 Book 6, Chapter 2, of the Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Book 6, Chapter 2. The Rat Hole. The reader must permit us to take him back to the Plastigreve, which we quitted yesterday with Gringoire in order to fiddle La Esmeralda. It is ten o'clock in the morning. Everything is indicative of the day after a festival. The pavement is covered with rubbish, ribbons, rags, feathers from tufts of plumes, drops of wax from the torches, crumbs of the public feast. A goodly number of bourgeois are sauntering, as we say, here and there, turning over with their feet the extinct brands of the bonfire, going into raptures in front of the pillar-house over the memory of the fine hangings of the day before, and to-day staring at the nails that secured them a last pleasure. The vendors of cider and beer are rolling their barrels among the groups. Some busy passers-by come and go. The merchants converse and call to each other from the thresholds of their shops. The festival, the ambassadors, Coppanoal, the Pope of the Fools, are in all mouths. They vie with each other, each trying to criticize it best and laugh the most. And meanwhile, four mounted sergeants, who have just posted themselves at the four sides of the pillory, have already concentrated around themselves a good proportion of the populace scattered on the plaza, who condemn themselves to immobility and fatigue in the hope of a small execution. If the reader, after having contemplated this lively and noisy scene which is being enacted in all parts of the plaza, will now transfer his gaze towards that ancient demigothic demiromanesque house of the Tour Roland which forms the corner of the key to the west, he will observe, at the angle of the façade, a large public breviary, with rich illuminations protected from the rain by a little penthouse and from thieves by a small grating, which however permits of the leaves being turned. Because this breviary is a narrow arched window, closed by two iron bars in the form of a cross, and looking on the square. The only opening which admits a small quantity of light and air to a little cell without a door, constructed on the ground floor, in the thickness of the walls of the old house and filled with a peace all the more profound, with a silence all the more gloomy, because a public place, the most populous and most noisy in Paris, swarms and shrieks around it. This little cell had been celebrated in Paris for nearly three centuries, ever since Madame Roland de la Tour Roland, in mourning for her father who died in the Crusades, had caused it to be hollowed out in the wall of her own house, in order to emure herself there forever, keeping of all her palace only this lodging whose door was walled up, and whose window stood open, winter and summer, giving all the rest to the poor and to God. The afflicted damsel had in effect waited twenty years for death in this premature tomb, praying night and day for the soul of her father sleeping in ashes without even a stone for a pillow, clothed in a black sack and subsisting on the bread and water which the compassion of the passers-by led them to deposit on the ledge of her window, thus receiving charity after having bestowed it. At her death, at the moment when she was passing to the other sepulchre, she had bequeathed this one in perpetuity to afflicted women, mothers, widows or maidens who should wish to pray much for others or for themselves, and who should desire to inter themselves alive in a great grief or a great penance. The poor of her day had made her a fine funeral, with tears and benedictions, but to their great regret the pious maid had not been canonized for lack of influence. Those among them who were a little inclined to impiety had hoped that the matter might be accomplished in paradise more easily than at Rome, and had frankly besought God instead of the Pope in behalf of the deceased. The majority had contented themselves with holding the memory of Roland sacred, and converting her rags into relics. The city, on its side, had founded in honour of the Damoiselle a public braviary which had been fastened near the window of the cell in order that passers-by might halt there from time to time, were it only to pray. That prayer might remind them of alms, and that poor recluses, heiresses of Madame Roland's vault, might not die outright of hunger and forgetfulness. Moreover, this sort of tomb was not so very rare a thing in the cities of the Middle Ages. One often encountered in the most frequented street, in the most crowded and noisy market, in the very middle, under the feet of the horses, under the wheels of the carts as it were, a cellar, a well, a tiny walled and grated cabin, at the bottom of which a human being prayed night and day, voluntarily devoted to some eternal lamentation, to some great expiation. And all the reflections which that strange spectacle would awaken in us today, that horrible cell, a sort of intermediary link between a house and the tomb, the cemetery and the city, that living being cut off from the human community and thenceforth reckoned among the dead, that lamp consuming its last drop of oil in the darkness, that remnant of life flickering in the grave, that breath, that voice, that eternal prayer in a box of stone, that face forever turned towards the other world, that eye already illuminated with another sun, that ear pressed to the walls of a tomb, that soul, a prisoner in that body, that body, a prisoner in that dungeon cell, and beneath that double envelope of flesh and granite, the murmur of that soul in pain. Nothing of all this was perceived by the crowd. The piety of that age, not very subtle nor much given to reasoning, did not see so many facets in an act of religion. It took the thing in the block, honored, venerated, hollowed the sacrifice at need, but did not analyze the sufferings, and felt but moderate pity for them. It brought some pittance to the miserable penitent from time to time, looked through the hole to see whether he was still living. For God his name hardly knew how many years ago he had begun to die, and to the stranger who questioned them about the living skeleton who was perishing in that cellar, the neighbors replied simply, It is the recluse. Everything was then viewed without metaphysics, without exaggeration, without magnifying glass, with the naked eye. The microscope had not yet been invented, either for things of matter, or for things of the mind. Moreover, although people were but little surprised by it, the examples of this sort of cloistration in the hearts of cities were in truth frequent, as we have just said. There were in Paris a considerable number of these cells, for praying to God and doing penance. They were nearly all occupied. It is true that the clergy did not like to have them empty, since that implied lukewarmness in believers, and that lepers were put into them when there were no penitents on hand. Besides the cell on the grève there was one at Mont-Fausson, one at the Charnier des Inossants, another I hardly know where, at the Clichon House I think, others still at many spots where traces of them are found in traditions in default of memorials. The university had also its own. On Mount Saint-Jean-Vievre, a sort of job of the Middle Ages, for the space of thirty years chanted the seven penitential Psalms on a dung hill at the bottom of a cistern, beginning anew when he had finished singing loudest at night. Magna voce per umbras. Today the antiquary fancies that he hears his voice as he enters the rue de Puy-Quipalais, the street of the speaking well. To confine ourselves to the cell in the Tour-Roland we must say that it had never lacked recluses. After the death of Maudame-Roland it had stood vacant for a year or two, though rarely. Many women had come thither to mourn until their death, for relatives, lovers, faults. Parisian malice, which thrusts its finger into everything, even into things which concern at the least, affirmed that it had beheld but few widows there. In accordance with the fashion of the epoch, a Latin inscription on the wall indicated to the learned passer-by the pious purpose of this cell. A custom was retained until the middle of the sixteenth century of explaining an edifice by a brief device inscribed above the door. Thus one still reads in France, above the wicked of the prison and the seniorial mansion of Tour-Vie, Sileto et Spira, in Ireland beneath the armorial bearings which surmount the grand door to Fortescu Castle, Fortescu-Tum Salus-Ducum. In England, over the principal entrance to the hospitable mansion of the earl's cowper, Tuum est. At that time every edifice was a thought. As there was no door to the walled cell of the Tour-Roland, these two words had been carved in large Roman capitals over the window. Tu ora. And this caused the people, whose good sense does not perceive so much refinement in things, and likes to translate Ludovico Magno by Porte Santani to give this dark, gloomy, damp cavity the name of the rat-hole. An explanation less