Chapter 53 Notre Dame de Paris (3) Volume 8 Gold Coins Turn into Dry Leaves (4)

Those who enter here four times, abandon all hope! ① A complete building in the Middle Ages, about half underground and half above ground.Unless the foundations of Notre-Dame are built on piles, no palace, no castle, no church does not have a double foundation.In the cathedrals there is, so to speak, another subterranean cathedral, low, dark, mysterious, opaque, and silent, beneath the bright nave above the ground, where the organ and bells ring day and night; At that time, the underground cathedral was a tomb.Beneath the palaces and castles was a prison; sometimes a tomb, sometimes both.These solid masonry buildings, whose manner of formation and multiplication we have described before, have not only foundations, but roots, so to speak, that run underground, forming rooms, corridors, and stairs, completely in harmony with the The buildings on the ground are exactly the same.Therefore, whether it is a church, a palace, or a castle, they are all half buried in the ground.The cellar of a building is another building, and to get there one has to go down, not up, and its subterranean floors are just below the layers of the ground, like forests and mountains reflected in the mountains. mirror in lake water.

① The inscription at the entrance to hell in Dante's Divine Comedy. At the Château de Saint-Anton, at the Palais de Justice in Paris, at the Louvre, these subterranean structures are prisons.The tiers of these prisons descended into the ground, becoming narrower and darker as they went down.This is also an area that becomes more eerie as it goes down. It is impossible to find a more suitable place for the hell that Dante wants to describe.Those cells arranged in a funnel shape usually reach a basin-shaped closet in the depths of the dungeon.There, Dante used it to imprison Satan, and society used it to imprison the condemned.Anyone who is miserable once buried there says goodbye forever to light, air, life, and all hope.No way out of there, except to the gallows or the stake.

Sometimes, it gradually rots away in the closet.Human justice calls this oblivion. The condemned prisoner feels that he is completely cut off from the world, and that what is pressing on his head is a huge pile of stones and jailers. The entire prison, this huge castle, is nothing but a big complicated lock, which locks him firmly. Cut off from the living world. Sentenced to hang, Esmeralda, probably fearing that she would escape, was thrown at the bottom of such a trough, in the dungeon dug in Saint-Louis, in the dungeon of the criminal court of Tournelle, with Town of the huge palace of justice.In fact, the poor fly can't even move its smallest pebbles!

It is true that both God and society are equally unfair. To crush such a weak woman, why should she be so aggressive and persecuted and tortured in every way! There she stayed, swallowed up by darkness, buried, hidden and imprisoned.Anyone who saw her laughing and dancing in the bright sunshine in the past would shudder to see her in this state.As cold as the night, as cold as death, there is no longer the breeze blowing in her hair, the voices are no longer lingering in her ears, and the bright eyes are no longer in her eyes. On a bit of straw, with a jug and a loaf of bread at her side, and beneath her in a pool of water seeping from the cell, she did not move, barely breathe, or even feel pain.Phoebes, sunshine, noon, fields, Parisian towns, dances to applauds, lingering love-talks with the officer, priests, wretches, daggers, pools of blood, torture, gallows, all this It kept coming up in her mind, and it was still there, now like pleasant golden visions, now like weird, horrible nightmares.However, all this is nothing but a terrible and vague struggle, gradually dissipating in the darkness, or it is just a distant music, playing in the air on the earth, whose music will never be heard again. To the abyss into which the miserable maiden fell.

Since being imprisoned here, it has never mattered to wake up or sleep.In this catastrophe, in this dungeon, it is no longer possible to distinguish waking from sleeping, dream from reality, just like night from day.In her mind, everything is mixed, fragmented, erratic, and spread out in a mess.She can no longer feel, she can no longer think, at most she can only dream.Never had a living being been so lost in nothingness as she was. ① That is, King Louis IX of France. In this way she was so numb, her limbs cold and petrified, that she scarcely noticed the occasional sound of a trap door.Somewhere above her head, the trap door had been open for two or three days without letting even a ray of light through it, and each time a hand threw her a piece of hard black bread through it.The regular inspections by the jailers are her only remaining connection with humans.

