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

admire the sun. And then, from morning till night, I have the happiness of passing all my days with a man of genius, who is myself, which is very agreeable.”

“A head fit for a mule bell!” muttered the archdeacon. “Oh! tell me who preserved for you that life which you render so charming to yourself? To whom do you owe it that you breathe that air, behold that sky, and can still amuse your lark’s mind with your whimsical nonsense and madness? Where would you be, had it not been for her? Do you then desire that she through whom you are alive, should die? that she should die, that beautiful, sweet, adorable creature, who is necessary to the light of the world and more divine than God, while you, half wise, and half fool, a vain sketch of something, a sort of vegetable, which thinks that it walks, and thinks that it thinks, you will continue to live with the life which you have stolen from her, as useless as a candle in broad daylight? Come, have a little pity, Gringoire; be generous in your turn; it was she who set the example.”

The priest was vehement. Gringoire listened to him at first with an undecided air, then he became touched, and wound up with a grimace which made his pallid face resemble that of a newborn infant with an attack of the colic.

“You are pathetic!” said he, wiping away a tear. “Well! I will think about it. That’s a queer idea of yours.⁠—After all,” he continued after a pause, “who knows? perhaps they will not hang me. He who becomes betrothed does not always marry. When they find me in that little lodging so grotesquely muffled in petticoat and coif, perchance they will burst with laughter. And then, if they do hang me⁠—well! the halter is as good a death as any. ’Tis a death worthy of a sage who has wavered all his life; a death which is neither flesh nor fish, like the mind of a veritable sceptic; a death all stamped with Pyrrhonism and hesitation, which holds the middle station betwixt heaven and earth, which leaves you in suspense. ’Tis a philosopher’s death, and I was destined thereto, perchance. It is magnificent to die as one has lived.”

The priest interrupted him: “Is it agreed?”

“What is death, after all?” pursued Gringoire with exaltation. “A disagreeable moment, a tollgate, the passage of little to nothingness. Someone having asked Cercidas, the Megalopolitan, if he were willing to die: ‘Why not?’ he replied; ‘for after my death I shall see those great men, Pythagoras among the philosophers, Hecataeus among historians, Homer among poets, Olympus among musicians.’ ”

The archdeacon gave him his hand: “It is settled, then? You will come tomorrow?”

This gesture recalled Gringoire to reality.

“Ah! i’ faith no!” he said in the tone of a man just waking up. “Be hanged! ’tis too absurd. I will not.”

“Farewell, then!” and the archdeacon added between his teeth: “I’ll find you again!”

“I do not want that devil of a man to find me,” thought Gringoire; and he ran after Dom Claude. “Stay, monsieur the archdeacon, no ill-feeling between old friends! You take an interest in that girl, my wife, I mean, and ’tis well. You have devised a scheme to get her out of Notre-Dame, but your way is extremely disagreeable to me, Gringoire. If I had only another one myself! I beg to say that a luminous inspiration has just occurred to me. If I possessed an expedient for extricating her from a dilemma, without compromising my own neck to the extent of a single running knot, what would you say to it? Will not that suffice you? Is it absolutely necessary that I should be hanged, in order that you may be content?”

The priest tore out the buttons of his cassock with impatience: “Stream of words! What is your plan?”

“Yes,” resumed Gringoire, talking to himself and touching his nose with his forefinger in sign of meditation⁠—“that’s it!⁠—The thieves are brave fellows!⁠—The tribe of Egypt love her!⁠—They will rise at the first word!⁠—Nothing easier!⁠—A sudden stroke.⁠—Under cover of the disorder, they will easily carry her off!⁠—Beginning tomorrow evening. They will ask nothing better.”

“The plan! speak,” cried the archdeacon shaking him.

Gringoire turned majestically towards him: “Leave me! You see that I am composing.” He meditated for a few moments more, then began to clap his hands over his thought, crying: “Admirable! success is sure!”

“The plan!” repeated Claude in wrath.

Gringoire was radiant.

“Come, that I may tell you that very softly. ’Tis a truly gallant counterplot, which will extricate us all from the matter. Pardieu, it must be admitted that I am no fool.”

He broke off.

“Oh, by the way! is the little goat with the wench?”

“Yes. The devil take you!”

“They would have hanged it also, would they not?”

“What is that to me?”

“Yes, they would have hanged it. They hanged a sow last month. The headsman loveth that; he eats the beast afterwards. Take my pretty Djali! Poor little lamb!”

“Malediction!” exclaimed Dom Claude. “You are the executioner. What means of safety have you found, knave? Must your idea be extracted with the forceps?”

“Very fine, master, this is it.”

Gringoire bent his head to the archdeacon’s head and spoke to him in a very low voice, casting an uneasy glance the while from one end to the other of the street, though no one was passing. When he had finished, Dom Claude took his hand and said coldly: “ ’Tis well. Farewell until tomorrow.”

“Until tomorrow,” repeated Gringoire. And, while the archdeacon was disappearing in one direction, he set off in the other, saying to himself in a low voice: “Here’s a grand affair, Monsieur Pierre Gringoire. Never mind! ’Tis not written that because one is of small account one should take fright at a great enterprise. Bitou carried a great bull on his shoulders; the water-wagtails, the warblers, and the buntings traverse the ocean.”

II Turn Vagabond

On re-entering the cloister, the archdeacon found at the