That night, Quasimodo did not sleep.He had just made his last round of the church.He had not noticed, that at the moment when he was closing the doors, the archdeacon had passed close to him and betrayed some displeasure on seeing him bolting and barring with care the enormous iron locks which gave to their large leaves the solidity of a wall.Dom Claude's air was even more preoccupied than usual.Moreover, since the nocturnal adventure in the cell, he had constantly abused Quasimodo, but in vain did he ill treat, and even beat him occasionally, nothing disturbed the submission, patience, the devoted resignation of the faithful bellringer.He endured everything on the part of the archdeacon, insults, threats, blows, without murmuring a complaint.At the most, he gazed uneasily after Dom Claude when the latter ascended the staircase of the tower; but the archdeacon had abstained from presenting himself again before the gypsy's eyes.
On that night, accordingly, Quasimodo, after having cast a glance at his poor bells which he so neglected now, Jacqueline, Marie, and Thibauld, mounted to the summit of the Northern tower, and there setting his dark lanturn, well closed, upon the leads, he began to gaze at paris.The night, as we have already said, was very dark.paris which, so to speak was not lighted at that epoch, presented to the eye a confused collection of black masses, cut here and there by the whitish curve of the Seine.Quasimodo no longer saw any light with the exception of one window in a distant edifice, whose vague and sombre profile was outlined well above the roofs, in the direction of the porte Sainte-Antoine. There also, there was some one awake.
As the only eye of the bellringer peered into that horizon of mist and night, he felt within him an inexpressible uneasiness.For several days he had been upon his guard.He had perceived men of sinister mien, who never took their eyes from the young girl's asylum, prowling constantly about the church.He fancied that some plot might be in process of formation against the unhappy refugee.He imagined that there existed a popular hatred against her, as against himself, and that it was very possible that something might happen soon.Hence he remained upon his tower on the watch, "dreaming in his dream-place," as Rabelais says, with his eye directed alternately on the cell and on paris, keeping faithful guard, like a good dog, with a thousand suspicions in his mind.
All at once, while he was scrutinizing the great city with that eye which nature, by a sort of compensation, had made so piercing that it could almost supply the other organs which Quasimodo lacked, it seemed to him that there was something singular about the Quay de la Vieille-pelleterie, that there was a movement at that point, that the line of the parapet, standing out blackly against the whiteness of the water was not straight and tranquil, like that of the other quays, but that it undulated to the eye, like the waves of a river, or like the heads of a crowd in motion.
This struck him as strange.He redoubled his attention. The movement seemed to be advancing towards the City. There was no light.It lasted for some time on the quay; then it gradually ceased, as though that which was passing were entering the interior of the island; then it stopped altogether, and the line of the quay became straight and motionless again.
At the moment when Quasimodo was lost in conjectures, it seemed to him that the movement had re-appeared in the Rue du parvis, which is prolonged into the city perpendicularly to the fa?ade of Notre-Dame.At length, dense as was the darkness, he beheld the head of a column debouch from that street, and in an instant a crowd--of which nothing could be distinguished in the gloom except that it was a crowd--spread over the place.
This spectacle had a terror of its own.It is probable that this singular procession, which seemed so desirous of concealing itself under profound darkness, maintained a silence no less profound.Nevertheless, some noise must have escaped it, were it only a trampling.But this noise did not even reach our deaf man, and this great multitude, of which he saw hardly anything, and of which he heard nothing, though it was marching and moving so near him, produced upon him the effect of a rabble of dead men, mute, impalpable, lost in a smoke.It seemed to him, that he beheld advancing towards him a fog of men, and that he saw shadows moving in the shadow.
Then his fears returned to him, the idea of an attempt against the gypsy presented itself once more to his mind. He was conscious, in a confused way, that a violent crisis was approaching.At that critical moment he took counsel with himself, with better and prompter reasoning than one would have expected from so badly organized a brain.Ought he to awaken the gypsy? to make her escape?Whither?The streets were invested, the church backed on the river.No boat, no issue!--There was but one thing to be done; to allow himself to be killed on the threshold of Notre-Dame, to resist at least until succor arrived, if it should arrive, and not to trouble la Esmeralda's sleep.This resolution once taken, he set to examining the enemy with more tranquillity.
