The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo [37]
“Ha, ha!” replied the fat magistrate, who was but half awake, “jolly enough, in truth!”
Gringoire was forced to content himself with this eulogy; for a storm of applause, mingled with prodigious shouts, cut short their conversation. The Pope of Fools was elected.
“Noël! Noel! Noël!” shouted the people on all sides.
That was indeed a marvelous grin which now beamed through the hole in the rose-window. After all the pentagonal, hexagonal, and heteroclitic faces which had followed one another in quick succession at the window without realizing that ideal of the grotesque constructed by imagination exalted by revelry, it required nothing less to gain the popular vote than the sublime grimace which had just dazzled the assembly. Master Coppenole himself applauded; and Clopin Trouillefou, who had competed for the prize (and Heaven knows to what intensity of ugliness his features could attain), confessed himself conquered. We will do the same. We will not try to give the reader any idea of that tetrahedron-like nose, of that horseshoe-shaped mouth; of that small left eye overhung by a bushy red eyebrow, while the right eye was completely hidden by a monstrous wart; of those uneven, broken teeth, with sad gaps here and there like the battlements of a fortress; of that callous lip, over which one of these teeth projected like an elephant’s tusk; of that forked chin; and especially of the expression pervading all this, that mixture of malice, amazement, and melancholy. Imagine, if you can, that comprehensive sight.
The vote was unanimous; the crowd rushed into the chapel. They returned leading the fortunate Pope of Fools in triumph. But it was then only that surprise and admiration reached their highest pitch; the grimace was his natural face.
Or rather the entire man was a grimace. A large head bristling with red hair; between his shoulders an enormous hump, with a corresponding prominence in front; legs and thighs so singularly crooked that they touched only at the knees, and, seen from the front, resembled two reaping-hooks united at the handle; broad feet, huge hands; and, with all this deformity, a certain awe-inspiring air of vigor, agility, and courage; strange exception to the rule which declares power, as well as beauty, to be the result of harmony,—such was the pope whom the fools had chosen to reign over them.
He looked like a giant broken to pieces and badly cemented together.
When this species of Cyclop appeared upon the threshold of the chapel, motionless, thickset, almost as broad as he was long, “the square of his base,” as a great man once expressed it, the people recognized him instantly, by his party-colored red and purple coat spangled with silver, and particularly by the perfection of his ugliness, and cried aloud with one voice:—
“It is Quasimodo, the bell-ringer! It is Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre-Dame! Quasimodo, the one-eyed! Quasimodo, the bandy-legged! Noel! Noël!”
The poor devil evidently had an abundance of nicknames to choose from.
“Let all pregnant women beware!” cried the students.
“Or all those who hope to be so,” added Joannes.
In fact, the women hid their faces.
“Oh, the ugly monkey!” said one of them.
“As wicked as he is ugly,” added another.
“He’s the very devil,” added a third.
“I am unlucky enough to live near Notre-Dame. I hear him prowling among the gutters by night.”
“With the cats.”
“He’s always on our roofs.”
“He casts spells upon us through the chimneys.”
“The other evening he came and pulled a face at me through the window. I thought it was a man. He gave me such a fright!”
“I’m sure he attends the Witches’ Sabbath. Once he left a broomstick on my leads.”
“Oh, what a disagreeable hunchback’s face he has!”
“Oh, the villainous creature!”
“Faugh!”
The men, on the contrary, were charmed, and applauded.
Quasimodo, the object of this uproar, still stood at the chapel door, sad and serious, letting himself be admired.
A student (Robin Poussepain, I think) laughed in his very