Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com

to Quasimodo with a gesture so imperious and significant, that the deaf hunchback in some degree
understood.
The Provost addressed him sternly: “What hast thou done, rascal, to be brought hither?”
The poor wretch, supposing that the Provost was asking his name, now broke his habitual silence and
answered in hoarse, guttural tones, “Quasimodo.”
The answer corresponded so little with the question that the former unbridled merriment threatened to
break out again, and Messire Robert, crimson with anger, roared, “Dost dare to mock me too,
arch-rogue?”
“Bell-ringer of Notre Dame,” continued Quasimodo, thinking that he must explain to the judges who he
was.
“Bell-ringer!” returned the Provost, who, as we know, had risen that morning in so vile a temper that
there was no need to add fresh fuel to the fire by such unwarrantable impudence. “Bell-ringer indeed!
They shall ring a carillon of rods on thy back at every street corner of Paris. Hearest thou, rascal?”
“If it is my age you desire to know,” said Quasimodo, “I think I shall be twenty come Martinmas.”
This was going too far; the Provost could contain himself no longer.
“Ha, miserable knave, thou thinkest to make sport of the law! Sergeant of the rod, you will take this
fellow to the pillory in the Grève and there flog him and turn him for an hour. He shall pay for this,
tête-Dieu! And I command that this sentence be proclaimed by means of the four legally appointed
trumpeters at the seven castellanies of the jurisdiction of Paris.”
The clerk proceeded forthwith to put the sentence on record.
“Ventre-Dieu! I call that giving judgment in good style!” said little Jehan Frollo of the Mill, from his
secluded corner.
The Provost turned and again transfixed Quasimodo with blazing eye. “I believe the rascal said
‘Ventre-Dieu!’ Clerk, you will add twelve deniers parisis as a fine for swearing, and let one-half of it go
to the Church of Saint-Eustache. I have a particular devotion for Saint-Eustache.”
A few minutes later and the sentence was drawn up. The language was brief and simple. The legal
procedure of the Provostry and bailiwick of Paris had not yet been elaborated by the President, Thibaut
Baillet, and Roger Barmne, King’s advocate, and therefore not yet obscured by that forest of chicanery
and circumlocution planted in it by these two lawyers at the beginning of the sixteenth century. All was
still clear, rapid, and to the point. There was no beating about the bush, and straight before you, at the
end of every path, you had a full view of the wheel, the gibbet, or the pillory. You knew, at least, exactly
where you were.
The clerk presented the sentence to the Provost, who affixed his seal to it and then departed, to continue
his round through the several courts of law, in a frame of mind which seemed likely, for that day, to fill
every jail in Paris. Jehan Frollo and Robin Poussepain were laughing in their sleeve, while Quasimodo
regarded the whole scene with an air of surprise and indifference.
Nevertheless, the clerk, while Maître Florian was engaged in reading over the judgment before signing