The Archdeacon pressed Gringoire with questions.

By Gringoire’s account, Esmeralda was a harmless and charming creature; pretty, apart from a little grimace which was peculiar to her; artless and impassioned; ignorant of everything and enthusiastic over everything; fond above all things of dancing, of all the stir and movement of the open air; not dreaming as yet of the difference between man and woman; a sort of human bee, with invisible wings to her feet, and living in a perpetual whirlwind. She owed this nature to the wandering life she had led. Gringoire had ascertained that, as quite a little child, she had gone all through Spain and Catalonia, and into Sicily; he thought even that the caravan of Zingari, to which she belonged, had carried her into the kingdom of Algiers—a country situated in Achaia, which Achaia was adjoining on one side to lesser Albania and Greece, and on the other to the sea of the Sicilies, which is the way to Constantinople. The Bohemians, said Gringoire, were vassals of the King of Algeria, in his capacity of Chief of the nation of the White Moors. Certain it was that Esmeralda had come into France while yet very young by way of Hungary. From all these countries the girl had brought with her fragments of fantastic jargons, outlandish songs and ideas which made her language almost as motley as her half-Egyptian, half-Parisian costume. For the rest, the people of the quarters which she frequented loved her for her gaiety, her kindness, her lively ways, for her dancing and her songs. In all the town she believed herself to be hated by two persons only, of whom she often spoke with dread: the sachette of the Tour-Roland, an evil-tempered recluse who cherished an unreasoning malice against gipsies, and who cursed the poor dancer every time she passed before her window; and a priest, who never crossed her path without hurling at her words and looks that terrified her. This last circumstance perturbed the Archdeacon greatly, though Gringoire paid no heed to the fact, the two months that had elapsed having sufficed to obliterate from the thoughtless poet’s mind the singular details of that evening on which he had first encountered the gipsy girl, and the circumstance of the Archdeacon’s presence on that occasion. For the rest, the little dancer feared nothing; she did not tell fortunes, and consequently was secure from those persecutions for magic so frequently instituted against the gipsy women. And then Gringoire was at least a brother to her, if he could not be a husband. After all, the philosopher endured very patiently this kind of platonic marriage. At all events it insured him food and a lodging. Each morning he set out from the thieves’ quarter, most frequently in company with the gipsy girl; he helped her to gain her little harvest of small coin in the streets; and each evening they returned to the same roof, he let her bolt herself into her own little chamber, and then slept the sleep of the just. A very agreeable existence on the whole, said he, and very favourable to reflection. Besides, in his heart and inner conscience, the philosopher was not quite sure that he was desperately in love with the gipsy. He loved her goat almost as much. It was a charming beast, gentle, intelligent, not to say intellectual; a goat of parts. (Nothing was commoner in the Middle Ages than these trained animals, which created immense wonderment among the uninitiated, but frequently brought their instructor to the stake.) However, the sorceries of the goat with the gilded hoofs were of a very innocent nature. Gringoire explained them to the Archdeacon, who appeared strangely interested in these particulars. In most cases it was sufficient to present the tambourine to the goat in such or such a manner, for it to perform the desired trick. It had been trained to this by its mistress, who had such a singular talent for these devices that two months had sufficed her to teach the goat to compose, with movable letters, the word Phœbus.

“’Phœbus!”’ said the priest; “why ’Phœbus’?”

“I do not know,” answered Gringoire. “Perhaps it is a word that she thinks endowed with some magic and secret virtue. She often murmurs it to herself when she believes herself alone.”

“Are you sure,” rejoined Claude, with his searching look, “that it is only a word—that it is not a name?”

“The name of whom?” said the poet.

“How should I know?” said the priest.