 Book 8, Chapter 4, of the hunchback of Notre-Dame, by Victor Hugo. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Book 8, Chapter 4, La Siete Agnésparanza, leave all hope behind ye who enter here. In the Middle Ages, when an edifice was complete, there was almost as much of it in the earth as above it. This built upon piles, like Notre-Dame, a palace, a fortress, a church, had always a double bottom. In cathedrals it was, in some sort, another subterranean cathedral, low, dark, mysterious, blind and mute, under the upper nave which was overflowing with light and reverberating with organs and bells day and night. Sometimes it was a simple cur. In palaces, in fortresses, it was a prison, sometimes a sepulchre also, sometimes both together. These mighty buildings, whose mode of formation and vegetation we have elsewhere explained, had not simply foundations, but, so to speak, roots, which ran branching through the soil in chambers, galleries and staircases, like the construction above. Thus churches, palaces, fortresses, had the earth half way up their bodies. The cellars of an edifice formed another edifice, into which one descended instead of ascending, and which extended its subterranean grounds under the external piles of the monument, like those forests and mountains which are reversed in the mirror-like waters of a lake, beneath the forests and mountains of the banks. At the fortress of Saint Antoine, at the palais de justice of Paris, at the Louvre, these subterranean edifices were prisons. The stories of these prisons, as they sank into the soil, grew constantly narrower and more gloomy. They were so many zones where the shades of horror were graduated. Dante could never imagine anything better for his hell. These tunnels of cells usually terminated in a sack of a lowest dungeon, with a vat-like bottom where Dante placed Satan, where society placed those condemned to death. A miserable human existence once interred there. Farewell light, air, life. Ogni sparenza, every hope. It only came forth to the scaffold or the stake. Sometimes it rotted there. Saint Justice called this forgetting. Between men and himself the condemned man felt a pile of stones and jailers weighing down upon his head, and the entire prison, the massive Bastille, was nothing more than an enormous, complicated lock which barred him off from the rest of the world. It was in a sloping cavity of this description, in the obliets excavated by Saint Louis, in the impasse of the tournel, that La Esmeralda had been placed on being condemned to death, through fear of her escape, no doubt, with the colossal courthouse over her head. Poor fly, who could not have lifted even one of its blocks of stone. Assurably providence and society had been equally unjust. Such an excess of unhappiness and of torture was not necessary to break so frail a creature. There she lay, lost in the shadows, buried, hidden, emured. Anyone who could have beheld her in this state, after having seen her laugh and dance in the sun, would have shuttered. Cold as night, cold as death, not a breath of air in her tresses, not a human sound in her ear, no longer a ray of light in her eyes. Snapped in twain, crushed with chains, crouching beside a jug and a loaf on a little straw, in a pool of water, which was formed under her by the sweating of the prison walls. Without motion, almost without breath, she had no longer the power to suffer. Phoebus, the sun, midday, the open air, the streets of Paris, the dances with applause, the sweet babblings of love with the officer. Then the priest, the old crone, the poignard, the blood, the torture, the gibbet. All this did indeed pass before her mind, sometimes as a charming and golden vision, sometimes as a hideous nightmare. But it was no longer anything but a vague and horrible struggle, lost in the gloom or distant music played up above ground, and which was no longer audible at the depth where the unhappy girl had fallen. Since she had been there, she had neither waked nor slept. In that misfortune, in that cell, she could no longer distinguish her waking hours from slumber, dreams from reality, any more than day from night. All this was mixed, broken, floating, disseminated confusedly in her thought. She no longer felt, she no longer knew, she no longer thought. At the most, she only dreamed. Never had a living creature been thrust more deeply into nothingness. Thus benumbed, frozen, petrified, she had barely noticed on two or three occasions the sound of a trap door opening somewhere above her, without even permitting the passage of a little light, and through which a hand had tossed her a bit of black bread. Nevertheless, this periodical visit of the jailer was the sole communication which was left her with mankind. The single thing still mechanically occupied her ear. Above her head the dampness was filtering through the moldy stones of the vault, and a drop of water dropped from them at regular intervals. She listened stupidly to the noise made by this drop of water as it fell into the pool beside her. This drop of water falling from time to time into that pool was the only movement which still went on around her, the only clock which marked the time, the only noise which reached her of all the noise made on the surface of the earth. To tell the whole, however, she also felt from time to time in that cesspool of mire and darkness, something cold passing over her foot or her arm, and she shuddered. How long had she been there? She did not know. She had a recollection of a sentence of death pronounced somewhere against someone, then having been herself carried away, and of waking up in darkness and silence chilled to the heart. She had dragged herself along on her hands. Then iron rings that cut her ankles and chains had rattled. She had recognized the fact that all around her was wall, that below her there was a pavement covered with moisture and a truss of straw, but neither lamp nor air-hole. Then she had seated herself on that straw, and sometimes for the sake of changing her attitude on the last stone step in her dungeon. For a while she had tried to count the black minutes measured off for her by the drop of water, but that melancholy labor of an ailing brain had broken off of itself in her head and left her in stupor. At length, one day, or one night, for midnight and midday were of the same color in that sepulchre, she heard above her a louder noise than was usually made by the turnkey when he brought her bread and jug of water. She raised her head, and beheld a ray of reddish light passing through the crevices in the sort of trapdoor contrived in the roof of the impasse. At the same time the heavy lock creaked, the trap graded on its rusty hinges, turned, and she beheld a lantern, a hand, and the lower portions of the bodies of two men, the door being too low to admit of her seeing their heads. The light paint her so acutely that she shut her eyes. When she opened them again the door was closed, the lantern was deposited on one of the steps of the staircase. A man alone stood before her. A monk's black cloak fell to his feet, a cowl of the same color concealed his face. Nothing was visible of his person, neither face nor hands. It was a long black shroud standing erect, and beneath which something could be felt moving. She gazed fixedly for several minutes at this sort of specter, but neither he nor she spoke. One would have pronounced them two statues confronting each other. Two things only seemed alive in that cavern, the wick of the lantern which sputtered on account of the dampness of the atmosphere, and the drop of water from the roof, which cut this irregular sputtering with its monotonous splash, and made the light of the lantern quiver in concentric waves on the oily water of the pool. At last the prisoner broke the silence. Who are you? A priest. The words, the accent, the sound of his voice made her tremble. The priest continued in a hollow voice. Are you prepared? For what? To die. Oh! said she, would it be soon? Tomorrow. Her head, which had been raised with joy, fell back upon her breast. Tis very far away yet, she murmured. Why could they not have done it to-day? Then you are very unhappy, asked the priest after a silence. I am very cold, she replied. She took her feet in her hands, a gesture habitual with unhappy wretches who are cold, as we have already seen in the case of the recluse of the Turoland, and her teeth chattered. The priest appeared to cast his eyes around the dungeon from beneath his cowl. Without light, without fire, in the water, it is horrible. Yes, she replied, with the bewildered air which unhappiness had given her. The day belongs to everyone. Why do they give me only night? Do you know, resumed the priest, after a fresh silence, why you are here? I thought I knew once, she said, passing her thin fingers over her eyelids as though to aid her memory, but I know no longer. All at once she began to weep like a child. I should like to get away from here, sir. I am