 BOOK FIRST CHAPTER V of THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTREDAM by Victor Hugo. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. BOOK FIRST CHAPTER V. QUACIMOTO. In the twinkling of an eye all was ready to execute Coppano's idea. Bougiois, scholars, and law clerks all set to work. The little chapel situated opposite the marble table was selected for the scene of the grinning match. A pane broken in the pretty rose window above the door left free a circle of stone through which it was agreed that the competitor should thrust their heads. In order to reach it it was only necessary to mount upon a couple of hog's heads, which had been produced from I know not where, and perched one upon the other after a fashion. It was settled that each candidate, man or woman, for it was possible to choose a female pope, should, for the sake of leaving the impression of his grimace fresh and complete, cover his face and remain concealed in the chapel until the moment of his appearance. In less than an instant the chapel was crowded with competitors upon whom the door was then closed. Coppano from his post ordered all, directed all, arranged all. During the uproar the cardinal, no less abashed than Gringoire, had retired with all his suite, under the pretext of business and vespers, without the crowd which his arrival had so deeply stirred being in the least moved by his departure. Guillaume Rime was the only one who noticed his eminence's discomforture. The attention of the populace, like the sun, pursued its revolution. Having set out from one end of the hall, and halted for a space in the middle, it had now reached the other end. The marble table, the brocaded gallery, had each had their day. It was now the turn of the chapel of Louis XI. Henceforth the field was open to all folly. There was no one there now, but the Fleming's and the rabble. The grimaces began. The first face which appeared at the aperture, with eyelids turned up to the reds, a mouth open like a maw, and a brow wrinkled like our hussar boots of the empire, evoked such an inextinguishable peel of laughter that Homer would have taken all these louts for gods. Nevertheless the grand hall was anything but Olympus, and Gringoise, poor Jupiter, knew it better than anyone else. A second and third grimace followed, then another and another, and the laughter and transports of delight went on increasing. There was in this spectacle a peculiar power of intoxication and fascination, of which it would be difficult to convey to the reader of our day and our salons any idea. Let the reader picture to himself a series of visages presenting successfully all geometric forms, from the triangle to the trapezium, from the cone to the polyhedron, all human expressions from wrath to lewdness, all ages from the wrinkles of the newborn babe to the wrinkles of the aged and dying, all religious phantasmagories from fawn to beelzebub, all animal profiles from the maw to the beak, from the jowl to the muzzle. Let the reader imagine all these grotesque figures of the pant-nouf, whose nightmares petrified beneath the hand of Germain Pilon, assuming life and breath, and coming in to stare at you in the face with burning eyes, all the masks of a carnival of Venice passing in succession before your glass, in a word, a human kaleidoscope. The orgy grew more and more Flemish. Ten years could have given but a very imperfect idea of it. Let the reader picture to himself in Bacchanal form, Salvatore Rosa's battle. There were no longer either scholars or ambassadors or bourgeois or men or women. There was no longer any clopin-tropho, or Gilles Le Corneux, or Marie Quatre Livres, or Robin Pospin. All was universal license. The grand hall was no longer anything but a vast furnace of affrontery and joviality, where every mouth was a cry, every individual a posture. Everything shouted and howled. The strange visages which came in turn to gnash their teeth in the rose window were like so many brands cast into the brazier, and from the hold of this effervescent crowd there escaped, as from a furnace, a sharp, piercing, stinging noise, hissing like the wings of a gnat. Ho, eh, curse it! Just look at that face! It's not good for anything. Goyamet-Mogère Puy, just look at that bull's muzzle! It only lacks the horns! It can't be your husband! Another! Belly of the Pope! What sort of a grimace is that? Oh, la eh! That's cheating! One must show only one's face! That damned perrette calabotte! She's capable of that! Good! Good! I'm stifling! There's a fellow whose ears won't go through! Etc., etc. But we must do justice to our friend Jehan. In the midst of this witch's sabbath he was still to be seen on the top of his pillar, like the cabin-boy on the top mast. He floundered about with incredible fury. His mouth was wide open, and from it there escaped a cry which no one heard. Not that it was covered by the general clamour, great as that was, but because it attained, no doubt, the limit of perceptible sharp sounds, the thousand vibrations of saviour, or the eight thousands of bio. As for Gringoire, the first moment of depression having passed, he had regained his composure. He had hardened himself against adversity. "'Continue!' he had said for the third time to his comedians, speaking machines. Then as he was marching with great strides in front of the marble table, a fancy seized him to go and appear in his turn at the aperture of the chapel, were it only for the pleasure of making a grimace at that ungrateful populace. "'But, no, that would not be worthy of us, no vengeance. Let us combat until the end,' he repeated to himself. "'The power of poetry over people is great. I will bring them back. We shall see which will carry the day, grimaces or polite literature.' Alas, he had been left the sole spectator of his peace. It was far worse than it had been a little while before. He no longer beheld anything but backs. I am mistaken. The big patient man, whom he had already consulted in a critical moment, had remained with his face turned towards the stage. As for Giscette and Leonard, they had deserted him long ago. Gringoire was touched to the heart by the fidelity of his only spectator. He approached him and addressed him, shaking his arms slightly, for the good man was leaning on the balustrade and dozing a little. "'Monsieurs,' said Gringoire, I thank you.' "'Monsieurs,' replied the big man with the yawn. For what?' "'I see what wearies you,' resumed the poet, "'tis all this noise which prevents your hearing comfortably. Just be at ease. Your name shall descend to posterity. Your name, if you please?' "'Renochateau, Guardian of the Seals of the Châtelet of Paris, at your service.' "'Monsieurs, you are the only representative of the Muses here,' said Gringoire. "'You are too kind, sir,' said the Guardian of the Seals at the Châtelet. "'You are the only one,' resumed Gringoire, who has listened to the piece decorously. What do you think of it?' "'Eh, eh!' replied the fat magistrate, half aroused. It's tolerably jolly. That's a fact.' Gringoire was forced to content himself with this eulogy. For a thunder of applause, mingled with a prodigious acclamation, cut their conversation short. The Pope of the Fools had been elected. "'Noel! Noel! Noel!' shouted the people on all sides. That was, in fact, a marvellous grimace which was beaming at that moment through the aperture in the rose-window. After all the pentagonal, hexagonal, and whimsical faces which had succeeded each other at the hole without realizing the ideal of the grotesque which their imaginations, excited by the orgy, had constructed. Nothing less was needed to win their suffrages than the sublime grimace