Notre-Dame de Paris (Oxford World's Classics)

by Hugo, Victor

  The novelty of this unusual scene aroused a wave of such wild merriment in the hall that the cardinal was soon aware of it; he half leaned forward, but from the point at which he was sitting he had only the most imperfect view of Trouillefou’s disreputable mantle and quite naturally assumed that the beggar was asking for alms; outraged at such a liberty he cried: ‘Monsieur the bailiff of the Palais, have this rascal thrown into the river.’

  ‘By the Rood! Monseigneur le Cardinal,’ Coppenole said without loosing Coppenole’s hand, ‘he’s a friend of mine.’

  ‘Noël! Noël!’ cried the audience. From that moment on Maître Coppenole enjoyed in Paris, as he did in Ghent, ‘high esteem with the people; for men of such stature do so,’ says Philippe de Commines, ‘when they are thus unruly.’

  The cardinal bit his lip. He leaned over to his neighbour, the abbot of Sainte-Geneviève, and said in an undertone: ‘Monsieur the Archduke has sent us a fine lot of ambassadors to herald Madame Marguerite!’

  ‘Your Eminence,’ the abbot replied, ‘is wasting his courtesies on these Flemish snouts. Margaritas ante porcos [Pearls before swine].’

  ‘Say rather,’ answered the cardinal with a smile: ‘Porcos ante Margaritam [Swine before Marguerite/pearl].’

  The whole of this little court swooned in their cassocks with ecstasy over this pun. The cardinal’s spirits rose a little; he had now got even with Coppenole, and also won applause for his pun.

  Now we should like permission from those of our readers with the power to generalize an image or idea, as the modern style puts it, to ask whether they have a clear picture of the scene presented by the vast parallelogram of the Great Hall of the Palais at the moment on which our attention is focused. In the middle of the hall, set up against the western wall, a large and magnificent tribune of gold brocade, which a procession of solemn personages, announced in turn by the strident voice of an usher, is entering through a small Gothic doorway. In the front rows numerous venerable figures are already seated, in their ermine, velvet, and scarlet hoods. Around the tribune, where quiet and dignity prevail, below, in front, everywhere, a great crowd and a great buzz of noise. From the crowd countless eyes gaze at every face on the tribune, countless comments are whispered over every name. The spectacle is indeed a curious one, well worthy of the spectators’ attention. But over there, at the far end, whatever can that be, that sort of trestle with four motley puppets on top and four more beneath? Whoever can that be, standing beside the trestle with his black smock and pale face? Alas! dear reader, it is Pierre Gringoire and his prologue.

  We had all completely forgotten him. Which is exactly what he had feared.

  From the moment the cardinal had made his entrance Gringoire had been constantly busy trying to save his prologue. First he had instructed the actors, who had remained in suspended animation, to go on, and to speak more loudly. Then, seeing that no one was listening, he had stopped them, and during the quarter-hour or so that the interruption lasted, he had been ceaselessly tapping his foot, jumping about, hailing Gisquette and Liénarde, encouraging his neighbours to have the prologue resumed; all in vain. No one could be diverted from the cardinal, the embassy, and the tribune, the single centre of this immense circle of visual radii. It also seems likely, and we say so with regret, that the audience was beginning to be slightly bored with the prologue just as His Eminence came in to divert attention so drastically from it. After all, on the tribune as on the marble table, it was all the same spectacle: the conflict of Husbandry and Clergy, of Nobility and Trade. And many people simply preferred to see them living, breathing, moving, jostling, in flesh and blood, in this Flemish embassy, this episcopal court, in the cardinal’s robes, in Coppenole’s jerkin, rather than painted and dressed up, speaking in verse and, so to speak, stuffed like dummies beneath the yellow and white tunics in which Gringoire had rigged them up.

  However, when our poet saw that calm had been partially restored, he conceived a stratagem which might have saved the day.

  ‘Monsieur,’ he said, turning to one of his neighbours, a stout, patient-looking worthy, ‘supposing they began again?’

  ‘Began what?’ said the neighbour.

  ‘Why, the mystery,’ said Gringoire.

