The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo [129]
The people themselves were affected by it, and began to clap their hands and shout,—
“Noël! Noël!”
It was at this instant that the recluse saw, from the window of her cell, the gipsy girl upon the pillory, and hurled her ominous curse at her head:—
“May you be accursed, daughter of Egypt! accursed! accursed!”
CHAPTER V
End of the Story of the Cake
Esmeralda turned pale, and descended from the pillory with faltering steps. The voice of the recluse still pursued her:—“Come down! come down, you gipsy thief! You will go up again!”
“The sachette has one of her ill turns today,” muttered the people, and they said no more; for women of this sort were held in much awe, which made them sacred. No one liked to attack those who prayed night and day.
The hour had come to release Quasimodo. He was unbound, and the mob dispersed.
Near the Grand-Pont, Mahiette, who was returning home with her two companions, stopped suddenly:—
“By the way, Eustache, what have you done with the cake?”
“Mother,” said the child, “while you were talking to the woman in that hole, there came a big dog and bit a piece out of my cake; so then I took a bite too.”
“What, sir!” she continued, “did you eat it all?”
“Mother, it was the dog. I told him not to eat it, but he wouldn’t mind me. So then I took a bite too; that’s all!”
“What a bad boy you are!” said his mother, smiling and scolding at once. “Only think, Oudarde! he ate every cherry on the tree in our orchard at Charlerange; so his grandfather says that he is sure to be a soldier. Let me catch you at it again, Master Eustache! Get along, you greedy boy!”
BOOK SEVEN
CHAPTER I
On the Danger of Confiding a Secret to a Goat
Several weeks had passed.11
It was early in March. The sun, which Dubartas,cg that classic father of periphrase, had not yet dubbed “the grand duke of candles,” was none the less bright and gay. It was one of those spring days which are so full of sweetness and beauty that all Paris, flocking into the squares and parks, keeps holiday as if it were a Sunday. On such clear, warm, peaceful days, there is one particular hour when the porch of Notre-Dame is especially worthy of admiration. It is the moment when the sun, already sinking towards the west, almost exactly faces the cathedral. Its rays, becoming more and more level, withdraw slowly from the pavement of the square, and climb the perpendicular face of the church, the shadows setting off the countless figures in high relief, while the great central rose-window flames like the eye of a Cyclop lighted up by reflections from his forge.
It was just that hour.
Opposite the lofty cathedral, reddened by the setting sun, upon the stone balcony built over the porch of a handsome Gothic house at the corner of the square and the Rue du Parvis, a group of lovely young girls were laughing and chatting gracefully and playfully. By the length of the veil which hung from the peak of their pointed coif, twined with pearls, down to their heels, by the fineness of the embroidered tucker which covered their shoulders, but still revealed, in the pleasing fashion of the day, the swell of their fair virgin bosoms, by the richness of their under petticoats, even costlier than their upper garments (wonderful refinement!), by the gauze, the silk, the velvet in which they were arrayed, and especially by the whiteness of their hands, which proved that they led a life of idle ease, it was easy to guess that these were rich heiresses. They were in fact Damoiselle Fleur-de-Lys de Gondelaurier and her companions, Diane de Christeuil, Amelotte de Montmichel, Colombe de Gaillefontaine, and the little De Champchevrier, all daughters of noble houses, just now visiting the widowed Madame de Gondelaurier, on account of Monseigneur de Beaujeu and his wife, who were coming to Paris in April to choose maids of honor to meet the Dauphiness Marguerite in Picardy and receive her from the hands of the Flemings. Now, all the country squires for thirty miles