Gringoire did not take flight, but neither did he advance another step.
Quasimodo approached him, flung him four paces away upon the pavement with a single back stroke, and plunged rapidly into the darkness, bearing the girl, thrown over one arm like a silken scarf. His companion followed him, and the poor goat ran behind, with its plaintive bleat.
“Murder! murder!” shrieked the unfortunate gipsy.
“Halt, wretches, and let that wench go!” abruptly exclaimed, in a voice of thunder, a horseman who appeared suddenly from the next cross-street.
It was a captain of the King’s archers, armed from head to foot, and broadsword in hand.
He tore the gipsy girl from the arms of the astounded Quasimodo, laid her across his saddle, and just as the redoubtable hunchback, recovering from his surprise, rushed upon him to get back his prey, some fifteen or sixteen archers, who were close behind their captain, appeared, two-edged swords in hand. They were a squadron of the royal troops going on duty as extra watchmen, by order of Master Robert d‘Estouteville, the Provost’s warden of Paris.
Quasimodo was surrounded, seized, garotted. He roared, he foamed at the mouth, he bit; and had it been daylight, no doubt his face alone, made yet more hideous by rage, would have routed the whole squadron. But by night he was stripped of his most tremendous weapon,—his ugliness.
His companion had disappeared during the struggle.
The gipsy girl sat gracefully erect upon the officer’s saddle, placing both hands upon the young man’s shoulders, and gazing fixedly at him for some seconds, as if charmed by his beauty and the timely help which he had just rendered her.
Then breaking the silence, she said, her sweet voice sounding even sweeter than usual: “What is your name, Mr. Officer?”
“Captain Phoebus de Chateaupers, at your service, my pretty maid!” replied the officer, drawing himself up.
“Thank you,” said she.
And while Captain Phoebus twirled his moustache, cut in Burgundian fashion, she slipped from the horse like an arrow falling to the earth, and fled.
A flash of lightning could not have vanished more swiftly.
“By the Pope’s head!” said the captain, ordering Quasimodo’s bonds to be tightened, “I would rather have kept the wench.”
“What would you have, Captain?” said one of his men; “the bird has flown, the bat remains.”
CHAPTER V
The Continuation of the Inconveniences
Gringoire, still dizzy from his fall, lay stretched on the pavement before the figure of the Blessed Virgin at the corner of the street. Little by little he regained his senses; at first he was for some moments floating in a sort of half-drowsy reverie which was far from unpleasant, in which the airy figures of the gipsy and her goat were blended with the weight of Quasimodo’s fist. This state of things did not last long. A somewhat sharp sensation of cold on that part of his body in contact with the pavement roused him completely, and brought his mind back to realities once more.
“Why do I feel so cold?” said he, abruptly. He then discovered that he was lying in the middle of the gutter.
“Devil take the hunchbacked Cyclop!” he muttered; and he tried to rise. But he was too dizzy and too much bruised; he was forced to remain where he was. However, his hand was free; he stopped his nose and resigned himself to his fate.
“The mud of Paris,” thought he （for he felt very sure that the gutter must be his lodging for the night, “the mud of Paris is particularly foul; it must contain a vast amount of volatile and nitrous salts. Moreover, such is the opinion of Master Nicolas Flamel and of the Hermetics—”
“And what should we do in a lodging if we do not think?”）ac
The word “Hermetics” suddenly reminded him of the archdeacon, Claude Frollo. He recalled the violent scene which he had just witnessed,—how the gipsy struggled with two men, how Quasimodo had a companion; and the morose and haughty face of the archdeacon passed confusedly through his mind. “That would be strange!” he thought. And he began to erect, upon these data and this basis, the fantastic edifice of hypothesis, that card-house of philosophers; then suddenly returning once more to reality, “But there! I am freezing!” he exclaimed.
The situation was in fact becoming more and more unbearable. Every drop of water in the gutter took a particle of heat from Gringoire’s loins, and the temperature of his body and the temperature of the gutter began to balance each other in a very disagreeable fashion.
An annoyance of quite another kind all at once beset him.