cold, I am afraid, and there are creatures which crawl over my body. Well, follow me. So saying, the priest took her arm. The unhappy girl was frozen to her very soul, yet that hand produced an impression of cold upon her. Oh! she murmured, tis the icy hand of death. Who are you? The priest threw back his cowl. She looked. It was the sinister visage which had so long pursued her, that demon's head which had appeared at La Falordelles, above the head of her adored Phoebus, that eye which she had last seen glittering beside a dagger. This apparition, always so fatal for her, and which had thus driven her on from misfortune to misfortune, even to torture, roused her from her stupor. It seemed to her that the sort of veil which had lain thick upon her memory was rent away. All the details of her melancholy adventure, from the nocturnal scene at La Falordelles, to her condemnation to the tornell, recurred to her memory, no longer vague and confused as heretofore, but distinct, harsh, clear, palpitating, terrible. These souvenirs, half effaced and almost obliterated by excess of suffering, were revived by the somber figure which stood before her, as the approach of fire causes letters traced upon white paper with invisible ink to start out perfectly fresh. It seemed to her that all the wounds of her heart opened and bled simultaneously. Ha! she cried, with her hands on her eyes and a convulsive trembling, Tiss the priest! Then she dropped her arms in discouragement and remained seated, with lowered head, eyes fixed on the ground, mute and still trembling. The priest gazed at her with the eye of a hawk which has long been soaring in a circle from the heights of heaven over a poor lark cowering in the wheat, and has long been silently contracting the formidable circles of his flight, and has suddenly swooped down upon his prey like a flash of lightning and holds it panting in his talons. She began to murmur in a low voice, Finish, finish the last blow! And she drew her head down in terror between her shoulders, like the lamb awaiting the blow of the butcher's axe. So I inspire you with horror, he said at length. She made no reply. Do I inspire you with horror? He repeated. Her lips contracted as though with a smile. Yes, said she, the headsman scoffs at the condemned. Here he has been pursuing me, threatening me, terrifying me for months. Had it not been for him, my God! How happy it should have been! It was he who cast me into this abyss! Oh, heavens! It was he who killed him, my Phoebus! Here bursting into sobs and raising her eyes to the priest! Oh, Wretch! Who are you? What have I done to you? Do you then hate me so? Alas! What have you against me? I love thee!" cried the priest. Her tears suddenly ceased. She gazed at him with the look of an idiot. He had fallen on his knees and was devouring her with the eyes of flame. Dost thou understand? I love thee! He cried again. What love! said the unhappy girl with a shudder. He resumed. The love of a damned soul! Both remained silent for several minutes, crushed beneath the weight of their emotions. He maddened. She stupefied. "'Listen,' said the priest at last, and a singular calm had come over him. "'You shall know all I am about to tell you, that which I have hitherto hardly dared to say to myself, when furtively interrogating my conscience at those deep hours of the night, when it is so dark that it seems as though God no longer saw us. "'Listen, before I knew you, young girl, I was happy.' "'So was I,' she sighed feebly. "'Do not interrupt me. "'Yes, I was happy. At least, I believed myself to be so. I was pure. My soul was filled with limpid light. No head was raised more proudly and more radiantly than mine. Priests consulted me on chastity, doctors on doctrines. Yes, science was all in all to me. It was a sister to me, a sister sufficed. That but that with age other ideas came to me. More than once my flesh had been moved as a woman's form passed by. That force of sex and blood, which in the madness of youth I had imagined that I had stifled forever, had more than once convulsively raised the chain of iron vows which bind me, a miserable wretch to the cold stones of the altar. That fasting, prayer, study, the mortifications of the cloister rendered my soul mistress of my body once more, and then I avoided women. Moreover, I had but to open a book and all the impure mists of my brain vanished before the splendors of science. In a few moments I felt the gross things of earth flee far away, and I found myself once more calm, quieted, and serene in the presence of the tranquil radiance of eternal truth. As long as the demons sent to attack me, only vague shadows of women who passed occasionally before my eyes in the church, in the streets, in the fields, and who hardly recurred to my dreams I easily vanquished him. Alas! if the victory has not remained with me, it is the fault of God, who has not created man and the demon of equal force. Listen, one day... Here the priest paused, and the prisoner heard sighs of anguish break from his breasts with a sound of the death-rattle. He resumed. One day I was leaning on the window of my cell. What book was I reading then? Oh, all that is a whirlwind in my head. I was reading. The window opened upon a square. I heard a sound of tambourine and music. Annoyed at being thus disturbed in my reverie, I glanced into the square. What I beheld, others saw beside myself, and yet it was not a spectacle made for human eyes. There, in the middle of the pavement, it was midday, the sun was shining brightly, a creature was dancing, a creature so beautiful that God would have preferred her to the Virgin and have chosen her for his mother and have wished to be born of her if she had been in existence when he was made man. Her eyes were black and splendid. In the midst of her black locks some hairs through which the sun shone glistened like threads of gold. Her feet disappeared in their movements like the spokes of a rapidly turning wheel. Around her head, in her black tresses, there were discs of metal which glittered in the sun and formed a coronet of stars on her brow. Her dress, thick-set with spangles, blue and dotted with a thousand sparks, gleamed like a summer night. Her brown supple arms twined and untwined around her waist like two scarfs. The form of her body was surprisingly beautiful. Oh! What a resplendent figure stood out, like something luminous even in the sunlight. Alas, young girl, it was thou. Surprised, intoxicated, charmed, I allowed myself to gaze upon thee. I looked so long that I suddenly shuddered with terror. I felt that fate was seizing hold of me. The priest paused for a moment, overcome with emotion. Then he continued. Already half-fascinated I tried to cling fast to something and hold myself back from falling. I recalled the snares which Satan had already set for me. The creature before my eyes possessed that superhuman beauty which can come only from heaven or hell. It was no simple girl made with the little of our earth and dimly lighted within by the vacillating ray of a woman's soul. It was an angel, but of shadows and flame and not of light. At the moment when I was meditating thus I beheld beside you a goat, a beast of witches which smiled as it gazed at me. The midday sun gave him golden horns. Then I perceived the snare of the demon and I no longer doubted that you had come from hell and that you had come thence for my perdition. I believed it. Here the priest looked the prisoner full in the face and added coldly. I believe it still. Nevertheless the charm operated little by little. Your dancing whirl through my brain. I felt the mysterious spell working within me. All that should have awakened was lulled to sleep, and like those who die in the snow I felt pleasure in allowing this sleep to draw on. All at once you began to sing. What could I do, unhappy wretch? Your song was still more charming than your dancing. I tried to flee, impossible. I was nailed, rooted to the spot. It seemed to me that the marble of the pavement had risen to my knees. I was forced to remain until the end. My feet were like ice. My head was on fire. At last you took pity on me. You ceased to sing. You disappeared. The reflection of the dazzling vision, the reverberation of the enchantic music, disappeared by degrees from my eyes and my ears. Then I fell back into the embrasure of the window, more rigid, more feeble than a statue torn from its base. The vesper bell roused me. I drew myself up. I fled. But alas, something within me had fallen never to rise again. Something had come upon me from which I could not flee. He made another pause and went on. Yes, dating from that day there was within me a man whom I did not know. I tried to make use of all my remedies, the cloister, the altar, work, books, follies. Oh, how hollow does science sound when one in despair dashes against it ahead full of passions. Do you know, young girl, that I saw thenceforth between my book and me? You, your shade, the image of the luminous