The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

by Victor Hugo

  But the clerk, just as Master Florian Barbedienne was reading the sentence in his turn before signing it, felt a twinge of pity for the poor devil of a prisoner, and in the hope of gaining some diminution of his punishment, leaned as close as he could to the judge's ear, and said, pointing to Quasimodo, "That fellow is deaf."

  He hoped that their common infirmity might rouse Master Florian's interest in the prisoner's favor. But, in the first place, we have already observed that Master Florian did not care to have his deafness noticed. In the next place, he was so hard of hearing that he caught not one word of what the clerk said to him; and yet, he wanted to have it appear that he heard, and therefore answered. "Oho! that's a different matter; I did not know that. Give him another hour in the pillory, in that case."

  And he signed the sentence with this modification.

  "Well done!" said Robin Poussepain, who bore Quasimodo a

  grudge; "that will teach him to maltreat folks."

  CHAPTER II

  The Rat-Hole

  With the reader's permission, we will return to the Place de Greve which we left yesterday with Gringoire, to follow Esmeralda.

  It is ten o'clock in the morning; everything smacks of the day after a holiday. The pavement is covered with fragments,--ribbons, scraps, feathers from the plumes, drops of wax from the torches, crumbs from the public feast. A number of citizens are lounging here and there, occasionally stirring the dying embers of the bonfire with their feet, going into ecstasies in front of the Maison-aux-Piliers, as they recall the fine hangings of the previous day, and staring at the nails which held them, the last remnant of their pleasure. The venders of cider and beer roll their barrels through the various groups. A few busy passers come and go. The shop-keepers chat and gossip with one another at the door of their shops. The festival, the ambassadors, Coppenole, the Pope of Fools, are on every tongue, each vying with the other in the severity of his criticisms and the loudness of his laughter. And yet four mounted police, who have just stationed themselves at the four corners of the pillory, have already collected about them a goodly portion of the populace scattered about the square, and willing to stand stupidly still for any length of time, in the hope of witnessing some petty punishment.

  If now the reader, having looked upon this lively and noisy scene enacting in every part of the square, will turn his gaze towards that ancient half-Gothic, half-Roman structure known as the Tour-Roland, which forms the western angle of the quay, he may perceive at the corner of its facade a large public breviary, richly illuminated, protected from the rain by a small pent-house, and from thieves by a grating, which, however, allows the passer-by to turn over its leaves. Beside this breviary is a narrow arched window, guarded by two iron bars placed crosswise, and looking out upon the square,--the only opening through which a little air and light reach a tiny cell without a door, built on the ground-floor, in the thickness of the wall of the old house, and filled with a peace made more profound, a silence made more melancholy, by the fact that a public square, the noisiest and most thickly peopled place in all Paris, swarms and shrieks just outside.

  This cell has been celebrated throughout Paris for almost three centuries; since Madame Rolande, of the Tour-Roland, being in mourning for her father, who died while on a Crusade, had it hewed out of the wall of her own house and shut herself up in it forever, keeping no part of her palace but this one lodging, the door of which was walled up and the window open, in winter as in summer, giving all the rest of her property to God and the poor. The desolate dame did indeed await death for twenty years within this premature tomb, praying night and day for her father's soul, sleeping upon a bed of ashes, without even a stone for pillow, clad in black sack-cloth, and living on such portions of bread and water as the pity of the passers-by placed on her window-sill; thus accepting charity after having bestowed it. At her death, as she was about to pass to another tomb, she bequeathed this one in perpetuity to all afflicted women, mothers, widows, or daughters, who had great need to pray for others or themselves, and who wished to bury themselves alive in token of their great grief or great penitence. The poor of her time paid her the best of funeral rites in their tears and blessings; but, to their great regret, the pious dame could not be canonized a saint, for lack of patronage. Those of them who were inclined to be impious hoped that the matter might be more readily arranged in paradise than at Rome, and quite simply prayed to God instead of to the Pope, for the deceased. Most of them were satisfied with holding her memory sacred and making relics of her rags. The city, for its part, founded for the lady's sake a public breviary, which was fastened to the wall near the window of the cell, so that those who passed might occasionally stop, if only to pray, that so the prayer might lead them to think of alms, and that the poor recluses, the heirs of Madame Rolande's cell, might not die of hunger and neglect.

