Jean des Cloches
ONE
The cry of every infant is the cry of being pried from warmth and comfort with Mother and forced into a cold, dry, penetrating world. The difference is, though, many are swept instantly into their mother's safe warm arms in a soft blanket, there are those too for whom it seems that the best of life they will ever feel is before they leave the womb. Such was the dreary night for one poor child among millions. Insignificant, it may seem—just one screaming infant that may or may not grow to live in squalor in such a miserable place as in the gutters of such a prominent city as Paris.
The sky looked liable to burst at any moment, but rain resisted falling. It just made a black night all the blacker. The orange glow of candlelight from a caravan looked from a distance to be a warm refuge from the miserable surroundings as it caught the bright colors and lovely stitched designs of the Gypsies. Indeed it would have been a warm glow in the end if it had not been for the infant himself.
The poor young mother barely older than fifteen and as slight a thing as a wisp on the wind fainted away. The women surrounding her quickly proved her to still be alive, and her breathing not too strained to fear death for her right away.
But as they turned to the infant, their relief soon gave way to another dread. First there came a gasp and then hushed voices. The father of the girl outside the wagon became impatient and stepped to the drapery in front of the back entrance of the wagon to see for himself what had happened. Just before he entered, the eldest of the three women inside threw open the cloth.
She jumped and squirmed uncomfortably at the sight of the man into which she almost ran into, and lowering her eyes she hesitated to say anything at all.
"What?" the man demanded. "What happened? Is she—?"
"No, so far she's only fainted," the woman gasped.
"Then what?!" hissed the man.
"The infant …" the woman finally let out.
"What?"
Pushing past her, he climbed inside the wagon and shoved his way through the other two women, other members of the family. Then he saw what the old woman had meant, and his eyes grew huge with horror and disbelief.
The pitiful cries did not come from a tender headed, kicking little red babe but a horrid red goblin, a creature from nightmares, all curled up like some sickening lobster covered with human flesh, and a face like that of a wax monkey melted partway by the flaming tuft of red hair on the top of the bulbous head.
The man staggered and felt suddenly lightheaded in this confined space. He nearly knocked over one of the candles as he tried to steady himself.
"The infant is cursed …" one of the women whispered shakily.
"We should kill it," hissed a second. "Its curse will spread to us if we keep it!"
"Don't be an ass, woman," the third woman said, the one who had met the man at the door, and she shook her head. "To kill it in cold blood? Could you commit such a wicked crime on so helpless a thing?"
The man ignored them and wiped the brow of the poor girl who still seemed to be breathing all right. She reacted a little from his touch but she remained lying with eyes closed.
"We should leave it somewhere," the old woman continued. "Somewhere in the city. It won't be killing it. It'll just be someone else's problem."
"Where?" growled the man glaring again at the wailing babe.
"I know the place," the old woman said.
Thus away with the child they flew. The old woman and the man stayed with the girl and the other two women left in a small wagon with the second woman's son and a couple other family members.
It was about this time at last that the rain began to fall. The clouds ripped open as a bubble long holding up and poured now like a never-emptying bucket upon the city.
One woman left the wagon suddenly with a shawl over her head to keep cover from the rain and a ragged blanket over the babe whose cries were becoming very weak. As she stepped out onto the cobbled street a ways she heard suddenly another cry of another baby. She paused, holding the babe in her arms close, and it stopped its cries long enough for the woman to hear the other more clearly, and it was very near and very solitary.
As the woman looked towards a flight of steps she saw in a flash of lightning a basket with tiny arms reaching out in desperation.
They were not the only ones abandoning infants this night.
As the woman came closer for a peek, she saw that this child in contrast with the monster in her arms was the most beautiful baby. A little thin perhaps and it was older than a newborn by at least a month, but without blemish on her skin and a little tuft of dark hair atop the head. A warm blanket covered her, and a pair of baby slippers adorned the feet. The only reason why anyone would throw such a beautiful child away was such desperate poverty or shame in the belief that the baby could not be kept, and as the people of the city knew, the only place to leave an unwanted child where he or she could hope for a future was as a ward of the Church.
After a pause of thought, the woman took it upon herself to give the proper infant a chance to have a real family. After all, no one else wanted the child. She knew exactly what she would do.
