The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo [39]
He went up to a group of townspeople who seemed to him to be talking about his play. This is the fragment of conversation which he caught:—
“You know, Master Cheneteau, the Hotel de Navarre, which belonged to M. de Nemours?”
“Yes, opposite the Braque Chapel.”
“Well, the Treasury Department has just left it to Guillaume Alexandre, the painter of armorial bearings, for six pounds and eight pence Paris a year.”
“How high rents are getting to be!”
“Well, well!” said Gringoire with a sigh; “the rest are listening.”
“Comrades!” shouted one of the young scamps in the window; “Esmeralda! Esmeralda is in the square!”
This cry had a magical effect. Every one in the hall rushed to the windows, climbing up the walls to get a glimpse, and repeating, “Esmeralda! Esmeralda!”
At the same time a great noise of applause was heard outside.
“What do they mean by their ‘Esmeralda’?” said Gringoire, clasping his hands in despair. “Oh, heavens! I suppose the windows are the attraction now!”
He turned back again to the marble table, and saw that the play had stopped. It was just the moment when Jupiter should have appeared with his thunder. Now Jupiter stood motionless at the foot of the stage.
“Michel Giborne!” cried the angry poet, “what are you doing there? Is that playing your part? Go up, I tell you!”
“Alas!” said Jupiter, “one of the students has taken away the ladder.”
Gringoire looked. It was but too true. All communication was cut off between his plot and its solution.
“The rascal!” he muttered; “and why did he carry off that ladder?”
“That he might see Esmeralda,” piteously responded Jupiter. “He said, ‘Stay, there’s a ladder which is doing no one any good!’ and he took it.”
This was the finishing stroke. Gringoire received it with submission.
“May the devil seize you!” said he to the actors; “and if I am paid, you shall be too.”
Then he beat a retreat, with drooping head, but last to leave, like a general who has fought a brave fight.
And as he descended the winding Palace staircase, he muttered between his teeth: “A pretty pack of donkeys and clowns these Parisians are! They come to hear a miracle-play, and then pay no heed to it! Their whole minds are absorbed in anybody and everybody, —in Clopin Trouillefou, the Cardinal, Coppenole, Quasimodo, the devil! but in Madame Virgin Mary not a whit. If I had known, I’d have given you your fill of Virgin Marys. And I,—to come to see faces, and to see nothing but backs! to be a poet, and to have the success of an apothecary! True, Homer begged his way through Greek villages, and Naso died in exile among the Muscovites. But may the devil flay me if I know what they mean by their ‘Esmeralda’! What kind of a word is that, anyhow? It must be Egyptian!”
BOOK TWO
CHAPTER I
From Charybdis to Scylla
Night falls early in January. The streets were already dark when Gringoire left the Palace. This nightfall pleased him. He longed to find some dark and solitary alley where he might meditate at his ease, and let the philosopher apply the first healing balm to the poet’s wounds. Besides, philosophy was his only refuge; for he knew not where to find shelter. After the total failure of his first theatrical effort he dared not return to the lodging which he had occupied, opposite the Hay-market, in the Rue Grenier-sur- l‘Eau, having reckoned upon what the provost was to give him for his epithalamium to pay Master Guillaume Doulx-Sire, farmer of the taxes on cloven-footed animals in Paris, the six months’ rent which he owed him, namely, twelve Paris pence,—twelve times the worth of everything that he owned in the world, including his breeches, his shirt, and his hat. After a moment’s pause for reflection, temporarily sheltered under the little gateway of the prison of the treasurer of the Sainte-Chapelle, as to what refuge he should seek for the night, having all the pavements of Paris at his disposition, he remembered having noticed, the week before, in the Rue de la Savaterie,