sublime perhaps than the other, but on the other hand more picturesque. End of Book Six, Chapter Two. Book Six, Chapter Three, of the Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Book Six, Chapter Three, History of Eleven Cake of Maze. At the epic of this history the cell in the Tour-Roland was occupied. If the reader desires to know by whom, he has only to lend an ear to the conversation of three worthy gossips, who at the moment when we have directed his attention to the rat-hole were directing their steps toward the same spot, coming up along the water's edge from the châtelet towards the grave. Two of these women were dressed like good bourgeoisie of Paris. Their fine white ruffs, their petticoats of Lindsay Woolsey striped red and blue. Their white knitted stockings, with clocks embroidered in colors, well drawn upon their legs. The square-toed shoes of tawny leather with black soles. And above all their headgear, that sort of tinsel horn loaded down with ribbons and laces, which the women of Champagne still wear, in company with the grenadiers of the Imperial Guard of Russia, announced that they belong to that class wives which holds the middle-ground between what the lackeys call a woman and what they term a lady. They wore neither rings nor gold crosses. And it was easy to see that, in their ease, this did not proceed from poverty, but simply from fear of being fined. Their companion was attired in very much the same manner. But there was that indescribable something about her dress and bearing which suggested the wife of a provincial notary. One could see, by the way in which her girdle rose above her hips, that she had not been long in Paris. Add to this a plaited tucker, knots of ribbon on her shoes, and that the stripes of her petticoat ran horizontally instead of vertically, and a thousand other enormities which shocked good taste. The two first walked with that step peculiar to Parisian ladies showing Paris to women from the country. The provincial held by the hand a big boy who held in his a large flat cake. We regret to be obliged to add that, owing to the rigor of the season, he was using his tongue as a handkerchief. The child was making them drag him along, non-pessibus sequus, as Virgil says, and stumbling at every moment to the great indignation of his mother. It is true that he was looking at his cake more than at the pavement. Some serious motive, no doubt, prevented his biting it, the cake, for he contended himself with gazing tenderly at it. But the mother should have rather taken charge of the cake. It was cruel to make a tantalus of the chubby cheeked boy. Meanwhile the three Damoiselles, for the name of Domes was then reserved for noble women, were all talking at once. "'Let us make haste, Damoiselle Mahyet,' said the youngest of the three, who was also the largest, to the provincial. "'I greatly fear that we shall arrive too late. They told us at the Châtelet that they were going to take him directly to the pillory.' "'Ah, bah! What are you saying, Damoiselle Oudard-Munier?' interposed the other Parisienne. There are two hours yet to the pillory. We have time enough. Have you ever seen any one pillory, my dear Mahyet?' "'Yes,' said the provincial, at Rhymes. "'Ah, bah! What is your pillory at Rhymes? A miserable cage into which only peasants are turned. A great affair, truly!' "'Only peasants,' said Mahyet, at the cloth market in Rhymes. We have seen very fine criminals there, who have killed their father and mother. Peasants! For what do you take us, Gervais?' It is certain that the provincial was on the point of taking offense for the honour of her pillory. Fortunately, that discreet Damoiselle Oudard-Munier turned the conversation in time. "'By the way, Damoiselle Mahyet, what say you to our Flemish ambassadors? Have you as fine ones at Rhymes?' "'I admit,' replied Mahyet, that it is only in Paris that such Flemings can be seen. "'Did you see, among the embassy, that big ambassador, who is a hosier?' asked Oudard. "'Yes,' said Mahyet. "'He has the eye of a Saturn. And the big fellow, whose face resembles a bare belly,' resumed Gervais. And the little one, with small eyes, framed in red eyelids, pared down and slashed up like a thistle-head. "'Tis they're horses that are worth seeing,' said Oudard, comparison'd as they are after the fashion of their country.' "'Ah, my dear,' interrupted provincial Mahyet, assuming in her turn an air of superiority. What would you say, then, if you had seen in sixty-one, at the consecration at Rhymes, eighteen years ago, the horses of the princes and of the king's company? Housings and comparisons of all sorts. Some of Damuscloth, a fine cloth of gold, furred with sables. Others of velvet, furred with ermine. Others all embellished with goldsmith's work and large bells of gold and silver. And what money they had cost! And what handsome boy pages wrote upon them!' "'That,' replied Oudard, dryly, does not prevent the Flemings having very fine horses, and having had a superb supper yesterday with Mansur the provost of the merchants at the Odelle de Vie, where they were served with comfits and hippocrats and spices and other singularities.' "'What are you saying, neighbour?' exclaimed Gervais. It was with Mansur the cardinal at the Petit Bourbon that they subbed. "'Not at all, at the Odelle de Vie. Yes, indeed, at the Petit Bourbon.' "'It was at the Odelle de Vie,' retorted Oudard sharply, and Dr. Scrabble addressed them in a harangue in Latin, which pleased them greatly. "'My husband, who is a sworn bookseller, told me.' "'It was at the Petit Bourbon,' replies Gervais, with no less spirit, and this is what Mansur the cardinal's procurator presented to them, twelve double-quarts of hippocrats, white, claret, and red, twenty-four boxes of double-lion marshipane, gilded, as many torches, worth two levers apiece, and six demicues of bonnet wine, white and claret, the best that could be found. "'I have it from my husband, who is a cinquantagné at the Parlois au Beaujois, and who was this morning comparing the Flemish ambassadors with those of Prestor John and the emperor of Trebizond, who came from Mesopotamia to Paris, under the last king, and who wore rings in their ears.' "'So true is it that they subbed at the Hotel de Vie,' replied Udard, but little affected by this catalogue, that such a triumph of vions and comfits has never been seen. "'I tell you that they were served by Les Sec, sergeant of the city, at the Hotel du Petit Bourbon, and that that is where you are mistaken. "'At the Hotel de Vie, I tell you.' "'At the Petit Bourbon, my dear, and they had illuminated with magic glasses the word hope, which is written on the grand portale. "'At the Hotel de Vie, at the Hotel de Vie, and Ouzonne Levoix played the flute. "'I tell you no. "'I tell you yes. "'I say no.' Plump and worthy Udard was preparing to retort, and the quarrel might, perhaps, have proceeded to a pulling of caps, but not, my yet,' suddenly exclaimed. "'Look at those people assembled yonder at the end of the bridge. There is something in their midst that they are looking at.' "'In soothe,' said Jervais, I hear the sounds of a tambourine. I believe, tis the little Esmeralda, who plays her mummeries with her goat. "'Ey, be quick, my yet! We double your pace and drag along your boy. You are come hither to visit the curiosities of Paris. You saw the Flemmings yesterday. You must see the Gypsy today.' "'The Gypsy,' said my yet, suddenly retracing her steps and clasping her son's arm forcibly. God preserve me from it. She would steal my child from me. Come, you stash!' And she set out on a run along the quay towards the greve, until she had left the bridge far behind her. In the meanwhile the child whom she was dragging after her fell upon his knees. She halted, breathless. Udard and Jervais rejoined her. "'That Gypsy steal your child from you,' said Jervais. "'That's a singular freak of yours!' Mahiet shook her head with a pensive air. "'The singular point is,' observed Udard, that La Sachette has the same idea about the Egyptian woman.' "'What is La Sachette?' asked Mahiet. "'Ey,' said Udard, sister Goudoule.' "'And who is sister Goudoule?' persisted Mahiet. "'You are certainly ignorant of all but your rhymes not to know that,' replied Udard. "'Tis the recluse of the rat-hole.' "'What?' demanded Mahiet. "'That poor woman to whom we are carrying this cake?' Udard nodded affirmatively. "'Precisely. You will see her presently at her window on the grave. She has the same opinion as yourself of these vagabonds of Egypt, who play the tambourine and tell fortunes to the public. No one knows whence comes her horror of the Gypsies and Egyptians. But you, Mahiet, why do you run so at the mere sight of them?' "'Oh!' said Mahiet, seizing her child's round head in both hands. "'I don't want that to happen to me, which happened to Paquette La Chante-Flurie.' "'Oh! You must tell us that story, my good Mahiet,' said your vase, taking her arm.' "'Gladly,' replied Mahiet. "'But you must be ignorant of all but