Document Outline 24 страница

She had with her a goat; a big billy- goat, whether black or white, I no longer remember. That set me to thinking. The girl does not concern me, but the goat! I love not those beasts, they have a beard and horns.

They are so like a man. And then, they smack of the witches, sabbath. However, I say nothing. I had the crown. That is right, is it not, Monsieur Judge? I show the captain and the wench to the upper chamber, and I leave them alone; that is to say, with the goat. I go down and set to spinning again--I must inform you that my house has a ground floor and story above. I know not why I fell to thinking of the surly monk whom the goat had put into my head again, and then the beautiful girl was rather strangely decked out. All at once, I hear a cry upstairs, and something falls on the floor and the window opens. I run to mine which is beneath it, and I behold a black mass pass before my eyes and fall into the water. It was a phantom clad like a priest. It was a moonlight night. I saw him quite plainly. He was swimming in the direction of the city. Then, all of a tremble, I call the watch. The gentlemen of the police enter, and not knowing just at the first moment what the matter was, and being merry, they beat me. I explain to them. We go up stairs, and what do we find? my poor chamber all blood, the captain stretched out at full length with a dagger in his neck, the girl pretending to be dead, and the goat all in a fright. 'Pretty work! ' I say, 'I shall have to wash that floor for more than a fortnight.

It will have to be scraped; it will be a terrible job. ' They carried off the officer, poor young man, and the wench with her bosom all bare. But wait, the worst is that on the next day, when I wanted to take the crown to buy tripe, I found a dead leaf in its place. "

The old woman ceased. A murmur of horror ran through the audience.

" That phantom, that goat, --all smacks of magic, " said one of Gringoire's neighbors.

" And that dry leaf! " added another.

" No doubt about it, " joined in a third, " she is a witch who has dealings with the surly monk, for the purpose of plundering officers. "

Gringoire himself was not disinclined to regard this as altogether alarming and probable.

" Goody Falourdel, " said the president majestically, " have you nothing more to communicate to the court? "

" No, monseigneur, " replied the crone, " except that the report has described my house as a hovel and stinking; which is an outrageous fashion of speaking. The houses on the bridge are not imposing, because there are such multitudes of people; but, nevertheless, the butchers continue to dwell there, who are wealthy folk, and CHAPTER I.

200

married to very proper and handsome women. "

The magistrate who had reminded Gringoire of a crocodile rose, --

" Silence! " said he. " I pray the gentlemen not to lose sight of the fact that a dagger was found on the person of the accused. Goody Falourdel, have you brought that leaf into which the crown which the demon gave you was transformed?

" Yes, monseigneur, " she replied; " I found it again. Here it is. "

A bailiff banded the dead leaf to the crocodile, who made a doleful shake of the head, and passed it on to the president, who gave it to the procurator of the king in the ecclesiastical court, and thus it made the circuit of the hail.

" It is a birch leaf, " said Master Jacques Charmolue. " A fresh proof of magic.

A counsellor took up the word.

" Witness, two men went upstairs together in your house: the black man, whom you first saw disappear and afterwards swimming in the Seine, with his priestly garments, and the officer. Which of the two handed you the crown? " The old woman pondered for a moment and then said, -- " The officer. "

A murmur ran through the crowd.

" Ah! " thought Gringoire, " this makes some doubt in my mind. "

But Master Philippe Lheulier, advocate extraordinary to the king, interposed once more.

" I will recall to these gentlemen, that in the deposition taken at his bedside, the assassinated officer, while declaring that he had a vague idea when the black man accosted him that the latter might be the surly monk, added that the phantom had pressed him eagerly to go and make acquaintance with the accused; and upon his, the captain's, remarking that he had no money, he had given him the crown which the said officer paid to la Falourdel. Hence, that crown is the money of hell. "

This conclusive observation appeared to dissipate all the doubts of Gringoire and the other sceptics in the audience.