apparition which had one day crossed the space before me. But this image had no longer the same color. It was somber, funereal, gloomy as the black circle which long pursues the vision of the imprudent man who has gazed intently at the sun. Unable to rid myself of it, since I heard your song humming ever in my head, beheld your feet dancing always on my breviary, felt even at night in my dreams your form in contact with my own. I desired to see you again, to touch you, to know who you were, to see whether I should really find you like the ideal image which I had retained of you, to shatter my dream perchance with reality. At all events I hoped that a new impression would have faced the first, and the first had become insupportable. I sought you. I saw you once more. Calamity! When I had seen you twice I wanted to see you a thousand times. I wanted to see you always. Then how stop myself on that slope of hell? Then I no longer belong to myself. The other end of the thread which the demon had attached to my wings he had fastened to his foot. I became vagrant and wandering like yourself. I waited for you under porches. I stood on the lookout for you at the street corners. I watched for you from the summit of my tower. Every evening I returned to myself more charmed, more despairing, more bewitched, more lost. I had learned who you were, an Egyptian, Bohemian, Gypsy, Zingara. How could I doubt the magic? Listen. I hoped that a trial would free me from the charm. A witch enchanted Bruno Dost. He had her burned and was cured. I knew it. I wanted to try the remedy. First I tried to have you forbidden the square in front of Notre-Dame, hoping to forget you if you return no more. You paid no heed to it. You returned. Then the idea of abducting you occurred to me. One night I made the attempt. There were two of us. We already had you in our power when that miserable officer came up. He delivered you. Thus did he begin your unhappiness, mine and his own. Finally no longer knowing what to do and what was to become of me, I denounced you to the official. I thought that I should be cured like Bruno Dost. I also had a confused idea that a trial would deliver you into my hands. That as a prisoner I should hold you, I should have you. That there you could not escape from me. That you had already possessed me a sufficiently long time to give me the right to possess you in my turn. When one does wrong one must do it thoroughly. Tis madness to halt midway in the monstrous. The extreme of crime has its deliriums of joy. A priest and a witch can mingle in delight upon the truss of straw in a dungeon. Accordingly I denounced you. It was then that I terrified you when we met. The plot which I was weaving against you, the storm which I was heaping up above your head, burst from me in threats and lightning glances. Still I hesitated. My project had its terrible sides which made me shrink back. Perhaps I might have renounced it. Perhaps my hideous thought would have withered in my brain without bearing fruit. I thought that it would always depend upon me to follow up or discontinue this prosecution. That every evil thought is inexorable and insists on becoming a deed. But where I believed myself to be all-powerful fate was more powerful than I. Alas! Tis fate which has seized you and delivered you to the terrible wheels of the machine which I had constructed doubly. Listen, I am nearing the end. One day, again the sun was shining brilliantly. I behold man past me uttering your name and laughing, who carries sensuality in his eyes. Damnation! I followed him. You know the rest. He ceased. The young girl could find but one word. Oh! My Phoebus! Not that name! Said the priest, grasping her arm violently. Utter not that name! Oh! Miserable wretches that we are! Tis that name which has ruined us! Or rather, we have ruined each other by the inexplicable play of fate. You are suffering, are you not? You are cold. The night makes you blind. The dungeon envelops you. But perhaps you still have some light in the bottom of your soul. Were it only your childish love for that empty man who played with your heart? While I bear the dungeon within me, within me there is winter, ice, despair. I have night in my soul. Do you know what I have suffered? I was present at your trial. I was seated on the official's bench. Yes, under one of the priest's cowls, there were the contortions of the damned. When you were brought in, I was there. When you were questioned, I was there. When of wolves, it was my crime, it was my gallows, that I beheld being slowly reared over your head. I was there for every witness, every proof, every plea. I could count each of your steps in the painful path. I was still there when that ferocious beast—oh, I had not foreseen torture. Listen! I followed you to that chamber of anguish. I beheld you stripped and handled, half naked, by the infamous hands of the tormentor. I beheld your foot—that foot which I would have given an empire to kiss and die. That foot beneath which to have my head crushed I should have felt such rapture. I beheld it encased in that horrible boot, which converts the limbs of a living being into one bloody clod. Oh, wretch! While I looked on at that, I held beneath my shroud a dagger with which I lacerated my breast. When you uttered that cry, I plunged it into my flesh. At a second cry it would have entered my heart. Look! I believe that it still bleeds. He opened his cassock. His breast was in fact mangled as by the claw of a tiger, and on his side he had a large and badly healed wound. The prisoner recoiled with horror. Oh! said the priest, young girl, have pity upon me. You think yourself unhappy? Alas! Alas! You know not what unhappiness is! Oh! to love a woman, to be a priest, to be hated, to love with all the fury of one soul, to feel that one would give for the least of her smiles, one's blood, one's vitals, one's fame, one's salvation, one's immortality and eternity, this life and the other. To regret that one is not a king, emperor, archangel, god, in order that one might place a greater slave beneath her feet, to clasp her night and day in one's dreams and one's thoughts, and to behold her in love with the trappings of a soldier, and to have nothing to offer her but a priest's dirty cassock which will inspire her with fear and disgust. To be present with one's jealousy and one's rage, while she lavishes on a miserable, blustering imbecile treasures of love and beauty, to behold that body whose form burns you, that bosom which possesses so much sweetness, that flesh palpitate and blush beneath the kisses of another. Oh, heaven, to love her foot, her arm, her shoulder, to think of her blue veins, of her brown skin, until one writhes for whole nights together on the pavement of one cell, and to behold all those caresses which one has dreamed of end in torture. To have succeeded only in stretching her upon the leather bed. Oh, these are the veritable pincers, reddened in the fires of hell. Oh, blessed is he who is sawn between two planks, or torn in pieces by four horses. Do you know what that torture is, which is imposed upon you for long nights by your burning arteries, your bursting heart, your breaking head, your teeth gnawed hands? Red tormentors which turn you incessantly as upon a red hot gridiron to a thought of love, of jealousy, and of despair. Young girl, mercy, a truce for a moment, a few ashes on these live coals. Wipe away, I beseech you, the perspiration which trickles in great drops from my brow. Child, torture me with one hand, but caress me with the other. Have pity, young girl! Have pity upon me!" The priest writhed on the wet pavement, beating his head against the corners of the stone steps. The young girl gazed at him, and listened to him. When he ceased, exhausted, and panting, she repeated in a low voice, Oh, my Phoebus! The priest dragged himself towards her on his knees. I beseech you, he cried. If you have any heart, do not repulse me. Oh, I love you! I am a wretch! When you utter that name, unhappy girl, it is as though you crushed all the fibres of my heart between your teeth. Mercy, if you come from hell, I will go thither with you. I have done everything to that end. The hell where you are shall be paradise. The sight of you is more charming than that of God. Oh, speak! You will have none of me. I should have thought the mountains would be shaken in their foundations on the day when a woman would repulse such a love. Oh, if you only would! Oh, how happy we might be! We would flee. I would help you to flee. We would go somewhere. We would seek that spot on earth where the sun is brightest, the sky is bluest, where the trees are most luxuriant. We would love each other. We would pour our two souls into each other. And we would have a thirst for ourselves which we would quench in common and incessantly at the fountain of inexhaustible love. She interrupted with a terrible and thrilling laugh. Look, Father, you have blood on your fingers. The priest remained for