The throng seemed to increase every moment in the church square.Only, he presumed that it must be making very little noise, since the windows on the place remained closed. All at once, a flame flashed up, and in an instant seven or eight lighted torches passed over the heads of the crowd, shaking their tufts of flame in the deep shade.Quasimodo then beheld distinctly surging in the parvis a frightful herd of men and women in rags, armed with scythes, pikes, billhooks and partisans, whose thousand points glittered.Here and there black pitchforks formed horns to the hideous faces. He vaguely recalled this populace, and thought that he recognized all the heads who had saluted him as pope of the Fools some months previously.One man who held a torch in one hand and a club in the other, mounted a stone post and seemed to be haranguing them.At the same time the strange army executed several evolutions, as though it were taking up its post around the church.Quasimodo picked up his lantern and descended to the platform between the towers, in order to get a nearer view, and to spy out a means of defence.
Clopin Trouillefou, on arriving in front of the lofty portal of Notre-Dame had, in fact, ranged his troops in order of battle.Although he expected no resistance, he wished, like a prudent general, to preserve an order which would permit him to face, at need, a sudden attack of the watch or the police.He had accordingly stationed his brigade in such a manner that, viewed from above and from a distance, one would have pronounced it the Roman triangle of the battle of Ecnomus, the boar's head of Alexander or the famous wedge of Gustavus Adolphus.The base of this triangle rested on the back of the place in such a manner as to bar the entrance of the Rue du parvis; one of its sides faced H?tel-Dieu, the other the Rue Saint-pierre-aux-Boeufs.Clopin Trouillefou had placed himself at the apex with the Duke of Egypt, our friend Jehan, and the most daring of the scavengers.
An enterprise like that which the vagabonds were now undertaking against Notre-Dame was not a very rare thing in the cities of the Middle Ages.What we now call the "police" did not exist then.In populous cities, especially in capitals, there existed no single, central, regulating power.Feudalism had constructed these great communities in a singular manner.A city was an assembly of a thousand seigneuries, which divided it into compartments of all shapes and sizes.Hence, a thousand conflicting establishments of police; that is to say, no police at all.In paris, for example, independently of the hundred and forty-one lords who laid claim to a manor, there were five and twenty who laid claim to a manor and to administering justice, from the Bishop of paris, who had five hundred streets, to the prior of Notre- Dame des Champs, who had four.All these feudal justices recognized the suzerain authority of the king only in name. All possessed the right of control over the roads.All were at home.Louis XI., that indefatigable worker, who so largely began the demolition of the feudal edifice, continued by Richelieu and Louis XIV.for the profit of royalty, and finished by Mirabeau for the benefit of the people,--Louis XI. had certainly made an effort to break this network of seignories which covered paris, by throwing violently across them all two or three troops of general police.Thus, in 1465, an order to the inhabitants to light candles in their windows at nightfall, and to shut up their dogs under penalty of death; in the same year, an order to close the streets in the evening with iron chains, and a prohibition to wear daggers or weapons of offence in the streets at night.But in a very short time, all these efforts at communal legislation fell into abeyance. The bourgeois permitted the wind to blow out their candles in the windows, and their dogs to stray; the iron chains were stretched only in a state of siege; the prohibition to wear daggers wrought no other changes than from the name of the Rue Coupe-Gueule to the name of the Rue-Coupe-Gorge* which is an evident progress.The old scaffolding of feudal jurisdictions remained standing; an immense aggregation of bailiwicks and seignories crossing each other all over the city, interfering with each other, entangled in one another, enmeshing each other, trespassing on each other; a useless thicket of watches, sub-watches and counter-watches, over which, with armed force, passed brigandage, rapine, and sedition.Hence, in this disorder, deeds of violence on the part of the populace directed against a palace, a hotel, or house in the most thickly populated quarters, were not unheard-of occurrences.In the majority of such cases, the neighbors did not meddle with the matter unless the pillaging extended to themselves. They stopped up their ears to the musket shots, closed their shutters, barricaded their doors, allowed the matter to be concluded with or without the watch, and the next day it was said in paris, "Etienne Barbette was broken open last night. The Marshal de Clermont was seized last night, etc."Hence, not only the royal habitations, the Louvre, the palace, the Bastille, the Tournelles, but simply seignorial residences, the petit-Bourbon, the H?tel de Sens, the H?tel d' Angoulême, etc., had battlements on their walls, and machicolations over their doors.Churches were guarded by their sanctity.Some, among the number Notre-Dame, were fortified.The Abbey of Saint-German-des-pres was castellated like a baronial mansion, and more brass expended about it in bombards than in bells.Its fortress was still to be seen in 1610.To-day, barely its church remains.
