by Hugo, Victor
Suddenly Phoebus snatched off the gypsy’s gorget. The poor child, who had remained pale and dreamy, came awake with a start. She abruptly drew away from the adventurous officer, and casting a glance at her naked bosom and shoulders, red with confusion and speechless with shame, she crossed her lovely arms over her breast to cover it. But for the fiery blush on her cheeks, seeing her thus silent and motionless, one would have taken her for a statue of modesty. Her eyes remained cast down.
Meanwhile the captain’s gesture had uncovered the mysterious amulet that she wore round her neck. ‘What’s that?’ he said, seizing this pretext to come closer again to the lovely creature whom he had just frightened away.
‘Don’t touch it!’ she said sharply. ‘It’s my guardian. It is what will enable me to find my family again if I remain worthy of it. Oh! let me be, Monsieur le capitaine! My mother! my poor mother! mother! where are you? Help me! Please, Monsieur Phoebus, give me back my gorget!’
Phoebus stepped back and said coldly: ‘Oh! mademoiselle! I see clearly that you don’t love me!’
‘Not love him!’ exclaimed the poor unhappy child, at the same time clinging to the captain and making him sit beside her. ‘I not love you, my Phoebus! What are you saying, wicked man, trying to break my heart? Oh! go on! take me, take all I have! Do what you will with me. I am yours. What does the amulet matter to me? What does my mother matter? You are my mother, since I love you! Phoebus, my beloved Phoebus, do you see me? It’s me, look at me. This is the little girl you won’t reject, who has come, come in person, to find you. My soul, my life, my body, my person, all is yours, captain. All right, no! we shan’t get married, that annoys you. Anyhow, what am I? A worthless girl from the gutter, while you, my Phoebus, you are gentry. A fine thing indeed! A dancer marrying an officer! I was crazy. No, Phoebus, no, I’ll be your mistress, for your amusement, pleasure, whenever you like, a girl who’ll be yours, that’s all I was made for, soiled, despised, dishonoured, but, what of it?—loved. I’ll be the proudest and most joyful of women. And when I’m old or ugly, Phoebus, when I am no longer fit to love you, my lord, you’ll still put up with me as a servant. Others will embroider sashes for you. I’ll be the servant, who will take care of them. You’ll let me polish your spurs, brush your tunic, dust your riding boots. Won’t you, my Phoebus, won’t you have pity on me? Until then, take me! Look, Phoebus, all this belongs to you, just love me! That’s all we gypsy women need, fresh air and love.’
So saying she threw her arms round the officer’s neck, looked up at him beseechingly and smiling beautifully amid her tears, her delicate breasts rubbed against his woollen doublet and its rough braid. She writhed, with her lovely body half naked on his knees. The captain, drunk with desire, pressed his ardent lips on those lovely African shoulders. The girl, staring vacantly at the ceiling, bent backwards, trembling and palpitating beneath that kiss.
Suddenly, above Phoebus’ head, she saw another head, a livid, green, convulsed face, with the eyes of a damned soul. Beside that face was a hand holding a dagger. The face and the hand were the priest’s. He had smashed down the door and was there. Phoebus could not see him. The girl stayed motionless, frozen, speechless before the terrifying apparition, like a dove raising its head just as the round-eyed osprey looks into the nest.
She was unable even to utter a cry. She saw the dagger strike down at Phoebus and come up again reeking. ‘Curses!’ said the captain, and fell.
She fainted.
Just as her eyes closed, when all feeling was drifting away, she thought she felt a fiery touch imprinted on her lips, a kiss more searing than the executioner’s red-hot iron.
When she recovered her senses, she was surrounded by soldiers of the watch. The captain’s body, drenched in his own blood, was being carried away, the priest had vanished, the window at the back of the room, looking on to the river, stood wide open, someone was picking up a cloak, supposing it to belong to the officer, and she heard them say around her: ‘She’s a witch who has stabbed a captain.’