several moments as though petrified, with his eyes fixed upon his hand. Well, yes, he resumed at last with strange gentleness. Insult me, scoff at me, overwhelm me with scorn. But come, come, let us make haste. It is to be tomorrow, I tell you, the gibbet on the grave, you know it. It stands always ready. It is horrible to see you ride in that tumble. Oh, mercy, until now I have never felt the power of my love for you. Oh, follow me. You shall take your time to love me after I have saved you. You shall hate me as long as you will. But come, to-morrow, to-morrow, the gallows, your execution. Oh, save yourself, spare me. He seized her arm, and he was beside himself. He tried to drag her away. She fixed her eye intently on him. What has become of my Phoebus? Ah, said the priest, releasing her arm, you are pitiless. What has become of Phoebus? She repeated coldly. He is dead, cried the priest. Dead, said she, still icy and motionless. Then why do you talk to me of living? He was not listening to her. Oh, yes, said he, as though speaking to himself. He certainly must be dead. The blade pierced deeply. I believe I touched his heart with the point. Oh, my very soul was at the end of the dagger. The young girl flung herself upon him like a raging Tigris, and pushed him upon the steps of the staircase with supernatural force. Be gone, monster! Be gone, assassin! Leave me to die! Made the blood of both of us make an eternal stain upon your brow. Be thine, priest! Never, never! Nothing shall unite us, not hell itself! Go, accursed man! Never!" The priest had stumbled on the stairs. He silently disentangled his feet from the folds of his robe, picked up his lantern again, and slowly began the ascent of the steps which led to the door. He opened the door and passed through it. All at once the young girl beheld his head reappear. He'd wore a frightful expression, and he cried, hoarse with rage and despair. I tell you, he is dead! She fell face downwards upon the floor, and there was no longer any sound audible in the cell than the sob of the drop of water which made the pool palpitate amid the darkness. End of Book 8, Chapter 4 Book 8, Chapter 5 Of the Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Book 8, Chapter 5 The Mother I do not believe that there is anything sweeter in the world than the ideas which awaken a mother's heart at the sight of her child's tiny shoe. Especially if it is a shoe for festivals, for Sunday, for baptism, the shoe embroidered to the very soul, a shoe in which the infant has not yet taken a step. That shoe has so much grace and daintiness, it is so impossible for it to walk that it seems to the mother as though she saw her child. She smiles upon it, she kisses it, she talks to it, she asks herself whether there can actually be a foot so tiny, and if the child be absent, the pretty shoe suffices to place the sweet and fragile creature before her eyes. She thinks she sees it, she does see it, complete, living, joyous with its delicate hands, its round head, its pure lips, its serene eyes, whose white is blue. If it is in winter, it is yonder, crawling on the carpet. It is laboriously climbing upon an ottoman, and the mother trembles lest it should approach the fire. If it is summertime, it crawls about the yard, in the garden, plucks up the grass between the paving-stones, gazes innocently at the big dogs, the big horses, without fear, plays with the shells, with the flowers, and makes the gardener grumble because he finds sand in the flower beds and earth in the paths. Everything laughs and shines and plays around it, like it, even the breath of air and the ray of sun which vie with each other in disporting among the silky ringlets of its hair. The shoe shows all this to the mother and makes her heart melt as fire melts wax. But when the child is lost, these thousand images of joy, of charms, of tenderness, which throng around the little shoe, become so many horrible things. The pretty, broidered shoe is no longer anything but an instrument of torture, which eternally crushes the heart of the mother. It is always the same fiber which vibrates, the tendress, and most sensitive. But instead of an angel caressing it, it is a demon who is wrenching at it. One may morning, when the sun was rising on one of those dark blue skies against which Garofalo loves to place his descents from the cross, the recluse of the tour au land heard a sound of wheels, of horses and irons in the Plasta Greve. She was somewhat aroused by it, nodding her hair upon her ears in order to deafen herself and resumed her contemplation on her knees of the inanimate object which she had adored for fifteen years. This little shoe was the universe to her, as we have already said. Her thought was shut up in it, and was destined never more to quit it except at death. The somber cave of the tour au land alone knew how many bitter implications, touching complaints, prayers, and sobs she had wafted to heaven in connection with that charming bobble of a rose-colored satin. Never was more despair bestowed upon a prettier and more graceful thing. It seemed as though her grief were breaking forth more violently than usual, and she could be heard outside lamenting in a loud and monotonous voice which rent the heart. Oh, my daughter, she said, my daughter, my poor dear little child, so I shall never see thee more. It is over. It always seems to me that it happened yesterday. My God, my God, it would have been better not to give her to me than to take her away so soon. Did you not know that our children are part of ourselves, and that a mother who has lost her child no longer believes in God? Ah, wretched that I am to have gone out that day. Lord, Lord, to have taken her from me thus, you could never have looked at me with her when I was joyously warming her at my fire, when she laughed as she suckled, when I made her tiny feet creep up my breast to my lips. Oh, if you had looked at that, my God, you would have taken pity on my joy. You would not have taken from me the only love which lingered in my heart. Was I then, Lord, so miserable a creature that you could not look at me before condemning me? Alas, alas, here is the shoe. Where is the foot? Where is the rest? Where is the child? My daughter, my daughter, what did they do with thee? Lord, give her back to me. My knees have been worn for fifteen years and praying to thee, my God. Is not that enough? Give her back to me one day, one hour, one minute, one minute, Lord, and then cast me to the demon for all eternity. Oh, if I only knew where the skirt of your garment trails, I would cling to it with both hands, and you would be obliged to give me back my child. Have you no pity on her pretty little shoe? Could you condemn a poor mother to this torture for fifteen years? Good virgin, good virgin of heaven, my infant Jesus has been taken from me, has been stolen from me. They devoured her on a heath, they drank her blood, they cracked her bones. Good virgin, have pity upon me. My daughter, I want my daughter. What is it to me that she is in paradise? I do not want your angel, I want my child. I am a lioness, I want my welp. Oh, I will writhe on the earth, I will break the stones with my forehead, and I will dam myself, and I will curse you, Lord, if you keep my child from me. You see plainly that my arms are all bitten, Lord, has the good God no mercy? Oh, give me only salt and black bread, only let me have my daughter to warm me like a sun. Alas, Lord my God, alas, Lord my God, I am only a vile sinner. But my daughter made me pious. I was full of religion for the love of her, and I beheld you through her smile as though when opening into heaven. Oh, if I could only once, just once more, a single time, put this shoe on her pretty little pink foot, I would die blessing you, good virgin. Ah, fifteen years, she will be grown up now, unhappy child. What? It is really true, then, I shall never see her more, not even in heaven, for I shall not go there myself. Oh, what a misery to think that here is her shoe, and that, that is all. The unhappy woman flung herself upon that shoe, her consolation and her despair for so many years, and her vitals were rent with sobs as on the first day, because for a mother who has lost her child it is always the first day. That grief never grows old, the mourning garments may grow white and threadbare, the heart remains dark. At that moment the fresh and joyous cries of children passed in front of the cell. Every time that children crossed her vision or struck her ear, the poor mother flung herself into the darkest corner of her sepulchre, and one would have said that she sought to plunge her head into the stone in order not to hear them. This time, on the contrary, she drew herself upright with a start, and listened eagerly. One of the little boys had just said, They're going to hang a gypsy today. With the abrupt leap of that spider which we have seen fling itself upon a fly at the trembling of its web, she rushed to her air-hole, which opened