The World's Greatest Books - Volume 5 Part 23

Later in the day, when darkness had fallen, as the gypsy and her goat were proceeding to their lodgings, Quasimodo seized hold of the girl and ran off with her.

"Murder! Murder!" shrieked the unfortunate gypsy.

"Halt! Let the girl go, you ruffian!" exclaimed, in a voice of thunder, a horseman who appeared suddenly from a cross street. It was a captain of the King's Archers, armed from head to foot, and sword in hand.

He tore the gypsy girl from the arms of the astonished Quasimodo, and placed her across his saddle. Before the hunchback could recover from his surprise, a squadron of royal troops, going on duty as extra watchmen, surrounded him, and he was seized and bound.

The gypsy girl sat gracefully upon the officer's saddle, placing both hands upon the young man's shoulders, and gazing at him fixedly. Then breaking the silence, she said tenderly, "What is your name, M.

l'Officier?"

"Captain Phaebus de Chateaupers, at your service, my pretty maid!" said the officer, drawing himself up.

"Thank you."

And while Captain Phaebus twirled his mustache, she slipped from his horse and vanished like a flash of lightning.

"The bird has flown, but the bat remains, captain," said one of the troopers, tightening Quasimodo's bonds.

Quasimodo being deaf, understood nothing of the proceedings in the court next day, when he was charged with creating a disturbance, and of rebellion and disloyalty to the King's Archers.

The chief magistrate, also being deaf and at the same time anxious to conceal his infirmity, understood nothing that Quasimodo said.

The hunchback was sentenced to be taken to the pillory in the Greve, to be beaten, and to be kept there for two hours.

Quasimodo remained utterly impa.s.sive, while the crowd which yesterday had hailed him as Lord of Misrule now greeted him with hooting and derision.

The pillory was a simple cube of masonry, some ten feet high, and hollow within. A horizontal wheel of oak was at the top, and to this the victim was bound in a kneeling posture. A very steep flight of stone steps led to the wheel.

All the people laughed merrily when Quasimodo was seen in the pillory; and when he had been beaten by the public executioner, they added to the wretched sufferer's misery by insults, and, occasionally, stones. There was hardly a spectator in the crowd that had not some grudge, real or imagined, against the hunchback bell-ringer of Notre Dame.

Quasimodo had endured the torturer's whip with patience, but he rebelled against the stones, and struggled in his fetters till the old pillory- wheel creaked on its timbers. Then, as he could accomplish nothing by his struggles, his face became quiet again.

For a moment the cloud was lightened when the poor victim saw a priest seated on a mule approach in the roadway. A strange smile came on the face of Quasimodo as he glanced at the priest; yet when the mule was near enough to the pillory for his rider to recognise the prisoner, the priest cast down his eyes, turned back hastily, as if in a hurry to avoid humiliating appeals, and not at all anxious to be greeted by a poor wretch in the pillory.

The priest was the archdeacon, Claude Frollo. The smile on Quasimodo's face became bitter and profoundly sad.

Time pa.s.sed. He had been there at least an hour and a half, wounded, incessantly mocked, and almost stoned to death.

Suddenly he again struggled in his chains with renewed despair, and breaking the silence which he had kept so stubbornly, he cried in a hoa.r.s.e and furious voice, "Water!"

The exclamation of distress, far from exciting compa.s.sion, only increased the amus.e.m.e.nt of the Paris mob. Not a voice was raised, except to mock at his thirst.

Quasimodo cast a despairing look upon the crowd, and repeated in a heartrending voice, "Water!"

Everyone laughed. A woman aimed a stone at his head, saying, "That will teach you to wake us at night with your cursed chimes!"

"Here's a cup to drink out of!" said a man, throwing a broken jug at his breast.

"Water!" repeated Quasimodo for the third time.

