“Why not this evening?” resumed the poet tenderly. “Why not me?”
She cast a grave glance upon him and said,—
“I can never love a man who cannot protect me.”
Gringoire colored, and took the hint. It was evident that the young girl was alluding to the slight assistance which he had rendered her in the critical situation in which she had found herself two hours previously.
“How did you contrive to escape from the claws of Quasimodo?”
This question made the gypsy shudder.
“Oh! the horrible hunchback,” said she, hiding her face in her hands.
“Horrible, in truth,” said Gringoire, who clung to his idea; “but how did you manage to escape him?”
La Esmeralda smiled, sighed, and remained silent.
“Do you know why he followed you?” began Gringoire again.
“I don’t know,” said the young girl, and she added hastily, “but you were following me also, why were you following me?”
“In good faith,” responded Gringoire, “I don’t know either.”
The gypsy began to caress Djali.
“That’s a pretty animal of yours,” said Gringoire.
“She is my sister,” she answered.
“What is the meaning of the words, la Esmeralda?”
“I don’t know,” said she.
“To what language do they belong?”
“They are Egyptian, I think.”
“I suspected as much,” said Gringoire, “you are not a native of France?”
“I don’t know.”
“At what age did you come to France?”
“When I was very young.”
“And when to Paris?”
“Last year.”
She made her customary pretty grimace. “I don’t even know your name.”
“My name? If you want it, here it is,—Pierre Gringoire.”
“I know a prettier one,” said she.
“Naughty girl!” retorted the poet. “Never mind, you shall not provoke me.”
Girl’s eyes were fixed on the ground.
“Phoebus,” she said in a low voice. Then, turning towards the poet, “Phoebus,—what does that mean?”
“It is a Latin word which means sun.”
“Sun!” she repeated.
“It is the name of a handsome archer, who was a god,” added Gringoire.
“A god!” repeated the gypsy, and there was something pensive and passionate in her tone.
At that moment, one of her bracelets became unfastened and fell. Gringoire stooped quickly to pick it up; when he straightened up, the young girl and the goat had disappeared. He heard the sound of a door bolt.
“Has she left me a bed, at least?” said our philosopher.
He made the tour of his cell. There was no piece of furniture adapted to sleeping purposes, except a tolerably long wooden coffer.
Book Third
Chapter I
Good Souls
Sixteen years previous to when this story takes place, one fine morning, on Quasimodo Sunday, a living creature had been deposited, after mass, in the church of Notre-Dame, on the wooden bed securely fixed in the vestibule on the left.
That appeared to excite the curiosity of the numerous group which had congregated about the wooden bed. The group was formed for the most part of women.
In the first row, and among those who were most bent over the bed, four were noticeable, who, from their clothes, were recognizable as attached to some devout sisterhood. They were Agnès la Herme, Jehanne de la Tarme, Henriette la Gaultière, Gauchère la Violette, all four widows, all four dames of the Chapel Étienne Haudry.
“What is this, sister?” said Agnès to Gauchère, gazing at the little creature.
“What is to become of us,” said Jehanne, “if that is the way children are made now?”
“’Tis not a child, Agnès.”
“’Tis an abortion of a monkey,” remarked Gauchère.
“’Tis a miracle,” interposed Henriette la Gaultière.
“He yells loud enough to deafen a chanter,” continued Gauchère.
“I imagine,” said Agnès la Herme, “that it is a beast, an animal,—something not Christian, in short, which ought to be thrown into the fire or into the water.”
It was, in fact, not a new-born child. It was a very angular and very lively little mass. Its head was deformed enough; one beheld only a forest of red hair, one eye, a mouth, and teeth. The eye wept, the mouth cried, and the teeth seemed to ask only to be allowed to bite.
Many people stopped to see the child. Among them was a young priest. He had been listening for everyone who stopped for a while. He had a severe face, with a large brow, and a profound glance. Eventually, he thrust the crowd silently aside, and proclaimed that he would be the one to adopt the child.
He took it in his cassock and carried it off. The spectators followed him with frightened glances. A moment later, he had disappeared through the door, which led from the church to the cloister.
When the first surprise was over, one of the spectators bent down to the ear of another,—
“I told you so, sister,—that young clerk, Monsieur Claude Frollo, is a sorcerer.”
Chapter II
Claude Frollo
In fact, Claude Frollo was no common person.
He belonged to one of those middle-class families which were called the high bourgeoise or the petty nobility.
He had been destined from infancy, by his parents, to the ecclesiastical profession. He had been taught to read in Latin; he had been trained to keep his eyes on the ground and to speak low. While still a child, his father had cloistered him in the college of Torchi in the University.
Frollo was a sad, grave, serious child, who studied ardently, and learned quickly. Thus, at sixteen years of age, he might have held his own against a father of the church in mystical theology; in canonical theology, against a father of the councils; in scholastic theology, against a doctor of Sorbonne.
Theology conquered, he had plunged into decretals. Then he flung himself upon medicine, on the liberal arts. At the age of eighteen, he had made his way through the four faculties; it seemed to the young man that life had but one sole object: learning.
The excessive heat of the summer of 1466 caused that grand outburst of the plague which carried off more than forty thousand souls in Paris. The rumor spread in the University that the Rue Tirechappe was especially devastated by it. It was there that Claude’s parents resided. The young scholar rushed in great alarm to the paternal mansion. When he entered it, he found that both father and mother had died on the preceding day. A very young brother of his, was still alive and crying abandoned in his cradle. This was all that remained to Claude of his family. Up to that moment, he had lived only in science; he now began to live in life.
This catastrophe was a crisis in Claude’s existence. Orphaned, the eldest, head of the family at the age of nineteen, he felt himself rudely recalled from school to the realities of this world. Then, moved with pity, he was seized with passion and devotion towards the child, his brother.
This young brother, without mother or father, this little child which had fallen abruptly from heaven into his arms, made a new man of him. He threw himself into the love for his little Jehan with the passion of a character already profound, ardent, concentrated; that poor frail creature, pretty, fair-haired, rosy, and curly, touched him to the bottom of his heart. He was more than a brother to the child; he became a mother to him.
Little Jehan had lost his mother while he was still at the breast; Claude gave him to a nurse. There was a miller’s wife there who was nursing a fine child; it was not far from the university, and Claude carried the little Jehan to her in his own arms.
From that time forth, feeling that he had a burden to bear, he took life very seriously. The thought of his little brother became not only his recreation, but the object of his studies. He resolved to consecrate himself entirely to a future for which he was responsible in the sight of God, and never to have any other wife, any other child than the happiness and fortune of his brother. At the age of twenty, he was a priest, and served as the youngest of the chaplains of Notre-Dame.