The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo [82]
“What a simpleton you are, poor La Herme!” cried Jehanne; “don’t you see, sister, that this little wretch is at least four years old, and that he would have less appetite for your breast than for a piece of roast meat.”
In fact, “the little monster” (for we ourselves should find it hard to describe him otherwise) was no new-born baby. He was a very bony and very uneasy little bundle, tied up in a linen bag marked with the monogram of M. Guillaume Chartier, then Bishop of Paris, with a head protruding from one end. This head was a most misshapen thing; there was nothing to be seen of it but a shock of red hair, an eye, a mouth, and teeth. The eye wept, the mouth shrieked, and the teeth seemed only waiting a chance to bite. The whole body kicked and struggled in the bag, to the amazement of the crowd, which grew larger and changed continually around it.
Dame Aloïse de Gondelaurier, a rich and noble lady, leading a pretty girl of some six years by the hand, and trailing a long veil from the golden horn of her headdress, stopped as she passed the bed, and glanced for an instant at the miserable creature, while her lovely little daughter Fleur-de-Lys de Gondelaurier, arrayed in silk and velvet, spelled out with her pretty little finger the permanent inscription fastened to the bedstead “For Foundlings.”
“Really,” said the lady, turning away in disgust, “I thought they only put children here!”
She turned her back, throwing into the basin a silver coin which jingled loudly among the copper pence, and made the four good women from the Etienne Haudry Home stare.
A moment later, the grave and learned Robert Mistricolle, prothonotary to the king, passed with a huge missal under one arm and his wife under the other (Damoiselle Guillemette la Mairesse), being thus armed on either hand with his spiritual and his temporal advisers.
“A foundling,” said he, after examination, “found apparently on the shores of the river Phlegethon!”
“It sees with but one eye,” remarked Damoiselle Guillemette; “there is a wart over the other.”
“That is no wart,” replied Master Robert Mistricolle; “that is an egg which holds just such another demon, who also bears another little egg containing another demon, and so on ad infinitum.”
“How do you know?” asked Guillemette la Mairesse.
“I know it for very good reasons,” answered the prothonotary.
“Mr. Prothonotary,” inquired Gauchère la Violette, “what do you predict from this pretended foundling?”
“The greatest misfortunes,” replied Mistricolle.
“Ah, good heavens!” said an old woman in the audience; “no wonder we had such a great plague last year, and that they say the English are going to land at Harfleur!”
“Perhaps it will prevent the queen from coming to Paris in September,” added another; “and trade ’s so bad already!”
“It is my opinion,” cried Jehanne de la Tarme, “that it would be better for the people of Paris if this little sorcerer here were laid on a fagot rather than a board.”
“A fine flaming fagot!” added the old woman.
“That would be more prudent,” said Mistricolle.
For some moments a young priest had been listening to the arguments of the Haudriettes and the sententious decrees of the prothonotary. His was a stern face, with a broad brow and penetrating eye. He silently put aside the crowd, examined the “little sorcerer,” and stretched his hand over him. It was high time; for all the godly old women were already licking their lips at the thought of the “fine flaming fagot.”
“I adopt this child,” said the priest.
He wrapped it in his cassock and bore it away. The spectators looked after him with frightened eyes. A moment later he had vanished through the Porte Rouge, which then led from the church to the cloisters.
When their first surprise was over, Jehanne de la Tarme whispered in La Gaultière’s ear,—
“I always told you, sister, that that young scholar Monsieur Claude Frollo was a wizard.”
CHAPTER II
Claude