________________________________________________
_ The reader has probably not forgotten that a part of the
Cour de Miracles was enclosed by the ancient wall which
surrounded the city, a goodly number of whose towers had begun,
even at that epoch, to fall to ruin. One of these towers had
been converted into a pleasure resort by the vagabonds. There
was a drain-shop in the underground story, and the rest in the
upper stories. This was the most lively, and consequently
the most hideous, point of the whole outcast den. It was a
sort of monstrous hive, which buzzed there night and day.
At night, when the remainder of the beggar horde slept, when
there was no longer a window lighted in the dingy façades of
the Place, when not a cry was any longer to be heard proceeding
from those innumerable families, those ant-hills of thieves,
of wenches, and stolen or bastard children, the merry tower
was still recognizable by the noise which it made, by the scarlet
light which, flashing simultaneously from the air-holes, the
windows, the fissures in the cracked walls, escaped, so to
speak, from its every pore.
The cellar then, was the dram-shop. The descent to it was
through a low door and by a staircase as steep as a classic
Alexandrine. Over the door, by way of a sign there hung a
marvellous daub, representing new sons and dead chickens,*
with this, pun below: ~Aux sonneurs pour les trépassés~,--The
wringers for the dead.
* ~Sols neufs: poulets tués~.
One evening when the curfew was sounding from all the
belfries in Paris, the sergeants of the watch might have
observed, had it been granted to them to enter the formidable
Court of Miracles, that more tumult than usual was in progress
in the vagabonds' tavern, that more drinking was being
done, and louder swearing. Outside in the Place, there,
were many groups conversing in low tones, as when some great
plan is being framed, and here and there a knave crouching
down engaged in sharpening a villanous iron blade on a
paving-stone.
Meanwhile, in the tavern itself, wine and gaming offered
such a powerful diversion to the ideas which occupied the
vagabonds' lair that evening, that it would have been difficult
to divine from the remarks of the drinkers, what was the
matter in hand. They merely wore a gayer air than was their
wont, and some weapon could be seen glittering between the
legs of each of them,--a sickle, an axe, a big two-edged sword
or the hook of an old hackbut.
The room, circular in form, was very spacious; but the
tables were so thickly set and the drinkers so numerous, that
all that the tavern contained, men, women, benches, beer-jugs,
all that were drinking, all that were sleeping, all that were
playing, the well, the lame, seemed piled up pell-mell, with as
much order and harmony as a heap of oyster shells. There
were a few tallow dips lighted on the tables; but the real
luminary of this tavern, that which played the part in this
dram-shop of the chandelier of an opera house, was the fire.
This cellar was so damp that the fire was never allowed to go
out, even in midsummer; an immense chimney with a sculptured
mantel, all bristling with heavy iron andirons and cooking
utensils, with one of those huge fires of mixed wood and peat
which at night, in village streets make the reflection of forge
windows stand out so red on the opposite walls. A big dog
gravely seated in the ashes was turning a spit loaded with
meat before the coals.
Great as was the confusion, after the first glance one could
distinguish in that multitude, three principal groups which
thronged around three personages already known to the reader.
One of these personages, fantastically accoutred in many an
oriental rag, was Mathias Hungadi Spicali, Duke of Egypt
and Bohemia. The knave was seated on a table with his
legs crossed, and in a loud voice was bestowing his knowledge
of magic, both black and white, on many a gaping face which
surrounded him. Another rabble pressed close around our old
friend, the valiant King of Thunes, armed to the teeth.
Clopin Trouillefou, with a very serious air and in a low voice,
was regulating the distribution of an enormous cask of arms,
which stood wide open in front of him and from whence
poured out in profusion, axes, swords, bassinets, coats of mail,
broadswords, lance-heads, arrows, and viretons,* like apples
and grapes from a horn of plenty. Every one took something
from the cask, one a morion, another a long, straight sword,
another a dagger with a cross--shaped hilt. The very children
were arming themselves, and there were even cripples in
bowls who, in armor and cuirass, made their way between the
legs of the drinkers, like great beetles.
