by Hugo, Victor
Apparently he stayed in that posture for a long time, no longer thinking, shattered and passive under the demon’s hand. At length, regaining some strength, he thought of going to seek refuge in the tower near his faithful Quasimodo. He stood up, and as he was afraid, took the breviary lamp to light his way. That was sacrilege; but he was past caring about such trifles.
He slowly climbed the tower staircase, filled with secret terror which must have communicated itself to the rare passers-by in the Parvis by the mysterious light from his lamp going up at so late an hour from one loophole to the next to the top of the bell tower.
He suddenly felt a coolness on his face and found himself beneath the door of the topmost gallery. The air was chill; clouds swept across the sky, in white streaks, overflowing one upon the other, crushing away the corners, looking like winter ice breaking up in a river. The crescent moon, stranded amid the clouds, seemed like some heavenly ship caught in these aerial ice-floes.
He looked down and for a moment contemplated, between the grid of colonnettes joining the two towers, in the distance, through a haze of mist and smoke, the silent throng of Paris roofs, pointed, innumerable, packed and small as the ripples of a calm sea on a summer night.
The moon’s feeble beams gave sky and earth an ashen hue.
At that moment the clock raised its shrill, cracked voice. It struck midnight. The priest thought of midday. It was twelve o’clock come round again. ‘Oh!’ he murmured to himself, ‘she must be cold by now!’
Suddenly a puff of wind blew his lamp out, and at almost the same time he saw appearing, at the opposite corner of the tower, a shadow, a patch of white, a shape, a woman. He shuddered. By the woman’s side was a little goat, its bleating mingling with the final bleat of the clock.
He found the strength to look. It was her.
She was pale, she was sombre. Her hair fell over her shoulders as it had that morning. But there was no longer a rope round her neck, her hands were no longer bound. She was free, she was dead.
She was dressed in white, and had a white veil over her head.
She came towards him, slowly, looking at the sky. The supernatural goat followed her. He felt as if he were made of stone, too heavy to flee. With each step she took forward, he took one back, and that was all. He thus returned beneath the dark vaulting of the staircase. He went ice-cold at the thought that she might perhaps come there too; if she had done so, he would have died of terror.
She did indeed arrive in front of the staircase door, stopped there for a few moments, gazed into the darkness, but apparently without seeing the priest, and went on past. She looked taller to him than when she had been alive; he saw the moon through her white robe; he heard her breathing.
When she had gone by he started down the stairs again, moving as slowly as he had seen the spectre move, believing himself to be a spectre, haggard, hair standing on end, his hand still holding the extinguished lamp; and as he went down the spiral stairs, he distinctly heard in his ear a voice laughing and repeating: ‘A spirit passed before my face; I heard a small breath; the hair of my flesh stood up.’
II
HUNCHBACKED, ONE-EYED, LAME
EVERY town in the Middle Ages, and up until Louis XII* every town in France, had its places of asylum. These places of asylum, amid the deluge of penal laws and barbaric jurisdictions which flooded the city, were like islands rising above the level of human justice. In a suburb there were almost as many places of asylum as of execution. It was the abuse of impunity side by side with the abuse of punishment, two evils each trying to correct one another. The king’s palaces, princely residences, churches especially had the right of asylum. Sometimes a whole town which needed repopulating was temporarily made a place of refuge. Louis XI made Paris an asylum in 1467.
Once the criminal had set foot in an asylum he was sacred, but he had to take care not to leave it. One step outside the sanctuary and he fell back into the water. The wheel, the gibbet, the strappado, kept a keen watch around the place of refuge, lying ceaselessly in wait for their prey like sharks around a ship. There were cases of condemned persons growing white-haired in a cloister, on the steps of a palace, in the fields of an abbey, under a church porch; in that respect asylum was a prison like any other. It sometimes happened that a solemn decree of Parliament violated the asylum and delivered the condemned back to the executioner; but that was rare. Parliament was wary of bishops, and when it came to a clash between the two robes, the magistrate’s cimarra was not evenly matched against the cassock. At times, however, as in the case of the killers of Petit-Jean, the Paris executioner, and in that of Emery Rousseau, Jean Valleret’s murderer, secular justice went over the Church’s head and proceeded to execute its sentence; but short of a parliamentary decree, woe betide anyone who violated a place of asylum by force of arms! It is well known how Robert de Clermont, Marshal of France, and Jean de Châlons, Marshal of Champagne, died; and yet all that was at issue was a certain Perrin Marc, a moneychanger’s lad, a wretched murderer; but the two marshals* had broken down the doors of Saint-Méry. That was the enormity.