which had just dazzled the assembly. Master Caponell himself applauded, and Clopantry Faux, who had been among the competitors, and God knows what intensity of ugliness his visage could attain, confessed himself conquered. We will do the same. We shall not try to give the reader an idea of that tetrahedral nose, that horseshoe mouth, that little left eye obstructed with a red, bushy, bristling eyebrow, while the right eye disappeared entirely beneath an enormous wart, of those teeth in disarray, broken here and there like the embattled parapet of a fortress, of that callous lip upon which one of those teeth encroached, like the tusk of an elephant, of that forked chin, and above all of the expression spread over the whole, of that mixture of malice, amazement, and sadness. Let the reader dream of this whole if he can. The acclamation was unanimous, people rushed towards the chapel. They made the lucky pope of the Fools come forth in triumph, but it was then that surprise and admiration attained their highest pitch. The grimace was his face, or rather his whole person was a grimace. A huge head, bristling with red hair, between his shoulders, an enormous hump, a counterpart perceptible in front, a system of thighs and legs so strangely astray that they could touch each other only at the knees, and viewed from the front resembled the crescents of two sides joined by the handles, large feet, monstrous hands, and with all this deformity, an indescribable and redoubtable air of vigor, agility, and courage. Strange exception to the eternal rule which wills that force as well as beauty shall be the result of harmony. Such was the pope whom the Fools had just chosen for themselves. One would have pronounced him a giant who had been broken and badly put together again. When this species of cyclops appeared on the threshold of the chapel, motionless, squat, and almost as broad as he was tall, squared on the base, as a great man says, with his doublet half red, half violet, sewn with silver bells, and above all, in the perfection of his ugliness, the populace recognized him on the instant and shouted with one voice, Tis Quasimodo, the bell-ringer, Tis Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre Dame, Quasimodo, the one-eyed, Quasimodo, the bandy-legged, Noel, Noel!" It will be seen that the poor fellow had a choice of surnames. Let the women with child beware, shouted the scholars, or those who wish to be, resumed Joanne. The women did, in fact, hide their faces. Oh! the horrible monkey, said one of them, has wicked as he is ugly, retorted another. He is the devil, added a third. I have the misfortune to live near Notre Dame. I hear him prowling round the eaves by night, with the cats. He's always on our roofs. He throws spells down our chimneys. The other evening he came and made a grimace at me through my attic window. I thought that it was a man, such a fright as I had. I'm sure that he goes to the witch's Sabbath. Once he left a broom on my leads. Oh! What a displeasing hunchback's face! Oh! What an ill-favored soul! Phew! The men, on the contrary, were delighted and applauded. Quasimodo, the object of the tumult, still stood on the threshold of the chapel, somber and grave, and allowed them to admire him. One scholar, Roban Pwiss Pan, I think, came and laughed in his face, and too close. Quasimodo contented himself with taking him by the girdle and hurling him ten paces off amid the crowd, all without uttering a word. Sir Cappanol, in amazement, approached him. Cross of God! Holy Father! You possess the handsomest ugliness that I have ever beheld in my life! You would deserve to be Pope at Rome, as well as at Paris! So saying he placed his hand gaily on his shoulder, Quasimodo did not stir. Cappanol went on. You are a rogue with whom I have a fancy for carousing, were it to cost me a new dozen of twelve leavers of tours. How does it strike you? Quasimodo made no reply. Cross of God! said the hosier. Are you deaf? He was, in truth, deaf. Nevertheless, he began to grow impatient with Cappanol's behavior, and suddenly turned towards him with so formidable a gnashing of teeth that the Flemish giant recoiled like a bulldog before a cat. Then there was created around that strange personage a circle of terror and respect, whose radius was at least fifteen geometrical feet. An old woman explained to Cappanol that Quasimodo was deaf. Deaf, said the hosier with his great Flemish laugh, Cross of God! He's a perfect Pope! He! I recognize him! exclaimed Jehan, who had, at last, descended from his capital in order to see Quasimodo at closer quarters. He's the bell-ringer of my brother, the Archdeacon! Good day, Quasimodo! What a devil of a man! said Roban Puspan, still all bruised with his fall. He shows himself. He's a hunchback. He walks. He's bandy-legged. He looks at you. He's one-eyed. You speak to him. He's deaf! And what does this polyphemus do with his tongue? He speaks when he chooses, said the old woman. He became deaf through ringing the bells. He is not dumb! That he lacks, remarks Jehan. And he has one eye too many, added Roban Puspan. Not at all, says Jehan wisely. A one-eyed man is far less complete than a blind man. He knows what he lacks. In the meantime all the beggars, all the lackeys, all the cut-purses joined with the scholars had gone in procession to seek, in the cupboard of the law clerk's company, the cardboard tiara, and the derisive robe of the Pope of Fools. Quasimodo allowed them to array him in them without wincing, and with a sort of proud docility. Then they made him seat himself on a motley litter. Twelve officers of the fraternity of Fools raised him on their shoulders, and a sort of bitter and disdainful joy lighted up the morose face of the Cyclops, when he beheld beneath his deformed feet all those heads of the handsome, straight, well-made men. Then the ragged and howling procession set out on its march, according to custom, around the inner galleries of the courts, before making the circuit of the streets and squares. CHAPTER VI We are delighted to be able to inform the reader that during the hold of this scene Gringoire and his peace had stood firm. His actors, spurred on by him, had not ceased to spout his comedy, and he had not ceased to listen to it. He had made up his mind about the tumult, and was determined to proceed to the end, not giving up the hope of a return of attention on the part of the public. This gleam of hope acquired fresh life, when he saw Quasimodo, Caponello, and the deafening escort of the Pope of the procession of Fools, quit the hall amid the great uproar. The throng rushed eagerly after them. Good, he said to himself, there go all the mischief-makers. Unfortunately all the mischief-makers constituted the entire audience. In the twinkling of an eye the grand hall was empty. To tell the truth, a few spectators still remained. Some scattered, others in groups around the pillars, women, old men, or children, who had had enough of the uproar and tumult. Some scholars were still perched astride of the window-sills, engaged in gazing into the plas. Well, thought Gringoire, here are still as many as are required to hear the end of my mystery. They are few in number, but it is a choice audience, a lettered audience. An instant later a symphony, which had been intended to produce the greatest effect on the arrival of the Virgin, was lacking. The uproar perceived that his music had been carried off by the procession of the Pope of Fools. Skip it, said he stoically. He approached a group of bourgeois, who seemed to him to be discussing his piece. This is the fragment of conversation which he caught. You know, Master Shenoteau, the Hotel de Navarre, which