Victor Marie Hugo (1802–1885). Notre Dame de Paris.
The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction. 1917.
I. Charitable Souls
S
The specimen of humanity lying on this plank on the morning of Quasimodo-Sunday, in the year of our Lord 1467, seemed to invite, in a high degree, the curiosity of the very considerable crowd which had collected round it. This crowd was largely composed of members of the fair sex; in fact, there were hardly any but old women.
In front of the row of spectators, stooping low over the bed, were four of them whom by their gray cagoules—a kind of hooded cassock—one recognised as belonging to some religious order. I see no reason why history should not hand down to posterity the names of these discreet and venerable dames. They were: Agnès la Herme, Jehanne de la Tarme, Henriette la Gaultière, and Gauchére la Violette—all four widows, all four bedes-women of the Chapelle Etienne-Haudry, who, with their superior’s permission, and conformably to the rules of Pierre d’Ailly, had come to hear the sermon.
However, if these good sisters were observing for the moment the rules of Pierre d’Ailly, they were certainly violating to their heart’s content those of Michel de Brache and the Cardinal of Pisa, which so inhumanly imposed silence upon them.
“What can that be, sister?” said Agnès la Herme as she gazed at the little foundling, screaming and wriggling on its wooden pallet, terrified by all these staring eyes.
“What are we coming to,” said Jehanne, “if this is the kind of children they bring into the world now?”
“I am no great judge of children,” resumed Agnès, “but it must surely be a sin to look at such a one as this.”
“It’s not a child, Agnès.”
“It’s a monkey spoiled,” observed Gauchére.
“It’s a miracle,” said Henriette la Gaultière.
“If so,” remarked Agnès, “it is the third since Lætare Sunday, for it is not a week since we had the miracle of the mocker of pilgrims suffering divine punishment at the hands of Our Lady of Aubervilliers, and that was already the second within the month.”
“But this so-called foundling is a perfect monster of abomination,” said Jehanne.
“He bawls loud enough to deafen a precentor,” continued Gauchére. “Hold your tongue, you little bellower!”
“And to say that the Bishop of Reims sent this monstrosity to the Bishop of Paris!” exclaimed Gaultière, clasping her hands.
“I expect,” said Agnès la Herme, “that it is really a beast of some sort, an animal—the offspring of a Jew and a sow, something, at any rate, that is not Christian, and that ought to be committed to the water or the fire.”
“Surely,” went on La Gaultière, “nobody will have any thing to do with it.”
“Oh, mercy!” cried Agnès, “what if those poor nurses at the foundling-house at the bottom of the lane by the river, close beside the Lord Bishop’s—what if they take this little brute to them to be suckled. I would rather give suck to a vampire.”
“What a simpleton she is, that poor La Herme!” returned Jehanne; “don’t you see, ma sæur, that this little monster is at least four years old, and that a piece of meat would be more to his taste than your breast?”
And in truth “the little monster” (for we ourselves would be at a loss to describe it by any other name) was not a newborn babe. It was a little angular, wriggling lump, tied up in a canvas sack marked with the monogram of Messier Guillaume Charier, the then Bishop of Paris, with only its head sticking out at one end. But what a head! All that was visible was a thatch of red hair, an eye, a mouth, and some teeth. The eye wept, the mouth roared, and the teeth seemed only too ready to bite. The whole creature struggled violently in the sack, to the great wonderment of the crowd, constantly increasing and collecting afresh.
The Lady Aloïse de Gondelaurier, a wealthy and noble dame, with a long veil trailing from the peak of her head-dress, and holding by the hand a pretty little girl of about six years of age, stopped in passing and looked for a moment at the hapless creature, while her charming little daughter, Fleur-de-lis de Gondelaurier, all clad in silks and velvets, traced with her pretty finger on the permanent tablet attached to the bed the words: “Enchants trouvés.”
“Good lack!” said the lady, turning away in disgust. “I thought they exposed here nothing but babes.”
And she went on her way, first, however, tossing a silver Florin into the basin among the coppers, causing the eyes of the poor sisters of the Chapels Etienne-Haudry to open wide with astonishment.
A moment afterward the grave and learned Robert Mistricolle, promontory to the King, came along, with an enormous missal under one arm, and on the other his wife (Dame Guillemette la Maitres), having thus at his side his two monitors—the spiritual and the temporal.
“Foundling!” said he, after examining the object. “Found evidently on the brink of the river Phlegethon.”
“You can see but one eye,” observed Dame Guillemette. “There is a wart over the other.”
“That is no wart,” returned Maître Robert Mistricolle. “That is an egg containing just such another demon, which has a similar little egg with another little devil inside it, and so on.”
“How do you know that?” asked Dame Guillemette.
“I know it for a fact,” replied the promontory.
“Monsieur the promontory,” asked Gauchére, “what do you predict from this pretended foundling?”
“The greatest calamities,” returned Mistricolle.
“Ah, mon Dieu!” cried an old woman among the by-standers, “and there was already a considerable pestilence last year, and they say that the English are prepared to land in great companies at Harfleur.”
“Maybe that will prevent the Queen coming to Paris in September,” remarked another, “and trade is bad enough as it is.”
“It’s my opinion,” cried Jehanne de la Tarme, “that it would be better for the people of Paris if this little wizard were lying on a bundle of fagots instead of a bed.”
“And nice blazing fagots too,” added the old woman.
“It would be wiser,” said Mistricolle.
For some moments past a young priest, stern of face, with a broad forehead and penetrating eye, had stood listening to the argument of the Haudriette sisters, and the pronouncements of the promontory. He now silently parted the crowd, examined the “little wizard,” and stretched a hand over him. It was high time, for these pious old women were already licking their lips in anticipation of the “fine blazing fagots.”
“I adopt this child,” said the priest.
He wrapped it in his Spokane and carried it off, the bystanders looking after him in speechless amazement. The next moment he had disappeared through the Porte Rouge, which led at that time from the church into the cloister.
The first shock of surprise over, Jeannine de la Tame bent down and whispered in the ear of La Gaultière: “Did I not say to you, ma sœur, that that young cleric, M. Claude Follow was a sorcerer?”