by Hugo, Victor
‘In a quarter of an hour.’
‘At la Falourdel’s place.’
‘Just so.’
‘The bawd of the Pont Saint-Michel.’
‘Saint Michael the archangel, as the Paternoster* puts it.’
‘Impious fellow!’ muttered the spectre. ‘With a woman?’
‘Confiteor [I confess].’
‘By the name of…’
‘La Smeralda,’ Phoebus said gaily. All his insouciance had gradually returned.
At that name the shadow’s claw shook Phoebus’ arm furiously. ‘Captain Phoebus de Châteaupers, you are lying!’
Anyone who could have seen the captain’s face blaze at that moment, the way he sprang backwards, so violently that he broke loose from the pincer grip that had seized him, the haughty expression with which his hand flew to his sword hilt, and faced so angrily the bleak immobility of the man in the cloak, anyone who had seen that would have been terrified. It was not unlike the struggle between Don Juan and the statue.
‘Christ and Satan!’ cried the captain, ‘that’s a word that seldom assaults the ears of a Châteaupers! You would never dare repeat it.’
‘You are lying,’ said the shadow coldly.
The captain ground his teeth. Bogeyman-monk, phantom, superstitions, all was forgotten at that moment. All he could see was a man and an insult.
‘Ha! That’s the way!’ he spluttered in a voice choking with rage. He drew his sword, then stammering, for anger makes one tremble as much as fear: ‘Here! now! go to! Swords! swords! Blood on these cobbles!’
Meanwhile the other did not stir. When he saw his adversary on guard and ready to lunge: ‘Captain Phoebus,’ he said in a tone vibrant with bitterness, ‘you are forgetting your appointment.’
The rages of men like Phoebus are like heated milk which a drop of cold water can take off the boil. Those simple words brought down the sword glinting in the captain’s hand.
‘Captain,’ the man continued, ‘tomorrow, the day after, in a month, in ten years, you will find me again, ready to cut your throat; but first go to your appointment.’
‘Indeed,’ said Phoebus, as though looking for some accommodation with himself, ‘to encounter a sword or a girl are both delightful assignations; but I don’t see why I should give up one for the other when I can have both.’
He sheathed his sword again.
‘Go to your appointment,’ the stranger went on.
‘Monsieur,’ Phoebus answered in some embarrassment, ‘many thanks for your courtesy. There will in fact still be time tomorrow for us to cut slashes and buttonholes in each other’s birthday suits. I am grateful to you for letting me spend another pleasant quarter of an hour. I was fully hoping to lay you out in the gutter and still arrive in time for the lady, all the more so, as it’s good form to keep a woman waiting a bit in such cases. But you look pretty powerful, and it’s safer to put off the contest until tomorrow. So I’ll be off to my appointment. It’s for seven o’clock, as you know.’ Here Phoebus scratched his ear—’Ah! Corne-Dieu! I was forgetting! I haven’t a sou to pay the charge for the garret, and the old crone will want to be paid in advance. She doesn’t trust me.’
‘Here’s something to pay with.’
Phoebus felt the stranger’s cold hand slip a large coin into his own. He could not stop himself taking the money and shaking the hand.
‘God’s truth!’ he cried, ‘you’re a good chap!’
‘One condition,’ the man said. ‘Prove that I was wrong and that you were telling the truth. Hide me in some corner where I can see whether this woman really is the one whose name you mentioned.’
‘Oh!’ Phoebus replied, ‘it’s all the same to me. We’ll take the Sainte-Marthe room. You’ll be able to see all you want from the dog kennel next to it.’
‘Come along then,’ the shadow went on.
‘At your service,’ said the captain. ‘I don’t know if you aren’t Messer Diabolus in person. But let’s be friends this evening. Tomorrow I’ll pay off all my debts of purse and sword.’
They set off again at a rapid pace. After a few minutes the sound of the river told them that they were on the Pont Saint-Michel, at that time all built up with houses. ‘First of all I’m going to let you in,’ Phoebus told his companion, ‘then I’ll go and find my lovely who is supposed to be waiting for me by the Petit Châtelet.’
His companion made no reply. Since they had been walking side by side he had not said a word. Phoebus stopped in front of a low door and knocked at it roughly. A light appeared at the cracks in the door. ‘Who is it?’ cried a toothless voice.
