That night, Quasimodo did not sleep. He had just made his last round ofthe church. He had not noticed, that at the moment when he was closingthe doors, the archdeacon had passed close to him and betrayed somedispleasure on seeing him bolting and barring with care the enormousiron locks which gave to their large leaves the solidity of a wall. DomClaude's air was even more preoccupied than usual. Moreover, since thenocturnal adventure in the cell, he had constantly abused Quasimodo,but in vain did he ill treat, and even beat him occasionally, nothingdisturbed the submission, patience, the devoted resignation ofthe faithful bellringer. He endured everything on the part of thearchdeacon, insults, threats, blows, without murmuring a complaint. Atthe most, he gazed uneasily after Dom Claude when the latter ascendedthe staircase of the tower; but the archdeacon had abstained frompresenting himself again before the gypsy's eyes.
On that night, accordingly, Quasimodo, after having cast a glance at hispoor bells which he so neglected now, Jacqueline, Marie, and Thibauld,mounted to the summit of the Northern tower, and there setting his darklanturn, well closed, upon the leads, he began to gaze at Paris. Thenight, as we have already said, was very dark. Paris which, so tospeak was not lighted at that epoch, presented to the eye a confusedcollection of black masses, cut here and there by the whitish curve ofthe Seine. Quasimodo no longer saw any light with the exception of onewindow in a distant edifice, whose vague and sombre profile was outlinedwell above the roofs, in the direction of the Porte Sainte-Antoine.There also, there was some one awake.
As the only eye of the bellringer peered into that horizon of mist andnight, he felt within him an inexpressible uneasiness. For several dayshe had been upon his guard. He had perceived men of sinister mien, whonever took their eyes from the young girl's asylum, prowling constantlyabout the church. He fancied that some plot might be in process offormation against the unhappy refugee. He imagined that there existeda popular hatred against her, as against himself, and that it was verypossible that something might happen soon. Hence he remained upon histower on the watch, "dreaming in his dream-place," as Rabelais says,with his eye directed alternately on the cell and on Paris, keepingfaithful guard, like a good dog, with a thousand suspicions in his mind.
All at once, while he was scrutinizing the great city with that eyewhich nature, by a sort of compensation, had made so piercing that itcould almost supply the other organs which Quasimodo lacked, itseemed to him that there was something singular about the Quay de laVieille-Pelleterie, that there was a movement at that point, that theline of the parapet, standing out blackly against the whiteness of thewater was not straight and tranquil, like that of the other quays, butthat it undulated to the eye, like the waves of a river, or like theheads of a crowd in motion.
This struck him as strange. He redoubled his attention. The movementseemed to be advancing towards the City. There was no light. It lastedfor some time on the quay; then it gradually ceased, as though thatwhich was passing were entering the interior of the island; thenit stopped altogether, and the line of the quay became straight andmotionless again.
At the moment when Quasimodo was lost in conjectures, it seemed tohim that the movement had re-appeared in the Rue du Parvis, which isprolonged into the city perpendicularly to the facade of Notre-Dame.At length, dense as was the darkness, he beheld the head of a columndebouch from that street, and in an instant a crowd--of which nothingcould be distinguished in the gloom except that it was a crowd--spreadover the Place.
This spectacle had a terror of its own. It is probable that thissingular procession, which seemed so desirous of concealing itself underprofound darkness, maintained a silence no less profound. Nevertheless,some noise must have escaped it, were it only a trampling. But thisnoise did not even reach our deaf man, and this great multitude, ofwhich he saw hardly anything, and of which he heard nothing, though itwas marching and moving so near him, produced upon him the effect of arabble of dead men, mute, impalpable, lost in a smoke. It seemed tohim, that he beheld advancing towards him a fog of men, and that he sawshadows moving in the shadow.
Then his fears returned to him, the idea of an attempt against the gypsypresented itself once more to his mind. He was conscious, in a confusedway, that a violent crisis was approaching. At that critical moment hetook counsel with himself, with better and prompter reasoning than onewould have expected from so badly organized a brain. Ought he to awakenthe gypsy? to make her escape? Whither? The streets were invested, thechurch backed on the river. No boat, no issue!--There was but onething to be done; to allow himself to be killed on the threshold ofNotre-Dame, to resist at least until succor arrived, if it shouldarrive, and not to trouble la Esmeralda's sleep. This resolution oncetaken, he set to examining the enemy with more tranquillity.
