Beadle's New York Dime Library, No. 144 — page 33: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

@ ) approaching ; eee her foot was hidden from sight THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE-DAME. touched her, she felt all her blood flow back to her! sion, “Yes.” It was evident that her spirit was ut-! rope about your neck, tothe great porch of the church heart. She looked wildly around the room. She fancied that she saw those ugly implements.of torture —which were, among the instruments of all kinds that she had hitherto seen, what bats, millepedes, and spiders are among birds and reptiles—quitting their places and advancing from every part of the room toward her, to crawl over her, and to bite, pinch, and sting her. “ Where is the doctor? ”’’ asked Charmolue. “Here,’”’ answered a man in ablack gown, whom she ciality. “Justiceis enlightened at last,’’ said, he. had not yet noticed. * She shuddered. ' “ Demoiselle,’ resumed the smooth tongue of the proctor of the ecclesiastical court, “for the third time, do you persist in denying the charges preterred against ou ?”’ This time*her voice failed ; she was able only to nod an affirmative. “You persist,” cried Charmolue. ‘‘ lam very sorry for it, but I am obliged to perform the duties of my office.”’ ‘«Mr. Proctor,” said Pierrat, abruptly, “ what shall we begiu with?” | terly broken. | “Write, clerk,’’ said Charmolue. Then turning to Pierrat’s men: ‘* Loose the prisoner,’’ he proceeded, *‘and let her be taken back into court.” When the _buskin was removed, the proctor examined her foot, _ still numbed with’the pain. ‘‘Come, come,” said he, '“?’tis mot much the worst. You cried out in time. You would soon be able to dance as well as ever, my beauty!” Then addressing the priests of the offi- “’Tis a consolation, gentlemen ! and the damsel will bear witness that we have shown her all possible lenity.”’ _ CHAPTER LIL. | CONCLUSION OF THE CROWN TRANSFORMED INTO A DRY LEAF. WHEN she again entered the court, pale and halting, she was greeted with a general buzz of pleasure. On the part of the auditory, it arose from that feeling of ratified impatience which is experienced at the the- : ’ : - Charmolue paused for a moment with the ambiguous | atre at the conclusion of the last interlude of a play, t at a loss for a rhyme. “ With the grimace of a buskin,” he at length replied. The unfortunrte girl felt herself so totally abandoned by God and man, that her head sank upon her bosom, like something inert and destitute of animation. The tormentor and the physician approached her together; at the’same time the two assistants began to rummage in their hideous arsenal. At the clanking of the hor- rible irons, the unbappy girl shivered like a dead frog subjected to the action of galvanism. “Oh my Phoebus!” | murmured she,in so lowatone as to be inaudable. She then relapsed into her former insensibility and | deathlike silence. This sight would have rent any | other heart than the hearts of judges The wretched being to whom all this tremendous apparatus of saws, wheels, and pulleys was about to be applied ; the being about to be consigned to the iron gripe of executioners and ne rene 4 we a gentle, se er gM r e et, 2 up by human justice to be. ee orm the horrib Snill of the torture. Meanwhile the horny hands of Pierrat’s men had brutally stripped that beautiful leg, and that small, elegant foot. which-had so ofter delighted the bystand- ers with théir gracefulness and Paris. “ "Tis a pity!’’ mut veying those graceful and delicate forms. archdeacon been present, he would assuredly have be- thought him at that moment of his symbol of the spider and the fly. Presently the poor girl saw through the cloud that spread itself before her eyes the buskin | the tormentor, sur- Had the ' in the iron- dapparatus. Terror then restored ) strength. time sta . “For mercy’s sake!’ She — trom the with the intention of throwing berself a the feet of tl xing s | apt r; but, her Jot OF con- fined in the heavy block of oak sheathed w , she —— down pow gas a bee having its wings loaded jJead. Onasign from Charmolue, she was replaced bed, and two coarse hands fastened round hér on : slender waist the thong that hung from the ceiling. ‘For the last time,” said Oharmolue, with his — turbadle benignity, “do you confess ‘the crimes laid to ‘your charge?” — ve “Tam innocent.” : . 4 Then how do - explain the circumstances al. awe sir, i mow not.” Fou 1d < i ; ie, Ceaane Pierrat. singe it +H 1 read 7 ue to, Perea Do you con- ae evenyenig Torled the miserable girl. I confess Humanity obliges me to inform you,” observed the 8 ‘4 ons you confess, you have no pec og, mit,” said ‘And s sank back upon wo leathern suspended, asif lifeless, by the thong und her , pr la up o little!” sald Master “ You look like the golden sheep “*8o pre ot Monsieur of undy. Jacques Olue again raised ee 2) voice. . Clerk, write. hemian girl, confe ur n ~- sehege naniitess hell, with in ‘the feasts, Sabbaths, and “Yes,’’ said she, in so low a tone as to be scarcely demons, sorcerers, and witches? Answer.” «You confess that you have seen the ram, which Reelzebub displayed in the clouds to summon his children to their Sabbath, and which is seen only by sorcerers ?”’ as Yes.”’ “ You contess that you have devil in the shape of the goa proceedings ?”’ “ Lastly, you declare and confess that, instigated by, and with - assistance of the devil and the goblin: h the monk, d,on the ht of the 29th of last, ‘dil and slay & i named Phebus de mer ey She her glazed eyes upon the m replied, as if mechanically, without s commerce with the implicated in these trate, and or conyul- ility in the streets of |. 4, “Take it off!’ cried she, wildly, at the same | Ctceronian periphrases, flanked by quotations from “| wont battle the ortho. last —m 1 yi" » | ture shd had not calculated her ig i "Sen life had till then been so} ance right, #0 ry, Sojoyous—~the first pang overcame when the curtain rises, and the fifth aet begins; and on the part of the judges, from the prospect of being soon dismissed to their suppers. The poor little goat, too, bleated for joy. She would have run to her mistress,’ but she had been tied to a bench. It was now dark night. The candles, having received no accession to their number, gave so taint a light that the walls of the court were not discernible. The dark- ness enveloped objects in a sort of haze. A few unfeel- ing faces of judges alone were with difficulty distin- guishable. Opposite to them, at the other extremity of the long hall, they could perceive an undefined patch of white moving along the dark floor. It was the pris- oner. She advanced with faltering steps to her place. en Charmolue had magivterially resumed possession of his, he sat down; presently rising again, he said, without too strongly betraying the vanity of success: “The accused has confessed the crime.”’ '“ Bohemian girl,”” began the president, “you have confessed then all your misdeeds of magic, of prostitu- tion, and of murder committed on the body otf Phebus de Chateaupers ?"’ er heart was wrung, and she was heard to sob in the dark. “Whatever you please,’ answered she, —— “only put me to death soon !”’ _ “Mr. Proctor,”” said the president, “the court is ready to hear your requisitions.” Master Charmolue produced a tremendous roll of paper, from which he began to read with abundant ges- ticulation, and the exaggérated emphasis of the bar, a ef | Latin oration, in which all the evidence was built upon Plautus, his favorite comic writer. We are sorry that we cannot treat the reader to this delectable composi- tion. The ordtor delivered it with wonderful action. Before he had finished the exordium, big drops of pers- piration trickled from bis brow, and his eyes | a to be starting from his head. All at once, he stopped short in the middle of a sentence. His look, which was be so bland, nay, even so stppid, became ter, rific, “Gentlemen,’’ cried he—now deigning to me in French, for it was not in his manuscript: ‘‘ to suc ‘ade is Satan mixed up in this business, that par he is personally present at our mepesgenn an a'mock of their majesty !"’ he thus e, he pointed with his finger at the little goat, which observ- ing the gesticulations ot Charmolue, had seated herself upon her haunches, and was imitating as well as she could, with her ——— and her bearded head, the hetic pantomime of the king’s proctor in the oie oat diverting. tic ‘incident, the os : & ort werful effect. To put an end , the goat ‘were bound, and the 1 a. ve of he e second, to do pen- to be taken with her to the Place de Greve, and thete executed, a. He put on his cap and sat down, A man in a black gown, near the prisoner, then rose; it was hér advocate. The judges, feeling in want of their su fee to murmur. « Be brief,” said the president. | “ My lord,” replied the advocate, ‘‘ since the prisoner has be gee the crime, I have but afew fer, the Salic law there is this chance: ‘ita witch have eaten a man, and she be convicted of it, shall pays fine of eight thousean.1 deniers, which make two undred sousin gold.’ May it please the court then to sentence my client to pay this fine.”’ " “ That clause is become obsolete,” said the advocate extraordinary to the king. . “ Nego !|'’ replied the advocate of the prisoner. “To the vote!l’’ said a counselor; “the crime is proved, and it is late.’’ | The question was put to the vote without leaving the court. The judges decided off-hand; they were pressed for time. Their capped heads were seen uncovered one after another in the dusk; as the question was put to them successively in a low tone by the judge. The or prisoner appeared to be looking at them; but her m eye no longer saw the objects before it. The clerk of the court began w and then hand- ed along parchment to the president. The unhappy girl heard a bustle among the people, pikes clashing ogether, and a chilling voice pronounced these words : “ Bohemian girl, on such day as it shall please our lord the king, at the hour of noon, you shall be drawn in a tumbrel, stripped to your shift, barefoot, with a ‘31 the thread of his = ded wit! requiring th ‘the pris- 1d be condemn | pie noh e to puy a to of-} | of Notre-Dame, and shall there do penance, holding in your hand a wax taper of two pounds’ weight ; and thence you shall be taken tothe ~Place de Greve, and . there hanged by the neck on the gallows, of the city ; |and this your goat likewise; and you shall pay to the | official three gold lions in reparation of the crimes by you committed. and by you confesséd, ofsercery,magic, incontinence, and murder done upon the body of Sieur Phoebus de Chateaupers. God receive your soul |”’ “Oh! ’tis a dream !"