登陆注册
3553900000057

第57章 BOOK Ⅳ(4)

When he took the child out of the sack,he found it was indeed ill-favoured.The poor little wretch had a great wart over the left eye,its head was sunk between its shoulders,the spine arched,the breastbone protruding,the legs bowed.Yet he seemed lively enough;and although it was impossible to make out the language of his uncouth stammerings,his voice evidenced a fair degree of health and strength.Claude's compassion was increased by this ugliness,and he vowed in his heart to bring up this child for love of his brother;so that,whatever in the future might be the faults of little Jehan,this good deed,performed in his stead,might be accounted to him for righteousness.It was a sort of investment in charity effected in his brother's name,a stock of good works laid up for him in advance,on which the little rogue might fall back if some day he found himself short of that peculiar form of small change—the only kind accepted at the Gate of Heaven.

He christened his adopted child by the name of Quasimodo,either to commemorate thereby the day on which he found him,or to indicate by that name how incomplete and indefinite of shape the unfortunate little creature was.And,in truth,one-eyed,humpbacked,bow-legged,poor Quasimodo could hardly be accounted more than'quasi'human.

1 Deal out cuffs on the head and fight.

Chapter 3-Immanis Pecoris Custos,Immanior IPSE1

Now,by 1482,Quasimodo had come to man's estate,and had been for several years bell-ringer at Notre-Dame,by the grace of his adopted father,Claude Frollo—who had become archdeacon of Josas,by the grace of his liege lord,Louis de Beaumont—who,on the death of Guillaume Chartier in 1472,had become Bishop of Paris,by the grace of his patron,Olivier le Daim,barber to Louis XI,King by the grace of God.

Quasimodo then was bell-ringer of Notre-Dame.

As time went on a certain indescribable bond of intimacy had formed between the bell-ringer and the church.Separated forever from the world by the double fatality of his unknown birth and his actual deformity,imprisoned since his childhood within those two impassable barriers,the unfortunate creature had grown accustomed to taking note of nothing outside the sacred walls which had afforded him a refuge within their shade.Notre-Dame had been to him,as he grew up,successively the egg,the nest,his home,his country,the universe.

Certain it is that there was a sort of mysterious and pre-existent harmony between this being and this edifice.When,as a quite young child,he would drag himself about with many clumsy wrigglings and jerks in the gloom of its arches,he seemed,with his human face and beast-like limbs,the natural reptile of that dark and humid stone floor,on which the shadows of the Roman capitals fell in so many fantastic shapes.

And later,the first time he clutched mechanically at the bell-rope in the tower,clung to it and set the bell in motion,the effect to Claude,his adopted father,was that of a child whose tongue is loosened and begins to talk.

Thus,as his being unfolded itself gradually under the brooding spirit of the Cathedral;as he lived in it,slept in it,rarely went outside its walls,subject every moment to its mysterious influence,he came at last to resemble it,to blend with it and form an integral part of it.His salient angles fitted,so to speak,into the retreating angles of the edifice till he seemed not its inhabitant,but its natural tenant.He might almost be said to have taken on its shape,as the snail does that of its shell.It was his dwelling-place,his strong-hold,his husk.There existed between him and the ancient church so profound an instinctive sympathy,so many material affinities,that,in a way,he adhered to it as a tortoise to his shell.The hoary Cathedral was his carapace.

Needless to say,the reader must not accept literally the similes we are forced to employ in order to express this singular union—symmetrical,direct,consubstantial almost—between a human being and an edifice.Nor is it necessary to describe how minutely familiar he had become with every part of the Cathedral during so long and so absolute an intimacy.This was his own peculiar dwelling-place—no depths in it to which Quasimodo had not penetrated,no heights which he had not scaled.Many a time had he crawled up the sheer face of it with no aid but that afforded by the uneven surface of the sculpture.The towers,over whose surface he might often be seen creeping like a lizard up a perpendicular wall—those two giants,so lofty,so grim,so dangerous—had for him no terrors,no threats of vertigo or falls from giddy heights;to see them so gentle between his hands,so easy to scale,you would have said that he had tamed them.By dint of leaping and climbing,of sportively swinging himself across the abysses of the gigantic Cathedral,he had become in some sort both monkey and chamois,or like the Calabrian child that swims before it can run,whose first play-fellow is the sea.