as the reader knows on the Plastagreb. A ladder had in fact been raised up against the permanent gibbet, and the hangman's assistant was busying himself with adjusting the chains which had been rusted by the rain. There were some people standing about. The laughing group of children was already far away. The sacked nun sought with her eyes some passer-by whom she might question. All at once, beside her cell, she perceived a priest making a pretext of reading the public breviary, but who was much less occupied with the lectern of lattice-iron than with the gallows, toward which he cast a fierce and gloomy glance from time to time. She recognized Montseur, the archdeacon of José, a holy man. Father, she inquired, whom are they about to hang under? The priest looked at her and made no reply. She repeated her question. Then he said, I know not. Some children said that it was a gypsy, went on the recluse. I believe so, said the priest. Then paquette la chant-flurie burst into hyena-like laughter. Sister, said the archdeacon, do you then hate the gypsies heartily? Do I hate them? exclaimed the recluse. They are vampires, stealers of children. They devoured my little daughter, my child, my only child. I have no longer any heart, they devoured it. She was frightful. The priest looked at her coldly. There is one in particular whom I hate and whom I have cursed, she resumed. It is a young one of the age which my daughter would be if her mother had not eaten my daughter. Every time that that young viper passes in front of my cell, she sets my blood in a ferment. Well, sister, rejoice, said the priest, I see as a sepulchral statue. That is the one whom you are about to see die. His head fell upon his bosom and he moved slowly away. The recluse writhed her arms with joy. I predicted it for her that she would ascend thither. The hangs prized. She cried. And she began to pace up and down with long strides before the grating of her window. Her hair disheveled, her eyes flashing, with her shoulder striking against the wall, with the wild air of a female wolf in a cage who has long been famished and who feels the hour for her repast drawing near. CHAPTER VI. THREE HUMAN HEARTS DIFFERENTLY CONSTRUCTED. Phoebus was not dead, however. Men of that stamp die hard. When Master Philippe Lulie, advocate extraordinary of the king, had said to poor Esmeralda, he is dying. It was an error or a jest. When the Archdeacon had repeated to the condemned girl, he is dead. The fact is that he knew nothing about it, but that he believed it, that he counted on it, that he did not doubt it, that he devoutly hoped it. It would have been too hard for him to give up favourable news of his rival to the woman whom he loved. Any man would have done the same in his place. It was not that Phoebus' wound had not been serious, but it had not been as much so as the Archdeacon believed. The physician, to whom the soldiers of the watch had carried him at the first moment, had feared for his life during the space of a week, and had even told him so in Latin. But youth had gained the upper hand, and, as frequently happens, in spite of prognostications and diagnoses, nature had amused herself by saving the sick man under the physician's very nose. It was while he was still lying on the leeches' palate that he had submitted to the interrogations of Philippe Lulie and the official inquisitors, which had annoyed him greatly. Hence, one fine morning, feeling himself better, he had left his golden spurs with the leech as payment, and had slipped away. This had not, however, interfered with the progress of the affair. Justice, at that epoch, troubled itself very little about the clearness and definiteness of a criminal suit. Provided that the accused was hung, that was all that was necessary. Now the judge had plenty of proofs against La Asmeralda. They had supposed Phoebus to be dead, and that was the end of the matter. Phoebus, on his side, had not fled far. He had simply rejoined his company in Garrison at Q'en Brie, in the Isle de France, a few stages from Paris. After all, it did not please him in the least to appear in this suit. He had a vague feeling that he should play a ridiculous figure in it. On the whole he did not know what to think of the whole affair. Superstitious and not given to devoutness, like every soldier who is only a soldier, when he came to question himself about this adventure he did not feel assured as to the goat, as to the singular fashion in which he had met La Asmeralda, as to the no less strange manner in which she had allowed him to divine her love, as to her character as a gypsy, and lastly as to the surly monk. He perceived in all these incidents much more magic than love, probably a sorceress, perhaps the devil. A comedy in short, or to speak in the language of that day, a very disagreeable mystery in which he played a very awkward part, the role of blows and derision. The captain was quite put out of countenance about it. He experienced that sort of shame which our La Fontaine has so admirably defined. A shame as a fox who has been caught by a foul. Moreover, he hoped that the affair would not get noise to broad, that his name would hardly be pronounced in it, and that in any case it would not go beyond the courts of the Tornel. In this he was not mistaken. There was then no gazette de tribunaux, and as not a weak past which had not its counter-fitter to boil, or its witch to hang, or its heretic to burn, at some one of the innumerable justices of Paris, people were so accustomed to seeing in all the squares of the ancient feudal theme, bare-armed, with sleeves stripped up, performing her duty at the gibbets, the ladders, and the pillories, that they hardly paid any heed to it. Fashionable society of that day hardly knew the name of the victim who passed by at the corner of the street, and it was the populace at the most who regaled themselves with this coarse fare. An execution was an habitual incident of the public highways, like the brazing pan of the baker, or the slaughter-house of the knacker. The executioner was only a sort of butcher of a little deeper dye than the rest. Hence, Thebes' mind was soon at ease on the score of the Enchantress Esmeralda, or similar, as he called her, concerning the blow from the dagger of the Bohemian or of the Surly Monk. It mattered little which to him, and as to the issue of the trial. But as soon as his heart was vacant in that direction, Flur de Lis returned to it. Captain Thebes' heart, like the physics of that day, abhorred a vacuum. Q. Embry was a very insipid place to stay at then, a village of ferriers, and cowgirls with chapped hands, a long line of poor dwellings and thatched cottages, which borders on the Grand Road on both sides for half a league. A tale, Q., in short, as its name imports. Flur de Lis was his last passion but one, a pretty girl, a charming dowry. Accordingly, one fine morning, quite cured, and assuming that, after the lapse of two months, the Bohemian affair must be completely finished and forgotten, the Amherst Cavalier arrived on a prancing horse at the door of the Gandolorie mansion. He paid no attention to a tolerably numerous rabble which had assembled in the Place du Parvis before the portal of Notre-Dame. He remembered that it was the month of May. He supposed that it was some procession, some Pentecost, some festival, hitched his horse to the ring at the door, and gaily ascended the stairs to his beautiful betroved. She was alone with their mother. The scene of the witch, her goat, her cursed alphabet, and Phoebus' long absences still weighed on Flur de Lis's heart. Nevertheless, when she beheld her captain enter, she thought him so handsome, his doublet so new, his bald rick so shining, and his air so impassioned, that she blushed with pleasure. The noble damsel herself was more charming than ever. Her magnificent blonde hair was plated in a ravishing manner. She was dressed entirely in that sky blue which becomes fair people so well, a bit of coquetry which she had learned from Colombe, and her eyes were swimming in that languor of love which becomes them still better. Phoebus, who had seen nothing in the line of beauty, since he left the village maids of Q and Brie, was intoxicated with Flur de Lis, which imparted to our officer so eager and gallant an air that his peace was immediately made. Manab de Gondolarié herself, still maternally seated in her big armchair, had not the heart to scold him. As for Flur de Lis's reproaches, they expired in tender cooings. The young girl was seated near the window, still embroidering her grotto of Neptune. The captain was leaning over the back of her chair, and she was addressing her caressing reproaches to him in a low voice. What has become of you these two long months, wicked man? I swear to you, replied Phoebus, somewhat embarrassed by the question, that you are beautiful enough to set an archbishop to dreaming. She could not repress a smile. Good, good, sir. Let my beauty alone and answer my