Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com

seemed very tender to him. He mistrusted the capricious fancy of woman. And presently he was vaguely
conscious of entertaining a jealousy such as he never could have anticipated—a jealousy that made him
redden with shame and indignation.
“The captain,” thought he, “well, that might pass; but this one—!” The idea overwhelmed him.
His nights were dreadful. Since ever he learned that the gipsy girl was alive, the cold images of spectres
and the grave which had possessed him for a whole day, vanished, and the flesh returned to torment him.
He writhed upon his bed to know the girl so near him.
Each night his delirious imagination called up Esmeralda before him in all the attitudes most
calculated to inflame his blood. He saw her swooning over the stabbed officer, her fair, uncovered
bosom crimsoned with the young man’s blood—at that moment of poignant delight when the Archdeacon
had imprinted on her pallid lips that kiss of which, half dead as she was, the unhappy girl had felt the
burning pressure. Again he beheld her disrobed by the rude hands of the torturers, saw them lay bare
and thrust into the hideous boot with its iron screws her tiny foot, her round and delicate leg, her white
and supple knee. He saw that ivory knee alone left visible outside Torterue’s horrible apparatus. Finally,
he pictured to himself the girl in her shift, the rope round her neck, her shoulders and her feet bare,
almost naked, as he had seen her that last day and he clenched his hands in agony, and a long shiver ran
through him.
At last one night these images so cruelly inflamed his celibate’s blood that he tore his pillow with his
teeth, leaped from his bed, threw a surplice over his night garment, and left his cell, lamp in hand,
haggard, half naked, the fire of madness in his eyes.
He knew where to find the key of the Porte Rouge, the communication between the cloister and the
church, and, as we know, he always carried with him a key to the tower stair-case.
VI. Sequel to the Key of the Porte Rouge
THAT night Esmeralda had fallen asleep in her little chamber full of hope and sweet thoughts, the
horrors of the past forgotten. She had been sleeping for some time, dreaming, as ever, of Phœbus, when
she seemed to hear some sound. Her slumbers were light and broken—the sleep of a bird; the slightest
thing awoke her. She opened her eyes.
The night was very dark. Nevertheless, she saw a face peering in at her through the window—a lamp
shed its light on this apparition. The moment it found itself observed by Esmeralda the apparition
extinguished the lamp. However, the girl had had time to recognise the features. She closed her eyes in
terror.
“Oh,” she murmured weakly, “the priest!”
All her past misfortunes flashed like lightning through her mind. She fell back upon her bed frozen with
horror.
The next moment she felt something in contact with the whole length of her body which sent such a
shudder through her that she started up in bed, wide awake and furious. The priest had glided up beside
her and clasped his arms about her.