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

“Ah! do not weep for such a trifle, my graceful maid! ’tis a name to which one must get accustomed, that is all. When I once know it by heart, all will go smoothly. Listen then, my dear Similar; I adore you passionately. I love you so that ’tis simply miraculous. I know a girl who is bursting with rage over it⁠—”

The jealous girl interrupted him: “Who?”

“What matters that to us?” said Phoebus; “do you love me?”

“Oh!”⁠—said she.

“Well! that is all. You shall see how I love you also. May the great devil Neptunus spear me if I do not make you the happiest woman in the world. We will have a pretty little house somewhere. I will make my archers parade before your windows. They are all mounted, and set at defiance those of Captain Mignon. There are voulgiers, cranequiniers and hand couleveiniers.44 I will take you to the great sights of the Parisians at the storehouse of Rully. Eighty thousand armed men, thirty thousand white harnesses, short coats or coats of mail; the sixty-seven banners of the trades; the standards of the parliaments, of the chamber of accounts, of the treasury of the generals, of the aides of the mint; a devilish fine array, in short! I will conduct you to see the lions of the Hôtel du Roi, which are wild beasts. All women love that.”

For several moments the young girl, absorbed in her charming thoughts, was dreaming to the sound of his voice, without listening to the sense of his words.

“Oh! how happy you will be!” continued the captain, and at the same time he gently unbuckled the gypsy’s girdle.

“What are you doing?” she said quickly. This “act of violence” had roused her from her revery.

“Nothing,” replied Phoebus, “I was only saying that you must abandon all this garb of folly, and the street corner when you are with me.”

“When I am with you, Phoebus!” said the young girl tenderly.

She became pensive and silent once more.

The captain, emboldened by her gentleness, clasped her waist without resistance; then began softly to unlace the poor child’s corsage, and disarranged her tucker to such an extent that the panting priest beheld the gypsy’s beautiful shoulder emerge from the gauze, as round and brown as the moon rising through the mists of the horizon.

The young girl allowed Phoebus to have his way. She did not appear to perceive it. The eye of the bold captain flashed.

Suddenly she turned towards him⁠—

“Phoebus,” she said, with an expression of infinite love, “instruct me in thy religion.”

“My religion!” exclaimed the captain, bursting with laughter, “I instruct you in my religion! Corne et tonnerre! What do you want with my religion?”

“In order that we may be married,” she replied.

The captain’s face assumed an expression of mingled surprise and disdain, of carelessness and libertine passion.

“Ah, bah!” said he, “do people marry?”

The Bohemian turned pale, and her head drooped sadly on her breast.

“My beautiful love,” resumed Phoebus, tenderly, “what nonsense is this? A great thing is marriage, truly! one is none the less loving for not having spit Latin into a priest’s shop!”

While speaking thus in his softest voice, he approached extremely near the gypsy; his caressing hands resumed their place around her supple and delicate waist, his eye flashed more and more, and everything announced that Monsieur Phoebus was on the verge of one of those moments when Jupiter himself commits so many follies that Homer is obliged to summon a cloud to his rescue.

But Dom Claude saw everything. The door was made of thoroughly rotten cask staves, which left large apertures for the passage of his hawklike gaze. This brown-skinned, broad-shouldered priest, hitherto condemned to the austere virginity of the cloister, was quivering and boiling in the presence of this night scene of love and voluptuousness. This young and beautiful girl given over in disarray to the ardent young man, made melted lead flow in his-veins; his eyes darted with sensual jealousy beneath all those loosened pins. Any one who could, at that moment, have seen the face of the unhappy man glued to the worm-eaten bars, would have thought that he beheld the face of a tiger glaring from the depths of a cage at some jackal devouring a gazelle. His eye shone like a candle through the cracks of the door.

All at once, Phoebus, with a rapid gesture, removed the gypsy’s gorgerette. The poor child, who had remained pale and dreamy, awoke with a start; she recoiled hastily from the enterprising officer, and, casting a glance at her bare neck and shoulders, red, confused, mute with shame, she crossed her two beautiful arms on her breast to conceal it. Had it not been for the flame which burned in her cheeks, at the sight of her so silent and motionless, one would have declared her a statue of Modesty. Her eyes were lowered.

But the captain’s gesture had revealed the mysterious amulet which she wore about her neck.

“What is that?” he said, seizing this pretext to approach once more the beautiful creature whom he had just alarmed.

“Don’t touch it!” she replied, quickly, “ ’tis my guardian. It will make me find my family again, if I remain worthy to do so. Oh, leave me, monsieur le capitaine! My mother! My poor mother! My mother! Where art thou? Come to my rescue! Have pity, Monsieur Phoebus, give me back my gorgerette!”

Phoebus retreated amid said in a cold tone⁠—

“Oh, mademoiselle! I see plainly that you do not love me!”

“I do not love him!” exclaimed the unhappy child, and at the same time she clung to the captain, whom she drew to a seat beside her. “I do not love thee, my Phoebus? What art thou saying, wicked man, to break my heart? Oh, take me! take all! do what you will with me, I am thine. What matters to me the amulet! What matters to me my mother! ’Tis thou who