‘God’s body! God’s head! God’s belly!’ the captain answered.
The door opened at once and revealed to the newcomers an old woman and an old lamp, both trembling. The old woman was bent double, dressed in rags, a duster over her doddery head, with little slit eyes; she was wrinkled all over, on hands, face, neck; her lips sank in under her gums, and all round her mouth she had tufts of white hairs which made her look like a contented cat. The inside of the hovel was no less decrepit than she was. The walls were chalk, the beams on the ceiling were black, there was a broken-down fireplace, spiders’ webs in every corner, in the middle a rickety flock of unsteady tables and stools, a dirty child in the ashes, and at the back a staircase, or rather a wooden ladder, going up to a trapdoor in the ceiling. As he penetrated this den, Phoebus’ mysterious companion pulled his cloak up to his eyes. Meanwhile the captain, swearing the while like a Saracen, hastened ‘to make the sun shine on a gold piece’ as our admirable Régnier puts it. ‘The Sainte-Marthe room,’ he said.
The old woman treated him like a lord, and put the gold piece away in a drawer. It was the coin the man in the black cloak had given Phoebus. While her back was turned, the ragged, long-haired little boy who was playing in the ashes came deftly up to the drawer, took out the coin and in its place put a dry leaf that he had torn off a faggot.
The old woman beckoned to the two noble gentlemen, as she called them, to follow her, and preceded them up the ladder. When she reached the upper floor, she put the lamp on a chest, and Phoebus, as one used to the ways of the house, opened a door giving on to a dark closet.
‘Go in there, my dear fellow,’ he said to his companion. The man in the cloak obeyed without answering a word. The door fell back behind him. He heard Phoebus bolt it shut, and a moment later go back downstairs after the old woman. The light had vanished.
VIII
OF THE USEFULNESS OF WINDOWS LOOKING OUT ON TO THE RIVER
CLAUDE FROLLO (for we presume that the reader, more intelligent than Phoebus, has seen in all this adventure no other bogeyman-monk than the archdeacon), Claude Frollo groped about for a moment or two in the dark recess where the captain had bolted him in. It was one of those nooks and crannies which architects sometimes provide where the roof and the supporting wall meet. The vertical section of this kennel, as Phoebus had so aptly described it, would have made a triangle. For the rest it had no windows or skylight, and the sloping angle of the roof made it impossible to stand up inside. So Claude crouched down in the dust and lumps of plaster which crumbled beneath him. His head was on fire. Rummaging around with his hands he found on the floor a piece of broken window-glass which he pressed to his forehead and whose coldness provided some relief.
What was going on at that moment in the archdeacon’s dark soul? Only God and he could know.
In what fatal order had he ranged in his mind la Esmeralda, Phoebus, Jacques Charmolue, his beloved young brother, whom he had abandoned in the mire, his archdeacon’s cassock, perhaps his reputation, dragged along to la Falourdel’s, all these images, all these adventures? I could not say. But it is certain that these ideas composed a dreadful pattern in his mind.
He had been waiting for a quarter of an hour; he felt as though he had aged by a hundred years. Suddenly he heard the boards of the wooden staircase creaking. Someone was coming up. The trapdoor opened, a light reappeared. There was quite
a wide crack in the worm-eaten door to his hole. He pressed his face to it. In this way he could see everything that was going on in the next room. The cat-faced old woman came up from the trapdoor first, then Phoebus, twirling his moustache, then a third person, the beautiful and graceful figure of la Esmeralda. The priest saw her emerge from below like some dazzling apparition. Claude trembled, a cloud came over his eyes, the blood pounded in his arteries, a buzzing filled his ears, everything was spinning around. He saw and heard nothing more.
When he came to, Phoebus and la Esmeralda were alone, sitting on the wooden chest beside the lamp, which lit up sharply before the archdeacon’s eyes these two youthful figures and a wretched pallet at the far end of the garret.
Beside the pallet was a window, its glass caved in like a spider’s web battered by rain, and through the broken lattice could be seen a patch of sky and the moon in the distance, resting on an eiderdown of woolly clouds.
