As soon as Pierre Gringoire had seen how this whole affair wasturning, and that there would decidedly be the rope, hanging, and otherdisagreeable things for the principal personages in this comedy, he hadnot cared to identify himself with the matter further. The outcastswith whom he had remained, reflecting that, after all, it was the bestcompany in Paris,--the outcasts had continued to interest themselves inbehalf of the gypsy. He had thought it very simple on the part ofpeople who had, like herself, nothing else in prospect but Charmolue andTorterue, and who, unlike himself, did not gallop through the regionsof imagination between the wings of Pegasus. From their remarks, hehad learned that his wife of the broken crock had taken refuge inNotre-Dame, and he was very glad of it. But he felt no temptation togo and see her there. He meditated occasionally on the little goat, andthat was all. Moreover, he was busy executing feats of strength duringthe day for his living, and at night he was engaged in composing amemorial against the Bishop of Paris, for he remembered having beendrenched by the wheels of his mills, and he cherished a grudge againsthim for it. He also occupied himself with annotating the fine work ofBaudry-le-Rouge, Bishop of Noyon and Tournay, _De Cupa Petrarum_, whichhad given him a violent passion for architecture, an inclination whichhad replaced in his heart his passion for hermeticism, of which it was,moreover, only a natural corollary, since there is an intimate relationbetween hermeticism and masonry. Gringoire had passed from the love ofan idea to the love of the form of that idea.
One day he had halted near Saint Germain-l'Auxerrois, at the corner ofa mansion called "For-l'Eveque" (the Bishop's Tribunal), which stoodopposite another called "For-le-Roi" (the King's Tribunal). At thisFor-l'Eveque, there was a charming chapel of the fourteenth century,whose apse was on the street. Gringoire was devoutly examining itsexterior sculptures. He was in one of those moments of egotistical,exclusive, supreme, enjoyment when the artist beholds nothing in theworld but art, and the world in art. All at once he feels a hand laidgravely on his shoulder. He turns round. It was his old friend, hisformer 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 meetingwith whom always upsets the equilibrium of a sceptical philosopher.
The archdeacon maintained silence for several minutes, during whichGringoire had time to observe him. He found Dom Claude greatly changed;pale as a winter's morning, with hollow eyes, and hair almost white. Thepriest broke the silence at length, by saying, in a tranquil but glacialtone,--
"How do you do, Master Pierre?"
"My health?" replied Gringoire. "Eh! eh! one can say both one thing andanother on that score. Still, it is good, on the whole. I take not toomuch of anything. You know, master, that the secret of keeping well,according to Hippocrates; _id est: cibi, potus, somni, venus, omniamoderata sint_."
"So you have no care, Master Pierre?" resumed the archdeacon, gazingintently at Gringoire.
"None, i' faith!"
"And what are you doing now?"
"You see, master. I am examining the chiselling of these stones, and themanner in which yonder bas-relief is thrown out."
The priest began to smile with that bitter smile which raises only onecorner of the mouth.
"And that amuses you?"
"'Tis paradise!" exclaimed Gringoire. And leaning over the sculptureswith the fascinated air of a demonstrator of living phenomena: "Doyou not think, for instance, that yon metamorphosis in bas-relief isexecuted with much adroitness, delicacy and patience? Observe thatslender column. Around what capital have you seen foliage more tenderand better caressed by the chisel. Here are three raised bosses ofJean Maillevin. They are not the finest works of this great master.Nevertheless, the naivete, the sweetness of the faces, the gayety of theattitudes and draperies, and that inexplicable charm which is mingledwith all the defects, render the little figures very diverting anddelicate, perchance, even too much so. You think that it is notdiverting?"
"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 thicklyclustered as the head of a cabbage! The apse is of a very devout, and sopeculiar 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 ofthe priest, who let him have his way, and made him enter the staircaseturret of For-l'Eveque. "Here is a staircase! every time that I see it Iam happy. It is of the simplest and rarest manner of steps in Paris. Allthe steps are bevelled underneath. Its beauty and simplicity consistin the interspacing of both, being a foot or more wide, which areinterlaced, interlocked, fitted together, enchained enchased, interlinedone upon another, and bite into each other in a manner that is trulyfirm 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 allthings in equilibrium."
