It was the Middle Ages, a time of Catholicism, when the Church had absolute power, corruption and darkness, and when the people were at once ignorant and exploited, blind and confused and apathetic, but not without honesty and a sense of goodness. This can be seen in the fragment in which Esmeralda brings water to Quasimodo, see below:
Chapter 60 Notre Dame de Paris (III) Volume VI A Drop of Water, a Tear (4) (1)
Four A Drop of Water, a Tear
These words of the Hidden Nun can be said to be the point at which the two acts converge. Prior to this, the two acts were simultaneously unfolding in parallel on their own special stages, one, which we have just seen, taking place in a rat-hole, and the other, which we are about to see, taking place on the shelf of the Pillar of Shame. The only witnesses in the first act are the three women the reader has just met, and the audience in the latter act are the same members of the public we have seen earlier gathered around the pillar of shame and the gallows in Riverland Square.
Seeing that four constables had been standing at the corners of the Pillar of Shame since 9 a.m., this crowd expected that the execution was imminent, presumably not a hanging, but a flogging, or an ear-flap, or, in any case, some sort of thing. So in an instant, the crowd of onlookers increased dramatically, and surrounded the four constables, who had to use their whips more than once and push back with their horses' asses to, as they were called at the time, push the crowd back a little.
The people waiting to see the public execution were peaceful and did not look impatient. They were bored, so they watched the Pillar of Shame as a diversion. The so-called pillar of shame, in fact, is a very simple kind of stone monument, in the form of a cubic shape, about ten feet high, the center is empty. There was a steep, rough stone step called a ladder, leading to a platform at the top, on which rested a wheel of oak-paneled turntables on a flat surface. The prisoner was kneeling, with his arms clipped behind his back, tied to the top of the turntable. Concealed inside the platform is a winch, which, when turned, pushes a wooden axle, and with it the wheel turns, always on a plane, so that the prisoner's face is continuously presented to the spectators, and can be seen from any corner of the square. This is called car spinning criminals.
As one can see, the Pillar of Shame in River Plaza is nowhere near as much fun as the one in the food market, as far as entertaining people is concerned. There is not an ounce of architectural artistry, not a single star of grandeur. See no roofs with iron crosses erected, no octagonal lamps, no delicate little column-topped floral arches and leaf-plate arches jostling for attention on those straight eaves, no strange and mysterious gutters, intricately carved roof frames, or luscious stone carvings.
To see, you have to look at the crushed stone four pieces of the platform wall, sandstone roof and bottom of the platform, and next to a menacing stone column gallows, dried up, naked.
For lovers of Gothic architecture, this kind of enjoyment is a bit of a spoilsport. It is true that the medieval gawkers had no interest in architecture, not the beauty of the Pillar of Shame.
The prisoner, tied to the back of a large cart, finally arrived. He was then dragged onto the platform, and could be seen from all sides of the square as he was tied securely to the top of the turntable of the Pillar of Shame with ropes and leather straps, when a deafening hush erupted from the square, mingled with raucous laughter and cheers. Everyone recognized him instantly as Cazimodo.
It was indeed him. It's amazing how different he's come back this time. Yesterday, in this same square, accompanied by the Duke of Egypt, the King of Dinar and the Emperor of Galilee, a crowd of ten thousand people had cheered and honored him, installing him as the Pope of Fools, and today he was a prisoner on the Pillar of Shame! One thing is certain, there was not a single person in the crowd, not even Cazimodo himself, who was at once a victor and at once a criminal, who would have had it clear in his head to make this view of the different situations before and after. Nor did Grandgoire and his philosophy of life ever experience such a scene.
In a short time, Michel Nouare, the trumpeter appointed by our King's majesty, told everyone to be silent and read the judgment at the top of his voice, according to the ruling and order of the Lord Justice. Then, he retreated behind the great car with a squad of his men in armor.
Cazimodo was expressionless, not even frowning. Any resistance was impossible, and in the stylized language of criminal justice, the bindings were unforgiving and solid, meaning that the leather straps and chains were likely to sink right into the flesh. Besides, it is a tradition in prisons and penal ships that has not disappeared, and among civilized, gentle, humane people like ourselves, do not shackles preserve this tradition as a treasure to this day (as exemplified, by the way, by the penal colony and the guillotine)!
Cazimodo was dragged, pushed, carried, lifted and tied.
It was impossible to guess his expression except that of a savage or an idiot. People knew he was deaf, and seemingly blind.
