by Victor Hugo
A cask stood near the fire, and a beggar sat on the cask. This was the king upon his throne.
The three who held Gringoire led him up to this cask, and all the revellers were hushed for a moment, except the caldron inhabited by the child.
Gringoire dared not breathe or raise his eyes.
“Hombre, quita tu sombrero!”aj said one of the three scoundrels who held him; and before he had made up his mind what this meant, another snatched his hat,—a shabby head-piece to be sure, but still useful on sunny or on rainy days. Gringoire sighed.
But the king, from the height of his barrel, addressed him,—
“Who is this rascal?”
Gringoire started. The voice, although threatening in tone, reminded him of another voice which had that same morning dealt the first blow to his mystery by whining out from the audience, “Charity, kind souls!” He lifted his head. It was indeed Clopin Trouillefou.
Clopin Trouillefou, decked with his royal insignia, had not a tat ter more or less than usual. The wound on his arm had vanished.
In his hand he held one of those whips with whit-leather thongs then used by sergeants of the wand to keep back the crowd, and called “boullayes.” Upon his head he wore a circular bonnet closed at the top; but it was hard to say whether it was a child’s cap or a king’s crown, so similar are the two things.
Still, Gringoire, without knowing why, felt his hopes revive when he recognized this accursed beggar of the Great Hall in the King of the Court of Miracles.
“Master,” stuttered he, “My lord—Sire—How shall I address you?” he said at last, reaching the culminating point of his crescendo, and not knowing how to rise higher or to re-descend.
“My lord, your Majesty, or comrade. Call me what you will; but make haste. What have you to say in your defense?”
“ ‘In your defense,’ ” thought Gringoire; “I don’t like the sound of that.” He resumed stammeringly, “I am he who this morning—”
“By the devil’s claws!” interrupted Clopin, “your name, rascal, and nothing more. Hark ye. You stand before three mighty sover eigns: me, Clopin Trouillefou, King of Tunis,ak successor to the Grand Coëre, the king of rogues, lord paramount of the kingdom of Slang; Mathias Hungadi Spicali, Duke of Egyptal and Bohemia, that yellow old boy you see yonder with a clout about his head, Guillaume Rousseau, Emperor of Galilee,am that fat fellow who pays no heed to us, but caresses that wench. We are your judges. You have entered the kingdom of Slang, the land of thieves, without being a member of the confraternity; you have violated the privileges of our city. You must be punished, unless you be either prig, mumper, or cadger; that is, in the vulgar tongue of honest folks, either thief, beggar, or tramp. Are you anything of the sort? Justify yourself; state your character.”
“Alas!” said Gringoire, “I have not that honor. I am the author—”
“Enough!” cried Trouillefou, not allowing him to finish his sentence. “You must be hanged. Quite a simple matter, my honest citizens! As you treat our people when they enter your domain, so we treat yours when they intrude among us. The law which you mete out to vagabonds, the vagabonds mete out to you. It is your own fault if it be evil. It is quite necessary that we should occasionally see an honest man grin ever through a hempen collar; it makes the thing honorable. Come, friend, divide your rags cheerfully among these young ladies. I will have you hanged to amuse the vagabonds, and you shall give them your purse to pay for a drink. If you have any mummeries to perform, over yonder in that mortar there’s a capital God the Father, in stone, which we stole from the Church of Saint-Pierre-aux-Bœufs. You have four minutes to fling your soul at his head.”
This was a terrible speech.
“Well said, upon my soul! Clopin Trouillefou preaches as well as any pope!” exclaimed the Emperor of Galilee, smashing his jug to prop up his table.
“Noble emperors and kings,” said Gringoire with great coolness (for his courage had mysteriously returned, and he spoke firmly), “you do not consider what you’re doing. My name is Pierre Gringoire; I am the poet whose play was performed this morning in the Great Hall of the Palace.”
“Oh, is it you, sirrah?” said Clopin. “I was there, God’s wounds! Well, comrade, because you bored us this morning, is that any reason why we should not hang you tonight?”