" You have the documents, gentlemen, " added the king's advocate, as he took his seat; " you can consult the testimony of Phoebus de Châ teaupers. "

At that name, the accused sprang up, her head rose above the throng. Gringoire with horror recognized la Esmeralda.

She was pale; her tresses, formerly so gracefully braided and spangled with sequins, hung in disorder; her lips were blue, her hollow eyes were terrible. Alas!

" Phoebus! " she said, in bewilderment; " where is he? O messeigneurs! before you kill me, tell me, for pity sake, whether he still lives? "

" Hold your tongue, woman, " replied the president, " that is no affair of ours. "

" Oh! for mercy's sake, tell me if he is alive! " she repeated, clasping her beautiful emaciated hands; and the CHAPTER I.

201

sound of her chains in contact with her dress, was heard.

" Well! " said the king's advocate roughly, " he is dying. Are you satisfied? "

The unhappy girl fell back on her criminal's seat, speechless, tearless, white as a wax figure.

The president bent down to a man at his feet, who wore a gold cap and a black gown, a chain on his neck and a wand in his hand.

" Bailiff, bring in the second accused. "

All eyes turned towards a small door, which opened, and, to the great agitation of Gringoire, gave passage to a pretty goat with horns and hoofs of gold. The elegant beast halted for a moment on the threshold, stretching out its neck as though, perched on the summit of a rock, it had before its eyes an immense horizon. Suddenly it caught sight of the gypsy girl, and leaping over the table and the head of a clerk, in two bounds it was at her knees; then it rolled gracefully on its mistress's feet, soliciting a word or a caress; but the accused remained motionless, and poor Djali himself obtained not a glance.

" Eh, why--'tis my villanous beast, " said old Falourdel, " I recognize the two perfectly! "

Jacques Charmolue interfered.

" If the gentlemen please, we will proceed to the examination of the goat. " He was, in fact, the second criminal. Nothing more simple in those days than a suit of sorcery instituted against an animal. We find, among others in the accounts of the provost's office for 1466, a curious detail concerning the expenses of the trial of Gillet-Soulart and his sow, " executed for their demerits, " at Corbeil. Everything is there, the cost of the pens in which to place the sow, the five hundred bundles of brushwood purchased at the port of Morsant, the three pints of wine and the bread, the last repast of the victim fraternally shared by the executioner, down to the eleven days of guard and food for the sow, at eight deniers parisis each. Sometimes, they went even further than animals. The capitularies of Charlemagne and of Louis le Dé bonnaire impose severe penalties on fiery phantoms which presume to appear in the air.

Meanwhile the procurator had exclaimed: " If the demon which possesses this goat, and which has resisted all exorcisms, persists in its deeds of witchcraft, if it alarms the court with them, we warn it that we shall be forced to put in requisition against it the gallows or the stake. Gringoire broke out into a cold perspiration.

Charmolue took from the table the gypsy's tambourine, and presenting it to the goat, in a certain manner, asked the latter, --

" What o'clock is it? "

The goat looked at it with an intelligent eye, raised its gilded hoof, and struck seven blows.

It was, in fact, seven o'clock. A movement of terror ran through the crowd.

Gringoire could not endure it.

" He is destroying himself! " he cried aloud; " You see well that he does not know what he is doing. "

" Silence among the louts at the end of the hail! " said the bailiff sharply.

Jacques Charmolue, by the aid of the same manoeuvres of the tambourine, made the goat perform many other tricks connected with the date of the day, the month of the year, etc., which the reader has already witnessed.

CHAPTER I.

202

And, by virtue of an optical illusion peculiar to judicial proceedings, these same spectators who had, probably, more than once applauded in the public square Djali's innocent magic were terrified by it beneath the roof of the Palais de Justice. The goat was undoubtedly the devil.

