We have just said that Quasimodo disappeared from Notre-Dame on the dayof the gypsy's and of the archdeacon's death. He was not seen again, infact; no one knew what had become of him.
During the night which followed the execution of la Esmeralda, the nightmen had detached her body from the gibbet, and had carried it, accordingto custom, to the cellar of Montfaucon.
Montfaucon was, as Sauval says, "the most ancient and the most superbgibbet in the kingdom." Between the faubourgs of the Temple and SaintMartin, about a hundred and sixty toises from the walls of Paris, afew bow shots from La Courtille, there was to be seen on the crest of agentle, almost imperceptible eminence, but sufficiently elevated tobe seen for several leagues round about, an edifice of strange form,bearing considerable resemblance to a Celtic cromlech, and where alsohuman sacrifices were offered.
Let the reader picture to himself, crowning a limestone hillock, anoblong mass of masonry fifteen feet in height, thirty wide, fortylong, with a gate, an external railing and a platform; on this platformsixteen enormous pillars of rough hewn stone, thirty feet in height,arranged in a colonnade round three of the four sides of the mass whichsupport them, bound together at their summits by heavy beams, whencehung chains at intervals; on all these chains, skeletons; in thevicinity, on the plain, a stone cross and two gibbets of secondaryimportance, which seemed to have sprung up as shoots around the centralgallows; above all this, in the sky, a perpetual flock of crows; thatwas Montfaucon.
At the end of the fifteenth century, the formidable gibbet which datedfrom 1328, was already very much dilapidated; the beams were wormeaten,the chains rusted, the pillars green with mould; the layers of hewnstone were all cracked at their joints, and grass was growing on thatplatform which no feet touched. The monument made a horrible profileagainst the sky; especially at night when there was a little moonlighton those white skulls, or when the breeze of evening brushed the chainsand the skeletons, and swayed all these in the darkness. The presence ofthis gibbet sufficed to render gloomy all the surrounding places.
The mass of masonry which served as foundation to the odious edifice washollow. A huge cellar had been constructed there, closed by an old irongrating, which was out of order, into which were cast not only the humanremains, which were taken from the chains of Montfaucon, but also thebodies of all the unfortunates executed on the other permanent gibbetsof Paris. To that deep charnel-house, where so many human remains and somany crimes have rotted in company, many great ones of this world,many innocent people, have contributed their bones, from Enguerrand deMarigni, the first victim, and a just man, to Admiral de Coligni, whowas its last, and who was also a just man.
As for the mysterious disappearance of Quasimodo, this is all that wehave been able to discover.
About eighteen months or two years after the events which terminate thisstory, when search was made in that cavern for the body of Olivier leDaim, who had been hanged two days previously, and to whom CharlesVIII. had granted the favor of being buried in Saint Laurent, in bettercompany, they found among all those hideous carcasses two skeletons, oneof which held the other in its embrace. One of these skeletons, whichwas that of a woman, still had a few strips of a garment which had oncebeen white, and around her neck was to be seen a string of adrezarachbeads with a little silk bag ornamented with green glass, which was openand empty. These objects were of so little value that the executionerhad probably not cared for them. The other, which held this one in aclose embrace, was the skeleton of a man. It was noticed that his spinalcolumn was crooked, his head seated on his shoulder blades, and that oneleg was shorter than the other. Moreover, there was no fracture of thevertebrae at the nape of the neck, and it was evident that he had notbeen hanged. Hence, the man to whom it had belonged had come thither andhad died there. When they tried to detach the skeleton which he held inhis embrace, he fell to dust.
NOTE
ADDED TO THE DEFINITIVE EDITION.