The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo [128]
This exclamation of distress, far from exciting compassion, only increased the amusement of the good Parisian populace who surrounded the ladder, and who, it must be confessed, taken in the mass and as a multitude, were at this time scarcely less cruel and brutish than that horrible tribe of Vagrant Vagabonds to whom we have already introduced the reader, and who were simply the lowest stratum of the people. Not a voice was raised around the wretched sufferer, except to mock at his thirst.
Certainly he was at this moment more grotesque and repulsive than he was pitiable, with his livid and streaming face, his wild eye, his mouth foaming with rage and suffering, and his tongue protruding. It must also be acknowledged, that, even had there been in the throng any charitable soul tempted to give a cup of cold water to the miserable creature in his agony, so strong an idea of shame and ignominy was attached to the infamous steps of the pillory, that this alone would have sufficed to repel the Good Samaritan.
In a few minutes Quasimodo cast a despairing look upon the crowd, and repeated in a still more heartrending voice, “Water!”
Every one laughed.
“Drink that!” shouted Robin Poussepain, flinging in his face a sponge which had been dragged through the gutter. “There, you deaf monster! I owe you something.”
A woman aimed a stone at his head:—
“That will teach you to wake us at night with your cursed chimes!”
“Well, my boy!” howled a cripple, striving to reach him with his crutch, “will you cast spells on us again from the top of the towers of Notre-Dame?”
“Here’s a porringer to drink out of!” added a man, letting fly a broken jug at his breast. “ ‘Twas you who made my wife give birth to a double-headed child, just by walking past her.”
“And my cat have a kitten with six feet!” shrieked an old woman, hurling a tile at him.
“Water!” repeated the gasping Quasimodo for the third time.
At this moment he saw the crowd separate. A young girl, oddly dressed, stepped from their midst. She was accompanied by a little white goat with gilded horns, and held a tambourine in her hand.
Quasimodo’s eye gleamed. It was the gipsy girl whom he had tried to carry off the night before,—a feat for which he dimly felt that he was even now being punished; which was not in the least true, since he was only punished for the misfortune of being deaf, and having been tried by a deaf judge. He did not doubt that she too came to be avenged, and to take her turn at him with the rest.
He watched her nimbly climb the ladder. Rage and spite choked him. He longed to destroy the pillory; and had the lightning of his eye had power to blast, the gipsy girl would have been reduced to ashes long before she reached the platform.
Without a word she approached the sufferer, who vainly writhed and twisted to avoid her, and loosening a gourd from her girdle, she raised it gently to the parched lips of the miserable wretch.
Then from that eye, hitherto so dry and burning, a great tear trickled, and rolled slowly down the misshapen face, so long convulsed with despair. It was perhaps the first that the unfortunate man had ever shed.10
But he forgot to drink. The gipsy girl made her customary little grimace of impatience, and, smilingly, pressed the neck of the gourd to Quasimodo’s jagged mouth.
He drank long draughts; his thirst was ardent.
When he had done, the poor wretch put out his black lips, doubtless to kiss the fair hand which had helped him. But the girl, perhaps not quite free from distrust, and mindful of the violent attempt of the previous night, withdrew her hand with the terrified gesture of a child who fears being bitten by a wild animal.
Then the poor deaf man fixed upon her a look of reproach and unutterable sorrow.
It would anywhere have been a touching sight, to see this lovely girl, fresh, pure, charming, and yet so weak, thus devoutly hastening