your Paris not to know that.' "'I will tell you then, but tis not necessary for us to halt that I may tell you the tale. That Paquette La Chante-Flurie was a pretty maid of eighteen when I was one myself, that is to say, eighteen years ago, and tis her own fault, if she is not to-day, like me, a good, plump, fresh mother of six and thirty, with a husband and a son. However, after the age of fourteen it is too late.' "'Well, she was the daughter of Guy Bertaint, minstrel of the barges at Rhymes, the same who had played before King Charles VII at his coronation, when he descended our river Vesley from Sillerie to Mouesson, when Madame the Maid of Orleans was also in the boat. The old father died when Paquette was still a mere child. She had then no one but her mother, the sister of Monsieur Pradhon, Master Brazier, and Coppersmith in Paris, Rue Farm Garland, who died last year. You see, she was of good family. The mother was a good, simple woman, unfortunately, and she taught Paquette nothing but a bit of embroidery and toy-making, which did not prevent the little one from growing very large and remaining very poor. They both dwelt at Rhymes, on the river front, Rue de Follet-Pain. Mark this, for I believe it was this which brought misfortune to Paquette. In sixty-one, the year of the coronation of our King Louis XI, whom God preserve, Paquette was so gay and so pretty that she was called everywhere by no other name than La Charte Flurie, blossoming song. Poor girl! She had handsome teeth, was fond of laughing and displaying them. Now a maid who loves to laugh is on the road to weeping. Handsome teeth ruin handsome eyes. So she was La Charte Flurie. She and her mother earned a precarious living. They had been very destitute since the death of the minstrel. Their embroidery did not bring them in more than six far things a week, which does not amount to quite two eagle-yards. Where were the days when Father Guy Bartant had earned twelve Sous Parisian in a single coronation with a song? One winter it was in the same year of sixty-one, when the two women had neither faggots nor firewood, it was very cold, which gave La Charte Flurie such a fine color that the men called her Paquette, and many called her Paquette, and she was ruined. You stash, just let me see you bite that cake if you dare. We immediately perceived that she was ruined one Sunday when she came to church with a gold cross about her neck, at fourteen years of age. Three? First it was the young Vycompe de Cormontouy, who has his bell-tower three leagues distant from Rhymes. Then Messir Henri de Triancourt, aquary to the king. Then less than that, Chiat de Bollion, sergeant at arms. Then still descending, Guérry Aubert-Jean, carver to the king. Then Messé de Frappeux, barber to Monsieur the Dauphin. Then Tevinin Lemois, king's cook. Then the men growing continually younger and less noble, she fell to Guyom Racine, minstrel of the herdy-girdy, and to Thierry de Mer, lamp-lighter. Then, poor Chante Flurie, she belonged to every one. She had reached the last sue of her gold-piece. What shall I say to you, my damoiselles? At the coronation in the same year, sixty-one, twist she who made the bed of the king of the debauchers in the same year. Mahyet sighed and wiped away a tear which trickled from her eyes. This is no very extraordinary history, said Gervais, and in the whole of it I see nothing of any Egyptian women or children. Patience, resumed Mahyet, you will see one child. In sixty-six, to be sixteen years ago this month at St. Paul's Day, Paquette was brought to bed of a little girl. The unhappy creature. It was a great joy to her. She had long wished for a child. Her mother, good woman, who had never known what to do except to shut her eyes, her mother was dead. Paquette had no longer anyone to love in the world, or anyone to love her. La Chante-Flurie had been a poor creature during the five years since her fall. She was alone, alone in this life. Fingers were pointed at her. She was hooded at in the streets, beaten by the sergeants, jeered at by the little boys and rags. And then twenty had arrived. And twenty is an old age for amorous women. Folly began to bring her in no more than her trade of embroidery in former days. For every wrinkle that came a crown fled. Winter became hard to her once more. Wood became rare again in her brazier and bread in her cupboard. She could no longer work, because in becoming voluptuous she had grown lazy. And she suffered much more, because in growing lazy she had become voluptuous. At least that is the way in which Monsieur the curé of Saint-Rémy explains why these women are colder and hungrier than other poor women when they are old. Yes, remarked Gervais, but the gypsies? One moment, Gervais, said Udard, whose attention was less impatient. What would be left for the end if all were in the beginning? Continue, Mahyet, I entreat you. That poor Chante-Flurie. Mahyet went on. So she was very sad, very miserable, and furrowed her cheeks with tears. But in the midst of her shame, her folly, her debauchery, it seemed to her that she should be less wild, less shameful, less dissipated if there were something or someone in the world whom she could love, and who could love her. It was necessary that it should be a child, because only a child could be sufficiently innocent for that. She had recognized this fact after having tried to love a thief, the only man who wanted her. But after a short time she perceived that the thief despised her. Those women of love require either a lover or a child to fill their hearts. Otherwise they are very unhappy. As she could not have a lover, she turned holy towards a desire for a child, and as she had not ceased to be pious, she made her constant prayer to the good God for it, so the good God took pity on her and gave her a little daughter. I will not speak to you of her joy. It was a fury of tears and caresses and kisses. She nursed her child herself, made swaddling bands for it out of her coverlet, and only one which she had on her bed, and no longer felt either cold or hunger. She became beautiful once more, in consequence of it. An old maid makes a young mother. Gallantry claimed her once more. Men came to see La Chante Fleurie. She found customers again for her merchandise, and out of all these horrors she made baby clothes, caps and bibs, bodices with shoulder straps of lace, and tiny bonnets of satin, without even thinking of buying herself another coverlet. Master Eustache, I have already told you not to eat that cake. It was certain that little Agnes, that was the child's name, a baptismal name, for it was a long time since La Chante Fleurie had had any surname. It is certain that that little one was more swathed in ribbons and embroideries than a dolphiness of Dauphinie. Among other things she had a pair of little shoes, the like of which King Louis XI certainly never had. Her mother had stitched and embroidered them herself. She had lavished on them all the delicacies of her art of embroideress, and all the embellishments of a robe for the good virgin. They certainly were the two prettiest little pink shoes that could be seen. They were no longer than my thumb, and one had to see the child's little feet come out of them in order to believe that they had been able to get into them. It is true that those little feet were so small, so pretty, so rosy, rosier than the satin of the shoes. When you have children, Udard, you will find that there is nothing prettier than those little hands and feet. I ask no better, said Udard, with a sigh, but I am waiting until it shall suit the pleasure of Monsieur André Mounier. However, Paquette's child had more that was pretty about it besides its feet. I saw her when she was only four months old, she was a love. She had eyes larger than her mouth, and the most charming black hair which already curled. She would have been a magnificent brunette at the age of sixteen. Her mother became more crazy over her every day. She kissed her, caressed her, tickled her, washed her, decked her out, devoured her. She had lost her head over her, she thanked God for her. Her pretty little rosy feet above all were an endless source of wonderment. They were a delirium of joy. She was always pressing her lips to them, and she could never recover from her amazement at their smallness. She put them into the tiny shoes, took them out, admired them, marveled at them, looked at the light through them, was curious to see them try to walk on her bed, and would gladly have passed her life on her knees, putting on and taking off the shoes from those feet as though they had been those of an infant Jesus. The tale is fair and good, said Gervais in a low tone. But where do gypsies come into all that? Here, replied Mahyet. One day there arrived in rhymes of very queer sort of people. They were beggars and vagabonds who were roaming over the country, led by their duke and their counts. They were browned by exposure to the sun, they had closely curling hair and silver rings in their ears. The