belonged to Monsieur de Nemours? Yes, opposite the Chapelle de Braque. Well, the Treasury has just led it to Gayeux-Malachandra, historian, for six hires, eight souls, Parisian a year. How rints are going up? Come, said Gringoire, to himself with a sigh. The others are listening. Comrades! Suddenly shouted one of the young scamps from the window, La Esmeralda, La Esmeralda in the plas! This word produced a magical effect. One who was left in the hall flew to the windows, climbing the walls in order to see, and repeating, La Esmeralda, La Esmeralda! At the same time a great sound of applause was heard from without. What's the meaning of this, of the Esmeralda? said Gringoire, wringing his hands in despair. Ah, good heavens! It seems to be the turn of the windows now! He returned towards the marble table and saw that the representation had been interrupted. It was precisely at the instant when Jupiter should have appeared with his thunder. But Jupiter was standing motionless at the foot of the stage. Michel Gibon, cried the irritated poet, what are you doing there? Is that your part? Come up! Alas! said Jupiter, a scholar has just seized the ladder! Gringoire looked. It was all but too true. All communication between his plot and its solution was intercepted. The rascal, he murmured, and why did he take that ladder? In order to go and see Esmeralda, replied Jupiter piteously, he said, come, here's a ladder that's of no use, and he took it. This was the last blow. Gringoire received it with resignation. May the devil fly away with you, he said to the comedian, and if I get my pay, you shall receive yours. Then he beat a retreat with drooping head, but the last in the field, like a general who was fought well. And as he descended the winding stairs of the courts, a fine rabble of asses and dolts these Parisians, he muttered between his teeth. They come to hear a mystery and don't listen to it at all. They are engrossed by everyone, by Chopin, Trefoux, by the Cardinal, by Cappanol, by Quasimodo, by the devil, but by the Madame, the Virgin Mary, not at all. If I had known, I'd have given you Virgin Mary, you ninnies, and I, to come to see the faces and behold only backs, to be a poet and to reap the success of an apothecary. It is true that Homerus begged through the Greek towns, and that Nassau died in exile among the Muscovites. But may the devil fly me if I understand what they mean with their Esmeralda. What is that word in the first place? Tis Egyptian! Second of Chapter 6 Book Second, Chapter 1 of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, by Victor Hugo. Night comes on early in January. The streets were already dark when Gringoire issued forth from the courts. This gloom pleased him. He was in haste to reach some obscure and deserted alley, in order there to meditate at his ease, and in order that the philosopher might place the first dressing upon the wound of the poet. Philosophy, moreover, was his sole refuge, for he did not know where he was to lodge for the night. After the brilliant failure of his first theatrical venture, he dared not return to the lodging which he occupied in the Rue Grenier-sur-Léau, opposite to the Port d'Orphan, having depended upon receiving from Montseur the provost for his epithalamium the wherewithal to pay Master Guillaume du Seer, farmer of the taxes on cloven footed animals in Paris, the rent which he owed him, that is to say, twelve soles Parisian. Twelve times the value of all that he possessed in the world, including his trunk hose, his shirt, and his cap. After reflecting a moment, temporarily sheltered beneath the little wicket of the prison of the treasure of the Saint-Chapelle, as to the shelter which he would select for the night, having all the pavements of Paris to choose from, he remembered to have noticed the week previously, in the Rue de la Sabaterie, at the door of a counsellor of the Parliament, a stepping-stone for mounting a mule, and to have said to himself that the stone would furnish, on occasion, a very excellent pillow for a mendicant or a poet. He thanked Providence for having sent this happy idea to him. But as he was preparing to cross the plaza, in order to reach the torturous labyrinth of the city, where meander all those old sister streets, the Rue de la Barrillerie, de la Vielle-Draperie, de la Sabaterie, de la Jouverie, etc., still extant to-day with their nine storey houses, he saw the procession of the Pope of Fools, which was also emerging from the courthouse, and rushing across the courtyard, with great cries, a great flashing of torches, and the music which belonged to him Gringoire. This sight revived the pain of his self-love. He fled. In the bitterness of his dramatic misadventure, everything which reminded him of the festival of that day, irritated his wound and made it bleed. He was on the point of turning to the Pont-Saint-Michel, children were running about here and there with fire-lenses and rockets. Past on firework candles, said Gringoire, and he fell back on the Pont-Ochange. To the house at the head of the bridge there had been a fixed three small banners, representing the King, the Dauphin, and Marguerite of Flanders, and six little penins on which were portrayed the Duke of Austria, the Cardinal de Bourbon, Monsieur de Beaujeu, and Madame Jean de France, and Monsieur the Bastard of Bourbon, I know not whom else, all being illuminated with torches. The rabble were admiring. Happy painter, Jean-Farbeau, said Gringoire with a deep sigh, and he turned his back upon the bannerettes and penins. A street opened before him. He thought it so dark and deserted that he hoped to there escape from all the rumours as well as from all the gleams of the festival. At the end of a few moments his foot came in contact with an obstacle. He stumbled and fell. It was the May Truss, which the clerks of the clerk's law-court had deposited that morning at the door of a president of the parliament, in honor of the solemnity of the day. Gringoire bore this new disaster heroically. He picked himself up and reached the water's edge. After leaving behind him the civic tournel and the criminal tower, and skirted the great walls of the king's garden, on that unpaved strand where the mud reached to his ankles, he reached the western point of the city, and considered for some time the islet of the Passeur au Vache, which has disappeared beneath the bronze horse of the Pont Neuf. The islet appeared to him in the shadows like a black mass, beyond the narrow strip of whitish water which separated him from it. One could divine by the ray of a tiny light, the sort of hut in the form of a beehive where the ferrymen of cows took refuge at night. Happy ferrymen, thought Gringoire, you do not dream of glory, and you do not make married songs. What matters it to you if kings and duchesses of Burgundy marry? You know no other daisies, marguerites, than those which your April Greensward gives your cows to browse upon, while I, a poet, am hooded and shiver and oh twelve sews, and the soles of my shoes are so transparent that they might serve as glasses for your lantern. Thanks, ferrymen, your cabin rests my eyes, and makes me forget Paris. He was roused from his almost lyric ecstasy by a big double Saint-Jean cracker which suddenly went off from the happy cabin. It was the cow ferrymen who was taking his part in the rejoicings of the day and letting off fireworks. His cracker made Gringoire's skin bristle up all over. A cursed festival, he exclaimed, wilt thou pursue me everywhere? Oh, good God, even to the ferrymen's! Then he looked at the Saint at his feet, and a horrible temptation took possession of him. Oh, said he, I would gladly