登陆注册
5256400000061

第61章 CHAPTER III(1)

~IMMANIS PECORIS CUSTOS, IMMANIOR IPSE~.

Now, in 1482, Quasimodo had grown up. He had become a few years previously the bellringer of Notre-Dame, thanks to his father by adoption, Claude Frollo,--who had become archdeacon of Josas, thanks to his suzerain, Messire Louis de Beaumont,--who had become Bishop of Paris, at the death of Guillaume Chartier in 1472, thanks to his patron, Olivier Le Daim, barber to Louis XI., king by the grace of God.

So Quasimodo was the ringer of the chimes of Notre-Dame.

In the course of time there had been formed a certain peculiarly intimate bond which united the ringer to the church.

Separated forever from the world, by the double fatality of his unknown birth and his natural deformity, imprisoned from his infancy in that impassable double circle, the poor wretch had grown used to seeing nothing in this world beyond the religious walls which had received him under their shadow.

Notre-Dame had been to him successively, as he grew up and developed, the egg, the nest, the house, the country, the universe.

There was certainly a sort of mysterious and pre-existing harmony between this creature and this church. When, still a little fellow, he had dragged himself tortuously and by jerks beneath the shadows of its vaults, he seemed, with his human face and his bestial limbs, the natural reptile of that humid and sombre pavement, upon which the shadow of the Romanesque capitals cast so many strange forms.

Later on, the first time that he caught hold, mechanically, of the ropes to the towers, and hung suspended from them, and set the bell to clanging, it produced upon his adopted father, Claude, the effect of a child whose tongue is unloosed and who begins to speak.

It is thus that, little by little, developing always in sympathy with the cathedral, living there, sleeping there, hardly ever leaving it, subject every hour to the mysterious impress, he came to resemble it, he incrusted himself in it, so to speak, and became an integral part of it. His salient angles fitted into the retreating angles of the cathedral (if we may be allowed this figure of speech), and he seemed not only its inhabitant but more than that, its natural tenant. One might almost say that he had assumed its form, as the snail takes on the form of its shell. It was his dwelling, his hole, his envelope.

There existed between him and the old church so profound an instinctive sympathy, so many magnetic affinities, so many material affinities, that he adhered to it somewhat as a tortoise adheres to its shell. The rough and wrinkled cathedral was his shell.

It is useless to warn the reader not to take literally all the similes which we are obliged to employ here to express the singular, symmetrical, direct, almost consubstantial union of a man and an edifice. It is equally unnecessary to state to what a degree that whole cathedral was familiar to him, after so long and so intimate a cohabitation. That dwelling was peculiar to him. It had no depths to which Quasimodo had not penetrated, no height which he had not scaled. He often climbed many stones up the front, aided solely by the uneven points of the carving. The towers, on whose exterior surface he was frequently seen clambering, like a lizard gliding along a perpendicular wall, those two gigantic twins, so lofty, so menacing, so formidable, possessed for him neither vertigo, nor terror, nor shocks of amazement.

To see them so gentle under his hand, so easy to scale, one would have said that he had tamed them. By dint of leaping, climbing, gambolling amid the abysses of the gigantic cathedral he had become, in some sort, a monkey and a goat, like the Calabrian child who swims before he walks, and plays with the sea while still a babe.

Moreover, it was not his body alone which seemed fashioned after the Cathedral, but his mind also. In what condition was that mind? What bent had it contracted, what form had it assumed beneath that knotted envelope, in that savage life? This it would be hard to determine. Quasimodo had been born one-eyed, hunchbacked, lame. It was with great difficulty, and by dint of great patience that Claude Frollo had succeeded in teaching him to talk. But a fatality was attached to the poor foundling. Bellringer of Notre-Dame at the age of fourteen, a new infirmity had come to complete his misfortunes: the bells had broken the drums of his ears;he had become deaf. The only gate which nature had left wide open for him had been abruptly closed, and forever.

In closing, it had cut off the only ray of joy and of light which still made its way into the soul of Quasimodo. His soul fell into profound night. The wretched being's misery became as incurable and as complete as his deformity. Let us add that his deafness rendered him to some extent dumb.

For, in order not to make others laugh, the very moment that he found himself to be deaf, he resolved upon a silence which he only broke when he was alone. He voluntarily tied that tongue which Claude Frollo had taken so much pains to unloose.

Hence, it came about, that when necessity constrained him to speak, his tongue was torpid, awkward, and like a door whose hinges have grown rusty.

If now we were to try to penetrate to the soul of Quasimodo through that thick, hard rind; if we could sound the depths of that badly constructed organism; if it were granted to us to look with a torch behind those non-transparent organs to explore the shadowy interior of that opaque creature, to elucidate his obscure corners, his absurd no-thoroughfares, and suddenly to cast a vivid light upon the soul enchained at the extremity of that cave, we should, no doubt, find the unhappy Psyche in some poor, cramped, and ricketty attitude, like those prisoners beneath the Leads of Venice, who grew old bent double in a stone box which was both too low and too short for them.

