Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com

old loves. But when he had set them going, when he felt the whole cluster of bells move under his hands,
when he saw—for he could not hear it—the palpitating octave ascending and descending in that
enormous diapason, like a bird fluttering from bough to bough—when the demon of music, with his
dazzling shower of stretti, trills, and arpeggios, had taken possession of the poor deaf creature, then he
became happy once more, he forgot his former woes, and as the weight lifted from his heart his face lit
up with joy.
To and fro he hurried, clapped his hands, ran from one rope to the other, spurring on his six singers with
mouth and hands, like the conductor of an orchestra urging highly trained musicians.
“Come, Gabrielle,” said he, “come now, pour all thy voice into the Place, to-day is high festival.
Thibauld, bestir thyself, thou art lagging behind; on with thee, art grown rusty, sluggard? That is
well—quick! quick! led not the clapper be seen. Make them all deaf like me. That’s the way, my brave
Thibauld. Guillaume! Guillaume! thou art the biggest, and Pasquier is the smallest, and yet Pasquier
works better than thou. I warrant that those who can hear would say so too. Right so, my Garbrielle!
louder, louder! Hey! you two up there, you sparrows, what are you about? I do not see you make the
faintest noise? What ails those brazen beaks of yours that look to be yawning when they should be
singing? Up, up, to your work! ’Tis the Feast of the Annunciation. The sun shines bright, and we’ll have
a merry peal. What, Guillaume! Out of breath, my poor fat one!”
He was entirely absorbed in urging on his bells, the whole six of them rearing and shaking their
polished backs like a noisy team of Spanish mules spurred forward by the cries of the driver.
Happening, however, to glance between the large slate tiles which cover, up to a certain height, the
perpendicular walls of the steeple, he saw down in the square a fantastically dressed girl spreading out a
carpet, on which a little goat came and took up its position and a group of spectators formed a circle
round. This sight instantly changed the current of his thoughts, and cooled his musical enthusiasm as a
breath of cold air congeals a stream of flowing resin. He stood still, turned his back on the bells, and
crouching down behind the slate eaves fixed on the dancer that dreamy, tender, and softened look which
once already had astonished the Archdeacon. Meanwhile the neglected bells suddenly fell silent, to the
great disappointment of lovers of carillons who were listening in all good faith from the
Pont-aux-Change, and now went away as surprised and disgusted as a dog that has been offered a bone
and gets a stone instead.
IV. Fate
ONE fine morning in the same month of March—it was Saturday, the 29th, St. Eustache’s Day, I
think—our young friend, Jehan Frollo of the Mill, discovered, while putting on his breeches, that his
purse gave forth no faintest chink of coin. “Poor purse!” said he, drawing it out of his pocket, “what, not
a single little parisis? How cruelly have dice, Venus, and pots of beer disembowelled thee! Behold thee
empty, wrinkled, and flabby, like the bosom of a fury! I would ask you, Messer Cicero and Messer
Seneca, whose dog-eared volumes I see scattered upon the floor, of what use is it for me to know better
than any master of the Mint or a Jew of the Pont-aux-Change that a gold crown piece is worth thirty-five
unzain at twenty-five sous eight deniers parisis each, if I have not a single miserable black liard to risk
upon the double-six? Oh, Consul Cicero! this is not a calamity from which one can extricate one’s self by
periphrases—by quemadmodum, and verum enim vero!”