women were still uglier than the men. They had blacker faces, which were always uncovered, a miserable frock on their bodies, an old cloth woven of cords bound upon their shoulder, and their hair hanging like the tail of a horse. The children who scrambled between their legs would have frightened as many monkeys. A band of excommunicates. All these persons came direct from Lower Egypt to rhymes through Poland. The Pope had confessed them, it was said, and had prescribed them as penance to roam through the world for seven years without sleeping in a bed. And so they were called penancers, and smelt horribly. It appears that they had formerly been Saracens, which was why they believed in Jupiter, and claimed ten leavers of tourney from all archbishops, bishops, and mitered abbots with crows' ears. A bull from the Pope empowered them to do that. They came to rhymes to tell fortunes in the name of the King of Algiers and the Emperor of Germany. You can readily imagine that no more was needed to cause the entrance to the town to be forbidden to them. Then the whole band camped with good grace outside the Gate of Brain on that hill where stands a mill beside the cavities of the ancient chalk pits. And everybody in rhymes vied with his neighbor in going to see them. He looked at your hand and told you marvellous prophecies. They were equal to predicting to Judas that he would become Pope. Nevertheless ugly rumors were in circulation in regard to them. About children stolen, purses cut, and human flesh devoured. The wise people said to the foolish, Don't go there, and then wet themselves on the sly. It was an infatuation. The fact is that they said things fit to astonish a cardinal. Mothers triumphed greatly over their little ones after the Egyptians had read in their hands all sorts of marvellous written in Pagan and in Turkish. One had an Emperor, another a Pope, another a Captain. Poor Shanta Fleury was seized with curiosity. She wished to know about herself and whether her pretty little Agnes would not become some day Empress of Armenia or something else. So she carried her to the Egyptians, and the Egyptian women felt admiring the child, and to caressing it, and to kissing it with their black mouths, and to marvelling over its little band alas, to the great joy of the mother. They were specially enthusiastic over her pretty feet and shoes. The child was not yet a year old. She already lisped a little, laughed at her mother like a little mad thing, was plump and quite round, and possessed a thousand charming little gestures of the Angels of Paradise. She was very much frightened by the Egyptians and wept, but her mother kissed her more warmly and went away enchanted with the good fortune which the soothsayers had foretold for her Agnes. She was to be a beauty, virtuous, a queen. So she returned to her attic in the Rue Faulponnais, very proud of bearing with her a queen. The next day she took advantage of a moment when the child was asleep on her bed, for they always slept together, gently left the door a little way open, and ran to tell a neighbor in the Rue de la Sacherie that the day would come when her daughter Agnes would be served at a table by the King of England and by the Archduke of Ethiopia and a hundred other marvels. On her return, hearing no cries on the staircase, she said to herself, Good, the child is still asleep. She found her door wider open than she had left it, but she entered, poor mother, and ran to the bed. The child was no longer there, the place was empty. Nothing remained of the child, but one of her pretty little shoes. She flew out of the room, dashed down the stairs, and began to beat her head against the wall, crying, My child, who has my child? Who has taken my child? The street was deserted, the house isolated. No one could tell her anything about it. She went about the town, searched all the streets, ran hither and thither the whole day long, wild, beside herself, terrible, snuffing at doors and windows like a wild beast which has lost its young. She was breathless, disheveled, frightful to see, and there was a fire in her eyes which dried her tears. She stopped the passers-by and cried, My daughter, my daughter, my pretty little daughter, if anyone will give me back my daughter, I will be his servant, the servant of his dog, he shall eat my heart if he will. She met M. Lacqueret of Saint-Rémy and said to him, Monsieur, I will till the earth with my fingernails, but give me back my child. It was heart-rending, Udard, and I saw a very hard man, Master Ponce Lacabre, the procurator, weep. Ah, poor mother! In the evening she returned home. During her absence a neighbour had seen two gypsies ascend up to it with a bundle in their arms, then descend again after closing the door. Their departure, something like the cries of a child were heard in Pacquette's room. The mother, burst into shrieks of laughter, ascended the stairs as though on wings and entered. A frightful thing to tell, Udard. Instead of her pretty little agnes, so rosy and so fresh, who was a gift of the good God, a sort of hideous little monster, lame, one eyed, deformed, was crawling and squalling over the floor. She hid her eyes in horror. Oh, said she, have the witches transformed my daughter into this horrible animal? They hastened to carry away the little clubfoot. He would have driven her mad. It was the monstrous child of some gypsy woman who had given herself to the devil. He appeared to be about four years old, and talked a language which was no human tongue. There were words in it which were impossible. La chante-flurie flung herself upon the little shoe, all that remained to her of all that she loved. She remained so long motionless over it, mute, and without breath, that they thought she was dead. Suddenly she trembled all over, covered her relic with furious kisses, and burst out sobbing as though her heart were broken. I assure you that we were all weeping also. She said, Oh, my little daughter, my pretty little daughter, where art thou? And it rung your very heart. I weep still when I think of it. Our children are the marrow of our bones, you see. My poor you stash, though art so fair. If you only knew how nice he is. Yesterday he said to me, I want to be a gendarme that I do. Oh, my you stash, if I were to lose thee! All at once La chante-flurie rose and set out to run through rhyme screaming, To the gypsies' camp, to the gypsies' camp, police to burn the witches! The gypsies were gone. It was pitch dark. They could not be followed. On the morrow, two leagues from rhymes, on a heath between Gio and Tillie, the remains of a large fire were found, some ribbons which had belonged to Paquette's child, drops of blood, and the dung of a ram. The night just passed had been a Saturday. There was no longer any doubt that the Egyptians had held their sabbath on that heath, and that they had devoured the child in company with Beelzebub, as the practice is among the Mohammedans. When La chante-flurie learned these horrible things, she did not weep. She moved her lips as though to speak, but could not. On the morrow her hair was gray. On the second day she had disappeared. Tissient truth, a frightful tale, said Udard, and one which would make even a Burgundian weep. I am no longer surprised, added Gervais, that fear of the gypsies should spur you on so sharply. And you did all the better, resumed Udard, to flee with your Eustache just now, since these also are gypsies from Poland. No, said Gervais, Tiss said that they come from Spain and Catalonia. Catalonia? Tiss possible, replied Udard. Polon, Catalon, Valon, I always confound those three provinces. One thing is certain that they are gypsies, who certainly, added Gervais, have teeth long enough to eat little children. I should not be surprised if Las Marelda ate a little of them also, though she pretends to be dainty. Her white goat knows tricks that are too malicious for there not to be some impiety underneath it all. Ma yet walked on in silence. She was absorbed in that reverie which is, in some sort, the continuation of a mournful tale, and which ends only after having communicated the emotion from vibration to vibration, even to the very last fibers of the heart. Nevertheless, Gervais addressed her. And did they ever learn what became of La Chante Fleurie? Ma yet made no reply. Gervais repeated her question and shook her arm, calling her by name. Ma yet appeared to awaken from her thoughts. What became of La Chante Fleurie? She asked, repeating mechanically the words whose impression was still fresh in her ear, then making an effort to recall her attention to the meaning of her words. Ah! She continued briskly. No one ever found out. She added, after a pause. Some said that she had been seen to quit rhymes at nightfall by the Fleschambeau gate, others at daybreak by the old Basset gate. A poor man found her gold cross hanging at the stone cross in the field where the fair is held. It was that ornament which had wrought her ruin in sixty-one. It was a gift from the handsome