“I shall have hard work to get off,” thought Gringoire. But yet he made one more effort. “I don’t see,” said he, “why poets should not be classed with vagabonds. Æsop was a vagrant; Homer was a beggar; Mercury was a thief—”
Clopin interrupted him: “I believe you mean to cozen us with your lingo. Good God! be hanged, and don’t make such a row about it!”
“Excuse me, my lord King of Tunis,” replied Gringoire, disputing every inch of the ground. “Is it worth while—An instant—Hear me—You will not condemn me unheard—”
His melancholy voice was indeed lost in the uproar around him. The little boy scraped his kettle more vigorously than ever; and, to cap the climax, an old woman had just placed a frying-pan full of fat upon the trivet, and it crackled over the flames with a noise like the shouts of an army of children in chase of some mas querader.
However, Clopin Trouillefou seemed to be conferring for a moment with the Duke of Egypt and the Emperor of Galilee, the latter being entirely drunk. Then he cried out sharply, “Silence, I say!” and as the kettle and the frying-pan paid no heed, but kept up their duet, he leaped from his cask, dealt a kick to the kettle, which rolled ten paces or more with the child, another kick to the frying-pan, which upset all the fat into the fire, and then gravely reascended his throne, utterly regardless of the little one’s stifled sobs and the grumbling of the old woman whose supper had vanished in brilliant flames.
Trouillefou made a sign, and the duke, the emperor, the arch thieves, and the dignitaries of the kingdom ranged themselves around him in the form of a horseshoe, Gringoire, still roughly grasped by the shoulders, occupying the center. It was a semicircle of rags, of tatters, of tinsel, of pitchforks, of axes, of staggering legs, of bare brawny arms, of sordid, dull, stupid faces. In the middle of this Round Table of beggary Clopin Trouillefou reigned pre-eminent, as the doge of this senate, the king of this assembly of peers, the pope of this conclave,—pre-eminent in the first place by the height of his cask, then by a peculiarly haughty, savage, and tremendous air, which made his eyes flash, and amended in his fierce profile the bestial type of the vagrant. He seemed a wild boar among swine.
“Hark ye,” he said to Gringoire, caressing his shapeless chin with his horny hand; “I see no reason why you should not be hanged. To be sure, you seem to dislike the idea, and it’s very plain that you worthy townsfolk are not used to it; you’ve got an exaggerated idea of the thing. After all, we wish you no harm. There is one way of getting you out of the difficulty for the time being. Will you join us?”
My reader may fancy the effect of this proposal upon Gringoire, who saw his life escaping him, and had already begun to lose his hold upon it. He clung to it once more with vigor.
“I will indeed, with all my heart,” said he.
“Do you agree,” resumed Clopin, “to enroll yourself among the gentry of the chive.”an
“Of the chive, exactly,” answered Gringoire.
“Do you acknowledge yourself a member of the rogues’ brigade?” continued the King of Tunis.
“Of the rogues’ brigade.”
“A subject of the kingdom of Slang?”
“Of the kingdom of Slang.”
“A vagrant?”
“A vagrant.”
“At heart?”
“At heart.”
“I would call your attention to the fact,” added the King, “that you will be hanged none the less.”
“The devil!” said the poet.
“Only,” continued Clopin, quite unmoved, “you will be hanged later, with more ceremony, at the cost of the good city of Paris, on a fine stone gallows, and by honest men. That is some consolation.”
&n
bsp; “As you say,” responded Gringoire.
“There are other advantages. As a member of the rogues’ brigade you will have to pay no taxes for pavements, for the poor, or for lighting the streets, to all of which the citizens of Paris are subject.”
“So be it,” said the poet; “I consent. I am a vagrant, a man of Slang, a member of the rogues’ brigade, a man of the chive,—what you will; and I was all this long ago, Sir King of Tunis, for I am a philosopher; et omnia in philosophia, omnes in philosopho continentur,ao as you know.”
The King of Tunis frowned.
“What do you take me for, mate? What Hungarian Jew’s gibberish are you giving us? I don’t know Hebrew. I’m no Jew, if I am a thief. I don’t even steal now; I am above that; I kill. Cutthroat, yes; cutpurse, no.”
Gringoire tried to slip in some excuse between these brief phrases which anger made yet more abrupt.
“I beg your pardon, my lord. It is not Hebrew, it is Latin.”
