Then she threw herself gracefully upon her bed, with the sleeping goat at her feet. For some moments both were motionless, silently contemplating, he so much grace, she so much ugliness.
Every moment she discovered some additional deformity in Quasimodo. Her gaze roved from his knock knees to his humped back, from his humped back to his single eye. She could not understand why a being so imperfectly planned should continue to exist. But withal there was so much melancholy and so much gentleness about him that she began to be reconciled to it.
He was the first to break the silence: “Did you tell me to come back?”
She nodded her head, as she said, “Yes.”
He understood her nod. “Alas!” said he, as if loath to go on, “I am—I am deaf.”
“Poor fellow!” cried the gipsy, with a look of kindly pity.
He smiled sadly.
“You think that I only lacked that, don’t you? Yes, I am deaf. That’s the way I was made. It is horrible, isn’t it? And you,—you are so beautiful!”
There was so profound a sense of his misery in the poor wretch’s tone, that she had not the strength to say a word. Besides, he would not have heard her. He added:— “I never realized my ugliness till now. When I compare myself with you, I pity myself indeed, poor unhappy monster that I am! I must seem to you like some awful beast, eh? You,—you are a sunbeam, a drop of dew, a bird’s song! As for me, I am something frightful, neither man nor beast,—a nondescript object, more hard, shapeless, and more trodden under foot than a pebble!”
Then he began to laugh, and that laugh was the most heartrending thing on earth. He continued:— “Yes, I am deaf; but you can speak to me by gestures, by signs. I have a master who talks with me in that way. And then I shall soon know your wishes from the motion of your lips, and your expression.”
“Well,” she replied, smiling, “tell me why you saved me.”
He watched her attentively as she spoke.
“I understand,” he answered. “You ask me why I saved you. You have forgotten a villain who tried to carry you off one night,—a villain to whom the very next day you brought relief upon their infamous pillory. A drop of water and a little pity are more than my whole life can ever repay. You have forgotten that villain; but he remembers.”
She listened with deep emotion. A tear sparkled in the bell-ringer’s eye, but it did not fall. He seemed to make it a point of honor to repress it.
“Listen,” he resumed, when he no longer feared lest that tear should flow; “we have very tall towers here; a man who fell from them would be dead long before he touched the pavement; whenever it would please you to have me fall, you need not even say a single word; one glance will be enough.”
Then he rose. This peculiar being, unhappy though the gipsy was, yet roused a feeling of compassion in her heart. She signed him to stay.
“No, no,” said he, “I must not stay too long. I am not at my ease. It is out of pity that you do not turn away your eyes. I will go where I can see you without your seeing me. That will be better.”
He drew from his pocket a small metal whistle.
“There,” said he, “when you need me, when you wish me to come to you, when I do not horrify you too much, whistle with this. I hear that sound.”
He laid the whistle on the ground, and fled.
CHAPTER IV
Earthenware and Crystal
One day followed another.
Calm gradually returned to Esmeralda’s soul. Excess of grief, like excess of joy, is a violent thing, and of brief duration. The heart of man cannot long remain at any extreme. The gipsy had suffered so much that surprise was the only emotion of which she was now capable. With security, hope had returned. She was far away from society, far from life, but she vaguely felt that it might not perhaps be impossible to return to them. She was like one dead, yet holding in reserve the key to her tomb.
She felt the terrible images which had so long possessed her fading gradually away. All the hideous phantoms, Pierrat Torterue, Jacques Charmolue, had vanished from her mind,—all, even the priest himself.
And then, too, Ph?bus lived; she was sure of it; she had seen him. To her, the life of Phoebus was all in all. After the series of fatal shocks which had laid waste her soul, but one thing was left standing, but one sentiment,—her love for the captain. Love is like a tree; it grows spontaneously, strikes its roots deep into our whole being, and often continues to flourish over a heart in ruins.
And the inexplicable part of it is, that the blinder this passion, the more tenacious it is. It is never stronger than when it is utterly unreasonable.