The only thing she could hear subconsciously was the sound of water dripping evenly from the cracks in the moss-covered stone slabs on the vault.She listened blankly to the sound of water droplets falling into the puddle beside her.The drops of water in the puddles were the only movement around her, the only clock telling the time, the only sound reaching her out of all the sounds on the ground. Anyway, from time to time she felt something cold crawling up and down her feet or arms in the dark mud puddle, which made her tremble with fright. How long she's been here, she doesn't know.I remember somewhere a death sentence was pronounced on a person, and then they dragged her here, and when she woke up it was night, dead, and cold.She crawled on the ground with her hands, the iron rings of the fetters cut her ankles, and the chains jingled.She could make out solid walls all around her, and below her was a flooded stone slab, and a handful of straw.But no lights, no vents.So she sat down on the straw, sometimes on the bottom step of the cell for a change of position.For a moment, she tried to count the minutes in the dark by the number of drops of water, but a sick mind.She soon interrupted this miserable work of her own accord, and then she was dumbfounded again.

Finally one day, or one night (because midnight and noon are the same color in the tomb), she heard a noise above her head, louder than the usual door opening when the guards brought her bread and water jugs, and she looked up. Behold, a gleam of reddish-red light shines through the door, or rather, the flap-trap, in the vaulted vault.At the same time, the heavy iron door creaked, the rusty hinges made a harsh grinding sound, and the flap of the trap turned.Immediately she saw a lantern, a hand.The lower half of the two men; the door was too low for her to see their heads.The light stung her eyes, and she closed them immediately.

When she opened her eyes again, the trap door was closed, the lamp was on a stone step, and a man was standing in front of her alone, his black monk's robes trailing to his feet, and his face was covered by a black hood.You can't see his whole body at all, and you can't see his face.It was really a long black shroud standing upright, and something could be felt shaking inside the shroud.For a while she stared intently at the apparition.Neither of them said a word.In this dungeon only two things seemed to be alive, the wicks of the lamps crackling with the damp air, and the drops of water falling from the ceiling.The monotonous gurgling sound of the water droplets interrupted the irregular crackling sound of the wick; as soon as the water droplets fell, the light circle reflected on the surface of the puddle of oily water flickered.

Finally, the female prisoner finally broke the silence: "Who are you?" "A priest." The answer, the intonation, the voice made her tremble. The priest spoke hoarsely, but clearly, and said, "Are you ready?" "Ready for what?" "Go to hell." "Ah!" she said, "Go right away?" "tomorrow." She was so happy that she raised her head, but suddenly she drooped it to her chest again, and murmured: "So long to wait! Why not just today?" "So you're suffering so much?" the priest asked again after a moment's silence.

"I'm cold," she replied. She then clasped her feet with her hands, as is often the case with the unlucky when it is cold, as we had seen the nun do at the Tower Laurent.At the same time, her teeth chattered. The priest seemed to glance around the cell stealthily from under his hood. "No light! No fire! Soaked in water! It's appalling." "Yes," she said in a panic, which she had always looked like since the accident. "The day belongs to everyone, but the night is given to me. Why?" "Why are you here, do you know?" asked the priest after another moment of silence.