The throng seemed to increase every moment in the church square. Only,he presumed that it must be making very little noise, since the windowson the Place remained closed. All at once, a flame flashed up, and inan instant seven or eight lighted torches passed over the heads of thecrowd, shaking their tufts of flame in the deep shade. Quasimodo thenbeheld distinctly surging in the Parvis a frightful herd of men andwomen in rags, armed with scythes, pikes, billhooks and partisans, whosethousand points glittered. Here and there black pitchforks formed hornsto the hideous faces. He vaguely recalled this populace, and thoughtthat he recognized all the heads who had saluted him as Pope of theFools some months previously. One man who held a torch in one hand anda club in the other, mounted a stone post and seemed to be haranguingthem. At the same time the strange army executed several evolutions, asthough it were taking up its post around the church. Quasimodo picked uphis lantern and descended to the platform between the towers, in orderto get a nearer view, and to spy out a means of defence.
Clopin Trouillefou, on arriving in front of the lofty portal ofNotre-Dame had, in fact, ranged his troops in order of battle. Althoughhe expected no resistance, he wished, like a prudent general, topreserve an order which would permit him to face, at need, a suddenattack of the watch or the police. He had accordingly stationed hisbrigade in such a manner that, viewed from above and from a distance,one would have pronounced it the Roman triangle of the battle ofEcnomus, the boar's head of Alexander or the famous wedge of GustavusAdolphus. The base of this triangle rested on the back of the Place insuch a manner as to bar the entrance of the Rue du Parvis; one of itssides faced Hotel-Dieu, the other the Rue Saint-Pierre-aux-Boeufs.Clopin Trouillefou had placed himself at the apex with the Duke ofEgypt, our friend Jehan, and the most daring of the scavengers.
An enterprise like that which the vagabonds were now undertaking againstNotre-Dame was not a very rare thing in the cities of the Middle Ages.What we now call the "police" did not exist then. In populous cities,especially in capitals, there existed no single, central, regulatingpower. Feudalism had constructed these great communities in a singularmanner. A city was an assembly of a thousand seigneuries, whichdivided it into compartments of all shapes and sizes. Hence, a thousandconflicting establishments of police; that is to say, no police at all.In Paris, for example, independently of the hundred and forty-one lordswho laid claim to a manor, there were five and twenty who laid claim toa manor and to administering justice, from the Bishop of Paris, who hadfive hundred streets, to the Prior of Notre-Dame des Champs, who hadfour. All these feudal justices recognized the suzerain authority of theking only in name. All possessed the right of control over the roads.All were at home. Louis XI., that indefatigable worker, who so largelybegan the demolition of the feudal edifice, continued by Richelieu andLouis XIV. for the profit of royalty, and finished by Mirabeau for thebenefit of the people,--Louis XI. had certainly made an effort to breakthis network of seignories which covered Paris, by throwing violentlyacross them all two or three troops of general police. Thus, in 1465, anorder to the inhabitants to light candles in their windows at nightfall,and to shut up their dogs under penalty of death; in the same year,an order to close the streets in the evening with iron chains, and aprohibition to wear daggers or w
eapons of offence in the streetsat night. But in a very short time, all these efforts at communallegislation fell into abeyance. The bourgeois permitted the wind toblow out their candles in the windows, and their dogs to stray; the ironchains were stretched only in a state of siege; the prohibition towear daggers wrought no other changes than from the name of the RueCoupe-Gueule to the name of the Rue-Coupe-Gorge* which is an evidentprogress. The old scaffolding of feudal jurisdictions remained standing;an immense aggregation of bailiwicks and seignories crossing eachother all over the city, interfering with each other, entangled in oneanother, enmeshing each other, trespassing on each other; a uselessthicket of watches, sub-watches and counter-watches, over which, witharmed force, passed brigandage, rapine, and sedition. Hence, in thisdisorder, deeds of violence on the part of the populace directed againsta palace, a hotel, or house in the most thickly populated quarters, werenot unheard-of occurrences. In the majority of such cases, the neighborsdid not meddle with the matter unless the pillaging extended tothemselves. They stopped up their ears to the musket shots, closed theirshutters, barricaded their doors, allowed the matter to be concludedwith or without the watch, and the next day it was said in Paris,"Etienne Barbette was broken open last night. The Marshal de Clermontwas seized last night, etc." Hence, not only the royal habitations, theLouvre, the Palace, the Bastille, the Tournelles, but simply seignorialresidences, the Petit-Bourbon, the Hotel de Sens, the Hotel d'Angouleme, etc., had battlements on their walls, and machicolations overtheir doors. Churches were guarded by their sanctity. Some, among thenumber Notre-Dame, were fortified. The Abbey of Saint-German-des-Preswas castellated like a baronial mansion, and more brass expended aboutit in bombards than in bells. Its fortress was still to be seen in 1610.To-day, barely its church remains.
