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

different things. In order to be received among the thieves,14 you must prove that you are good for something, and for that purpose, you must search the mannequin.”

“I’ll search anything you like,” said Gringoire.

Clopin made a sign. Several thieves detached themselves from the circle, and returned a moment later. They brought two thick posts, terminated at their lower extremities in spreading timber supports, which made them stand readily upon the ground; to the upper extremity of the two posts they fitted a crossbeam, and the whole constituted a very pretty portable gibbet, which Gringoire had the satisfaction of beholding rise before him, in a twinkling. Nothing was lacking, not even the rope, which swung gracefully over the crossbeam.

“What are they going to do?” Gringoire asked himself with some uneasiness. A sound of bells, which he heard at that moment, put an end to his anxiety; it was a stuffed mannequin, which the vagabonds were suspending by the neck from the rope, a sort of scarecrow dressed in red, and so hung with mule-bells and larger bells, that one might have tricked out thirty Castilian mules with them. These thousand tiny bells quivered for some time with the vibration of the rope, then gradually died away, and finally became silent when the mannequin had been brought into a state of immobility by that law of the pendulum which has dethroned the water clock and the hourglass. Then Clopin, pointing out to Gringoire a rickety old stool placed beneath the mannequin⁠—“Climb up there.”

“Death of the devil!” objected Gringoire; “I shall break my neck. Your stool limps like one of Martial’s distiches; it has one hexameter leg and one pentameter leg.”

“Climb!” repeated Clopin.

Gringoire mounted the stool, and succeeded, not without some oscillations of head and arms, in regaining his centre of gravity.

“Now,” went on the King of Thunes, “twist your right foot round your left leg, and rise on the tip of your left foot.”

“Monseigneur,” said Gringoire, “so you absolutely insist on my breaking some one of my limbs?”

Clopin tossed his head.

“Hark ye, my friend, you talk too much. Here’s the gist of the matter in two words: you are to rise on tiptoe, as I tell you; in that way you will be able to reach the pocket of the mannequin, you will rummage it, you will pull out the purse that is there⁠—and if you do all this without our hearing the sound of a bell, all is well: you shall be a vagabond. All we shall then have to do, will be to thrash you soundly for the space of a week.”

“Ventre-Dieu! I will be careful,” said Gringoire. “And suppose I do make the bells sound?”

“Then you will be hanged. Do you understand?”

“I don’t understand at all,” replied Gringoire.

“Listen, once more. You are to search the mannequin, and take away its purse; if a single bell stirs during the operation, you will be hung. Do you understand that?”

“Good,” said Gringoire; “I understand that. And then?”

“If you succeed in removing the purse without our hearing the bells, you are a vagabond, and you will be thrashed for eight consecutive days. You understand now, no doubt?”

“No, monseigneur; I no longer understand. Where is the advantage to me? hanged in one case, cudgelled in the other?”

“And a vagabond,” resumed Clopin, “and a vagabond; is that nothing? It is for your interest that we should beat you, in order to harden you to blows.”

“Many thanks,” replied the poet.

“Come, make haste,” said the king, stamping upon his cask, which resounded like a huge drum! “Search the mannequin, and let there be an end to this! I warn you for the last time, that if I hear a single bell, you will take the place of the mannequin.”

The band of thieves applauded Clopin’s words, and arranged themselves in a circle round the gibbet, with a laugh so pitiless that Gringoire perceived that he amused them too much not to have everything to fear from them. No hope was left for him, accordingly, unless it were the slight chance of succeeding in the formidable operation which was imposed upon him; he decided to risk it, but it was not without first having addressed a fervent prayer to the mannequin he was about to plunder, and who would have been easier to move to pity than the vagabonds. These myriad bells, with their little copper tongues, seemed to him like the mouths of so many asps, open and ready to sting and to hiss.

“Oh!” he said, in a very low voice, “is it possible that my life depends on the slightest vibration of the least of these bells? Oh!” he added, with clasped hands, “bells, do not ring, hand-bells do not clang, mule-bells do not quiver!”

He made one more attempt upon Trouillefou.

“And if there should come a gust of wind?”

“You will be hanged,” replied the other, without hesitation.

Perceiving that no respite, nor reprieve, nor subterfuge was possible, he bravely decided upon his course of action; he wound his right foot round his left leg, raised himself on his left foot, and stretched out his arm: but at the moment when his hand touched the mannequin, his body, which was now supported upon one leg only, wavered on the stool which had but three; he made an involuntary effort to support himself by the mannequin, lost his balance, and fell heavily to the ground, deafened by the fatal vibration of the thousand bells of the mannequin, which, yielding to the impulse imparted by his hand, described first a rotary motion, and then swayed majestically between the two posts.

“Malediction!” he cried as he fell, and remained as though dead, with his face to the earth.

Meanwhile, he heard the dreadful peal above his head, the diabolical laughter of the vagabonds, and the voice of Trouillefou saying⁠—

“Pick me up that knave, and hang him without ceremony.” He rose. They had already detached the mannequin to make room for him.

The thieves made him mount the stool, Clopin came