"I guess I knew." She stretched out a thin finger and wiped her brow, as if to help her own memory. "But now I don't know." Suddenly she cried like a child: "I want to go out, sir. I'm cold, and I'm afraid, some insects will crawl on me." "Okay, come with me." So saying, the priest took her by the arm.The miserable woman was already cold to the marrow, but she felt that this hand was even colder. "Cough! This is the cold hand of death." She said to herself, and then asked: "Who are you?" The priest threw off his hood.She saw that it was the sinister face that had stalked her for so long, the devil's head that had appeared at Faludele's house over her beloved Phoebes, the last time she had seen it together. Those shining eyes next to the dagger. This ghost has been the bane of her demise, propelling her from one disaster to another, even to torture.The appearance of this ghost, on the contrary, woke her up from the numb state.She suddenly seemed to feel that the thick curtain covering her memory was torn apart.Her tragic experience, from the night scene at Farodel's house to the death sentence at the Tournell court, all rushed into her heart one after another, no longer as vague and chaotic as before, Rather, it is very clear, revealing, vivid, vivid, and terrifying.Half of these memories had been forgotten, and they were almost wiped out due to excessive pain, but now I saw this gloomy figure appearing in front of me.These memories suddenly came back to life, as if the invisible handwriting written on the white paper with steganographic ink was clearly revealed after being heated by the fire.She seemed to feel that all the wounds in her heart were split open again, and blood flowed straight out. "Ouch!" she cried, covering her eyes with her hands, convulsing and trembling. "So it was the priest!" As soon as he finished speaking, he lowered his arms in frustration, sat down on his buttocks, drooped his head, stared at the ground, still trembling. The priest stared at her like an eagle circling high in the sky. It tightly circled a poor skylark hiding in the wheat field, quietly and constantly narrowing its terrifying circle, and suddenly, as fast as lightning, swooped on its prey. Go down and grab the panting skylark with your talons. She murmured in a low voice: "Finish me! Finish me! Give the last blow!" She was terrified, her head crouched between her shoulders like a lamb awaiting a fatal blow from the butcher. "Am I the one who disgusts you?" he asked at last. She didn't respond. "Am I repulsing you?" he asked again. "That's right," she replied, her lips twitching in pain as if she were laughing. "This is the executioner making fun of the condemned. For months he has followed me, threatened me, terrorized me! How happy I would have been, God, if it hadn't been for him! He's the one who has pushed me down this abyss. Ah, Heaven! It was he who killed . . . he killed him—my Phoebus!" Here she sobbed, and looking up at the priest, she said: "Oh! villain! Who are you? What have I done to offend you that you hate me so much? Cough! What do you have against me?" "I love you!" cried the priest. Her tears suddenly stopped, her eyes were dazed, and she glanced at him.He knelt down, staring at her closely with fiery eyes. "Did you hear that? I love you!" he cried again. "What kind of love?" The unfortunate girl shivered. He went on to say: "The love of a man sent to hell." For a while they were silent, both crushed by their passions, he insane, she insensible. "Listen," said the priest at last, regaining his uncanny composure. "You'll know all about it soon. In the middle of the night, in the darkness everywhere, as if God couldn't see us, I quietly asked myself, there are some things that I dare not even tell myself before, and I will take all these All to you. Listen, girl, I was having a good time before I met you..." "Why am I not!" She sighed softly. "Don't interrupt me... Yes, I was having a good time, at least I thought I was. I was very pure, my heart was as clear as water, as clear as a mirror. No one was more proud than I, holding my head high Priests come to me for chastity, and learned men for scriptures. Yes, science is my everything, science is my sister, and a sister is enough for me. If not with age , and I have no other thoughts. More than once, as long as I see a woman walking by, my body is excited. The power of male sexual desire and male blood, I thought I had killed it all my life when I was a fanatical teenager No, it did not, and more than once it made waves, and shook the chains by which my poor soul was fastened to the cold stone of the altar by sworn iron oaths. Yet, through fasting, prayer, study, and The torture in the monastery, the soul became the master of the body again, so I shunned all women. Besides, as soon as I opened the book, all the foul things in my mind disappeared in the face of the brilliant science. In a short while , I feel that all the filthy things in the world have fled away, and I have regained my peace under the peaceful light of eternal truth. Luoluo is in front of my eyes, but almost never in my dreams, and I beat the devil easily if the devil just sends them to attack me. If I don't keep the victory, it's God's fault, God Man is not given the same power as the devil.  …Listen to me, one day…” Having said this, the priest suddenly stopped.The female prisoner heard a sound coming from his chest, like a dying gasp, like a heart-piercing pain. He went on to say: "...One day, I was leaning on the window sill of the secret room. What was I reading? Ah! My mind was so confused that I couldn't remember. . . . Anyway, I was reading. The window looked out on the square. , suddenly I heard a burst of tambourine and music, which disturbed my reverie, and I was very angry, so I glanced at the square. What I saw—of course others saw—it was not for the eyes of the world A sight. Over there, in the middle of the paved square, at noon, the sun is shining, and someone is dancing. She is so beautiful that even God would have preferred this woman to the Virgin, and would have chosen As a mother, if she had been alive when he became a human, she would have preferred her to be born! Her eyes were black and bright, and her black hair was full of black hair, with some strands shining in the middle like strands of gold. Glittering. A pair of feet spinning like the spokes of a wheel, you can't see it at all. The black braids are coiled around the head, covered with metal ornaments, and glittering in the sun, like wearing a crown studded with stars on the forehead. Her gown is adorned with many sequins, blue light flashes, and sewn with many glittering ornaments, like the starry sky on a summer night. Her soft brown arms, like two streamers, wrapped around her waist, suddenly The tangle was suddenly untied, and her figure was amazingly beautiful. Ah! That radiant figure, even in the sun, blazed like something bright! ... Oh! girl, it is you! ... I, Surprised, intoxicated, bewildered, staring at you involuntarily, looking and looking, I suddenly trembled with fear, and realized that fate had caught me." The priest paused again, breathless, and then went on: "Now that I'm half-obsessed, I'm trying to hold on to something before I fall again. I suddenly remember the traps that Satan has set for me many times in the past. The woman in front of me is so beautiful that she can only come from heaven or hell She is by no means an ordinary woman made of a bit of mortal clay, and her heart is definitely not as muddled as a woman's, with only a trembling light shining in her soul. She is an angel! However, she is an angel! An angel of darkness, an angel of fire, not an angel of light. While I was thinking this, I found a goat beside you, a beast of the Demon Society, looking at me with a smile. The noon sun Its horns shone like fire. Then I vaguely saw the trap set by the devil, and I no longer doubted that you came from hell to tempt me to fall. I am convinced of it." Having said this, the priest looked directly at the female prisoner and said coldly. "I still believe in it. . . . At that time, the magic gradually worked, and your dancing posture kept spinning in my head. I felt that the mysterious witchcraft had fulfilled its magic in my heart, and everything in my soul that should have been awakened Instead, he fell into a deep sleep, like a dying person in the snow, who feels happy even though he falls asleep like this. Suddenly, you start singing. Poor me, what can I do? Your singing voice is better than your dancing posture Still charming. I wanted to run away, but it was impossible. I was nailed there, rooted in the ground. It seemed that the marble floor had risen so high that my knees were buried. There was no choice but to wait. Listen there to the end. My feet are like ice, my head is buzzing. In the end, you may have pity on me, stop singing, disappear. The dazzling contemplation, the reverberation of the ecstasy music , Gradually disappeared from my eyes and ears. I collapsed at the foot of the window, stiffer and more lifeless than a fallen stone statue. The bells for vespers woke me up. I stood up and ran away. Yes. But, alas! Something in me fell down, and couldn't get up again." He paused again, then went on: "Yes, since that day a stranger has broken into my heart. I have cured myself with all the elixirs I know, monastery, altar, work, reading. What nonsense! Cough! When your head is full of lust, How hollow is the sound of banging your head against the gate of science in despair! Do you know, girl, what has been floating before my eyes ever since, between the book and me? It is you, Your figure is the image of that glorious ghost that descended from the sky in front of me one day. But this image is no longer the original color, it has become dim, bleak, gloomy, like a daredevil staring at the sun and then visually emerges for a long time There was a black shadow. "I can't get rid of it, your song is always in my head, your feet are always flying on my prayer book, and your form is always sliding on my body in my sleep at night, so I desperately want to see you again You, touch you, know who you are, see if you still look like the perfect image of you in my mind, maybe reality will shatter my dreams. Anyway, I hope to have a new impression, okay Erase the old impression, not to mention the old impression is too much for me. I looked for you everywhere, and finally saw you again. Disaster! I have seen you twice, but I wish I could see you a thousand times, forever See you. And then— on this slope leading to hell, how can I stop and not slide down?