“Who’ll join us?” said Clopin. “I shall have another try. By the way, where is that little student Jehan, who put on such a coat of mail?”
“He is probably dead,” answered some one; “we don’t hear his laugh.”
The King of Tunis frowned: “So much the worse. There was a stout heart beneath that steel. And Master Pierre Gringoire?”
“Captain Clopin,” said Andry le Rouge, “he took to his heels when we had only come as far as the Pont-aux-Changeurs.”
Clopin stamped his foot. “By the Mass! he urges us on, and then leaves us in the lurch! A cowardly prater, helmeted with a slipper!”
“Captain Clopin,” said Andry le Rouge, who was looking down the Rue du Parvis, “there comes the little student.”
“Pluto be praised!” said Clopin. “But what the devil is he lugging after him?”
It was indeed Jehan, running as fast as was possible under the weight of his heavy armor and a long ladder which he dragged sturdily over the pavement, more breathless than an ant harnessed to a blade of grass twenty times its own length.
“Victory! Te Deum!” shouted the student. “Here’s the ladder belonging to the longshoremen of St. Landry’s wharf.”
Clopin approached him:—
“Zounds, child! what are you going to do with that ladder?”
“I’ve got it,” replied Jehan, panting and gasping. “I knew where it was,—under the shed at the lieutenant’s house. There’s a girl there who knows me, who thinks me a perfect Cupid. I took advantage of her folly to get the ladder, and I have the ladder, odds bodikins! The poor girl came down in her shift to let me in.”
“Yes,” said Clopin; “but what will you do with the ladder now that you have got it?”
Jehan looked at him with a mischievous, cunning air, and cracked his fingers like so many castanets. At that moment he was sublime. He had on his head one of those enormous fifteenth-century helmets, which terrified the foe by their fantastic crests. It bristled with ten iron beaks, so that he might have disputed the tremendous ephithet ofduwith Nestor’s Homeric vessel.
“What shall I do with it, august King of Tunis? Do you see that row of statues with their foolish faces yonder, above the three porches?”
“Yes; what then?”
“That is the gallery of the kings of France.”
“What is that to me?” said Clopin.
“Wait a bit! At the end of that gallery there is a door which is always on the latch, and with this ladder I will climb to it, and then I am in the church.”
“Let me go up first, boy!”
“Not a bit of it, comrade; the ladder is mine. Come, you may be second.”
“May Beelzebub strangle you!” said the surly Clopin. “I’ll not be second to any man.”
“Then, Clopin, seek a ladder for yourself”; and Jehan set out at full speed across the square, dragging his ladder after him, shouting,— “Help, lads, help!”
In an instant the ladder was lifted, and placed against the railing of the lower gallery, over one of the side doors. The crowd of Vagrants, uttering loud cheers, thronged to the foot of it, eager to ascend; but Jehan maintained his right, and was first to set foot upon the rounds. The journey was long and slow. The gallery of the kings of France is in this day some sixty feet above the pavement. The eleven steps leading to the door made it still higher at the time of our story. Jehan climbed slowly, hampered by his heavy armor, clinging to the ladder with one hand and his cross-bow with the other. When he reached the middle, he cast a melancholy glance downwards at the poor dead Men of Slang who bestrewed the steps.
“Alas!” said he, “there’s a heap of corpses worthy of the fifth book of the Iliad!” Then he resumed his ascent. The Vagrants followed him; there was one upon every round. As this undulating line of cuirassed backs rose through the darkness, it looked like a serpent with scales of steel rearing its length along the church. Jehan, who represented the head, whistled shrilly, thus completing the illusion.
At last the student touched the balcony, and nimbly strode over it, amid the applause of the assembled Vagrants. Thus master of the citadel, he uttered a shout of joy, and all at once paused, petrified. He had seen behind one of the royal statues Quasimodo and his glittering eye lurking in the shadow.
Before a second assailant could set foot upon the gallery, the terrible hunchback leaped to the top of the ladder, seized, without a word, the ends of the two uprights in his strong hands, raised them, pushed them from the wall, balancing for a moment, amid screams of agony, the long, pliant ladder loaded with Vagrants from top to bottom, and then suddenly, with superhuman force, hurled the clustering mass of men into the square. There was an instant when the boldest trembled. The ladder plunged backward, for a moment stood erect, and seemed to hesitate, then tottered, then all at once, describing a frightful arc of eighty feet in radius, fell headlong on the pavement with its burden of bandits, more swiftly than a drawbridge when the chains which hold it are broken. There was an awful volley of curses, then all was hushed, and a few mutilated wretches crawled away from under the heap of dead.