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_ The reader will, perhaps, recall the critical situation in
which we left Quasimodo. The brave deaf man, assailed on
all sides, had lost, if not all courage, at least all hope
of saving, not himself (he was not thinking of himself), but
the gypsy. He ran distractedly along the gallery. Notre-Dame
was on the point of being taken by storm by the outcasts.
All at once, a great galloping of horses filled the neighboring
streets, and, with a long file of torches and a thick column of
cavaliers, with free reins and lances in rest, these furious
sounds debouched on the Place like a hurricane,--
"France! France! cut down the louts! Châteaupers to
the rescue! Provostship! Provostship!"
The frightened vagabonds wheeled round.
Quasimodo who did not hear, saw the naked swords, the
torches, the irons of the pikes, all that cavalry, at the head
of which he recognized Captain Phoebus; he beheld the confusion
of the outcasts, the terror of some, the disturbance among the
bravest of them, and from this unexpected succor he recovered
so much strength, that he hurled from the church the first
assailants who were already climbing into the gallery.
It was, in fact, the king's troops who had arrived.
The vagabonds behaved bravely. They defended themselves
like desperate men. Caught on the flank, by the Rue Saint-
Pierre-aux-Boeufs, and in the rear through the Rue du Parvis,
driven to bay against Notre-Dame, which they still assailed
and Quasimodo defended, at the same time besiegers and
besieged, they were in the singular situation in which Comte
Henri Harcourt, ~Taurinum obsessor idem et obsessus~, as his
epitaph says, found himself later on, at the famous siege of
Turin, in 1640, between Prince Thomas of Savoy, whom he
was besieging, and the Marquis de Leganez, who was blockading
him.
The battle was frightful. There was a dog's tooth for wolf's
flesh, as P. Mathieu says. The king's cavaliers, in whose
midst Phoebus de Châteaupers bore himself valiantly, gave no
quarter, and the slash of the sword disposed of those who
escaped the thrust of the lance. The outcasts, badly armed
foamed and bit with rage. Men, women, children, hurled
themselves on the cruppers and the breasts of the horses, and
hung there like cats, with teeth, finger nails and toe nails.
Others struck the archers' in the face with their torches.
Others thrust iron hooks into the necks of the cavaliers and
dragged them down. They slashed in pieces those who fell.
One was noticed who had a large, glittering scythe, and
who, for a long time, mowed the legs of the horses. He was
frightful. He was singing a ditty, with a nasal intonation,
he swung and drew back his scythe incessantly. At every blow
he traced around him a great circle of severed limbs. He
advanced thus into the very thickest of the cavalry, with the
tranquil slowness, the lolling of the head and the regular
breathing of a harvester attacking a field of wheat. It was
Chopin Trouillefou. A shot from an arquebus laid him low.
In the meantime, windows had been opened again. The
neighbors hearing the war cries of the king's troops, had
mingled in the affray, and bullets rained upon the outcasts
from every story. The Parvis was filled with a thick smoke,
which the musketry streaked with flame. Through it one could
confusedly distinguish the front of Notre-Dame, and the decrepit
Hôtel-Dieu with some wan invalids gazing down from the
heights of its roof all checkered with dormer windows.
At length the vagabonds gave way. Weariness, the lack of
good weapons, the fright of this surprise, the musketry from
the windows, the valiant attack of the king's troops, all
overwhelmed them. They forced the line of assailants, and fled
in every direction, leaving the Parvis encumbered with dead.
When Quasimodo, who had not ceased to fight for a moment,
beheld this rout, he fell on his knees and raised his
hands to heaven; then, intoxicated with joy, he ran, he
ascended with the swiftness of a bird to that cell, the
approaches to which he had so intrepidly defended. He had
but one thought now; it was to kneel before her whom he
had just saved for the second time.
When he entered the cell, he found it empty. _
Read next: VOLUME II: BOOK ELEVENTH: Chapter 1 - The Little Shoe
Read previous: VOLUME II: BOOK TENTH: Chapter 6 - Little Sword in Pocket
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