by Hugo, Victor
It was a formidable harangue.
‘Well said, upon my soul! Clopin Trouillefou preaches like our Holy Father the Pope,’ cried the Emperor of Galilee, smashing his pot to prop up his table.
‘My lords, emperors and kings,’ said Gringoire coolly, for somehow he had recovered his firmness and spoke resolutely, ‘you can’t be serious. My name is Pierre Gringoire, and I am the poet whose morality play was performed this morning in the Great Hall of the Palais.’
‘Ah! so it’s you, maître!’ said Clopin. ‘I was there, by God! Very well! Comrade, is there any reason, because you bored us this morning, for not hanging you this evening?’
‘I’m going to have a hard job getting out of this,’ Gringoire thought. All the same he made one more effort. ‘I don’t see why,’ he said, ‘poets shouldn’t be included among the truands. A vagabond, Aesop was; a beggar, Homer was; a thief, Mercury was …’
Clopin interrupted him: ‘I think you are trying to hoodwink us with your patter. By God, let them hang you and don’t make such a fuss!’
‘Pardon me, my lord King of Tunis,’ replied Gringoire, fighting every inch of the ground. ‘It’s well worth it … One moment! … Listen to me … You’re not going to condemn me without giving me a hearing.’
His unhappy voice was indeed drowned by the din going on around him. The small boy was scraping his cauldron more vigorously than ever; and to cap it all, an old woman had just put a pan full of fat on top of the red-hot trivet, and it sputtered over the fire with a noise like a band of children running after a masker.
Meanwhile Clopin Trouillefou seemed to be briefly conferring with the Duke of Egypt and the Emperor of Galilee, who was completely drunk. Then he cried out sharply: ‘Silence!’ and as the cauldron and the frying pan were not listening but continued their duet, he jumped down from his barrel, gave the cauldron a mighty kick, which sent it rolling ten yards away with the boy inside, kicked over the frying pan, spilling all the fat on to the fire, and then solemnly climbed back on his throne, paying no heed to the child’s muffled sobs nor to the old woman’s grumbling at the sight of her supper going up in a fine sheet of white flame.
Trouillefou made a sign, and the duke, the emperor, the archisuppôts, and the cagoux formed a horseshoe round him, with Gringoire, still held bodily in rough hands, at the centre. It was a semicircle of rags, tatters, tinsel, pitchforks, hatchets, legs unsteady with wine, great bare arms, sordid, lacklustre, besotted faces. In the middle of this round table of beggary, Clopin Trouillefou, like the doge of this senate, like the king of this peerage, like the pope of this conclave, dominated, first from being perched aloft on his barrel, then with an indefinable look, proud, fierce, and formidable, which made his eyes glint and refined on his savage profile the brutish character of the truand race. He was like a wild boar’s head among pigs’ snouts.
‘Listen,’ he said to Gringoire, stroking his misshapen chin with a horny hand, ‘I don’t see why you shouldn’t be hanged. It’s true that the idea seems to repel you; and that’s simply because you ordinary citizens are not used to it. You are making far too much of the whole thing. After all, we wish you no harm. Here’s a way of getting off for the moment. Are you willing to be one of us?’
The effect of this proposal on Gringoire can easily be imagined; he had seen his life running out and had begun to let it go. He energetically took a new grip on it.
‘I am indeed, to be sure,’ he said.
‘You agree,’ Clopin went on, ‘to be enrolled among the people of the petite flambe?’*
‘The petite flambe. Quite so,’ answered Gringoire.
‘You acknowledge yourself to be a member of the franche-bourgeoisie?’* the King of Tunis went on.
‘The franche-bourgeoisie.’
‘Subject of the kingdom of Argot?’
‘Of the kingdom of Argot.’
‘Truand?’
‘Truand.’
‘In your soul?’
‘In my soul.’
‘I would like you to note,’ the King went on, ‘that all that will make no difference to your being hanged.’
‘The devil!’ said the poet.
‘It’s just,’ Clopin continued imperturbably, ‘that you’ll be hanged later, more ceremoniously, at the expense of the good city of Paris, on a fine stone gibbet, and by honest men. That’s some consolation.’
‘As you say,’ Gringoire answered.
‘There are other advantages. As a franc-bourgeois you won’t have to pay the rates for the streets, the poor, or the lighting to which ordinary citizens are liable.’
