Chapter VI: Three Human Hearts Differently Constructed

Phœbus was not dead, however. Men of that stamp die hard. When
Master Philippe Lheulier, advocate extraordinary of the king, had
said to poor Esmeralda; “He is dying,” it was an error or a jest.
When the archdeacon had repeated to the condemned girl; “He is
dead,” the fact is that he knew nothing about it, but that he
believed it, that he counted on it, that he did not doubt it,
that he devoutly hoped it. It would have been too hard for him to
give favorable news of his rival to the woman whom he loved. Any
man would have done the same in his place.

It was not that Phœbus’s wound had not been serious, but it had
not been as much so as the archdeacon believed. The physician, to
whom the soldiers of the watch had carried him at the first
moment, had feared for his life during the space of a week, and
had even told him so in Latin. But youth had gained the upper
hand; and, as frequently happens, in spite of prognostications
and diagnoses, nature had amused herself by saving the sick man
under the physician’s very nose. It was while he was still lying
on the leech’s pallet that he had submitted to the interrogations
of Philippe Lheulier and the official inquisitors, which had
annoyed him greatly. Hence, one fine morning, feeling himself
better, he had left his golden spurs with the leech as payment,
and had slipped away. This had not, however, interfered with the
progress of the affair. Justice, at that epoch, troubled itself
very little about the clearness and definiteness of a criminal
suit. Provided that the accused was hung, that was all that was
necessary. Now the judge had plenty of proofs against la
Esmeralda. They had supposed Phœbus to be dead, and that was the
end of the matter.

Phœbus, on his side, had not fled far. He had simply rejoined his
company in garrison at Queue-en-Brie, in the Isle-de-France, a
few stages from Paris.

After all, it did not please him in the least to appear in this
suit. He had a vague feeling that he should play a ridiculous
figure in it. On the whole, he did not know what to think of the
whole affair. Superstitious, and not given to devoutness, like
every soldier who is only a soldier, when he came to question
himself about this adventure, he did not feel assured as to the
goat, as to the singular fashion in which he had met La
Esmeralda, as to the no less strange manner in which she had
allowed him to divine her love, as to her character as a gypsy,
and lastly, as to the surly monk. He perceived in all these
incidents much more magic than love, probably a sorceress,
perhaps the devil; a comedy, in short, or to speak in the
language of that day, a very disagreeable mystery, in which he
played a very awkward part, the role of blows and derision. The
captain was quite put out of countenance about it; he experienced
that sort of shame which our La Fontaine has so admirably
defined,—

Ashamed as a fox who has been caught by a fowl.

Moreover, he hoped that the affair would not get noised abroad,
that his name would hardly be pronounced in it, and that in any
case it would not go beyond the courts of the Tournelle. In this
he was not mistaken, there was then no _Gazette des Tribunaux;_
and as not a week passed which had not its counterfeiter to boil,
or its witch to hang, or its heretic to burn, at some one of the
innumerable justices of Paris, people were so accustomed to
seeing in all the squares the ancient feudal Themis, bare armed,
with sleeves stripped up, performing her duty at the gibbets, the
ladders, and the pillories, that they hardly paid any heed to it.
Fashionable society of that day hardly knew the name of the
victim who passed by at the corner of the street, and it was the
populace at the most who regaled themselves with this coarse
fare. An execution was an habitual incident of the public
highways, like the braising-pan of the baker or the
slaughter-house of the knacker. The executioner was only a sort
of butcher of a little deeper dye than the rest.

Hence Phœbus’s mind was soon at ease on the score of the
enchantress Esmeralda, or Similar, as he called her, concerning
the blow from the dagger of the Bohemian or of the surly monk (it
mattered little which to him), and as to the issue of the trial.
But as soon as his heart was vacant in that direction,
Fleur-de-Lys returned to it. Captain Phœbus’s heart, like the
physics of that day, abhorred a vacuum.

Queue-en-Brie was a very insipid place to stay at then, a village
of farriers, and cow-girls with chapped hands, a long line of
poor dwellings and thatched cottages, which borders the grand
road on both sides for half a league; a tail (queue), in short,
as its name imports.

Fleur-de-Lys was his last passion but one, a pretty girl, a
charming dowry; accordingly, one fine morning, quite cured, and
assuming that, after the lapse of two months, the Bohemian affair
must be completely finished and forgotten, the amorous cavalier
arrived on a prancing horse at the door of the Gondelaurier
mansion.