BOOK EIGHT
I
THE GOLD ÉCU TURNED INTO A DRY LEAF
GRINGOIRE and everyone in the Court of Miracles were desperately worried. For a good month now no one had known what had happened to la Esmeralda, much to the distress of the Duke of Egypt and his friends the truands, or to the goat, which intensified Gringoire’s grief. One evening the gypsy girl had disappeared, and had given no signs of life since then. All attempts to find her had been in vain. Some teasing sabouleux* told Gringoire that they had come across her that evening in the vicinity of the Pont Saint-Michel, going off with an officer; but this bohemian-style husband was a sceptical philosopher, and besides he knew better than anyone how absolutely his wife had preserved her virginity. He had been able to judge how impregnable was the modesty resulting from the combined virtues of the amulet and the gypsy, and he had worked out mathematically to the power of two the resistance of that chastity. So he was not concerned on that score.
Thus he could find no explanation for her disappearance. It grieved him deeply. It would have caused him to lose weight, had that been possible. It drove everything else from his mind, even his literary interests, even his great work ‘De figuris regularibus et irregularibus’ [‘On Regular and Irregular Figures’], which he intended to have printed as soon as he was next in funds. (For he had been going on about printing ever since he had seen Hugh of Saint-Victor’s Didascalon* printed in the celebrated characters of Wendelin of Speyer.)
One day, as he was walking gloomily past the Tour Criminelle, he noticed quite a crowd at one of the doors of the Palais de Justice.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked a young man who was coming out.
‘I don’t know, monsieur,’ the young man replied. ‘They say a woman is on trial for murdering a soldier. As there seems to be some sorcery involved in the affair, the bishop and his official have intervened in the case and my brother, who is archdeacon of Josas, spends all his time on it. Now I wanted a word with him, but I couldn’t get to him because of the crowd, and that is most annoying, because I’m in need of some money.’
‘Alas, monsieur,’ said Gringoire, ‘I’d like to be able to lend you some; but if there are holes in my breeches it’s not gold pieces that have made them.’
He did not dare tell the young man that he knew his brother the archdeacon, whom he had not been back to see since the scene in the church, an omission which embarrassed him.
The student went his way, and Gringoire began to follow the crowd going up the stairs to the Great Chamber. He reckoned that there is nothing like the spectacle of a criminal trial for driving away melancholy, entertaining as the judges’ stupidity usually is. The people whom he had joined were walking and jostling each other in silence. After a slow, tedious tramp through a long, gloomy corridor, which wound its way inside the palace like the intestinal canal of the old building, he arrived at a low door opening on to a hall which his height enabled him to scan over the swaying heads of the throng.
The hall was spacious and gloomy, which made it look all the more spacious. Daylight was fading; the long Gothic windows now let in only a pale beam of light which died out before reaching as far as the vaulted ceiling, an immense trellis of carved timbers, whose countless figures seemed to be moving vaguely in the shadows. There were already several candles burning here and there on the tables, casting their beams over the heads of clerks slumped over piles of paper. The front part of the hall was occupied by the public; to left and right were lawyers sitting at tables; at the back, on a dais, numerous judges, their back rows buried in the shadows: sinister faces without movement. The walls were sprinkled with countless fleurs-de-lys. A large figure of Christ could be vaguely discerned above the judges, and everywhere were pikes and halberds, their ends tipped with fire reflected from the candlelight.
‘Monsieur,’ Gringoire asked one of his neighbours, ‘who are all those people sitting in rows over there like prelates at a conclave?’
‘M
onsieur,’ said the neighbour, ‘on the right are the counsellors of the Great Chamber, and on the left the counsellors of the chambre des enquêtes, the maîtres are in black robes, the messires in red ones.’
‘There, sitting above them,’ Gringoiure went on, ‘who is that stout, red-faced man all in a sweat?’
‘That is Monsieur le Président.’
‘And those sheep behind him?’ continued Gringoire, who, as already mentioned, had no love for the magistracy, which might have had something to do with the grudge he had borne the Palais de Justice ever since his dramatic misadventure.
‘Those are the maîtres des requêtes* of the king’s household.’
‘And that wild boar in front of them?’
‘That’s the clerk to the court of Parliament.’
‘And, on the right, that crocodile?’
‘Maître Philippe Lheulier, advocate extraordinary to the King.’
‘And on the left, that big black cat?’
‘Maître Jacques Charmolue, the King’s attorney in ecclesiastical courts, with the gentlemen from the officiality.’
