She was not tall, but seemed to be, so proudly erect did she hold her slender figure. Her skin was brown, but it was evident that by daylight it must have that lovely golden gleam peculiar to Spanish and Roman beauties. Her tiny foot was Andalusian too, for it fitted both snugly and easily into its dainty shoe. She danced, she turned, she twirled, upon an antique Persian carpet thrown carelessly beneath her feet; and every time her radiant figure passed, as she turned, her great black eyes sent forth lightning flashes.
Upon her every eye was riveted, every mouth gaped wide; and in very truth, as she danced to the hum of the tambourine which her round and graceful arms held high above her head, slender, quick and active as any wasp, with a smoothly fitting golden bodice, her many-colored full skirts, her bare shoulders, her shapely legs, from which her skirts now and then swung away, her black hair, her eyes of flame, she seemed more than mortal creature.
“Indeed,” thought Gringoire, “she is a salamander, a nymph, a goddess, a bacchante from Mount M?nalus!”
At this moment one of the salamander’s tresses was loosened, and a bit of brass which had been fastened to it fell to the ground.
“Alas, no!” said he, “she’s a gipsy.”
All illusion had vanished.
She began to dance once more. She picked up two swords, and balancing them by their points on her forehead, she twirled them in one direction while she herself revolved in another; she was indeed but a gipsy girl. But great as was Gringoire’s disenchantment, the picture was far from being destitute of all charm and beauty; the bonfire lit it up with a crude red light, which flickered brightly upon the circle of surrounding figures and the young girl’s brown face, casting wan reflections, blended with alternating shadows, into the farthest corners of the square,—on one side upon the black and weather-beaten front of the Maison-aux-Piliers, and on the other upon the cross-beam of the stone gibbet.
Among the myriad of faces dyed scarlet by the flames, there was one which seemed absorbed even beyond all the rest in gazing at the dancer. It was the face of a man, austere, calm, and somber. This man, whose dress was hidden by the crowd about him, seemed not more than thirty-five years old, and yet he was bald; he had but a few grey and scanty locks of hair about his temples; his broad, high forehead was already beginning to be furrowed with wrinkles, but in his deep-set eyes sparkled an extraordinary spirit of youth, an ardent love of life and depth of passion. He kept them fixed on the gipsy; and while the giddy young damsel danced and fluttered to the delight of all, his thoughts seemed to become more and more melancholy. From time to time a smile and a sigh met upon his lips, but the smile was far sadder than the sigh.
The young girl stopped at last, breathless, and the people applauded eagerly.
“Djali!” said the gipsy.
Then Gringoire saw a pretty little white goat, active, alert, and glossy, with gilded horns, gilded hoofs, and a gilded collar, which he had not before observed, and which had hitherto remained quietly crouching on a corner of the carpet, watching its mistress as she danced.
“Djali,” said the dancer, “it’s your turn now.”
And sitting down, she gracefully offered the goat her tambourine.
“Djali,” she added, “what month in the year is this?”
The goat raised its fore-foot and struck once upon the tambourine. It was indeed the first month of the year. The crowd applauded.
“Djali,” resumed the young girl, turning her tambourine another way, “what day of the month is it?”
Djali lifted his little golden hoof and struck it six times upon the tambourine.
“Djali,” continued the daughter of Egypt, with still another twist of the tambourine, “what time of day is it?”
Djali gave seven blows, and at the same instant the clock on the Maison-aux-Piliers struck seven.
The people were lost in wonder.
“There is sorcery in this,” said a forbidding voice from the throng. It was the voice of the bald man, who had never taken his eyes from the gipsy.
She trembled, and turned towards him; but fresh applause broke out, and drowned the surly exclamation.
They even effaced it so completely from her mind that she went on questioning her goat.
“Djali, how does Master Guichard Grand-Remy, the captain of the city pistoleers, walk in the procession at Candlemas?”
Djali rose on his hind-legs and began to bleat, walking as he did so with an air of such polite gravity that the whole ring of spectators burst into a laugh at this parody of the selfish devotion of the captain of pistoleers.