and the first had becomeinsupportable. I sought you. I saw you once more. Calamity! When I hadseen you twice, I wanted to see you a thousand times, I wanted to seeyou always. Then--how stop myself on that slope of hell?--then I nolonger belonged to myself. The other end of the thread which the demonhad attached to my wings he had fastened to his foot. I became vagrantand wandering like yourself. I waited for you under porches, I stood onthe lookout for you at the street corners, I watched for you from thesummit of my tower. Every evening I returned to myself more charmed,more despairing, more bewitched, more lost!
"I had learned who you were; an Egyptian, Bohemian, gypsy, zingara. Howcould I doubt the magic? Listen. I hoped that a trial would free me fromthe charm. A witch enchanted Bruno d'Ast; he had her burned, and wascured. I knew it. I wanted to try the remedy. First I tried to have youforbidden the square in front of Notre-Dame, hoping to forget you if youreturned no more. You paid no heed to it. You returned. Then the idea ofabducting you occurred to me. One night I made the attempt. There weretwo of us. We already had you in our power, when that miserable officercame up. He delivered you. Thus did he begin your unhappiness, mine, andhis own. Finally, no longer knowing what to do, and what was to becomeof me, I denounced you to the official.
"I thought that I should be cured like Bruno d'Ast. I also had aconfused idea that a trial would deliver you into my hands; that, as aprisoner I should hold you, I should have you; that there you could notescape from me; that you had already possessed me a sufficiently longtime to give me the right to possess you in my turn. When one doeswrong, one must do it thoroughly. 'Tis madness to halt midway in themonstrous! The extreme of crime has its deliriums of joy. A priest and awitch can mingle in delight upon the truss of straw in a dungeon!
"Accordingly, I denounced you. It was then that I terrified you whenwe met. The plot which I was weaving against you, the storm which Iwas heaping up above your head, burst from me in threats and lightningglances. Still, I hesitated. My project had its terrible sides whichmade me shrink back.
"Perhaps I might have renounced it; perhaps my hideous thought wouldhave withered in my brain, without bearing fruit. I thought thatit would always depend upon me to follow up or discontinue thisprosecution. But every evil thought is inexorable, and insists onbecoming a deed; but where I believed myself to be all powerful, fatewas more powerful than I. Alas! 'tis fate which has seized you anddelivered you to the terrible wheels of the machine which I hadconstructed doubly. Listen. I am nearing the end.
"One day,--again the sun was shining brilliantly--I behold man pass meuttering your name and laughing, who carries sensuality in his eyes.Damnation! I followed him; you know the rest."
He ceased.
The young girl could find but one word:
"Oh, my Phoebus!"
"Not that name!" said the priest, grasping her arm violently. "Utter notthat name! Oh! miserable wretches that we are, 'tis that name which hasruined us! or, rather we have ruined each other by the inexplicable playof fate! you are suffering, are you not? you are cold; the night makesyou blind, the dungeon envelops you; but perhaps you still have somelight in the bottom of your soul, were it only your childish love forthat empty man who played with your heart, while I bear the dungeonwithin me; within me there is winter, ice, despair; I have night in mysoul.
"Do you know what I have suffered? I was present at your trial. I wasseated on the official's bench. Yes, under one of the priests' cowls,there were the contortions of the damned. When you were brought in, Iwas there; when you were questioned, I was there.--Den of wolves!--Itwas my crime, it was my gallows that I beheld being slowly reared overyour head. I was there for every witness, every proof, every plea; Icould count each of your steps in the painful path; I was still therewhen that ferocious beast--oh! I had not foreseen torture! Listen.I followed you to that chamber of anguish. I beheld you stripped andhandled, half naked, by the infamous hands of the tormentor. I beheldyour foot, that foot which I would have given an empire to kiss and die,that foot, beneath which to have had my head crushed I should have feltsuch rapture,--I beheld it encased in that horrible boot, which convertsthe limbs of a living being into one bloody clod. Oh, wretch! whileI looked on at that, I held beneath my shroud a dagger, with which Ilacerated my breast. When you uttered that cry, I plunged it into myflesh; at a second cry, it would have entered my heart. Look! I believethat it still bleeds."
He opened his cassock. His breast was in fact, mangled as by the claw ofa tiger, and on his side he had a large and badly healed wound.
The prisoner recoiled with horror.
