Собор Парижской богоматери / Notre-Dame de Paris
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Chapter VI
Esmeralda
Gringoire and his piece had stood firm. His actors, continued to spout his comedy, and he continued to listen to it.
To tell the truth, a few spectators still remained.
“Well,” thought Gringoire, “here are still as many as are required to hear the end of my mystery. They are few in number, but it is a choice audience.”
“Comrades,” suddenly shouted one of the kids from the window, “La Esmeralda! La Esmeralda in the Place!”
This word produced a magical effect. Every one who was left in the hall flew to the windows, repeating, “La Esmeralda! La Esmeralda?”
“What’s the meaning of this, of the Esmeralda?” said Gringoire. “Ah, good heavens! it seems to be the turn of the windows now.”
He returned towards the marble table, and saw that the representation had been interrupted. Jupiter should have appeared with his thunder. But Jupiter was standing motionless at the foot of the stage.
“Michel Giborne!” cried the irritated poet, “what are you doing there? Is that your part? Come up!”
“Alas!” said Jupiter, “a scholar has just seized the ladder.”
Gringoire looked. It was but too true.
“And why did he take that ladder?”
“In order to go and see the Esmeralda,” replied Jupiter. “He said, ‘Come, here’s a ladder that’s of no use!’ and he took it.”
This was the last blow.
“May the devil fly away with you!” he said to the comedian, “and if I get my pay, you shall receive yours.”
As he descended the winding stairs of the courts. he muttered: “These Parisians! They come to hear a mystery and don’t listen to it at all! And I! To come only to see faces and behold backs! May the devil flay me if I understand what they mean with their Esmeralda! What is that word, in the first place?”
Book Second
Chapter I
From Charybdis to Scylla
Night comes on early in January. The streets were already dark when Gringoire left the Courts. This gloom pleased him. After the brilliant failure of his first theatrical venture, he dared not return to the place he lived in, as he owned twelve sols for the rent. He remembered to seeing in the Rue de la Savaterie, at the door of a councillor of the parliament, a stepping stone for mounting a mule, which could serve as a very excellent pillow for a mendicant or a poet. He thanked Providence for having sent this happy idea to him; but then he saw the procession of the Pope of the Fools, which was also emerging from the court house. He fled.
Children were running about here and there with fire lances and rockets.
A street opened before him; he thought it so dark and deserted that he hoped to escape from all the rumors as well as from all the gleams of the festival. He reached the western point of the city and considered for some time the islet of the Passeur-aux-Vaches. The islet appeared to him in the shadow like a black mass. One could see by the ray of a tiny light a hut in the form of a beehive where the ferryman of cows took refuge at night.
“Happy ferryman!” thought Gringoire; “you do not dream of glory, and you do not make marriage songs! What matters it to you, if kings and Duchesses of Burgundy marry? Thanks, ferryman, your cabin rests my eyes, and makes me forget Paris!”
He was roused from his thoughts by the sounds of the cow ferryman taking his part in the rejoicings of the day and letting off fireworks.
“Accursed festival!” exclaimed Gringoire, “will it pursue me everywhere?”
Then he looked at the Seine at his feet, and a horrible temptation took possession of him:
“Oh!” said he, “I would gladly drown myself, were the water not so cold!”
Chapter II
The Place de Gr`eve
Place de Gr`eve was bordered on one side by the quay, and on the other three by a series of narrow and gloomy houses. By day, one could admire the variety of its edifices, all sculptured in stone or wood, presenting complete specimens of the different domestic architectures of the Middle Ages, running back from the fifteenth to the eleventh century. At night, one could distinguish nothing of all that mass of buildings, except the black indentation of the roofs, unrolling their chain of acute angles round the place.
When Pierre Gringoire arrived on the Place de Gr`eve, he was paralyzed. He had directed his course across the Pont aux Meuniers, in order to avoid the crowd; but the wheels of all the bishop’s mills had splashed him as he passed, and he was drenched. Hence he went to draw near the bonfire, which was burning magnificently in the middle of the Place. But a considerable crowd formed a circle around it.
“Accursed Parisians!” he said to imself, “there they are obstructing my fire! Nevertheless, I am greatly in need of warmth. Move aside! I’d like to know what they are doing there!”
On looking more closely, he saw that the circle was much larger than was required simply for the purpose of getting warm.
In a vast space between the crowd and the fire, a young girl was dancing.
Gringoire was fascinated.
She was not tall. Her skin possessed a beautiful golden tone of the Andalusians and the Roman women. She danced, she turned, she whirled rapidly about on an old Persian rug, and each time her radiant face passed before you, as she whirled, her great black eyes darted a flash of lightning at you.
She was a supernatural creature.
“In truth,” said Gringoire to himself, “she is a nymph, she is a goddess!”
At that moment, one of girl’s braids of hair became unfastened, and a piece of yellow copper which was attached to it, rolled to the ground.
“No!” said he, “she is a gypsy!”
All illusions had disappeared.
Disenchanted though Gringoire was, the whole picture was not without its charm and its magic; the bonfire illuminated, with a red flaring light, which trembled, all alive, over the circle of faces in the crowd and on the young girl.