by Hugo, Victor
We may add that the church, that vast church which enveloped her on every side, guarding her, saving her, was itself a sovereign tranquillizer. The solemn lines of the architecture, the religious attitude of all the objects around the girl, the devout and severe thoughts given off, so to speak, by every pore of the stonework, acted on her without her knowing. The building had its sounds too, so full of benediction and majesty that they lulled that ailing soul. The monotonous chant of those saying the offices, the people’s response to the priest, sometimes a mumble, sometimes thunderous, the harmonious vibration of the stained glass, the organ blaring out like a hundred trumpets, the three bell towers humming like hives of huge bees, that whole orchestra, over which a gigantic musical scale leaped without cease up and down from congregation to bell tower, deadened her memory, her imagination, her pain. The bells above all soothed her. It was as if these huge machines poured over her some powerful magnetism.
So each sunrise found her more at peace, breathing more easily, less pale. As her inner wounds healed, so her grace and beauty flowered again on her face, but more thoughtful now and calmer. Her former character came back too, even some of her gaiety, her pretty pout, her love for her goat, her taste for singing, her modesty. She was careful in the morning to dress in the corner of her cell, for fear that someone living in the neighbouring attics might see her through the window.
When thinking about Phoebus left her time, the gypsy sometimes thought of Quasimodo. He was the only link, the only connection, the only communication remaining to her with human kind, with the living. Unhappy girl! She was more cut off from the world than Quasimodo! She understood nothing about this strange friend whom chance had given her. She often reproached herself for not having enough gratitude to make her blind to his defects, but she could absolutely not accustom herself to the poor bell-ringer. He was too ugly.
The whistle he had given her she had left lying on the ground. That did not stop Quasimodo reappearing from time to time those first few days. She did her utmost not to turn away with too much revulsion when he came to bring her the basket of provisions or the jug of water, but he always noticed the least movement of that kind, and would then go away sadly.
Once he turned up just as she was fondling Djali. He stayed pensive for a few moments before the graceful pair of goat and gypsy girl. At length, shaking his heavy, misshapen head, he said: ‘It’s my misfortune still to look too much like a man. I’d like to be wholly animal, like that goat.’
She looked up at him in astonishment.
He answered her look: ‘Oh! I know very well why.’ And went away.
Another time he arrived at the entrance to the cell (he never went in) just as la Esmeralda was singing an old Spanish ballad, of which she did not understand the words, but which had remained in her ear because the gypsy women had lulled her to sleep with it when she was a little child. At the sight of that ugly face appearing in the middle of her song, the girl broke off with an involuntary gesture of fright. The unfortunate bell-ringer dropped to his knees in the doorway, and clasped his great shapeless hands beseechingly: ‘Oh!’ he said sorrowfully, ‘I beg you, go on and don’t send me away.’ She did not want to hurt him, and trembling all over went on singing her romance. Gradually, however, her fright abated, and she gave way completely to the impression of the melancholy, drawn-out tune she was singing. He had remained kneeling, hands folded as though in prayer, attentive, scarcely breathing, eyes fixed steadily on the gypsy’s shining pupils. It was as though he were hearing the song through her eyes.
Yet another time he came to her looking awkward and shy. ‘Listen’, he said with an effort, ‘I have something to tell you.’ She made a sign to show that she was listening. Then he began sighing, half opened his mouth, seemed for a moment to be about to speak, then looked at her, shook his head, and slowly withdrew, with his hand to his forehead, leaving the gypsy astounded.
Among the grotesque figures carved on the wall was one of which he was particularly fond, and with which he often seemed to be exchanging fraternal looks. Once the gypsy heard him say to it: ‘Oh! why am I not made of stone like you!’