It was far worse when the procurator of the king, having emptied upon a floor a certain bag filled with movable letters, which Djali wore round his neck, they beheld the goat extract with his hoof from the scattered alphabet the fatal name of Phoebus. The witchcraft of which the captain had been the victim appeared irresistibly demonstrated, and in the eyes of all, the gypsy, that ravishing dancer, who had so often dazzled the passers-by with her grace, was no longer anything but a frightful vampire.

However, she betrayed no sign of life; neither Djali's graceful evolutions, nor the menaces of the court, nor the suppressed imprecations of the spectators any longer reached her mind.

In order to arouse her, a police officer was obliged to shake her unmercifully, and the president had to raise his voice, --" Girl, you are of the Bohemian race, addicted to deeds of witchcraft. You, in complicity with the bewitched goat implicated in this suit, during the night of the twenty-ninth of March last, murdered and stabbed, in concert with the powers of darkness, by the aid of charms and underhand practices, a captain of the king's arches of the watch, Phoebus de Châ teaupers. Do you persist in denying it? "

" Horror! " exclaimed the young girl, hiding her face in her hands. " My Phoebus! Oh, this is hell! "

" Do you persist in your denial? " demanded the president coldly.

" Do I deny it? " she said with terrible accents; and she rose with flashing eyes.

The president continued squarely, --

" Then how do you explain the facts laid to your charge? "

She replied in a broken voice, --

" I have already told you. I do not know. 'Twas a priest, a priest whom I do not know; an infernal priest who pursues me! "

" That is it, " retorted the judge; " the surly monk. "

" Oh, gentlemen! have mercy! I am but a poor girl--"

" Of Egypt, " said the judge.

Master Jacques Charmolue interposed sweetly, --

" In view of the sad obstinacy of the accused, I demand the application of the torture. "

" Granted, " said the president.

The unhappy girl quivered in every limb. But she rose at the command of the men with partisans, and walked with a tolerably firm step, preceded by Charmolue and the priests of the officiality, between two rows of halberds, towards a medium-sized door which suddenly opened and closed again behind her, and which produced upon the grief-stricken Gringoire the effect of a horrible mouth which had just devoured her.

When she disappeared, they heard a plaintive bleating; it was the little goat mourning.

CHAPTER I.

203

The sitting of the court was suspended. A counsellor having remarked that the gentlemen were fatigued, and that it would be a long time to wait until the torture was at an end, the president replied that a magistrate must know how to sacrifice himself to his duty.

" What an annoying and vexatious hussy, " said an aged judge, " to get herself put to the question when one has not supped! "

CHAPTER II.

204

CHAPTER II.

CONTINUATION OF THE CROWN WHICH WAS CHANGED INTO A DRY LEAF.

After ascending and descending several steps in the corridors, which were so dark that they were lighted by lamps at mid-day, La Esmeralda, still surrounded by her lugubrious escort, was thrust by the police into a gloomy chamber. This chamber, circular in form, occupied the ground floor of one of those great towers, which, even in our own century, still pierce through the layer of modern edifices with which modern Paris has covered ancient Paris. There were no windows to this cellar; no other opening than the entrance, which was low, and closed by an enormous iron door. Nevertheless, light was not lacking; a furnace had been constructed in the thickness of the wall; a large fire was lighted there, which filled the vault with its crimson reflections and deprived a miserable candle, which stood in one corner, of all radiance. The iron grating which served to close the oven, being raised at that moment, allowed only a view at the mouth of the flaming vent-hole in the dark wall, the lower extremity of its bars, like a row of black and pointed teeth, set flat apart; which made the furnace resemble one of those mouths of dragons which spout forth flames in ancient legends. By the light which escaped from it, the prisoner beheld, all about the room, frightful instruments whose use she did not understand. In the centre lay a leather mattress, placed almost flat upon the ground, over which hung a strap provided with a buckle, attached to a brass ring in the mouth of a flat-nosed monster carved in the keystone of the vault. Tongs, pincers, large ploughshares, filled the interior of the furnace, and glowed in a confused heap on the coals. The sanguine light of the furnace illuminated in the chamber only a confused mass of horrible things.

