“Oh,” said the girl, without raising her eyes, “do not despise me, my lord Phœbus! I feel that I am doing very wrong.”
“Despise you, pretty child!” replied the officer with an air of extreme gallantry,—“despise you! By God’s passion! and why?”
“For coming here with you.”
“On that point, my beauty, we are not agreed. I should not despise you, but hate you.”
The young girl gazed at him in affright. “Hate me! What have I done?”
“For requiring so much urging.”
“Alas!” said she, “that is because I am breaking a sacred vow. I shall never find my parents! The amulet will lose its virtue; but what does that matter? Why should I need father or mother now?”
So saying, she fixed upon the captain her large dark eyes, moist with love and joy.
“The Devil take me if I understand you!” exclaimed Phoebus.
Esmeralda was silent for a moment, then a tear fell from her eyes, a sigh from her lips, and she said, “Oh, my lord, I love you!”
There was such an odor of chastity, such a charm of virtue about the young girl, that Phoebus did not feel wholly at his ease with her. But this speech emboldened him. “You love me!” said he, with transport; and he threw his arm around the gipsy’s waist. He had only waited for such an opportunity.
The priest saw him, and tested with the tip of his finger the point of a dagger hidden in his bosom.
“Phoebus,” continued the gipsy girl, gently removing the captain’s stubborn hands from her girdle, “you are good, you are generous, you are kind; you saved me—me, who am but a poor gipsy foundling. I have long dreamed of an officer who should save my life. It was of you I dreamed before I ever knew you, my Phoebus; the image of my dreams had a gorgeous uniform like yours, a grand air, a sword. Your name is Phœbus; it is a beautiful name. I love your name; I love your sword. Draw your sword, Phoebus, and let me see it.”
“Child!” said the captain; and he unsheathed his rapier with a smile.
The gipsy girl studied the handle, the blade, examined the letters on the hilt with adorable curiosity, and kissed the sword, as she said,—
“You are a brave man’s sword. I love my captain.”
Phœbus again took advantage of the situation to imprint on her lovely bent neck a kiss which made the girl start up as red as a cherry. The priest ground his teeth in the darkness at the sight.
“Phoebus,” resumed the gipsy, “let me talk to you. Walk about a little, so that I may have a good look at you, and hear your spurs jingle. How handsome you are!”
The captain rose to gratify her, while he scolded her with a smile of satisfaction:—
“What a child you are! By the way, my charmer, did you ever see me in my full dress uniform?”
“Alas, no!” she replied.
“Well, that is really fine!”
Phoebus came back and sat down beside her, but much nearer than before.
“Look here, my dear—”
“The gipsy gave him a few little taps on the lips with her pretty hand, with a childish playfulness full of gaiety and grace.
“No, no, I will not 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 before her. “My body, my soul, my blood, are yours. I am all yours,—all yours. I love you, and never loved any one but you.”
The captain had so often repeated this phrase on many a similar occasion, that he uttered it in a breath, without making a single mistake. At this passionate declaration the gipsy turned towards the dirty ceiling, which took the place of heaven, a look of angelic happiness. “Oh,” she murmured, “at such a moment one might well wish to die!”
Phoebus thought “the moment” a good one to steal another kiss, which inflicted fresh torment on the wretched archdeacon in his lair.
“To die?” exclaimed the amorous captain. “What are you talking about, my lovely angel? It is just the time to live, or Jupiter is but a paltry knave! Die at the beginning of such a pleasant thing! By Saint Luke’s face, what a joke! that would never do! Listen, my dear Similar—Esmenarda—Forgive me! but you have such a vastly outlandish name that I can never get it straight. I’m forever getting entangled in it.”
“Good Heavens!” said the poor girl, “and I thought the name pretty just for its oddness! But if you don’t like it, I am quite ready to change it for anything you please.”
“Ah, do not cry for such a trifle, my dearest! It’s a name to which one has to get used, that’s all. Once I have learned it by heart, it will be all right. Now listen, my dear Similar; I adore you passionately. I love you to such a degree that it is really marvelous. I know a little girl who is bursting with rage about it—”
The jealous damsel cut him short: “Who is she?”