He was kneeling on the wheel, and he did as he was told; he was stripped of his shirt and blouse until he was naked, and he did as he was told; he was re-tied with straps and buckles, and he did as he was told, and he did as he was told. I saw him gasping for breath from time to time, like a calf tied to a butcher's cart, with his head hanging over the edge of the cart, swaying around.
"That fool of a man!" John Frollo of the mill said to his friend Roban Pospan (the two schoolboys had followed the prisoner here as a matter of course).
"He's like a golden tortoise in a box, he doesn't understand anything!"
The audience could not help but burst into a fit of laughter at the sight of Cazimodo's naked hunchback, chicken breasts, calloused and hairy shoulders. While everyone was having a good time, a man in a bugle coat, five short and three thick, climbed up on the platform and walked over to stand next to the prisoner. Immediately his name spread among the crowd; this man was Master Pietra Tortelu, the legal executioner of the little fortress.
He began by placing a black hourglass in one corner of the pillar of shame. The bottle at the top end of the hourglass was filled with red sand and leaked down into the container at the bottom end. He then took off the two-colored tunic he was wearing, only to find a thin leather whip made of long, white strips of leather twisted together, oily and glistening with all the bumps, with some metal claws on the end, dangling from his right hand. With his left hand he absently uncovered the sleeve of his right arm shirt and lifted it all the way up to his armpit.
At that moment, John Frollo climbed onto Roban Pospan's shoulders, stuck his blond curly head above the crowd, and shouted, "Gentlemen and ladies, come and see! Here is the bell-ringer, Cazimodo, who is about to flog my brother, His Excellency, the Vicar-General of Jozar, a monster of Oriental architectural art, whose spine is a rounded lid, and whose legs are curved pillars!"
At the words, the crowd laughed, especially the children and the girls.
At the end, the executioner stomped his foot and the round wheel immediately spun. Cazimodo, tied solidly, shook. The misshapen face suddenly panicked, and the audience around him laughed even harder.
The spinning wheel delivered Cazimodo's hump one to Master Piella, who raised his right arm, and the thin strip of leather, which had the appearance of a viper, hissed piercingly through the air and lashed the poor man's shoulders viciously.
Cazimodo, as it were, awoke with a start, and his body jumped involuntarily, which gradually dawned on him. He shrank into his bonds in pain, and his face was so distorted by surprise and agony that the muscles in his face twitched violently. But he didn't groan, he just threw his head back, turned it to the left, then flicked it to the left, and swayed around like a bull being stung in the ribs by a gadfly, wagging its head and tail in pain.
It was followed by a second whip, a third whip, whip after whip, one after another, one after another. The wheel kept spinning and the whips kept raining down, and all of a sudden blood was pouring out, dripping from the back of the hunchback's tanned shoulders, while drops of blood splattered in all directions as the thin strip of leather swung through the air, splattering into the middle of the crowd.
Cazimodo resumed his original aloof demeanor, at least on the surface. First he was silent and outwardly unmoving, but secretly he rested in his efforts to break the shackles on his body. His one eye was glowing, his muscles were tense, his limbs were curled up, and his belt and chain were pulled tight. The struggle was powerful, marvelous, yet hopeless. Yet the antiquated shackles of the justice court were sturdy enough to roll and rattle just a little, and that was all. Exhausted, Cazimodo fell head over heels again.
The expression on his face suddenly changed from one of shock to one of bitterness and frustration. He closed that one eye, and his head dropped down to his chest for a moment, as if broken.
Then he stopped moving. Whether the blood flowed from his body, whether the lashes came one after the other, whether the executioner, who was getting more and more excited and intoxicated with the lustful power of the execution, whether the terrible whip, sharper than the claws of the devil and hissing even more, whistled on and on, nothing could make him move again.
At the beginning of the execution, a bailiff from Little Fort, dressed in black and riding a black horse, stood by the ladder. He then stretched out the ebony rod in his hand and pointed to the hourglass. Only then did the executioner stop, and the turntable came to a halt. Kazimodo slowly opened his eyes again.
The flogging was over. Two of the legal executioner's servants came over and scrubbed the blood from the prisoner's shoulders and back, applied some kind of ointment that immediately healed all kinds of wounds, and threw a yellow shawl, like an altar cloth, over his back. Meanwhile, Piella Totteru shook his blood-soaked and red-stained whip, and drops of blood fell to the stone floor.
In the case of Cazimodo, the matter was not closed, but had to be shown on the platform for an hour, a sentence which Master Florian Barberdian had most wisely added to that passed by Lord Robert d'Estouteville. Remembering that Jean de Goumena had said that deafness was absurd, this practice really brought to light that old jest, which embraced both physiology and psychology.
