Le Monde des Cathedrales
"I don't like your Quasimodo, brother," said Jehan playfully, glancing sideways at Claude as he stared thoughtfully over one of the parapets of the cathedral, down at the square below.
"Why do you dislike Quasimodo?" Claude asked flatly, hardly bothering to make it a question. Jehan considered sulking, to catch his attention, but decided it wasn't worth it and instead stretched his shoulders carelessly. Claude was being stupid and dull again, and he was sure it was because his birthday was coming soon. Claude never had enjoyed birthdays.
"Because I really must say he looks at you quite queerly. Those ugly eyes of his--always watching from somewhere up above a fellow, peering down through the bells--and he always looks at you, brother. He gazes at you like a parlourmaid after the butcher's boy. It's enough to make one concerned! Imagine those gossipy nuns catching sight of him. Why, you'd never hear the end of it."
"Need I remind you that Quasimodo merely sees me as his father." Claude didn't make a question of this one, either. "I have taken care of many children in the past, and they were all very grateful." He didn't add, 'as they well ought to have been', because it wouldn't have been the proper humiliated thing to say, but the taste of it was there, along with a slight hesitation. Jehan didn't bother sorting the hesitation out, but he laughed at the sense of the expectant words.
"Oh, of course. My angel of mercy brother. Well, you keep an eye on him, then, just as he does on you, and we'll see. Good day to you, Monsieur l'abbe."
He stepped off smartly, glowing and smiling and laughing inside, because he had annoyed Claude and disturbed him. Claude had not given him much money, but he already had a good excuse to come back next week--because of Claude's birthday; and he was unperturbed. As he went out into the square, however, he looked around the edge of the door behind him, and saw the big, bent shape of the bell-ringer clinging to a shadow and looking through the archway up the stairs, where Claude was sedately walking up.
Jehan laughed and shook his head. Claude would see!
~
Frollo turned over pages in a prayerbook with one hand and made notes on the lines of a text on alchemy with the other, once in a while glancing up to see the fire smoke and mutter something under his breath. There was a peculiar, unexpected beauty about his eyes, a quiet kind of dignity, a serious but a good expression. He had always been a good man, if a severe one. He had always done as he ought, and his eyes couldn't help showing it.
He only had one real transgression, and its difficulty was its inescapability. He had never conquered it. He had never really felt guilty about it, which pained him more than the committing of it ever had. There was nothing, not the power and control over himself which he was able to exercise in all other aspects nor the fear of l'Enfer, which had ever succeeded in helping him to stop his sin.
He carefully marked a paragraph in a different book, a richly illustrated Bible which Jehan had given him once a long time ago, on a birthday when Jehan was still a half-responsible young man who showed love for his brother. As he made the mark, he murmured,--
"Quasimodo."
Of course the boy couldn't hear him, but he made his jerking, awkward way into the room anyway, without knowing that he'd been invited and yet somehow perceiving it. Frollo looked up at him and beckoned him forward, still speaking. It was quite all right to speak. The boy couldn't understand.
"Jehan just left. What shall I do with my brother? I love my brother, as the Bible tells me, but I am worried about him, Quasimodo." He put out his hand, meeting the boy's eyes intently without looking at his ugly face, and touched the boy's misshapen ears and forehead thoughtfully. "He's a foolish boy. He wastes money and time and love. He will be a disgrace to me, but that will not stop me from loving him. Thou art a disgrace to me also, but I have never forsaken thee. I have never forsaken any of the children I raised."
Frollo paused and rubbed his thumb over the boy's twisted cheeks.
"Shall I give him money again when he comes to see me next? I can well afford to, but I cannot afford to make a slothful, sinful man of him. His soul must be saved, thou knowest. I cannot condemn him through my own desire to indulge him. Love seems to me to be a thing easily sinned by, and I wonder at it. A man, says our Lord Christ, shall not hate; but to love will often make him sin more greatly than to hate would, and often make a worser being of him than otherwise. Is it not so?"
He signed the last sentence, so that the boy could understand it, and in a voice that was just as misshapen and sad and ugly as himself, the boy answered, with effort, without knowing why he had been asked,--
"Yes, master."
"We are all poor sinners," said Frollo, and he leaned forward to kiss the boy.
~
He squeezed his eyes shut, which was difficult, for they were bulging and strangely set in his face and not meant to close properly, and then opened them again to look lovingly at Him. The firelight flickered on His face and over His mouth as He spoke, many, many words which he wouldn't ever be able to understand, and he sighed and smiled at once. He was only now seventeen years old, and not quite bitter yet. He still thought some things were beautiful.
The bells, and Him.
The bells made a noise he could hear, a faint, sweet sound that he could just make out, over and over when he pulled on the ropes. He began the noise, but they brought it forth, they rang. He tugged and dragged and burnt his hands sometimes on the heavy ropes, but it was Big Maria and Little Maria and Grand Maria who sang for him.
He could not hear Him, but He had hands that made words and meant things, and with His hands He guided him through the cathedral. He knew his way about it partly because he'd explored it in all the years he'd lived there, and partly because He had shown him the secret spots and the hidden chambers and the places where it was safe to sit and watch the services and the people with their candles and prayers.
It was He who loved him. No one loved him in all the world, but He did, like Jesus-Christ who loved all the people, even the lepers and the blind and the unclean, even the ugly people. Just like Jesus-Christ, He loved the ugly people. And he, who never quite understood beauty because the cathedral was not beautiful, she was sombre, saw that His eyes were beautiful.
He saw that the cathedral was his mother, his lady, his one safe place, and He was her son, like Notre Dame and Jesus-Christ. Like the cathedral, He was his one safe thing. He loved him. He stretched out His hands and dipped them in the font and blessed him and baptised him when someone else ought to have drowned him. He touched him and didn't strike him. He didn't curse him.
He loved him.
Younger Brother, who often came to see Him, did not love Him. This was only clear to see, even when his eyes were so misshapen and set so peculiarly in his face. He wasn't happy until Younger Brother had left and He was satisfied again.
So he waited by the door when Younger Brother came again, and watched vigilantly until he left, and when he was gone, crept through the doorway to see Him. For the first time--the only time he had ever known such a thing--he saw that He was weeping, and with his big, clumsy, rough hands, with burns and marks from pulling the bell-ropes, he touched His hands and covered them.
Then He kissed him gently and spoke soundlessly, and he once again remembered that He loved him, and when he rang the bells, he rang them for Him. Faraway beautiful sounds for kind beautiful eyes. He never quite understood beauty, because he was not beautiful at all, but he knew that two things were. The bells and Him.
They were all that really mattered, those two things.
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