Beadle's New York Dime Library, No. 144 — page 38: what you’re looking at

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

ewe ee 5 ee SS oe mm oo ee a ee ee ee E 4 ry ~ = = a aie Dt ye . 38 THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE-DAME. a LLL LLL LLL LLL LLL LL LLL lillie down on his back at the foot of the steeple of the Stras- | ohurch. It then seemed to him that the church, too burg cathedral, and looking at its enormous shaft moved, breathed, lived; that each massive column piercing above his head the penumbra of the twilight ; | was transformed into an enormous leg, stamping the only in this case Claude was standing and the obelisk | ground with his broad stone foot, and that the gigan- lying. But, as the river, in reflecting the sky length- | tic cathedral was but a sort of prodigious elephant, ened the abyss beneath them, the immense promontory pas aud walking, with pillars for TIegs, the two her one of those blesged couples, his heart dissolved in tenderness and despair. ' She formed the subject of his very thought. It was this fixed idea that haunted bim incessantly, that tor- tured him, that racked his brain, and ‘ynawed his vitals. He felt not regret; he felt not remorse; all that he had owers for trunks, and the immense sheet of black done he was ready to do again ; he would rather see;her | in the hands of the hangman than in the arms of the captain. But so acute was hiv anguish that at timés he tore off his hair by handfuls. There was one moment among others when it came into his mind that possibly at that very instant the hideous cliain which he had seen in the morning might be drawing its iron noose around that neck so slender and so graceful. This idea made the perspiration start from every pore., _ There was.another moment, when laughing dfaboli- cally at himself the while, his imagination represented to him at once La Esmeralda, as on the first day he had seen her all life, all mirtia, all joy, dressed and adorned, | agile, dancing, harmonious, and La Esmeralda of the last hour, stripped, the rope about her neck, slowl ascending with bare feet the raugh ladder to the ails bet; this twofold picture was drawn before hia, with such force as to extort from him a terrible shriek. While this hurricane of despair was bending, break- ing, shivering, overthrowing, uprooting everything in his s oul, his‘eye ranged over the scene around him. At his feet the fowls were ferreting among the bushes, and picking up the burnished jmsects that were run- ning about in the sun; overhead groups of dapple-gray clouds were hae me upon an azure sky; at the hori- zon, the ween 6 of the Abbey of St. Victor pierced the Ct of the hill with its slated obelisk, and the miller of eaux watched, whistling, the laboring sa is of his mill gurieng round. All this active, organized, il life, displayed around him ina thousand » gave him pain. Again he beya Pee: . This flight from Nature, from life, from himself, m man, from God, frem everything, lasted till even- Sometimes he threw himself on his face upon 6 oarth and tore u . the wet , the young corn with his fingers : di some lone ree bh and his th ts were so insupportable, thaf he grasped hfs head with both hands as though striving to wrench it flash it upon the ground, from his shoulders in order to The sun Was almost .. The within hinr from the @ hope and the will to , he found that he . re a 4 moment when he had lost’ t sound thought or idea. His reason was laid prostrate, aiutons utterly destroyed. His mind retained but two distinct images, La Esmeralda and the gibbet; all the rest was black. These two im formed a horri- ble ; and the more he fixed on them so much at- tention and thought as he was yet master of, the more tuey seemed to increase, according to a capt ro- eee the one in charm, in grace, in’ beauty, in t—theo ther in horror; so that at last La Esmeralda peared like a star, the gibbet like an enormous flesh- less arm. | ' It is remarkable that, during the whole of this tor- ture; he never conceived any serious idea of putting an end to nimecl?. The widlohed man was eipabicuir| —— aint tonne that he really saw hell ready to him afterward: b.. ae read we ' rz meanwhile continued to decline, The principle which sfill existed within him be ily of returning. He coneeived tha : re on examining the objécts around, he _ that he