The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo [47]
“Why not?” said he to himself.
Gringoire, being a practical philosopher of the streets of Paris, had observed that nothing is more favorable to reverie than the pursuit of a pretty woman when you don’t know where she is going. In this voluntary surrender of your own free will, this caprice yielding to another caprice, all unconscious of submission, there is a mixture of odd independence and blind obedience, a certain happy medium between slavery and liberty, which pleased Gringoire, a mind essentially mixed, undetermined, and complex, carrying everything to extremes, forever wavering betwixt all human propensities, and neutralizing them the one by the other. He frequently compared himself to Mahomet’s tomb, attracted in opposite directions by two loadstones, and perpetually trembling between top and bottom, between the ceiling and the pavement, between descent and ascent, between the zenith and the nadir.
If Gringoire were living now, what a golden mean he would observe between the classic and romantic schools!5
But he was not sufficiently primitive to live three hundred years, and ’t is a pity. His absence leaves a void but too deeply felt today.
However, nothing puts a man in a better mood for following people in the street (especially when they happen to be women), a thing Gringoire was always ready to do, than not knowing where he is to sleep.
He accordingly walked thoughtfully along behind the young girl, who quickened her pace and urged on her pretty goat, as she saw the townspeople were all going home, and the taverns—the only shops open upon this general holiday—were closing.
“After all,” thought he, “she must have a lodging somewhere; gipsies are generous. Who knows—”
And there were some very pleasant ideas interwoven with the points of suspension that followed this mental reticence.
Still, from time to time, as he passed the last belated groups of citizens shutting their doors, he caught fragments of their talk, which broke the chain of his bright hypotheses.
Now, it was two old men chatting together.
“Master Thibaut Fernicle, do you know it is cold?”
(Gringoire had known this since the winter first set in.)
“Yes, indeed, Master Boniface Disome! Are we going to have another winter like the one we had three years ago, in ‘80, when wood cost eight pence the measure?”
“Bah! that’s nothing, Master Thibaut, to the winter of 1407, when it froze from St. Martin’s Day to Candlemas, and with such fury that the parliamentary registrar’s pen froze, in the Great Chamber, between every three words, which was a vast impediment to the registration of justice!”
Farther on, two neighbor women gossiped at their windows; the candles in their hands flickered faintly through the fog.
“Did your husband tell you of the accident, Mademoiselle la Boudraque?”
“No. What was it, Mademoiselle Turquant?”
“The horse of M. Gilles Godin, the notary from the Châtelet, took fright at the Flemish and their procession, and knocked down Master Philippot Avrillot, lay brother of the Celestines.”
“Is that really so?”
“Indeed it is.”
“And such a plebeian animal! It’s a little too much. If it had only been a cavalry horse, it would not be so bad!”
And the windows were closed. But Gringoire had already lost the thread of his ideas.
Luckily, he soon recovered and readily resumed it, thanks to the gipsy girl, thanks to Djali, who still went before him,—two slender, delicate, charming creatures, whose tiny feet, pretty forms, and graceful manners he admired, almost confounding them in his contemplation; thinking them both young girls from their intelligence and close friendship; considering them both goats from the lightness, agility, and grace of their step.
But the streets grew darker and more deserted every instant. The curfew had long since sounded, and it was only at rare intervals that a passenger was seen upon the pavement or a light in any window. Gringoire had involved himself, by following in the footsteps of the gipsy, in that inextricable labyrinth of lanes, cross-streets, and blind alleys, which encircles the ancient sepulcher