The Hunchback of Notre Dame (33 page)

There was something in his immobility like a kite which has just discovered a nest of sparrows, and gazes at it.

“It is the archdeacon of Josas,” said Fleur-de-Lys.

“You have good eyes if you can recognize him from this distance!” remarked Mademoiselle Gaillefontaine.

“How he watches the little dancer,” added Diane de Christeuil.

“The gipsy girl had better beware,” said Fleur-de-Lys, “for he is not fond of gipsies.”

“’T is a great pity the man should stare at her so,” added Amelotte de Montmichel, “for she dances ravishingly.”

“Fair Cousin Phoebus,” suddenly said Fleur-de-Lys, “as you know this little gipsy girl, pray beckon to her to come up. It will amuse us.”

“Oh, yes!” cried all the girls, clapping their hands.

“What nonsense!” replied Phœbus. “She has doubtless forgotten me, and I don’t even know her name. Still, if you wish it, ladies, I will make an attempt;” and leaning over the balcony-rail, he called, “Little one!”

The dancer was not playing her tambourine at the moment. She turned her head towards the point whence this call came, her sparkling eye fell on Phoebus, and she stopped short.

“Little one!” repeated the captain; and he signed to her to come.

The young girl looked at him again; then she blushed as if her cheeks were on fire, and putting her tambourine under her arm, she moved through the astonished spectators towards the door of the house to which Phoebus called her, with slow, hesitating steps, and the troubled gaze of a bird yielding to the fascination of a snake.

A moment later, the tapestry hanging before the door was lifted, and the gipsy appeared on the threshold of the room, red, abashed, breathless, her large eyes cast down, and not daring to advance another step.

Bérangère clapped her hands.

But the dancer stood motionless at the door. Her appearance produced a strange effect upon the group of young girls. It is certain that a vague and indistinct desire to please the handsome officer animated them all alike; that his splendid uniform was the aim of all their coquetries; and that so long as he was present there was a certain secret lurking rivalry among them, which they hardly confessed to themselves, but which none the less appeared every instant in their gestures and words. Still, as they were possessed of an almost equal share of beauty, the contest was a fair one, and each might well hope for victory. The gipsy’s arrival abruptly destroyed this equilibrium. Her beauty was so remarkable that when she appeared on the threshold of the room she seemed to diffuse a sort of light peculiar to herself. Shut into this room, in this dark frame of hangings and wainscotting, she was incomparably more beautiful and more radiant than in the public square. She was like a torch brought from broad daylight into darkness. The noble maidens were dazzled in spite of themselves. Each of them felt her beauty in some sort impaired. Therefore their battle-front (if we may be pardoned the expression) changed at once, without exchanging a word. Still, they understood one another to perfection. The instincts of women read and reply to one another more rapidly than the understandings of men. An enemy had arrived; all felt it, all rallied for mutual support. A drop of wine is enough to redden a whole glass of water; the entrance of a prettier woman than themselves is enough to tinge a whole party of pretty women with a certain amount of ill-humor,—especially when there is but one man present.

Thus their reception of the gipsy girl was marvelously cold. They examined her from head to foot, then looked at one another, and that was enough: they understood one another. But the young girl waited for them to speak, so much agitated that she dared not raise her eyes.

The captain was the first to break the silence.

“On my word,” he said in his tone of bold assurance, “a charming creature! What do you think of her, fair cousin?”

The observation, which a more delicate admirer would at least have uttered in an undertone, was not adapted to soothe the feminine jealousies arrayed against the gipsy girl.

Fleur-de-Lys answered the captain with a sweet affectation of disdain: “She’s not bad-looking.”

The others whispered together.

At last Madame Aloïse, who was not the least jealous of the party since she was jealous for her daughter, addressed the dancer. “Come in, little one.”

“Come in, little one!” repeated, with comic dignity, Bérangère, who would have reached about to the gipsy’s waist.

Esmeralda approached the noble lady.

“My pretty child,” said Phœbus with emphasis, taking a few steps towards her, “I don’t know whether I have the supreme happiness of being recognized by you—”

She interrupted him with a smile and a glance of infinite sweetness,—

“Oh, yes!”

“She has a good memory,” observed Fleur-de-Lys.

