Notre-Dame de Paris quotes

the word, in its turn, has been effaced from the wall of the church; the church will, perhaps, itself soon disappear from the face of the earth.

It is upon this word that this book is founded.

I should be able to say to the reader, “Go and look at it,” and we should thus both escape the necessity—I of making, and he of reading, a description of it, such as it is.

Which demonstrates a new truth: that great events have incalculable results.

It is true that it may be quite possible, in the first place, that Ravaillac had no accomplices; and in the second, that if he had any, they were in no way connected with the fire of 1618. Two other very plausible explanations exist:

“Master Andry,” pursued Jean Jehan, still clinging to his capital, “hold your tongue, or I’ll drop on your head!”

Master Andry raised his eyes, seemed to measure in an instant the height of the pillar, the weight of the scamp, mentally multiplied that weight by the square of the velocity and remained silent.

Jehan, master of the field of battle, pursued triumphantly:

It is the accursed inventions of this century that are ruining everything—artilleries, bombards, and, above all, printing, that other German pest. No more manuscripts, no more books! printing will kill bookselling. It is the end of the world that is drawing nigh.”

“I see that plainly, from the progress of velvet stuffs,” said the fur-merchant.

At this moment, midday sounded.

Nothing made its appearance there. The bailiff’s four sergeants were still there, stiff, motionless, as painted statues. All eyes turned to the estrade reserved for the Flemish envoys. The door remained closed, the platform empty.

This crowd had been waiting since daybreak for three things: noonday, the embassy from Flanders, the mystery play. Noonday alone had arrived on time.

On this occasion, it was too much.

Poor Jupiter, haggard, frightened, pale beneath his rouge, dropped his thunderbolt, took his cap in his hand; then he bowed and trembled and stammered: “His eminence—the ambassadors—Madame Marguerite of Flanders—.” He did not know what to say. In truth, he was afraid of being hung.

Hung by the populace for waiting, hung by the cardinal for not having waited, he saw between the two dilemmas only an abyss; that is to say, a gallows.

Luckily, someone came to rescue him from his embarrassment, and assume the responsibility.

… to observe, that a certain amount of time must have already elapsed from the moment when Jupiter had retired beneath the tapestry to the instant when the author of the new morality had thus abruptly revealed himself to the innocent admiration of Gisquette and Liénarde.

Remarkable fact: that whole crowd, so tumultuous but a few moments before, now waited amiably on the word of the comedian; which proves the eternal truth, still experienced every day in our theatres, that the best means of making the public wait patiently is to assure them that one is about to begin instantly.

However, scholar Johannes had not fallen asleep.

and, in the midst of the uproar, there was a frightful concert of blasphemies and enormities of all the unbridled tongues, the tongues of clerks and students restrained during the rest of the year, by the fear of the hot iron of Saint Louis.

Poor Saint Louis! how they set him at defiance in his own court of law!

Each one of them selected from the newcomers on the platform, a black, gray, white, or violet cassock as his target. Joannes Frollo de Molendin, in his quality of brother to an archdeacon, boldly attacked the scarlet;

Laughter and applause burst forth.

A jest is always understood in Paris, and, consequently, always applauded.

Let us add that Coppenole was of the people, and that the auditors which surrounded him were also of the people. Thus the communication between him and them had been prompt, electric, and, so to speak, on a level.

With the exception of Gisquette and Liénarde, who turned round from time to time when Gringoire plucked them by the sleeve; with the exception of the big, patient neighbor, no one listened, no one looked at the poor, deserted morality full face.

Gringoire saw only profiles.

With what bitterness did he behold his whole erection of glory and of poetry crumble away bit by bit! And to think that these people had been upon the point of instituting a revolt against the bailiff through impatience to hear his work!

The acclamation was unanimous; people rushed towards the chapel. They made the lucky Pope of the Fools come forth in triumph. But it was then that surprise and admiration attained their highest pitch; the grimace was his face.

Or rather, his whole person was a grimace.

A huge head, bristling with red hair; between his shoulders an enormous hump, a counterpart perceptible in front;

Such was the pope whom the fools had just chosen for themselves.

One would have pronounced him a giant who had been broken and badly put together again.

