0
THE HUNCHBACK  OF  NOTRE DAME.


Outside the balustrade of the tower, below the
very point where the priest had stopped, there
was one of those stone gutters fantastically
carved, with wliich Gothic edifices are bristled,
and in a crevice of this gutter were two fine wall-
flowers in blossom, which waved, and, as if they
were animated by the breeze, seemed to be sport-
ively bowing to each other. Above the towers,
aloft in the air, small birds were heard twittering
and screaming.
But the priest neither heard nor saw any of
these things. He was one of those who take no
notice either of mornings, or of birds, or of flow-
His contemplation was engrossed  by one
only point of that immense horizon, which pre-
sented so many aspects around him.
Quasimodo burned with impatience to inquire
what he had done with the Egyptian ; but the
Archdeacon seemed at that moment to be out of
the world.   With him it was evidently one of
those critical moments of life, when a man would
not feel the earth crumbling beneath his feet. He
remained motionless and silent, with his eyes in-
variably fixed on  a particular spot ;  and this
silence and this motionless attitude had some-
thing so formidable that the savage bell-ringer
himself shuddered before and durst
not  disturb  it.    All he could do
therefore, and this was one way of
questioning the Archdeacon, was to
follow the  direction  of  his eye ;
and thus guided, that of the un-
happy   hunchback  fell upon the
-Place de Grčve.
He now perceived what the priest
•was looking at. The ladder was set
up against the permanent gibbet.
There were a few people m the
place and a great number of sol-
dier». A man was dragging along
the pavement something white to
which something black was cling-
ing. This man stopped at the foot
of the gibbet. What then took place
he could not clearly discern : not
that the sight of his only eye was at
all impaired, but a party of soldiers
prevented his distinguishing what
was going forward. Besides, at
that moment the sun burst forth
and poured such a flood of light
above the horizon, that every point
of Paris, steeples, chimneys, gables,
seemed to be set on fire at one and
the same moment.
Meanwhile the man began to
mount the ladder. Quasimodo now
saw distinctly again. He carried
across his shoulder a female, a
young female dressed in white ; this
young female had a rope about
her neck. Quasimodo knew her.
It was the Egyptian !
The man reached the top of the
ladder. There he arranged the
rope. The priest, in order to see
the better, now knelt down upon
the balustrade.
The man suddenly kicked away
the ladder, and Quasimodo, who
had not breathed for some mo-
ments, saw the unfortunate girl,
with the man crouched upon her
shoulders, dangling at the end of
the rope within two or three yards
of the pavement. The rope made
several revolutions, and Quasimodo
saw the body of the victim writhe
in frightful convulsions. The priest,
on his part, with outstretched neck
and eyes starting from his head,
contemplated the terrific group of
the man and the young girl, the
spider and the fly.
At this most awful moment, a demon laugh, a
laugh such as one only who has ceased to be hu-
man is capable of, burst forth upon the livid face
of the priest. Quasimodo heard not this laugh,
but he saw it. The bell-ringer recoiled a few
steps from the Archdeacon, then suddenly rushing
furiously upon him, thrust him with his two huge
hands into the abyss, over which he was leaning.
"Damnation ! " cried the priest as he fell.
The gu ter beneath caught him and broke the
fall. He clung to it with eager hands, and was
just opening his mouth to give a second cry, when
he beheld the formidable and avenging face of
Quasimodo protruded over the balustrade above
his head.   He was then silent.
The abyss was beneath him—a fall of more than
two hundred feet and the pavement! In this
terrible situation, the Archdeacon uttered neither
"word nor groan. Suspended from the gutter, he
wriggled, and made incredible efforts to raise
himself upon it : butt his hands had no hold of
the granite, and his toes merely streaked the
blackened wall without finding the least support.
All who have ever been up the towers of Notre
Dame know that the stone bellies immediately
under the balustrade. It was against the retreat-
ing slope that the wretched Archdeacon exhausted
himself in fruitless efforts. He had not to do
with a perpendicular wall, but a wall that receded
from him.
Quasimodo might have withdrawn him from
the gulf by merely reaching him his hand : but
he did not so much as look at him. He looked at
the Grčve. He looked at the Egyptian. He
looked at the gibbet. The hunchback was lean-
ing upon the balustrade, at the very spot which
the Archdeacon had just before occupied; and
there, never turning his eye from the only object
which existed for him at that moment, he was
motionless and mute as one thunderstruck; while
a stream flowed in silence from that eye, which
till then had not shed a single tear.
The Archdeacon meanwhile began to pant. The
perspiration trickled from his bald brow, the
blood oozed from his fingers' ends ; the skin was
rubbed from his knees against tlie wall. He
heard his cassock, which hung by the gutter,
crack and rip at every movement that he made.
To crown his misery, that gutter terminated in a
leaden pipe which bent with his weight. The
Archdeacon felt it slowly giving way. The
wretched man said to himself, that when his cas-
sock should be rent, when the leaden pipe should
yield, he must fall, and horror thrilled his entrails.
At times he wildly eyed a sort of narrow ledge,
formed about ten feet below him by the architect-
ural embellishments of the church, and in his dis-
tress he prayed to Heaven in the recesses of his
In the Parvis several groups of curious seech,
tors were calmly puzzling their brains to divine
who could be the maniac that was amusing him
self in this strange manner. The priest heard
them say, for their voices reached him, clear and
sharp, " By'r Lady, he must break his neck ! "
Quasimodo wept.