If she lived, the poor girl at home would not know that this child plucked from a basket was not her own, and she would never know the beast she bore after being raped by a son of Christian men. Thus as the woman glanced down at the gruesome creature resembling the beasts with which the Christians mutilated their cathedral behind the shadows of angels and saints, she thought that surely this was where such a ghastly living gargoyle belonged.
#
So annoyed was the honorable judge Claude Frollo that he hardly took note in the rain that pelted down. He wore a wide hood over his hat and that was enough. In a flash of lightning he looked up at the grand façade of Notre Dame, but he did not see the magnificence of the architecture, nor the angels or saints or even the gargoyles, save when he glanced at the depiction of the Last Judgment above the main portal. Here it was only to think how proud of a position he had as an acting representative of judgment on earth and that by rights no priest should have the power to call him to confession unless he saw fit to come himself.
He had little desire to face the archdeacon, not from fear but simply out of annoyance and the principle of the thing. The archdeacon probably would not even be expecting him in such weather, but it was Frollo's custom to make his points. He had been told to come this morning. Thus first thing this morning rain or shine, Frollo had determined to make his appearance.
Closing his eyes for a moment briefly he took to the first step of the cathedral, but just as he lifted his other foot, he paused at the sound of crying after a deep roll of thunder had passed. Glancing to his side he saw movement coming from under the left hand portal of the Virgin. A shroud as of a ghost seemed to be wafting, and stepping back he looked to see what person could be standing there. In another flash of lightning, he saw to his surprise the glint of gold earrings adorning an otherwise shabby-looking woman. A gypsy who was at that moment taking a baby from the basket below her, switched the one within with something that Frollo perceived to be a sickly piglet in the eerily cast light.
What revolting trickery! Frollo thought.
At first the woman did not see Frollo standing before the main portal, but it did not take her long after she turned around and saw with a gasp the tall, commanding figure in the rain standing like a spirit of death in his huge black hood and statuesque pose. With a gasp, the woman nearly dropped the crying babe wrapped in blankets that were clearly not of gypsy-make but of some impoverished Parisian peasant.
It was not that Frollo often thought of impoverished peasants, but the principle of the event stood strongly. A gypsy woman was kidnapping a ward of the church and in mockery of everyone's intelligence and pride had replaced the child with some grunting animal perhaps too sickly and thin to eat.
Thus as the judge he happened to be, he took action immediately.
So did the woman.
She leapt upright in a moment and let out a ragged cry, but what Frollo did not know at first was that her cry did not have to do with getting caught switching infants. But it was that she did not fully comprehend that Frollo had not yet seen the boy, her son, who was about to attempt picking Frollo's pocket. In such pouring rain, the boy might have gotten away with it too, but instead of providing a distraction, the woman's shriek only caused the boy to accidently swing his arm against Frollo's side in his own surprise, and of course Frollo had him in an instant.
The wagon already came rumbling towards the woman. The people inside snatched her up baby and all. She tried to leap back out for the boy, but the others yanked her back inside. There would be no hope for him. Authority had already arriving at Frollo's call. If the wagon did not hurry, they would all be caught and condemned of both kidnapping and theft and mischief overall. Perhaps they would even be accused of murder! They knew who that man was. They did not have to see his face. No vagabond of any sort was tolerated for disturbing the peace of the city in the eyes of such an infamous judge as Claude Frollo. Thus with screaming woman and screaming infant, the wagon disappeared into the night as fast as the horses could carry them.
About this time too, the archdeacon appeared on the scene. Through the raging storm he could certainly hear a woman shrieking like a lost soul just outside. He hurried to the narthex and swung open a portal door. It happened to be the portal of the Virgin, so that before he saw horseman and swords he looked down just in time to keep himself from tripping over the basket which held the poor replacement infant so weak it could barely cry and only made queer aching sounds. At first the archdeacon made to stoop down and pick up the basket, but he straightened as he saw the youth being taken away by authorities from the hands of a man he knew only too well.
"Claude!" he gasped running out into the rain bareheaded save a small cap. "What's going on here!?"
Frollo looked entirely undisturbed by the archdeacon's presence, and without turning to look at him, he retorted rather calmly, "He was caught in the act of thievery and was among the company of a troupe of gypsy tramps kidnapping a ward of the church."