vicomte Cormontouie, her first lover. Paquet had never been willing to part with it, wretched as she had been. She had clung to it as to life itself. So when we saw that cross abandoned, we all thought that she was dead. Nevertheless, there were people of the cabaret levante who said that they had seen her pass along the road to Paris, walking on the pebbles with her bare feet. But in that case, she must have gone out through the Porte Le Valet, and all this does not agree. Or to speak more truly, I believe that she actually did depart by the Porte de Valet, but departed from this world. I do not understand you, said Gervais. L'avale, replied Maillet, with a melancholy smile, is the river. Pours chant-fluris, c'est dudard, with a shiver, drowned. Drowned, resumed Maillet, who could have told good father Gibortant when he passed under the bridge of Tignot, with the current singing in his barge, that one day his dear little paquette would also pass beneath that bridge, but without song or boat. And the little shoe, asked Gervais, disappeared with the mother, replied Maillet. Poor little shoe, said Udard. Udard, a big and tender woman, would have been well pleased to sigh in company with Maillet, but Gervais, more curious, had not finished her questions. And the monster, she said suddenly to Maillet. What monster, inquired the latter? The little gypsy monster left by the sorceresses in chant-fluris chamber in exchange for her daughter. What did you do with it? I hope you drowned it also. No, replied Maillet. What? You burned it then. In soothe that is more just. A witch-child. Neither the one nor the other Gervais. Monsignor the archbishop interested himself in the child of Egypt, exercised it, blessed it, removed the devil carefully from its body, and sent it to Paris, to be exposed on the wooden bed at Notre-Dame as a foundling. Those bishops grumbled Gervais. Because they are learned, they do nothing like anybody else. I just put it to you, Udard, the idea of placing the devil among the foundlings. What that little monster was assured thee the devil! Well, Maillet, what did they do with it in Paris? I am quite sure that no charitable person wanted it. I do not know, replied the Renoir, to us just at that time that my husband bought the office of notary at Bern, two leagues from the town, and we were no longer occupied with that story. Besides, in front of Bern stand the two hills of Cernay, which hide the towers of the cathedral in rhymes from view. While chatting thus the three worthy bourgeoisie had arrived at the Place de Greve. In their absorption they had passed the public breviary of the tour roulande without stopping, and took their way mechanically towards the pillory around which the throng was growing more dense with every moment. It was probable that the spectacle which at that moment attracted all looks in that direction would have made them forget completely the rat-hole, and the halt which they intended to make there if Big Eustache, six years of age, whom Maillet was dragging along by the hand, had not abruptly recalled the object to them. Mother, he said, as though some instinct warned him that the rat-hole was behind them, can I eat the cake now? If Eustache had been more adroit, that is to say less greedy, he would have continued to wait, and would only have hazarded that simple question, Mother, can I eat the cake now? On their return to the university, to Master André Mounier's room Madame Lavalence, when he had the two arms of the same and the five bridges of the city between the rat-hole and the cake. This question, highly imprudent at the moment when Eustache put it, aroused Maillet's attention. By the way, she exclaimed, we are forgetting the recluse. Show me the rat-hole that I may carry her her cake. Immediately said Udard, tis a charity. But this did not suit Eustache. Stop, my cake, said he, rubbing both ears alternatively with his shoulders, which in such cases is the supreme sign of discontent. The three women retraced their steps, and, on arriving in the vicinity of the Tour Hollande, Udard said to the other two, We must not all three gaze into the hole at once, for fear of alarming the recluse. Do you two pretend to read the dominoes in the breviary, while I thrust my nose into the aperture? The recluse knows me a little. I will give you warning when you can approach. She proceeded alone to the window. At the moment when she looked in, a profound pity was depicted on all her features, and her frank, gay visage altered its expression and color as abruptly as though it had passed from a ray of sunlight to a ray of moonlight. Her eye became humid, her mouth contracted, like that of a person on the point of weeping. A moment later she laid her finger on her lips and made a sign to Maillet to draw near and look. Maillet, much touched, stepped up in silence on tiptoe, as though approaching the bedside of a dying person. It was, in fact, a melancholy spectacle which presented itself to the eyes of the two women as they gazed through the grading of the rat hole, neither stirring nor breathing. The cell was small, broader than it was long, with an arched ceiling and viewed from within it bore a considerable resemblance to the interior of a huge bishop's mitre. On the bare flagstones which formed the floor, in one corner a woman was sitting, or rather crouching. Her chin rested on her knees, which her crossed arms pressed forcibly to her breast. Thus doubled up, clad in a brown sack which enveloped her entirely in large folds, her long gray hair pulled over in front, falling over her face and along her legs nearly to her feet. She presented, at the first glance, only a strange form outlined against the dark background of the cell, a sort of dusky triangle which the ray of daylight falling through the opening cut roughly into two shades, the one somber, the other illuminated. It was one of those spectres, half light, half shadow, such as one beholds in dreams and in the extraordinary work of Goya, pale, motionless, sinister, crouching over a tomb or leaning against the grading of a prison cell. It was neither a woman nor a man, nor a living being, nor a definite form. It was a figure, a sort of vision, in which the real and the fantastic intersected each other, like darkness and day. It was with difficulty that one distinguished, beneath her hair which spread to the ground, a gaunt and severe profile. Her dress barely allowed the extremity of a bare foot to escape which contracted on the hard, cold pavement. The little of human form of which one caught a sight beneath this envelope of mourning caused a shudder. That figure, which one might have supposed to be riveted to the flagstones, appeared to possess neither movement nor thought nor breath. Lying in January in that thin linen sack, lying on a granite floor without fire, in the gloom of a cell whose oblique air-hole allowed only the cold breeze but never the sun to enter from without, she did not appear to suffer or even to think. One would have said that she had turned to stone with the cell, ice with the season. Her hands were clasped, her eyes fixed. At first sight one took her for a spectre, at the second for a statue. Nevertheless at intervals her blue lips half open to admit a breath and trembled, but as dead and as mechanical as the leaves which the wind sweeps aside. Nevertheless from her dull eyes there escaped a look, an ineffable look, a profound, lugubrious, imperturbable look, incessantly fixed upon a corner of the cell which could not be seen from without, a gaze which seemed to fix all the somber thoughts of that soul in distress upon some mysterious object. Such was the creature who had received, from her habitation, the name of the recluse, and from her garment the name of the sacked nun. The three women, for Gervais had rejoined Mahiette and Udard, gazed through the window. Their heads intercepted the feeble light in the cell, without the wretched being whom they thus deprived of it seeming to pay any attention to them. "'Do not let us trouble her,' said Udard in a low voice. She is in her ecstasy. She is praying.' Meanwhile, Mahiette was gazing with ever-increasing anxiety at that wan, withered, disheveled head, and her eyes filled with tears. "'This is very singular,' she murmured. She thrust her head through the bars, and succeeded in casting a glance at the corner where the gaze of the unhappy woman was immovably riveted. When she withdrew her head from the window, her countenance was inundated with tears. "'What do you call that woman?' she asked Udard. Udard replied. We call her Sister Goudoulay. And I, returned Mahiette, call her Paquette La Chante-Flourie. Then, laying her finger on her lips, she motioned to the astounded Udard to thrust her head through the window and look. It looked, and beheld, in the corner where the eyes of the recluse were fixed in that somber ecstasy, a tiny shoe of pink satin, embroidered with a thousand fanciful designs in gold and silver. Gervais looked after Udard, and then the three women, gazing