question. A fine beauty in soothe. Well, my dear cousin, I was recalled to the garrison. And where is that, if you please? And why did not you come to say farewell? At Q and Brie. Phoebus was delighted with the first question which helped him to avoid the second. But that is quite close by, monsieur. Why did you not come to see me a single time? Here, Phoebus was rather seriously embarrassed. Because, the service, and then charming cousin, I have been ill. Ill, she repeated in alarm. Yes, wounded. Wounded. She, poor child, was completely upset. Oh, do not be frightened at that, said Phoebus carelessly. It was nothing. A quarrel, a sword-cut. What is that to you? What is that to me? exclaimed Fleur-de-Lis, raising her beautiful eyes filled with tears. Oh, you do not say what you think when you speak thus. What sword-cut was that? I wish to know all. Well, my dear fair one, I had a falling out with Mahé Fadi, you know, the lieutenant of Saint-Germain-en-Layers, and re-ripped out a few inches of skin for each other. That is all. The mendacious captain was perfectly well aware that an affair of honour always makes a man stand well in the eyes of a woman. In fact, Fleur-de-Lis looked him full in the face, all agitated with fear, pleasure, and admiration. Still, she was not completely reassured. Provided that you are wholly cured, my Phoebus, said she, I do not know your Mahé Fadi, but he is a villainous man, and whence arose this quarrel? Here Phoebus, whose imagination was endowed with but mediocre power of creation, began to find himself in a quandary as to a means of extricating himself for his prowess. Oh, how do I know? A mere nothing, a horse, a remark. Fair cousin, he exclaimed, for the sake of changing the conversation. What noise is this in the cathedral square? He approached the window. Oh, my dear fair cousin, how many people there are on the plus! I know not, said Fleur-de-Lis. It appears that a witch is to do penance this morning before the church and thereafter to be hung. The captain was so thoroughly persuaded that La as morale does affair was concluded that he was but little disturbed by Fleur-de-Lis's words. Still, he asked her one or two questions. What is the name of this witch? I do not know, she replied. And what is she said to have done? She shrugged her white shoulders. I know not. Oh, Mandeuil Jezut, said her mother, there are so many witches nowadays that I dare say they burn them without knowing their names. One might as well seek the name of every cloud in the sky. After all, one may be tranquil. The good God keeps his register. Here the venerable Dom rose and came to the window. Good Lord, you are right, Phoebus, said she. The rabble is indeed great. There are people on all the roofs. Bless be God. Do you know, Phoebus, this reminds me of my best days. The entrance of King Charo VII, when also there were many people. I no longer remember in what year that was. When I speak of this to you, it produces upon you the effect, does it not, the effect of something very old and upon me of something very young. Oh, the crowd was far finer than at the present day. They even stood upon the maculations of the Porte Sanatuan. The king had the queen on a pillion, and after their highnesses came all the ladies mounted behind all the lords. I remember that they laughed loudly, because, beside Emmanuel de Garland, who was very short of stature, there rode the Sir Montefillon, a chevalier of gigantic size who had killed heaps of English. It was very fine. A procession of all the gentlemen of France with their oriflame waving red before the eye. There were some with penins and some with banners. How can I tell? The sire de Combe with a penin, Jean de Charte-Maurant with a banner, the sire de Coursy with a banner, and a more ample one than any of the others except the duke de Bourbon. Alas, it is a sad thing to think that all that has existed and exists no longer. The two lovers were not listening to the venerable dowager. Phoebus had returned and was leaning on the back of his betrothed chair. A charming post went his libertine glance plunged into all the openings of Fleur de Lise's gorge. This gorge gaped so conveniently and allowed him to see so many exquisite things and to divine so many more that Phoebus, dazzled by this skin with its gleams of satin, said to himself, How can anyone love anything but a fair skin? Both were silent. The young girl raised sweet and raptured eyes to whim from time to time, and their hair mingled in a ray of spring sunshine. Phoebus, said Fleur de Lise suddenly in a low voice, We are to be married three months hence. Swear to me that you have never loved any other woman than myself. I swear it, fair angel, replied Phoebus, and his passionate glances aided the sincere tone of his voice in convincing Fleur de Lise. Meanwhile the good mother, charmed to see the betrothed pair on terms of such perfect understanding, had just quitted the apartment to attend to some domestic matter. Phoebus observed it, and this so emboldened the adventurous captain that very strange ideas mounted to his brain. Fleur de Lise loved him. He was her betrothed. She was alone with him. His former taste for her had reawakened, not with all its freshness, but with all its ardour. After all, there is no great harm in tasting one's wheat while it is still in the blade. I do not know whether these ideas passed through his mind, but one thing is certain that Fleur de Lise was suddenly alarmed by the expression of his glance. She looked round and saw that her mother was no longer there. Good heavens, said she, blushing and uneasy. How very warm I am! I think in fact, replied Phoebus, that it cannot be far from midday. The sun is troublesome. We need only lower the curtains. No, no, exclaimed the poor little thing. On the contrary, I need air. And, like a fawn who feels the breath of the pack of hounds, she rose, ran to the window, opened it, and rushed upon the balcony. Phoebus, much discomfited, followed her. The plastouparvie Notre-Dame, upon which the balcony looked, as the reader knows, presented at that moment a singular and sinister spectacle, which caused the fright of the timid Fleur de Lise to change its nature. An immense crowd, which overflowed into all the neighboring streets, encumbered the place properly speaking. The little wall, brassed high, which surrounded the place, would not have sufficed to keep it free, had it not been lined with a thick hedge of sergeants and huckpeteers, culverines in hand. Thanks to this thicket of pikes and archibuses, the parvie was empty. Its entrance was guarded by a force of halberdeers, with the armorial bearings of the Bishop. The large doors of the church were closed, and formed a contrast with the innumerable windows on the plaza, which, open to their very gables, allowed a view of thousands of heads, heaped up almost like the piles of bullets in a park of artillery. The surface of this rabble was dingy, dirty, earthy. The spectacle which it was expecting was evidently one of the sort which possessed the privilege of bringing out and calling together the vilest among the populace. Nothing is so hideous as the noise which was made by that swarm of yellow caps and dirty heads. In that throng there were more laughs than cries, more women than men. From time to time a sharp and vibrating voice pierced the general clamour. Away, Mahi Balefre, is she to be hung yonder? Fool, tis here that she is to make her apology in her shift. The good God is going to cough Latin in her face. That is always done here at midday. If tis the gallows that you wish, go to the greve. I will go there afterwards. Tell me, la boucambrie, is it true that she has refused a confessor? It appears so, la bachonne. You see what a pagan she is. Tis the costume monsieur, the bailiff of the courts is bound to deliver the mal-factor ready judged for execution, if he be a layman, to the provost of Paris, if a clerk to the official of the bishopric. Thank you, sir. Oh, God! said Fleur-de-Lis, the poor creature. This thought filled with sadness the glance which she cast upon the populace. The captain, much more occupied with her than with that pack of the rabble, was amourously rumpling her girdle behind. She turned round, entreating, and smiling. Please let me alone, Phoebus. If my mother were to return, she would see your hand. At that moment midday rang slowly out from the clock of Notre-Dame. A murmur of satisfaction broke out in the crowd. The last vibration of the twelfth stroke had hardly died away when all heads surged like the waves beneath the squall, and an immense shout went up from the pavement, the windows, and the roofs. There she is! Fleur-de-Lis pressed her hands to her eyes that she might not see. Charming girl, said Phoebus, do you wish to withdraw? No, she replied, and she opened through curiosity the eyes which she had closed through fear. A tumbrel drawn by a stout Norman horse and all surrounded by cavalry and violet livery with white crosses had just debouched