* Cut-throat. Coupe-gueule being the vulgar word for cut-weazand.
Let us return to Notre-Dame.
When the first arrangements were completed, and we must say, to thehonor of vagabond discipline, that Clopin's orders were executed insilence, and with admirable precision, the worthy chief of the band,mounted on the parapet of the church square, and raised his hoarse andsurly voice, turning towards Notre-Dame, and brandishing his torch whoselight, tossed by the wind, and veiled every moment by its own smoke,made the reddish facade of the church appear and disappear before theeye.
"To you, Louis de Beaumont, bishop of Paris, counsellor in the Court ofParliament, I, Clopin Trouillefou, king of Thunes, grand Coesre, princeof Argot, bishop of fools, I say: Our sister, falsely condemned formagic, hath taken refuge in your church, you owe her asylum and safety.Now the Court of Parliament wishes to seize her once more there, and youconsent to it; so that she would be hanged to-morrow in the Greve, ifGod and the outcasts were not here. If your church is sacred, so is oursister; if our sister is not sacred, neither is your church. That is whywe call upon you to return the girl if you wish to save your church, orwe will take possession of the girl again and pillage the church, whichwill be a good thing. In token of which I here plant my banner, and mayGod preserve you, bishop of Paris."
Quasimodo could not, unfortunately, hear these words uttered with a sortof sombre and savage majesty. A vagabond presented his banner to Clopin,who planted it solemnly between two paving-stones. It was a pitchforkfrom whose points hung a bleeding quarter of carrion meat.
That done, the King of Thunes turned round and cast his eyes over hisarmy, a fierce multitude whose glances flashed almost equally with theirpikes. After a momentary pause,--"Forward, my Sons!" he cried; "to work,locksmiths!"
Thirty bold men, square shouldered, and with pick-lock faces, steppedfrom the ranks, with hammers, pincers, and bars of iron on theirshoulders. They betook themselves to the principal door of the church,ascended the steps, and were soon to be seen squatting under the arch,working at the door with pincers and levers; a throng of vagabondsfollowed them to help or look on. The eleven steps before the portalwere covered with them.
But the door stood firm. "The devil! 'tis hard and obstinate!" said one."It is old, and its gristles have become bony," said another. "Courage,comrades!" resumed Clopin. "I wager my head against a dipper that youwill have opened the door, rescued the girl, and despoiled the chiefaltar before a single beadle is awake. Stay! I think I hear the lockbreaking up."
Clopin was interrupted by a frightful uproar which re-sounded behind himat that moment. He wheeled round. An enormous beam had just fallen fromabove; it had crushed a dozen vagabonds on the pavement with the soundof a cannon, breaking in addition, legs here and there in the crowdof beggars, who sprang aside with cries of terror. In a twinkling, thenarrow precincts of the church parvis were cleared. The locksmiths,although protected by the deep vaults of the portal, abandoned the doorand Clopin himself retired to a respectful distance from the church.
"I had a narrow escape!" cried Jehan. "I felt the wind, of it,_tete-de-boeuf_! but Pierre the Slaughterer is slaughtered!"
It is impossible to describe the astonishment mingled with fright whichfell upon the ruffians in company with this beam.
They remained for several minutes with their eyes in the air, moredismayed by that piece of wood than by the king's twenty thousandarchers.
"Satan!" muttered the Duke of Egypt, "this smacks of magic!"
"'Tis the moon which threw this log at us," said Andry the Red.
"Call the moon the friend of the Virgin, after that!" went on FrancoisChanteprune.
"A thousand popes!" exclaimed Clopin, "you are all fools!" But he didnot know how to explain the fall of the beam.
Meanwhile, nothing could be distinguished on the facade, to whose summitthe light of the torches did not reach. The heavy beam lay in the middleof the enclosure, and groans were heard from the poor wretches who hadreceived its first shock, and who had been almost cut in twain, on theangle of the stone steps.
The King of Thunes, his first amazement passed, finally found anexplanation which appeared plausible to his companions.
"Throat of God! are the canons defending themselves? To the sack, then!to the sack!"
"To the sack!" repeated the rabble, with a furious hurrah. A dischargeof crossbows and hackbuts against the front of the church followed.
At this detonation, the peaceable inhabitants of the surrounding houseswoke up; many windows were seen to open, and nightcaps and hands holdingcandles appeared at the casements.
"Fire at the windows," shouted Clopin. The windows were immediatelyclosed, and the poor bourgeois, who had hardly had time to casta frightened glance on this scene of gleams and tumult, returned,perspiring with fear to their wives, asking themselves whether thewitches' sabbath was now being held in the parvis of Notre-Dame,or whether there was an assault of Burgundians, as in '64. Then thehusbands thought of theft; the wives, of rape; and all trembled.