upon the unhappy mother, began to weep. But neither their looks nor their tears disturbed the recluse. Her hands remained clasped, her lips mute, her eyes fixed, and that little shoe, thus gazed at, broke the heart of anyone who knew her history. The three women had not yet uttered a single word. They dared not speak, even in a low voice. This deep silence, this deep grief, this profound oblivion in which everything had disappeared except one thing, produced upon them the effect of the grand altar at Christmas or Easter. They remained silent, they meditated, they were ready to kneel. It seemed to them that they were ready to enter a church on the day of Tenebrae. At length Gervais, the most curious of the three, and consequently the least sensitive, tried to make the recluse speak. Sister, Sister Goudoulay, she repeated this call three times, raising her voice each time. The recluse did not move, not a word, not a glance, not a sigh, not a sign of life. Udard, in her turn, in a sweeter, more caressing voice, Sister, said she, Sister Sainte Goudoulay, the same silence, the same immobility. A singular woman exclaimed Gervais, and one not to be moved by a catapult. Perchance, she is deaf, said Udard. Perhaps she is blind, added Gervais. Dead Perchance returned my yet. It is certain that if the soul had not already quitted this inert, sluggish, lethargic body, it had at least retreated and concealed itself in depths whither the perceptions of the exterior organs no longer penetrated. Then we must leave the cake on the window, said Udard. Some scamp will take it. What shall we do to rouse her? Ustash, who up to that moment had been diverted by a little carriage drawn by a large dog, which had just passed, suddenly perceived that his three conductresses were gazing at something through the window, and curiosity taking possession of him in his turn he climbed upon a stone post, elevated himself on tiptoe, and applied his fat red face to the opening, shouting, Mother, let me see it too! At the sound of this clear, fresh, ringing child's voice, the recluse trembled. She turned her head with the sharp, abrupt movement of a steel spring. Her long, fleshless hands cast aside the hair from her brow, and she fixed upon the child bitter, astonished, desperate eyes. This glance was but a lightning flash. Oh, my God! She suddenly exclaimed, hiding her head on her knees, and it seemed as though her horse's voice tore her chest as it passed from it. Do not show me those of others! Good day, madam! said the child, gravely. Nevertheless this shock had, so to speak, awakened the recluse. A long shiver traversed her frame from head to foot. Her teeth chattered. She half raised her head and said, pressing her elbows against her hips, and clasping her feet in her hands as though to warm them. Oh! How cold it is! Poor woman, said Udard, with great compassion. Would you like a little fire? She shook her head in a token of refusal. Well, resumed Udard, presenting her with a flagon. Here is some hippocross which will warm you, drink it. Again she shook her head, looked at Udard fixedly and replied, Water! Udard persisted. No, sister, that is no beverage for January. You must drink a little hippocross and eat this leavened cake of maize which we have baked for you. She refused the cake which ma he had offered to her and said, Black bread! Come, said your vase, seized in her turn with an impulsive charity and unfastening her woollen cloak. Here is a cloak which is a little warmer than yours. She refused the cloak as she had refused the flagon and the cake, and replied, A sack! But, resumed the good Udard, you must have perceived to some extent that yesterday was a festival. I do perceive it, said the recluse. Tis two days now since I have had any water in my crock. She added, after a silence, Tis a festival, I am forgotten. People do well. Why should the world think of me when I do not think of it? Cold charcoal makes cold ashes. And as though fatigued with having said so much, she dropped her head on her knees again. The simple and charitable Udard, who fancied that she understood from her last words that she was complaining of the cold, replied innocently, Then you would like a little fire? Fire! said the sacked nun, with a strange accent. And will you also make a little for the poor little one who has been beneath the sod for these fifteen years? Every limb was trembling, her voice quivered, her eyes flashed. She had raised herself upon her knees. Suddenly she extended her thin, white hand towards the child, who was regarding her with a look of astonishment. Take away that child! She cried. The Egyptian woman is about to pass by. Then she fell face downward on the earth, and her forehead struck the stone, with the sound of one stone against another stone. The three women thought her dead. A moment later, however, she moved, and they beheld her drag herself on her knees and elbows to the corner where the little shoe was. Then they dared not look. They no longer saw her. But they heard a thousand kisses and a thousand sighs, mingled with heart-rending cries, and dull blows, like those of a head in contact with a wall. Then after one of these blows, so violent that all three of them staggered, they heard no more. Can she have killed herself? said Gervais, venturing to pass her head through the air-hole. Sister! Sister Goudelay! Sister Goudelay! repeated Udard. Ah! good heavens, she no longer moves, resumed Gervais. Is she dead? Goudelay! Goudelay! Mahyet choked to such a point that she could not speak, made an effort. Wait! said she, then bending towards the window. Paquet! she said. Paquet! La chanflourie! A child who innocently blows upon the badly ignited fuse of a bomb, and makes it explode in his face, is no more terrified than was Mahyet at the effect of that name, abruptly launched into the cell of Sister Goudelay. The recluse trembled all over, rose erect on her bare feet, and leaped at the window with eyes so glaring that Mahyet and Udard, and the other woman and the child recoiled even to the parapet of the key. Meanwhile the sinister face of the recluse appeared pressed to the grating of the air-hole. Oh! Oh! she cried, with an appalling laugh. Tis, the Egyptian who is calling me! At that moment a scene which was passing at the pillory caught her wild eye. Her brow contracted with horror. She stretched her two skeleton arms from her cell, and shrieked in a voice which resembled a death-rattle. So, Tis thou once more daughter of Egypt? Tis thou who callest me, Steeder of Children? Well, be thou accursed, accursed, accursed, accursed! Book 6, Chapter 4. A Tier for a Drop of Water These words were, so to speak, the point of union of two scenes, which had up to that time been developed in parallel lines at the same moment, each on its particular theatre. One, that which the reader has just perused, in the rat-hole. The other, which he is about to read, on the ladder of the pillory. The first had for witnesses only the three women with whom the reader has just made acquaintance. The second had, for spectators, all the public which we have seen above, collecting on the Place de Grave, around the pillory, and the gibbet. That crowd, which the four sergeants posted at nine o'clock in the morning at the four corners of the pillory, had inspired with the hope of some sort of an execution, no doubt, not a hanging, but a whipping, a cropping of ears, something in short that crowd had increased so rapidly that the four policemen, too closely besieged, had had occasion to press it as the expression then ran, more than once by sound blows of their whips and the haunches of their horses. This populace, disciplined to waiting for public executions, did not manifest very much impatience. It amused itself with watching the pillory, a very simple sort of monument, composed of a cube of masonry about six feet high and hollow in the interior. A very steep staircase of unhewn stone, which was called by distinction the latter, led to the upper platform upon which was visible a horizontal wheel of solid oak. The victim was bound upon this wheel, on his knees, with his hands behind his back. A wooden shaft, which set in motion a capstan concealed in the interior of the little edifice, imparted a rotatory motion to the wheel which always maintained its horizontal position, and in this manner presented the face of the condemned man to all quarters of the square in succession. This was what was called turning a criminal. As the reader perceives, the pillory of the grave was far from presenting all the recreations of the pillory of the hall. Nothing architectural, nothing monumental. No roof to the iron cross, no octagonal lantern, no frail, slender columns spreading out on the edge of the roof into capitals of acanthus leaves and flowers. No waterspouts of kameras and monsters on carved woodwork, no fine sculpture deeply sunk in the stone. They were forced to content themselves with those four stretches of rubblework, backed with sandstone and a wretched stone