"And how do you earn your living?"
"I still make epics and tragedies now and then; but that which brings mein most is the industry with which you are acquainted, master; carryingpyramids 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, oneencounters 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 twointerlocutors beheld defiling at the end of the street, a company of theking's unattached archers, their lances borne high, an officer attheir head. The cavalcade was brilliant, and its march resounded on thepavement.
"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 Phoebus de Chateaupers."
"Phoebus! A curious name! There is also a Phoebus, Comte de Foix. Iremember having known a wench who swore only by the name of Phoebus."
"Come away from here," said the priest. "I have something to say toyou."
From the moment of that troop's passing, some agitation had piercedthrough the archdeacon's glacial envelope. He walked on. Gringoirefollowed him, being accustomed to obey him, like all who had onceapproached that man so full of ascendency. They reached in silence theRue 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 justseen is far handsomer than yours and mine?"
Gringoire tossed his head.
"I' faith! I love better my red and yellow jerkin, than those scalesof iron and steel. A fine pleasure to produce, when you walk, the samenoise as the Quay of Old Iron, in an earthquake!"
"So, Gringoire, you have never cherished envy for those handsome fellowsin their military doublets?"
"Envy for what, monsieur the archdeacon? their strength, their armor,their discipline? Better philosophy and independence in rags. I preferto be the head of a fly rather than the tail of a lion."
"That is singular," said the priest dreamily. "Yet a handsome uniform isa beautiful thing."
Gringoire, perceiving
that he was in a pensive mood, quitted him to goand admire the porch of a neighboring house. He came back clapping hishands.
"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 superbentrance in the world."
"Pierre Gringoire," said the archdeacon, "What have you done with thatlittle 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. Bythe way," added Gringoire, looking at the archdeacon in a half banteringway, "are you still thinking of her?"
"And you think of her no longer?"
"Very little. I have so many things. Good heavens, how pretty thatlittle 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 retiredfrom the game."
"That is all you know of it?"
"Wait a bit. I was told that she had taken refuge in Notre-Dame, andthat she was safe there, and I am delighted to hear it, and I have notbeen able to discover whether the goat was saved with her, and that isall I know."
"I will tell you more," cried Dom Claude; and his voice, hitherto low,slow, and almost indistinct, turned to thunder. "She has in fact, takenrefuge in Notre-Dame. But in three days justice will reclaim her, andshe will be hanged on the Greve. There is a decree of parliament."
"That's annoying," said Gringoire.
The priest, in an instant, became cold and calm again.
"And who the devil," resumed the poet, "has amused himself withsoliciting a decree of reintegration? Why couldn't they leave parliamentin peace? What harm does it do if a poor girl takes shelter under theflying buttresses of Notre-Dame, beside the swallows' nests?"
"There are satans in this world," remarked the archdeacon.
"'Tis devilish badly done," observed Gringoire.
The archdeacon resumed after a silence,--
"So, she saved your life?"
"Among my good friends the outcasts. A little more or a little less andI should have been hanged. They would have been sorry for it to-day."
"Would not you like to do something for her?"
"I ask nothing better, Dom Claude; but what if I entangle myself in somevillanous affair?"
"What matters it?"
"Bah! what matters it? You are good, master, that you are! I have twogreat works already begun."
The priest smote his brow. In spite of the calm which he affected, aviolent gesture betrayed his internal convulsions from time to time.
"How is she to be saved?"
Gringoire said to him; "Master, I will reply to you; _Il padelt_, whichmeans in Turkish, 'God is our hope.'"
"How is she to be saved?" repeated Claude dreamily.
Gringoire smote his brow in his turn.
"Listen, master. I have imagination; I will devise expedients for you.What if one were to ask her pardon from the king?"
"Of Louis XI.! A pardon!"
"Why not?"