One day, finally, one morning, la Esmeralda had come right up to the edge of the roof and was looking down at the square over the pointed roof of Saint-Jean-le-Rond. Quasimodo was there behind her. He took up that position of his own accord, so as to spare the girl as much as possible the unpleasantness of seeing him. Suddenly the gypsy started, a tear and a flash of joy shone at the same time in her eyes, she kneeled on the edge of the roof and stretched out her arms in anguish towards the square, crying: ‘Phoebus! Phoebus! come! come! one word, a single word, in Heaven’s name! Phoebus! Phoebus!’—her voice, her face, her movements, her whole person bore the heart-rending expression of a shipwrecked mariner making distress signals to the ship merrily passing in the distance in a ray of sunshine on the horizon.
Quasimodo leaned out over the square and saw that the object of this frantic, tender appeal was a young man, a captain, a handsome horseman, with gleaming weapons and finery, who was caracoling by at the far end of the square, and taking off his plumed hat to a lovely lady smiling on her balcony. In any case, the officer did not hear the unhappy girl calling him. He was too far away.
But the poor deaf ringer heard. His chest heaved with a deep sigh. He turned round. His heart was brimming with all the tears he was choking back, his two fists, clenched convulsively, struck his head, and when he withdrew them each held a handful of reddish hair.
The gypsy was paying no heed to him. Grinding his teeth he muttered in a low voice: ‘Damnation! So that’s how you’ve got to be! You need only to be handsome on the outside!’
Meanwhile she had remained kneeling and was crying out in a state of extraordinary agitation: ‘Oh! there he is dismounting!—he’s about to go into that house!—Phoebus!—he can’t hear me! Phoebus!—how unkind of that woman to speak to him at the same time as me!—Phoebus! Phoebus!’
Deaf Quasimodo looked at her. He understood her mime. The poor bell-ringer’s eyes filled with tears, but not one did he let fall. Suddenly he tugged gently at the edge of her sleeve. She turned round. He had assumed an air of calm. He said: ‘Do you want me to go and fetch him?’
She let out a cry of joy: ‘Oh! go, go on! hurry! quickly! That captain! that captain! bring him to me! I’ll love you.’ She embraced his knees. He could not help shaking his head sorrowfully. ‘I’ll go and bring him to you,’ he said in a faint voice. Then he turned his head and strode hurriedly to the staircase, choking with sobs.
When he reached the square all he could see was the fine horse tethered to the door of the Gondelaurier mansion. The captain had just gone inside.
He looked up at the roof of the church. La Esmeralda was still there, in the same place, the same posture. He nodded to her sadly. Then he leaned against one of the stone bollards in the Gondelaurier porch, determined to wait until the captain came out.
In the Gondelaurier mansion it was one of those gala days which precede a wedding. Quasimodo saw a lot of people go in but he saw no one come out. From time to time he looked up at the roof. The gypsy girl had stirred no more than he had. A groom came to untie the horse and led it away to the stables.
The whole day went by like that, Quasimodo at his stone bollard, la Esmeralda on the roof, Phoebus no doubt at Fleur-de-Lys’s feet.
At last night fell: a moonless night, a dark night. In vain did Quasimodo keep his eyes fixed on la Esmeralda. Soon there was nothing there but a patch of white in the half-light; then nothing. Everything was wiped out, everything was black.
Quasimodo saw the windows of the Gondelaurier mansion light up from top to bottom of the façade. He saw the other casements in the square light up one after the other; he saw their lights go out too, down to the last one. For he stayed at his post all evening. The officer did not come out. When the last passers-by had gone home, when all the windows in the other houses had gone dark, Quasimodo remained alone, all by himself in tot
al darkness. At that time there was no lighting in the Parvis de Notre-Dame.
The windows of the Gondelaurier mansion, however, stayed lit up, even after midnight. Quasimodo, motionless and watchful, saw a host of lively, dancing shadows pass over the many-coloured window glass. If he had not been deaf, as the murmur of slumbering Paris died away, he would have heard more and more distinctly, from within the Gondelaurier mansion, the sound of revelry, laughter, and music.
At about one o’clock in the morning the guests began to leave. Quasimodo, wrapped in darkness, watched them pass by under the torch-lit porch. None of them was the captain.