He paid no attention to a tolerably numerous rabble which had
assembled in the Place du Parvis, before the portal of
Notre-Dame; he remembered that it was the month of May; he
supposed that it was some procession, some Pentecost, some
festival, hitched his horse to the ring at the door, and gayly
ascended the stairs to his beautiful betrothed.

She was alone with her mother.

The scene of the witch, her goat, her cursed alphabet, and
Phœbus’s long absences, still weighed on Fleur-de-Lys’s heart.
Nevertheless, when she beheld her captain enter, she thought him
so handsome, his doublet so new, his baldrick so shining, and his
air so impassioned, that she blushed with pleasure. The noble
damsel herself was more charming than ever. Her magnificent blond
hair was plaited in a ravishing manner, she was dressed entirely
in that sky blue which becomes fair people so well, a bit of
coquetry which she had learned from Colombe, and her eyes were
swimming in that languor of love which becomes them still better.

Phœbus, who had seen nothing in the line of beauty, since he left
the village maids of Queue-en-Brie, was intoxicated with
Fleur-de-Lys, which imparted to our officer so eager and gallant
an air, that his peace was immediately made. Madame de
Gondelaurier herself, still maternally seated in her big
arm-chair, had not the heart to scold him. As for Fleur-de-Lys’s
reproaches, they expired in tender cooings.

The young girl was seated near the window still embroidering her
grotto of Neptune. The captain was leaning over the back of her
chair, and she was addressing her caressing reproaches to him in
a low voice.

“What has become of you these two long months, wicked man?”

“I swear to you,” replied Phœbus, somewhat embarrassed by the
question, “that you are beautiful enough to set an archbishop to
dreaming.”

She could not repress a smile.

“Good, good, sir. Let my beauty alone and answer my question. A
fine beauty, in sooth!”

“Well, my dear cousin, I was recalled to the garrison.

“And where is that, if you please? and why did not you come to
say farewell?”

“At Queue-en-Brie.”

Phœbus was delighted with the first question, which helped him to
avoid the second.

“But that is quite close by, monsieur. Why did you not come to
see me a single time?”

Here Phœbus was rather seriously embarrassed.

“Because—the service—and then, charming cousin, I have been ill.”

“Ill!” she repeated in alarm.

“Yes, wounded!”

“Wounded!”

The poor child was completely upset.

“Oh! do not be frightened at that,” said Phœbus, carelessly, “it
was nothing. A quarrel, a sword cut; what is that to you?”

“What is that to me?” exclaimed Fleur-de-Lys, raising her
beautiful eyes filled with tears. “Oh! you do not say what you
think when you speak thus. What sword cut was that? I wish to
know all.”

“Well, my dear fair one, I had a falling out with Mahé Fédy, you
know? the lieutenant of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and we ripped open
a few inches of skin for each other. That is all.”

The mendacious captain was perfectly well aware that an affair of
honor always makes a man stand well in the eyes of a woman. In
fact, Fleur-de-Lys looked him full in the face, all agitated with
fear, pleasure, and admiration. Still, she was not completely
reassured.

“Provided that you are wholly cured, my Phœbus!” said she. “I do
not know your Mahé Fédy, but he is a villanous man. And whence
arose this quarrel?”

Here Phœbus, whose imagination was endowed with but mediocre
power of creation, began to find himself in a quandary as to a
means of extricating himself for his prowess.

“Oh! how do I know?—a mere nothing, a horse, a remark! Fair
cousin,” he exclaimed, for the sake of changing the conversation,
“what noise is this in the Cathedral Square?”

He approached the window.

“Oh! _Mon Dieu_, fair cousin, how many people there are on the
Place!”

“I know not,” said Fleur-de-Lys; “it appears that a witch is to
do penance this morning before the church, and thereafter to be
hung.”

The captain was so thoroughly persuaded that la Esmeralda’s
affair was concluded, that he was but little disturbed by
Fleur-de-Lys’s words. Still, he asked her one or two questions.

“What is the name of this witch?”

“I do not know,” she replied.

“And what is she said to have done?”

She shrugged her white shoulders.

“I know not.”