"To take the tiger's bone from him!"
Gringoire began to seek fresh expedients.
"Well, stay! Shall I address to the midwives a request accompanied bythe declaration that the girl is with child!"
This made the priest's hollow eye flash.
"With child! knave! do you know anything of this?"
Gringoire was alarmed by his air. He hastened to say, "Oh, no, not I!Our marriage was a real _forismaritagium_. I stayed outside. But onemight obtain a respite, all the same."
"Madness! Infamy! Hold your tongue!"
"You do wrong to get angry," muttered Gringoire. "One obtains a respite;that does no harm to any one, and allows the midwives, who are poorwomen, to earn forty deniers parisis."
The priest was not listening to him!
"But she must leave that place, nevertheless!" he murmured, "the decreeis to be executed within three days. Moreover, there will be no decree;that Quasimodo! Women have very depraved tastes!" He raised his voice:"Master Pierre, I have reflected well; there is but one means of safetyfor her."
"What? I see none myself."
"Listen, Master Pierre, remember that you owe your life to her. I willtell you my idea frankly. The church is watched night and day; onlythose are allowed to come out, who have been seen to enter. Henceyou can enter. You will come. I will lead you to her. You will changeclothes with her. She will take your doublet; you will take herpetticoat."
"So far, it goes well," remarked the philosopher, "and then?"
"And then? she will go forth in your garments; you will remain withhers. You will be hanged, perhaps, but she will be saved."
Gringoire scratched his ear, with a very serious air. "Stay!" said he,"that is an idea which would never have occurred to me unaided."
At Dom Claude's proposition, the open and benign face of the poet hadabruptly clouded over, like a smiling Italian landscape, when an unluckysquall comes up and dashes a cloud across the sun.
"Well! Gringoire, what say you to the means?"
"I say, master, that I shall not be hanged, perchance, but that I shallbe hanged indubitably.
"That concerns us not."
"The deuce!" said Gringoire.
"She has saved your life. 'Tis a debt that you are discharging."
"There are a great many others which I do not discharge."
"Master Pierre, it is absolutely necessary."
The archdeacon spoke imperiously.
"Listen, Dom Claude," replied the poet in utter consternation. "You clingto that idea, and you are wrong. I do not see why I should get myselfhanged in some one else's place."
"What have you, then, which attaches you so strongly to life?"
"Oh! a thousand reasons!"
"What reasons, if you please?"
"What? The air, the sky, the morning, the evening, the moonlight, mygood friends the thieves, our jeers with the old hags of go-betweens,the fine architecture of Paris to study, three great books to make, oneof them being against the bishops and his mills; and how can I tell all?Anaxagoras said that he was in the world to admire the sun. And then,from morning till night, I have the happiness of passing all my dayswith a man of genius, who is myself, which is very agreeable."
"A head fit for a mule bell!" muttered the archdeacon. "Oh! tell me whopreserved for you that life which you render so charming to yourself? Towhom do you owe it that you breathe that air, behold that sky, and canstill amuse your lark's mind with your whimsical nonsense and madness?Where would you be, had it not been for her? Do you then desire thatshe through whom you are alive, should die? that she should die, thatbeautiful, sweet, adorable creature, who is necessary to the light ofthe world and more divine than God, while you, half wise, and half fool,a vain sketch of something, a sort of vegetable, which thinks that itwalks, and thinks that it thinks, you will continue to live with thelife which you have stolen from her, as useless as a candle in broaddaylight? Come, have a little pity, Gringoire; be generous in your turn;it was she who set the example."
The priest was vehement. Gringoire listened to him at first with anundecided air, then he became touched, and wound up with a grimace whichmade his pallid face resemble that of a new-born infant with an attackof the colic.
