Work Text:
From behind the houses rises the murmuring of the river...
—Romain Rolland
In later times, many would question whether Claude had a happy childhood, or even any childhood to speak of. He would smile inwardly, for they had no knowledge of the distant light which continued to illuminate his soul, the first motion which propelled him ever onwards. His life in the house of his parents on the Rue de Tirechappe was brief—but so little was needed to feed an ardent mind!
He was happy. At an age where dreams were interwoven with memories, and memories with dreams, days and nights seemed to pass altogether. Lights, shadows, fragments of another world danced before him: his father’s funny hat, painted paper knights in colourful armour, friars passing through the street, a goose feather he found, a peal of bells, laughter....and the river, the great sound of the river, the only continuous music in that silent age, at which he peered through the doors of his mind, across a chasm wide as centuries....
Medieval Paris was another city: no house was ever too distant from the river. All the inhabitants, high or low, were nursed by the living force of its waters. Their architecture were congested together like plants growing haphazardly, with little regard of the trouble it would cause to poor Haussmann, who would strive so hard to prune Paris into neatly arranged arrondissements. By the humble dwellings rented to peasant households rose the ancient seat of an illustrious family, whose ancestors had fought alongside Saint Louis in days long past. The Seine was the common mother of them all.
On the brightest days of early summer, when the sky was clear and the air was not yet so hot as to make him wish to lie indolently, half-asleep, on the shaded balcony, he ran about on the river bank, wetting his feet, following other children who lived around him. His father, who sometimes went by on his way from important business on the île, often frowned at the carelessness with which his son born of gentility mingled with the children of common people, but the next day he would take Claude to a nearby brook and let him swim.
Summer passed: winter came. The streets were deserted now. Frost crept onto the hazy window-panes, but the inside of the house was always kept warm by the fire that their old servant tended. He lay across his mother’s lap as she sewed, listening to her as she repeated soft Latin prayers. Or else his father, seized by a burst of interest, would desultorily read him a few odes from Horace. So he, who had not yet fully grasped French, apprehensively imitated the mysterious syllables, feeling their weight rolling off on his tongue.
Pater noster, qui est in caelis...
Without knowing why his childish heart was moved by those sounds— spirits, whose voices echoed of something lost and faraway. He chased after them. When none of his parents realised, he took down his father’s books again and quietly read them to himself. They were all different: some were heavy books on law, which his father needed for his work; some were categorical books of the kind so favoured by medieval authors, which spoke of the ordering of animals, plants, and the stars. Some books, like the sunburnt peasant grandfathers, told him of stories, half-history, half-legend, the one indistinguishable from the other. Some books talked of more mysterious things, Greek mathematics, Latin treatises, who whispered of eternity and God. Often he could not understand them. But it did not matter: he only needed to listen. Then a flash of meaning would sometimes enter his mind, as if the book had confessed a secret to him.
And so it was that though his mother bore him no other living sibling, his childhood home was not found wanting in happiness or warmth. Situated between the growing class of burghers and the aristocracy, they were not an important family, but they lacked nothing. He was lovingly looked after by both his parents and the servants, who provided him with every necessity and comfort of the body. And as for his soul—how great was the world! How rich the bravura of nature! How wide the sea of knowledge which waited for him to conquer!
-
He was four years old that spring day. His parents took him to mass as usual, standing at their accustomed place in the front facing the altar, where many illustrious citizens were gathered. Unlike many other children who often grew impatient and started to make trouble through the lengthy ceremony, of which they could make no sense, he was quiet, and though he had to stand and kneel in the same place for a rather long time, he watched the proceedings attentively. By now he could remember the order of things: the music and chant alternating, interposed with responses from the congregation; the priest now grew silent, now again vocal...the server responded to him...they moved to the eucharistic host, and the priest put his hand over it in the eternal dance in which he was well-rehearsed...
...ite, missa est!
The solemn group of clergymen filed out. Many people, not interested in more than what was necessary and seeing that the business was done, did not try to linger. His father went outside to discuss something with an acquaintance, leaving him alone with his mother, who was praying intently before the image of a saint.
He was bored. He felt that he could not stand around and wait, but at the same time he did not want to not kneel beside his mother on the cold stone floor. After all he was a child, and children always seem to be impious innocents.
But where other children were indifferent he was overcome with wonder. Already he could somewhat read the great book of stone, and he took delight in touring the cathedral‘s murals and stained windows. It was not the first Sunday which he remembered passing inside the cathedral, nor certainly was it his first sight of it. But anyone who desires to see everything illuminated must make an effort to come often, for the sun at different times of the day only lights up a portion of the windows so that the glass shone like precious stones. And so there was always something new to see, and he never got tired.
“You seem very interested in that.”
He turned around. It was a young canon, recently ordained, who had just served at the preceding mass. His face was simple and friendly, unlike the older clerics who wore a tired or else distant air. And perhaps because of this, Claude, who disliked being interrogated by adults, felt somehow predisposed to talk to him.