“Oh, _mon Dieu Jésus!_” said her mother; “there are so many
witches nowadays that I dare say they burn them without knowing
their names. One might as well seek the name of every cloud in
the sky. After all, one may be tranquil. The good God keeps his
register.” Here the venerable dame rose and came to the window.
“Good Lord! you are right, Phœbus,” said she. “The rabble is
indeed great. There are people on all the roofs, blessed be God!
Do you know, Phœbus, this reminds me of my best days. The
entrance of King Charles VII., when, also, there were many
people. I no longer remember in what year that was. When I speak
of this to you, it produces upon you the effect,—does it not?—the
effect of something very old, and upon me of something very
young. Oh! the crowd was far finer than at the present day. They
even stood upon the machicolations of the Porte Sainte-Antoine.
The king had the queen on a pillion, and after their highnesses
came all the ladies mounted behind all the lords. I remember that
they laughed loudly, because beside Amanyon de Garlande, who was
very short of stature, there rode the Sire Matefelon, a chevalier
of gigantic size, who had killed heaps of English. It was very
fine. A procession of all the gentlemen of France, with their
oriflammes waving red before the eye. There were some with
pennons and some with banners. How can I tell? the Sire de Calan
with a pennon; Jean de Châteaumorant with a banner; the Sire de
Courcy with a banner, and a more ample one than any of the others
except the Duc de Bourbon. Alas! ’tis a sad thing to think that
all that has existed and exists no longer!”

The two lovers were not listening to the venerable dowager.
Phœbus had returned and was leaning on the back of his
betrothed’s chair, a charming post whence his libertine glance
plunged into all the openings of Fleur-de-Lys’s gorget. This
gorget gaped so conveniently, and allowed him to see so many
exquisite things and to divine so many more, that Phœbus, dazzled
by this skin with its gleams of satin, said to himself, “How can
any one love anything but a fair skin?”

Both were silent. The young girl raised sweet, enraptured eyes to
him from time to time, and their hair mingled in a ray of spring
sunshine.

“Phœbus,” said Fleur-de-Lys suddenly, in a low voice, “we are to
be married three months hence; swear to me that you have never
loved any other woman than myself.”

“I swear it, fair angel!” replied Phœbus, and his passionate
glances aided the sincere tone of his voice in convincing
Fleur-de-Lys.

Meanwhile, the good mother, charmed to see the betrothed pair on
terms of such perfect understanding, had just quitted the
apartment to attend to some domestic matter; Phœbus observed it,
and this so emboldened the adventurous captain that very strange
ideas mounted to his brain. Fleur-de-Lys loved him, he was her
betrothed; she was alone with him; his former taste for her had
re-awakened, not with all its freshness but with all its ardor;
after all, there is no great harm in tasting one’s wheat while it
is still in the blade; I do not know whether these ideas passed
through his mind, but one thing is certain, that Fleur-de-Lys was
suddenly alarmed by the expression of his glance. She looked
round and saw that her mother was no longer there.

“Good heavens!” said she, blushing and uneasy, “how very warm I
am!”

“I think, in fact,” replied Phœbus, “that it cannot be far from
midday. The sun is troublesome. We need only lower the curtains.”

“No, no,” exclaimed the poor little thing, “on the contrary, I
need air.”

And like a fawn who feels the breath of the pack of hounds, she
rose, ran to the window, opened it, and rushed upon the balcony.

Phœbus, much discomfited, followed her.

The Place du Parvis Notre-Dame, upon which the balcony looked, as
the reader knows, presented at that moment a singular and
sinister spectacle which caused the fright of the timid
Fleur-de-Lys to change its nature.

An immense crowd, which overflowed into all the neighboring
streets, encumbered the Place, properly speaking. The little
wall, breast high, which surrounded the Place, would not have
sufficed to keep it free had it not been lined with a thick hedge
of sergeants and hackbuteers, culverines in hand. Thanks to this
thicket of pikes and arquebuses, the Parvis was empty. Its
entrance was guarded by a force of halberdiers with the armorial
bearings of the bishop. The large doors of the church were
closed, and formed a contrast with the innumerable windows on the
Place, which, open to their very gables, allowed a view of
thousands of heads heaped up almost like the piles of bullets in
a park of artillery.

The surface of this rabble was dingy, dirty, earthy. The
spectacle which it was expecting was evidently one of the sort
which possess the privilege of bringing out and calling together
the vilest among the populace. Nothing is so hideous as the noise
which was made by that swarm of yellow caps and dirty heads. In
that throng there were more laughs than cries, more women than
men.

From time to time, a sharp and vibrating voice pierced the
general clamor.

“Ohé! Mahiet Baliffre! Is she to be hung yonder?”