* An arrow with a pyramidal head of iron and copper spiral
wings, by which a rotatory motion was communicated.
Finally, a third audience, the most noisy, the most jovial,
and the most numerous, encumbered benches and tables, in the
midst of which harangued and swore a flute-like voice, which
escaped from beneath a heavy armor, complete from casque to
spurs. The individual who had thus screwed a whole outfit
upon his body, was so hidden by his warlike accoutrements
that nothing was to be seen of his person save an impertinent,
red, snub nose, a rosy mouth, and bold eyes. His belt was
full of daggers and poniards, a huge sword on his hip, a rusted
cross-bow at his left, and a vast jug of wine in front of him,
without reckoning on his right, a fat wench with her bosom
uncovered. All mouths around him were laughing, cursing,
and drinking.
Add twenty secondary groups, the waiters, male and female,
running with jugs on their heads, gamblers squatting over
taws, merelles,* dice, vachettes, the ardent game of tringlet,
quarrels in one corner, kisses in another, and the reader will
have some idea of this whole picture, over which flickered the
light of a great, flaming fire, which made a thousand huge and
grotesque shadows dance over the walls of the drinking shop.
* A game played on a checker-board containing three concentric
sets of squares, with small stones. The game consisted in
getting three stones in a row.
As for the noise, it was like the inside of a bell at full peal.
The dripping-pan, where crackled a rain of grease, filled
with its continual sputtering the intervals of these thousand
dialogues, which intermingled from one end of the apartment
to the other.
In the midst of this uproar, at the extremity of the tavern,
on the bench inside the chimney, sat a philosopher meditating
with his feet in the ashes and his eyes on the brands. It was
Pierre Gringoire.
"Be quick! make haste, arm yourselves! we set out on
the march in an hour!" said Clopin Trouillefou to his thieves.
A wench was humming,--
"~Bonsoir mon père et ma mere,
Les derniers couvrent le feu~."*
* Good night, father and mother, the last cover up the fire.
Two card players were disputing,--
"Knave!" cried the reddest faced of the two, shaking his
fist at the other; "I'll mark you with the club. You can
take the place of Mistigri in the pack of cards of monseigneur
the king."
"Ugh!" roared a Norman, recognizable by his nasal accent;
"we are packed in here like the saints of Caillouville!"
"My sons," the Duke of Egypt was saying to his audience,
in a falsetto voice, "sorceresses in France go to the witches'
sabbath without broomsticks, or grease, or steed, merely by
means of some magic words. The witches of Italy always
have a buck waiting for them at their door. All are bound
to go out through the chimney."
The voice of the young scamp armed from head to foot,
dominated the uproar.
"Hurrah! hurrah!" he was shouting. "My first day in
armor! Outcast! I am an outcast. Give me something to
drink. My friends, my name is Jehan Frollo du Moulin, and
I am a gentleman. My opinion is that if God were a ~gendarme~,
he would turn robber. Brothers, we are about to set out on a
fine expedition. Lay siege to the church, burst in
the doors, drag out the beautiful girl, save her from the
judges, save her from the priests, dismantle the cloister,
burn the bishop in his palace--all this we will do in less
time than it takes for a burgomaster to eat a spoonful of
soup. Our cause is just, we will plunder Notre-Dame and that
will be the end of it. We will hang Quasimodo. Do you know
Quasimodo, ladies? Have you seen him make himself breathless
on the big bell on a grand Pentecost festival! ~Corne du
Père~! 'tis very fine! One would say he was a devil mounted
on a man. Listen to me, my friends; I am a vagabond to the
bottom of my heart, I am a member of the slang thief gang
in my soul, I was born an independent thief. I have been
rich, and I have devoured all my property. My mother wanted
to make an officer of me; my father, a sub-deacon; my aunt,
a councillor of inquests; my grandmother, prothonotary to
the king; my great aunt, a treasurer of the short robe,--and
I have made myself an outcast. I said this to my father, who
spit his curse in my face; to my mother, who set to weeping
and chattering, poor old lady, like yonder fagot on the
and-irons. Long live mirth! I am a real Bicêtre. Waitress,
my dear, more wine. I have still the wherewithal to pay. I
want no more Surène wine. It distresses my throat. I'd as
lief, ~corboeuf~! gargle my throat with a basket."