"To the sack!" repeated the thieves' crew; but they dared not approach.They stared at the beam, they stared at the church. The beam did notstir, the edifice preserved its calm and deserted air; but somethingchilled the outcasts.
"To work, locksmiths!" shouted Trouillefou. "Let the door be forced!"
No one took a step.
"Beard and belly!" said Clopin, "here be men afraid of a beam."
An old locksmith addressed him--
"Captain, 'tis not the beam which bothers us, 'tis the door, which isall covered with iron bars. Our pincers are powerless against it."
"What more do you want to break it in?" demanded Clopin.
"Ah! we ought to have a battering ram."
The King of Thunes ran boldly to the formidable beam, and placed hisfoot upon it: "Here is one!" he exclaimed; "'tis the canons who send itto you." And, making a mocking salute in the direction of the church,"Thanks, canons!"
This piece of bravado produced its effects,--the spell of the beam wasbroken. The vagabonds recovered their courage; soon the heavy joist,raised like a feather by two hundred vigorous arms, was flung with furyagainst the great door which they had tried to batter down. At the sight
of that long beam, in the half-light which the infrequent torches ofthe brigands spread over the Place, thus borne by that crowd of men whodashed it at a run against the church, one would have thought that hebeheld a monstrous beast with a thousand feet attacking with loweredhead the giant of stone.
At the shock of the beam, the half metallic door sounded like an immensedrum; it was not burst in, but the whole cathedral trembled, and thedeepest cavities of the edifice were heard to echo.
At the same moment, a shower of large stones began to fall from the topof the facade on the assailants.
"The devil!" cried Jehan, "are the towers shaking their balustrades downon our heads?"
But the impulse had been given, the King of Thunes had set the example.Evidently, the bishop was defending himself, and they only battered thedoor with the more rage, in spite of the stones which cracked skullsright and left.
It was remarkable that all these stones fell one by one; but theyfollowed each other closely. The thieves always felt two at a time, oneon their legs and one on their heads. There were few which did notdeal their blow, and a large layer of dead and wounded lay bleedingand panting beneath the feet of the assailants who, now grown furious,replaced each other without intermission. The long beam continued tobelabor the door, at regular intervals, like the clapper of a bell, thestones to rain down, the door to groan.
The reader has no doubt divined that this unexpected resistance whichhad exasperated the outcasts came from Quasimodo.
Chance had, unfortunately, favored the brave deaf man.
When he had descended to the platform between the towers, his ideas wereall in confusion. He had run up and down along the gallery for severalminutes like a madman, surveying from above, the compact mass ofvagabonds ready to hurl itself on the church, demanding the safety ofthe gypsy from the devil or from God. The thought had occurred to him ofascending to the southern belfry and sounding the alarm, but beforehe could have set the bell in motion, before Marie's voice could haveuttered a single clamor, was there not time to burst in the door of thechurch ten times over? It was precisely the moment when the locksmithswere advancing upon it with their tools. What was to be done?
All at once, he remembered that some masons had been at work all dayrepairing the wall, the timber-work, and the roof of the south tower.This was a flash of light. The wall was of stone, the roof of lead, thetimber-work of wood. (That prodigious timber-work, so dense that it wascalled "the forest.")
Quasimodo hastened to that tower. The lower chambers were, in fact, fullof materials. There were piles of rough blocks of stone, sheets of leadin rolls, bundles of laths, heavy beams already notched with the saw,heaps of plaster.
Time was pressing, The pikes and hammers were at work below. With astrength which the sense of danger increased tenfold, he seized oneof the beams--the longest and heaviest; he pushed it out through aloophole, then, grasping it again outside of the tower, he made it slidealong the angle of the balustrade which surrounds the platform, andlet it fly into the abyss. The enormous timber, during that fall of ahundred and sixty feet, scraping the wall, breaking the carvings, turnedmany times on its centre, like the arm of a windmill flying off alonethrough space. At last it reached the ground, the horrible cry arose,and the black beam, as it rebounded from the pavement, resembled aserpent leaping.
Quasimodo beheld the outcasts scatter at the fall of the beam, likeashes at the breath of a child. He took advantage of their fright, andwhile they were fixing a superstitious glance on the club which hadfallen from heaven, and while they were putting out the eyes of thestone saints on the front with a discharge of arrows and buckshot,Quasimodo was silently piling up plaster, stones, and rough blocks ofstone, even the sacks of tools belonging to the masons, on the edge ofthe balustrade from which the beam had already been hurled.