drown myself, were the water not so cold. Then a desperate resolution occurred to him. It was, since he could not escape from the Pope of the Fools, from Jehan-4-Bear's Bannerettes, from May Trusses, from Squibs and Crackers, to go to the Place de Grave. At least, he said to himself, I shall there have a fire-brand of joy wherewith to warm myself, and I can sup on some crumbs of the three great armorial bearings of royal sugar which have been erected on the public refreshment stall of the city. End of Chapter 1 Book 2 Chapter 2 of the Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Book 2 Chapter 2 The Place de Grave There remains today but a very imperceptible vestige of the Place de Grave, such as it existed then. It consists in the charming little turret, which occupies the angle north of the Place, and which already enshroudered in the ignoble plaster which fills with paste the delicate lines of its sculpture, would soon have disappeared, perhaps submerged by that flood of new houses which so rapidly devours all the ancient facades of Paris. The persons, who, like ourselves, never crossed the Place de Grave without casting a glance of pity and sympathy on that poor turret, strangled between two hovels of the time of Louis XV, can easily reconstruct in their minds the aggregate of edifices to which it belonged, and find again, entire in it, the ancient gothic Place of the 15th century. It was then, as it is today, an irregular trapezoid, bordered on one side by the Quay, and on the other three by a series of lofty, narrow and gloomy houses. By day one could admire the variety of its edifices, all sculptured in stone or wood, and already presenting complete specimens of the different domestic architectures of the Middle Ages, running back from the 15th to the 11th century, from the casement which had begun to dethrone the arch, to the Roman semicircle which had been supplanted by the Ojive and which still occupies below it the first story of that ancient house de la Tour Roland, at the corner of the Place upon the Seine, on the side of the street with the tannery. At night one could distinguish nothing of all that mass of buildings except the black indentation of the roofs, unrolling their chain of acute angles round the Place. For one of the radical differences between the cities of that time and the cities of the present day lay in the façades which looked upon the places and streets and which were then gables. For the last two centuries the houses have been turned round. In the center of the eastern side of the Place rose a heavy and hybrid construction, formed of three buildings placed in juxtaposition. It was called by three names which explained its history, its destination and its architecture. The house of the Dauphin, because Charles V. when Dauphin had inhabited it, the merchandise, because it had served as town hall, and the pilloried house, Domus ad Pilaria, because of a series of large pillars which sustained the three stories. The city found there all that is required for a city like Paris, a chapel in which to pray to God, a plaidoyer or pleading-room in which to hold hearings and to repel at need the king's people, and under the roof and our Sennac, full of artillery. For the bourgeois of Paris were aware that it is not sufficient to pray in every conjuncture and to plead for the franchises of the city, and they had always in reserve, in the garret of the town hall, a few good rusty archibuses. The grave had then that sinister aspect which it preserved today, from the executable ideas which it awakens, and from the somber town hall of Dominique Bocador, which has replaced the pilloried house. It must be admitted that a permanent gibbet and a pillory, a justice and a ladder, as they were called in that day, erected side by side in the center of the pavement, contributed not a little to cause eyes to be turned away from that fatal place where so many beings full of life and health have agonized. Here, fifty years later, that fever of Saint Valier was destined to have its birth, that terror of the scaffold, the most monstrous of all maladies because it comes not from God, but from man. It is a consoling idea, let us remark in passing, to think that the death penalty, which three hundred years ago still encumbered with its iron wheels, its stone gibbets, and all its paraphernalia of torture, permanent and riveted to the pavement. The grave, the hall, the plastophine, the cross du trahoi, the March au Parceau, that hideous Mont-Fasson, the barrier des Sargeants, the Place au Chat, the Port Saint-Denis, Champeau, the Port Baudet, the Port Saint-Jacques. Without reckoning the innumerable ladders of the provosts, the bishop of the chapters, of the abbots, of the priors, who had the decree of life and death, without reckoning the judicial drownings in the river Sain, it is consoling today, after having lost successively all the pieces of its armor, its luxury of torment, its penalty of imagination and fancy, its torture, for which it reconstructed every five years a leather bed at the Grand Châtelet, that ancient suzerain of feudal society almost expunged from our laws and our cities, hunted from code to code, chased from place to place, has no longer, in our immense Paris, any more than a dishonored corner of the grave. Than a miserable guillotine, furtive, uneasy, shameful, which seems always afraid of being caught in the act, so quickly does it disappear after having dealt its blow. End of Chapter 2. Book 2. CHAPTER III. KISSES FOR BLOWS. When Pierre Gringoire arrived at the Place de Greve, he was paralyzed. He had directed his course across the Pont-au-Munnière in order to avoid the rabble on the Pont-au-Change, and the pennons of Jehan-4-Beau. But the wheels of all the bishop's mills had splashed him as he passed, and his doublet was drenched. It seemed to him, besides that the failure of his peace had rendered him still more sensible to coal than usual. Hence he made haste to draw near the bonfire, which was burning magnificently in the middle of the plaza. But a considerable crowd formed a circle around it. A cursed Parisians, he said to himself, for Gringoire, like a true dramatic poet, was subject to monologues. There they are obstructing my fire. Nevertheless I am greatly in need of a chimney corner. My shoes drink in the water, and all those cursed mills wept upon me. That devil of a bishop of Paris with his mills. I'd just like to know what use a bishop can make of a mill. Does he expect to become a miller instead of a bishop? If only my malediction is needed for that, I bestow it upon him, and his cathedral, and his mills. Just see if those boobies will put themselves out. Move aside! I'd like to know what they're doing there. They are warming themselves, much pleasure may it give them. They are watching a hundred faggots burn, a fine spectacle. On looking more closely he perceived that the circle was much larger than was required simply for the purpose of getting warm at the king's fire, and that this concourse of people had not been attracted solely by the beauty of the hundred faggots which were burning. The vast space left free between the crowd and the fire a young girl was dancing. Whether this young girl was a human being, a fairy, or an angel, is what Gringoire, skeptical philosopher and ironical poet that he was, could not decide at the first moment, so fascinated was he by this dazzling vision. She was not tall, though she seemed so, so boldly did her slender form dart about. She was swarthy of complexion, but one divine that by day her skin must possess that beautiful golden tone of the Andalusians and the Roman women. Her little foot, too, was Andalusian, for