"What are you talking about!?" demanded the archdeacon throwing his hands out imploringly. "I just called you over here to talk about your unfair trials and judgments and now you're at it again!"
"He'll be given a trial," said Frollo with a sniff.
"Will he indeed!?" gasped the archdeacon angrily. "You'll treat him like a hardened murderer escaped thrice from prison, and he's only a boy! And there's a woman screaming that seems to have vanished out into the tempest, and a baby barely alive at the door!"
"That's no baby," muttered Frollo, still watching the boy being taken away for a moment. Then he swept past the archdeacon and lifted the basket as though something rotting lay inside, but as both men stood under the shelter of the portal and looked into the basket, both gasped.
In disgust and shock, Frollo dropped the basket, but the archdeacon caught it just barely in time and almost fell over down the step to do so. The infant inside began to choke and to try again to cry, but it sounded so miserable it only added to the poor creature's appearance.
"I saw them do it!" Frollo snapped. "I saw them switch the baby for that—that worse than an animal!"
"It's a human child," retorted the archdeacon, and he took it out of the basket to at least warm the baby against the storm as he lifted it with barely a napkin to warm it to his chest and wrapped it in his cloak.
"A changeling more like it!" sniffed Frollo. "A thing possessed, perhaps!"
The archdeacon ignored him, blessed the baby and brought him into the church. In the candlelight he looked upon the poor babe and saw truly its contorted form. In his heart, however the archdeacon saw more sickliness than ugliness, and he knew also that the child had very little time to live if he was not given something for nourishment.
Claude Frollo came in behind the archdeacon, his brother in honesty, but the archdeacon Benjamin Frollo did not look back. He simply wrapped the child back up in his cloak and said, "I'm going to call Madame Courtois, the midwife. She's only down the street."
"No woman in her right mind would nurture that thing," grumbled Frollo. "Obviously the little beast's own mother had no care for it."
The archdeacon closed his eyes and tried to ease his anger into patience, which he always found the most difficult when in the presence of Claude Frollo.
"Boy," he corrected. "The child is a boy."
Frollo snorted, but the archdeacon wasted no more time as he went himself down the street in the rain for the midwife with the child in his arms.
#
As the rain ceased and the late morning sun began to peek weakly out onto the city of Paris, Judge Frollo himself saw the thieving boy from the gypsy troupe hanged. The trial had been quick and to the point as Frollo made sure they always were, yet as the boy gasped his last, it must be admitted that Frollo felt a touch of guilt for the proceedings. He blamed it on his brother, of course. He had just seen him this morning rescuing that lump of flesh uglier than a freshly hatched crow and as fiendish as a red donkey. It was not his brother's irritation that had reached Frollo's heart but his actions. The archdeacon's pity and true charity he processed both in prayer to God and kindness to those in need was something undeniable. Frollo could not help but think that his elder brother was headed into the direction of saintliness, which in comparison to himself he knew, if he was honest with himself, he was certainly not going in that direction.
Oblivious to this impression he had left on the judge, Archdeacon Benjamin was quite surprised to see his brother that very same day ready for confession, and he was frank with the judge in telling him that murder was a most serious mortal sin, a critical offence against God. Such a thing required penance, he told the judge, though he spoke very gently as he said this, for he felt overjoyed that his brother seemed to at last see the wrong in his ways. He said so too that he praised God for his return to his senses.
"The penance," he then said, "if offered willingly will give you the graces to keep you from committing such crimes again."
"Yes, yes, I know," muttered the judge impatiently but still sincere in his words. "What is it you'll have me do?"
"Yes," said the archdeacon and clearing his throat, he said a little more professionally in tone, "Yes, I believe that as penance you should be given the opportunity to show your love for God's souls and learn the balance between true judgment and true mercy. Therefore I give you charge over your own son, which I've always known you mourned over the loss of being able to have since the passing of dear Julienne. The infant on the doorstep is in need of a family and so are you. Therefore I see no greater thing than for you to take him as your own."
Judge Frollo tried to hide his disappointment. He would have preferred a haircloth shirt, or a ten-year pilgrimage on foot to the Holy Land with ashes sprinkled on his head every morning. In protest he said very calmly, "Surely the baby is at death's door."