Thus, as soon as they began to batter the grand door, the shower ofrough blocks of stone began to fall, and it seemed to them that thechurch itself was being demolished over their heads.
Any one who could have beheld Quasimodo at that moment would have beenfrightened. Independently of the projectiles which he had piled upon thebalustrade, he had collected a heap of stones on the platform itself. Asfast as the blocks on the exterior edge were exhausted, he drew on theheap. Then he stooped and rose, stooped and rose again with incredibleactivity. His huge gnome's head bent over the balustrade, then anenormous stone fell, then another, then another. From time to time, hefollowed a fine stone with his eye, and when it did good execution, hesaid, "Hum!"
Meanwhile, the beggars did not grow discouraged. The thick door on whichthey were venting their fury had already trembled more than twentytimes beneath the weight of their oaken battering-ram, multiplied by thestrength of a hundred men. The panels cracked, the carved work flew intosplinters, the hinges, at every blow, leaped from their pins, the planksyawned, the wood crumbled to powder, ground between the iron sheathing.Fortunately for Quasimodo, there was more iron than wood.
Nevertheless, he felt that the great door was yielding. Although he didnot hear it, every blow of the ram reverberated simultaneously in thevaults of the church and within it. From above he beheld the vagabonds,filled with triumph and rage, shaking their fists at the gloomy facade;and both on the gypsy's account and his own he envied the wings of theowls which flitted away above his head in flocks.
His shower of stone blocks was not sufficient to repel the assailants.
At this moment of anguish, he noticed, a little lower down than thebalustrade whence he was crushing the thieves, two long stone gutterswhich discharged immediately over the great door; the internal orificeof these gutters terminated on the pavement of the platform. An ideaoccurred to him; he ran in search of a fagot in his bellringer's den,placed on this fagot a great many bundles of laths, and many rolls oflead, munitions which he had not employed so far, and having arrangedthis pile in front of the hole to the two gutters, he set it on firewith his lantern.
During this time, since the stones no longer fell, the outcasts ceasedto gaze into the air. The bandits, panting like a pack of hounds who areforcing a boar into his lair, pressed tumultuously round the greatdoor, all disfigured by the battering ram, but still standing. They werewaiting with a quiver for the great blow which should split it open.They vied with each other in pressing as close as possible, in order todash among the first, when it should open, into that opulent cathedral,a vast reservoir where the wealth of three centuries had been piled up.They reminded each other with roars of exultation and greedy lust, ofthe beautiful silver crosses, the fine copes of brocade, the beautifultombs of silver gilt, the great magnificences of the choir, thedazzling festivals, the Christmasses sparkling with torches, theEasters sparkling with sunshine,--all those splendid solemneties whereinchandeliers, ciboriums, tabernacles, and reliquaries, studded the altarswith a crust of gold and diamonds. Certainly, at that fine moment,thieves and pseudo sufferers, doctors in stealing, and vagabonds, werethinking much less of delivering the gypsy than of pillaging Notre-Dame.We could even easily believe that for a goodly number among them laEsmeralda was only a pretext, if thieves needed pretexts.
All at once, at the moment when they were grouping themselves round theram for a last effort, each one holding his breath and stiffening hismuscles in order to communicate all his force to the decisive blow, ahowl more frightful still than that which had burst forth and expiredbeneath the beam, rose among them. Those who did not cry out, those whowere still alive, looked. Two streams of melted lead were falling fromthe summit of the edifice into the thickest of the rabble. That sea ofmen had just sunk down beneath the boiling metal, which had made, at thetwo points where it fell, two black and smoking holes in the crowd, suchas hot water would make in snow. Dying men, half consumed and groaningwith anguish, could be seen writhing there. Around these two principalstreams there were drops of that horrible rain, which scattered over theassailants and entered their skulls like gimlets of fire. It was a heavyfire which overwhelmed these wretches with a thousand hailsto
nes.
The outcry was heartrending. They fled pell-mell, hurling the beam uponthe bodies, the boldest as well as the most timid, and the parvis wascleared a second time.
All eyes were raised to the top of the church. They beheld there anextraordinary sight. On the crest of the highest gallery, higher thanthe central rose window, there was a great flame rising between the twotowers with whirlwinds of sparks, a vast, disordered, and furious flame,a tongue of which was borne into the smoke by the wind, from time totime. Below that fire, below the gloomy balustrade with its trefoilsshowing darkly against its glare, two spouts with monster throats werevomiting forth unceasingly that burning rain, whose silvery stream stoodout against the shadows of the lower facade. As they approached theearth, these two jets of liquid lead spread out in sheaves, like waterspringing from the thousand holes of a watering-pot. Above the flame,the enormous towers, two sides of each of which were visible in sharpoutline, the one wholly black, the other wholly red, seemed still morevast with all the immensity of the shadow which they cast even to thesky.