At length the Archdeacon, foaming with raee
and terror, became sensible that all was useless
He nevertheless mustered all his remaining
strength for a last effort. Setting both his knees
against the wall, he hooked his hands into a cleft
in the stones, and succeeded in raising himself
about a foot; but this struggle caused the leaden
beak which supported him to give way suddenly
His cassock was ripped up from the same cause
Feeling himself sinking, having only his stiffened
and crippled hands to hold by, the wretched man
closed his eyes, and presently his fingers relaxed
their grasp. Down he fell !
Quasimodo watched him faffing.
A fall from such a height is rarely perpendicu.
lar. The Archdeacon, launched into the abyss
fell at first head downward and with outstretched
arms, and then whirled several times over and
over ; dropping upon a roof of a house, and break-
ing some of his bones. He was not
dead when he reached it, for the
bell-ringer saw him strive to
grapple the ridge with his fingers •
but the slope was too steep, and his
strength utterly failed him. Sliding
rapidly down the roof, like a tile
that has got loose, down he went,
and rebounded on the pavement,
He never stirred more.
Quasimodo then raised his eye to
the Egyptian, dangling from the
gallows. At that distance he could
see her quiver beneath her white
robe in the last convulsive agonies
of death ; he then looked down at
the Archdeacon, stretched at the
foot of the tower, with scarcely a
vestige of the human form about
him, and heaving a deep sigh, he
cried, "There is all I ever loved !"
Chapter III—Marriage ob Cap-
tain Phoebus.
Toward the evening of the same
day, when the judicial officers ot
the bishop came to remove the man-
gled corpse of the Archdeacon from
the pavement of the Parvis, Qua-
simodo was not to be found in
Notre Dame.
Many rumors were circulated re-
specting this affair. The general
opinion was that the day had ar-
rived when, according to agreement,
Quasimodo, or the devil, was to
carry away Claude Frollo, the sor-
cerer. It was presumed that he
had smashed the body to get at the
soul, just as monkeys crack the
shell of a nut to get at the kernel.
For this reason the Archdeacon
was not interred in consecrated
ground.
Louis XI died in the month of
August in the following year, 1483.
As for Pierre Gringoire, he con-
trived to save the goat, and to gain
applause as a tragic writer, lt
appears that, after dabbling in as-
trology, philosophy, architecture,
alchymy, and all sorts of silly pur-
suits, he reverted to tragedy, which
is the silliest of all.   This he called
THBUST HIM INTO THE ABĎSS.
soul, to permit him to end his life on this space of
two square feet, were it even to last a hundred
years. Once he glanced at the abyss beneath him :
when he raised his head his eyes were closed and
his hair standing erect.
There was something frightful in the silence of
these two persons. While the Archdeacon, at the
distance of a few feet, was experiencing the most
horrible agonies, Quasimodo kept his eye fixed on
the Grčve and wept.
The Archdeacon, perceiving that all his exer-
tions served but to shake the only frail support
that was left him, determined to stir no more.
There he was, clasping the gutter,scarcely breath-
ing, absolutely motionless save that mechanical
convulsion of the abdomen which supervenes in
sleep, when you dream that you are falling. His
fixed eyes glared in a wild and ghastly manner.
Meanwhile he began to lose his hold : his fingers
slipped down the gutter : he felt his arms becom-
ing weaker and weaker, and his body heavier and
heavier. The leaden pipe which supported him
bent more and more every moment toward the
abyss. Beneath he beheld—horrid sight !—the
roof of St. Jean-le-Rond, diminutive as a card
bent in two. He eyed one after another the pas-
sionless sculptures of the tower, suspended like
himself over the abyss, but without fear for them-
selves or pity for him. All about him was stone :
before his eyes gaping monsters; under him, at the
bottom of the gulf, the pavement ; over his head
Quasimodo weeping.
" liaving come to a tragic
In
the accompts of the Ordinary tor
1483 may be found the following
entry relative to his dramatic triumphs : w
Jehan Marchand and Pierre Gringoire, carpenter
and composer, who made and composed tne
mvstery enacted at the Chatelet of Pans at M
entry of Monsieur the legate, and arranged tne
characters, habited and equipped as by, tne saw
mystery was required ; and also for having mafl»
the scaffolds which were necessary thereto, on»
hundred livres."                           .    , „ „_. .. »
Phoebus de Chateaupers likewise "came to
tragic end : " he married.
Chapter IV.—Marriage of Quasimodo.
We have just said that, on the> day when the
Egyptian and the Archdeacon died, Quas"»«>ao
was not to be found in Notre Dame.   HerVH»
never seen afterward, nor was it ever w>v
what became of him.                              . T. j;s.
In the night following the execution otw^
meralda, the hangman and his assistants w
down her body from the gibbet, and convey
according to custom, to the vault of Montfauco
Montfaucon, as we are told by Sauvai, was ^
most ancient and the most superb rgal'ows - le
kingdom." Between the faubourgs of the ityfr
and St. Martin, about one hundred and sixty i
oms from the walls of Pans, and a few f
bow shots from la Courtille, was seen aUne-1,v
a gentle, imperceptible rise, ^t sufficiently e_
ed to be seen for several leagues ioi no i » ^
ing of strange form, nearly resembling *