Asylums were hedged about with such respect that, according to tradition, it extended at times even to animals. Aymoin tells of a stag, hunted by Dagobert, which sought refuge by the tomb of Saint-Denys; the hounds stopped dead, still baying.
Churches usually had a small cell ready to receive supplicants. In 1407 Nicolas Flamel had built for them, over the vaulting of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, a room which cost him 4 livres 6 sols 16 deniers parisis.
At Notre-Dame it was a cell constructed in the roof space of the side-aisles beneath the flying buttresses, facing the cloister, exactly at the spot where the wife of the present concierge of the towers has contrived for herself a garden, which is to the hanging gardens of Babylon what a lettuce is to a palm tree, or a porter’s wife to Semiramis.
There it was that Quasimodo, after his frantic and triumphant dash over the towers and galleries, had set down la Esmeralda. As long as that headlong course lasted, the girl had been unable to regain full consciousness; half comatose, half awake, all she had felt was going up in the air, floating, flying, being carried off by something above the earth. Now and then she heard the bellowing laughter, the loud voice of Quasimodo in her ear; she half opened her eyes; then beneath her she had a confused view of Paris, inlaid with its thousands of slate and tile roofs like a red and blue mosaic, and above her head the frightening, gleeful face of Quasimodo. Then her eyelids closed again; she thought it was all over, that she had been executed while she was in a faint, and that the deformed spirit which had presided over her destiny had caught her again and was carrying her off. She did not dare to look at him and just lay inert.
But when the bell-ringer, dishevelled and panting, put her down in the cell of refuge, when she felt his great hands undo the cord which was bruising her arms, she experienced the kind of shock which wakes up passengers with a start when their ship grounds in the middle of a dark night. Her thoughts awoke too, and came back one by one. She saw that she was in Notre-Dame, she remembered being snatched from the hands of the executioner, that Phoebus was alive, that Phoebus did not love her any more; and those two ideas, the one casting so much bitterness over the other, coming into her mind together, she turned to Quasimodo, who was standing before her and frightened her. She said to him: ‘Why did you rescue me?’
He looked at her anxiously as if trying to guess what she was saying. She repeated her question. Then he gave her a look of profound sadness and fled.
She remained astounded.
A few moments later he came back, bringing a package that he cast at her feet. In it were clothes which some charitable women had left for her at the entrance to the church. Then she looked down at herself, saw she was almost naked and blushed. Life was coming back.
Quasimodo seemed to feel some of the same modesty. He veiled his eyes with a large hand and went away again, but slowly.
She hurried to get dressed. There was a whit
e robe with a white veil. A novice’s habit from the Hôtel-Dieu.
She had scarcely finished when she saw Quasimodo returning. He carried a basket under one arm and a mattress under the other. In the basket was a bottle, some bread, and some provisions. He put the basket on the ground and said: ‘Eat.’ He laid the mattress out over the stone floor, and said: ‘Sleep.’ It was his own meal, his own bed, that the bell-ringer had gone to fetch.
The gypsy looked up at him to thank him, but could not utter a word. The poor devil looked truly horrible. She lowered her head with a shudder of fright.
Then he said: ‘I frighten you. I am very ugly, aren’t I? Don’t look at me. Just listen. During the day you will stay here; at night you can go wherever you like in the church. But don’t leave the church day or night. You would be done for. They would kill you and I should die.’
Touched by this, she raised her head to answer. He had disappeared. She was alone again, musing on the singular words of this almost monstrous creature, and struck by the sound of his voice, so raucous and yet so gentle.
