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Updated: June 16, 2025
The dripping-pan, where crackled a rain of grease, filled with its continual sputtering the intervals of these thousand dialogues, which intermingled from one end of the apartment to the other. In the midst of this uproar, at the extremity of the tavern, on the bench inside the chimney, sat a philosopher meditating with his feet in the ashes and his eyes on the brands. It was Pierre Gringoire.
"Death of the devil!" objected Gringoire; "I shall break my neck. Your stool limps like one of Martial's distiches; it has one hexameter leg and one pentameter leg." "Climb!" repeated Clopin. Gringoire mounted the stool, and succeeded, not without some oscillations of head and arms, in regaining his centre of gravity.
The exposition, rather long and rather empty, that is to say, according to the rules, was simple; and Gringoire, in the candid sanctuary of his own conscience, admired its clearness. As the reader may surmise, the four allegorical personages were somewhat weary with having traversed the three sections of the world, without having found suitable opportunity for getting rid of their golden dolphin.
And many people preferred to see them alive, breathing, moving, elbowing each other in flesh and blood, in this Flemish embassy, in this Episcopal court, under the cardinal's robe, under Coppenole's jerkin, than painted, decked out, talking in verse, and, so to speak, stuffed beneath the yellow amid white tunics in which Gringoire had so ridiculously clothed them.
"I say, master, that I shall not be hanged, perchance, but that I shall be hanged indubitably. "That concerns us not." "The deuce!" said Gringoire. "She has saved your life. 'Tis a debt that you are discharging." "There are a great many others which I do not discharge." "Master Pierre, it is absolutely necessary." The archdeacon spoke imperiously.
Gringoire with horror recognized la Esmeralda. She was pale; her tresses, formerly so gracefully braided and spangled with sequins, hung in disorder; her lips were blue, her hollow eyes were terrible. Alas! "Phoebus!" she said, in bewilderment; "where is he? O messeigneurs! before you kill me, tell me, for pity sake, whether he still lives?"
"It is the recluse of the Tour-Roland," they exclaimed, with wild laughter, "it is the sacked nun who is scolding! Hasn't she supped? Let's carry her the remains of the city refreshments!" All rushed towards the Pillar House. In the meanwhile, Gringoire had taken advantage of the dancer's embarrassment, to disappear.
"Pierre Gringoire," said the archdeacon, "What have you done with that little gypsy dancer?" "La Esmeralda? You change the conversation very abruptly." "Was she not your wife?" "Yes, by virtue of a broken crock. We were to have four years of it. By the way," added Gringoire, looking at the archdeacon in a half bantering way, "are you still thinking of her?" "And you think of her no longer?"
A murmur of horror ran through the audience. "That phantom, that goat, all smacks of magic," said one of Gringoire's neighbors. "And that dry leaf!" added another. "No doubt about it," joined in a third, "she is a witch who has dealings with the surly monk, for the purpose of plundering officers." Gringoire himself was not disinclined to regard this as altogether alarming and probable.
His mouth was wide open, and from it there escaped a cry which no one heard, not that it was covered by the general clamor, great as that was but because it attained, no doubt, the limit of perceptible sharp sounds, the thousand vibrations of Sauveur, or the eight thousand of Biot. As for Gringoire, the first moment of depression having passed, he had regained his composure.
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