The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo [180]
The young girl sat by the window, still working away at her Neptune’s cave. The captain leaned against the back of her chair, and she addressed her affectionate complaints to him in an undertone.
“Where have you been for these two months, you naughty fellow?”
“I swear,” replied Phoebus, somewhat embarrassed by the question, “that you are handsome enough to disturb the dreams of an archbishop.”
She could not help smiling.
“There, there, sir! Leave my beauty out of the question, and answer me. Fine beauty, indeed!”
“Well, dear cousin, I was sent back to garrison.”
“And where, pray? And why didn’t you come and take leave of me?”
“At Queue-en-Brie.”
Phœbus was enchanted that the first question helped him to evade the second.
“But that is close by, sir. Why did you never come to see us?”
Here Phœbus was seriously embarrassed.
“Why—my duties—And then, fair cousin, I have been ill.”
“Ill!” she repeated in alarm.
“Yes,—wounded.”
“Wounded!”
The poor child was quite overcome.
“Oh, don’t be frightened about that!” said Phœbus, indifferently; “it was nothing. A quarrel, a sword-thrust; why should that trouble you?”
“Why should that trouble me?” cried Fleur-de-Lys, raising her lovely eyes bathed in tears. “Oh, you do not really mean what you say! What was this sword-thrust? I insist upon knowing everything.”
“Well, then, my dear, I had a row with Mahé Fédy,—you know whom I mean,—the lieutenant from Saint-Germain-en-Laye; and each of us ripped up a few inches of the other’s skin. That’s all there is about it.”
The lying captain was well aware that an affair of honor always exalts a man in a woman’s eyes. In fact, Fleur-de-Lys looked him in the face, quivering with terror, delight, and admiration. Still, she was not completely reassured.
“If you are sure that you are quite cured, dear Phoebus!” said she. “I don’t know your Mahé Fédy, but he is a bad man. And what did you quarrel about?”
Here Phoebus, whose imagination was only tolerably active, began to wonder how he was to get out of the scrape.
“Oh, I don’t know,—a trifle, a horse, a bit of gossip! Fair cousin,” cried he, in order to change the conversation, “what can that noise be in the square?”
He stepped to the window.
“Heavens! fair cousin, what a crowd there is in the square!”
“I don’t know,” said Fleur-de-Lys, “but I heard that a witch was to do public penance this morning before the church, and to be hanged afterwards.”
The captain felt so sure that Esmeralda’s affair was well over, that he took very little interest in Fleur-de-Lys’ words. Still he asked her one or two questions.
“What is this witch’s name?”
“I do not know,” replied she.
“And what do they claim that she has done?”
She again shrugged her white shoulders.
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, my sweet Savior!” said the mother, “there are so many sorcerers nowadays that they burn them, I verily believe, without knowing their names. You might as well try to find out the name of every cloud in the sky. After all, we may rest easy. The good God keeps his list.” Here the venerable lady rose, and came to the window. “Good Lord!” said she, “you’re right, Phoebus. What a rabble! Bless me! if they haven’t climbed upon the house-tops! Do you know, Phœbus, it reminds me of my young days. When King Charles VII entered Paris, there was exactly such a crowd. I’ve forgotten, now, just what year that was. When I talk to you of such matters, it seems to you like ancient history, doesn’t it, while to me it seems quite recent. Oh, that was a much finer-looking crowd than this is! They even hung upon the battlements of the Porte Saint-Antoine. The king had the queen on the crupper behind him, and after their Highnesses came all the ladies riding on the cruppers of all the lords. I remember people laughed well because beside Amanyon de Garlande, who was very short of stature, was my lord Matefelon, a knight of gigantic size, who had killed heaps of Englishmen. It was a