‘So be it,’ said the poet. ‘I agree. I am a truand, an Argoteer, a franc-bourgeois, a petite-flambe, anything you like. And I was all those things before, monsieur, King of Tunis, for I am a philosopher: and omnia in philosophic, omnes in philosopho continentur [all things are contained in philosophy, all men in the philosopher], as you know.’
The King of Tunis frowned.
‘Who do you take me for, friend? What Hungarian Jewish lingo are you singing now? I don’t know Hebrew. Being a robber doesn’t make you a Jew. I don’t even steal any more, I’m above all that, I kill. Cuthroat, yes, cutpurse, no.’
Gringoire tried to slip in some excuse amid these brief words, which anger made increasingly staccato. ‘I beg your pardon, my lord. It isn’t Hebrew, it’s Latin.’
‘I tell you,’ Clopin went on in a rage, ‘that I’m not a Jew, and I’ll have you hanged, by the synagogue’s belly! Like that little marcandier from Judaea beside you, and whom I hope one day to see nailed to a counter like the counterfeit coin he is!’
Saying which he pointed his finger at the little bearded Hungarian, who had accosted Gringoire with his ‘facitote caritatem’ and who, knowing no other language, observed with surprise the bad temper of the King of Tunis venting itself on him.
At length Monseigneur Clopin calmed down.
‘Rogue!’ he said to our poet, ‘so you do want to be a truand?’
‘Quite certainly,’ answered the poet.
‘Wanting isn’t everything,’ said Clopin gruffly. ‘Good will never put an extra onion in the soup, and its only use is for getting into paradise; now paradise and Argot are two quite different things. To be accepted into Argot you’ve got to prove that you are some use, and to do that you’ll have to search the dummy.’
‘I’ll search anything you like,’ said Gringoire.
Clopin made a sign. Some Argoteers left the circle and returned after a moment. They were carrying two posts, with two wooden feet on their lower end so that they stood firm on the ground. On the upper end of the two posts they fitted a crossbar, the whole forming a very neat portable gallows, which Gringoire had the satisfaction of seeing erected before him in the twinkling of an eye. There was nothing lacking, not even the rope, which swung gracefully from the crossbar.
‘What are they up to?’ Gringoire wondered rather uneasily. A tinkling of bells that he heard at that moment allayed his anxiety. It came from a dummy which the truands were suspending with the rope round its neck, a kind of scarecrow, dressed in red, and laden with enough jingling, tinkling little bells to provide the harness for thirty Castilian mules. These hundreds of little bells jingled for a while as the rope swung, gradually becoming fainter, and in the end fell silent, when the dummy had returned to a point of rest in accordance with the law of the pendulum which has ousted the clepsydra or water-clock and hourglass.
Then Clopin, pointing to a rickety old stool placed beneath the dummy, told Gringoire: ‘Get up there.’
‘Hell’s teeth,’ Gringoire objected, ‘I’ll break my neck. Your stool limps as badly as one of Martial’s distichs: one foot is a hexameter, the other a pentameter.’
‘Up,’ Clopin repeated.
Gringoire got up on the stool, and managed, not without some wobbling of head and arms, to find his centre of gravity.
‘Now,’ the King of Tunis continued, ‘turn your right foot round your left leg, and stand on tiptoe on y
our left foot.’
‘My lord,’ said Gringoire, ‘are you absolutely set on having me break a limb?’
Clopin shook his head.
‘Listen, friend, you talk too much. Here in short is what it’s all about. You will stand on tiptoe, as I said; that will bring you within reach of the dummy’s pocket; you’ll search it; you’ll pull out a purse that’s in there; and if you do all that without anyone hearing one of the bells tinkle, that’s fine; you’ll be a truand. All we have to do then is thrash you for a week.’
‘God’s belly! I’ll take care not to. And if I make the bells jingle?’
‘Then you’ll be hanged. Understand?’
‘I don’t understand at all,’ Gringoire answered.
‘Listen once more. You’re going to search the dummy and take its purse from it; if a single bell moves while you’re doing so you’ll be hanged. Do you understand that much?’
‘Right,’ said Gringoire, ‘I understand that much. And then?’
‘If you succeed in removing the purse without the bells jingling, you are a truand, and you’ll be thrashed every day for a week. Now perhaps you understand?’
