Hunchback of Notre Dame (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (69 page)

The oath was a tremendous one; Louis XI had never but twice in his life sworn by the cross of Saint-Lô.

Olivier opened his lips to answer.

“On your knees!” fiercely interrupted the king. “Tristan, watch this man!”

Olivier knelt, and said coldly,—

“Sire, a witch was condemned to death by your parliamentary court. She took refuge in Notre-Dame. The people desire to take her thence by force. The provost and the captain of the watch, who have just come from the scene of the insurrection, are here to contradict me if I speak not truly. The people are besieging Notre-Dame.”

“Indeed!” said the king in a low voice, pale and trembling with rage. “Notre-Dame! So they lay siege to my good mistress, Our Lady, in her own cathedral! Rise, Olivier; you are right. I give you Simon Radin’s office. You are right; it is I whom they attack. The witch is in the safe-keeping of the church; the church is in my safe-keeping; and I was foolish enough to believe that they were assault ing the provost. It is myself!”
¹⁹

Then, made young by fury, he began to pace the floor with hasty strides. He laughed no longer; he was terrible to behold; he came and went; the fox was turned to a hyæna. He seemed to have lost all power of speech; his lips moved, and his fleshless hands were clinched. All at once he raised his head, his hollow eye seemed filled with light, and his voice flashed forth like a clarion:—

“Do your work well, Tristan! Do your work well with these scoundrels! Go, Tristan my friend; kill! kill!”

This outburst over, he sat down again, and said with cold and concentrated wrath,—

“Here, Tristan! There are with us in this Bastille Viscount de Cifs fifty lances, making three hundred horse: take them. There is also M. de Chateaupers’ company of archers of our ordnance: take them. You are provost-marshal; you have your own men: take them. At the Hotel Saint-Pol you will find forty archers of the Dauphin’s new guard: take them. And with all these soldiers you will hasten to Notre-Dame. Ah, you commoners of Paris, so you would attack the Crown of France, the sanctity of Notre-Dame, and the peace of this republic! Exterminate them, Tristan! exterminate them! and let not one escape but for Montfaucon.”

Tristan bowed. “It is well, Sire.”

After a pause he added, “And what shall I do with the witch?”

This question gave the king food for thought.

“Ah,” said he, “the witch! D‘Estouteville, what was the people’s pleasure in regard to her?”

“Sire,” replied the provost of Paris, “I fancy that as the people desire to wrest her from her shelter in Notre-Dame, it is her lack of punishment that offends them, and they propose to hang her.”

The king seemed to muse deeply; then, addressing Tristan l‘Hermite: “Very well, compere; exterminate the people, and hang the witch!”

“That’s it,” whispered Rym to Coppenole, “punish the people for their purpose, and then fulfil that purpose.”

“It is well, Sire,” answered Tristan. “If the witch be still in Notre-Dame, shall we disregard the sanctuary, and take her thence?”

“By the Rood! Sanctuary!” said the king, scratching his ear. “And yet this woman must be hanged.”

Here, as if struck by a sudden thought, he fell upon his knees before his chair, doffed his hat, put it on the seat, and gazing devoutly at one of the leaden images with which it was loaded, he exclaimed, with clasped hands: “Oh, Our Lady of Paris, my gracious patroness, pardon me! I will only do it this once. This criminal must be punished. I assure you, Holy Virgin, my good mistress, that she is a witch, and unworthy of your generous protection. You know, madame, that many very pious princes have infringed upon the privileges of the Church for the glory of God and the needs of the State. Saint Hugh, Bishop of England, allowed King Edward to capture a magician in his church. Saint Louis of France, my master, for the same purpose violated the church of St. Paul; and Alphonso, son of the King of Jerusalem, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre itself. Forgive me this once, Our Lady of Paris! I will never do so again, and I will give you a fine new silver statue, like the one I gave Our Lady of Ecouys last year. Amen.”

He. made the sign of the cross, rose, put on his hat, and said to Tristan,—

“Make haste, friend; take Châteaupers with you. Ring the alarm! Quell the mob! Hang the witch! That is all. And I expect you to pay the costs of hanging. You will render me an account thereof. Come, Olivier, I shall not go to bed tonight; shave me.”