“Yes, monsieur abbé, I was thinking how beautiful this window is when light shines upon it like that—and whether there are places where—like in the stories—all houses would be as the house of God.”
The priest laughed, but then fell into a brief reflection. He was far from dismissing this boy’s ideas as nothing but a preposterous fantasy born from an idle and unlearned mind, who understood nothing of how many years this cathedral took to build, how much money spent, how many lives consumed. In some ways young men are quite like children, except that children are unconscious idealists and young men are conscious ones.
“Maybe in paradise, my boy,” after a while he said solemnly. “We would only be fit to live in houses of God when we are raised to his eternity.”
Then he pointed to the window. “Do you know what this depicts?”
“It is Christ and St. Dismas, the penitent thief, monsieur.”
“Ah, I see you know that story! Would you like me to read the inscription for you?”
“But I know what it says, monsieur abbé— Amen dico tibi hodie mecum eris in paradiso. ”
The pronouncement had all the effect of a mischievous victory, fit for a fledgling court wit, but it came from the mouth of a cherub. He looked up, the priest looked at him aghast. “Can you read, child? Or have you memorised this?”
The truth was that it was part reading, part memorisation. Neither was good enough to serve him in putting out Latin quotations yet, but seeing the letters helped him remember, and his memory helped him make out the words. “My father reads to me,” he said simply, “but I only remember this part, since it is written here. What had the thief said to Our Lord?”
By this time a few other clerics, curious about the exchange, had gathered around them. And so it was that when his mother rose from her knees and came to find him she saw the image of the young Christ in the temple, discoursing with teachers far older than him. The sun shone through the coloured glass, casting a colourful halo on the scene. At the sound of her approach the child raised his dark head, and warm light made his eyes the colour of liquid gold.
The young abbé came to her. “You must be his mother, Madame. He is precocious, consider sending him to service of the Church.”
It was nothing but a simple observation, but Claude noticed that his mother turned quite pale. For at that moment, the words of the priest whose name time has forgotten, sounded to the mother like a command of God.
-
From then on his life took on a definite shape. Often we emerge from the obscure sanctuary of the earliest childhood only gradually, the world forming as a sculpture emerging from a mass of stone with each blow of the sculptor. But for him it was not so. When he left the church that morning he had an inexplicable feeling that his childhood had abruptly ended, although he understood little and could not explain why. Suddenly the dreamlike veil fell off and life stood out in sharp relief.
His poor mother did not wish to give him up to the priesthood, but the words of the priest echoed and re-echoed in her mind, until she could no longer bear to keep for herself what belonged to the Lord. His father at first opposed it altogether, being a man with more practicality than piety, who regarded all theology as the mere play of words. The whole affair was completely senseless: they had no other child beside Claude, no other heir to come after them. But, whether because he loved his wife more than he loved the continuation of his line, or because the embers of his doubtful faith were stirred by her zeal, in the end he yielded.
He was sent to learn Latin. Before the cock’s crow his father got him up, and though he was never quite awake, he was made to recite poetry and scripture by candlelight—for in three quarters of the year it was not yet light—then he walked with him to the cathedral school of Saint Germain l’Auxerrois, where Claude would pass the more pleasant half of the day in ill-lit rooms memorising and copying Latin passages. Besides him there were several other students, without exception a few years older than he, and perhaps because of this they rarely condescended to acknowledge his existence. Therefore neither did he attempt to make friends with them, out of some natural pride and aloofness. He thought them stupid, but at the same time was intimidated by their presence.
But for a while he did not forget the children with whom he grew up, who still came to find him from time to time. They are mostly the sons of tradesmen and peasants, not educated folk, but they were rather good-natured, and most importantly, they knew him, and they saw him as one of their own. Half a day he yet posesse free of studies, so he joined in the games and exploits of these boys.
In the days that they left him alone, which was more common, he hid himself somewhere to read his favourite books—just such books that boys of his age liked, which recount the exploits of paladins of ages past or the fantastical tales from Outremer far-away. He was engrossed by those great deeds, always surrounded with a perfume of oriental mystery, so that very often this young master, as the servants noted, paused from his readings to gaze absent-mindedly at the hilly Parisian landscape extending beyond the sight of men.
One year, as he still remembered much later, when searching the recesses of his memory for the pieces of a world long gone, news of a great tragedy came from the Greek Empire and stirred Paris. Everywhere people gathered in groups, the learned in their studies and the unlearned in their taverns, each giving his idle theory about the future of Christendom. Some said the end of the world is near, while others laughed off such an idea, and, like the King of France, was rather more concerned about the threat of the Holy Roman Emperor than the Turks.
And naturally, while his father and other notable burghers discussed politics, he and his friends, taking fishing poles for lances, acted out the grown-ups’ talk by declaring a little crusade with no less enthusiasm than the real crusaders when they first set out for the holy city.