‘No, my lord, that’s where I stop understanding. Where’s the benefit for me? Hanged in one case, beaten in the other …’
‘And truand?’ put in Clopin, ‘and truand? Isn’t that worth something? It’s in your interest that we thrash you, so as to harden you against beatings.’
‘Many thanks,’ the poet replied.
‘Come on, hurry up,’ said the King, banging his foot against the barrel, which boomed like a big drum. ‘Search the dummy, and have done. I warn you for the last time that if I hear a single little bell you’ll take the dummy’s place.’
The band of Argoteers applauded Clopin’s words and formed a circle round the gallows, laughing so unmercifully that Gringoire saw that he was providing them with too much sport not to have everything to fear from them. So he had no hope left, except the slim chance of succeeding in the fearful exercise imposed on him. He decided to risk it, but not without first addressing a fervent prayer to the dummy which he was about to rob and which would have been easier to soften up than the truands. These thousands of little bells with their little brass tongues seemed to him like so many asps’ jaws open, ready to bite and hiss.
‘Oh!’ he said in a whisper, ‘can it be possible that my life should depend on the slightest vibration of the least of these bells? Oh!’ he added, with hands clasped together, ‘bells, don’t bell! chimes, don’t chime! tinklers, don’t tinkle!’
He made one more effort with Trouillefou. ‘Suppose there’s a sudden puff of wind?’ he asked.
‘You’ll be hanged,’ the other replied without hesitation.
Seeing that there was no possibility of respite, delay, or prevarication, he bravely set to. He turned his right foot round his left leg, stood on tiptoe on his left foot, and stretched out his arm; but just as he touched the dummy, his body, now balanced only on one foot, swayed on the stool which had only three; he tried automatically to steady himself on the dummy, lost his balance, and fell heavily to the ground, deafened by the fatal vibrations of the hundreds of bells on the dummy, which, under the impulse from his hand, first turned on its own axis, and then swung majestically between the two posts.
‘Curse it!’ he cried as he fell, and lay like a dead man with his face to the ground.
Meanwhile he heard the dread carillon above his head, and the truands’ diabolical laughter, and Trouillefou’s voice saying: ‘Pick up that rascal and hang him smartly.’
He stood up. The dummy had already been taken down to make room for him.
The Argoteers made him stand on the stool. Clopin came up to him, put the noose round his neck and clapped him on the shoulder: ‘Goodbye, friend! You can’t escape now, even if you had the Pope’s bowels to digest with.’
The word ‘mercy’ expired on Gringoire’s lips. He looked round. But it was hopeless; they were all laughing.
‘Bellevigne de l’Étoile,’ the King of Tunis said to a huge truand who stepped forward, ‘get up on the crossbar.’
Bellevigne de l’Étoile nimbly climbed up on the beam, and Gringoire looked up a moment later in terror to see him squatting on the crossbar above his head.
‘Now,’ Clopin Trouillefou went on, ‘as soon as I clap my hands, Andry-le-Rouge, you push the stool over with your knee; François Chante-Prune, you hang on to the rogue’s feet; and you, Bellevigne, jump on his shoulders; all at the same time, do you hear?’
Gringoire shivered.
‘Ready?’ Clopin Trouillefou said to the three Argoteers, all set to pounce on Gringoire like three spiders on a fly. The poor victim had a moment of awful expectation, while Clopin calmly used the tip of his foot to push back into the fire a few twigs which the flames had not reached. ‘Ready?’ he repeated, and opened his hands to clap. One second more and it would all be over.
But he stopped, as though struck by a sudden idea. ‘One minute!’ he said; ‘I was forgetting … It’s our custom not to hang a man without asking if there’s a woman who wants him. Comrade, it’s your last resort. You have either got to wed a truand woman or the rope.’
This Bohemian law, weird though it may seem to the reader, is still today written down in full in the old English statute books. See Burington’s Observations.*
Gringoire breathed again. It was the second time he had come back to life in half an hour. So he did not dare rely on it too much.
‘Hallo there!’ cried Clopin, back on top of his cask; ‘hallo! women, females, is there any one among you, from the witch to her cat, any bawdy wench would like to have this bawdy fellow? Hey there, Colette la Charonne! Elisabeth Trouvain! Simone Jodouyne! Marie Piédebon! Thonne la Longue! Bérarde Fanouel! Michelle Genaille! Claude Ronge-Oreille! Mathurine Girorou! Hey! Isabeau la Thierrye! Come up and look! A man for nothing! Who wants him?’