So the hourglass was turned over again, and the bound hunchback was left on the torture table, so that the punishment could be carried out to the end.
The populace, especially in the Middle Ages, were as much a part of society as children are of the family. As long as they remained in a state of primitive ignorance, in a state of spiritual and intellectual immaturity, they could be described in the words that describe an infantile child:
There is no sympathy at this age.
From what we have said it is clear that Cazimodo is everywhere to be grudged and hated, and it is not true that there is more than one reason for resentment. Almost everyone in the crowd had reason, or thought they had reason, to complain about the hunchbacked villain of Notre Dame. At first the sight of him on the pedestal of shame was greeted with joy and jubilation; then the sight of him being tortured and in his miserable condition afterward added a few moments of amusement rather than pity, and the resentment became even more venomous.
According to the jargon still used by the square-hatted judges, as soon as the public prosecution is over, it is the turn of thousands of private grievances to be avenged. Here, too, as in the Hall of Justice, there was a particular uproar from the women, each of whom bore some sort of grudge against Cazimodo, some hated him for his cunning, some for his ugliness, and the latter women were the most vicious, and hated him with a gnashing of teeth.
"Bah! Antichrist's ugly thing!" One called out.
"Broom-handle-riding devil!" Another shouted.
"What a nice devil face!" A third said. "If today had been yesterday, with that ghostly face, I'd be the Mad Pope!"
"Yes!" An old woman went on. "That's the Ghostface on the Pillar of Shame. When will we see him make faces on the gallows?"
"When will you, you damned bell-ringer, top that big bell of yours in the ninth fountain?"
"But it's this devil who rings the Sanjing bell!"
"Bah! Deaf! One-eyed! Hunchbacked! Ugly!"
"An ugly face that could scare a pregnant woman into miscarriage, and any doctor or pharmacist who performs abortions would have to bow down!"
Speaking of this, the two schoolboys, John of the Mill and Roban Pospan, tore their voices out and sang aloud the iteration of the old folk song:
A noose
Hangs the hanged sinner!
A bundle of firewood
Burn the strange ugly one!
All sorts of other curses came pouring down; boos, curses, and laughter were heard in quick succession; and here and there stones flew.
Kazimodo, deaf as he was, could see clearly that the public anger that flowed over his face was no less intense than the words. Besides, the rocks that smashed over them were heard more clearly than the cacophony of laughter.
At first he held his nerve. But the endurance of the executioner's lash, which he had been able to withstand through clenched teeth, was weakened by the stings of the insects, and he could not hold out any longer. The bull of Asturia, almost indifferent to the attacks of the matador, was enraged by the barking of the dogs and the throwing of lances.
He first looked slowly around the crowd with a menacing gaze, but being bound to death, his gaze was not enough to drive away the flies that stung his wounds.
So he struggled and wriggled furiously, despite the ropes, shaking the old wheel on its wooden axle. In response, the jeers and insults intensified.
This miserable man was like a beast in chains, and since he could not break the chains on his body, he had to calm down again. Only an angry sigh escaped from time to time, and his whole chest puffed out. There was no blush on his face. He was plainly too far from the social state and too close to the natural state to know what the hell shame was. Besides, he was deformed to such an extent, how could he see whether he was ashamed or not? However, anger, hatred, despair, to this ugly face slowly covered a layer of dark clouds, it is more and more dark, more and more full of electricity, this Cyclops eye then burst out of the light of lightning.
At that moment a mule came through the crowd carrying a cleric, and for a moment the clouded face of Cazimodo brightened. He caught a glimpse of the mule and the cleric from a distance, and the poor prisoner was instantly reconciled, and a strange smile, full of indescribable gentleness, forbearance, and affection, appeared on his face, which had been so taut with anger. As the clergyman came nearer and nearer, the smile became clearer, more distinct, more glowing. This unfortunate person to meet as if a savior, but when the mule approached the pillar of shame, the mule rider can see who the prisoner, the clergyman then lowered his eyes, violently folded back, with the kicking spurs kicked, and hurriedly walked away, as if afraid of the ugly monster to make any request, eager to get out of the way, as far as a poor man in such a situation of homage or gratitude, he does not care mileage.
The clergyman was Don Claude Frollo, the vicar-general.
The cloud was again cast over Cazimodo's face, and it grew even darker. There was a smile interspersed with the cloud, but it was a bitter smile, a deflated smile, a smile of infinite sadness.