had turned short after the bounds ot the University. The steeple of St. Sulpice and the thiee tall of St. Germain des Pres shot up above the horizon on his right. He proceeded in that direction. When he heard smbattled circumvallation of St. Germain, he turned off, took a path which presented itself between the li and the lazar-house of the hamlet and aux- . This meadow was celebrated for the squabbles which took place een and day; it was, sosaith the chronicler, the hydra of the main. The arelideacon was should meet some one; he was face; he had avoided St. Germain; he wished to make it as late as possible before he entered the streets. Pre-aux-Cleres, took the lonely path which separated it from the Dieu Neuf, and at length reached the bank of the river. There Dom Claude found a boatman, who for a few de took him up the Seine to the point of the city, and set him ashore upon that vacant tongue of land, where the reader has already seen Gringoire pondering. and Sage extended beyond the king’s gar- ens’ p el the isle of the cattle-ferryman. nonotongus rocking of the boat, and the mur- Ar 0; et 1a. somewhat lulled the wretched tends, When th¢ bostinaa had loft him, he, romatned ding oe idly upou the strand, looking straight- rd Pop ects he bam op seemed to dance before forming a sort antasmagoria. It is no ng for the fatigue of excessive grief to com thi : » this effect n the mind. — 8 a sot behind tho tall tower of Nesle. It ens lest he idof every human : yilight. The sky was white; the water of oa" vas wh a een these the left bank the Seine, up whys his eyes were fixed, extended sombre mass, which, gradually ta at it hy the prespective, pi the haze of the li on like a black arrow. It was cove oe thea eg” ’ ch nothin was distinguishable but the obscure profile, standin ont ft strong relief in the dark from the of th sk and indo Th amen a h may be imag | cenit “tie in the d was near setting when, on’ examining him, ¥ save the Egyptian had not left in his mind a single naw his brother. ai nge of the men-at-arms of the Abbot around the. poor monks of St. Ger- 6 University and the hamlet of He proceeded along the extremity of the mitting a faint | doubtful’colors of night, a sort of violet, white, and y the tint of which is elsewhere found’ on the faces of shot forthinto space like any church-steeple, and the impression was the, same. That impression was ren- dered the more striking and extraordinary by the cir- cumstance that this steeple was twe leagues high—a colossal, immeasurable, unparalleled object; a tower of Babel ; an edifice such as human eye never beheld. The chimneys of the houses, the battlements of the walls, the angles of the roots, the steeple of the Augus- | tines, the Tower of Nesle, all those salient points which indented the profile of the immense obelisk, heightened the illusion by presenting to the eye a grotesque sem- blance of the ffetwork of a rich and fantastic sculpture. Claude, in the state of hallucination in which he then was, fancied that. he saw—saw with his bodily eyes— the tower of hell; the thoysand lights gleaming from bottom to top. of this frightful tower appeared to him sO many entrances to the immense furnace within ; and the voices and sounds which issued from it, the shrieks and moans of the damned. A deep fear came over him; he covered his ears with his hands that he might not | hear, turned his back that he might not see, and hur- | ried’‘away trom the terrible vision. | But the vision was within him. . ' On entering the streets, the passengers who jostled one another by the light of the shop-fronts, appeared ment, neither men, women, nor carriages, but a chaos of confused objects blending one with another. At the corner of the Rue de la Barillerie there was @ grocers shop, the penthouse of which was hung all along, ac- cording to the immemorial custom, with tin hoops, to which were attached fmitation candles of wood; these, en by the wind, clattered like castanets. He that ‘he heard the skeletons of Montfaucon rk. “Oh!” muttered he, ‘ the night-wind ‘is ge, them oné against another; mingling the clank of thei chains with the rattling of their bones. She is there, too, perhaps, among them !"’ . Distracted, he knew not whither he went. Presently he was upon the Pont St. Michél. He peréeiveda i in the window ofa ground-floor room; he approached it Through a cracke 6 he beheld a mean apartment, which awakened confused recollections in his mind. In ig aperipelt) Senny lighted by a lamp, he saw a fair, esh-colored, jovial-looking youth, loudly laughing with a young female; and near the lamp was seated an old woman spinning and singing, or rather squalling a song. — the intervals en the laughter ceased, natches Of the old woman’s song reached the ear of t f enti the tettor of it was frightful, and not very intell ‘ ‘ lige , ‘The old wotnan was Falourdel, the girl was a stran- ger, and the youth was his brother Johan. He coutin- ued to watch them, Hesaw Jehan go to & window atthe further end of the room, open it, and look out on the uay, where a thousand illumined windows glanced in the distance; and he heard him say while shutting the rindow ;: ‘*Pon my soul, ’tis a dark night. The citi- Zens are lighting tp their candles, and Night her stars.” Jehan then went back to his companion, and held up a bottle which stood on the table. ““* Zounds!” he cried, “ empty already! and I have nd more money.” So saying he came forth from the house. Dom Claude had but just time to throw himself on the ground that he might not be met, looked’in the face, and recognized Luckily the street was dark and the “ Oho!’ said he, “ here is one who has been enjoying himself to*day.’’ With his foot he shook Dom Claude, who held in breath. ~ - Dead drunk!” resumed Jehan. “* Full smonghs it. seems. A proper leech loosed from a cask. , tool” added ‘he, stooping, ‘‘an old man! Fortunate senex !”’ Dom Claude then heard him move away, saying: ‘Never mind! Reason is afine thing, though; and very lucky is my brother; the archdeacon, in being prudent and ha money.’’ F ‘ j The archdeacon then rose, and ran without stopping toward Notre-Dame, the enormous towers of which he scholar was not sober. hind a cluster of pillars. like specters incessantly going and coming around him. | sive in the hand of the demon, “Strange noises rang’ in his ears ; extraordinary fancies some degree of conscidusness, he thought of Seek disturbed his mind. He ‘say n:ither houses nor pave- a | i saw lifting themselves in the dark above the houses..| At the moment when, quite breathless, he reached the | goemed to him taller than when cloth for a caparison. Thus the fever or the frenzy of the wretched priest had attained such a degree of intensity that to him the external world was buta kind of Apocalypse yis- ible, palpable, terrific. i _ Fors moment he felt somewhat. reliéyed. On enter. ing one of the aisles he perceived a reddish light be. He ran toward it as toward a Star. It was the pretty lamp which night and day threw a dim light onthe public breviary of Notre- Dame, beneath its iron grating. He hurried te the sa- cred book, in hopes of finding in it some consolation or encouragement. It was open at this passage of Job. which caught his fixedeye, “Then a spirit passed be- fore my tace, and the hair of my flesh stood up.” . On reading this fearful text, he felt much the same as a blind man whose fingers are pricked by the staff which he has picked up, His knees failed him, and he sank upon the pavement thinking of her who had that day suffered death. Such volumes of blasting vapors enveloped his brain that it seemed as if his head had been turned into one of the chimneys of bell. He must have remained for along time i this atti- tude, neither thinking nor feeling, h ‘Ipless and pas- At length, recovering refuge in the tower, near his trusty Quasimodo. “He roge, and, being -afraid, he took the lamp of the bre- viary tolight him. This wasasacrilége; but he no longer regarded such a trifle as that. — atin 5 " He slowly ascended the staircase of thé tower, filled with agecret dread, which was communicated to the passengers who now and then crossed the Parvis, on seeing the mysterious light of his lamp mounting so late from loophole to loophole to the top of the tower. All at once he felt cool air upon his, face, and found himself under the doorway of the uppermost gallery. The night was cool. The sky was mottled with clouds, the large white masses of which, overlapping» each other at the edges, and being compressed at the cor- ners, resembled the ice of ariver that has broken up is winter. The crescent moon, imbedded in those clouds, looked like a celestial ship surrounded,by these aerial sheets of i¢e,» tat