it was both pinched and at ease in its graceful shoe. She danced, she turned, she whirled rapidly about on an old Persian rug, spread negligently under her feet, and each time that her radiant face passed before you, as she whirled, her great black eyes darted a flash of lightning at you. All around her all glances were riveted, all mouths open, and in fact when she danced thus to the humming of the Basque tambourine which her two pure rounded arms raised above her head, slender, frail and vivacious as a wasp, with her corsage of gold without a fold, her variegated gown puffed out, her bare shoulders, her delicate limbs, which her petticoat revealed at times, her black hair, her eyes of flame, she was a supernatural creature. "'In truth,' said Gringoire to himself, "'she is a salamander, she is a nymph, she is a goddess, she is a baccante of the Manili and Mount.' At that moment one of the salamander's braids of hair became unfastened, and a piece of yellow copper which was attached to it rolled to the ground. "'Eno,' said he, "'she is a gypsy!' All illusions had disappeared. She began her dance once more. She took from the ground two swords, whose points she rested against her brow, and which she made to turn in one direction while she turned in the other. It was a purely gypsy effect. But disenchanted though Gringoire was, the whole effect of this picture was not without its charm and its magic. The bonfire illuminated with a red, flaring light which trembled all alive over the circle of faces in the crowd, on the brow of the young girl and at the background of the plaza cast a pallid reflection. On one side of the ancient black and wrinkled façade of the house of pillars, on the other upon the old stone gibbet. Among the thousands of visages which that light tinged with scarlet there was one which seemed even more than all the others absorbed in contemplation of the dancer. It was the face of a man, austere, calm and somber. This man, whose costume was concealed by the crowd which surrounded him, did not appear to be more than five and thirty years of age. Nevertheless he was bald. He had merely a few tufts of thin gray hair on his temples. His broad, high forehead had begun to be furrowed with wrinkles. But his deep-set eyes sparkled with extraordinary youthfulness, and ardent life, a profound passion. He kept them fixed incessantly on the gypsy, and while the giddy young girl of sixteen danced and whirled for the pleasure of all, his reverie seemed to become more and more somber. From time to time a smile and a sigh met upon his lips, but the smile was more melancholy than the sigh. The young girl stopped at length, breathless, and the people applauded her lovingly. Jolly! said the gypsy. Then Gringoise saw come up to her a pretty little white goat, alert, wide-eyed, glossy with gilded horns, gilded hoofs, and gilded color, which he had not hitherto perceived, and which had remained lying curled up on one corner of the carpet, watching his mistress dance. Jolly! said the dancer. It is your turn. Seeding herself, she gracefully presented her tambourine to the goat. Jolly! she continued, what month is this? The goat lifted its forefoot and struck one blow upon the tambourine. It was the first month in the year, in fact. Jolly! pursued the young girl, turning her tambourine round. What day of the month is this? Jolly raised his little gilt hoof and struck six blows on the tambourine. Jolly! pursued the Egyptian, with still another movement of the tambourine. What hour of the day is it? Jolly struck seven blows. At that moment the clock of the pillar-house rang out seven. The people were amazed. There's sorcery at the bottom of it! said a sinister voice in the crowd. It was that of the bald man who never removed his eyes from the gypsy. She shuddered and turned round. But applause broke forth and drowned the morose exclamation. It even effaced it so completely from her mind that she continued to question her goat. Jolly! what does Master Guishard Granrami, Captain of the Pistoliers of the Town-Dew, at the procession of Condelmass? Jolly reared himself on his hind legs and began to bleat, marching along with so much dainty gravity that the entire circle of spectators burst into a laugh at this parody of the interested devoutness of the Captain of Pistoliers. Jolly, resumed the young girl, emboldened by her growing success. How preaches Master Jacques Charmelieu, Procurator to the King in the ecclesiastical court? The goat seated himself on his hind quarters and began to bleat, waving his forefeet in so strange a manner that, with the exception of the bad French and worse Latin, Jacques Charmelieu was their complete gesture, accent, and attitude. And the crowd applauded louder than ever. Sacrilege! Profanation! resumed the voice of the bald man. The gypsy turned round once more. Ah, said she, tis that villainous man! Then, thrusting her under lip out beyond the upper, she made a little pout, which appeared to be familiar to her, executed a pirouette on her heel, and set about collecting in her tambourine the gifts of the multitude. Big blanks, little blanks, targes, and eagle-yards showered into it. All at once she passed in front of Gringoire. Gringoire put his hands so recklessly into his pocket that she halted. The devil, said the poet, finding at the bottom of his pocket the reality, that is to say, a void. In the meantime the pretty girl stood there, gazing at him with her big eyes, and holding out her tambourine to him and waiting. Gringoire broke into a violent perspiration. If he had all Peru in his pocket he would certainly have given it to the dancer. But Gringoire had not Peru, and moreover America had not yet been discovered. Happily an unexpected incident came to his rescue. Will you take yourself off, you Egyptian grasshopper? cried a sharp voice which proceeded from the darkest corner of the plaza. The young girl turned round in a fright. It was no longer the voice of the bald man, it was the voice of a woman, bigoted and malicious. However this cry, which alarmed the gypsy, delighted a troop of children who were prowling about there. It is the recluse of the tour Roland, they exclaimed with wild laughter. It is the sacked nun who is scolding. Hasn't she supped? Let's carry her the remains of the city refreshments. All rushed towards the pillar house. In the meantime Gringoire had taken advantage of the dancer's embarrassment to disappear. The children's shouts had reminded him that he also had not supped, so he ran to the public buffet. But the little rascals had better legs than he. When he arrived they had stripped the table. There remained not so much as a miserable chemichon. At five sews the pound. Nothing remained upon the wall but the slender fleur-de-lis mingled with rose-bushes. Painted in 1434 by Metteau Beterre. It was a meager supper. It is an unpleasant thing to go to bed without supper. It is a still less pleasant thing not to supp and not to know where one is to sleep. That was Gringoire's condition. No supper, no shelter. He saw himself pressed on all sides by necessity, and he found necessity very crabbed. He had long ago discovered the truth that Jupiter created men during a fit of misanthropy, and that during a wise man's whole life his destiny holds his philosophy in a state of siege. As for himself he had never seen the blockade so complete. He heard his stomach sounding a parlay, and considered it very much out of place that evil destiny should capture his philosophy by famine. This melancholy reverie was absorbing him more and more, when a song, quaint but full of sweetness, suddenly tore him from it. It was the young gypsy who was singing. Her voice was