“Fool! ’tis here that she is to make her apology in her shift!
the good God is going to cough Latin in her face! That is always
done here, at midday. If ’tis the gallows that you wish, go to
the Grève.”

“I will go there, afterwards.”

“Tell me, la Boucanbry? Is it true that she has refused a
confessor?”

“It appears so, La Bechaigne.”

“You see what a pagan she is!”

“’Tis the custom, monsieur. The bailiff of the courts is bound to
deliver the malefactor ready judged for execution if he be a
layman, to the provost of Paris; if a clerk, to the official of
the bishopric.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Oh, God!” said Fleur-de-Lys, “the poor creature!”

This thought filled with sadness the glance which she cast upon
the populace. The captain, much more occupied with her than with
that pack of the rabble, was amorously rumpling her girdle
behind. She turned round, entreating and smiling.

“Please let me alone, Phœbus! If my mother were to return, she
would see your hand!”

At that moment, midday rang slowly out from the clock of
Notre-Dame. A murmur of satisfaction broke out in the crowd. The
last vibration of the twelfth stroke had hardly died away when
all heads surged like the waves beneath a squall, and an immense
shout went up from the pavement, the windows, and the roofs,

“There she is!”

Fleur-de-Lys pressed her hands to her eyes, that she might not
see.

“Charming girl,” said Phœbus, “do you wish to withdraw?”

“No,” she replied; and she opened through curiosity, the eyes
which she had closed through fear.

A tumbrel drawn by a stout Norman horse, and all surrounded by
cavalry in violet livery with white crosses, had just debouched
upon the Place through the Rue Saint-Pierre-aux-Bœufs. The
sergeants of the watch were clearing a passage for it through the
crowd, by stout blows from their clubs. Beside the cart rode
several officers of justice and police, recognizable by their
black costume and their awkwardness in the saddle. Master Jacques
Charmolue paraded at their head.

In the fatal cart sat a young girl with her arms tied behind her
back, and with no priest beside her. She was in her shift; her
long black hair (the fashion then was to cut it off only at the
foot of the gallows) fell in disorder upon her half-bared throat
and shoulders.

Athwart that waving hair, more glossy than the plumage of a
raven, a thick, rough, gray rope was visible, twisted and
knotted, chafing her delicate collar-bones and twining round the
charming neck of the poor girl, like an earthworm round a flower.
Beneath that rope glittered a tiny amulet ornamented with bits of
green glass, which had been left to her no doubt, because nothing
is refused to those who are about to die. The spectators in the
windows could see in the bottom of the cart her naked legs which
she strove to hide beneath her, as by a final feminine instinct.
At her feet lay a little goat, bound. The condemned girl held
together with her teeth her imperfectly fastened shift. One would
have said that she suffered still more in her misery from being
thus exposed almost naked to the eyes of all. Alas! modesty is
not made for such shocks.

“Jesus!” said Fleur-de-Lys hastily to the captain. “Look fair
cousin, ’tis that wretched Bohemian with the goat.”

So saying, she turned to Phœbus. His eyes were fixed on the
tumbrel. He was very pale.

“What Bohemian with the goat?” he stammered.

“What!” resumed Fleur-de-Lys, “do you not remember?”

Phœbus interrupted her.

“I do not know what you mean.”

He made a step to re-enter the room, but Fleur-de-Lys, whose
jealousy, previously so vividly aroused by this same gypsy, had
just been re-awakened, Fleur-de-Lys gave him a look full of
penetration and distrust. She vaguely recalled at that moment
having heard of a captain mixed up in the trial of that witch.

“What is the matter with you?” she said to Phœbus, “one would
say, that this woman had disturbed you.”

Phœbus forced a sneer,—

“Me! Not the least in the world! Ah! yes, certainly!”

“Remain, then!” she continued imperiously, “and let us see the
end.”

The unlucky captain was obliged to remain. He was somewhat
reassured by the fact that the condemned girl never removed her
eyes from the bottom of the cart. It was but too surely la
Esmeralda. In this last stage of opprobrium and misfortune, she
was still beautiful; her great black eyes appeared still larger,
because of the emaciation of her cheeks; her pale profile was
pure and sublime. She resembled what she had been, in the same
degree that a virgin by Masaccio, resembles a virgin of
Raphael,—weaker, thinner, more delicate.