‘Well now, monsieur,’ said Gringoire, ‘what are all these good people doing here?’
‘They are judges in the trial.’
‘Who is on trial? I don’t see anyone in the dock.’
‘It’s a woman, monsieur. You can’t see her. She has her back to us, and she’s hidden by the crowd. Look, there she is, where you see that bunch of halberds.’
‘Who is this woman?’ asked Gringoire. ‘Do you know her name?’
‘No, monsieur. I’ve only just arrived. I’m only assuming that it’s to do with witchcraft, because the official is present at the trial.’
‘Well then!’ said our philosopher, ‘we’re going to see all these legal gentlemen eating human flesh. It’s as good a show as any.’
‘Monsieur,’ observed his neighbour, ‘don’t you think Maître Jacques Charmolue has a very gentle look to him?’
‘Hm!’ Gringoire answered. ‘I don’t trust the sort of gentleness that has pinched nostrils and thin lips.’
At this point those nearby made the two chatterers keep quiet. An important deposition was being heard.
‘My lords,’ said an old woman in the middle of the hall, her face so concealed by her clothing that she looked like a walking pile of rags, ‘my lords, the thing is as true as it’s true that I am la Falourdel, established for the past forty years on the Pont Saint-Michel, and regularly paying my rents, dues, and quit-rents, the door opposite the house of Tassin-Caillard, the dyer, which is on the side of the bridge facing upstream. A poor old woman now, but used to be a pretty girl, my lords. They had been telling me for the past few days: “La Falourdel, don’t work too hard at your spinning-wheel in the evenings, the devil likes to comb old women’s distaffs with his horns. There’s no doubt that the bogey-monk, who was over by the Temple last year, is now prowling about in the Cité. Take care, la Falourdel, that he doesn’t bang on your door.” One evening I had my spinning-wheel going, there’s a bang at my door. I ask who it is. Someone swears. I open up. In come two men. A man in black with a handsome officer. All you could see of the man in black was his eyes. Two live coals. The rest of him was all cloak and hat. Then they say to me: “The Sainte-Marthe room.” That’s my room upstairs, my lords, my best room. They give me an écu. I put the coin away in my drawer and say: “That will do to buy some tripe tomorrow from the flayers at la Gloriette.” We go upstairs. When we get to the upper room, while I have my back turned, the man in black vanishes. That rather amazes me. The officer, who was as handsome as a noble lord, comes down again with me. He goes out. By the time I’ve spun a quarter of a skein he’s back with a lovely young girl, a real doll who could have shone as bright as the sun if she had had her hair properly done. She had a he-goat with her, a big one, black or white, I forget now. That gave me something to think about. The girl, she’s none of my business, but the goat!—I don’t like those creatures, they have a beard and horns, they look so like a man. Besides, they have a whiff of the sabbath about them. Still, I don’t say anything. I had my gold écu. That’s fair enough, isn’t it. Monsieur le juge? I show the girl and the captain to the upstairs room, and I leave them on their own, that is, with the goat. I come down again and go back to my spinning. I must explain that my house has a ground floor and one above; at the back it looks out on to the river, like the other houses on the bridge, and the window on the ground floor and the one on the upper floor open on to the water. So there I was at my spinning-wheel. I don’t know why, but I was thinking of the bogey-monk that the goat had put me in mind of, and anyhow the lovely young girl’s get-up was a bit weird. Suddenly I hear a cry from upstairs, and something falling on the floor, and the window opening. I hurry over to my window, which is just underneath, and I see a black shape go past my eyes and fall into the water. It was a phantom dressed as a priest. The moon was shining bright. I saw it quite clearly. It was swimming towards the Cité. Then, all of a tremble, I called the watch. The gentlemen of the douzaine come in, and right from the start, not knowing what it was all about, and being in high spirits, they knocked me about. We go up, and what do we find? My poor room with blood all over it, the captain stretched out full length with a dagger in his neck, the girl acting dead, and the goat quite terrified. “Right,” I say, “it’ll take me more than a couple of weeks to wash that floor clean. It’ll have to be scraped, it’ll be an awful job.” They took away the officer, poor young man! and the girl, not even properly dressed. Wait. The worst of it was that next day when I went to get the écu to buy my tripe, I found a dry leaf in its place.’