like her dancing, like her beauty. It was indefinable and charming, something pure and sonorous, aerial, winged, so to speak. There were continual outbursts, melodies, unexpected cadences, then simple phrases strewn with aerial and hissing notes. Then floods of scales which would have put a nightingale to route, but in which harmony was always present. Then soft modulations of octaves which rose and fell, like the bosom of the young singer. Her beautiful face followed, with singular mobility, all the caprices of her song, from the wildest inspiration to the chastest dignity. One would have pronounced her, now a mad creature, now a queen. The words which she sang were in a tongue unknown to Gringoire, and which seemed to him to be unknown to herself, so little relation did the expression which she imparted to her song bear to the sense of the words. Thus these four lines in her mouth were madly gay. A coffer of great richness, in a pillar's heart they found, within it lay new banners, with figures to astound. And in an instant afterwards, at the accents which she imparted to the stanza of her song, she found a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of at the accents which she imparted to the stanza. Gringoire felt the tears start to his eyes. Nevertheless her song breathed joy, most of all, and she seemed to sing like a bird, from serenity and heedlessness. The gypsy song had disturbed Gringoire's reverie as the swan disturbs the water. He listened in a sort of rapture and forgetfulness of everything. It was the first moment in the course of many hours when he did not feel that he suffered. The moment was brief. The same woman's voice, which had interrupted the gypsy's dance, interrupted her song. Will you hold your tongue, you cricket of hell? It cried, still from some obscure corner of the plaza. The poor cricket stopped short. Gringoire covered up his ears. Oh, he exclaimed, a cursed saw with missing teeth, which comes to break the lyre. Meanwhile the other spectators murmured like himself, to the devil with a sacked nun, said some of them. And the old invisible killjoy might have had occasion to repent of her aggressions against the gypsy had their attention not been diverted at this moment by the procession of the Pope of the Fools, which, after having traversed many streets and squares, debouched on the Plasta Grave, with all its torches and all its uproar. This procession, which our readers have seen set out from the Palais de Justice, had organized on the way, and had been recruited by all the knaves, idle thieves, and unemployed vagabonds in Paris, so that it presented a very respectable aspect when it arrived at the Grave. First came Egypt. The Duke of Egypt headed it on horseback, with his counts on foot holding his bridle and stirrups for him. Behind them the male and female Egyptians, Pelle Mel, with their little children crying on their shoulders. All, Duke, counts, and populace, in rags and tatters. Then came the kingdom of Argo, that is to say, all the thieves of France, arranged according to the order of their dignity, the minor people walking first. Thus defiled by fours, with the diverse insignia of their grades in that strange faculty, most of them lame, some cripples, others one-armed, shop clerks, pilgrim, ubans, boot-blacks, thimble-rigors, street-aribs, beggars, the bleer-eyed beggars, thieves, the weakly, vagabonds, merchants, sham soldiers, goldsmiths, past masters of pickpockets, isolates, isolated thieves. A catalogue that would weary Homer. In the center of the conclave of the past masters of pickpockets, one had some difficulty in distinguishing the king of Argo, the grand co-ez, so-called, crouching in a little cart drawn by two big dogs. After the kingdom of the Argoteers came the Empire of Galilee, Gayom Receau, emperor of the Empire of Galilee, marched majestically in his robe of purple, spotted with wine, preceded by buffoons wrestling and executing military dances, surrounded by his mace-bearers, his pickpockets, and clerks of the Chamber of Accounts. Last of all came the Corporation of Law Clerks, with its may-polls crowned with flowers, its black robes, its music worthy of the Orgy, and its large candles of yellow wax. In the center of this crowd the grand officers of the Brotherhood of Fools bore on their shoulders a litter more loaded down with candles than the reliquary of San-Jean-Viev in the Time of Pest, and on this litter shone resplendent with Crozier, Cope, and Miter the new Pope of the Fools, the bell-ringer of Notre-Dame, Quasimodo, the hunchback. Each section of this grotesque procession had its own music. The Egyptians made their drums and African tambourines resound. The slang men, not a very musical race, still clung to the goats' horn trumpets and the gothic rubaby of the twelfth century. The Empire of Galilee was not much more advanced. Among its music one could hardly distinguish some miserable rebeck, from the infancy of the art still imprisoned in the Ray-La-Mi. But it was around the Pope of the Fools that all the musical riches of the epic were displayed in a magnificent discord. It was nothing but soprano-rebecks, counter-tenor-rebecks, and tenor-rebecks, not to reckon the flutes and brass instruments. Alas, our readers will remember that this was Gringoise orchestra. It is difficult to convey an idea of the degree of proud and blissful expansion to which the sad and hideous visage of Quasimodo had attained during the transit from the Pallas de Justis to the Place de Greve. It was the first enjoyment of self-love that he had ever experienced. Down to that day he had known only humiliation, disdain for his condition, disgust for his person. Hence, deaf though he was, he enjoyed, like a veritable pope, the acclamations of that throng, which he hated because he felt that he was hated by it. What mattered it that his people consisted of a pack of fools, cripples, thieves, and beggars? It was still a people, and he was its sovereign. And he accepted seriously all this ironical applause, all this derisive respect, with which the crowd mingled, it must be admitted, a good deal of very real fear. For the hunchback was robust. For the bandy-legged fellow was agile. For the deaf man was malicious. Three qualities which temper ridicule. We are far from believing, however, that the new pope of the fools understood both the sentiments which he felt and the sentiments which he inspired. The spirit which was lodged in this failure of a body had necessarily something incomplete and deaf about it. Thus what he felt at the moment was to him absolutely vague, indistinct, and confused. Only joy made itself felt, only pride dominated. Around that somber and unhappy face there hung a radiance. It was then, not without surprise and alarm, that at the very moment when Quasimodo was passing the pillar-house, in that semi-intoxicated state, a man was seen to dart from the crowd, and to tear from his hands with a gesture of anger his crozier of gilded wood, the emblem of his mock-pope-ship. This man, this rash individual, was the man with the bald brow, who a moment earlier, standing with the gypsy's group, had chilled the poor girl with his words of menace and hatred. He was dressed in an ecclesiastical costume. At the moment when he stood forth from the crowd, Gringoire, who had not noticed him up to that time, recognized him. Hold, he said, with an exclamation of astonishment, hey, tis my master in air may, Dom Claude Frollo, the arch-deacon. What the devil does he want with that old one-eyed fellow? He'll get himself devoured. A cry of terror arose, in fact. The formidable Quasimodo had hurled himself from the litter, and the women turned aside