This Tartarus was called simply, The Question Chamber.

On the bed, in a negligent attitude, sat Pierrat Torterue, the official torturer. His underlings, two gnomes with square faces, leather aprons, and linen breeches, were moving the iron instruments on the coals.

In vain did the poor girl summon up her courage; on entering this chamber she was stricken with horror.

The sergeants of the bailiff of the courts drew up in line on one side, the priests of the officiality on the other.

A clerk, inkhorn, and a table were in one corner.

Master Jacques Charmolue approached the gypsy with a very sweet smile.

" My dear child, " said he, " do you still persist in your denial? "

" Yes, " she replied, in a dying voice.

" In that case, " replied Charmolue, " it will be very painful for us to have to question you more urgently than we should like. Pray take the trouble to seat yourself on this bed. Master Pierrat, make room for mademoiselle, and close the door. "

Pierrat rose with a growl.

" If I shut the door, " he muttered, " my fire will go out. "

" Well, my dear fellow, " replied Charmolue, " leave it open then. "

Meanwhile, la Esmeralda had remained standing. That leather bed on which so many unhappy wretches had writhed, frightened her. Terror chilled the very marrow of her bones; she stood there bewildered and stupefied. At a sign from Charmolue, the two assistants took her and placed her in a sitting posture on the bed.

They did her no harm; but when these men touched her, when that leather touched her, she felt all her blood CHAPTER II.

205

retreat to her heart. She cast a frightened look around the chamber. It seemed to her as though she beheld advancing from all quarters towards her, with the intention of crawling up her body and biting and pinching her, all those hideous implements of torture, which as compared to the instruments of all sorts she had hitherto seen, were like what bats, centipedes, and spiders are among insects and birds.

" Where is the physician? " asked Charmolue.

" Here, " replied a black gown whom she had not before noticed.

She shuddered.

" Mademoiselle, " resumed the caressing voice of the procucrator of the Ecclesiastical court, " for the third time, do you persist in denying the deeds of which you are accused? "

This time she could only make a sign with her head.

" You persist? " said Jacques Charmolue. " Then it grieves me deeply, but I must fulfil my office. "

" Monsieur le Procureur du Roi, " said Pierrat abruptly, " How shall we begin? "

Charmolue hesitated for a moment with the ambiguous grimace of a poet in search of a rhyme.

" With the boot, " he said at last.

The unfortunate girl felt herself so utterly abandoned by God and men, that her head fell upon her breast like an inert thing which has no power in itself.

The tormentor and the physician approached her simultaneously. At the same time, the two assistants began to fumble among their hideous arsenal.

At the clanking of their frightful irons, the unhappy child quivered like a dead frog which is being galvanized.

" Oh! " she murmured, so low that no one heard her; " Oh, my Phoebus! " Then she fell back once more into her immobility and her marble silence. This spectacle would have rent any other heart than those of her judges.

One would have pronounced her a poor sinful soul, being tortured by Satan beneath the scarlet wicket of hell.

The miserable body which that frightful swarm of saws, wheels, and racks were about to clasp in their clutches, the being who was about to be manipulated by the harsh hands of executioners and pincers, was that gentle, white, fragile creature, a poor grain of millet which human justice was handing over to the terrible mills of torture to grind. Meanwhile, the callous hands of Pierrat Torterue's assistants had bared that charming leg, that tiny foot, which had so often amazed the passers-by with their delicacy and beauty, in the squares of Paris.

" 'Tis a shame! " muttered the tormentor, glancing at these graceful and delicate forms.

Had the archdeacon been present, he certainly would have recalled at that moment his symbol of the spider and the fly. Soon the unfortunate girl, through a mist which spread before her eyes, beheld the boot approach; she soon beheld her foot encased between iron plates disappear in the frightful apparatus. Then terror restored her strength.

