The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo [62]
Gringoire tried to take the bag. She drew back.
“Don’t touch it! It’s an amulet. You will injure the charm, or the charm you.”
The poet’s curiosity was more and more eagerly aroused.
“Who gave it to you?”
She put her finger to her lip and hid the amulet in her bosom. He tried her with other questions, but she scarcely answered him.
“What does the word Esmeralda’ mean?”
“I don’t know,” said she.
“To what language does it belong?”
“I think it is a gipsy word.”
“So I suspected,” said Gringoire; “you are not a native of France?”
“I know nothing about it.”
“Are your parents living?”
She began to sing, to an ancient air:—
“A bird is my mother,
My father another.
Nor boat nor bark need I
As over the sea I fly;
A bird is my mother,
My father another.”
“Very good,” said Gringoire. “At what age did you come to France?”
“When I was very small.”
“To Paris?”
“Last year. Just as we entered the Papal Gate, I saw the reed warbler skim through the air; it was the last of August. I said: It will be a hard winter.”
“So it has been,” said Gringoire, charmed at this beginning of conversation; “I have spent it in blowing on my fingers to keep them warm. So you have the gift of prophecy?”
She fell back into her laconicism.
“No.”
“Is that man whom you call the Duke of Egypt, the head of your tribe?”
“Yes.”
“But it was he who married us,” timidly remarked the poet.
She made her usual pretty grimace.
“I don’t even know your name.”
“My name? You shall have it, if you wish: Pierre Gringoire.”
“I know a nicer one,” said she.
“Cruel girl!” replied the poet. “Never mind, you shall not vex me. Stay; perhaps you will love me when you know me better; and then you told me your history so confidingly that I owe you somewhat of mine. You must know, then, that my name is Pierre Gringoire, and that I am the son of the notary of Gonesse. My father was hanged by the Burgundians and my mother ripped up by the Picards, at the time of the siege of Paris, now twenty years ago. At the age of six years, therefore, I was left an orphan, with no sole to my foot but the pavement of Paris. I don’t know how I managed to exist from six to sixteen. A fruit-seller would give me a plum, a baker would throw me a crust; at nightfall I would contrive to be caught by the watch, who put me in prison, and there I found a bundle of straw. All this did not hinder me from growing tall and thin, as you see. In winter time I warmed myself in the sun, under the portico of the Hotel de Sens, and I thought it very absurd that the bale-fires of St. John should be deferred until the dog-days. At the age of sixteen I wished to learn a trade. I tried everything in turn. I became a soldier, but I was not brave enough. I turned monk, but I was not pious enough; and then, I’m no drinker. In despair, I became a carpenter’s apprentice, but I was not strong enough. I had more liking for the schoolmaster’s trade; true, I did not know how to read, but that was no hindrance. After a time, I discovered that I lacked some necessary quality for everything; and seeing that I was good for nothing, I became a poet and composer of rhymes, of my own free will. That is a trade that one can always take up when one is a vagabond; and it is better than stealing, as certain thievish young friends of mine advised. By good luck, I one fine day encountered Dom Claude Frollo, the reverend archdeacon of Notre-Dame. He took an interest in me, and it is to him I owe it that I am now a genuine man of letters, knowing Latin, from Cicero’s Offices to the necrology of the Celestine Fathers, and being ignorant of neither scholastics, poetry, nor rhythm, that sophism of sophisms. I am the author of the miracle-play performed today with great triumph, and before a great concourse of people, in the hall of the Palace. I have also written a book which will make six hundred pages, on the wonderful comet of 1465, which drove one man mad. I have also had other successes. Being somewhat of an engineer, I worked on Jean Maugue’s great bomb, which you know burst on Charenton