At this moment he saw the gypsy girl and her goat come through the crowd. His eye gleamed. He did not doubt that she, too, came to be avenged, and to take her turn at him with the rest. He watched her nimbly climb the ladder. Rage and spite choked him. He longed to destroy the pillory; and had the lightning of his eye had power to blast, the gypsy girl would have been reduced to ashes long before she reached the platform. Without a word she approached the sufferer, loosened a gourd from her girdle, and raised it gently to the parched lips of the miserable man. Then from his eye a great tear trickled, and rolled slowly down the misshapen face, so long convulsed with despair.

The gypsy girl smilingly pressed the neck of the gourd to Quasimodo's jagged mouth.

He drank long draughts; his thirst was feverish. When he had done, the poor wretch put out his black lips to kiss the hand which had helped him. But the girl, remembering the violent attempt of the previous night, and not quite free from distrust, withdrew her hand quickly.

Quasimodo fixed upon her a look of reproach and unspeakable sorrow.

The sight of this beautiful girl succouring a man in the pillory so deformed and wretched seemed sublime, and the people were immediately affected by it. They clapped their hands, and shouted, "Noel! Noel!"

Esmeralda--for that was the name of the gypsy girl--came down from the pillory, and a mad woman called out, "Come down! Come down! You will go up again!"

Presently Quasimodo was released, and the mob thereupon dispersed.

_III.--The Archdeacon's Pa.s.sion_

In spite of the austerity of Claude Frollo's life, pious people suspected him of magic. His silence and secretiveness encouraged this feeling. He was known to be at work in the long hours of the night in his cell in Notre Dame, and he wandered about the streets like a spectre.

Whenever the gypsy girl placed her carpet within sight of Claude Frollo's cell and began to dance the priest turned from his books and, resting his head in his hands, gazed at her. Then he would go down into the public thoroughfares, lured on by some burning pa.s.sion within.

Quasimodo, too, would desist from his bell-ringing to look at the dancing girl.

The hotter the fire of pa.s.sion burned within the priest the farther Esmeralda moved from him. He discovered that she was in love with Captain Phoebus, her rescuer, and this knowledge added fuel to the flames.

One purpose now was clear to him. He would give up all for the dancing girl, and she should be his. But if Esmeralda refused to come to him, then the archdeacon resolved that she should die before she married anyone else. At any time he could have her arrested on the charge of sorcery, and the goat's tricks would easily procure a conviction.

Captain Phoebus, having invited Esmeralda to meet him at a wineshop, the priest followed the couple, and when the captain, to whom the girl was the merest diversion, began to make love, Claude Frollo, unable to contain himself, rushed in un.o.bserved and stabbed him.

Captain Phoebus was taken up for dead, and the priest vanished as silently as he had come. The soldiers of the watch found Esmeralda, and said, "This is the sorceress who has stabbed our captain." So Esmeralda was brought to trial on the charge of witchcraft, and every day the priest from Notre Dame came into court.

It was a tedious process, for not only was the girl on trial, but the goat also, in accordance with the custom of the times, was under arrest.

All that Esmeralda wanted to know was whether Phoebus was still alive, and she was told by the judges he was dying.

The indictment against her was "that with her accomplice, the bewitched goat, she did murder and stab, in league with the powers of darkness, by the aid of charms and spells, a captain of the king's troops, one Phoebus de Chateaupers." And it was vain that the girl denied vehemently her guilt.

"How do you explain the charge brought against you?" said the president.

"I have told you already I do not know," said Esmeralda, in a broken voice. "It was a priest--a priest who is always pursuing me"

"That's it," said the president; "it is a goblin monk."

The goat having performed his simple tricks in the presence of the court, and Esmeralda still refusing to admit her guilt, the president ordered her to be put to the question.

She was placed on the rack, and at the first turn of the screw promised to confess everything. Then the lawyers put a number of questions to her, and Esmeralda answered "Yes" in every case. It was plain that her spirit was utterly broken.

Then the court having read the confession, sentence was p.r.o.nounced. She was to be taken to the Greve, where the pillory stood, and, in atonement for the crimes confessed, there hanged and strangled on the city gibbet, "and likewise this your goat."