The old woman fell silent. A murmur of horror ran through the audience. ‘That phantom, that he-goat, that all smells of magic,’ said one of Gringoire’s neighbours. ‘And that dry leaf!’ added another. ‘No doubt about it,’ put in a third, ‘she’s a witch who has dealings with the bogey-monk so as to rob officers.’ Gringoire himself was not far from finding the whole business frightening and probable.
‘Mistress Falourdel,’ said Monsieur le Président majestically, ‘have you nothing more to tell the court?’
‘No, my lord,’ the old woman replied, ‘except that in the report they described my house as a stinking, dilapidated old hovel, which is most offensive language. The houses on the bridge don’t look all that fine, because they are so crammed with people, but all the same that doesn’t stop the butchers living there, and they are rich men married to fine women as clean as could be.’
The magistrate who had put Gringoire in mind of a crocodile rose: ‘Silence!’ he said. ‘I ask you, messieurs, not to lose sight of the fact that a dagger was found on the accused woman. Mistress Falourdel, have you brought the dry leaf into which the écu given you by the demon was changed?’
‘Yes, my lord,’ she answered, ‘I found it again. Here it is.’
An usher handed over the dead leaf to the crocodile who gave a lugubrious nod and passed it to the president who dispatched it to the King’s attorney in ecclesiastical courts, so that it went all round the room. ‘It is a birch leaf,’ said Maître Jacques Charmolue; ‘further evidence of magic.’
A counsellor spoke up: ‘Witness, two men went up your stairs at the same time, the man in black whom you saw first vanish, then swimming in the Seine in priest’s clothing, and the officer—which of them handed you the écu?’
The old woman reflected for a moment and said: ‘The officer.’ A murmur ran through the crowd.
‘Ah!’ thought Gringoire, ‘that rather shakes my conviction.’
Meanwhile Maître Philippe Lheulier, advocate extraordinary to the King, intervened again: ‘May I remind you, messieurs, that in the deposition taken down at his bedside, the murdered officer, while declaring that the thought had vaguely occurred to him at the moment when the man in black accosted him that he might very well be the bogey-monk, added that the phantom had keenly pressed him to enter upon familiar relations with the accused, and on his observin
g, I mean the captain, that he had no money, had given him the écu with which the said officer had paid la Falourdel. So the écu is a coin from hell.’
This conclusive remark seemed to dispel all doubts in the mind of Gringoire and other sceptics in the audience.
‘You have the dossier of evidence, messieurs,’ the King’s advocate added as he sat down, ‘and you can consult the statement of Phoebus de Châteaupers.’
At that name the accused stood up. Her head rose clear of the crowd. Gringoire was appalled to recognize la Esmeralda.
She was pale, her hair, once so gracefully plaited and spangled with sequins, fell loose in disorder; her lips were blue; her sunken eyes frightening. Alas!
‘Phoebus!’ she said, distraught. ‘Where is he? Oh my lords! before you kill me, I beg you, tell me if he is still alive!’
‘Be quiet, woman,’ the president answered. ‘That’s not our business.’
‘Oh! for pity’s sake, tell me if he is alive!’ she went on, clasping her lovely, wasted hands, and her chains could be heard rattling against her dress.
‘Very well,’ the King’s advocate said drily, ‘he’s dying. Are you satisfied?’
The wretched girl fell back on her seat, without a word, without a tear, white as a waxwork figure.
The president bent over to a man at his feet, wearing a gold cap and a black robe, a chain round his neck, and a staff in his hand. ‘Usher, bring in the second accused.’
Every eye turned to the small door which opened and, to the thumping of Gringoire’s heart, admitted a pretty she-goat with gilded horns and hooves. The elegant animal stopped for a moment in the doorway, stretching out its neck as if, standing on some rocky peak, it had a vast horizon before its eyes. It suddenly caught sight of the gypsy girl, and jumping over the table and the clerk’s head, in two leaps was at her knee. Then it curled up gracefully over its mistress’s feet, inviting a word or a caress: but the accused stayed motionless, and poor Djali herself was spared not a glance.