The archdeacon nodded. "It is possible that he will not survive still, but so far he's already improved now that he's been fed and warmed. Until his last breath you will be responsible for his care."
"I know nothing of rearing children."
"Madame Courtois will help you until he is weaned."
"If ever he's weaned," muttered the judge. "If ever he'll be anything close to being considered a normal human being, whether he lives or not. How can I raise him as my son?"
"Trust in God," said the archdeacon most grave in tone. "That is another lesson for you to learn. If you can trust and love in the situation of this boy then it will bring both your soul and the boy's close to our dear home in heaven."
"If such a thing can even possess one …"
Benjamin frowned.
The judge sighed but nodded.
"God will help you raise him if you humble yourself to let Him," said Benjamin. "For the strengthening of your faith, your charity, and your patience, and humility. This is your penance and none other. And remember that this is a penance not a punishment. If you remember this, one day you will see the child as the greatest gift to you. A true and loving son in your old age."
The judge closed his eyes, and though he still looked a little unhappy about the archdeacon's decision he remained patient and accepting of it. He allowed himself to be led to where the baby slept in a monk dormitory.
As Judge Frollo neared the new basket and the blanket inside, he hoped that the lightning and ill-lit cathedral of earlier that morning had caused the baby to look more monstrous than it actually would in true light of midday, but when he looked he was appalled to see that the baby was actually more gruesome, though perhaps less monstrous, than he had seemed the first time. It was little wonder why the gypsies wanted to get rid of him.
Yet in the light and calm, the judge's heart, which truly had become more humble than usual, felt a sincere pity for the little abandoned creature. At first it was more of the type of pity one may have over a wounded animal, but he soon felt that his brother may be right. Maybe he could better this poor creature and raise him to be at least inwardly a good little soul. Either way, the judge determined at that moment to raise him well, and he felt rather good about himself.
Later that very evening he had the baby baptized in case he should not survive the night, and Archdeacon Benjamin performed the ceremony in private after evening mass.
When it came time to name the child, he had to pause and ask his brother, "What shall the boy be called?"
"I've decided," said the judge, "to name him after the day upon which he was found."
Archdeacon Benjamin could not help but make a face. "Quasimodo Sunday?" he asked doubtfully.
"In honor of the fact," the judge explained calmly and confidently, "that he will grow from the milk of truth."
"It's not in the least bit orthodox to call a child such a name," the archdeacon protested. "He should still have a true Christian name. Besides. 'Quasimodo' in itself has not a becoming meaning."
"And 'Marie' itself means 'bitter', after all," retorted the judge. "And the Mother of God bears the name."
The archdeacon suppressed the urge to yell at the judge for his impossible nature, but he could not suppress a downright huff that escaped almost of its own accord. "At least, mon frère! At least if you must call him that, give him also a baptismal name to go with it."
"Jean."
It was said so quickly and sharply and cut right into the archdeacon's last phrase so that at first the archdeacon did not comprehend what his brother had said, but shaking his head back to attention he nodded with satisfaction. He knew that the judge had only chosen the name because it had been the first name to come into his head for its common nature. Yet although common, it was only because of its strength as a name that the popularity of "Jean" endured.
He looked down at the baby in his arms.
"Yes. 'Jean' you are," he said.
"But you must promise me something," said the judge suddenly.
Archdeacon Benjamin hesitated and looked upon the judge with uncertainty.
"Yes?" he asked.
"You must promise to allow me to raise the boy here."
"Here?"
"My house is not suitable for children whether well or otherwise. It is not a good neighborhood besides."
"He can't live in the cathedral," the archdeacon protested.
"And why not?" the judge demanded. "If it is a service to God to raise the boy the least that can be done is to promise me the boy can be housed within these strong walls. May he learn the ways of the Church from infancy."
Though not at all convinced, the archdeacon knew that it would be no use arguing about it at present. He would wait until later.
For now, the baptism concluded and little Jean Quasimodo was washed over his head from the font. The cold chill of the water, as was only natural for most babies, caused him to cry. The cry had certainly regained its strength since he had been found on the steps. It echoed throughout the vast cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris and out into the square and the streets beyond.