CHAPTER IV
The Inconveniences of Following a Pretty Woman in the Street at Night
Gringoire determined to follow the gipsy girl at any risk. He had seen her go down the Rue de la Coutellerie with her goat; he therefore went down the Rue de la Coutellerie.
“Why not?” said he to himself.
Gringoire, being a practical philosopher of the streets of Paris, had observed that nothing is more favorable to reverie than the pursuit of a pretty woman when you don’t know where she is going. In this voluntary surrender of your own free will, this caprice yielding to another caprice, all unconscious of submission, there is a mixture of odd independence and blind obedience, a certain happy medium between slavery and liberty, which pleased Gringoire, a mind essentially mixed, undetermined, and complex, carrying everything to extremes, forever wavering betwixt all human propensities, and neutralizing them the one by the other. He frequently compared himself to Mahomet’s tomb, attracted in opposite directions by two loadstones, and perpetually trembling between top and bottom, between the ceiling and the pavement, between descent and ascent, between the zenith and the nadir.
If Gringoire were living now, what a golden mean he would observe between the classic and romantic schools!5
But he was not sufficiently primitive to live three hundred years, and ’t is a pity. His absence leaves a void but too deeply felt today.
However, nothing puts a man in a better mood for following people in the street (especially when they happen to be women), a thing Gringoire was always ready to do, than not knowing where he is to sleep.
He accordingly walked thoughtfully along behind the young girl, who quickened her pace and urged on her pretty goat, as she saw the townspeople were all going home, and the taverns—the only shops open upon this general holiday—were closing.
“After all,” thought he, “she must have a lodging somewhere; gipsies are generous. Who knows—”
And there were some very pleasant ideas interwoven with the points of suspension that followed this mental reticence.
Still, from time to time, as he passed the last belated groups of citizens shutting their doors, he caught fragments of their talk, which broke the chain of his bright hypotheses.
Now, it was two old men chatting together.
“Master Thibaut Fernicle, do you know it is cold?”
(Gringoire had known this since the winter first set in.)
“Yes, indeed, Master Boniface Disome! Are we going to have another winter like the one we had three years ago, in ‘80, when wood cost eight pence the measure?”
“Bah! that’s nothing, Master Thibaut, to the winter of 1407, when it froze from St. Martin’s Day to Candlemas, and with such fury that the parliamentary registrar’s pen froze, in the Great Chamber, between every three words, which was a vast impediment to the registration of justice!”
Farther on, two neighbor women gossiped at their windows; the candles in their hands flickered faintly through the fog.
“Did your husband tell you of the accident, Mademoiselle la Boudraque?”
“No. What was it, Mademoiselle Turquant?”
“The horse of M. Gilles Godin, the notary from the Châtelet, took fright at the Flemish and their procession, and knocked down Master Philippot Avrillot, lay brother of the Celestines.”
“Is that really so?”
“Indeed it is.”
“And such a plebeian animal! It’s a little too much. If it had only been a cavalry horse, it would not be so bad!”
And the windows were closed. But Gringoire had already lost the thread of his ideas.
Luckily, he soon recovered and readily resumed it, thanks to the gipsy girl, thanks to Djali, who still went before him,—two slender, delicate, charming creatures, whose tiny feet, pretty forms, and graceful manners he admired, almost confounding them in his contemplation; thinking them both young girls from their intelligence and close friendship; considering them both goats from the lightness, agility, and grace of their step.
But the streets grew darker and more deserted every instant. The curfew had long since sounded, and it was only at rare intervals that a passenger was seen upon the pavement or a light in any window. Gringoire had involved himself, by following in the footsteps of the gipsy, in that inextricable labyrinth of lanes, cross-streets, and blind alleys, which encircles the ancient sepulcher of the Holy Innocents, and which is much like a skein of thread tangled by a playful kitten.
“Here are streets with but little logic!” said Gringoire, lost in the myriad windings which led back incessantly to their original starting-point, but amid which the damsel pursued a path with which she seemed very familiar, never hesitating, and walking more and more swiftly. As for him, he would not have had the least idea where he was, if he had not caught a glimpse, at the corner of a street, of the octagonal mass of the pillory of the Markets, whose pierced top stood out in sharp, dark outlines against a window still lighted in the Rue Verdelet.
A few moments before, he had attracted the young girl’s attention; she had several times turned her head anxiously towards him; once she had even stopped short, and taken advantage of a ray of light which escaped from a half-open bakeshop, to study him earnestly from head to foot; then, having cast that glance, Gringoire saw her make the little pouting grimace which he had already noted, and then she passed on.
It gave Gringoire food for thought. There was certainly a leaven of scorn and mockery in that dainty grimace. He therefore began to hang his head, to count the paving-stones, and to follow the young girl at a somewhat greater distance, when at the turn of a street which hid her from his sight, he heard her utter a piercing scream.
He hastened on.
The street was full of dark shadows. Still, a bit of tow soaked in oil, which burned in an iron cage at the foot of the image of the Holy Virgin at the street corner enabled Gringoire to see the gipsy girl struggling in the arms of two men who were trying to stifle her cries. The poor little goat, in great alarm, lowered its horns and bleated piteously.
“This way, gentlemen of the watch!” shouted Gringoire; and he rushed boldly forward. One of the men who held the girl turned towards him. It was the formidable figure of Quasimodo.
Gringoire did not take flight, but neither did he advance another step.
Quasimodo approached him, flung him four paces away upon the pavement with a single back stroke, and plunged rapidly into the darkness, bearing the girl, thrown over one arm like a silken scarf. His companion followed him, and the poor goat ran behind, with its plaintive bleat.
“Murder! murder!” shrieked the unfortunate gipsy.
“Halt, wretches, and let that wench go!” abruptly exclaimed, in a voice of thunder, a horseman who appeared suddenly from the next cross-street.
It was a captain of the King’s archers, armed from head to foot, and broadsword in hand.
He tore the gipsy girl from the arms of the astounded Quasimodo, laid her across his saddle, and just as the redoubtable hunchback, recovering from his surprise, rushed upon him to get back his prey, some fifteen or sixteen archers, who were close behind their captain, appeared, two-edged swords in hand. They were a squadron of the royal troops going on duty as extra watchmen, by order of Master Robert d‘Estouteville, the Provost’s warden of Paris.
Quasimodo was surrounded, seized, garotted. He roared, he foamed at the mouth, he bit; and had it been daylight, no doubt his face alone, made yet more hideous by rage, would have routed the whole squadron. But by night he was stripped of his most tremendous weapon,—his ugliness.
His companion had disappeared during the struggle.
The gipsy girl sat gracefully erect upon the officer’s saddle, placing both hands upon the young man’s shoulders, and gazing fixedly at him for some seconds, as if charmed by his beauty and the timely help which he had just rendered her.
Then breaking the silence, she said, her sweet voice sounding even sweeter than usual:
“What is your name, Mr. Officer?”
“Captain Phoebus de Châteaupers, at your service, my pretty maid!” replied the officer, drawing himself up.
“Thank you,” said she.
And while Captain Phoebus twirled his moustache, cut in Burgundian fashion, she slipped from the horse like an arrow falling to the earth, and fled.
A flash of lightning could not have vanished more swiftly.
“By the Pope’s head!” said the captain, ordering Quasimodo’s bonds to be tightened, “I would rather have kept the wench.”
“What would you have, Captain?” said one of his men; “the bird has flown, the bat remains.”