CHAPTER V
The Continuation of the Inconveniences
Gringoire, still dizzy from his fall, lay stretched on the pavement before the figure of the Blessed Virgin at the corner of the street. Little by little he regained his senses; at first he was for some moments floating in a sort of half-drowsy reverie which was far from unpleasant, in which the airy figures of the gipsy and her goat were blended with the weight of Quasimodo’s fist. This state of things did not last long. A somewhat sharp sensation of cold on that part of his body in contact with the pavement roused him completely, and brought his mind back to realities once more.
“Why do I feel so cold?” said he, abruptly. He then discovered that he was lying in the middle of the gutter.
“Devil take the hunchbacked Cyclop!” he muttered; and he tried to rise. But he was too dizzy and too much bruised; he was forced to remain where he was. However, his hand was free; he stopped his nose and resigned himself to his fate.
“The mud of Paris,” thought he (for he felt very sure that the gutter must be his lodging for the night, “the mud of Paris is particularly foul; it must contain a vast amount of volatile and nitrous salts. Moreover, such is the opinion of Master Nicolas Flamel and of the Hermetics—”
“And what should we do in a lodging if we do not think?”)ac
The word “Hermetics” suddenly reminded him of the archdeacon, Claude Frollo. He recalled the violent scene which he had just witnessed,—how the gipsy struggled with two men, how Quasimodo had a companion; and the morose and haughty face of the archdeacon passed confusedly through his mind. “That would be strange!” he thought. And he began to erect, upon these data and this basis, the fantastic edifice of hypothesis, that card-house of philosophers; then suddenly returning once more to reality, “But there! I am freezing!” he exclaimed.
The situation was in fact becoming more and more unbearable. Every drop of water in the gutter took a particle of heat from Gringoire’s loins, and the temperature of his body and the temperature of the gutter began to balance each other in a very disagreeable fashion.
An annoyance of quite another kind all at once beset him.
A band of children, those little barefoot savages who have haunted the streets of Paris in all ages under the generic name of “gamins,” and who, when we too were children, threw stones at us every day as we hastened home from school because our trousers were destitute of holes,—a swarm of these young scamps ran towards the cross-roads where Gringoire lay, with shouts and laughter which seemed to show but little regard for their neighbors’ sleep.6 They dragged after them a shapeless sack, and the mere clatter of their wooden shoes would have been enough to rouse the dead. Gringoire, who was not quite lifeless yet, rose to a sitting position.
“Olé, Hennequin Dandeche! Ole, Jehan-Pincebourde!” they bawled at the top of their voices; “old Eustache Moubon, the junk-man at the corner, has just died; we’ve got his mattress; we’re going to build a bonfire. This is the Flemings’ day!”
And lo, they flung the mattress directly upon Gringoire, near whom they stood without seeing him. At the same time one of them snatched up a wisp of straw which he lighted at the good Virgin’s lamp.
“Christ’s body!” groaned Gringoire, “am I going to be too hot next?”
It was a critical moment. He would soon be caught betwixt fire and water. He made a supernatural effort,—such an effort as a coiner of false money might make when about to be boiled alive and struggling to escape. He rose to his feet, hurled the mattress back upon the little rascals, and fled.
“Holy Virgin!” screamed the boys; “the junk-dealer has returned!”
And they too took to their heels.
The mattress was left mistress of the battlefield. Belleforêt, Father le Juge, and Corrozet affirm that it was picked up next day with great pomp by the clergy of the quarter, and placed in the treasury of the Church of the Holy Opportunity, where the sacristan earned a handsome income until 1789 by his tales of the wonderful miracle performed by the statue of the Virgin at the corner of the Rue Mauconseil, which had by its mere presence, on the memorable night of Jan. 6, 1482, exorcised the spirit of the defunct Eustache Moubon, who, to outwit the devil, had, in dying, maliciously hidden his soul in his mattress.