Собор Парижской богоматери / Notre-Dame de Paris
Шрифт:
The young girl’s attention had been attracted to him for the last few moments; she had repeatedly turned her head towards him with uneasiness.
He dropped his head, began to count the paving-stones, and tried to follow the young girl at a little greater distance, when, at the turn of a street, which had caused him to lose sight of her, he heard her utter a piercing cry.
He hastened his steps.
The street was full of shadows. Nevertheless, he saw the gypsy struggling in the arms of two men. The poor little goat, in great alarm, lowered his horns and bleated.
“Help! Gentlemen of the watch [5] !” shouted Gringoire, and advanced bravely. One of the men who held the young girl turned towards him. It was Quasimodo.
Gringoire did not take to flight, but neither did he advance another step.
Quasimodo came up to him, tossed him four paces away on the pavement with a backward turn of the hand, and plunged rapidly into the gloom, bearing the young girl folded across one arm like a silken scarf. His companion followed him, and the poor goat ran after them all, bleating.
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gentlemen of the watch – стража
“Murder! Murder!” shrieked the unhappy gypsy.
“Halt, rascals, and give me that wench!” suddenly shouted in a voice of thunder.
It was a captain of the king’s archers, armed from head to foot, with his sword in his hand.
He tore the gypsy from the arms of the dazed Quasimodo, threw her across his saddle, and at the moment when the terrible hunchback, recovering from his surprise, rushed upon him to regain his prey, fifteen or sixteen archers, who followed their captain closely, made their appearance, with their two-edged swords in their fists.
Quasimodo was surrounded; he roared, he foamed at the mouth, he bit. His companion had disappeared during the struggle.
The gypsy gracefully raised herself upright upon the officer’s saddle, placed both hands upon the young man’s shoulders, and gazed fixedly at him for several seconds, as though enchanted with his good looks and with the aid which he had just rendered her. Then breaking silence first, she said to him, making her sweet voice still sweeter than usual,—
“What is your name, monsieur le gendarme?”
“Captain Phoebus de Ch^ateaupers, at your service, my beauty!” replied the officer, drawing himself up.
“Thank you,” said she.
And then she slipped from the horse, like an arrow falling to earth, and fled. A flash of lightning would have vanished less quickly.
Chapter IV
Result of the Dangers
Gringoire, thoroughly stunned by his fall, remained on the pavement. Little by little, he regained his senses.
“That devil of a hunchbacked cyclops!” he muttered between his teeth; and he tried to rise. But he was too much dazed and bruised; he was forced to remain where he was.
“The mud of Paris,” he said to himself—for decidedly he thought that he was sure that the gutter would prove his refuge for the night; and what can one do in a refuge, except dream?—“the mud of Paris is particularly stinking; it must contain a great deal of volatile and nitric salts. That, moreover, is the opinion of Master Nicholas Flamel, and of the alchemists—”
The word alchemists suddenly suggested to his mind the idea of Archdeacon Claude Frollo. He recalled the violent scene which he had just witnessed in part; that the gypsy was struggling with two men, that Quasimodo had a companion. “That would be strange!” he said to himself.
The place was becoming less and less tenable.
A group of children rushed towards the square where Gringoire lay, with shouts and laughter. They were dragging after them some sort of hideous sack.
“Oh'e, Hennequin Dand`eche! Oh'e, Jehan Pincebourde!” they shouted in deafening tones, “old Eustache Moubon, the merchant at the corner, has just died. We’ve got his straw pallet, we’re going to have a bonfire out of it. It’s the turn of the Flemish to-day!”
They flung the pallet directly upon Gringoire. At the same time, one of them took a handful of straw and set off to light it at the wick of the good Virgin.
“S’death!” growled Gringoire, “am I going to be too warm now?”
It was a critical moment. He was caught between fire and water; he made a superhuman effort, the effort of a counterfeiter of money who is on the point of being boiled, and who seeks to escape. He rose to his feet, flung aside the straw pallet upon the street urchins, and fled.
“Holy Virgin!” shrieked the children; “’tis the merchant’s ghost!”
And they fled in their turn.
Chapter V
The Broken Jug
After having run for some time at the top of his speed, without knowing where, our poet finally stopped.
He continued to advance at a slower pace. Soon he saw legless cripple in a bowl, who was hopping along on his two hands like a wounded field-spider which has but two legs left. At the moment when he passed close to this species of spider with a human countenance, it raised towards him a lamentable voice: “La buona mancia, signor! la buona mancia! [6] ”
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«Подайте немного денег, сеньор! Немного денег!»
He overtook a man with crutches and wooden legs. This living tripod saluted him as he passed, but stopping his hat on a level with Gringoire’s chin, like a shaving dish, while he shouted in the latter’s ears: “Se~nor cabellero, para comprar un pedaso de pan! [7] ”
For the third time something barred his way. This something or, rather, someone was a blind man, who droned through his nose with a Hungarian accent: “Facitote caritatem!”
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«Сеньор, подайте на кусок хлеба.»