Victor Hugo - Victor Hugo - The Hunchback of Notre Dame

“As a lover?—”

“Yes.”

She remained thoughtful for a moment, then said with a peculiar expression: “That I shall know soon.”

“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. This memory, effaced by his own adventures of the evening, now recurred to him. He smote his brow.

“By the way, mademoiselle, I ought to have begun there. Pardon my foolish absence of mind. 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. And she shuddered as though with violent cold.

“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, seeking to return to his question by a circuitous route.

“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.”

Silence ensued. Gringoire slashed the table with his knife. The young girl smiled and seemed to be gazing through the wall at something. All at once she began to sing in a barely articulate voice,—

Quando las pintadas aves,

Mudas estan, y la tierra —*

* When the gay-plumaged birds grow weary, and the earth—

She broke off abruptly, and began to caress Djali.

“That’s a pretty animal of yours,” said Gringoire.

“She is my sister,” she answered.

“Why are you called ‘la Esmeralda?’” asked the poet.

“I do not know.”

“But why?”

She drew from her bosom a sort of little oblong bag, suspended from her neck by a string of adrézarach beads. This bag exhaled a strong odor of camphor. It was covered with green silk, and bore in its centre a large piece of green glass, in imitation of an emerald.

“Perhaps it is because of this,” said she.

Gringoire was on the point of taking the bag in his hand. She drew back.

“Don’t touch it! It is an amulet. You would injure the charm or the charm would injure you.”

The poet’s curiosity was more and more aroused.

“Who gave it to you?”

She laid one finger on her mouth and concealed the amulet in her bosom. He tried a few more questions, but she hardly replied.

“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.”

“Are your parents alive?”

She began to sing, to an ancient air,—

Mon père est oiseau,

Ma mère est oiselle.

Je passe l’eau sans nacelle,

Je passe l’eau sans bateau,

Ma mère est oiselle,

Mon père est oiseau .*

* My father is a bird, my mother is a bird. I cross the

water without a barque, I cross the water without a boat. My mother is a

bird, my father is a bird.

“Good,” said Gringoire. “At what age did you come to France?”

“When I was very young.”

“And when to Paris?”

“Last year. At the moment when we were entering the papal gate I saw a reed warbler flit through the air, that was at the end of August; I said, it will be a hard winter.”

“So it was,” said Gringoire, delighted at this beginning of a conversation. “I passed it in blowing my fingers. So you have the gift of prophecy?”

She retired into her laconics again.

“Is that man whom you call the Duke of Egypt, the chief of your tribe?”

“Yes.”

“But it was he who married us,” remarked the poet timidly.

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. Wait, perhaps you will love me more when you know me better; and then, you have told me your story with so much confidence, that I owe you a little of mine. You must know, then, that my name is Pierre Gringoire, and that I am a son of the farmer of the notary’s office of Gonesse. My father was hung by the Burgundians, and my mother disembowelled by the Picards, at the siege of Paris, twenty years ago. At six years of age, therefore, I was an orphan, without a sole to my foot except the pavements of Paris. I do not know how I passed the interval from six to sixteen. A fruit dealer gave me a plum here, a baker flung me a crust there; in the evening I got myself taken up by the watch, who threw me into prison, and there I found a bundle of straw. All this did not prevent my growing up and growing thin, as you see. In the winter I warmed myself in the sun, under the porch of the Hôtel de Sens, and I thought it very ridiculous that the fire on Saint John’s Day was reserved for the dog days. At sixteen, I wished to choose a calling. I tried all in succession. I became a soldier; but I was not brave enough. I became a monk; but I was not sufficiently devout; and then I’m a bad hand at drinking. In despair, I became an apprentice of the woodcutters, but I was not strong enough; I had more of an inclination to become a schoolmaster; ‘tis true that I did not know how to read, but that’s no reason. I perceived at the end of a certain time, that I lacked something in every direction; and seeing that I was good for nothing, of my own free will I became a poet and rhymester. That is a trade which one can always adopt when one is a vagabond, and it’s better than stealing, as some young brigands of my acquaintance advised me to do. One day I met by luck, Dom Claude Frollo, the reverend archdeacon of Notre-Dame. He took an interest in me, and it is to him that I to-day owe it that I am a veritable man of letters, who knows Latin from the de Officiis of Cicero to the mortuology of the Celestine Fathers, and a barbarian neither in scholastics, nor in politics, nor in rhythmics, that sophism of sophisms. I am the author of the Mystery which was presented to-day with great triumph and a great concourse of populace, in the grand hall of the Palais de Justice. I have also made a book which will contain six hundred pages, on the wonderful comet of 1465, which sent one man mad. I have enjoyed still other successes. Being somewhat of an artillery carpenter, I lent a hand to Jean Mangue’s great bombard, which burst, as you know, on the day when it was tested, on the Pont de Charenton, and killed four and twenty curious spectators. You see that I am not a bad match in marriage. I know a great many sorts of very engaging tricks, which I will teach your goat; for example, to mimic the Bishop of Paris, that cursed Pharisee whose mill wheels splash passers-by the whole length of the Pont aux Meuniers. And then my mystery will bring me in a great deal of coined money, if they will only pay me. And finally, I am at your orders, I and my wits, and my science and my letters, ready to live with you, damsel, as it shall please you, chastely or joyously; husband and wife, if you see fit; brother and sister, if you think that better.”

Gringoire ceased, awaiting the effect of his harangue on the young girl. Her eyes were fixed on the ground.