“I tell you,” replied Clopin, furiously, “that I am no Jew, and that I will have you hanged,—by the synagogue, I will!-together with that paltry Judean cadger beside you, whom I mightily hope I may some day see nailed to a counter, like the counterfeit coin that he is!”
So saying, he pointed to the little Hungarian Jew with the beard, who had accosted Gringoire with his “Facitote caritatem,” and who, understanding no other language, was amazed at the wrath which the King of Tunis vented upon him.
At last my lord Clopin became calm.
“So, rascal,” said he to our poet, “you wish to become a vagrant?”
“Undoubtedly,” replied the poet.
“It is not enough merely to wish,” said the surly Clopin; “goodwill never added an onion to the soup, and is good for nothing but a passport to paradise; now, paradise and Slang are two distinct things. To be received into the kingdom of Slang, you must prove that you are good for something; and to prove this you must search the manikin.“ap
“I will search,” said Gringoire, “as much as ever you like.”
Clopin made a sign. A number of Slangers stepped from the circle and returned immediately, bringing a couple of posts finished at the lower end with broad wooden feet, which made them stand firmly upon the ground; at the upper end of the two posts they arranged a crossbeam, the whole forming a very pretty portable gallows, which Gringoire had the pleasure of seeing erected before him in the twinkling of an eye. Nothing was wanting, not even the rope, which swung gracefully from the crossbeam.
“What are they going to do?” wondered Gringoire with some alarm. A sound of bells which he heard at the same moment put an end to his anxiety; it was a manikin, or puppet, that the vagrants hung by the neck to the cord,—a sort of scarecrow, dressed in red, and so loaded with little bells and hollow brasses that thirty Castilian mules might have been tricked out with them. These countless tinklers jingled for some time with the swaying of the rope, then the sound died away by degrees, and finally ceased when the manikin had been restored to a state of complete immobility by that law of the pendulum which has superseded the clepsydra and the hour-glass.
Then Clopin, showing Gringoire a rickety old footstool, placed under the manikin, said,—
“Climb up there!”
“The devil!” objected Gringoire; “I shall break my neck. Your stool halts like one of Martial’s couplets; one foot has six syllables and one foot has but five.”
“Climb up!” repeated Clopin.
Gringoire mounted the stool, and succeeded, though not without considerable waving of head and arms, in recovering his center of gravity.
“Now,” resumed the King of Tunis, “twist your right foot round your left leg, and stand on tiptoe with your left foot.”
“My lord,” said Gringoire, “are you absolutely determined to make me break a limb?”
Clopin tossed his head.
“Hark ye, mate; you talk too much. I will tell you in a couple of words what I expect you to do: you are to stand on tiptoe, as I say; in that fashion you can reach the manikin’s pockets; you are to search them; you are to take out a purse which you will find there; and if you do all this without ringing a single bell, it is well: you shall become a vagrant. We shall have nothing more to do but to baste you with blows for a week.”
“Zounds! I shall take good care,” said Gringoire. “And if I ring the bells?”
“Then you shall be hanged. Do you understand?”
“I don’t understand at all,” answered Gringoire.
“Listen to me once more. You are to search the manikin and steal his purse; if but a single bell stir in the act, you shall be hanged. Do you understand that?”
“Good,” said Gringoire, “I understand that. What next?”
“If you manage to get the purse without moving the bells, you are a vagrant, and you shall be basted with blows for seven days in succession. You understand now, I suppose?”
“No, my lord; I no longer understand. Where is the advantage? I shall be hanged in the one case, beaten in the other?”
“And as a vagrant,” added Clopin, “and as a vagrant; does that count for nothing? It is for your own good that we shall beat you, to harden you against blows.”
“Many thanks,” replied the poet.
“Come, make haste,” said the king, stamping on his cask, which re-echoed like a vast drum.
“Make haste, and be done with it! I warn you, once for all, that if I hear but one tinkle you shall take the manikin’s place.”