Moreover, there was nothing in her which was not shaken in some
sort, and which with the exception of her modesty, she did not
let go at will, so profoundly had she been broken by stupor and
despair. Her body bounded at every jolt of the tumbrel like a
dead or broken thing; her gaze was dull and imbecile. A tear was
still visible in her eyes, but motionless and frozen, so to
speak.

Meanwhile, the lugubrious cavalcade has traversed the crowd amid
cries of joy and curious attitudes. But as a faithful historian,
we must state that on beholding her so beautiful, so depressed,
many were moved with pity, even among the hardest of them.

The tumbrel had entered the Parvis.

It halted before the central portal. The escort ranged themselves
in line on both sides. The crowd became silent, and, in the midst
of this silence full of anxiety and solemnity, the two leaves of
the grand door swung back, as of themselves, on their hinges,
which gave a creak like the sound of a fife. Then there became
visible in all its length, the deep, gloomy church, hung in
black, sparely lighted with a few candles gleaming afar off on
the principal altar, opened in the midst of the Place which was
dazzling with light, like the mouth of a cavern. At the very
extremity, in the gloom of the apse, a gigantic silver cross was
visible against a black drapery which hung from the vault to the
pavement. The whole nave was deserted. But a few heads of priests
could be seen moving confusedly in the distant choir stalls, and,
at the moment when the great door opened, there escaped from the
church a loud, solemn, and monotonous chanting, which cast over
the head of the condemned girl, in gusts, fragments of melancholy
psalms,—

“_Non timebo millia populi circumdantis me: exsurge, Domine;
salvum me fac, Deus!_”

“_Salvum me fac, Deus, quoniam intraverunt aquæ usque ad animam
meam_.

“_Infixus sum in limo profundi; et non est substantia_.”

At the same time, another voice, separate from the choir, intoned
upon the steps of the chief altar, this melancholy offertory,—

“_Qui verbum meum audit, et credit ei qui misit me, habet vitam
æternam et in judicium non venit; sed transit a morte in
vitam._”[46]

This chant, which a few old men buried in the gloom sang from
afar over that beautiful creature, full of youth and life,
caressed by the warm air of spring, inundated with sunlight was
the mass for the dead.

The people listened devoutly.

The unhappy girl seemed to lose her sight and her consciousness
in the obscure interior of the church. Her white lips moved as
though in prayer, and the headsman’s assistant who approached to
assist her to alight from the cart, heard her repeating this word
in a low tone,—“Phœbus.”

They untied her hands, made her alight, accompanied by her goat,
which had also been unbound, and which bleated with joy at
finding itself free: and they made her walk barefoot on the hard
pavement to the foot of the steps leading to the door. The rope
about her neck trailed behind her. One would have said it was a
serpent following her.

Then the chanting in the church ceased. A great golden cross and
a row of wax candles began to move through the gloom. The
halberds of the motley beadles clanked; and, a few moments later,
a long procession of priests in chasubles, and deacons in
dalmatics, marched gravely towards the condemned girl, as they
drawled their song, spread out before her view and that of the
crowd. But her glance rested on the one who marched at the head,
immediately after the cross-bearer.

“Oh!” she said in a low voice, and with a shudder, “’tis he
again! the priest!”

It was in fact, the archdeacon. On his left he had the
sub-chanter, on his right, the chanter, armed with his official
wand. He advanced with head thrown back, his eyes fixed and wide
open, intoning in a strong voice,—

“_De ventre inferi clamavi, et exaudisti vocem meam_.

“_Et projecisti me in profundum in corde maris, et flumem
circumdedit me._”[47]

At the moment when he made his appearance in the full daylight
beneath the lofty arched portal, enveloped in an ample cope of
silver barred with a black cross, he was so pale that more than
one person in the crowd thought that one of the marble bishops
who knelt on the sepulchral stones of the choir had risen and was
come to receive upon the brink of the tomb, the woman who was
about to die.

She, no less pale, no less like a statue, had hardly noticed that
they had placed in her hand a heavy, lighted candle of yellow
wax; she had not heard the yelping voice of the clerk reading the
fatal contents of the apology; when they told her to respond with
_Amen_, she responded _Amen_. She only recovered life and force
when she beheld the priest make a sign to her guards to withdraw,
and himself advance alone towards her.

Then she felt her blood boil in her head, and a remnant of
indignation flashed up in that soul already benumbed and cold.

The archdeacon approached her slowly; even in that extremity, she
beheld him cast an eye sparkling with sensuality, jealousy, and
desire, over her exposed form. Then he said aloud,—

“Young girl, have you asked God’s pardon for your faults and
shortcomings?”

