Then Clopin, showing Gringoire a rickety old footstool, placed under the manikin, said,— “Climb up there!”
“The devil!” objected Gringoire; “I shall break my neck. Your stool halts like one of Martial’s couplets; one foot has six syllables and one foot has but five.”
“Climb up!” repeated Clopin.
Gringoire mounted the stool, and succeeded, though not without considerable waving of head and arms, in recovering his center of gravity.
“Now,” resumed the King of Tunis, “twist your right foot round your left leg, and stand on tiptoe with your left foot.”
“My lord,” said Gringoire, “are you absolutely determined to make me break a limb?”
Clopin tossed his head.
“Hark ye, mate; you talk too much. I will tell you in a couple of words what I expect you to do: you are to stand on tiptoe, as I say; in that fashion you can reach the manikin’s pockets; you are to search them; you are to take out a purse which you will find there; and if you do all this without ringing a single bell, it is well: you shall become a vagrant. We shall have nothing more to do but to baste you with blows for a week.”
“Zounds! I shall take good care,” said Gringoire. “And if I ring the bells?”
“Then you shall be hanged. Do you understand?”
“I don’t understand at all,” answered Gringoire.
“Listen to me once more. You are to search the manikin and steal his purse; if but a single bell stir in the act, you shall be hanged. Do you understand that?”
“Good,” said Gringoire, “I understand that. What next?”
“If you manage to get the purse without moving the bells, you are a vagrant, and you shall be basted with blows for seven days in succession. You understand now, I suppose?”
“No, my lord; I no longer understand. Where is the advantage? I shall be hanged in the one case, beaten in the other?”
“And as a vagrant,” added Clopin, “and as a vagrant; does that count for nothing? It is for your own good that we shall beat you, to harden you against blows.”
“Many thanks,” replied the poet.
“Come, make haste,” said the king, stamping on his cask, which re-echoed like a vast drum.
“Make haste, and be done with it! I warn you, once for all, that if I hear but one tinkle you shall take the manikin’s place.”
The company applauded Clopin’s words, and ranged themselves in a ring around the gallows, with such pitiless laughter that Gringoire saw that he amused them too much not to have everything to fear from them. His only hope lay in the slight chance of succeeding in the terrible task imposed upon him; he decided to risk it, but not without first addressing a fervent prayer to the manikin whom he was to plunder, and who seemed more easily moved than the vagrants. The myriad little bells with their tiny brazen tongues seemed to him like so many vipers with gaping jaws, ready to hiss and sting.
“Oh,” he murmured, “is it possible that my life depends upon the slightest quiver of the least of these bells? Oh,” he added with clasped hands, “do not ring, ye bells! Tinkle not, ye tinklers! Jingle not, ye jinglers!”
He made one more attempt to melt Trouillefou.
“And if a breeze spring up?” he asked.
“You will be hanged,” answered the other, without hesitating.
Seeing that neither respite, delay, nor subterfuge was possible, he made a desperate effort; he twisted his right foot round his left leg, stood tiptoe on his left foot, and stretched out his arm, but just as he touched the manikin, his body, now resting on one foot, tottered upon the stool, which had but three; he strove mechanically to cling to the figure, lost his balance, and fell heavily to the ground, deafened and stunned by the fatal sound of the myriad bells of the manikin, which, yielding to the pressure of his hand, first revolved upon its own axis, then swung majestically to and fro between the posts.
“A curse upon it!” he cried as he fell; and he lay as if dead, face downwards.
Still he heard the fearful peal above his head, and the devilish laugh of the vagrants, and the voice of Trouillefou, as it said, “Lift up the knave, and hang him double-quick.”
He rose. The manikin had already been taken down to make room for him.
The Canters made him mount the stool. Clopin stepped up to him, passed the rope round his neck, and clapping him on the shoulder, exclaimed,— “Farewell, mate. You can’t escape now, though you have the digestion of the Pope himself.”
The word “mercy” died on Gringoire’s lips. He gazed around him, but without hope; every man was laughing.