Then she examined her cell. It was a room of some six square feet, with a little window and a door on to the gently inclined plane of the roof of flat stones. Several waterspouts with animal faces seemed to be leaning out round her, craning their necks to see her through the window. At the edge of her roof she could see the tops of countless chimneys from which rose, as she watched, the smoke from all the fires in Paris. A cheerless sight for the poor gypsy girl, a foundling, condemned to death, an unhappy creature, without a country, without a family, without a home.
At the moment when the thoughts of her isolation thus came over her, more poignantly than ever, she felt a shaggy, bearded head slip into her hands, over her knees. She shuddered (everything frightened her now) and looked. It was the poor goat, the agile Djali, who had escaped after her, just as Quasimodo was scattering Charmolue’s brigade, and who had been lavishing caresses on her feet for the best part of an hour without being able to get so much as a glance from her. The gypsy smothered her with kisses. ‘Oh! Djali,’ she said, ‘how I had forgotten you! So you still think of me! Oh! you are not the one who is ungrateful!’ At the same time, as if an invisible hand had lifted the weight which had for so long been holding down the tears in her heart, she began to weep; and as the tears flowed, she felt all that was most sharp and bitter in her grief going away with them.
With the coming of evening she found the night so beautiful, the moon so sweet, that she walked all the way round the lofty gallery encircling the church. The walk brought her some relief, so calm did the earth appear seen from that height.
III
DEAF
NEXT morning she realized when she woke up that she had been asleep. This singular fact amazed her. For so long she had grown unaccustomed to sleep. A joyful beam from the rising sun came in through the window and fell upon her face. At the same time as the sun she saw at the window an object which frightened her; the unfortunate face of Quasimodo. Involuntarily she closed her eyes again, but in vain; she still thought she could see through her rosy eyelids that gnome’s mask, one-eyed and gap-toothed. Then, as she kept her eyes closed, she heard a rough voice saying very gently: ‘Don’t be afraid. I am your friend. I came to look at you sleeping. It does you no harm, does it, if I come and look at you sleeping? What does it matter to you if I am there when your eyes are closed? Now I’m going away. There, I’ve put myself behind the wall. You can open your eyes again.’
Even more plaintive than these words was the tone in which they were uttered. Touched, the gypsy opened her eyes. He was indeed no longer at the window. She went to it and saw the poor hunchback huddled into a corner of the wall, in an attitude of sorrowful resignation. She made an effort to overcome the revulsion he inspired in her. ‘Come,’ she said to him gently. From the movement of her lips Quasimodo thought she was sending him off: so he stood up and limped away, slowly, hanging his head, not even daring to look up at the girl with his eye full of despair. ‘Come here, then,’ she cried. But he continued to retreat. Then she rushed out of the cell, ran after him and took him by the arm. When he felt her touch upon him, Quasimodo trembled in every limb. He looked up with a beseeching eye, and seeing that she was drawing him close to her, his whole face radiated joy and tenderness. She tried to make him enter her cell, but he stayed obstinately in the doorway. ‘No, no,’ he said, ‘the owl does not enter the lark’s nest.’
Then she squatted gracefully on her bed with the goat asleep at her feet. Both stayed for a few moments without moving, silently contemplating, he so much grace, she so much ugliness. With every moment she discovered some new deformity in Quasimodo. Her eyes ranged from his knock-knees to his humped back, from his humped back to his single eye. She could not understand how a creature so awkwardly designed could exist. Yet over it all lay so much sadness and gentleness that she began to get used to it.
He was the first to break the silence: ‘So you were telling me to come back?’
She nodded assent and said: ‘Yes.’
He understood her nod. ‘Alas,’ he said as if hesitating to finish the phrase: ‘the fact is … I’m deaf.’
‘Poor man!’ exclaimed the gypsy with an expression of kindly pity.
He gave a sorrowful smile. ‘You think that was the only item lacking, don’t you? Yes, I’m deaf. That’s how I am made. It’s horrible, isn’t it? And you are so beautiful!’
