Did he address this fragment of a litany, to the Holy Virgin, or to the mattress? That we are wholly unable to say.
He had taken but a few steps down the long lane, which was steep, unpaved, and more and more muddy and sloping, when he remarked a very strange fact. It was not empty: here and there, along its length, crawled certain vague and shapeless masses, all proceeding towards the light which flickered at the end of the street, like those clumsy insects which creep at night from one blade of grass to another towards a shepherd’s fire.
Nothing makes a man bolder than the sense of an empty pocket. Gringoire continued to advance, and had soon overtook that larva which dragged itself most lazily along behind the others. As he approached, he saw that it was nothing but a miserable cripple without any legs, a stump of a man, hopping along as best he might on his hands, like a wounded spider which has but two legs left. Just as he passed this kind of human insect, it uttered a piteous appeal to him: “La buona mancia, signor! la buona mancia!”af
“Devil fly away with you,” said Gringoire, “and with me too, if I know what you’re talking about!”
And he passed on.
He came up with another of these perambulating masses, and examined it. It was another cripple, both lame and one-armed, and so lame and so armless that the complicated system of crutches and wooden limbs which supported him made him look like a mason’s scaffolding walking off by itself. Gringoire, who loved stately and classic similes, compared the fellow, in fancy, to Vulcan’s living tripod.
The living tripod greeted him as he passed, by holding his hat at the level of Gringoire’s chin, as if it had been a barber’s basin, and shouting in his ears: “Senor caballero, para comprar un pedaso de pan!”ag
“It seems,” said Gringoire, “that he talks too; but it’s an ugly language, and he is better off than I am if he understands it.”
Then, clapping his hand to his head with a sudden change of idea: “By the way, what the devil did they mean this morning by their ‘Esmeralda’？”
He tried to quicken his pace; but for the third time something blocked the way. This something, or rather this some one, was a blind man, a little blind man, with a bearded Jewish face, who, feeling about him with a stick, and towed by a big dog, snuffled out to him with a Hungarian accent: “Facitote caritatem!”ah
“That’s right!” said Pierre Gringoire; “here’s one at last who speaks a Christian tongue. I must have a very charitable air to make all these creatures come to me for alms when my purse is so lean. My friend [and he turned to the blind man], I sold my last shirt last week; that is to say, since you understand the language of Cicero, ‘Vendidi hebdomade nuper transita meam ultimam chemisam!’ ”
So saying, he turned his back on the blind man and went his way. But the blind man began to mend his steps at the same time; and lo and behold! the cripple and the stump hurried along after them with a great clatter of supports and crutches over the pavement.
Then all three, tumbling over each other in their haste at the heels of poor Gringoire, began to sing their several songs:— “Caritatem!” sang the blind man.
“La buona mancia!” sang the stump.
And the lame man took up the phrase with, “Un pedaso de pan!”
Gringoire stopped his ears, exclaiming, “Oh, tower of Babel!”
He began to run. The blind man ran. The lame man ran. The stump ran.
And then, the farther he went down the street, the more thickly did cripples, blind men, and legless men swarm around him, with armless men, one-eyed men, and lepers with their sores, some coming out of houses, some from adjacent streets, some from cellar-holes, howling, yelling, bellowing, all hobbling and limping, rushing towards the light, and wallowing in the mire like slugs after a rain shower.
Gringoire, still followed by his three persecutors and not knowing what would happen next, walked timidly through the rest, going around the lame, striding over the cripples, his feet entangled in this ant-hill of deformity and disease, like that English captain caught fast by an army of land-crabs.
He thought of retracing his steps; but it was too late. The entire legion had closed up behind him, and his three beggars pressed him close. He therefore went on, driven alike by this irresistible stream, by fear, and by a dizzy feeling which made all this seem a horrible dream.
At last he reached the end of the street. It opened into a vast square, where a myriad scattered lights twinkled through the dim fog of night. Gringoire hurried forward, hoping by the swiftness of his legs to escape the three infirm specters who had fastened themselves upon him.