“What difference does that make to us?” said Phœbus; “do you love me?”
“Oh!” said she.
“Well, then, that is all that is necessary. You shall see how I love you, too. May the great devil Neptune bestride me if I do not make you the happiest creature in the world. We will have a pretty little room somewhere! I will review my archers under your windows. They are all mounted, and make nothing of Captain Mignon’s men. There are spear-men, cross-bowmen, and culverin men. I will take you to see the great Paris musters at the Grange de Rully. It’s a very fine sight,—eighty thousand helmeted heads; thirty thousand bright harnesses, coats of mail, or brigandines; sixty-seven banners of the various guilds; the standards of the Parliament, the Chamber of Accounts, the Treasury, the Assistants in the Mint; in fact, the devil’s own train! I will take you to see the lions at the king’s palace, which are wild beasts; all the women like that.”
For some moments the young girl, wrapped in her own delightful thoughts, had been dreaming to the sound of his voice, without heeding the meaning of his words.
“Oh, how happy you will be!” continued the captain; and at the same time he gently unclasped the gipsy’s belt.
“What are you doing?” said she, quickly. This act of violence startled her from her reverie.
“Nothing,” answered Phoebus; “I was merely saying that you must give up this ridiculous mountebank dress when you come to live with me.”
“When I live with you, my Phœbus!” said the young girl, tenderly.
She again became pensive and silent.
The captain, made bold by her gentleness, took her by the waist without any resistance on her part, then began noiselessly to unlace the poor child’s bodice, and so disarranged her neckerchief that the panting priest saw the gipsy’s lovely shoulder issue from the gauze, plump and brown, like the moon rising through the mists on the horizon.
The young girl let Phoebus have his way. She did not seem conscious of what he was doing. The bold captain’s eyes sparkled.
All at once she turned towards him.
“Phœbus,” she said, with a look of infinite love, “instruct me in your religion.”
“My religion!” cried the captain, bursting into laughter. “I instruct you in my religion! Thunder and guns! What do you want with my religion?”
“To be married to you,” she answered.
The captain’s face assumed an expression of mingled surprise, scorn, recklessness, and evil passion.
“Nonsense!” said he. “Why should we marry?”
The gipsy turned pale, and let her head sink sadly on her breast.
“My pretty love,” tenderly added Phoebus, “what are all these foolish ideas? Marriage is nothing! Is any one less loving for not having spouted a little Latin in some priest’s shop?”
So saying in his sweetest voice, he approached extremely near the gipsy girl; his caressing hands had resumed their place around the lithe, slender waist, and his eye kindled more and more, and everything showed that Master Phoebus was about to enjoy one of those moments in which Jupiter himself commits so many follies that the good Homer is obliged to call in a cloud to help him.
But Dom Claude saw all. The door was made of decayed pun cheon staves, which left ample room between them for the passage of his hawk-like glance. The brown-skinned, broad-shouldered priest, hitherto condemned to the austere rule of the convent, shuddered and burned at this scene of love, darkness, and passion.
The young and lovely girl, her garments in disorder abandoning herself to this ardent young man, made his veins run molten lead. An extraordinary agitation shook him; his eye sought, with lustful desire, to penetrate beneath all these unfastened pins. Any one who had at this moment seen the face of the unhappy man glued to the worm-eaten bars, might have thought he saw a tiger glaring from his cage at some jackal devouring a gazelle. His pupils glowed like a candle through the cracks of the door.
Suddenly, with a rapid motion, Phoebus removed the gipsy’s neckerchief. The poor child, who still sat pale and dreamy, sprang up with a start; she retreated hastily from the enterprising officer, and, glancing at her bare throat and shoulders, red, confused, and dumb with shame, she crossed her lovely arms over her bosom to cover it. But for the flame which mantled her cheeks, any one seeing her thus silent and motionless, might have thought her a statue of Modesty. Her eyes were downcast.
Meantime the captain’s action had exposed the mysterious amulet which she wore about her neck.
“What’s this?” said he, seizing this pretext to draw nearer to the beautiful creature whom he had alarmed.