Their innumerable sculptures of demons and dragons assumed a lugubriousaspect. The restless light of the flame made them move to the eye. Therewere griffins which had the air of laughing, gargoyles which one fanciedone heard yelping, salamanders which puffed at the fire, tarasques*which sneezed in the smoke. And among the monsters thus roused fromtheir sleep of stone by this flame, by this noise, there was one whowalked about, and who was seen, from time to time, to pass across theglowing face of the pile, like a bat in front of a candle.
* The representation of a monstrous animal solemnly drawn aboutin Tarascon and other French towns.
Without doubt, this strange beacon light would awaken far away, thewoodcutter of the hills of Bicetre, terrified to behold the giganticshadow of the towers of Notre-Dame quivering over his heaths.
A terrified silence ensued among the outcasts, during which nothing washeard, but the cries of alarm of the canons shut up in their cloister,and more uneasy than horses in a burning stable, the furtive soundof windows hastily opened and still more hastily closed, the internalhurly-burly of the houses and of the Hotel-Dieu, the wind in the flame,the last death-rattle of the dying, and the continued crackling of therain of lead upon the pavement.
In the meanwhile, the principal vagabonds had retired beneath the porchof the Gondelaurier mansion, and were holding a council of war.
The Duke of Egypt, seated on a stone post, contemplated thephantasmagorical bonfire, glowing at a height of two hundred feet in theair, with religious terror. Clopin Trouillefou bit his huge fists withrage.
"Impossible to get in!" he muttered between his teeth.
"An old, enchanted church!" grumbled the aged Bohemian, Mathias HungadiSpicali.
"By the Pope's whiskers!" went on a sham soldier, who had once been inservice, "here are church gutters spitting melted lead at you betterthan the machicolations of Lectoure."
"Do you see that demon passing and repassing in front of the fire?"exclaimed the Duke of Egypt.
"Pardieu, 'tis that damned bellringer, 'tis Quasimodo," said Clopin.
The Bohemian tossed his head. "I tell you, that 'tis the spirit Sabnac,the grand marquis, the demon of fortifications. He has the form of anarmed soldier, the head of a lion. Sometimes he rides a hideous horse.He changes men into stones, of which he builds towers. He commandsfifty legions 'Tis he indeed; I recognize him. Sometimes he is clad in ahandsome golden robe, figured after the Turkish fashion."
"Where is Bellevigne de l'Etoile?" demanded Clopin.
"He is dead."
Andry the Red laughed in an idiotic way: "Notre-Dame is making work forthe hospital," said he.
"Is there, then, no way of forcing this door," exclaimed the King ofThunes, stamping his foot.
The Duke of Egypt pointed sadly to the two streams of boiling lead whichdid not cease to streak the black facade, like two long distaffs ofphosphorus.
"Churches have been known to defend themselves thus all by themselves,"he remarked with a sigh. "Saint-Sophia at Constantinople, forty yearsago, hurled to the earth three times in succession, the crescent ofMahom, by shaking her domes, which are her heads. Guillaume de Paris,who built this one was a magician."
"Must we then retreat in pitiful fashion, like highwaymen?" said Clopin."Must we leave our sister here, whom those hooded wolves will hangto-morrow."
"And the sacristy, where there are wagon-loads of gold!" added avagabond, whose name, we regret to say, we do not know.
"Beard of Mahom!" cried Trouillefou.
"Let us make another trial," resumed the vagabond.
Mathias Hungadi shook his head.
"We shall never get in by the door. We must find the defect in the armorof the old fairy; a hole, a false postern, some joint or other."
"Who will go with me?" said Clopin. "I shall go at it again. By the way,where is the little scholar Jehan, who is so encased in iron?"
"He is dead, no doubt," some one replied; "we no longer hear his laugh."
The King of Thunes frowned: "So much the worse. There was a brave heartunder that ironmongery. And Master Pierre Gringoire?"
"Captain Clopin," said Andry the Red, "he slipped away before we reachedthe Pont-aux-Changeurs."
Clopin stamped his foot. "Gueule-Dieu! 'twas he who pushed us onhither, and he has deserted us in the very middle of the job! Cowardlychatterer, with a slipper for a helmet!"
"Captain Clopin," said Andry the Red, who was gazing down Rue du Parvis,"yonder is the little scholar."