Tristan l‘Hermite bowed, and left the room. Then the king dismissed Rym and Coppenole with a gesture, and the words,—

“God keep you, my good Flemish friends. Go, take a little rest; the night is passing, and we are nearer morn than evening.”

Both retired, and on reaching their apartments under the escort of the captain of the Bastille, Coppenole said to Guillaume Rym,—

“Ahem! I have had enough of this coughing king. I have seen Charles of Burgundy drunk, and he was not so bad as Louis XI sick.”

“Master Jacques,” replied Rym, “‘tis because the wine of kings is less cruel than their tisane.”

O
n leaving the Bastille, Gringoire ran down the Rue Saint-Antoine with the speed of a runaway horse. On reaching the Porte Baudoyer, he walked straight up to the stone cross in the middle of the square, as if he had been able to distinguish in the darkness the figure of a man in a black dress and cowl, who sat upon the steps of the cross.

“Is it you, master?” said Gringoire.

The black figure rose.

“‘Sdeath! You make my blood boil, Gringoire. The man on the tower of Saint-Gervais has just cried half-past one.”

“Oh,” rejoined Gringoire, “it is not my fault, but that of the watch and the king. I have had a narrow escape. I always just miss being hanged; it is my fate.”

“You just miss everything,” said the other; “but make haste. Have you the password?”

“Only fancy, master, that I have seen the king! I have just left him. He wears fustian breeches. It was quite an adventure.”

“Oh, you spinner of words! What do I care for your adventure? Have you the watchword of the Vagrants?”

“I have; never fear. It is ‘the Chive in the Cly.”’ “Good! Otherwise we could not make our way to the church. The Vagrants block the streets. Luckily, it appears that they met with considerable resistance. We may yet be there in time.”

“Yes, master; but how are we to get into Notre-Dame?”

“I have the key to the towers.”

“And how shall we get out?”

“There is a small door, behind the cloisters, which opens upon the Terrain, and thence to the water. I have the key, and I moored a boat there this morning.”

“I had a pretty escape from being hanged!” repeated Gringoire.

“Come, be quick!” said the other.

Both went hurriedly towards the City.

T
he reader may perhaps recall the critical situation in which we left Quasimodo. The brave deaf man, assailed on every hand, had lost, if not all courage, at least all hope of saving not himself (he did not think of himself), but the gipsy. He ran frantically up and down the gallery. Notre-Dame was about to be captured by the Vagrants. Suddenly, the gallop of horses filled the neighboring streets, and with a long train of torches and a broad column of horsemen riding at full speed with lances lowered, the furious sound burst into the square like a whirlwind:—

“France! France! Hew down the clodpolls! Châteaupers to the rescue! Provosty! provosty!”

The terrified Vagrants wheeled about.

Quasimodo, who heard nothing, saw the naked swords, the torches, the pike-heads, the horsemen, at whose head he recognized Captain Phœbus. He saw the confusion of the Vagrants,—the alarm of some, the consternation of the stoutest-hearted,—and he derived so much strength from this unexpected succor, that he hurled from the church the foremost assailants, who were already bestriding the gallery rails.

The king’s troops had actually arrived.

The Vagrants fought bravely; they defended themselves desperately. Taken in flank from the Rue Saint-Pierre-aux-Bœufs, and in the rear from the Rue du Parvis, driven close against Notre-Dame, which they were still assailing, and which Quasimodo was defending, at once besiegers and besieged, they were in the singular situation in which Count Henro d‘Harcourt afterwards found himself at the famous siege of Turin, in 1640,—between Prince Thomas of Savoy, whom he was besieging, and the Marquis de Leganez, who was blockading him. “Taurinum
obsessor
idem et
obsessus
,”
^dy
as his epitaph says.

The conflict was frightful. As Père Mathieu puts it, “wolf’s flesh needs dog’s teeth.” The king’s cavaliers, among whom Phœbus de Châteaupers comported himself most valiantly, gave no quarter, and the edge of the sword slew those who escaped the thrust of the lance. The Vagrants, ill-armed, foamed and bit. Men, women, and children flung themselves upon the cruppers and breast-pieces of the horses, and clung to them like cats with tooth and nail. Others blinded the archers by blows of their torches; others again struck iron hooks into the riders’ necks and pulled them down, cutting into pieces those who fell.