  Nor was this sort of tomb a great rarity in the cities of the Middle Ages. There might frequently be found, in the most crowded street, in the most motley and clamorous market-place, in the very midst of the confusion, under the horses' feet, under the cart-wheels, as it were, a cellar, a well, a walled and grated cell, within which some human being prayed night and day, voluntarily vowed to everlasting lamentation, to some extraordinary expiation. And all the reflections which would be roused today by so singular a sight,--that horrid cell, a sort of connecting link between the house and the tomb, the cemetery and the city; that living creature cut off from human companionship and thenceforth reckoned with the dead; that lamp consuming its last drop of oil in darkness; that remnant of life flickering in a grave; that breath, that voice, that perpetual prayer, in a coffin of stone; that face forever turned towards the other world; that eye already illumined by another sun; that ear glued to the wall of the tomb; that soul imprisoned in that body; that body imprisoned in that dungeon; and beneath that double casing of flesh and stone the murmur of that suffering soul,--nothing of all this was noted by the crowd.

  The unreasoning and far from subtile piety of that day could not conceive of so many sides to an act of religion. It viewed the thing as a whole, and honored, venerated, sanctified the sacrifice if need be, but did not analyze the suffering, and pitied it but slightly. It occasionally bestowed some pittance on the wretched penitent, looked through the hole to see if he were still alive, knew not his name, hardly knew how many years it was since he began to die, and to the stranger who asked about the living skeleton rotting in that cellar, the neighbors simply answered, "That is the recluse."

  People saw things in this way then,--without metaphysics, without exaggeration, without magnifying-glass, with the naked eye. The microscope had not yet been invented, either for material or for spiritual things.

  Besides, although people marvelled so little at them, instances of this kind of claustration in the heart of a town were really very frequent, as we just now observed. Paris contained a goodly number of these cells for praying to God and doing penance; they were almost all occupied. It is true that the clergy did not care to leave them empty, as that would imply luke-warmness among the faithful; and they therefore put lepers into them when they had no penitents. Besides the cell in the Place de Greve, there was one at Montfaucon, one at the charnel-house of the Cemetery of the Innocents, another,--I've forgotten just where,--at Clichon House, I believe; others again in many other places, traces of which may yet be found in popular tradition, for lack of monuments. The University had also cells of its own. On the mountain of St. Genevieve a kind of mediaeval Job for thirty years sang the seven penitential psalms upon a dunghill, at the bottom of a cistern, beginning again whenever he reached the end, chanting louder by night,--magna voce per umbras; and even now the antiquary fancies that he hears his voice when he enters the street known as Rue Puits-qui-parle: the street of the Talking Well.

  But to keep to the cell of the Tour-Roland, we should mention that it had never wanted for recluses. Since Madame Rolande's death, it had seldom been vacant for more than a year. Many women had gone t
hither to weep, until death, for parents, lovers, or sins. Parisian malice, which interferes with everything, even those things which concern it least, asserted that very few widows had ever been seen within its walls.

  As was the fashion of that period, a Latin inscription on the wall informed the learned passers-by of the pious purpose of this cell. The custom was retained until the middle of the sixteenth century, of explaining the purpose of a building by a brief device inscribed above the door. Thus we still read in France, over the gate of the prison belonging to the manor of the Lord of Tourville: "Sileto et spera;"bzin Ireland, under the escutcheon over the great door of Fortescue Castle: "Forte scutum, salus ducum;"ca and in England, over the main entrance to the hospitable manor of Earl Cowper: "Tuum est."cbIn those days every edifice embodied a thought.

  As there was no door to the walled cell in the Tour-Roland, some one had carved in Roman capitals over the window these two words:--

  "TU, ORA."cc

  Hence the people, whose mind never grasps such nice distinctions, and who are quite ready to translate Ludovico Magno into the Porte Saint-Denis, gave this dark, damp, gloomy cavern the name of the "Trou-aux-Rats," or the Rat-Hole,--an explanation possibly less sublime, but certainly more picturesque than the other.

