Victor Hugo: The Hunchback of Notre Dame

BOOK EIGHTH. CHAPTER 6. THREE HUMAN HEARTS DIFFERENTLY CONSTRUCTED. (continued)

He bent down to her ear, and added (the spectators supposed that he was receiving her last confession): "Will you have me? I can still save you!"

She looked intently at him: "Begone, demon, or I will denounce you!"

He gave vent to a horrible smile: "You will not be believed. You will only add a scandal to a crime. Reply quickly! Will you have me?"

"What have you done with my Phoebus?"

"He is dead!" said the priest.

At that moment the wretched archdeacon raised his head mechanically and beheld at the other end of the Place, in the balcony of the Gondelaurier mansion, the captain standing beside Fleur-de-Lys. He staggered, passed his hand across his eyes, looked again, muttered a curse, and all his features were violently contorted.

"Well, die then!" he hissed between his teeth. "No one shall have you." Then, raising his hand over the gypsy, he exclaimed in a funereal voice:--"I nunc, anima anceps, et sit tibi Deus misenicors!"*

* "Go now, soul, trembling in the balance, and God have mercy upon thee."

This was the dread formula with which it was the custom to conclude these gloomy ceremonies. It was the signal agreed upon between the priest and the executioner.

The crowd knelt.

"Kyrie eleison,"* said the priests, who had remained beneath the arch of the portal.

* "Lord have mercy upon us."

"Kyrie eleison," repeated the throng in that murmur which runs over all heads, like the waves of a troubled sea.

"Amen," said the archdeacon.