“Do not touch it!” replied she, quickly, “it is my protector. It will help me to find my family, if I am still worthy of it. Oh, leave me, Mr. Captain! My mother! my poor mother! Mother, where are you? Help me now! For Heaven’s sake, Mr. Phoebus, give me back my neckerchief!”
Phoebus drew back, and said in a cold tone,—
“Oh, young lady! I see very plainly that you do not love me!”
“I do not love him!” exclaimed the unhappy creature, and at the same time she hung upon the captain, whom she drew to a seat by her side. “I not love you, my Phoebus? How can you say so, you wicked man, to break my heart? Oh, come! take me, take everything! Do with me what you will; I am yours. What do I care for the amulet! What is my mother to me now! You are my mother, for I love you! Phoebus, my adored Phoebus, do you see me? It is I, look at me; it is that little girl whom you cannot repulse, who comes,—who comes herself in search of you. My soul, my life, my person, are yours; I am all yours, my captain. No, then, we will not marry; it would trouble you; and what am I? A miserable child of the gutter; while you, my Phoebus, are a gentleman. A fine thing, truly,—a dancing-girl to marry an officer! I was mad. No, Phoebus, no; I will be your mistress, your amusement, your pleasure, when you will; always yours. I am only made for that,—to be soiled, despised, dishonored; but what matter? I shall be loved. I shall be the proudest and happiest of women. And when I grow old or ugly, Phoebus, when I am no longer fit to love you, my lord, you will still suffer me to serve you. Others may embroider your scarves; but I, your servant, will take care of them. You will let me polish your spurs, brush your coat, dust your riding-boots. You will have this much pity for me, my Phoebus, will you not? Meantime, take me! There, Phoebus, all this belongs to you, only love me. We gipsy girls need nothing else,—nothing but air and love.”
As she said this, she flung her arms around the officer’s neck; she gazed up into his face imploringly, and with a lovely smile through her tears. Her delicate throat rubbed against his cloth doublet with its rough embroideries. She threw herself across his lap, her beautiful body half revealed. The enraptured captain pressed his burning lips to those beautiful brown shoulders. The young girl, her eyes fixed on the ceiling, her head thrown back, shuddered and trembled at his kiss.
All at once above the head of Phœbus she saw another head,—a livid, green, convulsed face, with the look of a soul in torment; beside this face there was a hand which held a dagger. It was the face and the hand of the priest; he had broken open the door, and he was there. Phoebus could not see him. The girl was motionless, frozen, mute, at the frightful apparition, like a dove which chances to raise its head at the instant when the sea-eagle glares into its nest with fiery eyes.
She could not even utter a cry. She saw the dagger descend upon Phœbus and rise again reeking.
“Malediction!” said the captain; and he fell.
She fainted.
As her eyes closed, as all consciousness left her, she fancied she felt a fiery touch upon her lips, a kiss more burning than the torturer’s red-hot iron.
When she recovered her senses she was surrounded by the soldiers of the watch, some of whom were just carrying off the captain bathed in his own blood; the priest had vanished; the window at the back of the room, which opened upon the river, was wide open; some one picked up a cloak which he supposed belonged to the officer, and she heard the soldiers say,—
“She is a sorceress who has stabbed a captain.”
BOOK EIGHT
CHAPTER I
The Crown Piece Changed to a Dry Leaf
G
ringoire and the entire Court of Miracles were in a terrible state of anxiety. Esmeralda had not been heard from for a whole long month, which greatly grieved the Duke of Egypt and his friends the Vagrants; nor did any one know what had become of her goat, which redoubled Gringoire’s grief. One night the gipsy girl had disappeared, and since then had given no sign of life. All search for her was vain. Some malicious sham epileptics told Gringoire that they had met her that same evening near the Pont Saint-Michel, walking with an officer; but this husband, after the fashion of Bohemia, was an incredulous philosopher, and besides, he knew better than any one else how chaste his wife was. He had been able to judge what invincible modesty resulted from the two combined virtues of the amulet and the gipsy, and he had made a mathematical calculation of the resistance of that chastity multiplied into itself. He was therefore quite easy on this point.