  CHAPTER III

  The Story of a Wheaten Cake

  At the time of which this story treats, the cell in the Tour-Roland was occupied. If the reader wishes to know by whom, he has but to listen to the conversation of three worthy gossips, who, at the moment when we drew his attention to the Rat-Hole, were walking directly that way, going from the Chatelet towards the Place de Greve, along the water's edge.

  Two of these women were dressed like good citizens of Paris. Their fine white gorgets; their petticoats of striped linsey-woolsey, red and blue; their white knitted stockings, with colored clocks, pulled well up over the leg; their square-toed shoes of tan-colored leather with black soles; and above all their head-dress,--a sort of tinsel horn overloaded with ribbons and lace, still worn by the women of Champagne and by the grenadiers of the Russian Imperial Guard,--proclaiming that they belonged to that class of rich tradesfolk occupying the middle ground between what servants call "a woman" and what they call "a lady." They wore neither rings nor gold crosses; and it was easy to see that this was not from poverty, but quite simply from fear of a fine. Their companion was attired in much the same style; but there was something in her appearance and manner which bespoke the country notary's wife. It was evident by the way in which her girdle was arranged high above her hips, that she had not been in Paris long; add to this a pleated gor get, knots of ribbon on her shoes, the fact that the stripes of her petticoat ran breadthwise and not lengthwise, and a thousand other enormities revolting to good taste.

  The first two walked with the gait peculiar to Parisian women showing Paris to their country friends. The country-woman held by the hand a big boy, who grasped in his hand a large wheaten cake. We regret that we must add that, owing to the severity of the season, his tongue did duty as a pocket-handkerchief.

  The child loitered ("non passibus oequis," as Virgil has it), and stumbled constantly, for which his mother scolded him well. True, he paid far more attention to the cake than to the pavement. Undoubtedly he had some grave reason for not biting it (the cake), for he contented himself with gazing affectionately at it. But his mother should have taken charge of the cake. It was cruel to make a Tantalus of the chubby child.

  But the three damsels (for the term "dame" was then reserved for noble ladies) were all talking at once.

  "Make haste, Damoiselle Mahiette," said the youngest of the three, who was also the biggest, to the country-woman. "I am mightily afraid we shall be too late; they told us at the Chatelet that he was to be taken directly to the pillory."

  "Nonsense! What do you mean, Damoiselle Oudarde Musnier?" replied the other Parisian. "He is to spend two hours in the pillory. We have plenty of time. Did you ever see any one pilloried, my dear Mahiette?"

  "Yes," said the country-woman, "at Rheims."

  "Pooh! What's your pillory at Rheims? A miserable cage, where they turn nothing but peasants! A fine sight, truly!"

  "Nothing but peasants!" said Mahiette, "in the Clothmarket! at Rheims! We've seen some very fine criminals there,--people who had killed both father and mother! Peasants, indeed! What do you take us for, Gervaise?"

  The country-lady was certainly on the verge of losing her temper in defense of her pillory. Fortunately the discreet Damoiselle Oudarde Musnier changed the subject in time:--

  "By-the-bye, Damoiselle Mahiette, what do you say to our Flemish ambassadors? Have you any as fine at Rheims?"

  "I confess," answered Mahiette, "that there is no place like Paris for seeing such Flemings as those."

  "Did you see among the embassy that great ambassador who is a hosier?" asked Oudarde.

  "Yes," responded Mahiette. "He looks like a regular Saturn."

  "And that fat one with the smooth face?" added Gervaise. "And that little fellow with small eyes and red lids, as ragged and hairy as a head of thistle?"

  "Their horses were the finest sight," said Oudarde, "dressed out in the fashion of their country."

  "Oh, my dear," interrupted the rustic Mahiette, assuming an air of superiority in her turn, "what would you say if you had seen, in 1461, at the coronation at Rheims, now eighteen years ago, the horses of the princes and of the king's escort? Housings and trappings of every description: some of damask cloth, of fine cloth of gold, trimmed with sable; others, of velvet, trimmed with ermines' tails; others, loaded down with goldsmiths' work and great gold and silver bells! And the money that it must have cost! And the lovely page-boys that rode on them!"