— Then, I can't hold myself anymore. The devil binds the string on my wings, and the other end is tied to you Like you, I am a vagabond, wandering everywhere. I wait for you under porches, wait on you on street corners, spy on you from the top of the belfry. Every night, I reflect on myself , I feel more fascinated, more depressed. More obsessed, more hopeless! "I already knew who you were, an Egyptian, a Bohemian, a Gypsy, a Gypsy. What is there to doubt about witchcraft? Listen, I had hoped that a trial would free me from the grip of magic." .A witch once possessed Bruno de Astor. He burned the witch and saved himself. I know that. I decided to try this cure. First of all , I tried not to let you come to the square in front of Notre-Dame, as long as you don't come, I can forget you. But you came as a deaf ear, and then I tried to snatch you away. One night, I tried Take you away, we are two people, we have already caught you. Unexpectedly, the unlucky officer came and set you free. He rescued you, and your disaster began. It was also my disaster and his disaster. .In the end I denounced you to the Inquisition, not knowing what to do or where things were going. I thought I would be cured like Bruno de Astor. Yes. I also vaguely think that a lawsuit can get you, and I can catch you and have you in a cell, where you can't escape my grasp; you have haunted me so long, It's my turn to hang on to you too. A man who does evil must end his evil. Let go halfway, it's a pussy! Sin to the extreme, there will be wild fun. A priest and a witch can be on the straw of the cell Ecstasy, fusion! "So I denounced you. That's when I scared you out of your wits every time I met you. I plotted against you, the storm I piled up on you, and out of me came a threat. The intimidation turned into lightning and thunder. Still, I hesitated. Some aspects of my plan were so dire that I recoiled in fright. "Perhaps I could have given up the project, and perhaps my ugly thoughts would have dried up in my head without fruit. I thought it was up to me to continue or interrupt the case. But no evil thought can be removed Yes, it must become a fact; but, just where I think I am omnipotent, fate is stronger than me. Alas! cough! It is fate that holds you tight, it is fate that pushes you to my secret setting. Grind to pieces in the dreadful cogs of the plot! . . . Listen, this is almost over. "One day, another sunny day, I accidentally saw a man walking by in front of me. He called your name, laughed loudly, and had lewd eyes. Damn it! I followed him. Everything that happened later you Know it all." He shut up.The only thing the girl could say was one sentence: "Ah, my Phoebus!" "Don't mention that name!" said the priest, grabbing her arm violently. "Don't mention that name! Oh! How wretched we are, it is the name that has ruined us! Rather, we have ruined each other by fate's inexplicable tricks! You suffer, don't you? You are cold, and the night makes you Blind man, the prison is all around you, but maybe there is some light in the depths of your heart, though it's just your innocent love for the walking dead that plays with your feelings! And me, I'm a prison inside me, and winter inside me , snow, despair, and night in my soul. Do you know what I suffered? I took part in your trial, and sat in the bench of the inquisitors. Yes, among those priestly hoods, there is a Under the roof is a convulsed convict convulsed into hell. I was there when you were brought in, and I was there when you were interrogated. . . That's the gallows for me, and I see it rising slowly over your head. Every testimony, every proof, every accusation, I'm there; Every step; I was there too, when that beast...! I didn't expect to use torture!... Listen to me, I followed you into the torture room. Seeing you stripped of your clothes, the torturer Despicable hands run over your half-naked body. I see your feet, the ones I'd give an empire for a kiss and die for, the ones I'd love to have a crushed head on Feet, I saw it fastened in that dreadful iron shoe, which could turn a living limb into a bloody pulp. O wretched man! When I saw all this, I hid it in my priest's robe. The dagger below cut my chest. Hearing your scream, I plunged the dagger into my flesh; hearing your second scream, the dagger pierced my heart! Look, I think the wound is still there bleeding." He lifted the robe.Sure enough, his chest seemed to have been scratched by a tiger's claws, and there was a rather large wound on the side that hadn't healed yet. The female prisoner backed away in fright. "Ah!" said the priest, "maid, have pity on me! You think yourself unlucky, alas! alas! you don't know what unhappiness is. Why, to love a woman! To be a priest! To