Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo (e reader for manga txt) 📕

I haven’t a sou to discharge the price of the garret, and the old crone will insist on being paid in advance. She distrusts me.”

“Here is the wherewithal to pay.”

Phoebus felt the stranger’s cold hand slip into his a large piece of money. He could not refrain from taking the money and pressing the hand.

“Vrai Dieu!” he exclaimed, “you are a good fellow!”

“One condition,” said the man. “Prove to me that I have been wrong and that you were speaking the truth. Hide me in some corner whence I can see whether this woman is really the one whose name you uttered.”

“Oh!” replied Phoebus, “ ’tis all one to me. We will take, the Sainte-Marthe chamber; you can look at your ease from the kennel hard by.”

“Come then,” said the shadow.

“At your service,” said the captain, “I know not whether you are Messer Diavolus in person; but let us be good friends for this evening; tomorrow I will repay you all my debts, both of purse and sword.”

They set out again at a rapid pace. At the expiration of a few minutes, the sound of the river announced to them that they were on the Pont Saint-Michel, then loaded with houses.

“I will first show you the way,” said Phoebus to his companion, “I will then go in search of the fair one who is awaiting me near the Petit-Châtelet.”

His companion made no reply; he had not uttered a word since they had been walking side by side. Phoebus halted before a low door, and knocked roughly; a light made its appearance through the cracks of the door.

“Who is there?” cried a toothless voice.

“Corps-Dieu! Tête-Dieu! Ventre-Dieu!” replied the captain.

The door opened instantly, and allowed the newcomers to see an old woman and an old lamp, both of which trembled. The old woman was bent double, clad in tatters, with a shaking head, pierced with two small eyes, and coiffed with a dish clout; wrinkled everywhere, on hands and face and neck; her lips retreated under her gums, and about her mouth she had tufts of white hairs which gave her the whiskered look of a cat.

The interior of the den was no less dilapitated than she; there were chalk walls, blackened beams in the ceiling, a dismantled chimneypiece, spiders’ webs in all the corners, in the middle a staggering herd of tables and lame stools, a dirty child among the ashes, and at the back a staircase, or rather, a wooden ladder, which ended in a trapdoor in the ceiling.

On entering this lair, Phoebus’s mysterious companion raised his mantle to his very eyes. Meanwhile, the captain, swearing like a Saracen, hastened to “make the sun shine in a crown” as saith our admirable Régnier.

“The Sainte-Marthe chamber,” said he.

The old woman addressed him as monseigneur, and shut up the crown in a drawer. It was the coin which the man in the black mantle had given to Phoebus. While her back was turned, the bushy-headed and ragged little boy who was playing in the ashes, adroitly approached the drawer, abstracted the crown, and put in its place a dry leaf which he had plucked from a fagot.

The old crone made a sign to the two gentlemen, as she called them, to follow her, and mounted the ladder in advance of them. On arriving at the upper story, she set her lamp on a coffer, and, Phoebus, like a frequent visitor of the house, opened a door which opened on a dark hole. “Enter here, my dear fellow,” he said to his companion. The man in the mantle obeyed without a word in reply, the door closed upon him; he heard Phoebus bolt it, and a moment later descend the stairs again with the aged hag. The light had disappeared.

VIII The Utility of Windows Which Open on the River

Claude Frollo (for we presume that the reader, more intelligent than Phoebus, has seen in this whole adventure no other surly monk than the archdeacon), Claude Frollo groped about for several moments in the dark lair into which the captain had bolted him. It was one of those nooks which architects sometimes reserve at the point of junction between the roof and the supporting wall. A vertical section of this kennel, as Phoebus had so justly styled it, would have made a triangle. Moreover, there was neither window nor air-hole, and the slope of the roof prevented one from standing upright. Accordingly, Claude crouched down in the dust, and the plaster which cracked beneath him; his head was on fire; rummaging around him with his hands, he found on the floor a bit of broken glass, which he pressed to his brow, and whose coolness afforded him some relief.

What was taking place at that moment in the gloomy soul of the archdeacon? God and himself could alone know.

In what order was he arranging in his mind la Esmeralda, Phoebus, Jacques Charmolue, his young brother so beloved, yet abandoned by him in the mire, his archdeacon’s cassock, his reputation perhaps dragged to la Falourdel’s, all these adventures, all these images? I cannot say. But it is certain that these ideas formed in his mind a horrible group.

He had been waiting a quarter of an hour; it seemed to him that he had grown a century older. All at once he heard the creaking of the boards of the stairway; someone was ascending. The trapdoor opened once more; a light reappeared. There was a tolerably large crack in the worm-eaten door of his den; he put his face to it. In this manner he could see all that went on in the adjoining room. The cat-faced old crone was the first to emerge from the trap-door, lamp in hand; then Phoebus, twirling his moustache, then a third person, that beautiful and graceful figure, la Esmeralda. The priest beheld her rise from below like a dazzling apparition. Claude trembled, a cloud spread over his eyes, his pulses beat violently, everything rustled