Chapter 12 Notre-Dame de Paris (1) Volume 2 Dangerous (4)

Five troubles ensued Gringoire was thrown into a daze, lying down in front of the statue of the Virgin Mary at the corner of the street, and slowly came to his senses.At first, I felt light and drowsy for a while, half asleep, but not without a sweet feeling. I saw the two light faces of the gypsy girl and the she-goat intertwined with Quasimodo's heavy fist. .This situation passed quickly.The part of his body that was in contact with the road felt cold, and he woke up suddenly, refreshed.Suddenly, he thought: "Where is this cold air coming from?" Only then did he realize that he almost fell into the gutter.

"Humpbacked Cyclops!" he muttered under his breath, trying to get up. But my head was too dizzy and the fall was too heavy, so I had to lie still.Fortunately, his hands were still flexing and stretching freely, so he covered his nose and held back. "The muddy waters of Paris," he thought (for he was sure the gutters would be his dwelling, except in a dream, who lives here?) "The muddy water in Paris is very foul! It must contain volatile nitrates. Besides, this is the opinion of Monsieur Nicolas Flamel and alchemists in general..." ① Nicola Flamel (1330-1418) writer, chemist (thought to be an alchemist at the time).

The word "alchemist" suddenly reminded him of Archdeacon Claude Frollo.He recalled the scene of violence which he had just glimpsed, the gypsy girl struggling between two men, Quasimodo having an accomplice, and the melancholy and haughty face of the archdeacon flashed in Gringoire's mind.He thought: "This is really strange!" So, according to the known conditions, and based on this, he began to construct various hypothetical absurd mansions, which are purely philosophers' paper castles.Then, with a jerk, he came back to reality: "Oh! I'm freezing to death!" he cried.

Indeed, the place was getting more and more intolerable.Every molecule of the ditch water robbed every molecule of the heat emitted by Gringoire's waist, and a balance was gradually established between his body temperature and the temperature of the gutter water, which was very unpleasant. Unexpectedly, another annoyance came to attack him. A group of children, those wild children who wander around the streets of Paris with bare feet no matter the wind or rain, are called waifs from ancient times to the present, that is, when we came out of school in the evening when we were young, we saw that our trousers were not torn, and asked us all. Those little savages who throw stones.At this time, such a group of little troublemakers swarmed like a swarm, completely ignoring whether the neighbors were sleeping or not, laughing and screaming, and ran towards the fork in the road where Gringoire was lying.Behind them dragged an inexplicable bag that was not a bag, and the mere sound of their wooden shoes would have awakened the dead.Gringoire was not quite dead yet, so he half straightened up.

"Oh hello! Eraghan Donsher! Oh hello! John Pancebud!" they yelled desperately. "The old ironman around the corner, Eustache Morpen, has just died. Let's take his straw mattress and light some fireworks. Isn't it a day to welcome the Flemish people!" Just as they said, they walked up to Gringoire, but without seeing him, they threw the straw mat just on top of him.At the same moment, a child seized a handful of straw, and was going to borrow a fire from the kerosene burning under the Madonna's seat. "Death to Christ! Aren't I too hot now!" muttered Gringoire.

The crisis is extremely serious, he will be in the midst of fire and water!In a panic, like a fake money maker who was about to be thrown into the frying pan and struggling desperately, he used all his incredible strength to jump up, grabbed the straw mat and threw it at the urchins, then ran away. "Holy Mother!" exclaimed the children. "The man who sells broken copper and rotten iron has come back to life!" They also ran away in fright. That straw mat became the master of the battlefield for a while.Magistrate Papa Belforet, and Crozier, still say with certainty that the priest of the neighborhood picked up the mat with great ceremony the day after the accident and delivered it to the church of St. The Sanctuary, and from that day until 1789, the person in charge of the Sanctuary made a considerable fortune, because the Madonna at the corner of the Rue Morgonseil was rebuilt on January 6, 1482. On that unforgettable night of the 1st, he performed his feats in a single stroke exorcising the ghost of the late Eustache Maupon, who, as a joke to the devil, hid the ghost in a straw mattress at the time of his death.