Chapter VI

A Bridal Night

A few moments later our poet found himself in a tiny arched chamber, very cosy, very warm, and alone with a pretty girl. The adventure smacked of enchantment.

The young girl did not appear to pay any attention to him. At last she came and seated herself near the table.

“So this,” he said to himself, “is la Esmeralda! a street dancer!”

He stepped up to the young girl. She drew back.

“What do you want of me?” said she.

“Can you ask me, adorable Esmeralda?” replied Gringoire.

The gypsy opened her great eyes. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“What!” resumed Gringoire; “am I not thine, sweet friend, art thou not mine?”

And, quite ingenuously, he clasped her waist.

The gypsy’s corsage slipped through his hands like the skin of an eel. She bounded from one end of the tiny room to the other. At the same time, the white goat placed itself in front of her, bristling with two pretty horns, gilded and very sharp.

The gypsy broke the silence on her side.

“You must be a very bold knave!”

“Pardon, mademoiselle,” said Gringoire, with a smile. “But why did you take me for your husband?”

“Should I have allowed you to be hanged?”

“So,” said the poet, somewhat disappointed in his amorous hopes. “You had no other idea in marrying me than to save me from the gibbet?”

“And what other idea did you suppose that I had?”

Gringoire bit his lips.

“Mademoiselle Esmeralda,” said the poet, “let us come to terms. I swear to you, upon my share of Paradise, not to approach you without your leave and permission, but do give me some supper.”

The gypsy did not reply. She drew up her head like a bird, then burst out laughing. A moment later, there stood upon the table a loaf of rye bread, a slice of bacon, some wrinkled apples and a jug of beer. Gringoire began to eat eagerly.

The young girl seated opposite him, watched him in silence, visibly preoccupied with another thought, at which she smiled from time to time, while her soft hand caressed the intelligent head of the goat, gently pressed between her knees.

“You do not eat, Mademoiselle Esmeralda?”

She replied by a negative sign of the head.

The young girl’s mind was elsewhere, and Gringoire’s voice had not the power to recall it. Fortunately, the goat interfered. She began to pull her mistress gently by the sleeve.

“What dost thou want, Djali?” said the gypsy.

“She is hungry,” said Gringoire, charmed to enter into conversation. Esmeralda began to crumble some bread, which Djali ate gracefully from the hollow of her hand.

Moreover, Gringoire did not give her time to resume her revery.

“So you don’t want me for your husband?”

The young girl looked at him intently, and said, “No.”

“For your lover?” went on Gringoire.

She pouted, and replied, “No.”

“For your friend?” pursued Gringoire.

She gazed fixedly at him again, and said, after a momentary reflection, “Perhaps.”

This “perhaps” emboldened Gringoire.

“Do you know what friendship is?” he asked.

“Yes,” replied the gypsy; “it is to be brother and sister; two souls which touch without mingling, two fingers on one hand.”

“And love?” pursued Gringoire.

“Oh! love!” said she, and her voice trembled, and her eye beamed. “That is to be two and to be but one.”

Gringoire continued,—

“What must one be then, in order to please you?”

“A man.”

“And I—” said he, “what, then, am I?”

“A man has a helmet on his head, a sword in his hand, and golden spurs on his heels.”

“Good,” said Gringoire, “without a horse, no man. Do you love any one?”

“As a lover?—”

“Yes.”

She remained thoughtful for a moment, then said with a peculiar expression: “That I shall know soon.”

“Why not this evening?” resumed the poet tenderly. “Why not me?”

She cast a grave glance upon him and said,—

“I can never love a man who cannot protect me.”

Gringoire colored, and took the hint. It was evident that the young girl was alluding to the slight assistance which he had rendered her in the critical situation in which she had found herself two hours previously.

“How did you contrive to escape from the claws of Quasimodo?”

This question made the gypsy shudder.

“Oh! the horrible hunchback,” said she, hiding her face in her hands.

“Horrible, in truth,” said Gringoire, who clung to his idea; “but how did you manage to escape him?”

La Esmeralda smiled, sighed, and remained silent.

“Do you know why he followed you?” began Gringoire again.

“I don’t know,” said the young girl, and she added hastily, “but you were following me also, why were you following me?”

“In good faith,” responded Gringoire, “I don’t know either.”

The gypsy began to caress Djali.

“That’s a pretty animal of yours,” said Gringoire.

“She is my sister,” she answered.

“What is the meaning of the words, la Esmeralda?”

“I don’t know,” said she.

“To what language do they belong?”

“They are Egyptian, I think.”

“I suspected as much,” said Gringoire, “you are not a native of France?”

“I don’t know.”

“At what age did you come to France?”

“When I was very young.”

“And when to Paris?”

“Last year.”

She made her customary pretty grimace. “I don’t even know your name.”

“My name? If you want it, here it is,—Pierre Gringoire.”

“I know a prettier one,” said she.

“Naughty girl!” retorted the poet. “Never mind, you shall not provoke me.”

Girl’s eyes were fixed on the ground.

“Phoebus,” she said in a low voice. Then, turning towards the poet, “Phoebus,—what does that mean?”

“It is a Latin word which means sun.”

“Sun!” she repeated.

“It is the name of a handsome archer, who was a god,” added Gringoire.

“A god!” repeated the gypsy, and there was something pensive and passionate in her tone.

At that moment, one of her bracelets became unfastened and fell. Gringoire stooped quickly to pick it up; when he straightened up, the young girl and the goat had disappeared. He heard the sound of a door bolt.

“Has she left me a bed, at least?” said our philosopher.