Meanwhile, the rabble applauded with shouts of laughter;
and seeing that the tumult was increasing around him, the
scholar cried,--.
"Oh! what a fine noise! ~Populi debacchantis populosa
debacchatio~!" Then he began to sing, his eye swimming in
ecstasy, in the tone of a canon intoning vespers, ~Quoe
cantica! quoe organa! quoe cantilenoe! quoe meloclioe hic
sine fine decantantur! Sonant melliflua hymnorum organa,
suavissima angelorum melodia, cantica canticorum mira~!
He broke off: "Tavern-keeper of the devil, give me
some supper!"
There was a moment of partial silence, during which the
sharp voice of the Duke of Egypt rose, as he gave instructions
to his Bohemians.
"The weasel is called Adrune; the fox, Blue-foot, or the
Racer of the Woods; the wolf, Gray-foot, or Gold-foot; the
bear the Old Man, or Grandfather. The cap of a gnome confers
invisibility, and causes one to behold invisible things.
Every toad that is baptized must be clad in red or black
velvet, a bell on its neck, a bell on its feet. The godfather
holds its head, the godmother its hinder parts. 'Tis the
demon Sidragasum who hath the power to make wenches
dance stark naked."
"By the mass!" interrupted Jehan, "I should like to be
the demon Sidragasum."
Meanwhile, the vagabonds continued to arm themselves and
whisper at the other end of the dram-shop.
"That poor Esmeralda!" said a Bohemian. "She is our
sister. She must be taken away from there."
"Is she still at Notre-Dame?" went on a merchant with
the appearance of a Jew.
"Yes, pardieu!"
"Well! comrades!" exclaimed the merchant, "to Notre-Dame!
So much the better, since there are in the chapel of Saints
Féréol and Ferrution two statues, the one of John the
Baptist, the other of Saint-Antoine, of solid gold, weighing
together seven marks of gold and fifteen estellins; and the
pedestals are of silver-gilt, of seventeen marks, five ounces.
I know that; I am a goldsmith."
Here they served Jehan with his supper. As he threw
himself back on the bosom of the wench beside him,
he exclaimed,--
"By Saint Voult-de-Lucques, whom people call Saint
Goguelu, I am perfectly happy. I have before me a fool
who gazes at me with the smooth face of an archduke. Here
is one on my left whose teeth are so long that they hide his
chin. And then, I am like the Marshal de Gié at the siege
of Pontoise, I have my right resting on a hillock. ~Ventre-
Mahom~! Comrade! you have the air of a merchant of tennis-
balls; and you come and sit yourself beside me! I am a
nobleman, my friend! Trade is incompatible with nobility.
Get out of that! Hola hé! You others, don't fight! What,
Baptiste Croque-Oison, you who have such a fine nose are
going to risk it against the big fists of that lout! Fool!
~Non cuiquam datum est habere nasum~--not every one is
favored with a nose. You are really divine, Jacqueline
Ronge-Oreille! 'tis a pity that you have no hair! Holà!
my name is Jehan Frollo, and my brother is an archdeacon.
May the devil fly off with him! All that I tell you is the
truth. In turning vagabond, I have gladly renounced the half
of a house situated in paradise, which my brother had promised
me. ~Dimidiam domum in paradiso~. I quote the text. I
have a fief in the Rue Tirechappe, and all the women are in
love with me, as true as Saint Eloy was an excellent goldsmith,
and that the five trades of the good city of Paris are
the tanners, the tawers, the makers of cross-belts, the
purse-makers, and the sweaters, and that Saint Laurent was
burnt with eggshells. I swear to you, comrades.
"~Que je ne beuvrai de piment,
Devant un an, si je cy ment~.*
* That I will drink no spiced and honeyed wine for a year,
if I am lying now.