their eyes in order not to see him tear the arch-deacon asunder. He made one bound as far as the priest, looked at him, and fell upon his knees. The priest tore off his tiara, broke his crozier, and rent his tinsel-cope. Quasimodo remained on his knees, with head bent and hands clasped. Then there was established between them a strange dialogue of signs and gestures, for neither of them spoke. The priest, erect on his feet, irritated, threatening, imperious. Quasimodo, prostrate, humble, suppliant. And, nevertheless, it was certain that Quasimodo could have crushed the priest with his thumb. At length the arch-deacon, giving Quasimodo's powerful shoulder a rough shake, made him assigned to rise and follow him. Quasimodo rose. Then, the brotherhood of fools, their first stupor having passed off, wished to defend their pope, so abruptly dethroned. The Egyptians, the men of slang, and all the fraternity of law clerks gathered howling round the priest. Quasimodo placed himself in front of the priest, said in play the muscles of his athletic fists, and glared upon the assailants with a snarl of an angry tiger. The priest resumed his somber gravity, made assigned to Quasimodo, and retired in silence. Quasimodo walked in front of him, scattering the crowd as he passed. When they had traversed the populace and the plus, the cloud of curious and idle were minded to follow them. Quasimodo then constituted himself the rearguard, and followed the arch-deacon walking backwards, squat, surly, monstrous, bristling, gathering up his limbs, licking his boar's tusks, growling like a wild beast, and imparting to the crowd immense vibrations with a look or a gesture. Both were allowed to plunge into a dark and narrow street where no one dared to venture after them. So thoroughly did the mere commira of Quasimodo gnashing his teeth bar the entrance. Here's a marvellous thing, said Gringoire, but where the deuce shall I find some supper? End of Chapter 3 Book 2 Chapter 4 of the Hunchback of Notre-Dame, by Victor Hugo. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Book 2 Chapter 4 The Inconveniences of Following a Pretty Woman Through the Streets in the Evening Gringoire set out to follow the gypsy at all hazards. He had seen her, accompanied by her goat, take to the Rue de la Coutellerie. He took the Rue de la Coutellerie. Why not, he said to himself. Gringoire, a practical philosopher of the Streets of Paris, had noticed that nothing is more propitious to reverie than following a pretty woman without knowing whither she is going. There was, in this voluntary abdication of his free will, in this fancy submitting itself to another fancy, which suspects it not, a mixture of fantastic independence and blind obedience, something indescribable, intermediate between slavery and liberty, which pleased Gringoire. A spirit essentially compound, undecided and complex, holding the extremities of all extremes, incessantly suspended between all human propensities and neutralizing one by the other. He was fond of comparing himself to Mahomet's coffin, attracted in two different directions by two lodestones, and hesitating eternally between the heights and the depths, between the vaults and the pavement, between fall and ascent, between zenith and nadir. If Gringoire had lived in our day what a fine middle course he would hold between classicism and romanticism. But he was not sufficiently primitive to live three hundred years anticipity. His absence is a void which his but two sensibly felt today. Moreover, for the purpose of this following passers-by, and especially female passers-by in the streets, which Gringoire was fond of doing, there is no better disposition than ignorance of where one is going to sleep. So he walked along, very thoughtfully, behind the young girl, who hastened her pace and made her go trot as she saw the bourgeois returning home, and the taverns, the only shops which had been open that day, closing. After all, he half-thought to himself, she must lodge somewhere, gypsies have kindly hearts, who knows. And in the points of suspense which he placed after this reticence in his mind there lay, I know not what, flattering ideas. Meanwhile, from time to time, as he passed the last groups of bourgeois closing their doors, he caught some scraps of their conversation, which broke the thread of his pleasant hypotheses. Now it was two old men accosting each other. Do you know that it is cold, Master Thibault Ferne claye? Gringoire had been aware of this since the beginning of the winter. Yes, indeed, Master Boniface de Sommet, are we going to have a winter such as we had three years ago, in 80, when wood cost eight soothes the measure? Bah! That's nothing, Master Thibault, compared with the winter of 1407, when it froze from St. Martin's Day, until Kandelmas, and so cold that the pen of the registrar of the Parliament froze every three words in the grand chamber, which interrupted the registration of justice. Further on there were two female neighbours at their windows, holding candles which the fog caused to sputter. Has your husband told you about the mishap, mademoiselle la Badrac? No, what is it, mademoiselle Turquois? The horse of Monsieur Gilles Gaudin, the notary of the Châtelet, took fright at the flammings and their procession, and overturned Master Philippe Everlot, Les Moncs of the Celestines. Really? Actually! A bourgeois horse, tis rather too much, if it had been a cavalry horse, well and good! And the windows were closed, but Gringoire had lost the thread of his ideas nevertheless. Fortunately he speedily found it again, and he knotted it together without difficulty, thanks to the gypsy, thanks to Jolly, who still walked in front of him. Two fine, delicate and charming creatures, whose tiny feet, beautiful forms, and graceful manners he was engaged in admiring, almost confusing them in his contemplation. Believing them to be both young girls, from their intelligence and good friendship, regarding them both as goats, so far as the lightness, agility, and dexterity of their walk were concerned. But the streets were becoming blacker and more deserted every moment. The curfew had sounded long ago, and it was only at rare intervals now that they encountered a passer-by in the street, or a light in the windows. Gringoire had become involved in his pursuit of the gypsy, in that inextricable labyrinth of alleys, squares, and closed courts which surround the ancient sepulchre of the Saint-Innocence, and which resembles a ball of thread tangled by a cat. Here are streets which possess but little logic, said Gringoire, lost in the thousands of circuits which returned upon themselves incessantly, but where the young girl pursued a road which seemed familiar to her, without hesitation, and with a step which became ever more rapid. As for him, he would have been utterly ignorant of his situation, had he not aspired, in passing, at the turn of a street, the octagonal mass of the pillory of the fish markets, the openwork summit of which, through its black, fretted outlines, clearly upon a window which was still lighted in the Rue Verdelet. The young girl's attention had been attracted to him for the last few moments. She had repeatedly turned her head towards him with uneasiness. She had even once come to a standstill, and taking advantage of a ray of light which escaped from a half-open bakery, to survey him intently, from head to foot. Then, having cast this glance, Gringoire had seen her make that little pout which he had already noticed, after which she passed on. This little pout had furnished Gringoire with food for thought. There was certainly both disdain and mockery in that graceful grimace. So, he dropped