"Praised be Pluto!" said Clopin. "But what the devil is he draggingafter him?"
It was, in fact, Jehan, who was running as fast as his heavy outfit of aPaladin, and a long ladder which trailed on the pavement, would permit,more breathless than an ant harnessed to a blade of grass twenty timeslonger than itself.
"Victory! _Te Deum_!" cried the scholar. "Here is the ladder of thelongshoremen of Port Saint-Landry."
Clopin approached him.
"Child, what do you mean to do, _corne-dieu_! with this ladder?"
"I have it," replied Jehan, panting. "I knew where it was under the shedof the lieutenant's house. There's a wench there whom I know, who thinksme as handsome as Cupido. I made use of her to get the ladder, and Ihave the ladder, _Pasque-Mahom_! The poor girl came to open the door tome in her shift."
"Yes," said Clopin, "but what are you going to do with that ladder?"
Jehan gazed at him with a malicious, knowing look, and cracked hisfingers like castanets. At that moment he was sublime. On his head hewore one of those overloaded helmets of the fifteenth century, whichfrightened the enemy with their fanciful crests. His bristled with teniron beaks, so that Jehan could have disputed with Nestor's Homericvessel the redoubtable title of _dexeubolos_.
"What do I mean to do with it, august king of Thunes? Do you see thatrow of statues which have such idiotic expressions, yonder, above thethree portals?"
"Yes. Well?"
"'Tis the gallery of the kings of France."
"What is that to me?" said Clopin.
"Wait! At the end of that gallery there is a door which is neverfastened otherwise than with a latch, and with this ladder I ascend, andI am in the church."
"Child let me be the first to ascend."
"No, comrade, the ladder is mine. Come, you shall be the second."
"May Beelzebub strangle you!" said surly Clopin, "I won't be second toanybody."
"Then find a ladder, Clopin!"
Jehan set out on a run across the Place, dragging his ladder andshouting: "Follow me, lads!"
In an instant the ladder was raised, and propped against the balustradeof the lower gallery, above one of the lateral doors. The throng ofvagabonds, uttering loud acclamations, crowded to its foot to ascend.But Jehan maintained his right, and was the first to set foot on therungs. The passage was tolerably long. The gallery of the kings ofFrance is to-day about sixty feet above the pavement. The eleven stepsof the flight before the door, m
ade it still higher. Jehan mountedslowly, a good deal incommoded by his heavy armor, holding his crossbowin one hand, and clinging to a rung with the other. When he reachedthe middle of the ladder, he cast a melancholy glance at the poor deadoutcasts, with which the steps were strewn. "Alas!" said he, "here is aheap of bodies worthy of the fifth book of the Iliad!" Then he continuedhis ascent. The vagabonds followed him. There was one on every rung.At the sight of this line of cuirassed backs, undulating as they rosethrough the gloom, one would have pronounced it a serpent with steelscales, which was raising itself erect in front of the church. Jehan whoformed the head, and who was whistling, completed the illusion.
The scholar finally reached the balcony of the gallery, and climbed overit nimbly, to the applause of the whole vagabond tribe. Thus master ofthe citadel, he uttered a shout of joy, and suddenly halted, petrified.He had just caught sight of Quasimodo concealed in the dark, withflashing eye, behind one of the statues of the kings.
Before a second assailant could gain a foothold on the gallery, theformidable hunchback leaped to the head of the ladder, without utteringa word, seized the ends of the two uprights with his powerful hands,raised them, pushed them out from the wall, balanced the long and pliantladder, loaded with vagabonds from top to bottom for a moment, in themidst of shrieks of anguish, then suddenly, with superhuman force,hurled this cluster of men backward into the Place. There was a momentwhen even the most resolute trembled. The ladder, launched backwards,remained erect and standing for an instant, and seemed to hesitate, thenwavered, then suddenly, describing a frightful arc of a circle eightyfeet in radius, crashed upon the pavement with its load of ruffians,more rapidly than a drawbridge when its chains break. There arose animmense imprecation, then all was still, and a few mutilated wretcheswere seen, crawling over the heap of dead.
A sound of wrath and grief followed the first cries of triumph amongthe besiegers. Quasimodo, impassive, with both elbows propped on thebalustrade, looked on. He had the air of an old, bushy-headed king athis window.
As for Jehan Frollo, he was in a critical position. He found himself inthe gallery with the formidable bellringer, alone, separated from hiscompanions by a vertical wall eighty feet high. While Quasimodo wasdealing with the ladder, the scholar had run to the postern which hebelieved to be open. It was not. The deaf man had closed it behind himwhen he entered the gallery. Jehan had then concealed himself behinda stone king, not daring to breathe, and fixing upon the monstroushunchback a frightened gaze, like the man, who, when courting the wifeof the guardian of a menagerie, went one evening to a love rendezvous,mistook the wall which he was to climb, and suddenly found himself faceto face with a white bear.
