Chapter IV

Earthenware and Crystal

Day followed day. Calm gradually returned to the soul of la Esmeralda. Excess of grief, like excess of joy is a violent thing which lasts but a short time. The heart of man cannot remain long in one extremity. The gypsy had suffered so much, that nothing was left her but astonishment. Hope had returned to her.

Phoebus was alive; she was sure of it, she had seen him. To her the fact of Phoebus being alive was everything.

La Esmeralda did not think of the captain without bitterness, no doubt. No doubt it was terrible that he also should have been deceived; that he should have believed that impossible thing, that he could have conceived of a stab dealt by her who would have given a thousand lives for him. But, after all, she must not be too angry with him for it; had she not confessed her crime? Had she not yielded, weak woman that she was, to torture? The fault was entirely hers.

The gypsy sometimes thought of Quasimodo. He was the sole bond, the sole connection, the sole communication which remained to her with men, with the living.

She had left the whistle which he had given her lying on the ground. This did not prevent Quasimodo from making his appearance from time to time during the first few days. She did her best not to turn aside with too much repugnance when he came to bring her her basket of provisions or her jug of water.

Once he came at the moment when she was caressing Djali. He stood pensively for several minutes before this graceful group of the goat and the gypsy; at last he said, shaking his heavy and ill-formed head,—

“My misfortune is that I still resemble a man too much. I should like to be wholly a beast like that goat.”

She gazed at him in amazement.

He replied to the glance,—

“Oh! I well know why,” and he went away.

On another occasion he presented himself at the door of the cell (which he never entered) at the moment when la Esmeralda was singing an old Spanish ballad. At the sight of him, the young girl paused with an involuntary gesture of alarm. Quasimodo fell upon his knees and clasped his large, misshapen hands with a suppliant air. “Oh!” he said, sorrowfully, “continue, I implore you, and do not drive me away.” She did not wish to pain him, and resumed singing, trembling all over. Slowly, however, her terror disappeared, and she yielded herself wholly to the slow and melancholy air which she was singing. He remained on his knees with hands clasped, as in prayer.

On another occasion, he came to her with an awkward and timid air. “Listen,” he said, with an effort; “I have something to say to you.” She made him a sign that she was listening. Then he began to sigh, half opened his lips, appeared for a moment to be on the point of speaking, then he looked at her again, shook his head, and withdrew slowly, with his brow in his hand, leaving the gypsy stupefied. Among the grotesque personages sculptured on the wall, there was one to whom he was particularly attached, and with which he often seemed to exchange fraternal glances. Once the gypsy heard him saying to it,—

“Oh! Why am not I of stone, like you!”

One night, when she was not asleep, but was thinking of her handsome captain, she heard something breathing near her cell. She rose in alarm, and saw by the light of the moon, a shapeless mass lying across her door on the outside. It was Quasimodo asleep there upon the stones.

Chapter V

The Key to the Red Door

In the meantime, public rumor had informed the archdeacon of the miraculous manner in which the gypsy had been saved. When he learned it, he knew not what his sensations were. He had reconciled himself to la Esmeralda’s death. In that matter he was tranquil; he had reached the bottom of personal suffering.

To feel that she was alive, and Phoebus also, meant that tortures, shocks, alternatives, life, were beginning again. And Claude was weary of all this.

When he heard this news, he shut himself in his cell in the cloister. He closed his door against all, even against the bishop.

He passed whole days with his face close to the panes of his window. From that window, situated in the cloister, he could see la Esmeralda’s chamber. He often saw herself with her goat, sometimes with Quasimodo. He remarked the little attentions of the ugly deaf man, his obedience, his delicate and submissive ways with the gypsy. He recalled, for he had a good memory, and memory is the tormentor of the jealous, he recalled the singular look of the bellringer, bent on the dancer upon a certain evening. He asked himself what motive could have impelled Quasimodo to save her. Then he felt a jealousy which he could never have believed possible awakening within him. It upset him.

His nights were frightful. He turned and twisted on his couch at the thought that the dark-skinned maiden was so near him.

One night, among others, the visions of her heated his virgin and priestly blood so much, that he bit his pillow, leaped from his bed, and left his cell, lamp in hand, half naked, wild, his eyes aflame.

He knew where to find the key to the red door, which connected the cloister with the church, and he always had about him, as the reader knows, the key of the staircase leading to the towers.

