Sin poderse menear,
Con espadas, y los cuellos,
Ballestas de buen echar.”z
The gipsy’s song had troubled Gringoire’s reverie, but as the swan troubles the water. He listened in a sort of ecstasy which rendered him oblivious of all else. It was the first instant, for some hours, in which he had felt no pain.
The moment was brief.
The same woman’s voice which had cut short the girl’s dance now interrupted her song.
“Will you hold your tongue, you infernal cricket?” she cried, still from the same dark corner of the square.
The poor “cricket” stopped short. Gringoire clapped his hands to his ears.
“Oh,” he exclaimed, “cursed be that rusty saw, which breaks the lyre!”
And the other listeners grumbled with him.
“To the devil with the crazy nun!” said more than one. And the invisible old marplot might have had reason to repent of her aggressions, had not their thoughts been diverted at that very moment by the procession of the Pope of Fools, which, having traversed many a street and square, now appeared in the Place de Grève with all its torches and all its noise.
This procession, which our readers saw as it started from the Palace, had taken shape as it marched, enlisting all the available vagabonds and scamps and idle thieves in Paris; so that it presented quite a respectable appearance when it reached the Place de Grève.
First came Egypt at the head, on horseback, with his aids on foot, holding his stirrup and bridle. Behind walked the rest of the Egyptians, male and female, with their little ones clamoring on their backs; all, men, women, and children, in rags and tatters. Then came the thieves’ brotherhood:4 that is, all the robbers in France, ranged according to their degree, the least expert coming first. Thus they filed along four by four, armed with the various insignia of their degrees. In this singular faculty, most of them maimed, some halt, some with but one arm, were shoplifters, mock pilgrims, housebreakers, sham epileptics, sham Abrams,aa street rowdies, sham cripples, the card sharpers, the fakely infirm, the hawkers, rogues pretending to have been burned out, cadgers, old soldiers, high-flyers, swell mobsmen, and thieves of the highest order—a list long enough to weary Homer himself. In the center of the high thieves might dimly be distinguished the head of the thieves’ brotherhood, the “Grand Co?re,” or king of rogues, squatting in a small cart, drawn by two big dogs. After the fraternity of thieves came the Empire of Galilee.ab Guillaume Rousseau, Emperor of the Galilees, marched majestic in his purple robes stained with wine, preceded by mountebanks fighting and dancing Pyrrhic dances, surrounded by his mace-bearers, tools, and the clerks of the Court of Exchequer. Last came the basoche （the corporation of lawyers’ clerks）， with their sheaves of maize crowned with flowers, their black gowns, their music worthy of a Witches’ Sabbath, and their huge yellow wax candles. In the midst of this throng the high officials of the fraternity of fools bore upon their shoulders a barrow more heavily laden with tapers than the shrine of St. Geneviève in time of plague; and upon this barrow rode resplendent, with crosier, cope, and miter, the new Pope of Fools, the bell-ringer of Notre-Dame, Quasimodo the Hunchback.
Each division of this grotesque procession had its own peculiar music. The Gipsies drew discordant notes from their balafos and their African tabors. The thieves, a far from musical race, were still using the viol, the cow-herd’s horn, and the quaint rubeb of the twelfth century. Nor was the Empire of Galilee much more advanced; their music was almost wholly confined to some wretched rebec dating back to the infancy of the art, still imprisoned within the re-la-mi. But it was upon the Pope of Fools that all the musical riches of the period were lavished in one magnificent cacophony. There were treble rebecs, counter-tenor rebecs, tenor rebecs, to say nothing of flutes and brass instruments. Alas! our readers may remember that this was Gringoire’s orchestra.
It is difficult to convey any idea of the degree of proud and sanctimonious rapture which Quasimodo’s hideous and painful face had assumed during the journey from the Palace to the Place de Grève. This was the first thrill of vanity which he had ever felt. Hitherto he had known nothing but humiliation, disdain of his estate, and disgust for his person. Therefore, deaf as he was, he enjoyed, like any genuine pope, the applause of that mob which he had hated because he felt that it hated him. What mattered it to him that his subjects were a collection of fools, cripples, thieves, and beggars! They were still subjects and he a sovereign! And he took seriously all the mock applause, all the satirical respect with which, it must be confessed, there was a slight mixture of very real fear in the hearts of the throng. For the hunchback was strong; for the bow legs were nimble; for the deaf ears were malicious,—three qualities which tempered the ridicule.