Gloomy thoughts filled his mind. At times he looked up into the air, as people do when they are bored. Great, dark clouds, heavy, ragged, torn, hung like crêpe hammocks from the starry arch of night. They looked like cobwebs on heaven’s vault.
At one such moment he suddenly saw opening mysteriously the French window to the balcony whose stone balustrade was silhouetted above his head. The flimsy glass door let through two figures, and then closed silently behind them. They were a man and a woman. With some difficulty Quasimodo managed to recognize in the man the handsome captain, and in the woman the young lady whom he had seen that morning, welcoming the officer from that very same balcony. The square was in total darkness, and a double crimson curtain which had dropped back behind the door just as it closed again hardly let through on to the balcony any light from inside the apartment.
The young man and the girl, as far as our deaf watcher could judge without being able to hear a single word they said, appeared to be indulging in a most affectionate tête-à-tête. The girl seemed to have allowed the officer to put both arms round her waist, and was gently resisting a kiss.
From below, Quasimodo watched this scene, a sight all the more charming for not being meant to be seen. He observed such happiness, such beauty, with bitterness. After all, nature was not dumb in the poor devil, and his spinal column, dreadfully misshapen though it was, was no less sensitive to excitement than anyone else’s. He thought of the wretched lot dealt him by Providence, how women, love, sensual delight would everlastingly pass before his eyes, how he would only ever see the bliss of others. But what he found most heart-rending in this spectacle, what added indignation to his frustration, was the thought of how the gypsy girl must be suffering if she could see it. True, the night was very dark, la Esmeralda, if she had stayed where she was (and he did not doubt that she had) was a good way off, and it was as much as he could do himself to make out the lovers on the balcony. That consoled him.
However, their conversation was becoming increasingly animated. The young lady appeared to be begging the officer to make no further demands on her. From all this Quasimodo could make out only fair hands clasped together, smiles mingled with tears, the girl’s eyes raised to the stars, the captain’s eyes lowered ardently on her.
Fortunately, for the girl’s resistance was beginning to become only faint, the balcony door suddenly opened, an old lady appeared, the fair young lady seemed embarrassed, the officer looked put out, and all three went back inside.
A moment later a horse stamped the ground under the porch and the dazzling officer, wrapped in his night cloak, went rapidly by in front of Quasimodo.
The bell-ringer let him turn the street corner, then began running after him, nimbly as a monkey, shouting: ‘Hey! Captain!’
The captain stopped. ‘What does this rascal want with me?’ he said, spying in the darkness a lopsided sort of figure jerkily running towards him.
Quasimido, meanwhile, had reached him, and boldly seized the horse’s bridle: ‘Follow me, captain! There’s someone wants a word with you.’
‘Cornemahom!’ muttered Phoebus, ‘here’s a nasty, scruffy customer I seem to have seen somewhere before! Hey there! my man, will you kindly let go of my horse’s bridle?’
‘Captain,’ answered the deaf man, ‘aren’t you going to ask who it is?’
‘I tell you, let go of my horse,’ Phoebus replied, losing patience. ‘What does he want, this rascal hanging on to my charger’s reins? Do you take my horse for a gallows?’
Quasimodo, far from loosing the horse’s bridle, was getting ready to make it turn round. Unable to account for the captain’s resistance, he hastened to tell him: ‘Come on, captain, there’s a woman waiting for you.’ He added, with an effort: ‘A woman who loves you.’
‘A rare scoundrel!’ said the captain, ‘to think I’m obliged to go and call on all the women who love me! or say they do!—And supposing by chance she looks like you, with your screech-owl face?—tell the one who sent you that I’m about to get married, and she can go to the devil!’
‘Listen,’ exclaimed Quasimodo, thinking he would overcome this hesitation with a word, ‘come, my lord! It’s the gypsy you know about!’