Such was the scene his father came upon, when he had left the gathering of doctors and lawyers and merchants and looked for his son near the bridge of the river.
“What are you doing here?”
“We are the king Charlemagne and the twelve peers of France taking back Constantinople!” They replied with one voice.
Without another word, his father took him by the arm and led him away before all the other boys. Claude made no struggle, but his cheeks burned for being disciplined before so many people, as if he had done something wrong. But his father did not seem angry.
“Which paladin were you?” After they were far away enough from the others, his father asked him.
“Turpin of Reims.”
“Ah, the archbishop.”
They walked down the familiar streets together. At length his father said, in carefully measured words, as if after a long deliberation: “Claude, you must not play with those boys anymore. You are, or you will be, a priest of the holy church. You belong to a different world. So go no more to the games of peasant boys, and think no more of the business of warriors. It is not proper for a priest to fight.”
“But Archbishop Turpin was a priest, yet he—“
“Turpin‘s time was different,” his father cut him off, “men were more barbaric, and the world more perilous. Now there is no need for that.”
“Then are priests doomed to never do any great deeds, but always hide in their cloisters, only appearing when lords need spiritual advice, and disappearing when they are not needed?” He cried.
“What are you saying, child? Doomed? Do you not consider it a great deed to be a saint?”
Claude made no answer. His father continued, “Is a vocation worthless if its work is unseen? Each man has his station in life. Some live by the sword, some by the plow, and some by rosaries. Leave warfare to the princes, Claude, it is your duty to pray for their souls.”
“But why? Why must I be a priest?”
“ ’Ανάγκη ’έστιν ,” said his father, who knew some Greek. “Some things are not for us to decide. Do you understand?”
He did not really understand.
“Claude, you are given your life by God and your parents, it is not yours so that you could do what you want with it.”
“Yes, father.”
As he became older, he gradually lost interest in those chivalric romances and medieval gestes, rather turning to the works Cicero and Seneca and such grave-faced Roman authors for consolation. The other children, knowing that he studied all day, were wise enough not to disturb him, and over time they forgot his existence. The only friend that remained was Philosophy.
-
On a dark, damp morning, he watched as the servants loaded his heavy trunk onto a carriage, which was hired for this very purpose, though it was but a short distance. He knew that he was going to the other side of the river, to the place they called the University, and will live there for an indefinitely long time.
Therefore he got into the low wooden box with his mother before him and his father following after him. The obscurity and the closeness of this place, which did not have windows large enough to offer a view of the country and the city streets, a sort of un-world existing between the home of his childhood and the world of the University, had the appearance of severing the one from the other, as if they were not verily connected by broad roads trod by peasants hurrying to the market every dawn.
He had never been on a carriage before. The frequent jolting made him ill at ease.
“Father, where are you going to send me?” Through the dizziness, he somehow conjured this question.
“To the Collège de Lisieux—the Collège de Torcy,” said his father.
“Torcy. What is it like?”
“It is a good college,” said his father.
But after a pause, he again muttered under his voice, “At least they wouldn’t give you only one piece of bread a day like they do in Montaigu,” which sounded as if it was more said to himself than to Claude.
When they finally got off at the doors of Torcy, an older student was already waiting there. Claude raised his head to look at him. He remembered neither the name nor the face of that youth, only that he was very tall.
“You are Claude Frollo? Come, take your trunk, I will show you your cell.”
Claude could hardly lift his trunk, so his father nodded to the servant that came with them, who carried it into the courtyard. He looked at the student, and then at his parents. “Goodbye, father. Goodbye, mother.”
As he was turning to leave, his mother, half-crouching, stayed him with her hand. She had tears in her eyes. From somewhere among her clothes she produced a gilded cross decorated with delicate tracery, which has apparently seen some age. “This belonged to your grandfather, Claude. Now I give it to you, wear it and keep it with you.”
So saying, she put it around his neck and tucked it inside his shirt. It was very heavy, and he almost bowed over, but he still tried to smile at her.
“Be diligent, my son, and serve the Lord. Then your mother will be happy.”
It was getting lighter. The sun must have risen by now, but there was no sunrise that day. A pale and diffused light painted the faces of his parents in the drab tones of realism. And he saw them, as if for the first time. Afterwards, whenever he tried to remember them, it was not the idylls of Tirechappe and the fireside lullabies that came to his mind, but that moment before the watchful walls of Torcy: his father’s downcast countenance and his mother’s expectant, pleading eyes. They seemed old. Already they are spectres from a disappearing world.
“I will,” he said quietly, for he did not know what else to say.
The student motioned for Claude to follow him. So without further urging, he went over the threshold of the tall door crowned by a stone arch. Behind him, he heard the rustle of his mother’s skirts as she stood up. But he did not turn again, and did not see whether she wept as she watched him go.