  "That does not alter the fact," drily responded Damoiselle Oudarde, "that the Flemings have very fine horses, and that they had a splendid supper last night given them by the Provost at the Hotel-de-Ville, where they were treated to sugar-plums, hippocras, spices, and other rarities."

  "What are you talking about, neighbor!" cried Gervaise. "It was at the Petit-Bourbon, with the Cardinal, that the Flemings supped."

  "Not at all. At the Hotel-de-Ville!"

  "Yes, indeed. At the Petit-Bourbon!"

  "So surely was it at the Hotel-de-Ville," returned Oudarde, sharply, "that Doctor Scourable made them a speech in Latin with which they seemed mightily pleased. It was my husband, who is one of the licensed copyists, who told me so."

  "So surely was it at the Petit-Bourbon," replied Gervaise, with no whit less of animation, "that I can give you a list of what the Cardinal's attorney treated them to: Twelve double quarts of hippocras, white, yellow, and red; twenty-four boxes of double-gilt Lyons marchpane; as many wax torches of two pounds each, and six half-casks of Beaune wine, red and white, the best to be found. I hope that's decisive. I have it from my husband, who is captain of fifty men in the Commonalty Hall, and who was only this morning comparing the Flemish ambassadors with those sent by Prester John and the Emperor of Trebizond, who came from Mesopotamia to Paris during the reign of the last king, and who had rings in their ears."

  "It is so true that they supped at the Hotel-de-Ville," replied Oudarde, but little moved by this display of eloquence, "that no one ever saw such an exhibition of meats and sugar-plums before."

  "But I tell you that they were served by Le Sec, one of the city guard, at the Petit-Bourbon, and that's what misled you."

  "At the Hotel-de-Ville, I say!"

  "At the Petit-Bourbon, my dear! For didn't they illuminate the word 'Hope,' which is written over the great entrance, with magical glasses?"

  "At the Hotel-de-Ville! at the Hotel-de-Ville! Don't I tell you that Husson-le-Voir played the flute?"

  "I tell you, no!"

  "I tell you, yes!"

  "And I tell you, no!"

  The good fat Oudarde was making ready to reply, and the quarrel might have come to blows, if Mahiette had not suddenly exclaimed, "Only see those people crowding together at the end of the
bridge! There's something in the midst of them, at which they're all looking."

  "Truly," said Gervaise, "I do hear the sound of a tambourine. I verily believe it's that little Smeralda playing her tricks with her goat. Come quick, Mahiette! Make haste and pull your boy along faster. You came here to see all the sights of Paris. Yesterday you saw the Flemings; today you must see the gipsy girl."

  "The gipsy," said Mahiette, turning back abruptly, and grasping her son's arm more firmly. "Heaven preserve us! She might steal my child! -Come, Eustache!"

  And she set out running along the quay towards the Place de Greve, until she had left the bridge far behind her. But the child, whom she dragged after her, stumbled, and fell upon his knees; she stopped, out of breath. Oudarde and Gervaise rejoined her.

  "That gipsy girl steal your child!" said Gervaise. "What a strange idea!"

  Mahiette shook her head with a pensive air.

  "The queer part of it is," observed Oudarde, "that the sachette has the same opinion of the gipsies."

  "What do you mean by the sachette?" said Mahiette.

  "Why!" said Oudarde, "Sister Gudule."

  "And who," returned Mahiette, "is Sister Gudule?"

  "You must indeed be from Rheims, not to know that!" replied Oudarde. "She is the recluse of the Rat-Hole."

  "What!" asked Mahiette, "the poor woman to whom we are carrying this cake?"

  Oudarde nodded.

  "Exactly so. You will see her presently at her window on the Place de Greve. She feels just as you do about those gipsy vagabonds who go about drumming on the tambourine and telling people's fortunes. No one knows what gave her such a horror of gipsies. But you, Mahiette,--why should you take to your heels in such haste at the mere sight of them?"

  "Oh," said Mahiette, clasping her child to her bosom, "I could not bear to have the same thing happen to me that happened to Paquette la Chantefleurie."