*Cut-throat.Coupe-gueule being the vulgar word for cut-weazand.
Let us return to Notre-Dame.
When the first arrangements were completed, and we must say, to the honor of vagabond discipline, that Clopin's orders were executed in silence, and with admirable precision, the worthy chief of the band, mounted on the parapet of the church square, and raised his hoarse and surly voice, turning towards Notre-Dame, and brandishing his torch whose light, tossed by the wind, and veiled every moment by its own smoke, made the reddish fa?ade of the church appear and disappear before the eye.
"To you, Louis de Beaumont, bishop of paris, counsellor in the Court of parliament, I, Clopin Trouillefou, king of Thunes, grand Co?sre, prince of Argot, bishop of fools, I say: Our sister, falsely condemned for magic, hath taken refuge in your church, you owe her asylum and safety.Now the Court of parliament wishes to seize her once more there, and you consent to it; so that she would be hanged to-morrow in the Grève, if God and the outcasts were not here.If your church is sacred, so is our sister; if our sister is not sacred, neither is your church.That is why we call upon you to return the girl if you wish to save your church, or we will take possession of the girl again and pillage the church, which will be a good thing.In token of which I here plant my banner, and may God preserve you, bishop of paris,"
Quasimodo could not, unfortunately, hear these words uttered with a sort of sombre and savage majesty.A vagabond presented his banner to Clopin, who planted it solemnly between two paving-stones.It was a pitchfork from whose points hung a bleeding quarter of carrion meat.
That done, the King of Thunes turned round and cast his eyes over his army, a fierce multitude whose glances flashed almost equally with their pikes.After a momentary pause,--"Forward, my Sons!" he cried; "to work, locksmiths!"
Thirty bold men, square shouldered, and with pick-lock faces, stepped from the ranks, with hammers, pincers, and bars of iron on their shoulders.They betook themselves to the principal door of the church, ascended the steps, and were soon to be seen squatting under the arch, working at the door with pincers and levers; a throng of vagabonds followed them to help or look on.The eleven steps before the portal were covered with them.
But the door stood firm."The devil! 'tis hard and obstinate!" said one."It is old, and its gristles have become bony," said another."Courage, comrades!" resumed Clopin. "I wager my head against a dipper that you will have opened the door, rescued the girl, and despoiled the chief altar before a single beadle is awake.Stay!I think I hear the lock breaking up."
Clopin was interrupted by a frightful uproar which re- sounded behind him at that moment.He wheeled round. An enormous beam had just fallen from above; it had crushed a dozen vagabonds on the pavement with the sound of a cannon, breaking in addition, legs here and there in the crowd of beggars, who sprang aside with cries of terror.In a twinkling, the narrow precincts of the church parvis were cleared.The locksmiths, although protected by the deep vaults of the portal, abandoned the door and Clopin himself retired to a respectful distance from the church.
"I had a narrow escape!" cried Jehan."I felt the wind, of it, ~tête-de-boeuf~! but pierre the Slaughterer is slaughtered!"
It is impossible to describe the astonishment mingled with fright which fell upon the ruffians in company with this beam.
They remained for several minutes with their eyes in the air, more dismayed by that piece of wood than by the king's twenty thousand archers.
"Satan!" muttered the Duke of Egypt, "this smacks of magic!"
"'Tis the moon which threw this log at us," said Andry the Red.
"Call the moon the friend of the Virgin, after that!" went on Francois Chanteprune.