his head, began to count the paving stones, and to follow the young girl at a little greater distance, when, at the turn of a street, which had caused him to lose sight of her, he heard her utter, a piercing cry. He hastened his steps. The street was full of shadows. Nevertheless, a twist of toe soaked in oil, which burned in a cage at the feet of the Holy Virgin at the street corner, permitted Gringoire to make out the gypsy struggling in the arms of two men, who were endeavouring to stifle her cries. The poor little goat, in great alarm, lowered his horns and bleated. Help! Gentlemen of the Watch! shouted Gringoire, and advanced bravely. One of the men who held the young girl turned towards him. It was the formidable visage of Quasimodo. Gringoire did not take to flight, but neither did he advance another step. Quasimodo came up to him, tossed him four paces away on the pavement, with a backward turn of the hand, and plunged rapidly into the gloom, bearing the young girl folded across one arm like a silken scarf. His companion followed him, and the poor goat ran after them all, bleeding plaintively. Murder! Murder! shrieked the unhappy gypsy. Halt, rascals, and yield me that wench! Suddenly shouted in a voice of thunder, a cavalier who appeared suddenly from a neighbouring square. It was a captain of the king's archers, armed from head to foot, with his sword in his hand. He tore the gypsy from the arms of the dazed Quasimodo, threw her across his saddle, and at the moment when the terrible hunchback, recovering from his surprise, rushed upon him to regain his prey, fifteen or sixteen archers, who followed their captain closely, made their appearance, with their two-edged swords in their fists. It was a squad of the king's police, which was making the rounds by order of Messier Robert d'Estovie, guard of the provost ship of Paris. Quasimodo was surrounded, seized, garred it. He roared, he foamed at the mouth, he bit. And had it been broad daylight, there is no doubt that his face alone, rendered more hideous by wrath, would have put the entire squad to flight. But by night he was deprived of his most formidable weapon, his ugliness. His companion had disappeared during the struggle. The gypsy gracefully raised herself upright upon the officer's saddle, placed both hands upon the young man's shoulders, and gazed, fixedly at him for several seconds, as though enchanted with his good looks and with the aid which he had just rendered her. Then, breaking silence first, she said to him, making her sweet voice still sweeter than usual, What is your name, Monsieur de Gendarme? Captain Phoebus d'Estovie, at your service, my beauty, replied the officer, drawing himself up. Thanks, said she. And while Captain Phoebus was turning up his moustache in burgundian fashion, she slipped from the horse, like an arrow falling to earth, and fled. A flash of lightning would have vanished less quickly. Nombril of the Pope, said the Captain, causing Quasimodo's straps to be drawn tighter, I should have preferred to keep the winch. What would you have, Captain? said one gendarme. The warbler has fled, and the bat remains. End of Chapter Four Book II. Chapter Five Of the Hunchback of Notre-Dame, by Victor Hugo. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter Five Result of the Dangers Gringoire, thoroughly stunned by his fall, remained on the pavement in front of the Holy Virgin at the street corner. Little by little he regained his senses. At first, for several minutes, he was floating in a sort of half-somnolent reverie, which was not without its charm, in which aerial figures of the gypsy and her goat were coupled with Quasimodo's heavy fist. This state lasted but a short time. A decidedly vivid sensation of cold in the part of his body, which was in contact with the pavement, suddenly aroused him and caused his spirit to return to the surface. Whence comes this chill, he said abruptly to himself. He then perceived that he was lying half in the middle of the gutter. That devil of a hunchbacked cyclops, he muttered between his teeth and he tried to rise. But he was too dazed and bruised. He was forced to remain where he was. Moreover, his hand was tolerably free. He stopped his nose and resigned himself. The mud of Paris, he said to himself, for decidedly he thought that he was sure that the gutter would prove his refuge for the night. And what can one do in a refuge except dream? The mud of Paris is particularly stinking. It must contain a great deal of volatile and nitric salts. That, moreover, is the opinion of Master Nicolas Flamel and of the Alchemists. The word Alchemists suddenly suggested to his mind the idea of Archdeacon Claude Frollo. He recalled the violent scene which he had just witnessed in part, that the gypsy was struggling with two men, that Quasimodo had a companion, and the morose and haughty face of the Archdeacon passed confusedly through his memory. That would be strange, he said to himself. And on that fact and that basis he began to construct a fantastic edifice of the hypothesis, that hard castle of philosophers. Then suddenly returning once more to reality. Come, I'm freezing, he ejaculated. The place was, in fact, becoming less and less tenable. Each molecule of the gutter bore away a molecule of heat radiating from gringoise loins, and the equilibrium between the temperature of his body and the temperature of the brook began to be established in rough fashion. Quite a different annoyance suddenly assailed him. A group of children, those little barefooted savages who have always roamed the pavements of Paris under the eternal name of gamines, and who, when we were also children ourselves, threw stones at all of us in the afternoon when we came out of school because our trousers were not torn. A swarm of these young scamps rushed towards the square where gringois lay, with shouts and laughter which seemed to pay but little heed to the sleep of the neighbors. They were dragging after them some sort of hideous sack, and the noise of their wooden shoes alone would have roused the dead. Gringois, who was not quite dead yet, half raised himself. Away, Anak'en d'Andaché! Away, Jehan Pencebaud! They shouted in deafening tones. Old you stache m'au bon! The merchant at the corner has just died. We've got his straw pallet. We're going to have a bonfire out of it. It's the turn of the Flemish to-day." And behold, they flung the pallet directly upon gringois, beside whom they had arrived without espying him. At the same time one of them took a handful of straw and set off to light it with the wick of the good virgin. Steth, growled gringois, am I going to be too warm now? It was a critical moment. He was caught between fire and water. He made a superhuman effort, the effort of a counterfeiter of money who was on the point of being boiled and who seeks to escape. He rose to his feet, flung aside the straw pallet upon the street urchins and fled. Holy Virgin! shriek the children. Tiss the merchant's ghost! And they fled in their turn. The straw mattress remained master of the field. Belfortet, Father Lejeuge and Carouset affirm that it was picked up on the morrow, with great pomp, by the clergy of the quarter and born to the treasury of the Church of Saint-Apartoune, where the sacriston, even as late as 1789, earned a tolerably handsome revenue out of the great miracle of the statue of the Virgin at the corner of the rue Maconsee, which had, by its mere presence, on the memorable night between the 6th and 7th of January, 1482, exercised the defunct Eustache Mauban, who in order to play a trick on the devil, had, at his death, maliciously concealed his soul in the straw pallet. End of chapter 5