upon the plaza through the rue Saint-Pierre-au-Bufs. The sergeants of the watch were clearing a passage for it through the crowd by stout blows from their clubs. Beside the cart wrote several officers of justice and police, recognisable by their black costume and their awkwardness in the saddle. Master Jacques Chameleaux paraded at their head. In the fatal cart sat a young girl with her arms tied behind her back, and with no priest beside her. She was in her shift. Her long black hair, the fashion then was to cut it off only at the foot of the gallows, fell in disorder upon her half-bared throat and shoulders. A thwart that waving hair, more glossy than the plumage of a raven, a thick, rough gray rope was visible, twisted and knotted, chafing her delicate collar bones and twining round the charming neck of the poor girl like an earthworm round a flower. Beneath that rope glittered a tiny amulet ornamented with bits of green glass, which had been left to her no doubt because nothing is refused to those who are about to die. The spectators in the windows could see in the bottom of the cart her naked legs, which she strove to hide beneath her as by a final feminine instinct. At her feet lay a little goat bound. The condemned girl held together with her teeth her imperfectly fastened shift. One would have said that she suffered still more in her misery from being thus exposed almost naked to the eyes of all. Alas, modesty is not made for such shocks. Jesus, said Fleur-de-Lis hastily to the captain, look fair cousin, tis that wretched Bohemian with the goat. So saying she turned to Phoebus, his eyes were fixed on the tumbrel, he was very pale. What Bohemian with the goat, he stammered. What, resumed Fleur-de-Lis, do you not remember? Phoebus interrupted her. I do not know what you mean. He made a step to re-enter the room, but Fleur-de-Lis, whose jealousy previously so vividly aroused by this same gypsy had just been reawakened, Fleur-de-Lis gave him a look full of penetration and distrust. She vaguely recalled at that moment having heard of a captain mixed up in the trial of that witch. What is the matter with you? she said to Phoebus. One would say that this woman had disturbed you. Phoebus forced a sneer. Me, not the least in the world. Ah, yes, certainly. Remain then, she continued imperiously, and let us see the end. The unlucky captain was obliged to remain. He was somewhat reassured by the fact that the condemned girl never removed her eyes from the bottom of the cart. It was but too surely La Esmeralda. In this last stage of approbrium and misfortune she was still beautiful. Her great black eyes appeared still larger because of the emaciation of her cheeks. Her pale profile was pure and sublime. She resembled what she had been, in the same degree that a virgin by Massaccio resembles a virgin of Raphael. Weaker, thinner, more delicate. Moreover, there was nothing in her which was not shaken in some sort, and which, with the exception of her modesty, she did not let go at will, so profoundly had she been broken by stupor and despair. Her body bounded at every jolt of the tumble, like a dead or broken thing. Her gaze was dull and imbecile. A tear was still visible in her eyes, but motionless and frozen, so to speak. Meanwhile, the lugubrious cavalcade has traversed the crowd amid cries of joy and curious attitudes. But as a faithful historian, we must state that on beholding her so beautiful, so depressed, many were moved with pity, even among the hardest of them. The tumbrel had entered the parvie. It halted before the central portal. The escort ranged themselves in line on both sides. The crowd became silent, and in the midst of this silence, full of anxiety and solemnity, the two leaves of the grand door swung back, as of themselves, on their hinges, which gave a creak like the sound of a fife. Then there became visible, in all its length, the deep, gloomy church, hung in black, sparely lighted with a few candles gleaming afar off on the principal altar, opened in the midst of the plass which was dazzling with light, like the mouth of a cavern. At the very extremity, in the gloom of the apse, a gigantic silver cross was visible against a black drapery, which hung from the vault to the pavement. The whole nave was deserted, but a few heads of priests could be seen moving confusedly in the distant choir stalls, and at the moment, when the great door opened, they escaped from the church, a loud solemn and monotonous chanting, which cast over the head of the condemned girl in gusts fragments of melancholy psalms. Salvo mi fac deus, conium intro verunt acoe esco ad anima mi am, infaxis sum in limo profundi, et non es substantia. At the same time, another voice, separate from the choir, intoned upon the steps of the chief altar, this melancholy offertory. Chi verbum meum audit et credit ae qui mesit me, hebet vitum otternum et injustitiam, non venit sed transit e morte im vitum. He that hirith my word, and believeth in him that sent me, hath eternal life, and hath not come into condemnation, but is passed from death to life. This chant, which a few old men buried in the gloom, sank from afar over that beautiful creature, full of youth and life, caressed by the warm air of spring, inundated with sunlight, was the mass for the dead. The people listened devoutly. The unhappy girl seemed to lose her sight and her consciousness in the obscure interior of the church. Her white lips moved as though in prayer, and the headsman's assistant, who approached to assist her to a light from the cart, heard her repeating this word in a low tone. Phoebus. They untied her hands, made her a light, accompanied by her goat, which had also been unbound, and which bleeded with joy at finding itself free. And they made her walk barefoot on the hard pavement to the foot of the steps leading to the door. The rope about her neck trailed behind her. One would have said it was a serpent following her. Then the chanting in the church ceased. A great golden cross and a row of wax candles began to move through the gloom. The halberds of the motley beetles clanked, and a few moments later a long procession of priests and chassables and deacons and delmatics marched gravely towards the condemned girl as they drawled their song spread out before her view and that of the crowd. But her glance rested on the one who marched at the head immediately after the cross-bearer. Oh! she said in a low voice and with a shudder. Tis he again the priest! It was, in fact, the Archdeacon. On his left he had the sub-chanter, on his right the chanter, armed with his official wand. He advanced with head thrown back, his eyes fixed and wide open, in toning, in a strong voice. Deventre in ferry clamavi et exaldisti voce miam et projachisti me in profundum in cordemans et flumem circum didet me. Out of the belly of hell cried I and thou hurtest my voice, for thou hast cast me into the deep in the midst of the seas and the floods compassed me about. At the moment when he made his appearance in the full daylight beneath the lofty arched portal, enveloped in an ample cope of silver barred with a black cross, he was so pale that more than one person in the crowd thought that one of the marble bishops who knelt on the sepulchral stones of the choir had risen and was come to receive upon the brink of the tomb the woman who was about to die. She, no less pale, no less like a statue, had hardly noticed that they had placed in her hand a heavy lighted candle of yellow wax. She had not heard the yelping voice of the clerk reading the fatal contents of the apology, when they told her to respond with amen she responded amen. She only recovered life and force when she beheld the priest make a sign to her guards to withdraw and himself advance alone towards her. Then she felt her blood boil in her head, and a remnant of indignation flashed up in that soul already benumbed and cold. The Archdeacon approached her slowly. Even in that extremity she beheld him cast an eye sparkling with sensuality, jealousy, and desire over her exposed form. Then he said aloud, Young girl, have you asked God's pardon for your faults and shortcomings? He bent down to her ear and added, the spectator supposed that he was receiving her last confession. Will you have me? I can still save you. She looked intently at him. Be gone, demon, or I will denounce you. He gave vent to a horrible smile. You will not be believed. You will only add a scandal to a crime. Reply quickly. Will you have me? What have you done with my Phoebus? He is dead, said the priest. At that moment the wretched Archdeacon raised his head mechanically and beheld at the other end of the plaza in the balcony of the gondolaurier mansion, the captain standing beside Fleur-de-Lis. He staggered, passed his hand across his eyes, looked again, muttered a curse, and all his features were violently contorted. Well, die, then, he hissed between his teeth. No one shall have you. Then, raising his hand over the gypsy, he exclaimed in