"Oh!" said the priest, "young girl, have pity upon me! You thinkyourself unhappy; alas! alas! you know not what unhappiness is. Oh! tolove a woman! to be a priest! to be hated! to love with all the furyof one's soul; to feel that one would give for the least of hersmiles, one's blood, one's vitals, one's fame, one's salvation, one'simmortality and eternity, this life and the other; to regret that oneis not a king, emperor, archangel, God, in order that one might placea greater slave beneath her feet; to clasp her night and day in one'sdreams and one's thoughts, and to behold her in love with the trappingsof a soldier and to have nothing to offer her but a priest's dirtycassock, which will inspire her with fear and disgust! To be presentwith one's jealousy and one's rage, while she lavishes on a miserable,blustering imbecile, treasures of love and beauty! To behold that bodywhose form burns you, that bosom which possesses so much sweetness, thatflesh palpitate and blush beneath the kisses of another! Oh heaven! tolove her foot, her arm, her shoulder, to think of her blue veins, of herbrown skin, until one writhes for whole nights together on the pavementof one's cell, and to behold all those caresses which one has dreamedof, end in torture! To have succeeded only in stretching her upon theleather bed! Oh! these are the veritable pincers, reddened in the firesof hell. Oh! blessed is he who is sawn between two planks, or tornin pieces by four horses! Do you know what that torture is, which isimposed upon you for long nights by your burning arteries, your burstingheart, your breaking head, your teeth-knawed hands; mad tormentors whichturn you incessantly, as upon a red-hot gridiron, to a thought of love,of jealousy, and of despair! Young girl, mercy! a truce for a moment!a few ashes on these live coals! Wipe away, I beseech you, theperspiration which tric
kles in great drops from my brow! Child! tortureme with one hand, but caress me with the other! Have pity, young girl!Have pity upon me!"
The priest writhed on the wet pavement, beating his head against thecorners of the stone steps. The young girl gazed at him, and listened tohim.
When he ceased, exhausted and panting, she repeated in a low voice,--
"Oh my Phoebus!"
The priest dragged himself towards her on his knees.
"I beseech you," he cried, "if you have any heart, do not repulse me!Oh! I love you! I am a wretch! When you utter that name, unhappy girl,it is as though you crushed all the fibres of my heart between yourteeth. Mercy! If you come from hell I will go thither with you. I havedone everything to that end. The hell where you are, shall he paradise;the sight of you is more charming than that of God! Oh! speak! you willhave none of me? I should have thought the mountains would be shaken intheir foundations on the day when a woman would repulse such a love.Oh! if you only would! Oh! how happy we might be. We would flee--I wouldhelp you to flee,--we would go somewhere, we would seek that spot onearth, where the sun is brightest, the sky the bluest, where the treesare most luxuriant. We would love each other, we would pour our twosouls into each other, and we would have a thirst for ourselves which wewould quench in common and incessantly at that fountain of inexhaustiblelove."
She interrupted with a terrible and thrilling laugh.
"Look, father, you have blood on your fingers!"
The priest remained for several moments as though petrified, with hiseyes fixed upon his hand.
"Well, yes!" he resumed at last, with strange gentleness, "insult me,scoff at me, overwhelm me with scorn! but come, come. Let us make haste.It is to be to-morrow, I tell you. The gibbet on the Greve, you know it?it stands always ready. It is horrible! to see you ride in that tumbrel!Oh mercy! Until now I have never felt the power of my love for you.--Oh!follow me. You shall take your time to love me after I have saved you.You shall hate me as long as you will. But come. To-morrow! to-morrow!the gallows! your execution! Oh! save yourself! spare me!"
He seized her arm, he was beside himself, he tried to drag her away.
She fixed her eye intently on him.
"What has become of my Phoebus?"
"Ah!" said the priest, releasing her arm, "you are pitiless."
"What has become of Phoebus?" she repeated coldly.
"He is dead!" cried the priest.
"Dead!" said she, still icy and motionless "then why do you talk to meof living?"
He was not listening to her.
"Oh! yes," said he, as though speaking to himself, "he certainly must bedead. The blade pierced deeply. I believe I touched his heart with thepoint. Oh! my very soul was at the end of the dagger!"
The young girl flung herself upon him like a raging tigress, and pushedhim upon the steps of the staircase with supernatural force.
"Begone, monster! Begone, assassin! Leave me to die! May the bloodof both of us make an eternal stain upon your brow! Be thine, priest!Never! never! Nothing shall unite us! not hell itself! Go, accursed man!Never!"
The priest had stumbled on the stairs. He silently disentangled hisfeet from the folds of his robe, picked up his lantern again, and slowlybegan the ascent of the steps which led to the door; he opened the doorand passed through it.
All at once, the young girl beheld his head reappear; it wore afrightful expression, and he cried, hoarse with rage and despair,--
"I tell you he is dead!"
She fell face downwards upon the floor, and there was no longer anysound audible in the cell than the sob of the drop of water which madethe pool palpitate amid the darkness.
CHAPTER V. THE MOTHER.