Let us return to Notre-Dame.
When the first arrangements had been made （and we must say, to the honor of the discipline of the Vagrants, that Clopin’s orders were carried out in silence and with admirable precision）， the worthy leader of the band mounted the parapet of the Parvis, and raised his hoarse, surly voice, keeping his face turned towards Notre-Dame, and waving his torch, the flame of which, flickering in the wind, and now and again veiled by its own smoke, first revealed and then hid the front of the church, lit up with a reddish glow.
“To you, Louis de Beaumont, Bishop of Paris, Councillor of the Court of Parliament, I, Clopin Trouillefou, king of blacklegs, king of rogues, prince of slang, and bishop of fools, proclaim: Our sister, falsely condemned for magic, has taken refuge in your church. You owe her shelter and safeguard. Now, the Parliamentary Court desire to recover her person, and you have given your consent; so that indeed she would be hanged tomorrow on the Place de Grève were not God and the Vagrants here to aid her. We have therefore come hither to you, O Bishop. If your church be sacred, our sister is likewise sacred; if our sister be not sacred, neither is your church. Wherefore we summon you to deliver over to us the girl if you would save your church, or we will seize upon the girl, and will plunder the church, which will be a righteous deed. In token whereof I here plant my banner; and may God have you in his guard, O Bishop of Paris!”
Unfortunately Quasimodo could not hear these words, uttered as they were with a sort of sombre, savage majesty. A Vagrant handed the banner to Clopin, who planted it solemnly between two flagstones. It was a pitchfork, from whose prongs hung a bleeding mass of carrion.
This done, the King of Tunis turned and glanced at his army,—a fierce host, whose eyes glittered almost as brightly as their pikes. After an instant’s pause he cried,— “Forward, boys! To your work, rebels!”
Thirty stout fellows, with sturdy limbs and crafty faces, stepped from the ranks with hammers, pincers, and crowbars on their shoulders. They advanced towards the main entrance of the church, mounted the steps, and were soon crouching beneath the arch, working away at the door with pincers and levers. A crowd of Vagrants followed them to help or encourage. They thronged the eleven steps leading to the porch.
Still the door refused to yield. “The devil! how tough and obstinate it is!” said one. “It is old, and its joints are stiff,” said another. “Courage, comrades!” replied Clopin. “I’ll wager my head against an old slipper that you’ll have opened the door, captured the girl, and stripped the high-altar before a single sacristan is awake. Stay! I think the lock is giving way.”
Clopin was interrupted by a tremendous din behind him. He turned. A huge beam had fallen from the sky; it had crushed a dozen of his Vagrants on the church steps and rebounded to the pavement with the crash of a cannon, breaking the legs of various tatterdemalions here and there in the crowd, which scattered with cries of terror. In the twinkling of an eye the enclosed portion of the square was cleared. The rebels, although protected by the deep arches of the porch, forsook the door, and Clopin himself retired to a respectful distance.
“I had a narrow escape!” cried Jehan. “I felt the wind of it as it passed, by Jove! but Pierre l‘Assommeur is knocked down!”dt
It is impossible to picture the mingled consternation and affright which overcame the bandits with the fall of this beam. They stood for some moments staring into the air, more dismayed by that fragment of wood than by twenty thousand of the king’s archers.
“Satan!” growled the Duke of Egypt; “that smells of sorcery!”
“It must be the moon which flung that log at us,” said Andry le Rouge.
“Why,” replied Fran?ois Chanteprune, “they say the moon is a friend of the Virgin Mary!”
“By the Pope’s head!” exclaimed Clopin; “but you are a parcel of fools!” And yet even he could not explain the fall of the plank.
Meanwhile, nothing was to be seen upon the front of the cathedral, to the top of which the light of the torches did not reach. The heavy plank lay in the middle of the square, and loud were the groans of the wretched men who had received its first shock, and who had been almost cut in two upon the sharp edges of the stone steps.
The King of Tunis, his first dismay over, at last hit upon an explanation which seemed plausible to his companions:— “Odds bodikins! Is the clergy defending itself? Then, sack! sack!”
“Sack!” repeated the rabble, with a frantic cheer. And they discharged a volley of cross-bows and hackbuts at the church.