" Take that off! " she cried angrily; and drawing herself up, with her hair all dishevelled: " Mercy! "

She darted from the bed to fling herself at the feet of the king's procurator, but her leg was fast in the heavy block of oak and iron, and she sank down upon the boot, more crushed than a bee with a lump of lead on its CHAPTER II.

206

wing.

At a sign from Charmolue, she was replaced on the bed, and two coarse hands adjusted to her delicate waist the strap which hung from the ceiling.

" For the last time, do you confess the facts in the case? " demanded Charmolue, with his imperturbable benignity.

" I am innocent. "

" Then, mademoiselle, how do you explain the circumstance laid to your charge? "

" Alas, monseigneur, I do not know. "

" So you deny them? "

" All! "

" Proceed, " said Charmolue to Pierrat.

Pierrat turned the handle of the screw-jack, the boot was contracted, and the unhappy girl uttered one of those horrible cries which have no orthography in any human language.

" Stop! " said Charmolue to Pierrat. " Do you confess? " he said to the gypsy.

" All! " cried the wretched girl. " I confess! I confess! Mercy! "

She had not calculated her strength when she faced the torture. Poor child, whose life up to that time had been so joyous, so pleasant, so sweet, the first pain had conquered her!

" Humanity forces me to tell you, " remarked the king's procurator, " that in confessing, it is death that you must expect. "

" I certainly hope so! " said she. And she fell back upon the leather bed, dying, doubled up, allowing herself to hang suspended from the strap buckled round her waist.

" Come, fair one, hold up a little, " said Master Pierrat, raising her. " You have the air of the lamb of the Golden Fleece which hangs from Monsieur de Bourgogne's neck. "

Jacques Charmolue raised his voice,

" Clerk, write. Young Bohemian maid, you confess your participation in the feasts, witches' sabbaths, and witchcrafts of hell, with ghosts, hags, and vampires? Answer. "

" Yes, " she said, so low that her words were lost in her breathing.

" You confess to having seen the ram which Beelzebub causes to appear in the clouds to call together the witches' sabbath, and which is beheld by socerers alone? "

" Yes. "

" You confess to having adored the heads of Bophomet, those abominable idols of the Templars? "

CHAPTER II.

207

" Yes. "

" To having had habitual dealings with the devil under the form of a goat familiar, joined with you in the suit? "

" Yes. "

" Lastly, you avow and confess to having, with the aid of the demon, and of the phantom vulgarly known as the surly monk, on the night of the twenty-ninth of March last, murdered and assassinated a captain named Phoebus de Châ teaupers? "

She raised her large, staring eyes to the magistrate, and replied, as though mechanically, without convulsion or agitation, --

" Yes. "

It was evident that everything within her was broken.

" Write, clerk, " said Charmolue. And, addressing the torturers, " Release the prisoner, and take her back to the court. "

When the prisoner had been " unbooted, " the procurator of the ecclesiastical court examined her foot, which was still swollen with pain. " Come, " said he, " there's no great harm done. You shrieked in good season. You could still dance, my beauty! "

Then he turned to his acolytes of the officiality, -- " Behold justice enlightened at last! This is a solace, gentlemen! Madamoiselle will bear us witness that we have acted with all possible gentleness. "

CHAPTER III.

208

CHAPTER III.

END OF THE CROWN WHICH WAS TURNED INTO A DRY LEAF.

When she re-entered the audience hall, pale and limping, she was received with a general murmur of pleasure.

On the part of the audience there was the feeling of impatience gratified which one experiences at the theatre at the end of the last entr'acte of the comedy, when the curtain rises and the conclusion is about to begin. On the part of the judges, it was the hope of getting their suppers sooner.

The little goat also bleated with joy. He tried to run towards his mistress, but they had tied him to the bench.