One man had a large shining scythe, with which he mowed the legs of the horses. It was a frightful sight. He sang a nasal song, and swept his scythe ceaselessly to and fro. At every stroke he cut a broad swath of dismembered limbs. He advanced thus into the thickest of the cavalry, with the calm deliberation, swaying of the head, and regular breathing of a mower cutting down a field of grain. This was Clopin Trouillefou. A shot from an arquebus at last laid him low.

Meantime, windows were again opened. The neighbors, hearing the battle-shouts of the king’s men, joined in the skirmish, and from every story bullets rained upon the Vagrants. The square was filled with thick smoke, which the flash of musketry streaked with fire. The front of Notre-Dame was vaguely visible through it, and the decrepit hospital the Hôtel-Dieu, with a few wan patients looking down from the top of its roof dotted with dormer-windows.

At last the Vagrants yielded. Exhaustion, lack of proper arms, the terror caused by the surprise, the musketry from the windows, the brave onslaught of the king’s men, all combined to crush them. They broke through the enemy’s ranks, and fled in every direction, leaving the square heaped with corpses.

When Quasimodo, who had not stopped fighting for a single instant, saw this rout, he fell upon his knees and raised his hands to heaven; then, mad with joy, he ran, he climbed with the swift motion of a bird to that little cell, all access to which he had so intrepidly defended. He had but one thought now: that was, to kneel before her whom he had saved for the second time.

When he entered the cell he found it empty.

W
hen the Vagrants attacked the church, Esmeralda was asleep.

Soon the ever-increasing noise about the building, and the anxious bleating of her goat, which waked before she did, roused her from her slumbers. She sat up, listened, looked about; then, alarmed by the light and commotion, hurried from her cell to see what it all meant. The aspect of the square, the vision which she beheld, the disorder and confusion of this night attack, the hideous rabble bounding hither and thither like an army of frogs half seen in the darkness, the croaking of the hoarse mob, the few red torches moving and dancing in the darkness like will-o‘-the-wisps sporting on the misty surface of a marsh,—the whole scene produced upon her the effect of a weird battle waged by the phantoms of the Witches’ Sabbath and the stone monsters of the church. Imbued from infancy with the superstitious notions of the gipsy tribe, her first thought was that she had surprised the strange beings of the night in their sorceries. Thus she ran back to her cell in affright to hide her head, and implore her pillow to send her some less horrid nightmare.

Little by little, however, the first fumes of fear vanished; from the ever-increasing tumult, and from various other tokens of reality, she felt that she was beset, not by specters, but by human beings. Then her terror, without being augmented, changed its nature. She reflected upon the possibility of a popular revolt to tear her from her refuge. The idea of again losing life, hope, and Phoebus, whom she still hoped to win in the future, her own absolute defenselessness, all flight cut off, no help at hand, her forlorn condition, her isolation,—these thoughts and countless others overwhelmed her. She fell upon her knees, her face buried in the bed-clothes, her hands clasped above her head, full of agony and apprehension, and, gipsy, pagan, and idolater though she was, she began with sobs to entreat mercy of the good Christian God, and to pray to her hostess, Our Lady. For, believe in nothing though one may, there are moments in life when one belongs to the creed of whatever church is nearest.

She lay thus prostrate for a very long time, trembling indeed, far more than she prayed, chilled by the ever-advancing breath of that frantic mob, wholly ignorant of the meaning of their unbridled rage, knowing not what was on foot, what was being done, what object that throng had in view, but foreseeing some terrible issue.

In the midst of her anguish she heard steps close at hand. She turned. Two men, one of whom carried a lantern, entered her cell. She uttered a faint shriek.

“Fear nothing,” said a voice which was not unknown to her; “it is I.”

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Pierre Gringoire.”

That name calmed her fears. She raised her eyes, and saw that it was indeed the poet; but beside him stood a black figure veiled from head to foot, which silenced her.

“Ah!” replied Gringoire in reproachful tones, “Djali knew me before you did!”