  ‘Just as you like,’ replied the neighbour.

  This half-approval was enough for Gringoire, and taking matters into his own hands he began crying out, merging as much as possible into the crowd: ‘Start the mystery again! Start again!’

  ‘Devil take it,’ said Joannes de Molendino, ‘what are they chanting there, down at the end?’ (For Gringoire was making enough noise for four people.) ‘What about it, comrades? Isn’t the mystery ended? They want to start it up again. That’s not right.’

  ‘No! no!’ cried all the students. ‘Down with the mystery! Down with it!’

  But Gringoire only tried harder and cried still more loudly: ‘Start again! Start again!’

  All this clamour attracted the cardinal’s attention.

  ‘Monsieur the Bailiff of the Palais,’ he said to a tall, dark man standing near him. ‘Why are those rascals making that infernal noise, like men possessed?’

  The bailiff of the Palais was a kind of amphibious magistrate, a sort of bat in the judicial order, a cross between rat and bird, judge and soldier.

  He approached His Eminence, very much afraid of his displeasure, and stammered out an explanation for the people’s unseemly behaviour; noon had arrived before His Eminence, and the players had been forced to begin without waiting for His Eminence.

  The cardinal burst out laughing. ‘Upon my soul, the rector of the University should have done the same. What say you, Maître Guillaume Rym?’

  ‘Monseigneur,’ Guillaume Rym replied, ‘let’s be content with having been let off half the comedy. There’s that much at least to our credit.’

  ‘Can these rogues go on with their farce?’ asked the bailiff.

  ‘Go on, go on,’ said the cardinal, ‘it’s all the same to me. I’ll be reading my breviary the while.’

  The bailiff came forward to the edge of the tribune, silenced them with a gesture and cried: ‘Citizens, villeins, inhabitants, to satisfy those who want it to start again and those who want it done with, His Eminence orders the play to continue.’

  Both parties had to put up with that. However author and public for long afterwards felt resentment towards the cardinal.

  The characters on the stage resumed their commentary, and Gringoire hoped that at least the remainder of his text would be heard. This hope soon went the way of his other illusions; silence in the audience had indeed been more or less restored, but Gringoire had failed to notice that at the moment when the cardinal gave the order to continue, the tribune was far from full, and after the Flemish envoys had come other persons belonging to the procession, whose names and titles, intermittently projected by the usher’s cry amid the continuing dialogue, was wreaking considerable havoc with it. Try indeed to imagine, in the middle of a theatrical performance, a yelping usher interjecting between two rhymes, and often between two hemistichs, such parentheses as these: ‘Maître Jacques Charmolue, the King’s attorney in the ecclesiastical court!—Jehan de Harlay, esquire, keeper of the office of Chevalier of the Night Watch of the Town of Paris!—Messire Galiot de Genoilhac, knight, seigneur de Brussac, Master of the King’s Artillery!—Maître Dreux-Raguier, Inspector of Waters and Forests of our lord the King for the Île-de-France, Champagne, and Brie!—Messire Louis de Graville, knight, counsellor, and chamberlain to the King, admiral of France, guardian of the forest of Vincennes!—Maître Denis le Mercier, Keeper of the Hospital for the Blind of Paris!—etc., etc.’ It was becoming intolerable.

  This strange accompaniment, which made it hard to follow the play, made Gringoire all the more indignant as he could not disguise from himself the fact that it was becoming more interesting all the time and the only thing wrong with his work was that no one was listening to it. It would indeed be hard to imagine a more ingenious and drama
tic construction. The four characters of the prologue were bemoaning their insoluble predicament, when Venus in person, vera incessu patuit dea* [a true goddess was evident in her step] appeared before them, wearing a fine cotehardie emblazoned with the ship of the town arms of Paris. She came herself to claim the dolphin promised to the most beautiful of women. Jupiter, whose thunder could be heard rumbling from the dressing room, supported her, and the goddess was about to win the prize, that is, in plain terms, to marry Monsieur le Dauphin, when a little girl, dressed in white damask and holding in her hand a marguerite daisy (a transparent personification of the Princess of Flanders) had come to contend with Venus. Dramatic surprise, reversal of fortune. After some debate, Venus, Marguerite, and those in the wings had agreed to abide by the judgement of the Holy Virgin. There was another fine part, that of Dom Pedro, King of Mesopotamia. But with so many interruptions it was hard to work out what he was there for. They had all climbed the ladder to come up on stage.