“Now, then,” continued Phoebus, “you escaped very nimbly the other night. Did I frighten you?”

“Oh, no!” said the gipsy.

There was an indefinite something in the tone in which this “Oh, no!” was uttered directly after the “Oh, yes!” which wounded Fleur-de-Lys.

“You left me in your place, my beauty,” resumed the captain, whose tongue was loosened when he talked to a girl from the streets, “a very surly knave, blind of one eye, and a hunchback, the bishop’s bell-ringer, I believe. They tell me he’s the archdeacon’s son, and a devil. He has a droll name; they call him Ember Days, Palm Sunday, Shrove Tuesday, or something of the sort! He’s named for some high holiday or other! He took the liberty of carrying you off; as if you were a mate for such as he! That was coming it rather strong. What the devil did that screech-owl want with you, eh? Tell me!”

“I don’t know,” answered she.

“Did any one ever hear of such insolence,—a bell-ringer to carry off a girl as if he were a viscount! a common fellow to poach the game of gentlemen! A pretty state of things, indeed! However, he paid dearly for it. Master Pierrat Torterue is the roughest groom that ever combed and curried a knave; and I can tell you, if it will please you, that he gave your bell-ringer’s hide a most thorough dressing.”

“Poor man!” said the gipsy, reminded by these words of the scene at the pillory.

The captain burst out laughing. “By the great horn-spoon! your pity is as much out of place as a feather on a pig’s tail. May I be as fat as a pope, if—”

He stopped short. “Excuse me, ladies! I was just about to utter a folly.”

“Fie, sir!” said Gaillefontaine.

“He speaks to that creature in her own tongue!” added Fleur-de-Lys in a low voice, her anger growing every instant. Nor was this wrath diminished when she saw the captain, charmed with the gipsy and above all with himself, turn on his heel, repeating with the coarse and frank gallantry of a soldier,—

“A lovely girl, upon my soul!”

“Very badly dressed,” said Diane de Christeuil, smiling to show her fine teeth.

This remark was a ray of light to the others. It showed them the gipsy’s vulnerable point: unable to carp at her beauty, they attacked her dress.

“Why, that’s true, little one,” said Montmichel; “where did you learn to run about the streets in this way, without a wimple or a neckerchief?”

“Your skirt is so short it fairly makes me shiver,” added Gaillefontaine.

“My dear,” continued Fleur-de-Lys, somewhat sharply, “you will be taken up one of these days, by the sergeants of the dozen, for your gilded belt.”

“Little one, little one,” resumed Christeuil with a pitiless smile, “if you wore a decent pair of sleeves upon your arms, they would be less sunburnt.”

It was indeed a scene worthy of a more intelligent spectator than Phoebus, to see how these beautiful girls, with their angry, venomous tongues, glided and twisted and twined about the street dancer; they were cruel and yet gracious; they maliciously searched and scanned her shabby, fantastic garb of rags and tinsel. Their laughter, their mockery, and their sneers were endless. Sarcasms rained upon the gipsy, with wicked glances and a haughty pretence of benevolence. They were like those young Roman damsels who amused themselves by plunging golden pins into the bosom of a beautiful slave girl. They were like elegant greyhounds, hanging, with distended nostrils and fiery eyes, about a poor wood-deer which their master’s eye forbids them to devour.

After all, what was a miserable street dancer to these daughters of noble houses? They seemed to pay no heed to her presence, and spoke of her, before her, to her, in loud tones, as of something rather dirty, rather low, but still rather pretty.

The gipsy was not insensible to these pin-pricks. Now and then a flush of shame, a flash of anger, kindled in her eyes or on her cheeks; a scornful word seemed trembling on her lips; she made that little pout with which the reader is familiar, in token of her contempt, but she stood motionless; she fixed a sad, sweet look of resignation upon Phœbus.

This look was also full of happiness and affection. She seemed to be restraining herself, for fear she should be turned out.

Phœbus also laughed, and took the gipsy’s part with a mixture of impertinence and pity.

“Let them talk, little one,” he repeated, jingling his golden spurs; “no doubt your dress is somewhat extravagant and peculiar; but what does that matter to such a charming girl as you are?”

“Good gracious!” exclaimed the fair-haired Gaillefontaine, straightening her swan-like neck with a bitter smile, “I see that the officers of the king’s guard easily take fire at the bright eyes of a gipsy.”

