The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo [185]
The judge had lied! the priest had lied! It was indeed he, she could not doubt it; he was there, handsome, living, clad in his splendid uniform, the plume upon his head, his sword at his side!
“Phoebus!” she cried; “my Phoebus!”
And she strove to stretch out her arms quivering with love and rapture; but they were bound.
Then she saw the captain frown, a lovely young girl who leaned upon him look at him with scornful lip and angry eyes; then Phœbus uttered a few words which did not reach her, and both vanished hastily through the window of the balcony, which was closed behind them.
“Phœbus,” she cried in despair, “do you believe this thing?”
A monstrous idea had dawned upon her. She remembered that she had been condemned for the murder of Captain Phoebus de Châteaupers.
She had borne everything until now. But this last blow was too severe. She fell senseless upon the pavement.
“Come,” said Charmolue, “lift her into the tumbrel, and let us make an end of it!”
No one had observed, in the gallery of statues of the kings carved just above the pointed arches of the porch, a strange spectator who had until now watched all that happened with such impassivity, with so outstretched a neck, so deformed a visage, that, had it not been for his party-colored red and violet garb, he might have passed for one of those stone monsters through whose jaws the long cathedral gutters have for six centuries past disgorged themselves. This spectator had lost nothing that had passed since noon before the doors of Notre-Dame. And at the very beginning, unseen by any one, he had firmly attached to one of the small columns of the gallery a strong knotted rope, the end of which trailed upon the ground below. This done, he began to look about him quietly, and to whistle from time to time when a blackbird flew by him.
All at once, just as the hangman’s assistants were preparing to execute Charmolue’s phlegmatic order, he bestrode the balustrade of the gallery, seized the rope with his feet, knees, and hands; then he slid down the façade as a drop of rain glides down a window-pane, rushed towards the two executioners with the rapidity of a cat falling from a roof, flung them to the ground with his two huge fists, seized the gipsy girl in one hand, as a child might a doll, and with one bound was in the church, holding her above his head, and shouting in a tremendous voice,—
“Sanctuary!”
All this was done with such speed that had it been night, one flash of lightning would have sufficed to see it all.
“Sanctuary! sanctuary!” repeated the mob; and the clapping of ten thousand hands made Quasimodo’s single eye flash with pride and pleasure.
This shock restored the prisoner to her senses. She raised her eyelids, looked at Quasimodo, then closed them suddenly, as if alarmed by her savior.
Charmolue stood stupefied, and the hangman and all the escort did the same. In fact, within the precincts of Notre-Dame the prisoner was secure; the cathedral was a sure place of refuge; all human justice died upon its threshold.
Quasimodo had paused beneath the great portal, his broad feet seeming as firmly rooted to the pavement of the church as the heavy Roman pillars. His big bushy head was buried between his shoulders like the head of a lion which also has a mane and no neck. He held the young girl, trembling from head to foot, suspended in his horny hands like a white drapery; but he carried her as carefully as if he feared he should break or injure her. He seemed to feel that she was a delicate, exquisite, precious thing, made for other hands than his. At times he looked as if he dared not touch her, even with his breath.