The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo [43]
Among the myriad of faces dyed scarlet by the flames, there was one which seemed absorbed even beyond all the rest in gazing at the dancer. It was the face of a man, austere, calm, and somber. This man, whose dress was hidden by the crowd about him, seemed not more than thirty-five years old, and yet he was bald; he had but a few grey and scanty locks of hair about his temples; his broad, high forehead was already beginning to be furrowed with wrinkles, but in his deep-set eyes sparkled an extraordinary spirit of youth, an ardent love of life and depth of passion. He kept them fixed on the gipsy; and while the giddy young damsel danced and fluttered to the delight of all, his thoughts seemed to become more and more melancholy. From time to time a smile and a sigh met upon his lips, but the smile was far sadder than the sigh.
The young girl stopped at last, breathless, and the people applauded eagerly.
“Djali!” said the gipsy.
Then Gringoire saw a pretty little white goat, active, alert, and glossy, with gilded horns, gilded hoofs, and a gilded collar, which he had not before observed, and which had hitherto remained quietly crouching on a corner of the carpet, watching its mistress as she danced.
“Djali,” said the dancer, “it’s your turn now.”
And sitting down, she gracefully offered the goat her tambourine.
“Djali,” she added, “what month in the year is this?”
The goat raised its fore-foot and struck once upon the tambourine. It was indeed the first month of the year. The crowd applauded.
“Djali,” resumed the young girl, turning her tambourine another way, “what day of the month is it?”
Djali lifted his little golden hoof and struck it six times upon the tambourine.
“Djali,” continued the daughter of Egypt, with still another twist of the tambourine, “what time of day is it?”
Djali gave seven blows, and at the same instant the clock on the Maison-aux-Piliers struck seven.
The people were lost in wonder.
“There is sorcery in this,” said a forbidding voice from the throng. It was the voice of the bald man, who had never taken his eyes from the gipsy.
She trembled, and turned towards him; but fresh applause broke out, and drowned the surly exclamation.
They even effaced it so completely from her mind that she went on questioning her goat.
“Djali, how does Master Guichard Grand-Remy, the captain of the city pistoleers, walk in the procession at Candlemas?”
Djali rose on his hind-legs and began to bleat, walking as he did so with an air of such polite gravity that the whole ring of spectators burst into a laugh at this parody of the selfish devotion of the captain of pistoleers.
“Djali,” continued the young girl, encouraged by her increasing success, “show us how Master Jacques Charmolue, the king’s attorney in the Ecclesiastical Court, preaches.”
The goat sat up and began to bleat, waving his fore-feet in so strange a fashion that, except for the bad French and the bad Latin, Jacques Charmolue himself stood before you,—gesture, accent, and attitude.
And the crowd applauded louder than before.
“Sacrilege! Profanation!” exclaimed the voice of the bald-headed man.
The gipsy turned again.
“Ah!” said she, “it is that ugly man!” Then projecting her lower lip beyond the upper one, she made a little pout which seemed habitual with her, pirouetted on her heel, and began to collect the gifts of the multitude in her tambourine.
Big pieces of silver,