a funereal voice, Go now, soul, trembling in the balance, and God have mercy upon thee. This was the dread formula with which it was the custom to conclude these gloomy ceremonies. It was the signal agreed upon between the priest and the executioner. The crowd knelt. Curie Eleson, said the priests, who would remain beneath the arch of the portal. Lord have mercy upon us. Curie Eleson repeated the throng in that murmur which runs over all heads, like the waves of a troubled sea. Amen, said the Archdeacon. He turned his back to the condemned girl. His head sank upon his breast once more. He crossed his hands and rejoined his escort of priests, and a moment later he was seen to disappear, with the cross, the candles, and the copes, beneath the misty arches of the cathedral, and his sonorous voice was extinguished by degrees in the choir, as he chanted this verse of despair. Omnes gurgetes tuae et fluctos tuae super me transerionte. All thy waves and thy billows have gone over me. At the same time the intermittent clash of the iron butts of the Beatles Halberds, gradually dying away among the columns of the nave, produced the effect of a clock hammer striking the last hour of the condemned. The doors of Notre Dame remained open, allowing a view of the empty desolate church, draped in mourning, without candles and without voices. The condemned girl remained motionless in her place, waiting to be disposed of. One of the sergeants of police was obliged to notify Master Charmalu of the fact, as the latter during this entire scene, had been engaged in studying the bas-relief of the Grand Portal, which represents, according to some, the sacrifice of Abraham, according to others, the philosopher's alchemical operation, the sun being figured forth by the angel, the fire by the faggot, the artisan, by Abraham. There was considerable difficulty in drawing him away from that contemplation, but at length he turned round, and at a signal which he gave, two men, clad in yellow, the executioner's assistants, approached the gypsy to bind her hands once more. The unhappy creature, at the moment of mounting once again the fatal cart and proceeding to her last halting place, was seized, possibly with some poignant clinging to life. She raised her dry red eyes to heaven, to the sun, to the silvery clouds, cut here and there by a blue trapezium or triangle, then she lowered them to objects around her, to the earth, the throng, the houses. All at once, while the yellow man was binding her elbows, she uttered a terrible cry, a cry of joy. Yonder, on that balcony, at the corner of the plaza, she had just caught sight of him, of her friend, her lord, Phoebus, the other apparition of her life. The judge had lied, the priest had lied, it was certainly he, she could not doubt it. He was there, handsome, alive, dressed in his brilliant uniform, his plume on his head, his sword by his side. Phoebus, she cried, my Phoebus! And she tried to stretch toward him arms, trembling with love and rapture, but they were bound. Then she saw the Captain Frown, a beautiful young girl, who was leaning against him, gazed at him with disdainful lips and irritated eyes. Then Phoebus uttered some words which did not reach her, and both disappeared precipitately behind the window opening upon the balcony, which closed after them. Phoebus, she cried wildly. Can it be you believe it? A monstrous thought had just presented itself to her. She remembered that she had been condemned to death for murder committed on the person of Phoebus de Chateau-Pay. She had borne up until that moment, but this last blow was too harsh. She fell lifeless on the pavement. Come, said Charmalieu, carry her to the cart and make an end of it. No one had yet observed in the gallery of the statues of the kings carved directly above the arches of the portal a strange spectator, who had, up to that time, observed everything with such impassiveness with a neck so strained, a visage so hideous that in his motley accoutrement of red and violet he might have been taken for one of those stone monsters through whose mouths the long gutters of the cathedral have discharged their waters for six hundred years. This spectator had missed nothing that had taken place since midday, in front of the portal of Notre-Dame. And at the very beginning he had securely fastened to one of the small columns a large knotted rope, one end of which trailed on the flight of steps below. This being done, he began to look on tranquilly, whistling from time to time when a blackbird flitted past. Suddenly, at the moment when the superintendent's assistants were preparing to execute Charmalieu's phlegmatic order, he threw his leg over the balustrade of the gallery, seized the rope with his feet, his knees and his hands. Then he was seen to glide down the facade as a drop of rain slips down a window-pane, rushed to the two executioners with the swiftness of a cat which has fallen from a roof, knocked them down with two enormous fists, picked up the gypsy with one hand as a child would her doll and dashed back into the church with a single bound, lifting the young girl above his head and crying in a formidable voice, Sanctuary! This was done with such rapidity that had it taken place at night, the whole of it could have been seen in the space of a single flash of lightning. Sanctuary! Sanctuary! repeated the crowd, and the clapping of ten thousand hands made Quasimodo's single eye sparkle with joy and pride. This shock restored the condemned girl to her senses. She raised her eyelids, looked at Quasimodo, then closed them again suddenly as though terrified by her deliverer. Charmalieu was stupified, as well as the executioners and the entire escort. In fact, within the bounds of Notre-Dame, the condemned girl could not be touched. The cathedral was a place of refuge. All temporal jurisdiction expired upon its threshold. Quasimodo had halted beneath the Great Portal. His huge feet seemed as solid on the pavement of the church as the heavy Roman pillars. His great bushy head sat low between his shoulders, like the heads of lions, who also have a mane and no neck. He held the young girl, who was quivering all over, suspended from his horny hands like a white drapery. But he carried her with as much care as though he feared to break her or blight her. One would have said that he felt that she was a delicate, exquisite, precious thing made for other hands than his. There were moments when he looked as if not daring to touch her, even with his breath. Then, all at once, he would press her forcibly in his arms, against his angular bosom like his own possession, his treasure, as the mother of that child would have done. His gnome's eye, fastened upon her, inundated her with tenderness, sadness, and pity, and was suddenly raised filled with lightnings. Then the women laughed and wept, the crowd stamped with enthusiasm, for at that moment Quasimodo had a beauty of his own. He was handsome. He, that orphan, that foundling, that outcast. He felt himself august and strong. He gazed in the face of that society from which he was banished and which he had so powerfully intervened, of that human justice from which he had wrenched its prey, of all those tigers whose jaws were forced to remain empty, of those policemen, those judges, those executioners, of all that force of the king which he, the meanest of creatures, had just broken with the force of God. And then it was touching to behold this protection which had fallen from a being so hideous upon a being so unhappy, a creature condemned to death saved by Quasimodo. They were two extremes of natural and social wretchedness, coming into contact and aiding each other. Meanwhile, after several moments of triumph, Quasimodo had plunged abruptly into the church with his burden. The populace, fond of all prowess, sought him with their eyes, beneath the gloomy nave, regretting that he had so speedily disappeared from their acclamations. All at once he was seen to reappear at one of the extremities of the gallery of the kings of France. He traversed it, running like a madman, raising his conquest high in his arms and shouting, The crowd broke forth, too, into fresh applause. The gallery passed he plunged once more into the interior of the church. A moment later he reappeared upon the upper platform with the gypsy still in his arms, still running madly, still crying, Sanctuary! And the throng applauded. Finally he made his appearance for the third time upon the summit of the tower where hung the great bell. From that point he seemed to be showing to the entire city the girl whom he had saved, and his voice of thunder, that voice which was so rarely heard, and which he never heard himself, repeated thrice with frenzy, even to the clouds, Sanctuary! Sanctuary! Sanctuary! Noel! Noel! shouted the populace in its turn, and that immense acclamation flew to astonish the crowd assembled at the grave on the other bank, and the recluse who was still waiting with her eyes riveted on the gibbet.