Gringoire, in this wretched state, was no doubt not very attractive. The women truands showed no great interest in the offer. The unfortunate man heard them reply: ‘No! No! Hang him, then we can all have some fun.’
Three, however, emerged from the crowd and came to sniff at him. The first was a big, slab-faced girl. She carefully examined the philosopher’s deplorable doublet. The smock was threadbare and had more holes in it than a chestnut roasting-pan. The girl pulled a face. ‘Bit of old rag,’ she muttered, and, turning to Gringoire: ‘Let’s see your cape!’
‘I’ve lost it,’ said Gringoire.
‘Your hat?’
‘It’s been stolen.’
‘Your shoes?’
‘The soles are beginning to wear away.’
‘Your purse?’
‘Alas!’ Gringoire stammered, ‘I haven’t got so much as a denier parisis.’
‘Let him hang, and say thank you for it!’ the truande replied, turning her back on him.
The second one, old, dark, wrinkled, hideous, ugly enough to be noticeable even in the Court of Miracles, walked all round Gringoire. He was almost trembling for fear that she might want him. But she mumbled: ‘He’s too skinny,’ and went away.
The third was a young girl, fresh enough, and not too ugly. ‘Save me!’ the poor devil said to her in a low voice. She looked at him for a moment with pity, then dropped her eyes, made a pleat in her skirt and remained undecided. His eyes followed her every movement; it was his last ray of hope. ‘No,’ the girl said at last; ‘no! Guillaume Longuejoue would beat me.’ She went back into the crowd.
‘Comrade,’ said Clopin, ‘your luck’s out.’
Then, standing up on his barrel: ‘Nobody wants him?’ he cried, imitating an auctioneer’s tones, to the great delight of all: ‘Nobody wants him? Going, going, going!’ And turning towards the gallows with a sign of his head: ‘Gone!’
Bellevigne de l’Étoile, Andry le Rouge, Fraçois Chante-Prune came closer to Gringoire.
At that moment a cry went up from the Argoteers: ‘La Esmeralda! la Esmeralda!’
Gringoire started, and turned in the direction of the shouting. The crowd opened, and let through a pure, dazzling figure.
It was the gypsy girl.
‘La Esmeralda!’ said Gringoire, stunned, in the midst of all his emotions, at how suddenly that magic word knitted together all his memories of that day.
This rare creature seemed to extend even over the Court of Miracles the sovereign power of her charm and beauty. The men and women of the Argot gently stood back to let her through and their brutish countenances lit up as she looked at them.
She approached the victim with her graceful step. Her pretty Djali followed her. Gringoire was more dead than alive. She contemplated him for a moment in silence.
‘You are going to hang this man?’ she gravely asked Clopin.
‘Yes, sister,’ the King of Tunis answered, ‘unless you take him for a husband.’
She stuck out her lower lip in her pretty little pout.
‘I’ll take him,’ she said.
At this point Gringoire firmly believed that ever since that morning he had just been in a dream, and that this was a continuation of the same dream.
The turn of fortune, though delightful, was indeed violent.
They undid the slip-knot, took the poet down from the stool. He was obliged to sit down, so intense was his shock.
The Duke of Egypt, without uttering a word, brought up a clay pitcher. The gypsy girl presented it to Gringoire. ‘Throw it on the ground,’ she said.
The pitcher broke into four pieces.
‘Brother,’ the Duke of Egypt said then, placing his hands on their foreheads, ‘she is your wife; sister, he is your husband. For four years. On your way!’
VII
A WEDDING NIGHT
A FEW moments later our poet found himself in a little Gothic vaulted room, nicely private and warm, sitting in front of a table which looked as if it would be only too pleased to borrow one or two things from a meatsafe hanging nearby, with the prospect of a decent bed, and alone in the company of a pretty girl. The adventure had a touch of magic about it. He was beginning to take himself seriously as a character in a fairy tale; from time to time he looked around as if to see whether the fiery chariot hitched to two winged chimeras, for nothing else could have conveyed him so swiftly from hell to paradise, was still there. At times too he riveted his gaze on the holes in his doublet, in order to cling to reality and not completely to lose contact with the earth. His reason, bouncing around in imaginary space, was now secured only by that thread.