Time passed. He had been there for at least an hour and a half, chopped liver, humiliated, mocked, and nearly stoned alive.
And then, with double despair, he struggled again, despite his shackles, and even the whole wooden frame of the gurney shook beneath him. He had been silent all this time, but at this moment he actually broke the silence, his voice hoarse and fierce, rather like a dog barking than like a man barking, overpowering the mocking voices of the crowd, only to hear a roar, "Water!"
This miserable cry, not only did not move the masses of compassion, but to the torture platform around the Paris onlookers of the good people to add a laugh. It should be noted that these rabble, as a whole, were no less cruel and stupid than that dreadful gang of beggars. As we have before shown the reader, that gang was downright the lowest layer of the populace. After the unfortunate sinner had cried out for thirst, there was nothing but a chorus of cynicism around him, and nothing more. It is true to say that his appearance at this moment was not only pitiful, but also comical and disgusting. See his face purple, sweating like a stream, eyes confused, anger and pain on the mouth foaming, tongue stretched out most of the way. It should be noted, too, that even if there was a kindly man or woman among this rabble of citizens who had the good sense to send a glass of water to this suffering wretch, the disgraceful prejudice that surrounded the abominable steps of the Pillar of Shame was enough to discourage the philanthropic.
After a moment, Cazimodo looked around the crowd with desperate eyes, and in a more heartbreaking voice cried out again, "Water!"
Another roar of laughter followed in response.
"Drink this!" Roban Pospan yelled, and hurled a gutter-soaked rag in his face. "Take it, damned deaf man! Count me in your debt na!"
A woman threw a stone at his head, "Here, have a taste of this, and see if you dare ring that funeral bell late at night and wake us all up!"
"Hey, boy!" A cripple howled as he strained to beat him with his cane. "Let's see if you still have the guts to work your magic on us from the top of Notre Dame's bell tower."
"Here's a bowl for you to scoop up some water!" One of the men threw a broken tile jar at his chest and screamed, "Just because you walked past my wife, she gave birth to a two-headed cub!"
"And my cat gave birth to a cub with six feet!" An old woman screamed shrilly as she picked up a tile and smashed it at him.
"Water!" Cazimodo came up for air and shouted a third time.
At this juncture, he saw the crowd suddenly flash out of the way, and out stepped a strangely dressed young girl with a small white goat with golden horns at her side, and a Basque tambourine in her hand.
That eye of Kazimodo's lit up at once. It was the very same gypsy girl he had tried so hard to snatch away last night. He realized in a vague way that it was for this attack that he was being punished at this point. In fact, it was by no means true; he was being punished only because he had had the bad luck to be deaf, and to have a deaf man judging him. He had no doubt that the gypsy girl had come to take revenge and to beat him up like the others.
And sure enough, he only saw her ascending the steps at a quick pace. He was so angry and remorseful that he couldn't even breathe. He wished he could collapse the platform of the Pillar of Shame in one fell swoop, and if his one eye were capable of lightning he would have blown the Egyptian girl to pieces without waiting for her to climb the platform.
Without a word, she silently approached the writhing sinner who tried to avoid her, then unhooked a canteen from her belt and gently brought it to the poor man's parched lips.
At that moment, only a large teardrop rolled from his dry, burning eye, and then trickled slowly down the ugly face, long wrinkled with disappointment. It was perhaps the first time in his life that this unfortunate man had shed a tear.
But he had forgotten to drink. The Egyptian woman pouted impatiently, and with a smile on her face, held the canteen close to Cazimodo's open mouth, and he was so thirsty that he drank from it, one breath after another.
As soon as he had finished, the poor man stretched out his blackened lips, presumably to kiss the hand that had just rescued him. But the girl, perhaps wary, and remembering the attempted atrocity of last night, drew back her hand in fear, as a child might do if bitten by a wild beast.
So the poor deaf man stared at her with a look of reproach and inexpressible sorrow.
That such a beautiful woman, delicate, innocent, charming, and yet so frail, should have come in such good faith to the rescue of a wretched, ugly, and wicked fellow, is perhaps the most touching scene in the world, and especially at the Pillar of Shame, which is unparalleled.
All the people were moved, applauding and shouting, "Bravo! Wonderful!"
At that very moment, the Cloistered Nun looked out of the window of the hole in the ground and saw the Egyptian woman standing on the Pillar of Shame, and then cursed venomously, "You deserve death by a thousand cuts, Egyptian girl! Death by a thousand cuts! Death by a thousand cuts!"