He bent down to her ear, and added (the spectators supposed that
he was receiving her last confession): “Will you have me? I can
still save you!”

She looked intently at him: “Begone, demon, or I will denounce
you!”

He gave vent to a horrible smile: “You will not be believed. You
will only add a scandal to a crime. Reply quickly! Will you have
me?”

“What have you done with my Phœbus?”

“He is dead!” said the priest.

At that moment the wretched archdeacon raised his head
mechanically and beheld at the other end of the Place, in the
balcony of the Gondelaurier mansion, the captain standing beside
Fleur-de-Lys. He staggered, passed his hand across his eyes,
looked again, muttered a curse, and all his features were
violently contorted.

“Well, die then!” he hissed between his teeth. “No one shall have
you.” Then, raising his hand over the gypsy, he exclaimed in a
funereal voice:—“_I nunc, anima anceps, et sit tibi Deus
misericors!_”[48]

This was the dread formula with which it was the custom to
conclude these gloomy ceremonies. It was the signal agreed upon
between the priest and the executioner.

The crowd knelt.

“_Kyrie eleison_,”[49] said the priests, who had remained beneath
the arch of the portal.

“_Kyrie eleison_,” repeated the throng in that murmur which runs
over all heads, like the waves of a troubled sea.

“_Amen_,” said the archdeacon.

He turned his back on the condemned girl, his head sank upon his
breast once more, he crossed his hands and rejoined his escort of
priests, and a moment later he was seen to disappear, with the
cross, the candles, and the copes, beneath the misty arches of
the cathedral, and his sonorous voice was extinguished by degrees
in the choir, as he chanted this verse of despair,—

“_Omnes gurgites tui et fluctus tui super me transierunt_.”[50]

At the same time, the intermittent clash of the iron butts of the
beadles’ halberds, gradually dying away among the columns of the
nave, produced the effect of a clock hammer striking the last
hour of the condemned.

The doors of Notre-Dame remained open, allowing a view of the
empty desolate church, draped in mourning, without candles, and
without voices.

The condemned girl remained motionless in her place, waiting to
be disposed of. One of the sergeants of police was obliged to
notify Master Charmolue of the fact, as the latter, during this
entire scene, had been engaged in studying the bas-relief of the
grand portal which represents, according to some, the sacrifice
of Abraham; according to others, the philosopher’s alchemical
operation: the sun being figured forth by the angel; the fire, by
the fagot; the artisan, by Abraham.

There was considerable difficulty in drawing him away from that
contemplation, but at length he turned round; and, at a signal
which he gave, two men clad in yellow, the executioner’s
assistants, approached the gypsy to bind her hands once more.

The unhappy creature, at the moment of mounting once again the
fatal cart, and proceeding to her last halting-place, was seized,
possibly, with some poignant clinging to life. She raised her
dry, red eyes to heaven, to the sun, to the silvery clouds, cut
here and there by a blue trapezium or triangle; then she lowered
them to objects around her, to the earth, the throng, the houses;
all at once, while the yellow man was binding her elbows, she
uttered a terrible cry, a cry of joy. Yonder, on that balcony, at
the corner of the Place, she had just caught sight of him, of her
friend, her lord, Phœbus, the other apparition of her life!

The judge had lied! the priest had lied! it was certainly he, she
could not doubt it; he was there, handsome, alive, dressed in his
brilliant uniform, his plume on his head, his sword by his side!

“Phœbus!” she cried, “my Phœbus!”

And she tried to stretch towards him arms trembling with love and
rapture, but they were bound.

Then she saw the captain frown, a beautiful young girl who was
leaning against him gazed at him with disdainful lips and
irritated eyes; then Phœbus uttered some words which did not
reach her, and both disappeared precipitately behind the window
opening upon the balcony, which closed after them.

“Phœbus!” she cried wildly, “can it be you believe it?” A
monstrous thought had just presented itself to her. She
remembered that she had been condemned to death for murder
committed on the person of Phœbus de Châteaupers.

She had borne up until that moment. But this last blow was too
harsh. She fell lifeless on the pavement.

“Come,” said Charmolue, “carry her to the cart, and make an end
of it.”