同类推荐
  • 负暄野录

    负暄野录

    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。
  • You Never Can Tell

    You Never Can Tell

    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。
  • Free Trade

    Free Trade

    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。
  • 圭塘小稿

    圭塘小稿

    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。
  • 何澹安医案

    何澹安医案

    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
  • 爆宠狂妃:王爷,请自重

    爆宠狂妃:王爷,请自重

    她在现世为所欲为兴风作浪,却意外魂穿到一个身份卑微的庶女身上。她生母被害,更有人想夺她性命,她表示很刺激!!她既能做初一,还能做十五,只求渣爹恶母婊兄妹别跑站好接招……
  • 名门暖婚

    名门暖婚

    初次见面,她遭这个妖孽般的男人强吻!再次见面,她竟成了他的私人助理!她遭房东扫地出门,他出手相救,却趁机霸道将她强留身边,一步一步攻占她的人,她的心!他说:珞珞,十五年前你保护了我,以后的人生由我保护你!”
  • 设局

    设局

    陌生的电话,陌生的女人松原市委副书记兼政法委书记邱长根,刚刚从海滨调到松原,从区委书记荣任市委副书记,正处到副厅,上了一个台阶,内心的激动可想而知。四十来岁的他,家在海滨,妻子和孩子也在海滨,不是她们来不了松原,是她们不愿意来。故土难离吧。邱长根也就没有劝,为官者,说不准几年以后,又回到了海滨。再说自己一个人在松原,也落得轻松自在。这些年,老婆成天像看犯人似地看着自己,也有些烦。烦归烦,他知道,好的夫妻关系,是他仕途中不可缺少的重要因子。来到松原,他给自己定了一个规矩,陌生电话一律拒听。
  • 长乐未央

    长乐未央

    卫国国破,自城楼陨落的不仅是一国公主的非如此不可,更带走了两代君王的痴狂权谋与利用,女色与复国,诱惑与仇恨她游走于两代君王之间,却不知情归何处。
  • 海贼王之羁绊

    海贼王之羁绊

    白胡子海贼团旗下四十三位船长之一的钻石星辰海贼团船长蒂云.银与同伴之间的羁绊。
  • 卡耐基魅力口才与说话技巧

    卡耐基魅力口才与说话技巧

    哈佛大学里最杰出的心理学教授威廉·詹姆斯曾经写道:“不管任何课程,只要你能满怀热忱,就一定可以确保无事。假如你对某一结果热切关注,你一定会达成愿望。假如你全心想做好一件事,你一定会做好它。假如你期望财富,那你就会拥有财富。假如你渴望成为一个博学的人,你一定会学富五车。只要你真心地期盼这些事,只有你心无旁骛地去努力,你才不会胡思乱想一些不相干的事,你才会得到你想要的东西。”
  • 遇见我的前世今生

    遇见我的前世今生

    本书是潜意识大师高原在面临人生困境之时的一次心灵和身体的双重之旅——公司的破产、妻子的离弃,身体的疾病……在遇到事业的巨大挫折和人生的重大变故时,“我”曾一度迷失了方向。为了使自己的心灵得以解脱,“我”选择了旅行,从洛杉矶到印度;从东京到南美;从阿根廷再到中国西藏。在路上,作者遇到了各色各样的人,包括企业家、律师、小老板、修女、僧人、不得志的员工等。特别的际遇给了他特别的启示,最终作者站在生命的十字路口,苏醒、觉悟,豁然开朗,这种的感觉,或许,一生只有一次。整本书中,作者通过知名人物的禅修案例,以及大量丰富的亲身经历、向我们展现了多种自我疗愈的神奇方法以及自我苏醒、自我觉悟的心灵过程。
  • 假面追踪

    假面追踪

    明洪武十三年,仲秋。桂林城内外到处飘着浓郁的桂花香味时,唯有桂林府衙大门两边兵丁林立,恶犬横行,一片阴森恐怖。这天辰时,几顶大轿被前呼后拥抬出府衙,门前一直站立恭候了许久的陈俊,立刻弯腰弓背屈膝抱拳虔诚地喊:“王爷一路走好!”缓缓行走在正中的朱红大轿突然在他身边停下了,轿帘掀开,霸气的靖江王朱守谦此刻一脸怨容,说:“陈俊,你随我几年忠心耿耿,此次皇上贬我去云南边关你却执意不再随我前行,知道你恋恋不舍的是磨穿那块风水宝地,今日赠你一剑,做个留念吧。”说罢,轿帘重新落下,两个人,仿佛站在两个世界里。
  • 上品丹法节次

    上品丹法节次

    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。
  • 狂医丹帝

    狂医丹帝

    丹药幻化日月星辰,手术衍变无尽神域!最强军医化身镇妖王第七子叶青阳,武魂大到撑破天!神丹灵药收尽天材异宝,妙手医术揽尽世间美人;无敌神功杀世子,诛豪门,火融万里江山,怒焚诸天圣境!PS:以完成三百万字都市修真小说《绝品仙医》,完本有保障,求收藏,推荐,好评,打赏。