Moreover,not only his body seemed to have fashioned itself after the Cathedral,but his mind also.In what condition was this soul of his?What impressions had it received,what form had it adopted behind that close-drawn veil,under the influence of that ungentle life,it would be hard to say.Quasimodo had been born halt,humpbacked,half-blind.With infinite troubled and unwearied patience Claude Frollo had succeeded in teaching him to speak.But a fatality seemed to pursue the poor foundling.When,at the age of fourteen,he became a bell-ringer at Notre-Dame,a fresh infirmity descended on him to complete his desolation:the bells had broken the drum of his ears and he became stone-deaf.The only door Nature had left for him wide open to the world was suddenly closed forever.

同类推荐
  • 鬼谷子注

    鬼谷子注

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 中天竺舍卫国祇洹寺图经

    中天竺舍卫国祇洹寺图经

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 乾隆休妻

    乾隆休妻

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 兵要望江南

    兵要望江南

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 释名

    释名

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
热门推荐
  • 一世红颜(全集)

    一世红颜(全集)

    已改编为同名电视剧《一世红颜》,2017年即将开拍。皇帝欲立亲生女儿为后,天理难容!皇后隐忍十一载只为被废,匪夷所思!只可怜那天下无数英雄,却败给了一名弱女子!战乱将起,而起因是你!你何其忍心!天下分合,何时是我一个弱女子所能左右?带你走进一段复杂的后宫争斗之中。
  • 海峡两岸网络原创文学大赛入围作品选(10)短篇小说

    海峡两岸网络原创文学大赛入围作品选(10)短篇小说

    本系列图书精选“海峡两岸网络原创文学大赛”入围作品,分类结集成书。本书为第10册,收录第一届大赛14篇小说作品,包括都市情感类小说“窥”“十年”“那些美好的际遇,你还相信一见钟情吗”、浪漫爱情小说“案底”、以及青春校园类小说“那時花開”等短篇作品。
  • 名人佳作:格言寄语篇

    名人佳作:格言寄语篇

    《格言寄语篇》共有七辑,主要收入人生与命运、理想与追求、学习与求知、爱情与婚姻、道德与品格、交际与处世、生活与娱乐等方面格言。
  • 星罗轮转

    星罗轮转

    少年因一些特殊原因,导致自己失去了六岁以前的所有记忆,他彷徨、茫然,被人嫌弃,但在遇到一名老者后,一切都改变了。“没有以前的记忆,那你就珍惜当下。没有人在乎你、需要你,那都只是你自己认为的,你一直窝在这个渺小空间里,又岂会有人知道你,需要你呢?没有名字,那我便为你取个名字,以天为姓,以逆为名,逆天而行,行不可能之事!”
  • 跑偏的游戏愿望师

    跑偏的游戏愿望师

    “什么,当愿望师需要成为一名全职业大师,不是biu一下就完成愿望的么?”“瓦特?愿望师什么时候还有月老的兼职?”“干脆让我拯救世界得了……额,我只是开玩笑的,别当真。游戏要是关服了,咱们换个游戏耍不行么?不行,好吧,那咱们还是造游戏吧——”
  • 骗妻成婚

    骗妻成婚

    她在相亲那天跑去国外旅游,还和刚在国外认识不久的人成了男女朋友。她瞒着家里人交往了一个多月后,自信满满地把他带回家,想向老妈证明自己的眼光。结果发现,他就是她之前要相亲的对象。“地球真的这么小?!”“傻女人,还好我先遇到你!”不然被人骗走了还得了。
  • 积极心态引领成功

    积极心态引领成功

    本书教导读者要以积极的心态去面对学习工作,这样对获取成功更有帮助。
  • 五代春秋

    五代春秋

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 笃定

    笃定

    新一代青春文学领军人物、8090最热少女作家。夏茗悠青春成长小说文集,《笃定》为你讲述学生时代的日常、初涉社会的困惑迷茫,以及青春的情感与梦想。这本文集,起名《笃定》是因为,其中的每个短篇都在讨论人物内心世界与外部世界产生冲突后的出路,这个集子中所展示的正确的选择多为一种对自我的可贵坚持。我们每个人都渴望成为睿智有担当的成人,但在社会上找到自己的合适位置却又往往困难。在写作中,我在努力尝试着寻求社会与个人、理性与感性、主观与客观之间的平衡,如果大家也能从主人公们身上找到自己,从他们的生活经历中悟出对自己实现社会认知与自我认知、建立个人身份与人生价值有所帮助的一点东西,对写作者而言,这便是最幸福的事。
  • THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU

    THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。