“Well, my boy!” howled a cripple, striving to reach him with his crutch, “will you cast spells on us again from the top of the towers of Notre-Dame?”
“Here’s a porringer to drink out of!” added a man, letting fly a broken jug at his breast. “ ‘Twas you who made my wife give birth to a double-headed child, just by walking past her.”
“And my cat have a kitten with six feet!” shrieked an old woman, hurling a tile at him.
“Water!” repeated the gasping Quasimodo for the third time.
At this moment he saw the crowd separate. A young girl, oddly dressed, stepped from their midst. She was accompanied by a little white goat with gilded horns, and held a tambourine in her hand.
Quasimodo’s eye gleamed. It was the gipsy girl whom he had tried to carry off the night before,—a feat for which he dimly felt that he was even now being punished; which was not in the least true, since he was only punished for the misfortune of being deaf, and having been tried by a deaf judge. He did not doubt that she too came to be avenged, and to take her turn at him with the rest.
He watched her nimbly climb the ladder. Rage and spite choked him. He longed to destroy the pillory; and had the lightning of his eye had power to blast, the gipsy girl would have been reduced to ashes long before she reached the platform.
Without a word she approached the sufferer, who vainly writhed and twisted to avoid her, and loosening a gourd from her girdle, she raised it gently to the parched lips of the miserable wretch.
Then from that eye, hitherto so dry and burning, a great tear trickled, and rolled slowly down the misshapen face, so long convulsed with despair. It was perhaps the first that the unfortunate man had ever shed.10
But he forgot to drink. The gipsy girl made her customary little grimace of impatience, and, smilingly, pressed the neck of the gourd to Quasimodo’s jagged mouth.
He drank long draughts; his thirst was ardent.
When he had done, the poor wretch put out his black lips, doubtless to kiss the fair hand which had helped him. But the girl, perhaps not quite free from distrust, and mindful of the violent attempt of the previous night, withdrew her hand with the terrified gesture of a child who fears being bitten by a wild animal.
Then the poor deaf man fixed upon her a look of reproach and unutterable sorrow.
It would anywhere have been a touching sight, to see this lovely girl, fresh, pure, charming, and yet so weak, thus devoutly hastening to the help of so much misery, deformity, and malice. Upon a pillory, the sight was sublime.
The people themselves were affected by it, and began to clap their hands and shout,— “No?l! No?l!”
It was at this instant that the recluse saw, from the window of her cell, the gipsy girl upon the pillory, and hurled her ominous curse at her head:—
“May you be accursed, daughter of Egypt! accursed! accursed!”
CHAPTER V
End of the Story of the Cake Esmeralda turned pale, and descended from the pillory with faltering steps. The voice of the recluse still pursued her:—“Come down! come down, you gipsy thief! You will go up again!”
“The sachette has one of her ill turns today,” muttered the people, and they said no more; for women of this sort were held in much awe, which made them sacred. No one liked to attack those who prayed night and day.
The hour had come to release Quasimodo. He was unbound, and the mob dispersed.
Near the Grand-Pont, Mahiette, who was returning home with her two companions, stopped suddenly:— “By the way, Eustache, what have you done with the cake?”
“Mother,” said the child, “while you were talking to the woman in that hole, there came a big dog and bit a piece out of my cake; so then I took a bite too.”
“What, sir!” she continued, “did you eat it all?”
“Mother, it was the dog. I told him not to eat it, but he wouldn’t mind me. So then I took a bite too; that’s all!”
“What a bad boy you are!” said his mother, smiling and scolding at once. “Only think, Oudarde! he ate every cherry on the tree in our orchard at Charlerange; so his grandfather says that he is sure to be a soldier. Let me catch you at it again, Master Eustache! Get along, you greedy boy!”
BOOK SEVEN
CHAPTER I
On the Danger of Confiding a Secret to a Goat Several weeks had passed.11
It was early in March. The sun, which Dubartas,cg that classic father of periphrase, had not yet dubbed “the grand duke of candles,” was none the less bright and gay. It was one of those spring days which are so full of sweetness and beauty that all Paris, flocking into the squares and parks, keeps holiday as if it were a Sunday. On such clear, warm, peaceful days, there is one particular hour when the porch of Notre-Dame is especially worthy of admiration. It is the moment when the sun, already sinking towards the west, almost exactly faces the cathedral. Its rays, becoming more and more level, withdraw slowly from the pavement of the square, and climb the perpendicular face of the church, the shadows setting off the countless figures in high relief, while the great central rose-window flames like the eye of a Cyclop lighted up by reflections from his forge.