The girl was flushed, confused, quivering with emotion. Her long eyelashes were lowered, shading her crimson cheeks. The officer, on whom she did not dare raise her eyes, was beaming. Mechanically, and with a charmingly awkward gesture, she was tracing random patterns on the seat with her fingertip and looking at her finger. Her foot was hidden by the little goat crouching on top of it.
The captain was very smartly dressed, with knots of braid at collar and cuffs—the height of elegance at the time.
With some difficulty Dom Claude managed to hear what they were saying through the pounding of the blood in his temples.
(Love talk is a somewhat trite affair. It is one perpetual ‘I love you’—a very bare and insipid musical phrase for the uninvolved listener unless embellished with some fioriture. But Claude was no uninvolved listener.)
‘Oh!’ the girl was saying, without raising her eyes, ‘do not despise me, Monseigneur Phoebus. I feel that what I am doing is wrong.’
‘Despise you, lovely child!’ the officer replied with an air of superior and distinguished gallantry, ‘despise you, God’s head! whatever for?’
‘For following you.’
‘On that score, my beauty, we don’t agree. I ought not to despise but hate you.’
The girl looked at him in alarm: ‘Hate me! But what have I done?’
‘For having needed so much persuading.’
‘Alas!’ she said, ‘the fact is I am breaking a vow.… I’ll never find my parents again.… The amulet will lose its virtue—but what of it? What need have I now of father and mother?’
Thus saying, she gazed at the captain with her large black eyes moist with joy and affection.
‘The devil if I understand you!’ cried Phoebus.
La Esmeralda stayed silent for a moment, then a tear fell from her eyes, a sigh from her lips, and she said: ‘O my lord, I love you.’
The girl was surrounded with such an aura of chastity, such a spell of virtue, that Phoebus did not feel wholly at ease with her. However, these words made him bolder. ‘You love me!’
He said in rapture, and flung his arm round the gypsy’s waist. He had only been waiting for this opportunity.
The priest saw him, and with his fingertip tested the point of a dagger which he kept hidden on his breast.
‘Phoebus,’ the gypsy continued, gently removing the captain’s tenacious hands from round her waist, ‘you are kind, you are generous, you are handsome. You saved me, me, a poor lost child in Bohemia. I have long dreamed of an officer saving my life. I was dreaming of you before I knew you, my own Phoebus. The man in my dreams had a fine uniform like you, a grand demeanour, a sword. You are called Phoebus, it is a beautiful name. I love your sword. Draw your sword, Phoebus, so that I can see it.’
‘Child!’ said the captain, and unsheathed his rapier with a smile. The gypsy looked at the hilt, the blade, examined with adorable curiosity the cipher on the guard, and kissed the sword, telling it: ‘You are the sword of a brave man. I love my captain.’
Phoebus once more seized the opportunity to bestow on her lovely neck as it bent over a kiss which made the girl straighten up, scarlet as a cherry. The priest ground his teeth in the dark.
‘Phoebus,’ the gypsy went on, ‘let me talk to you. Walk about a bit so that I can see how tall you are and hear your spurs jangle. How handsome you are!’
The captain stood up to oblige her, scolding her with a self-satisfied smile. ‘How childish you are! By the way, charming lady, have you seen me in my ceremonial tunic?’
‘Alas! no,’ she answered.
‘That’s a really handsome sight!’
Phoebus came to sit beside her again, but much closer than before.
‘Listen my dear …’
The gypsy gave him a few little taps on the mouth with her pretty hand, playfully childish, graceful, and gay. ‘No, no, I won’t listen. Do you love me? I want you to tell me if you love me.’
‘Do I love you, angel of my life!’ cried the captain, half kneeling. ‘I am all yours, body, blood, soul, all is for you! I love you and I’ve never loved anyone else but you.’
The captain had repeated that phrase so many times, in so many similar situations that he declaimed it all in one breath, with flawless accuracy. At this passionate declaration, the gypsy looked up at the dingy ceiling which took the place of heaven with eyes full of angelic happiness. ‘Oh!’ she murmured, ‘this is the moment when one should die!’ Phoebus found ‘the moment’ suitable for stealing another kiss, adding to the torment of the wretched archdeacon in his corner.
‘Die!’ cried the amorous captain. ‘What are you talking about, beautiful angel? This is the time for living, or Jupiter is just a rogue! Die when something so sweet is just starting? Corne de bceuf, what a joke! That’s not right. Listen, my dear Similar … Esmenarda—forgive me, but you have such a prodigiously Saracen name that I can’t get it out straight. It’s such a tangle that it stops me in my tracks.’