gibbet, meager and bare on one side. The entertainment would have been but a poor one for lovers of gothic architecture. It is true that nothing was ever less curious on the score of architecture than the worthy gapers of the Middle Ages, and that they cared very little for the beauty of a pillory. The victim finally arrived, bound to the tail of a cart, and when he had been hoisted upon the platform, where he could be seen from all points of the plaza, bound with cords and straps upon the wheel of the pillory, a prodigious hoot mingled with laughter and acclamations burst forth upon the plaza. They had recognized Quasimodo. It was he, in fact. The change was singular. Right on the very place where, on the day before, he had been saluted, acclaimed, and proclaimed, Pope and Prince of Fools, in the cortege of the Duke of Egypt, the King of Tunei, and the Emperor of Galilee. One thing is certain, and that is, there was not a soul in the crowd, not even himself, though in turn triumphant and the sufferer, who set forth this combination clearly in his thought. King Gua and his philosophy were missing at this spectacle. Soon, Michel Noiré, sworn trumpeter to the King our Lord, imposed silence on the louts, and proclaimed the sentence, in accordance with the order and command of Montseur the Provost. Then he withdrew behind the cart, with his men in livery circuits. Quasimodo, impassable, did not wince. All resistance had been rendered impossible to him by what was then called, in the style of the criminal chancelory, the vehemence and firmness of the bonds, which means that the thongs and chains probably cut into his flesh. Moreover, it is a tradition of jail and wardens, which has not been lost, and which the handcuffs still preciously preserve among us a civilized, gentle, humane people, the galleys and the guillotine in parentheses. He had allowed himself to be led, pushed, carried, lifted, bound and bound again. Nothing was to be seen upon his countenance but the astonishment of a savage or an idiot. He was known to be deaf. One might have pronounced him to be blind. They placed him on his knees on the circuit or plank. He made no resistance. They removed his shirt and doublet as far as his girdle. He allowed them to have their way. They entangled him under a fresh system of thongs and buckles. He allowed them to bind and buckle him. Only from time to time he snorted noisily, like a calf whose head is hanging and bumping over the edge of a butcher's cart. "'The dolt,' said Jehan Frollo of the mill, to his friend Roban Puspan, for the two students had followed the culprit, as was to have been expected. He understands no more than a cockchaffer shut up in a box!' There was a wild laughter among the crowd when they beheld Quasimodo's hump, his camel's breast, his callous and hairy shoulders laid bare. During this gaiety a man in the livery of the city, short of stature and robust of mean, mounted the platform and placed himself near the victim. His name speedily circulated among the spectators. It was Master Periat Torcheru, official torturer to the Châtelet. He began by depositing on an angle of the pillory a black hour-glass, the upper lobe of which was filled with red sand, which it allowed to glide into the lower receptacle. Then he removed his party-coloured certu, and there became visible, extended from his right hand, a thin and tapering whip of long, white, shining, knotted, plated thongs, armed with metal nails. With his left hand he negligently folded back his shirt around his right arm to the very armpit. In the meantime Jehan Frollo, elevating his curly blonde head above the crowd, he had mounted upon the shoulders of Roban Puspan, for the purpose, shouted, Come and look, gentle ladies and men, they are going to peremptorily flagellate Master Quasimodo, the bell-ringer of my brother, Montseur the Archdeacon of José, a nave of oriental architecture who has a back like a dome and legs like twisted columns. And the crowd burst into a laugh, especially the boys and young girls. At length the torturer stamped his foot. The wheel began to turn, Quasimodo wavered beneath his bonds. The amazement which was suddenly depicted upon his deformed face caused the bursts of laughter to redouble around him. All at once, at the moment when the wheel in its revolution presented to Master Peret the humped back of Quasimodo, Master Peret raised his arm. The fine thongs whistled sharply through the air, like a handful of adders, and fell with fury upon the wretches' shoulders. Quasimodo leaped as though awakened with a start. He began to understand. He writhed in his bonds. A violent contraction of surprise and pain distorted the muscles of his face, but he uttered not a single sigh. He merely turned his head backward to the right, then to the left, balancing it as a bull does who has been stung in the flanks by a gadfly. A second blow followed the first, then a third, and another, and another, and still others. The wheel did not cease to turn, nor the blows to rain down. Soon the blood burst forth, and could be seen trickling in a thousand threads down the hunchback's black shoulders. And the slender thongs in their rotatory motion which rent the air sprinkled drops of it upon the crowd. Quasimodo had resumed, to all appearance, his first imperturbability. He had first tried, in a quiet way and without much outward movement, to break his bonds. His eye had been seen to light up, his muscles to stiffen, his members to concentrate their force and the straps to stretch. The effort was powerful, prodigious, desperate. But the provost's seasoned bonds resisted. They cracked, and that was all. Quasimodo fell back exhausted. Amazement gave way on his features to a sentiment of profound and bitter discouragement. He closed his single eye, allowed his head to droop upon his breast and feigned death. From that moment forth he stirred no more. Nothing could force a movement from him. Neither his blood, which did not cease to flow, nor the blows which redoubled in fury, nor the wrath of the torturer, who grew excited himself and intoxicated with the execution, nor the sound of the horrible thongs more sharp and whistling than the claws of scorpions. At length a bailiff from the Châtelet clad in black mounted on a black horse, who had been stationed beside the ladder since the beginning of the execution, extended his ebony wand towards the hourglass. The torturer stopped, the wheel stopped, Quasimodo's eye opened slowly. The scourging was finished. Two lackeys of the official torturer bathed the bleeding shoulders of the patient, anointed them with some ungwent which immediately closed all the wounds and threw upon his back a sort of yellow vestment, in cut like a chassable. In the meanwhile Pérez Torcheru allowed the thongs, red and gorged with blood, to drip upon the pavement. All was not over for Quasimodo. He had still to undergo that hour of pillory which Master Florian Barberian had so judiciously added to the sentence of Messier Robert Destové. All to the greater glory of the old physiological and psychological play upon the words of Jean de Coumenet, serdus absurdus. A deaf man is absurd. So the hourglass was turned over once more, and they left the hunchback fastened to the plank in order that justice might be accomplished to the very end. The populace, especially in the Middle Ages, is in society what the child is in the family. As long as it remains in its state of primitive ignorance, of moral and intellectual minority it can be said of it as of the child. Tis the pitiless age. We have already shown that Quasimodo was generally hated, for more than one good reason it is true. There was hardly a spectator in that crowd who had not or did not believe that he had reason to complain of the malevolent hunchback of Notre-Dame. The joy at seeing him appear thus in the pillory had been universal, and the harsh punishment which he had just suffered and the pitiful condition in which it had left him far from softening the populace had rendered its hatred more malicious by arming it with a touch of mirth. Hence the public prosecution satisfied, as the bigwigs of the law still express it in their jargon, the turn came of a thousand private vengences. Here, as in the Grand Hall, the women rendered themselves particularly prominent. All cherished some rancor against him, some for his malice, others for his ugliness. The latter were the most furious. Oh, mask of anti-Christ, said one. Rider on a broom-handle, cried another. What a fine, tragic grimace, howl'd a third, and who would make him pope of the fools if to-day were yesterday. Tis, well, struck in an old woman, this is the grimace of the pillory. When shall we have that of the jibbit? When will you be quaffed with your big bell a hundred feet underground, cursed bell-ringer? But is the devil who rings the Angelus? Oh, the deaf man, the one-eyed creature, the hunchback, the monster! A face to make a woman miscarry better than all the drugs and medicines! And the two scholars, Jehan du Milan and Roban