"'Tis moonlight, my charmer; see yonder through the window
how the wind is tearing the clouds to tatters! Even thus
will I do to your gorget.--Wenches, wipe the children's noses
and snuff the candles.--Christ and Mahom! What am I eating
here, Jupiter? Ohé! innkeeper! the hair which is not
on the heads of your hussies one finds in your omelettes. Old
woman! I like bald omelettes. May the devil confound you!--A
fine hostelry of Beelzebub, where the hussies comb their heads
with the forks!
"~Et je n'ai moi,
Par la sang-Dieu!
Ni foi, ni loi,
Ni feu, ni lieu,
Ni roi,
Ni Dieu."*
* And by the blood of God, I have neither faith nor law, nor
fire nor dwelling-place, nor king nor God.
In the meantime, Clopin Trouillefou had finished the
distribution of arms. He approached Gringoire, who appeared
to be plunged in a profound revery, with his feet on an andiron.
"Friend Pierre," said the King of Thunes, "what the devil
are you thinking about?"
Gringoire turned to him with a melancholy smile.
"I love the fire, my dear lord. Not for the trivial reason
that fire warms the feet or cooks our soup, but because it has
sparks. Sometimes I pass whole hours in watching the sparks.
I discover a thousand things in those stars which are sprinkled
over the black background of the hearth. Those stars are also
worlds."
"Thunder, if I understand you!" said the outcast. "Do you know
what o'clock it is?"
"I do not know," replied Gringoire.
Clopin approached the Duke of Egypt.
"Comrade Mathias, the time we have chosen is not a good
one. King Louis XI. is said to be in Paris."
"Another reason for snatching our sister from his claws,"
replied the old Bohemian.
"You speak like a man, Mathias," said the King of Thunes.
"Moreover, we will act promptly. No resistance is to be
feared in the church. The canons are hares, and we are in
force. The people of the parliament will be well balked
to-morrow when they come to seek her! Guts of the pope I
don't want them to hang the pretty girl!"
Chopin quitted the dram-shop.
Meanwhile, Jehan was shouting in a hoarse voice:
"I eat, I drink, I am drunk, I am Jupiter! Eh! Pierre,
the Slaughterer, if you look at me like that again, I'll fillip
the dust off your nose for you."
Gringoire, torn from his meditations, began to watch the
wild and noisy scene which surrounded him, muttering between
his teeth: "~Luxuriosa res vinum et tumultuosa ebrietas~.
Alas! what good reason I have not to drink, and how excellently
spoke Saint-Benoit: '~Vinum apostatare facit etiam sapientes!'"
At that moment, Clopin returned and shouted in a voice of
thunder: "Midnight!"
At this word, which produced the effect of the call to boot
and saddle on a regiment at a halt, all the outcasts, men,
women, children, rushed in a mass from the tavern, with great
noise of arms and old iron implements.
The moon was obscured.
The Cour des Miracles was entirely dark. There was not a
single light. One could make out there a throng of men and
women conversing in low tones. They could be heard buzzing,
and a gleam of all sorts of weapons was visible in the
darkness. Clopin mounted a large stone.
"To your ranks, Argot!"* he cried. "Fall into line, Egypt!
Form ranks, Galilee!"
* Men of the brotherhood of slang: thieves.
A movement began in the darkness. The immense multitude
appeared to form in a column. After a few minutes, the
King of Thunes raised his voice once more,--
"Now, silence to march through Paris! The password is,
'Little sword in pocket!' The torches will not be lighted till
we reach Notre-Dame! Forward, march!"
Ten minutes later, the cavaliers of the watch fled in terror
before a long procession of black and silent men which was
descending towards the Pont an Change, through the tortuous
streets which pierce the close-built neighborhood of the markets
in every direction. _
Read next: VOLUME II: BOOK TENTH: Chapter 4 - An Awkward Friend
Read previous: VOLUME II: BOOK TENTH: Chapter 2 - Turn Vagabond
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