That word did indeed make a great impression on Phoebus, but not what the deaf man had expected. It will be remembered that our gallant officer had withdrawn with Fleur-de-Lys a few moments before Quasimodo had rescued the condemned woman from Charmolue’s hands. Since then, on all his visits to the Gondelaurier mansion, he had been very careful to make no further mention of that woman, whose memory, after all, was a painful one for him; and for her part Fleur-de-Lys had not judged it politic to tell him that the gypsy girl was still alive. So Phoebus believed poor ‘Similar’ to be dead, and that already since a month or two back. Moreover, it may be added, the captain had been thinking for the past few moments of the deep darkness of the night, of the supernatural ugliness, the sepulchral tones of the strange messenger, that it was past midnight, that the street was as deserted as it had been that evening when the bogey-monk had accosted him, and that his horse snorted when it looked at Quasimodo.
‘The gypsy!’ he exclaimed, almost in fright. ‘What then, do you come from the other world?’
And his hand went to the hilt of his dagger.
‘Quick, quick,’ said the deaf man, trying to drag the horse along. ‘This way.’
Phoebus planted a mighty kick in his chest with his boot.
Quasimodo’s eye sparkled. He made as if to lunge at the captain. Then he stiffened and said: ‘Oh! how lucky you are to have someone who loves you!’
He stressed the word ‘someone’, and loosing the horse’s bridle said: ‘Off with you!’
Phoebus spurred away, swearing. Quasimodo watched him plunge off down the street into the murk. ‘Oh!’ the poor deaf creature whispered, ‘fancy refusing that!’
He returned to Notre-Dame, lit his lamp and climbed back up the tower. As he had supposed, the gypsy was still in the same place.
As soon as she saw him coming, she ran to him. ‘Alone!’ she cried, clasping her lovely hands sorrowfully.
‘I couldn’t find him,’ Quasimodo said coldly.
‘You should have waited all night!’ she went on furiously.
He saw her angry gesture, and understood her reproach. ‘I’ll keep a better look out for him another time,’ he said, hanging his head.
‘Go away!’ she said.
He left her. She was displeased with him. He had preferred to be rebuked by her rather than distress her. He had kept all the pain for himself.
From that day on, the gypsy saw him no more. He stopped coming to her cell. At most she would sometimes catch a glimpse of the bell-ringer’s face at the top of a tower, mournfully gazing at her. But as soon as she noticed him he would vanish.
It has to be said that she was not too upset by this voluntary absence of the poor hunchback. In her inmost heart she was grateful to him for it. Besides, Quasimodo had no illusions on that score.
She did not see him any more, but she felt the presence of a kindly spirit round her. Her provisions were replenished by an invisible hand while she was asleep. One morning she found a birdcage on her window. Above her cell was a sculpture which frightened her. She had shown as much more than once in front of Quasimodo. One morning (for all these things happened at night), she could no longer see it. Someone ha
d shattered it. Whoever had climbed up to that sculpture must have risked his life.
Sometimes, in the evening, she would hear a voice hidden under the louvres of the bell tower singing a sad, strange song, as if to lull her to sleep. The lines had no rhyme, and were such as a deaf man might make up:
Look not at the face,
Young girl, look at the heart.
The heart of a handsome young man is often misshapen.
There are hearts where love does not last.
Young girl, the pine tree is not beautiful,
Not beautiful like the poplar,
But it keeps its leaves in winter.
Alas! what’s the good of saying that?
Whatever is without beauty is wrong to exist,
Beauty only loves beauty,
April turns her back on January.
Beauty is perfect,
Beauty can do anything,
Beauty is the only thing that does not live by halves.
The crow flies only by day,
The owl flies only by night
The swan flies both by night and day
One morning, she saw, as she awoke, two vases filled with flowers on her window. One was a crystal vase, very fine and brilliant, but cracked. It had let all the water with which it had been filled run out, and the flowers in it were withered. The other was an earthenware pot, crude and common, but it had kept all its water, and the flowers in it had stayed fresh and bright red.
I do not know if it was intentional, but la Esmeralda took the faded bunch, and wore it all day on her breast.
