She turned round.
He had assumed a tranquil air; he said to her,—
“Would you like to have me bring him to you?”
She uttered a cry of joy.
“Oh! go! hasten! run! quick! that captain! that captain! bring him to me!
I will love you for it!”
She clasped his knees.
He could not refrain from shaking his head sadly.
“I will bring him to you,” he said, in a weak voice. Then he turned his head and plunged down the staircase with great strides, stifling with sobs.
When he reached the Place, he no longer saw anything except the handsome horse hitched at the door of the Gondelaurier house; the captain had just entered there.
He raised his eyes to the roof of the church.
La Esmeralda was there in the same spot, in the same attitude.
He made her a sad sign with his head; then he planted his back against one of the stone posts of the Gondelaurier porch, determined to wait until the captain should come forth.
In the Gondelaurier house it was one of those gala days which precede a wedding.
Quasimodo beheld many people enter, but no one come out.
He cast a glance towards the roof from time to time; the gypsy did not stir any more than himself.
A groom came and unhitched the horse and led it to the stable of the house.
The entire day passed thus, Quasimodo at his post, la Esmeralda on the roof, Phoebus, no doubt, at the feet of Fleur-de-Lys.
At length night came, a moonless night, a dark night.
Quasimodo fixed his gaze in vain upon la Esmeralda; soon she was no more than a whiteness amid the twilight; then nothing. All was effaced, all was black.
Quasimodo beheld the front windows from top to bottom of the Gondelaurier mansion illuminated; he saw the other casements in the Place lighted one by one, he also saw them extinguished to the very last, for he remained the whole evening at his post.
The officer did not come forth.
When the last passers-by had returned home, when the windows of all the other houses were extinguished, Quasimodo was left entirely alone, entirely in the dark.
There were at that time no lamps in the square before Notre-Dame.
Meanwhile, the windows of the Gondelaurier mansion remained lighted, even after midnight.
Quasimodo, motionless and attentive, beheld a throng of lively, dancing shadows pass athwart the many-colored painted panes.
Had he not been deaf, he would have heard more and more distinctly, in proportion as the noise of sleeping Paris died away, a sound of feasting, laughter, and music in the Gondelaurier mansion.
Towards one o’clock in the morning, the guests began to take their leave.
Quasimodo, shrouded in darkness watched them all pass out through the porch illuminated with torches.
None of them was the captain.
He was filled with sad thoughts; at times he looked upwards into the air, like a person who is weary of waiting.
Great black clouds, heavy, torn, split, hung like crape hammocks beneath the starry dome of night.
One would have pronounced them spiders’ webs of the vault of heaven.
In one of these moments he suddenly beheld the long window on the balcony, whose stone balustrade projected above his head, open mysteriously.
The frail glass door gave passage to two persons, and closed noiselessly behind them; it was a man and a woman.
It was not without difficulty that Quasimodo succeeded in recognizing in the man the handsome captain, in the woman the young lady whom he had seen welcome the officer in the morning from that very balcony.
The place was perfectly dark, and a double crimson curtain which had fallen across the door the very moment it closed again, allowed no light to reach the balcony from the apartment.
The young man and the young girl, so far as our deaf man could judge, without hearing a single one of their words, appeared to abandon themselves to a very tender tete-a-tete.
The young girl seemed to have allowed the officer to make a girdle for her of his arm, and gently repulsed a kiss.
Quasimodo looked on from below at this scene which was all the more pleasing to witness because it was not meant to be seen.
He contemplated with bitterness that beauty, that happiness.
After all, nature was not dumb in the poor fellow, and his human sensibility, all maliciously contorted as it was, quivered no less than any other.
He thought of the miserable portion which Providence had allotted to him; that woman and the pleasure of love, would pass forever before his eyes, and that he should never do anything but behold the felicity of others.
But that which rent his heart most in this sight, that which mingled indignation with his anger, was the thought of what the gypsy would suffer could she behold it.
It is true that the night was very dark, that la Esmeralda, if she had remained at her post (and he had no doubt of this), was very far away, and that it was all that he himself could do to distinguish the lovers on the balcony.
This consoled him.
Meanwhile, their conversation grew more and more animated.
The young lady appeared to be entreating the officer to ask nothing more of her.
Of all this Quasimodo could distinguish only the beautiful clasped hands, the smiles mingled with tears, the young girl’s glances directed to the stars, the eyes of the captain lowered ardently upon her.
Fortunately, for the young girl was beginning to resist but feebly, the door of the balcony suddenly opened once more and an old dame appeared; the beauty seemed confused, the officer assumed an air of displeasure, and all three withdrew.