Chapter VI

Continuation of the Key to the Red Door

That night, la Esmeralda had fallen asleep in her cell. She had already been asleep for some time, dreaming as always, of Phoebus, when it seemed to her that she heard a noise near her. She opened her eyes. The night was very dark. Nevertheless, she saw a figure gazing at her through the window; a lamp lighted up this apparition.

“Oh!” she said in a faint voice, “the priest!”

All her past unhappiness came back to her like a flash of lightning. She fell back on her bed, chilled.

A moment later she felt a touch along her body which made her shudder so that she straightened herself up in a sitting posture, wide awake and furious.

The priest had just slipped in beside her. He encircled her with both arms.

She tried to scream and could not.

“Begone, monster! Begone assassin!” she said, in a voice which was low and trembling with wrath and terror.

“Mercy! Mercy!” murmured the priest, pressing his lips to her shoulder.

She seized his bald head by its remnant of hair and tried to thrust aside his kisses as though they had been bites.

“Mercy!” repeated the unfortunate man. “If you but knew what my love for you is! ’Tis fire, melted lead, a thousand daggers in my heart.”

She stopped his two arms with superhuman force.

“Let me go,” she said, “or I will spit in your face!”

He released her. “Vilify me, strike me, be malicious! Do what you will! But have mercy! Love me!”

“Begone, demon!”

“Love me! Love me! Pity!” cried the poor priest returning her blows with caresses.

All at once she felt him stronger than herself.

“There must be an end to this!” he said, gnashing his teeth.

She was conquered, palpitating in his arms, and in his power. She felt a wanton hand straying over her. She made a last effort, and began to cry: “Help! Help! A vampire! A vampire!”

Nothing came. Djali alone was awake and bleating with anguish.

“Hush!” said the panting priest.

All at once, as she struggled and crawled on the floor, the gypsy’s hand came in contact with something cold and metallic—it was Quasimodo’s whistle. She seized it with a convulsive hope, raised it to her lips and blew with all the strength that she had left. The whistle gave a clear, piercing sound.

“What is that?” said the priest.

Almost at the same instant he felt himself raised by a vigorous arm. The cell was dark; he could not distinguish clearly who it was that held him thus.

The priest fancied that this was Quasimodo. He assumed that it could be no one but he.

In a moment, the priest was overthrown and a leaden knee rested on his breast.

From the angular imprint of that knee he recognized Quasimodo; but what was to be done? How could he make the other recognize him? The darkness rendered the deaf man blind.

He was lost. The young girl, pitiless as an enraged tigress, did not intervene to save him. The knife was approaching his head; the moment was critical. All at once, his adversary seemed stricken with hesitation.

“No blood on her!” he said in a dull voice.

It was, in fact, Quasimodo’s voice.

Then the priest felt a large hand dragging him feet first out of the cell; it was there that he was to die. Fortunately for him, the moon had risen a few moments before.

Quasimodo looked him full in the face, a trembling seized him, and he released the priest and shrank back.

The gypsy, who had advanced to the threshold of her cell, beheld with surprise their roles abruptly changed. It was now the priest who menaced, Quasimodo who was the suppliant.

The priest, who was overwhelming the deaf man with gestures of wrath and reproach, made the latter a violent sign to retire.

The deaf man dropped his head, then he came and knelt at the gypsy’s door,—“Monseigneur,” he said, in a grave and resigned voice, “you shall do all that you please afterwards, but kill me first.”

So saying, he presented his knife to the priest. The priest, beside himself, was about to seize it. But the young girl was quicker than he; she wrenched the knife from Quasimodo’s hands and burst into a frantic laugh,—“Approach,” she said to the priest.

She held the blade high. The priest remained undecided.

She would certainly have struck him.

Then she added with a pitiless expression, well aware that she was about to pierce the priest’s heart with thousands of red-hot irons,—

“Ah! I know that Phoebus is not dead!”

The priest overturned Quasimodo on the floor with a kick, and, quivering with rage, darted back to the staircase.

When he was gone, Quasimodo picked up the whistle which had just saved the gypsy.

“It was getting rusty,” he said, as he handed it back to her; then he left her alone.

The young girl, deeply agitated by this violent scene, fell back exhausted on her bed, and began to sob and weep.

The priest had made his way back to his cell.

It was settled. Dom Claude was jealous of Quasimodo!

He repeated with a thoughtful air his fatal words: “No one shall have her.”