Pouspan, sang at the top of their lungs the ancient refrain, Une at pour la pendade, on faggot pour la maggot! A rope for the gallows-bird, a faggot for the ape. A thousand other insults rained down upon him, and hoots and implications and laughter, and now and then, stones. Quasimodo was deaf, but his sight was clear, and the public fury was no less energetically depicted on their visages than in their words. Moreover, the blows from the stones explained the bursts of laughter. At first he held his ground, but little by little that patience which had borne up under the lash of the torturer yielded and gave way before all these stings of insects. The bull of the Asturias, who has been but little moved by the attacks of the Picador, grows irritated with the dogs and bandareras. He first cast around a slow glance of hatred upon the crowd, but bound as he was, his glance was powerless to drive away those flies which were stinging his wound. Then he moved in his bonds, and his furious exertions made the ancient wheel of the pillory shriek on its axle. All this only increased the derision and hooting. Then the wretched man, unable to break his collar, like that of a chained wild beast, became tranquil once more. Only at intervals a sigh of rage heaved the hollows of his chest. There was neither shame nor redness on his face. He was too far from the state of society, and too near the state of nature to know what shame was. Moreover, with such a degree of deformity, is infamy a thing that can be felt? But wrath, hatred, despair, slowly lowered over that hideous visage a cloud which grew ever more and more somber, ever more and more charged with electricity, which burst forth in a thousand lightning flashes from the eye of the Cyclops. Nevertheless that cloud cleared away for a moment at the passage of a mule which traversed the crowd, bearing a priest. As far away as he could see that mule and that priest, the poor victim's visage grew gentler. The fury which had contracted it was followed by a strange smile full of ineffable sweetness, gentleness, and tenderness. In proportion as the priest approached, that smile became more clear, more distinct, more radiant. It was like the arrival of a saviour, which the unhappy man was greeting. But as soon as the mule was near enough to the pillory to allow of its rider recognizing the victim, the priest dropped his eyes, beat a hasty retreat, spurred on rigorously as though in haste to rid himself of humiliating appeals, and not at all desirous of being saluted and recognized by a poor fellow in such a predicament. The priest was arch-deacon Dom Claude Frollo. The cloud descended more blackly than ever upon Quasimodo's brow. The smile was still mingled with it for a time, but was bitter, discouraged, profoundly sad. Time passed on. He had been there at least an hour and a half, lacerated, retreated, mocked incessantly, and almost stoned. All at once he moved again in his chains with redoubled despair, which made the whole framework that bore him tremble, and, breaking the silence which he had obstinately preserved hither to, he cried in a hoarse and furious voice, which resembled a bark rather than a human cry, and which was drowned in the noise of the hoots, Drink! This exclamation of distress, far from exciting compassion, only added amusement to the good Parisian populace who surrounded the latter, and who, it must be confessed, taken in the mass and as a multitude, was then no less cruel and brutal than that horrible tribe of robbers among whom we have already conducted the reader, and which was simply the lower stratum of the populace. Not a voice was raised around the unhappy victim, except to jeer at his thirst. It is certain that at that moment he was more grotesque and repulsive than pitiable, with his face purple and dripping, his eye wild, his mouth foaming with rage and pain, and his tongue lawling half out. It must also be stated that if a charitable soul of bourgeois or bourgeoisie in the rabble had attempted to carry a glass of water to that wretched creature in torment, there reigned around the infamous steps of the pillory such a prejudice of shame and ignominy that it would have suffice to repulse the good Samaritan. At the expiration of a few moments Quasimodo cast a desperate glance upon the crowd and repeated in a voice still more heart-rending, "'Drink!' and all began to laugh. "'Drink this!' cried Roban Puspan, throwing in his face a sponge which had been soaked in the gutter. "'There, you deaf villain, I'm your debtor!' A woman hurled a stone at his head. "'That will teach you to wake us of a night with your peel of a damned soul!' "'Eh, good my son!' howled a cripple, making an effort to reach him with his crutch. "'Will you cast any more spells on us from the top of the towers of Notre-Dame?' "'Here's a drinking cup!' chimed in a man, flinging a broken jug at his breast. "'To us you that made my wife, simply because she passed near you, give birth to a child with two heads!' "'And my cat bring forth a kitten with six paws!' yelped an old crone, launching a brick at him. "'Drink!' repeated Quasimodo panting for the third time. At that moment he beheld the crowd give way. A young girl, fantastically dressed, emerged from the throng. She was accompanied by a little white goat with gilded horns and carried a tambourine in her hand. Quasimodo's eyes sparkled. It was the gypsy whom he had attempted to carry off on the preceding night, a misdeed for which he was dimly conscious that he was being punished at that very moment, which was not in the least the case, since he was being chastised only for the misfortune of being deaf and of having been judged by a deaf man. He doubted not that she had come to wreak her vengeance also, and to deal her blow like the rest. He beheld her, in fact, mount the ladder rapidly. Wrath and spite suffocated him. He would have liked to make the pillory crumble into ruins, and if the lightning of his eye could have dealt death, the gypsy would have been reduced to powder before she reached the platform. She approached, without uttering a syllable, the victim who writhed in a vain effort to escape her, and detaching a gourd from her girdle, she raised it gently to the parched lips of the miserable man. Then, from that eye which had been up to that moment so dry and burning, a big tear was seen to fall, and roll slowly down that deformed visage so long contracted with despair. It was the first, in all probability, that the unfortunate man had ever shed. Meanwhile, he had forgotten to drink. The gypsy made her little pout from impatience, and pressed the spout to the tusked mouth of Quasimodo with a smile. He drank with deep drafts. His thirst was burning. When he had finished, the wretch protruded his black lips, no doubt, with the object of kissing the beautiful hand which had just suckered him. But the young girl, who was perhaps somewhat distrustful, and who remembered the violent attempt of the night, withdrew her hand with the frightened gesture of a child who was afraid of being bitten by a beast. Then the poor deaf man fixed on her a look of full reproach and inexpressible sadness. It would have been a touching spectacle anywhere, this beautiful, fresh, pure and charming girl, who was at the same time so weak, thus hastening to the relief of so much misery, deformity, and malevolence. On the pillory, the spectacle was sublime. The very populace were captivated by it, and began to clap their hands, crying, Noelle! Noelle! It was at that moment that the recluse caught sight, from the window of her bowl, of the gypsy on the pillory, and hurled at her her sinister imprecation. Acourst be thou, daughter of Egypt! Acourst! Acourst!" End of Book 6, Chapter 5 End of the story of the cake La Esmeralda turned pale and descended from the pillory, staggering as she went. The voice of the recluse still pursued her. Descend! Descend! Thief of Egypt, thou shalt ascend it once more!" Thus sacked none is in one of her tantrums, muttered the populace, and that was the end of it. For that sort of woman was feared, which rendered them sacred. People did not then willingly attack one who prayed day and night. The hour had arrived for removing Quasimodo. He was unbound, the crowd dispersed. Near the grand ponte Mahiet, who was returning with her two companions, suddenly halted. "'By the way, you stash, what did you do with that cake?' "'Mother,' said the child, while you were talking with that lady in the bowl, a big dog took a bite of my cake, and then I bit it also. "'What, sir, did you eat the whole of it?' she went on. "'Mother, it was the dog. I told him, but he would not listen to me. Then I bit into it also.' "'Tis a terrible child,' said the mother, smiling and scolding at one and the same time. "'Do you see, Udard? He already eats all the fruit from the cherry tree in our orchard of Charlerange. So his grandfather says, that will be a captain. "'Let me catch you at it again, Master Ustash. Come along, you greedy fellow!' End of book 6, chapter 5