When this species of cyclops appeared on the threshold of the chapel, motionless, squat, and almost as broad as he was tall; squared on the base, as a great man says;

“What a devil of a man!” said Robin Poussepain still all bruised with his fall. “

He shows himself; he’s a hunchback. He walks; he’s bandy-legged. He looks at you; he’s one-eyed. You speak to him; he’s deaf.

And what does this Polyphemus do with his tongue?”

“Not at all,” said Jehan wisely. “

A one-eyed man is far less complete than a blind man. He knows what he lacks.

”

Then he looked at the Seine at his feet, and a horrible temptation took possession of him:

“Oh!” said he, “I would gladly drown myself, were the water not so cold!”

Then a desperate resolution occurred to him. It was, since he could not escape from the Pope of the Fools, from Jehan Fourbault’s bannerets, from May trusses, from squibs and crackers, to go to the Place de Grève.

In the meantime, the pretty girl stood there, gazing at him with her big eyes, and holding out her tambourine to him and waiting. Gringoire broke into a violent perspiration.

If he had all Peru in his pocket, he would certainly have given it to the dancer; but Gringoire had not Peru, and, moreover, America had not yet been discovered.

Happily, an unexpected incident came to his rescue.

it was still a people and he was its sovereign. And he accepted seriously all this ironical applause, all this derisive respect, with which the crowd mingled, it must be admitted, a good deal of very real fear.

For the hunchback was robust; for the bandy-legged fellow was agile; for the deaf man was malicious: three qualities which temper ridicule.

We are far from believing, however, that the new Pope of the Fools understood both the sentiments which he felt and the sentiments which he inspired. The spirit which was lodged in this failure of a body had, necessarily, something incomplete and deaf about it.

“Why not?” he said to himself.

Gringoire, a practical philosopher of the streets of Paris, had noticed that nothing is more propitious to revery than following a pretty woman without knowing whither she is going.

There was in this voluntary abdication of his free-will, in this fancy submitting itself to another fancy, which suspects it not, a mixture of fantastic independence and blind obedience, something indescribable, intermediate between slavery and liberty, which pleased Gringoire—a spirit essentially compound, undecided, and complex, …

Quasimodo was surrounded, seized, garroted; he roared, he foamed at the mouth, he bit; and had it been broad daylight, there is no doubt that his face alone, rendered more hideous by wrath, would have put the entire squad to flight.

But by night he was deprived of his most formidable weapon, his ugliness.

His companion had disappeared during the struggle.

And while Captain Phoebus was turning up his moustache in Burgundian fashion, she slipped from the horse, like an arrow falling to earth, and fled.

A flash of lightning would have vanished less quickly.

“Nombrill of the Pope!” said the captain, causing Quasimodo’s straps to be drawn tighter, “I should have preferred to keep the wench.”

“What would you have, captain?” said one gendarme. “

The warbler has fled, and the bat remains.

”

At length he lost patience, and exclaimed solemnly:

“Cursed be cross roads! ’tis the devil who has made them in the shape of his pitchfork!”

This exclamation afforded him a little solace, and a sort of reddish reflection which he caught sight of at that moment, at the extremity of a long and narrow lane, completed the elevation of his moral tone. “God be praised!”

“God be praised!” said he, “There it is yonder! There is my pallet burning.” And comparing himself to the pilot who suffers shipwreck by night, “Salve,” he added piously, “salve, maris stella!”

Did he address this fragment of litany to the Holy Virgin, or to the pallet? We are utterly unable to say.

He had taken but a few steps in the long street, which sloped downwards, was unpaved, and more and more muddy and steep, when he noticed a very singular thing. It was not deserted;

… and there along its extent crawled certain vague and formless masses, all directing their course towards the light which flickered at the end of the street, like those heavy insects which drag along by night, from blade to blade of grass, towards the shepherd’s fire.

Nothing renders one so adventurous as not being able to feel the place where one’s pocket is situated.

Gringoire continued to advance, and had soon joined that one of the forms which dragged along most indolently, behind the others.

“In the Court of Miracles,” replied a fourth spectre, who had accosted them.

“Upon my soul,” resumed Gringoire, “I certainly do behold the blind who see, and the lame who walk, but where is the Saviour?”

They replied by a burst of sinister laughter.

… of ancient houses, whose worm-eaten, shrivelled, stunted façades, each pierced with one or two lighted attic windows, seemed to him, in the darkness, like enormous heads of old women, ranged in a circle, monstrous and crabbed, winking as they looked on at the Witches’ Sabbath.

