The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo [166]
This Tartarus was known as “the torture-chamber.”
Upon the bed sat carelessly Pierrat Torterue, the sworn torturer. His assistants, two square-faced gnomes with leather aprons and linen breeches, were stirring the iron instruments upon the coals.
In vain the poor girl strove to summon all her courage; as she entered the room a feeling of terror overcame her.
The sergeants of the Bailiff of the Palace ranged themselves on one side, the priests of the Bishop’s Court on the other. A clerk, pen, ink, and paper, and a table were in one corner.
Master Jacques Charmolue approached the girl with a very sweet smile, saying,—
“Do you still persist in your denial, my dear child?”
“Yes,” replied she in a faint voice.
“In that case,” resumed Charmolue, “it will be our very painful duty to question you more urgently than we could wish. Be kind enough to take your seat on that bed. Master Pierrat, make room for the young lady, and close the door.”
Pierrat rose with a grunt.
“If I close the door,” he muttered, “my fire will go out.”
“Very well, my dear fellow,” replied Charmolue; “then leave it open.”
But Esmeralda still stood. That leather bed, upon which so many wretches had writhed in torment, alarmed her. Terror froze the marrow in her bones; she stood there, stupefied and bewildered. At a sign from Charmolue, the two assistants took hold of her and seated her upon the bed. They did not hurt her; but when they touched her, when the leather touched her, she felt all the blood in her body flow back to her heart. She cast a desperate look around the room. She seemed to see all those monstrous tools of torture, which were to the instruments of every sort which she had hitherto seen, what bats, spiders, and wood-lice are to birds and insects, moving and advancing towards her from every direction, to crawl over her and bite her and pinch her.
“Where is the doctor?” asked Charmolue.
“Here,” replied a black gown which she had not noticed before.
She shivered.
“Young lady,” resumed the caressing voice of the king’s proxy to the Ecclesiastical Court, “for the third time, do you persist in denying those things of which you are accused?”
This time she could only nod her head. Her voice failed her.
“You persist?” said Jacques Charmolue. “Then I am extremely sorry, but I must perform the duty of my office.”
“Mr. Proxy,” said Pierrat, abruptly, “with what shall we begin?”
Charmolue hesitated a moment, with the doubtful face of a poet in search of a rhyme.
“With the buskin,” said he at last.
The unfortunate girl felt herself so wholly forsaken by God and man, that her head fell upon her breast like a lifeless thing destitute of all strength.
The torturer and the doctor approached her together. At the same time the two assistants began to rummage in their hideous arsenal.
At the clink of that frightful heap of iron, the unhappy creature trembled like a dead frog when galvanism is applied to it. “Oh,” she murmured in so low a tone that no one heard it, “oh, my Phœbus!” Then she relapsed into her former immobility and marble-like silence. The sight would have wrung any heart save the hearts of judges. She seemed some poor sinning soul questioned by Satan at the scarlet gates of hell. Could it be that this gentle, fair, and fragile creature, a poor grain of millet given over by human justice to be ground in the fearful mills of torture, was the miserable body upon which that frightful array of saws, wheels, and racks was to fasten,—the being whom the rough hands of executioners and pincers were to handle?
But the horny fingers of Pierrat Torterue’s assistants had already brutally bared that charming leg and that tiny foot, which had so often amazed the by-standers with their grace and beauty in the streets of Paris.
“‘Tis a pity!” growled the torturer, as he looked at the