Night was fully set in. The candles, whose number had not been increased, cast so little light, that the walls of the hall could not be seen. The shadows there enveloped all objects in a sort of mist. A few apathetic faces of judges alone could be dimly discerned. Opposite them, at the extremity of the long hail, they could see a vaguely white point standing out against the sombre background. This was the accused.

She had dragged herself to her place. When Charmolue had installed himself in a magisterial manner in his own, he seated himself, then rose and said, without exhibiting too much self-complacency at his success, --" The accused has confessed all. "

" Bohemian girl, " the president continued, " have you avowed all your deeds of magic, prostitution, and assassination on Phoebus de Châ teaupers. "

Her heart contracted. She was heard to sob amid the darkness.

" Anything you like, " she replied feebly, " but kill me quickly! "

" Monsieur, procurator of the king in the ecclesiastical courts, " said the president, " the chamber is ready to hear you in your charge. "

Master Charmolue exhibited an alarming note book, and began to read, with many gestures and the exaggerated accentuation of the pleader, an oration in Latin, wherein all the proofs of the suit were piled up in Ciceronian periphrases, flanked with quotations from Plautus, his favorite comic author. We regret that we are not able to offer to our readers this remarkable piece. The orator pronounced it with marvellous action. Before he had finished the exordium, the perspiration was starting from his brow, and his eyes from his bead.

All at once, in the middle of a fine period, he interrupted himself, and his glance, ordinarily so gentle and even stupid, became menacing.

" Gentlemen, " he exclaimed (this time in French, for it was not in his copy book), " Satan is so mixed up in this affair, that here he is present at our debates, and making sport of their majesty. Behold! "

So saying, he pointed to the little goat, who, on seeing Charmolue gesticulating, had, in point of fact, thought it appropriate to do the same, and had seated himself on his haunches, reproducing to the best of his ability, with his forepaws and his bearded head the pathetic pantomine of the king's procurator in the ecclesiastical court. This was, if the reader remembers, one of his prettiest accomplishments. This incident, this last proof, produced a great effect. The goat's hoofs were tied, and the king's procurator resumed the thread of his eloquence.

It was very long, but the peroration was admirable. Here is the concluding phrase; let the reader add the hoarse voice and the breathless gestures of Master Charmolue, CHAPTER III.

209

" ~Ideo, domni, coram stryga demonstrata, crimine patente, intentione criminis existente, in nornine sanctoe ecclesioe Nostroe- Domince Parisiensis quoe est in saisina habendi omnimodam altam et bassam justitiam in illa hac intemerata Civitatis insula, tenore proesentium declaremus nos requirere, primo, aliquamdam pecuniariam indemnitatem; secundo, amendationem honorabilem ante portalium maximum Nostroe-Dominoe, ecclesioe cathedralis; tertio, sententiani in virtute cujus ista styrga cum sua capella, seu in trivio vulgariter dicto~ la Grè ve, ~seu in insula exeunte in fluvio Secanoe, juxta pointam juardini regalis, executatoe sint~! " *

* The substance of this exordium is contained in the president's sentence.

He put on his cap again and seated himself.

" Eheu! " sighed the broken-hearted Gringoire, " ~bassa latinitas~--bastard latin! "

Another man in a black gown rose near the accused; he was her lawyer. --The judges, who were fasting, began to grumble.

" Advocate, be brief, " said the president.

" Monsieur the President, " replied the advocate, " since the defendant has confessed the crime, I have only one word to say to these gentlemen. Here is a text from the Salic law; 'If a witch hath eaten a man, and if she be convicted of it, she shall pay a fine of eight thousand deniers, which amount to two hundred sous of gold. '

May it please the chamber to condemn my client to the fine? "

" An abrogated text, " said the advocate extraordinary of the king.

" Nego, I deny it, " replied the advocate.

" Put it to the vote! " said one of the councillors; " the crime is manifest, and it is late. "