? murmured the, prisoner, and she telt rough hands bearing her away. CHAPTER IV. LASCIATE OGNI ° SPERANZA. In the Middle Ages, when a building was com- plete, there was almost.as much of it under ground as above. A palace,a fortress, a church, had always a double basement, unless it stood upon piles like | Notre-Dame. Under a cathedral there was a kind _of subterraneous church, low, dark, mysterious, | blind, and mute, beneath the upper nave, which was resplendent with light and rang with the pealing of organs and bells, night and day; si metimes it was a catacomb. In palaces, in bastiles, it was a prison, sometimes asepulchre, and sometimes both together. These mighty edifices, the mode of whose formation and vegetation we have elsewhere described, had not merely foundations, but,as it were, roots, which shot out into the soil in chambers, in galleries, in staircases, like the building above them. Thus churches, palaces, | bastiles, were buried up to the middle in the ground. | The vaults ofa building were another building, to which you descended instead of ascending, and which clapped its subterraneous, stories beneath the exterior stories of the edifice, like those woods and mountains which ap- pear reversed in the mirror ofalake beneath the w and mountains risiny from its banks. At the Bastile St. Antoine, at the Palace of Justice, at the Louvre, these subterraneous edifices were prisons. - The stories of theSe prisons became-meore and more con- tracted and gloomy, the lower you descended. They were s0 many zones pervaded by different shades of horror. Dante could not find anything more suitable for hishell. These funnels of dungeons usually ter- minated in a deep hole gradually widening from the bottom upward, in which te has placed his Satan, ‘but where society confined culprits under sentence of deatlt. When once a miserable wretch was thus buried, farewell to light, to air, to life, to every hope; there was no leaving the place but for the gallows or the stake. Sometimes the prisoner’ was left to molder there; human justice called this /urgetting. The con- denned felt himself cut off from his kind by a supet- incumbent mountain ot stones anda host. of gaolers; and the entire prison, the massive bastile; cae one enormous complicated lock, which shut him ont from ~ living world, PP _ nto a dungeon of this kind—the oubdlieties by Saint Louis, the in pace of the Se pe was thrust after her condemnation, uo doubt tor fear of es- Cape, with the colossal Palace ot Justice over her bead. Poor girl! she could mot have satirred;the mall of the stones of which it was built. .There led not such aprofusion of misery and torture to crush go frail a creature. ' " ' ' There she was, wrapt in darkness, buried; entombed, immured, Whoever had beheld her in this state, after having seen her sporting and dancing in the sup, wo have shuddered, Cold as night breath of airiu her dark locks, not bh ear, hot aglimmer of light in he? ey Me ie gm a’ donis. sponaney xin ' &loaf of bread, on a 6, straw, in the poot for nea Scr bp the water t nat dh : om the dunyeon, motionless and a eathing- could she suffer? Phe irve air, the streets of P. her such pindie, her 1 eae the priest, fhe dagger, OWS; this had ; : sometimes like He and golden vision, hideous nightm®re; buti rible and indistinct s ness, or than distant and which was not héa | ree ig A gery is ecg not w " ; wt} ¢ : -dne the oO more sed — muse a. Sep nentes ‘Thue torpid, en, ticed the zn of a tra or thrice sumewhere nea , but withou hea ey of light, and at which less th no- ce a wn to her a crust of black bread, It Was neverthe- e sole comm uniéation still left to her with man- kind—the periodical visit of = gaoler. Her ear was mechanically directed to the only sound that now en- gaged it; above her head the wet filtered throug): the mossy stones of the vaulted roof, and a of witer fell trom it at equal intervals. She listened stupicily to the noise made by this falling into the pool ot pier by her ay | — aon = — ceptible aroun er, the cloc marked the og viernes the only noise that reached her of all the D s that are made on the face of the earth. that she did indeed feel trom.time to time, in this dark and disgusting abode, something cola crawling about = sy foot or her arm, and she could not help shud- ring. How long she had been in this place she knew not. She had a recollection of a sentence of death passed somewhere upon somebody ; she remembered that > Pes EO ANIICEl OVexe)