She approached the victim with her light step. Her pretty Djali followed her. Gringoire was more dead than alive. She gazed at him an instant in silence.
“Are you going to hang this man?” she gravely asked Clopin.
“Yes, sister,” replied the King of Tunis, “unless you’ll take him for your husband.”
She pouted her pretty lower lip.
“I’ll take him,” said she.
Gringoire here firmly believed that he had been dreaming ever since morning, and that this was the end of the dream.
In fact, the sudden change of fortune, though charming, was violent.
The slip-noose was unfastened, the poet was helped from his stool. He was obliged to seat himself, so great was his agitation.
The Duke of Egypt, without uttering a word, brought forward an earthen pitcher. The gipsy girl offered it to Gringoire. “Throw it down,” she said to him.
The pitcher was broken into four pieces.
“Brother,” then said the Duke of Egypt, laying his hands on their heads, “she is your wife; sister, he is your husband. For four years. Go!”
CHAPTER VII
A Wedding Night
few moments later our poet found himself in a small room with a vaulted roof, very snug, very warm, seated before a table which seemed to ask nothing better than to borrow a few stores from a hanging cupboard close by; with a good bed in prospect, and alone with a pretty girl. The adventure partook of the nature of magic. He began seriously to think himself the hero of some fairy-tale; now and then he gazed about him as if in search of the fairy chariot, drawn by two winged steeds, which could alone have transported him so swiftly from Tartarus to Paradise. Occasionally his eyes were riveted on the holes in his doublet, to bring himself back to actual things, and lest he should quite lose sight of land. His reason, floating in imaginary realms, had only this thread to cling to.
The young girl apparently took no notice of him: she came and went, moved a stool, chatted with her goat, smiled, and pouted. Finally she seated herself at the table, and Gringoire could study her at his leisure.
You were once a child, reader, and you may be lucky enough to be one still. You must more than once （and for my part I spent whole days at it,—the best days of my life） have pursued from bush to bush, on the brink of some brisk stream, in bright sunshine, some lovely green or azure dragon-fly, which checked its flight at sharp angles, and kissed the tip of every twig. You will remember the loving curiosity with which your mind and your eye followed that buzzing, whizzing little whirlwind, with blue and purple wings, between which floated an intangible form, veiled by the very swiftness of its motion. The airy creature, vaguely seen amid the quivering wings, seemed to you chimerical, imaginary, impossible to touch, impossible to see. But when the dragon-fly at last rested on the tip of a reed, and you could examine, holding your breath meanwhile, its slender gauzy wings, its long enameled robes, its crystal globe-like eyes, what amazement you felt, and what fear lest it should again fade to a shadow and the creature turn to a chimera! Recall these sensations, and you will readily appreciate what Gringoire felt as he beheld in visible, palpable form that Esmeralda of whom he had hitherto had but a glimpse amidst the eddying dance and song, and a confused mass of people.
Becoming more and more absorbed in his reverie, he thought: “This, then, is ‘Esmeralda’！ a celestial creature! a street dancer! So much and so little! It was she who put the finishing stroke to my play this morning; it was she who saved my life this evening. My evil genius! my good angel! A pretty woman, upon my word! And she must love me to distraction to take me in this fashion. By-the-by,” said he, rising suddenly with that sense of truth which formed the basis of his character and his philosophy, “I don’t quite know how it came about, but I am her husband!”
With this idea in mind and in his eyes, he approached the young girl in so military and lover-like a fashion that she shrank away from him.
“What do you want?” she said.
“Can you ask me, adorable Esmeralda?” replied Gringoire in such impassioned tones that he himself was astounded at his own accents.
The gipsy girl stared at him. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Oh, come now!” added Gringoire, becoming more and more excited, and thinking that after all he was only dealing with the ready-made virtue of the Court of Miracles; “am I not yours, sweet friend? Are you not mine?”
And, quite innocently, he clasped her by the waist.
The girl’s bodice slipped through his hands like a snake’s skin. She leaped from one end of the little cell to the other, stooped, and rose with a tiny dagger in her hand, before Gringoire had time to see whence this dagger came,—proud, angry, with swelling lips, dilated nostrils, cheeks red as crab-apples, and eyes flashing lightning. At the same time the white goat placed itself before her, and presented a battle-front to Gringoire, bristling with two pretty, gilded, and very sharp horns. All this took place in the twinkling of an eye.