o) e. _ He-cast (down his eye between the iron railing of the dwarf collonade which unites the two to: , and for &@ moment contemplated through the vail ge and smoke the vast extent of the roofs of 8, sharp, countless, crowded together,and small as the ripples ofacalm sea ina summer's night. @ nioon.gaye but a faint light, which imparted an ashy tint to earth andsky. © ge mu : _ At this moment the clock raised its loud and sulemn yoice. It was midnight. The priest thought of noon; it was again twelve o'clock. . _ : aren “Oh,” muttered he to himsélf, ‘she must be cold by this time.” rd r nut All.at once a gust of wind extinguished his lamp, and at the same moment, he saw something white—a shade—a human form—a female appear at the oppo- site angle of the tower. He shuddered. By the side of thi female there was alittle goat, which eS her bleating with the last tones of the bell. ; the courage to look at her. "Twas she hespait! ‘She was pale; she was sad. Her hair fell over her shoulders, as ia the mo ; but there was no rope about her neck; her hands werg not bound; she was fr she was dead. wena —e She was habited in white, and had a white vail over her head. was petrified. He would have ee ; All he could do was to recede a ste ae t e that, she advanced. He retreated iu | r till he was beneath the dark vault of the staircase, His blood curdled at the idea that she might, nie come that way, too; ifshé haa, he must have died of fright. She did, in fact, approach so near as the door of the staircase; where she paused fora few moments. She cast a fixed look into the darkness, but without ap- pearing to discern the priest, and ed-on. Sie He saw th¢ She came toward him slowly looking yup at ‘| the sky, and followed by thé supernatural 0 ao : ait 2 ve. Place du Parvis, he paused, and durst not raise hiseyes jyoonshine throtgh hér‘/ white robe; “he heard het to the fatal edifice: “Oh!” said he,in a low tone, “is | proatioe. it true, then, that such a thing could have happened | here to-day? this very morning ?”’ He yen facade was dark ; the sky behind it glistened with stars. above the horizon, was seen at the moment on the top of the right-hand tower, and seemed to be perched like aluminous bird on the edge of the parapet, cut out into large trefoils. ¥ The door of the cloisters was shut, but the arch- deacon always carried about him thekey of the tower in which was ah aay stg t Availing himself of it, he entered the church, He tound the interior dark and silent ag the grave. From ‘the large shadows My fell from all sides in broad sheéts, he knew that the hangings puf up for the morning’s ceremony had not been removed, Tho great silver cross glistened amid the gion, woktee W! Fla intoriny, points, Tike the milky-way of this sepulchral night. The tall windows of the choir showed above the black drapery the upper pointed arches, the panes of which, ray of moonlight; had but those 6 dead. The archdeacon, perteiving all around the choir th eats of i rri livid } 0 t hasty faces staring at ‘him. With’ h step he began to flee acréss the | ints of arches, fancied that he | another. The | When she was gone, he began-to descend the stairy as slowly as he had seen the specter move. Horror’ ed, however, to look at the church. The stricken, his hair erect, still holding the extinguished lamp in his hand, he fancied himselfa specter; and, The crescent of the moon, which had mot beef long | while descending the winding stairs, he heard a voice, laughing and repeating distinctly in his ear A spirit. passed before my face, and the hair of my flesh stood up.’’ . » _ © CHAPTER IL. THE SANCTUARY. We 6% In the Middle Ages every town, and. till the time of Louis XII. every town in Franee, had its sanctuaries. Amid the deluge of penal laws and barbarous jurisdic- tions which inundated that division of Paris which we have specially called the Oity, these sanctuaries were a kind of islands, which-rose above the level of human justice. Every criminal who took refuge there was. saved, ‘There were in a district almost’ as y sanctu- aries as places of executions It was therabuse of im- punity going hand in hand with the abase of punish- ment—two bad things, which strove»to correct one alaces of the “king, the hotels of the princes, but above all, the churches, had the of sanctuary, Sometimes that right was-confegred for a . GOMmiiGooo