Notre-Dame de Paris - Victor Hugo (diy ebook reader .txt) 📗

she struggled and crawled on the floor, the gypsy’s hand came in contact with something cold and metallic⁠—it was Quasimodo’s whistle. She seized it with a convulsive hope, raised it to her lips and blew with all the strength that she had left. The whistle gave a clear, piercing sound.

“What is that?” said the priest.

Almost at the same instant he felt himself raised by a vigorous arm. The cell was dark; he could not distinguish clearly who it was that held him thus; but he heard teeth chattering with rage, and there was just sufficient light scattered among the gloom to allow him to see above his head the blade of a large knife.

The priest fancied that he perceived the form of Quasimodo. He assumed that it could be no one but he. He remembered to have stumbled, as he entered, over a bundle which was stretched across the door on the outside. But, as the newcomer did not utter a word, he knew not what to think. He flung himself on the arm which held the knife, crying: “Quasimodo!” He forgot, at that moment of distress, that Quasimodo was deaf.

In a twinkling, the priest was overthrown and a leaden knee rested on his breast.

From the angular imprint of that knee he recognized Quasimodo; but what was to be done? how could he make the other recognize him? the darkness rendered the deaf man blind.

He was lost. The young girl, pitiless as an enraged tigress, did not intervene to save him. The knife was approaching his head; the moment was critical. All at once, his adversary seemed stricken with hesitation.

“No blood on her!” he said in a dull voice.

It was, in fact, Quasimodo’s voice.

Then the priest felt a large hand dragging him feet first out of the cell; it was there that he was to die. Fortunately for him, the moon had risen a few moments before.

When they had passed through the door of the cell, its pale rays fell upon the priest’s countenance. Quasimodo looked him full in the face, a trembling seized him, and he released the priest and shrank back.

The gypsy, who had advanced to the threshold of her cell, beheld with surprise their roles abruptly changed. It was now the priest who menaced, Quasimodo who was the suppliant.

The priest, who was overwhelming the deaf man with gestures of wrath and reproach, made the latter a violent sign to retire.

The deaf man dropped his head, then he came and knelt at the gypsy’s door⁠—“Monseigneur,” he said, in a grave and resigned voice, “you shall do all that you please afterwards, but kill me first.”

So saying, he presented his knife to the priest. The priest, beside himself, was about to seize it. But the young girl was quicker than he; she wrenched the knife from Quasimodo’s hands and burst into a frantic laugh⁠—“Approach,” she said to the priest.

She held the blade high. The priest remained undecided.

She would certainly have struck him.

Then she added with a pitiless expression, well aware that she was about to pierce the priest’s heart with thousands of red-hot irons⁠—

“Ah! I know that Phoebus is not dead!”

The priest overturned Quasimodo on the floor with a kick, and, quivering with rage, darted back under the vault of the staircase.

When he was gone, Quasimodo picked up the whistle which had just saved the gypsy.

“It was getting rusty,” he said, as he handed it back to her; then he left her alone.

The young girl, deeply agitated by this violent scene, fell back exhausted on her bed, and began to sob and weep. Her horizon was becoming gloomy once more.

The priest had groped his way back to his cell.

It was settled. Dom Claude was jealous of Quasimodo!

He repeated with a thoughtful air his fatal words: “No one shall have her.”

Book X I Gringoire Has Many Good Ideas in Succession.⁠—Rue des Bernardins

As soon as Pierre Gringoire had seen how this whole affair was turning, and that there would decidedly be the rope, hanging, and other disagreeable things for the principal personages in this comedy, he had not cared to identify himself with the matter further. The outcasts with whom he had remained, reflecting that, after all, it was the best company in Paris⁠—the outcasts had continued to interest themselves in behalf of the gypsy. He had thought it very simple on the part of people who had, like herself, nothing else in prospect but Charmolue and Torterue, and who, unlike himself, did not gallop through the regions of imagination between the wings of Pegasus. From their remarks, he had learned that his wife of the broken crock had taken refuge in Notre-Dame, and he was very glad of it. But he felt no temptation to go and see her there. He meditated occasionally on the little goat, and that was all. Moreover, he was busy executing feats of strength during the day for his living, and at night he was engaged in composing a memorial against the Bishop of Paris, for he remembered having been drenched by the wheels of his mills, and he cherished a grudge against him for it. He also occupied himself with annotating the fine work of Baudry-le-Rouge, Bishop of Noyon and Tournay, De Cupa Petrarum, which had given him a violent passion for architecture, an inclination which had replaced in his heart his passion for hermeticism, of which it was, moreover, only a natural corollary, since there is an intimate relation between hermeticism and masonry. Gringoire had passed from the love of an idea to the love of the form of that idea.

One day he had halted near Saint Germain-l’Auxerrois, at the corner of a mansion called “For-l’Évêque” (the Bishop’s Tribunal), which stood opposite another called “For-le-Roi” (the King’s Tribunal). At this For-l’Évêque, there was a charming chapel of the fourteenth century, whose apse was on the street. Gringoire was devoutly examining its exterior sculptures. He was in one of those moments of egotistical, exclusive,