In the wretched man’s tone there was so profound a sense of his wretchedness that she did not have the strength to say a single word. Besides he would not have heard. He went on. ‘I have never before seen my ugliness as I do now. When I compare myself with you, I feel really sorry for myself; poor unfortunate monster that I am! I must look like some sort of animal to you, don’t I?—you are a ray of sunshine, a drop of dew, the song of a bird!—while I am something dreadful, neither man nor beast, something harder, more downtrodden, more misshapen than a pebble!’
Then he laughed, and his laugh was the most heartrending sound imaginable. He continued:
‘Yes, I’m deaf. But you can speak to me in signs and gestures. I have a master who talks to me like that. And anyhow, I will soon know what you want from the movement of your lips and your eyes.’
‘Very well,’ she replied with a smile, ‘tell me why you rescued me.’
He watched her attentively while she was speaking.
‘I understand,’ he answered. ‘You ask why I rescued you. You have forgotten a wretch who tried to abduct you one night, a wretch to whom you brought succour the very next day on that shameful pillory of theirs. A drop of water and a little pity, that’s more than I could repay with my life. You have forgotten that wretch; but he remembered.’
She listened, deeply touched. A tear welled up in the bellringer’s eye, but did not fall. He seemed to make it a point of honour to swallow it.
‘Listen,’ he went on, once he was no longer afraid that the tear might fall, ‘we have very high towers over there, and anyone falling from one would be dead before he reached the pavement; if you would ever like me to fall, you won’t even have to say a word, a glance will do.’
Then he stood up. This strange creature, unhappy though the gypsy’s plight was, still aroused in her a feeling of compassion. She signed to him to stay.
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘I mustn’t stay too long. I don’t feel comfortable with you looking at me. It’s out of pity that you don’t turn your eyes away. I’m going somewhere where I can see you without you seeing me. That will be better.’
He took a little metal whistle out of his pocket. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘when you need me, when you want me to come, when you won’t feel too revolted at the sight of me, you can whistle with this. That is a sound I can hear.’
He laid the whistle on the ground and fled.
IV
EARTHENWARE AND CRYSTAL
DAY after day went by.
Calm gradually returned to la Esmeralda’s soul. Excessive pain, like excessive
joy, is something violent that does not last. The human heart cannot long remain at an extreme. The gypsy girl had suffered so much that all that now remained was astonishment.
With the sense of security, hope had returned to her. She was outside society, outside life, but she vaguely felt that it might not be impossible to come inside again. She was like a dead person holding in reserve a key to her tomb.
She felt the terrible images which had obsessed her for so long gradually becoming more remote. All the hideous phantoms, Pierrat Torterue, Jacques Charmolue, faded from her mind, all of them, even the priest.
And then Phoebus was alive, she was sure of it. She had seen him. Phoebus’ life, that meant everything. After the series of fatal shocks which had brought her soul to total collapse, the one thing, the one feeling which she found still standing in her soul was her love for the captain. The fact is that love is like a tree, it grows of its own accord, strikes deep roots throughout our being, and continues to put out leaves on a heart in ruins.
And what defies explanation is that the blinder the passion, the more tenacious it is. It is never more solid than when it lacks all reason.
No doubt la Esmeralda could not think of the captain without bitterness. No doubt it was awful that he too had been mistaken, that he should have believed that impossible thing, that he should have believed a dagger thrust to have come from someone who would have given her life a thousand times over for him. Still, one must not hold too much against him: had she not confessed ‘her crime’? Had she not given in, weak woman that she was, to torture? It was all her fault. She should have let them pull out her nails rather than extract such words from her. Anyhow, if she could see Phoebus just once more, just for a minute, it would take but one word, one look, to put him right, to bring him back. She had no doubt about it. She dulled her feelings too over a number of strange facts—Phoebus chancing to be present on the day of her public penance, the girl he had been with. It was no doubt his sister. An unreasonable explanation, but one she was content to accept, since she needed to believe that Phoebus still loved her and no one else. Had he not sworn so to her? What more did she need, naïve and credulous as she was? And then, in this matter, did not appearances tell much more against her than against him? So she waited. She hoped.