  But the play was done for. None of these beauties had been felt or understood. At the cardinal’s entrance it seemed as though a magic, invisible thread had suddenly drawn every eye from the marble table to the tribune, from the southern end of the hall to its western side. Nothing could break the spell put on the audience. Every eye remained riveted there, and the new arrivals, their cursed names, their faces, and their costumes constituted a continual distraction. It was heart-rending. Except for Gisquette and Liénarde, who turned away from time to time when Gringoire pulled at their sleeves, except for the stout, patient neighbour, no one was facing the poor abandoned morality. All Gringoire could see were faces in profile.

  How bitterly he saw the piecemeal collapse of his whole edifice of fame and poetry! And just to think that these people had been on the point of rebellion against Monsieur the bailiff, so impatient were they to hear his work! Now that they had it, no one cared about it. The same performance which had begun with such unanimous applause! Eternal ebb and flow of popular favour! To think that they had come close to hanging the bailiff’s sergeants! What would he not have given to return to that hour of sweetness!

  The usher’s brutal monologue, however, came to an end. All had now arrived and Gringoire breathed again. The actors went bravely on. But what should happen but that Maître Coppenole, the hosier, suddenly stands up, and Gringoire hears him deliver, amid the attention of all, this abominable harangue:

  ‘Messieurs, burghers and squires of Paris, I don’t know, by the Rood! what we are doing here. I can quite clearly see over there, in that corner, on that trestle, some people who look as if they want a fight. I don’t know if that’s what you call a “mystery”, but it’s not much fun. They go for each other with their tongues, and that’s all. For quarter of an hour I’ve been waiting for the first blow, nothing happens. They are cowards, and they only scratch each other with insults. They should have brought over some fighters from London or Rotterdam; and then, my goodness! there would have been punches you could hear out in the street! But this lot are pathetic. They ought at least to give us a Morris dance or some other mummery! This isn’t what they told me. They promised us a Feast of Fools, with the election of a pope. We have our Pope of Fools in Ghent too, and we don’t lag behind anyone when it comes to that, by the Rood! This is what we do. We get together a crowd, like here. Then everyone in turn sticks his head through a hole and pulls faces at the others. The one who pulls the ugliest face, by general acclamation, is elected pope. There you are. Most entertaining. Would you like us to make your pope as we do at home? At least it wouldn’t be as dull as listening to those windbags. If they want to come and pull a face at the hole they’ll be in the competition. What do you say, Messieurs the burghers? There’s a good enough choice of gargoyles of both sexes for us to have a good Flemish laugh, and enough ugly mugs to hope for a splendid grimace.’

  Gringoire would have liked to reply. Stupefaction, anger, indignation left him speechless. Besides, the popular hosier’s motion was greeted with such enthusiasm by these burghers, who felt flattered to be addressed as squires, that resistance was pointless. There was nothing for it but to go along with the torrent. Gringoire buried his face in his hands, not being fortunate enough to have a cloak to hide his head like Timanthes’* Agamemnon.

  V

  QUASIMODO

  IN less than no time everything was ready for carrying out Coppenole’s idea. Townsfolk, students, and law clerks had set to work. The small chapel facing the marble table was chosen as the scene for the face-pulling. Where glass had been broken from the pretty rose-window it had left open a stone circle through which, it was agreed, the contestants would stick their heads. All they had to do to reach it was to clamber up a couple of barrels, which had been brought from somewhere and precariously balanced one on top of the other. It was laid down that every candidate, man or woman (for a female pope might be chosen) should preserve the impression of their grimace unspoiled and intact by covering their faces and staying out of sight in the chapel until it was time for them to make their appearance. In a moment the chapel was full of contestants and the door was closed behind them.