The company applauded Clopin’s words, and ranged themselves in a ring around the gallows, with such pitiless laughter that Gringoire saw that he amused them too much not to have everything to fear from them. His only hope lay in the slight chance of succeeding in the terrible task imposed upon him; he decided to risk it, but not without first addressing a fervent prayer to the manikin whom he was to plunder, and who seemed more easily moved than the vagrants. The myriad little bells with their tiny brazen tongues seemed to him like so many vipers with gaping jaws, ready to hiss and sting.
“Oh,” he murmured, “is it possible that my life depends upon the slightest quiver of the least of these bells? Oh,” he added with clasped hands, “do not ring, ye bells! Tinkle not, ye tinklers! Jingle not, ye jinglers!”
He made one more attempt to melt Trouillefou.
“And if a breeze spring up?” he asked.
“You will be hanged,” answered the other, without hesitating.
Seeing that neither respite, delay, nor subterfuge was possible, he made a desperate effort; he twisted his right foot round his left leg, stood tiptoe on his left foot, and stretched out his arm, but just as he touched the manikin, his body, now resting on one foot, tottered upon the stool, which had but three; he strove mechanically to cling to the figure, lost his balance, and fell heavily to the ground, deafened and stunned by the fatal sound of the myriad bells of the manikin, which, yielding to the pressure of his hand, first revolved upon its own axis, then swung majestically to and fro between the posts.
“A curse upon it!” he cried as he fell; and he lay as if dead, face downwards.
Still he heard the fearful peal above his head, and the devilish laugh of the vagrants, and the voice of Trouillefou, as it said, “Lift up the knave, and hang him double-quick.”
He rose. The manikin had already been taken down to make room for him.
The Canters made him mount the stool. Clopin stepped up to him, passed the rope round his neck, and clapping him on the shoulder, exclaimed,—
“Farewell, mate. You can’t escape now, though you have the digestion of the Pope himself.”
The word “mercy” died on Gringoire’s lips. He gazed around him, but without hope; every man was laughing.
“Bellevigne de l‘Etoile,” said the King of Tunis to a huge vagrant who started from the ranks, “climb upon the crossbeam.”
Bellevigne de l‘Etoile nimbly climbed the crossbeam, and in an instant Gringoire, raising his eyes, with terror beheld him squattin
g upon it, above his head.
“Now,” continued Clopin Trouillefou, “when I clap my hands, do you, Andry le Rouge, knock away the footstool from under him; you, Françoise Chante-Prune, hang on to the knave’s feet; and you, Bellevigne, jump down upon his shoulders; and all three at once, do you hear?”
Gringoire shuddered.
“Are you ready?” said Clopin Trouillefou to the three Canters prepared to fall upon Gringoire. The poor sufferer endured a moment of horrible suspense, while Clopin calmly pushed into the fire with his foot a few vine-branches which the flame had not yet kindled. “Are you ready?” he repeated; and he opened his hands to clap. A second more, and all would have been over.
But he paused, as if struck by a sudden thought.
“One moment,” said he; “I forgot! It is our custom never to hang a man without asking if there be any woman who’ll have him. Comrade, it’s your last chance. You must marry a tramp or the rope.”
This gipsy law, strange as it may seem to the reader, is still written out in full in the ancient English codes. (See “Burington’s Observations.”)
Gringoire breathed again. This was the second time that he had been restored to life within the half-hour; so he dared not feel too confident.
“Holà!” cried Clopin, remounting his cask; “holà there, women, females! is there among you, from the old witch to her cat, a wench who’ll take this scurvy knave? Holà, Colette la Charonne! Elisa beth Trouvain! Simone Jodouyne! Marie Piedcbou! Thonne la Longue! Bérarde Fanouel! Michelle Genaille! Claude Ronge-Oreille! Mathurine Girorou! Holà! Isabeau la Thierrye! Come and look! a man for nothing! who’ll take him?”
Gringoire, in his wretched plight, was doubtless far from tempting. The vagabond women seemed but little moved by the offer. The luckless fellow heard them answer: “No! no! hang him; that will make sport for us all.”
Three, however, stepped from the crowd to look him over. The first was a stout, square-faced girl. She examined the philosopher’s pitiable doublet most attentively. The stuff was worn, and more full of holes than a furnace for roasting chestnuts. The girl made a wry face. “An old clout!” she grumbled, and, addressing Gringoire, “Let’s look at your cloak?”