“Why not?” said Phœbus.

At this answer, carelessly uttered by the captain, like a stone cast at random, which falls unnoted, Colombe began to laugh, as did Diane and Amelotte and Fleur-de-Lys, into whose eyes tears started at the same time.

The gipsy, whose eyes had drooped at the words of Colombe de Gaillefontaine, now raised them beaming with pride and pleasure, and fixed them again upon Phoebus. She was beautiful indeed at this moment.

The old lady, who was watching this scene, felt offended, though she did not know why.

“Holy Virgin!” she suddenly exclaimed, “what is this thing poking about under my feet? Oh, the ugly beast!”

It was the goat, which had entered in scarch of its mistress, and which, in its haste to reach her, had caught its horns in the mass of folds which the noble dame’s draperies formed about her feet when she was seated.

This caused a diversion. The gipsy girl, without speaking, released her pet.

“Oh, there’s the little goat with the golden feet!” cried Bérangère, jumping with joy.

The gipsy girl crouched upon her knees and pressed her cheek against the goat’s fond head. She seemed to be begging its pardon for having thus deserted it.

Diane whispered in Colombe’s ear,—

“Gracious! why didn’t I think of it before? It’s the gipsy girl with the goat, of whom I have so often heard. They say she is a witch, and that her goat performs very marvelous tricks.”

“Very well,” said Colombe, “the goat must now amuse in its turn, by performing some miracle.”

Diane and Colombe addressed the gipsy eagerly,—

“Little one, make your goat perform some miracle.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” replied the dancer.

“A miracle, a piece of magic, some witchcraft.”

“I don’t understand;” and she began to fondle the pretty creature, repeating, “Djali! Djali!”

At this instant Fleur-de-Lys noticed an embroidered leather bag hanging from the goat’s neck.

“What is that?” she asked.

The gipsy raised her large eyes to the girl’s face and replied gravely, “That is my secret.”

“I should very much like to know what your secret is,” thought Fleur-de-Lys.

Meanwhile the good lady rose angrily, saying,—

“Come, gipsy, if neither you nor your goat can dance for us, why do you loiter here?”

The gipsy, without answering, moved slowly towards the door; but the nearer she came to it, the slower grew her steps. An irresistible magnet seemed to hold her back. All at once she turned her eyes wet with tears upon Phœbus, and paused.

“Zounds!” cried the captain; “you mustn’t go in that way. Come back, and dance something for us. By the way, my beauty, what is your name?”

“Esmeralda,” said the dancer, without taking her eyes from his face.

At this strange name the young girls burst into a fit of laughter.

“A terrible name for a girl,” said Diane.

“You see now,” added Amelotte, “that she is an enchantress.”

“My dear,” solemnly exclaimed Dame Aloïse, “your parents never fished out that name for you from the baptismal font.”

Some moments previous, however, Bérangère, unheeded by the rest, had lured the goat into one corner of the room by a bit of marchpane. In an instant they were good friends. The curious child had removed the bag from the goat’s neck, had opened it, and emptied its contents upon the matting; they consisted of an alphabet, each letter being written upon a separate square of boxwood. No sooner were these playthings scattered over the floor, than the child was amazed to see the goat, one of whose “miracles” this undoubtedly was, select certain letters with her golden hoof and arrange them, by a series of gentle pushes, in a particular order. In a moment a word was spelled out which the goat seemed to have been trained to write, so little did she hesitate in the task; and Bérangère exclaimed suddenly, clasping her hands in admiration, —

“Godmother Fleur-de-Lys, do see what the goat has just done!”

Fleur-de-Lys looked, and shuddered. The letters arranged upon the floor spelled this word:—

“PHŒBUS.”
¹³

“Did the goat do that?” she asked in an altered tone.

“Yes, godmother,” answered Bérangère.

It was impossible to doubt her, for the child could not spell.

“This is her secret!” thought Fleur-de-Lys.

Meantime, at the child’s shout, the whole party hastened to her side,—the mother, the girls, the gipsy, and the officer.

The gipsy saw the folly which her goat had committed. She turned first red, then pale, and trembled like a criminal before the captain, who regarded her with a smile of mingled satisfaction and surprise.