"A thousand popes!" exclaimed Clopin, "you are all fools!"But he did not know how to explain the fall of the beam.
Meanwhile, nothing could be distinguished on the fa?ade, to whose summit the light of the torches did not reach.The heavy beam lay in the middle of the enclosure, and groans were heard from the poor wretches who had received its first shock, and who had been almost cut in twain, on the angle of the stone steps.
The King of Thunes, his first amazement passed, finally found an explanation which appeared plausible to his companions.
"Throat of God! are the canons defending themselves? To the sack, then! to the sack!"
"To the sack!" repeated the rabble, with a furious hurrah. A discharge of crossbows and hackbuts against the front of the church followed.
At this detonation, the peaceable inhabitants of the surrounding houses woke up; many windows were seen to open, and nightcaps and hands holding candles appeared at the casements.
"Fire at the windows," shouted Clopin.The windows were immediately closed, and the poor bourgeois, who had hardly had time to cast a frightened glance on this scene of gleams and tumult, returned, perspiring with fear to their wives, asking themselves whether the witches' sabbath was now being held in the parvis of Notre-Dame, or whether there was an assault of Burgundians, as in '64.Then the husbands thought of theft; the wives, of rape; and all trembled.
"To the sack!" repeated the thieves' crew; but they dared not approach.They stared at the beam, they stared at the church.The beam did not stir, the edifice preserved its calm and deserted air; but something chilled the outcasts.
"To work, locksmiths!" shouted Trouillefou."Let the door be forced!"
No one took a step.
"Beard and belly!" said Clopin, "here be men afraid of a beam."
An old locksmith addressed him--
"Captain, 'tis not the beam which bothers us, 'tis the door, which is all covered with iron bars.Our pincers are powerless against it."
"What more do you want to break it in?" demanded Clopin.
"Ah! we ought to have a battering ram."
The King of Thunes ran boldly to the formidable beam, and placed his foot upon it: "Here is one!" he exclaimed; "'tis the canons who send it to you."And, making a mocking salute in the direction of the church, "Thanks, canons!"
This piece of bravado produced its effects,--the spell of the beam was broken.The vagabonds recovered their courage; soon the heavy joist, raised like a feather by two hundred vigorous arms, was flung with fury against the great door which they had tried to batter down.At the sight of that long beam, in the half-light which the infrequent torches of the brigands spread over the place, thus borne by that crowd of men who dashed it at a run against the church, one would have thought that he beheld a monstrous beast with a thousand feet attacking with lowered head the giant of stone.
At the shock of the beam, the half metallic door sounded like an immense drum; it was not burst in, but the whole cathedral trembled, and the deepest cavities of the edifice were heard to echo.
At the same moment, a shower of large stones began to fall from the top of the fa?ade on the assailants.
"The devil!" cried Jehan, "are the towers shaking their balustrades down on our heads?"
But the impulse had been given, the King of Thunes had set the example.Evidently, the bishop was defending himself, and they only battered the door with the more rage, in spite of the stones which cracked skulls right and left.
It was remarkable that all these stones fell one by one; but they followed each other closely.The thieves always felt two at a time, one on their legs and one on their heads.There were few which did not deal their blow, and a large layer of dead and wounded lay bleeding and panting beneath the feet of the assailants who, now grown furious, replaced each other without intermission.The long beam continued to belabor the door, at regular intervals, like the clapper of a bell, the stones to rain down, the door to groan.
The reader has no doubt divined that this unexpected resistance which had exasperated the outcasts came from Quasimodo.
Chance had, unfortunately, favored the brave deaf man.
When he had descended to the platform between the towers, his ideas were all in confusion.He had run up and down along the gallery for several minutes like a madman, surveying from above, the compact mass of vagabonds ready to hurl itself on the church, demanding the safety of the gypsy from the devil or from God.The thought had occurred to him of ascending to the southern belfry and sounding the alarm, but before he could have set the bell in motion, before Marie's voice could have uttered a single clamor, was there not time to burst in the door of the church ten times over? It was precisely the moment when the locksmiths were advancing upon it with their tools.What was to be done?