For the first few moments, the deaf man paid no heed to him; but at lasthe turned his head, and suddenly straightened up. He had just caughtsight of the scholar.
Jehan prepared himself for a rough shock, but the deaf man remainedmotionless; only he had turned towards the scholar and was looking athim.
"Ho ho!" said Jehan, "what do you mean by staring at me with thatsolitary and melancholy eye?"
As he spoke thus, the young scamp stealthily adjusted his crossbow.
"Quasimodo!" he cried, "I am going to change your surname: you shall becalled the blind man."
The shot sped. The feathered vireton* whizzed and entered thehunchback's left arm. Quasimodo appeared no more moved by it than by ascratch to King Pharamond. He laid his hand on the arrow, tore it fromhis arm, and tranquilly broke it across his big knee; then he let thetwo pieces drop on the floor, rather than threw them down. But Jehanhad no opportunity to fire a second time. The arrow broken, Quasimodobreathing heavily, bounded like a grasshopper, and he fell upon thescholar, whose armor was flattened against the wall by the blow.
* An arrow with a pyramidal head of iron and copper spiral wings bywhich a rotatory motion was communicated.
Then in that gloom, wherein wavered the light of the torches, a terriblething was seen.
Quasimodo had grasped with his left hand the two arms of Jehan, who didnot offer any resistance, so thoroughly did he feel that he was lost.With his right hand, the deaf man detached one by one, in silence, withsinister slowness, all the pieces of his armor, the sword, the daggers,the helmet, the cuirass, the leg pieces. One would have said that it wasa monkey taking the shell from a nut. Quasimodo flung the scholar'siron shell at his feet, piece by piece. When the scholar beheld himselfdisarmed, stripped, weak, and naked in those terrible hands, he made noattempt to speak to the deaf man, but began to laugh audaciously in hisface, and to sing with his intrepid heedlessness of a child of sixteen,the then popular ditty:--
"_Elle est bien habillee, La ville de Cambrai; Marafin l'a pillee_..."*
* The city of Cambrai is well dressed. Marafin plundered it.
He did not finish. Quasimodo was seen on the parapet of the gallery,holding the scholar by the feet with one hand and whirling him overthe abyss like a sling; then a sound like that of a bony structure incontact with a wall was heard, and something was seen to fall whichhalted a third of the way down in its fall, on a projection in thearchitecture. It was a dead body which remained hanging there, bentdouble, its loins broken, its skull empty.
A cry of horror rose among the vagabonds.
"Vengeance!" shouted Clopin. "To the sack!" replied the multitude."Assault! assault!"
There came a tremendous howl, in which were mingled all tongues, alldialects, all accents. The death of the poor scholar imparted a furiousardor to that crowd. It was seized with shame, and the wrath of havingbeen held so long in check before a church by a hunchback. Rage foundladders, multiplied the torches, and, at the expiration of a fewminutes, Quasimodo, in despair, beheld that terrible ant heap mount onall sides to the assault of Notre-Dame. Those who had no ladders hadknotted ropes; those who had no ropes climbed by the projections ofthe carvings. They hung from each other's rags. There were no means ofresisting that rising tide of frightful faces; rage made these fiercecountenances ruddy; their clayey brows were dripping with sweat; theireyes darted lightnings; all these grimaces, all these horrors laid siegeto Quasimodo. One would have said that some other church had despatchedto the assault of Notre-Dame its gorgons, its dogs, its drees, itsdemons, its most fantastic sculptures. It was like a layer of livingmonsters on the stone monsters of the facade.
Meanwhile, the Place was studded with a thousand torches. This scene ofconfusion, till now hid in darkness, was suddenly flooded with light.The parvis was resplendent, and cast a radiance on the sky; the bonfirelighted on the lofty platform was still burning, and illuminated thecity far away. The enormous silhouette of the two towers, projected afaron the roofs of Paris, and formed a large notch of black in this light.The city seemed to be aroused. Alarm bells wailed in the distance.The vagabonds howled, panted, swore, climbed; and Quasimodo, powerlessagainst so many enemies, shuddering for the gypsy, beholding the furiousfaces approaching ever nearer and nearer to his gallery, entreatedheaven for a miracle, and wrung his arms in despair.
CHAPTER V. THE RETREAT IN WHICH MONSIEUR LOUIS OF FRANCE SAYS HISPRAYERS.