The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo [44]
If he had had the wealth of Peru in his pocket, he would certainly have given it to the dancing-girl; but Gringoire did not possess the wealth of Peru, and moreover America had not then been discovered.
Luckily an unexpected event came to his rescue.
“Will you be gone, you gipsy grasshopper?” cried a sharp voice from the darkest corner of the square.
The young girl turned in terror. This was not the voice of the bald-headed man; it was a woman’s voice,—the voice of a malicious and bigoted person.
However, the cry which alarmed the gipsy delighted a band of roving children.
“It’s the recluse of the Tour-Roland,” they shouted with riotous laughter. “It’s the sachettex scolding! Hasn’t she had her supper? Let’s carry her some bits from the city sideboard!”
All rushed towards the Maison-aux-Piliers.
Gringoire seized the occasion of the dancer’s distress to disappear. The children’s shouts reminded him that he too had not supped. He therefore hastened to the sideboard. But the little scamps had better legs than he; when he arrived, they had swept the table clear. There was not even a paltry cake at five cents the pound remaining. Nothing was left on the wall but the delicate fleurs-de-lis, twined with rose branches, painted in 1434 by Mathieu Biterne. That was a meagre repast.
It’s a tiresome matter to go to bed without supper; it is still less agreeable to have no supper and not to know where to find a bed. This was Gringoire’s condition. No bread, no shelter; he was goaded on every hand by necessity, and he found necessity very crabbed and cross. He had long since discovered the truth that Jupiter created mankind in a fit of misanthropy, and that throughout a wise man’s life fate keeps his philosophy in a state of siege. As for himself, the blockade had never been so complete. He heard his stomach sounding a parley, and he thought it very improper for an evil destiny to overcome his philosophy by famine.
He was becoming more and more absorbed in these melancholy reflections, when a peculiar although melodious song suddenly roused him from them. The young gipsy girl was singing.
Her voice was like her dancing, like her beauty. It was charming, and not to be defined,—possessing a pure and sonorous quality, something ethereal and airy. There was a constant succession of bursts of melody, of unexpected cadences, then of simple phrases mingled with shrill sibilant notes: now runs and trills which would have baffled a nightingale, but which never ceased to be harmonious; then softly undulating octaves rising and falling like the bosom of the youthful singer.
Her fine features expressed every caprice of her song with singular flexibility, from the most lawless inspiration to the chastest dignity. At one instant she seemed a mad woman, at the next a queen.
The words which she sang were in a language unknown to Gringoire, and apparently one with which she was not herself familiar, so little connection had the expression which she lent her song with the meaning of the words. Thus these four lines in her mouth became wildly gay:—
“Un cofre de gran riqueza
Hallaron dentro un pilar,
Dentro del, nuevas banderas
Con figuras de espantar.”y
And a moment later, the tone in which she uttered the words,—brought the tears into Gringoire’s eyes. And yet her song was full of joy, and she seemed to sing like a bird, from sheer happiness and freedom from care.
“Alarabes de cavallo
Sin poderse menear,
Con espadas, y los cuellos,
Ballestas de buen echar.”z
The gipsy’s song had troubled Gringoire’s reverie, but as the swan troubles the water. He listened in a sort of ecstasy which rendered him oblivious of all else. It was the first instant,