‘Goodness,’ said the poor girl, ‘and I thought it was a pretty name because it was so unusual! But since you don’t like it, I don’t mind being called Goton.’
‘Ah! let’s not cry over such a little thing, my lovely! It’s a name one has to get used to, that’s all. Once I know it by heart, it will come quite naturally. Listen then, my dear Similar, I adore you passionately. I truly love you so much that it’s a miracle. I know one girl who is dying of rage because of it…’
The jealous girl interrupted him: ‘Who’s that?’
‘What does that matter to us?’ said Phoebus. ‘Do you love me?’
‘Oh!’ she said.
‘Well! that’s all. You’ll see how I love you too. May the great devil Neptune stick his fork in me if I don’t make you the happiest creature in the world. We’ll have a pretty little nest somewhere. I’ll have my archers parade beneath your window. They are all mounted and have no time for Captain Mignon’s lot. There are halberdiers, crossbowmen, and culverineers. I’ll take you to the Parisians’ great musters at the barn at Rully.* It’s really magnificent. Eighty thousand armed men; thirty thousand white harnesses, jacks, or brigandines; the seventy-seven guild banners; the standards of the Parliament, the audit office, the treasurers-general, and the mint; the very devil of an army in fact! I’ll take you to see the lions of the Hôtel du Roi; they’re wild animals. Women all love that.’
For some moments, the girl, absorbed in her delightful thoughts, had been dreaming to the sound of his voice without taking in the meaning of his words.
‘Oh! you will be so happy!’ the captain continued, at the same time gently unbuckling the gypsy’s belt.
‘What are you doing?’ she said sharply. This ‘assault’ had jerked her out of her reverie.
‘Nothing,’ Phoebus answered. ‘I was just saying you’ll have to give up this wild street-corner outfit when you’re with me.’
‘When I’m with you, my Phoebus!’ the girl said tenderly. She relapsed into a thoughtful silence.
The captain, emboldened by her docility, put his arm round her waist without
meeting any resistance, then began very quietly unlacing the poor child’s bodice, and disarranged her gorget to such an extent that the priest, breathing heavily, saw the gypsy’s bare shoulder emerge from the gauze, round and brown, like the moon rising on a misty horizon.
The girl let Phoebus have his way. She did not seem to notice. The bold captain’s eyes sparkled.
She suddenly turned to him: ‘Phoebus,’ she said with an expression of boundless love, ‘teach me about your religion.’
‘My religion!’ the captain exclaimed, with a roar of laughter. ‘Me, teach you about my religion! Horn and thunder! What do you want with my religion?’
‘It’s so that we can get married,’ she replied.
The captain’s face took on an expression of mixed surprise, disdain, nonchalance, and passionate lust. ‘Bah!’ he said, ‘does marriage come into it?’
The gypsy paled, and sadly let her head drop on her breast.
‘My loving beauty,’ Phoebus went on tenderly, ‘what’s all this nonsense? Marriage is a great song and dance! Are we any less loving for not having spouted a bit of Latin in a priest’s shop?’
As he said this in his gentlest voice, he came extremely close to the gypsy girl, his fondling hands resumed their position around that delicate, supple waist, his eyes grew brighter and brighter, and all the evidence proclaimed that Monsieur Phoebus was clearly on the brink of one of those moments when Jupiter himself commits such follies that good Homer is obliged to enlist the aid of a cloud.
Dom Claude, however, could see everything. The door was made of rotten puncheon staves, which left wide cracks through which his predatory gaze could pass. This broad-shouldered, brown-skinned priest, hitherto condemned to the austere virginity of the cloister, shivered and seethed at this scene of love, darkness, and sensuality. The beautiful young girl surrendering in disarray to this ardent young man sent molten lead coursing through his veins. Extraordinary reactions stirred within him. His jealous and lascivious eye delved deep beneath all those undone pins. To anyone seeing the unhappy man’s face at that moment pressed against the worm-eaten bars, it would have looked like the face of a tiger watching from the depths of its cage a jackal devouring a gazelle. His pupils blazed like candles through the cracks in the door.
