The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo [165]
Moreover, she gave no sign of life; neither the pretty pranks of Djali, nor the threats of the magistrates, nor the muttered curses of the audience seemed to reach her ear.
In order to rouse her, an officer was forced to shake her most unmercifully, the president raising his voice solemnly as he said:—
“Girl, you are of the gipsy race, addicted to sorceries. You, with your accomplice, the bewitched goat involved in the charge, did, upon the night of the 29th of March last, murder and stab, in league with the powers of darkness, by the aid of charms and spells, a captain of the king’s troops, one Phoebus de Châteaupers. Do you persist in denying this?”
“Horrible!” cried the young girl, hiding her face in her hands. “My Phœbus! oh, this is indeed hell!”
“Do you persist in your denial?” coldly asked the president.
“Certainly I deny it!” said she, in terrible accents; and she rose to her full height, her eyes flashing.
The president continued bluntly:—
“Then how do you explain the facts alleged against you?”
She answered in a broken voice,—
“I have told you already. I do not know. It was a priest,—a priest whom I do not know; an infernal priest who has long pursued me!”
“There it is,” said the judge; “the goblin monk.”
“Oh, my lords, have pity! I am only a poor girl.”
“A gipsy,” said the judge.
Master Jacques Charmolue said gently,—
“In view of the prisoner’s painful obstinacy, I demand that she be put to the rack.”
“Agreed,” said the president.
The wretched girl shuddered. Still, she rose at the order of the halberdiers, and walked with quite firm step, preceded by Charmolue and the priests of the Bishop’s Court, between two rows of halberds, towards a low door, which suddenly opened and closed behind her, making the unhappy Gringoire feel as if she had been devoured by some awful monster.
As she disappeared, a plaintive bleat was heard. It was the little goat mourning for her.
The hearing was over. A councillor remarked that the gentlemen were tired, and that it would be a long time for them to wait until the torture was over; and the president replied that a magistrate should be ever ready to sacrifice himself to his duty.
“What a disagreeable, tiresome jade,” said an old judge, “to force us to send her to the rack when we have not supped!”
CHAPTER II
Continuation of the Crown Piece Changed to a Dry Leaf
After going up a few steps and down a few steps in corridors so dark that they were lighted with lamps at midday, Esmeralda, still surrounded by her dismal escort, was pushed by the sergeants of the Palace into a room of forbidding appearance. This room, round in form, occupied the ground-floor of one of those great towers which still rise above the layer of modern structures with which the new Paris has covered the old city. There were no windows in this vault, nor was there any opening save the low entrance closed by a huge iron door. Still, there was no lack of light; a furnace was built in the thickness of the wall; a vast fire had been kindled in it, which filled the vault with its red glow, and robbed a paltry candle, placed in a corner, of all its radiance. The iron grating which served to close the furnace was just now raised, only showing, at the mouth of the flaming chasm against the dark wall, the lower edge of its bars, like a row of sharp black teeth set at regular intervals, which made the furnace look like the mouth of one of those legendary dragons that spit forth fire. By the light which it cast, the prisoner saw, all around the room, terrible instruments whose use she did not understand. In the middle of the room was a leather mattress laid almost flat upon the ground, over which hung a strap with a buckle, attached to a copper ring held by a flat-nosed monster carved on the keystone of the