He made the tour of his cell. There was no piece of furniture adapted to sleeping purposes, except a tolerably long wooden coffer.

Book Third

Chapter I

Good Souls

Sixteen years previous to when this story takes place, one fine morning, on Quasimodo Sunday, a living creature had been deposited, after mass, in the church of Notre-Dame, on the wooden bed securely fixed in the vestibule on the left.

That appeared to excite the curiosity of the numerous group which had congregated about the wooden bed. The group was formed for the most part of women.

In the first row, and among those who were most bent over the bed, four were noticeable, who, from their clothes, were recognizable as attached to some devout sisterhood. They were Agnès la Herme, Jehanne de la Tarme, Henriette la Gaultière, Gauchère la Violette, all four widows, all four dames of the Chapel Étienne Haudry.

“What is this, sister?” said Agnès to Gauchère, gazing at the little creature.

“What is to become of us,” said Jehanne, “if that is the way children are made now?”

“’Tis not a child, Agnès.”

“’Tis an abortion of a monkey,” remarked Gauchère.

“’Tis a miracle,” interposed Henriette la Gaultière.

“He yells loud enough to deafen a chanter,” continued Gauchère.

“I imagine,” said Agnès la Herme, “that it is a beast, an animal,—something not Christian, in short, which ought to be thrown into the fire or into the water.”

It was, in fact, not a new-born child. It was a very angular and very lively little mass. Its head was deformed enough; one beheld only a forest of red hair, one eye, a mouth, and teeth. The eye wept, the mouth cried, and the teeth seemed to ask only to be allowed to bite.

Many people stopped to see the child. Among them was a young priest. He had been listening for everyone who stopped for a while. He had a severe face, with a large brow, and a profound glance. Eventually, he thrust the crowd silently aside, and proclaimed that he would be the one to adopt the child.

He took it in his cassock and carried it off. The spectators followed him with frightened glances. A moment later, he had disappeared through the door, which led from the church to the cloister.

When the first surprise was over, one of the spectators bent down to the ear of another,—

“I told you so, sister,—that young clerk, Monsieur Claude Frollo, is a sorcerer.”

Chapter II

Claude Frollo

In fact, Claude Frollo was no common person.

He belonged to one of those middle-class families which were called the high bourgeoise or the petty nobility.

He had been destined from infancy, by his parents, to the ecclesiastical profession. He had been taught to read in Latin; he had been trained to keep his eyes on the ground and to speak low. While still a child, his father had cloistered him in the college of Torchi in the University.

Frollo was a sad, grave, serious child, who studied ardently, and learned quickly. Thus, at sixteen years of age, he might have held his own against a father of the church in mystical theology; in canonical theology, against a father of the councils; in scholastic theology, against a doctor of Sorbonne.

Theology conquered, he had plunged into decretals. Then he flung himself upon medicine, on the liberal arts. At the age of eighteen, he had made his way through the four faculties; it seemed to the young man that life had but one sole object: learning.

The excessive heat of the summer of 1466 caused that grand outburst of the plague which carried off more than forty thousand souls in Paris. The rumor spread in the University that the Rue Tirechappe was especially devastated by it. It was there that Claude’s parents resided. The young scholar rushed in great alarm to the paternal mansion. When he entered it, he found that both father and mother had died on the preceding day. A very young brother of his, was still alive and crying abandoned in his cradle. This was all that remained to Claude of his family. Up to that moment, he had lived only in science; he now began to live in life.

This catastrophe was a crisis in Claude’s existence. Orphaned, the eldest, head of the family at the age of nineteen, he felt himself rudely recalled from school to the realities of this world. Then, moved with pity, he was seized with passion and devotion towards the child, his brother.

This young brother, without mother or father, this little child which had fallen abruptly from heaven into his arms, made a new man of him. He threw himself into the love for his little Jehan with the passion of a character already profound, ardent, concentrated; that poor frail creature, pretty, fair-haired, rosy, and curly, touched him to the bottom of his heart. He was more than a brother to the child; he became a mother to him.

Little Jehan had lost his mother while he was still at the breast; Claude gave him to a nurse. There was a miller’s wife there who was nursing a fine child; it was not far from the university, and Claude carried the little Jehan to her in his own arms.

From that time forth, feeling that he had a burden to bear, he took life very seriously. The thought of his little brother became not only his recreation, but the object of his studies. He resolved to consecrate himself entirely to a future for which he was responsible in the sight of God, and never to have any other wife, any other child than the happiness and fortune of his brother. At the age of twenty, he was a priest, and served as the youngest of the chaplains of Notre-Dame.

This mixture of learning and austerity, so rare at his age, had promptly acquired for him the respect and admiration of the monastery.

It was at the moment when he was returning, on Quasimodo day, from saying his mass at the Altar of the Lazy, that his attention had been attracted by the group of old women chattering around the bed for foundlings.

Then it was that he approached the unhappy little creature, which was so hated and so menaced. That distress, that deformity, that abandonment, the thought of his young brother, the idea which suddenly occurred to him, that if he were to die, his dear little Jehan might also be flung miserably on the plank for foundlings,—all this had gone to his heart simultaneously; a great pity had moved in him, and he had carried off the child.

When he removed the child from the sack, he found it greatly deformed. The poor little wretch had a wart on his left eye, his head placed directly on his shoulders, his spinal column was crooked, his breast bone prominent, and his legs bowed; but he appeared to be lively; and although it was impossible to say in what language he lisped, his cry indicated considerable force and health. Claude’s compassion increased at the sight of this ugliness; and he made a vow in his heart to rear the child for the love of his brother.

He baptized his adopted child, and gave him the name of Quasimodo.