"You are pathetic!" said he, wiping away a tear. "Well! I will thinkabout it. That's a queer idea of yours.--After all," he continued aftera pause, "who knows? perhaps they will not hang me. He who becomesbetrothed does not always marry. When they find me in that littlelodging so grotesquely muffled in petticoat and coif, perchance theywill burst with laughter. And then, if they do hang me,--well! thehalter is as good a death as any. 'Tis a death worthy of a sage
who haswavered all his life; a death which is neither flesh nor fish, like themind of a veritable sceptic; a death all stamped with Pyrrhonism andhesitation, which holds the middle station betwixt heaven and earth,which leaves you in suspense. 'Tis a philosopher's death, and I wasdestined thereto, perchance. It is magnificent to die as one has lived."
The priest interrupted him: "Is it agreed."
"What is death, after all?" pursued Gringoire with exaltation. "Adisagreeable moment, a toll-gate, the passage of little to nothingness.Some one having asked Cercidas, the Megalopolitan, if he were willing todie: 'Why not?' he replied; 'for after my death I shall see those greatmen, Pythagoras among the philosophers, Hecataeus among historians,Homer among poets, Olympus among musicians.'"
The archdeacon gave him his hand: "It is settled, then? You will cometo-morrow?"
This gesture recalled Gringoire to reality.
"Ah! i' faith no!" he said in the tone of a man just waking up. "Behanged! 'tis too absurd. I will not."
"Farewell, then!" and the archdeacon added between his teeth: "I'll findyou again!"
"I do not want that devil of a man to find me," thought Gringoire; andhe ran after Dom Claude. "Stay, monsieur the archdeacon, no ill-feelingbetween old friends! You take an interest in that girl, my wife, I mean,and 'tis well. You have devised a scheme to get her out of Notre-Dame,but your way is extremely disagreeable to me, Gringoire. If I had onlyanother one myself! I beg to say that a luminous inspiration has justoccurred to me. If I possessed an expedient for extricating her froma dilemma, without compromising my own neck to the extent of a singlerunning knot, what would you say to it? Will not that suffice you? Is itabsolutely necessary that I should be hanged, in order that you may becontent?"
The priest tore out the buttons of his cassock with impatience: "Streamof words! What is your plan?"
"Yes," resumed Gringoire, talking to himself and touching his nose withhis forefinger in sign of meditation,--"that's it!--The thieves arebrave fellows!--The tribe of Egypt love her!--They will rise at thefirst word!--Nothing easier!--A sudden stroke.--Under cover of thedisorder, they will easily carry her off!--Beginning to-morrow evening.They will ask nothing better.
"The plan! speak," cried the archdeacon shaking him.
Gringoire turned majestically towards him: "Leave me! You see that I amcomposing." He meditated for a few moments more, then began to clap hishands over his thought, crying: "Admirable! success is sure!"
"The plan!" repeated Claude in wrath.
Gringoire was radiant.
"Come, that I may tell you that very softly. 'Tis a truly gallantcounter-plot, which will extricate us all from the matter. Pardieu, itmust be admitted that I am no fool."
He broke off.
"Oh, by the way! is the little goat with the wench?"
"Yes. The devil take you!"
"They would have hanged it also, would they not?"
"What is that to me?"
"Yes, they would have hanged it. They hanged a sow last month. Theheadsman loveth that; he eats the beast afterwards. Take my prettyDjali! Poor little lamb!"
"Malediction!" exclaimed Dom Claude. "You are the executioner. Whatmeans of safety have you found, knave? Must your idea be extracted withthe forceps?"
"Very fine, master, this is it."
Gringoire bent his head to the archdeacon's head and spoke to him in avery low voice, casting an uneasy glance the while from one end to theother of the street, though no one was passing. When he had finished,Dom Claude took his hand and said coldly: "'Tis well. Farewell untilto-morrow."
"Until to-morrow," repeated Gringoire. And, while the archdeacon wasdisappearing in one direction, he set off in the other, saying tohimself in a low voice: "Here's a grand affair, Monsieur PierreGringoire. Never mind! 'Tis not written that because one is of smallaccount one should take fright at a great enterprise. Bitou carried agreat bull on his shoulders; the water-wagtails, the warblers, and thebuntings traverse the ocean."
CHAPTER II. TURN VAGABOND.