No one had yet observed in the gallery of the statues of the
kings, carved directly above the arches of the portal, a strange
spectator, who had, up to that time, observed everything with
such impassiveness, with a neck so strained, a visage so hideous
that, in his motley accoutrement of red and violet, he might have
been taken for one of those stone monsters through whose mouths
the long gutters of the cathedral have discharged their waters
for six hundred years. This spectator had missed nothing that had
taken place since midday in front of the portal of Notre-Dame.
And at the very beginning he had securely fastened to one of the
small columns a large knotted rope, one end of which trailed on
the flight of steps below. This being done, he began to look on
tranquilly, whistling from time to time when a blackbird flitted
past. Suddenly, at the moment when the superintendent’s
assistants were preparing to execute Charmolue’s phlegmatic
order, he threw his leg over the balustrade of the gallery,
seized the rope with his feet, his knees and his hands; then he
was seen to glide down the façade, as a drop of rain slips down a
window-pane, rush to the two executioners with the swiftness of a
cat which has fallen from a roof, knock them down with two
enormous fists, pick up the gypsy with one hand, as a child would
her doll, and dash back into the church with a single bound,
lifting the young girl above his head and crying in a formidable
voice,—

“Sanctuary!”

This was done with such rapidity, that had it taken place at
night, the whole of it could have been seen in the space of a
single flash of lightning.

“Sanctuary! Sanctuary!” repeated the crowd; and the clapping of
ten thousand hands made Quasimodo’s single eye sparkle with joy
and pride.

This shock restored the condemned girl to her senses. She raised
her eyelids, looked at Quasimodo, then closed them again
suddenly, as though terrified by her deliverer.

Charmolue was stupefied, as well as the executioners and the
entire escort. In fact, within the bounds of Notre-Dame, the
condemned girl could not be touched. The cathedral was a place of
refuge. All temporal jurisdiction expired upon its threshold.

Quasimodo had halted beneath the great portal, his huge feet
seemed as solid on the pavement of the church as the heavy Roman
pillars. His great, bushy head sat low between his shoulders,
like the heads of lions, who also have a mane and no neck. He
held the young girl, who was quivering all over, suspended from
his horny hands like a white drapery; but he carried her with as
much care as though he feared to break her or blight her. One
would have said that he felt that she was a delicate, exquisite,
precious thing, made for other hands than his. There were moments
when he looked as if not daring to touch her, even with his
breath. Then, all at once, he would press her forcibly in his
arms, against his angular bosom, like his own possession, his
treasure, as the mother of that child would have done. His
gnome’s eye, fastened upon her, inundated her with tenderness,
sadness, and pity, and was suddenly raised filled with
lightnings. Then the women laughed and wept, the crowd stamped
with enthusiasm, for, at that moment Quasimodo had a beauty of
his own. He was handsome; he, that orphan, that foundling, that
outcast, he felt himself august and strong, he gazed in the face
of that society from which he was banished, and in which he had
so powerfully intervened, of that human justice from which he had
wrenched its prey, of all those tigers whose jaws were forced to
remain empty, of those policemen, those judges, those
executioners, of all that force of the king which he, the meanest
of creatures, had just broken, with the force of God.

And then, it was touching to behold this protection which had
fallen from a being so hideous upon a being so unhappy, a
creature condemned to death saved by Quasimodo. They were two
extremes of natural and social wretchedness, coming into contact
and aiding each other.

Meanwhile, after several moments of triumph, Quasimodo had
plunged abruptly into the church with his burden. The populace,
fond of all prowess, sought him with their eyes, beneath the
gloomy nave, regretting that he had so speedily disappeared from
their acclamations. All at once, he was seen to re-appear at one
of the extremities of the gallery of the kings of France; he
traversed it, running like a madman, raising his conquest high in
his arms and shouting: “Sanctuary!” The crowd broke forth into
fresh applause. The gallery passed, he plunged once more into the
interior of the church. A moment later, he re-appeared upon the
upper platform, with the gypsy still in his arms, still running
madly, still crying, “Sanctuary!” and the throng applauded.
Finally, he made his appearance for the third time upon the
summit of the tower where hung the great bell; from that point he
seemed to be showing to the entire city the girl whom he had
saved, and his voice of thunder, that voice which was so rarely
heard, and which he never heard himself, repeated thrice with
frenzy, even to the clouds: “Sanctuary! Sanctuary! Sanctuary!”

“Noël! Noël!” shouted the populace in its turn; and that immense
acclamation flew to astonish the crowd assembled at the Grève on
the other bank, and the recluse who was still waiting with her
eyes riveted on the gibbet.

BOOK NINTH.