The reader will, perhaps, recall the critical situation in which we leftQuasimodo. The brave deaf man, assailed on all sides, had lost, ifnot all courage, at least all hope of saving, not himself (he was notthinking of himself), but the gypsy. He ran distractedly along thegallery. Notre-Dame was on the point of being taken by storm bythe outcasts. All at once, a great galloping of horses filled theneighboring streets, and, with a long file of torches and a thick columnof cavaliers, with free reins and lances in rest, these furious soundsdebouched on the Place like a hurricane,--
"France! France! cut down the louts! Chateaupers to the rescue!Provostship! Provostship!"
The frightened vagabonds wheeled round.
Quasimodo who did not hear, saw the naked swords, the torches, theirons of the pikes, all that cavalry, at the head of which he recognizedCaptain Phoebus; he beheld the confusion of the outcasts, the terrorof some, the disturbance among the bravest of them, and from thisunexpected succor he recovered so much strength, that he hurled from thechurch the first assailants who were already climbing into the gallery.
It was, in fact, the king's troops who had arrived. The vagabondsbehaved bravely. They defended themselves like desperate men. Caught onthe flank, by the Rue Saint-Pierre-aux-Boeufs, and in the rear throughthe Rue du Parvis, driven to bay against Notre-Dame, which theystill assailed and Quasimodo defended, at the same time besiegers andbesieged, they were in the singular situation in which Comte HenriHarcourt, _Taurinum obsessor idem et obsessus_, as his epitaph says,found himself later on, at the famous siege of Turin, in 1640, betweenPrince Thomas of Savoy, whom he was besieging, and the Marquis deLeganez, who was blockading him.
The battle was frightful. There was a dog's tooth for wolf's flesh,as P. Mathieu says. The king's cavaliers, in whose midst Phoebus deChateaupers bore himself valiantly, gave no quarter, and the slash ofthe sword disposed of those who escaped the thrust of the lance. Theoutcasts, badly armed foamed and bit with rage. Men, women, children,hurled themselves on the cruppers and the breasts of the horses, andhung there like cats, with teeth, finger nails and toe nails. Othersstruck the archers' in the face with their torches. Others thrustiron hooks into the necks of the cavaliers and dragged them down. Theyslashed in pieces those who fell.
One was noticed who had a large, glittering scythe, and who, for a longtime, mowed the legs of the horses. He was frightful. He was singinga ditty, with a nasal intonation, he swung and drew back his scytheincessantly. At every blow he traced around him a great circle ofsevered limbs. He advanced thus into the very thickest of the cavalry,with the tranquil slowness, the lolling of the head and the regularbreathing of a harvester attacking a field of wheat. It was ChopinTrouillefou. A shot from an arquebus laid him low.
In the meantime, windows had been opened again. The neighbors hearingthe war cries of the king's troops, had mingled in the affray, andbullets rained upon the outcasts from every story. The Parvis was filledwith a thick smoke, which the musketry streaked with flame. Throughit one could confusedly distinguish the front of Notre-Dame, and thedecrepit Hotel-Dieu with some wan invalids gazing down from the heightsof its roof all checkered with dormer windows.
At length the vagabonds gave way. Weariness, the lack of good weapons,the fright of this surprise, the musketry from the windows, the valiantattack of the king's troops, all overwhelmed them. They forced theline of assailants, and fled in every direction, leaving the Parvisencumbered with dead.
When Quasimodo, who had not ceased to fight for a moment, beheldthis rout, he fell on his knees and raised his hands to heaven; then,intoxicated with joy, he ran, he ascended with the swiftness of a birdto that cell, the approaches to which he had so intrepidly defended.He had but one thought now; it was to kneel before her whom he had justsaved for the second time.
When he entered the cell, he found it empty.
BOOK ELEVENTH.
CHAPTER I. THE LITTLE SHOE.