  From his place on the tribune Coppenole organized, directed, and arranged everything. During the commotion the cardinal, no less put out than Gringoire, had taken himself off with all his suite on the pretext of having business and vespers to attend to, without the crowd, which had been so excited by his arrival, taking the slightest notice of his departure. Guillaume Rym was the only one to notice His Eminence put to flight. The attention of the people, like the sun, pursued its revolution; starting at one end of the hall, after pausing for a time in the middle, it was now at the other end. The marble table, the brocaded tribune had had their moment; it was now the turn of Louis XI’s chapel. From now on the field was clear for unbridled folly. Only the Flemings and the rabble remained.

  The face-pulling began. The first face to appear at the hole, with eyelids turned inside out with rouge, mouth agape like a monster’s jaws, and brows all wrinkled like our Empire cavalry boots, set off such peals of uncontrollable laughter that Homer would have taken all these villeins for gods. However, the Great Hall was anything but Olympus, as Gringoire’s poor Jupiter knew better than anyone. A second, and a third ugly face followed, then another and yet another, and each time there was renewed laughter and delighted stamping of feet. The spectacle provoked a special kind of giddy elation, it had a certain power of intoxication and fascination, of which it would be hard to convey any idea to a modern reader and modern drawing-room society. Imagine a series of faces successively presenting every geometrical shape, from the triangle to the trapezium, from the cone to the polyhedron—every human expression, from anger to lust—every age of man, from the wrinkles of the new-born baby to the wrinkles of the dying old crone; every religious phantasmagoria, from Faunus to Beelzebub; every animal profile, from jaw to beak, from snout to muzzle. Picture all the grotesque heads carved on the Pont-Neuf, those nightmares turned to stone under the hand of Germain Pilon,* taking on life and breath, and coming one by one to stare at you with burning eyes; all the masks from the Venice carnival passing one after the other before your spyglass; in a word, a human kaleidoscope.

  The orgy was becoming more and more Flemish. Teniers* could give only a very imperfect idea of it. Imagine Salvator Rosa’s* battle picture turned into Bacchanalia. There were no more students, ambassadors, burghers, men, women; no more Clopin Trouillefou, Gilles Lecornu, Marie Quatre-livres, Robin Poussepain. All was eclipsed in the common licence. The Great Hall was now just a vast furnace of shameless merriment, where every mouth was a shout, every eye a sparkle, every face a grimace, every individual a posture. It was all shouting and bawling. The strange faces which came one after another to grind their teeth at the rose-window were so many brands thrown on the fire. From all this seething throng rose, like steam from a furnace, a sharp, shrill, piercing, high-pitched buzz like the wings of a gnat.

  ‘Hey! Blast!’

  ‘Just look at th
at face!’

  ‘That one’s no good.’

  ‘And the next!’

  ‘Guillemette Maugerepuis, just look at that bull’s muzzle, it’s got everything but horns. It can’t be your husband, then.’

  ‘Next!’

  ‘By the Pope’s belly! what sort of grimace is that?’

  ‘Hey! that’s cheating. You may only show your face.’

  ‘That damned Perrette Callebotte! She’s quite capable of that.’

  ‘Noël! Noël!’

  ‘I’m choking!’

  ‘There’s one can’t get his ears through!’

  Etc., etc.

  We must, however, give our friend Jehan his due. Amid all this witches’ sabbath he could still be seen up on his pillar, like a cabin boy in the crow’s nest. He was throwing himself about in an incredible frenzy. His mouth was wide open, and from it emerged a cry that no one could hear, not that it was lost in the general clamour, intense though that was, but because it had surely gone to the limit of high-pitched audible sounds, the twelve thousand vibrations of Sauveur or the eight thousand of Biot.*

  As for Gringoire, once his initial depression had passed, he had recovered his composure. He had braced himself against adversity. ‘Go on!’ he had told his actors, his talking machines, for the third time. Then striding round in front of the marble table he had a notion to go in his turn and appear at the chapel window, if only for the pleasure of pulling faces at these ungrateful people. ‘No, that would be unworthy of us; no revenge! Fight on to the end,’ he kept telling himself. ‘The power of poetry over the people is great; I’ll bring them back. We’ll see which will win, face-pulling or the literary arts.’