be hated! To be a priest! To love her with all the madness of his soul, and to feel that, in exchange for a smile from her, he would give his blood, his viscera, his fame, his eternity, his immortality and eternity, this life and the world to come; Archangels, gods, to lie at her feet as a greater slave; only wanting to hug her tightly day and night in dreams, but to see her fascinated by a warrior's uniform! And I can dedicate to him but a filthy priestly surplice that frightened and loathed her! I was there, envious and furious, when she offered her precious love and beauty to a pathetic and foolish braggadocio! Horny form, breasts so soft and delicate, flesh quivering and flushing under another's kiss! Oh, my God! Fetish her feet, her arms, her shoulders, dreaming of her blue Her veins, brown skin, tossing and tossing all night on the slate floor of the secret room, actually led to the torture! How much thought was spent, and the result was to make her lie on the leather bed! Oh! That is like using the fire of hell Red-hot, real iron tongs! Well! Even the man who is sawn in half between the splints, and the man who is quartered by horses, is more blessed than me! How do you know that in the long night, Veins boiling, heart broken, head burst, teeth biting hands, what kind of torture is it like! It's like a vicious executioner turning you around on a red-hot grill, full of love, jealousy And the torment of disappointment! Be kind, girl! Stop torturing me, let me rest! Please sprinkle ashes on this fiery coals! My brow is dripping with sweat, I beg you, please wipe Sweat it, child! Torment me with one hand and soothe me with the other! Have mercy, girl, have mercy on me!" The priest rolled and fell into the puddles on the flagstone floor, bumping his head on the corners of the steps again and again.The girl listened and watched, and when he was exhausted and panting, she said again in a low voice: "Oh, my Phoebus!" The priest crawled up to her on his knees and cried: "I beseech you, if you have heart, don't refuse me! Ah! I love you! I'm a poor wretch! When you say that name, poor man, it's as if you'd gnawed out my whole body with your teeth. Heart muscle! Have mercy! If you come from Hell, I will go back to Hell with you. To this end, I have done everything I have to do. Your hell is my heaven, and your eyes are greater than the eyes of God. Charming! Ah, tell me! Do you want me or not? If a woman refuses such a love, the mountains can dance. Oh! If you will! . . . Oh! We shall be happy! We I can escape, I can help you escape, and we will escape together somewhere, to find a piece of paradise on this earth, where the sun is the brightest, the trees are the most lush, and the sky is the bluest. We love each other, our two souls are like The nectar and jade dew poured into each other, we are always hungry and thirsty, longing for the love of men and women, and drink this never-dried love wine together forever!" She laughed aloud, sternly, and interrupted him: "Look, priest! Your nails are bleeding!" The priest froze for a moment, stared at his hands for a while like a clay sculpture, and finally said in a voice that was surprisingly gentle: "That's not it! You insult me, mock me, overwhelm me! But come, come! We must hurry. I told you, it's tomorrow, the gallows on the beach, you know? Always All ready. Terrible! Seeing you step into the prison wagon! Oh please! I've never loved you like I do now! Oh come with me. You won't be able to love me until I get you out .You can hate me as long as you like. But come on. Tomorrow! Tomorrow! The gallows! Your execution! Ah! Run! Forgive me!" He grabbed her arm, dazed, and dragged her away. She stared blankly at him. "How is my Phoebus?" "Ah!" exclaimed the priest, and let go of her arm. "You have no mercy!" "What is the matter with Phoebus?" she repeated coldly. "He's dead!" cried the priest. "Dead!" She remained cold and motionless. "Then why do you persuade me to live?" He didn't listen to her, but seemed to say to himself: "Oh! yes, he must be dead, the blade went so far. I think the point of the knife went straight to the heart! Ah, all my strength is concentrated on the dagger on the tip!" When the girl heard this, she sprang at him like a raging tiger, and threw him down on the stairs with supernatural force, crying, "Go away, devil! Go away, murderer! Let me die! Let me go!" My blood and his blood an indelible blot on your brow! Want me to be yours, priest! Never! Never! We shall never be united, not even in hell. Go away, damned fellow! Never! !” The priest staggered to the stone staircase, quietly freed his feet from the wrinkled robe, picked up the lantern, slowly climbed up the stone staircase leading to the door, opened the door, and walked out. Suddenly, the girl saw him poking his head in from the door again, the expression on his face was really scary, furious, desperate, even his voice became hoarse, and he yelled at her: "I tell you, he's dead!" She fell to the ground.There was no sound to be heard in the dungeon, only the sighs of water drops falling in the dark and shaking the puddles.