It was like a new world, unknown, unheard of, misshapen, creeping, swarming, fantastic.

Gringoire, more and more terrified, clutched by the three beggars as by three pairs of tongs, dazed by a throng of other faces which frothed and yelped around him, unhappy Gringoire endeavored to summon his presence of mind, in order to recall whether it was …

But his efforts were vain; the thread of his memory and of his thought was broken; and, doubting everything, wavering between what he saw and what he felt, he put to himself this unanswerable question—

“If I exist, does this exist? if this exists, do I exist?”

At that moment, a distinct cry arose in the buzzing throng which surrounded him, “Let’s take him to the king! let’s take him to the king!”

In short, on examining the orgy more closely, and with more coolness, he fell from the witches’ sabbath to the dram-shop.

The Cour des Miracles was, in fact, merely a dram-shop; but a brigand’s dram-shop, reddened quite as much with blood as with wine.

The spectacle which presented itself to his eyes, when his ragged escort finally deposited him at the end of his trip, was not fitted to bear him back to poetry, even to the poetry of hell.

“What do you take me for, my friend? What Hungarian Jew patter are you jabbering at us? I don’t know Hebrew. One isn’t a Jew because one is a bandit.

I don’t even steal any longer. I’m above that; I kill. Cutthroat, yes; cutpurse, no.

”

At the same time, the white goat placed itself in front of her, and presented to Gringoire a hostile front, bristling with two pretty horns, gilded and very sharp. All this took place in the twinkling of an eye.

The dragonfly had turned into a wasp, and asked nothing better than to sting.

Our philosopher was speechless, and turned his astonished eyes from the goat to the young girl. “Holy Virgin!” he said at last, when surprise permitted him to speak, “here are two hearty dames!”

“Oh! love!” said she, and her voice trembled, and her eye beamed. “

That is to be two and to be but one. A man and a woman mingled into one angel. It is heaven.

”

She cast a grave glance upon him and said—

“I can never love a man who cannot protect me.”

Gringoire colored, and took the hint. It was evident that the young girl was alluding to the slight assistance which he had rendered her in the critical situation in which she had found herself two hours previously.

… it is difficult not to sigh, not to wax indignant, before the numberless degradations and mutilations which time and men have both caused the venerable monument to suffer, without respect for Charlemagne, who laid its first stone, or for Philip Augustus, who laid the last.

On the face of this aged queen of our cathedrals, by the side of a wrinkle, one always finds a scar.

Tempus edax, homo edacior; which I should be glad to translate thus: time is blind, man is stupid.

lastly, fashions, even more grotesque and foolish, which, since the anarchical and splendid deviations of the Renaissance, have followed each other in the necessary decadence of architecture.

Fashions have wrought more harm than revolutions.

They have cut to the quick; they have attacked the very bone and framework of art; they have cut, slashed, disorganized, killed the edifice, in form as in the symbol, in its consistency as well as in its beauty.

this is the work of time. Deeds of violence, brutalities, contusions, fractures; this is the work of the revolutions from Luther to Mirabeau. Mutilations, amputations, dislocation of the joints, restorations; this is the Greek, Roman, and barbarian work of professors according to Vitruvius and Vignole.

This magnificent art produced by the Vandals has been slain by the academies.

The centuries, the revolutions, which at least devastate with impartiality and grandeur, have been joined by a cloud of school architects, licensed, sworn, and bound by oath;

defacing with the discernment and choice of bad taste, substituting the chicorées of Louis XV for the Gothic lace, for the greater glory of the Parthenon.

It is the kick of the ass at the dying lion.

It is the old oak crowning itself, and which, to heap the measure full, is stung, bitten, and gnawed by caterpillars.

rather the offspring of a nation’s effort, than the inspired flash of a man of genius; the deposit left by a whole people; the heaps accumulated by centuries; the residue of successive evaporations of human society—in a word, species of formations.

Each wave of time contributes its alluvium, each race deposits its layer on the monument, each individual brings his stone.

Thus do the beavers, thus do the bees, thus do men. The great symbol of architecture, Babel, is a hive.

the residue of successive evaporations of human society—in a word, species of formations. Each wave of time contributes its alluvium, each race deposits its layer on the monument, each individual brings his stone. Thus do the beavers, thus do the bees, thus do men.

The great symbol of architecture, Babel, is a hive.

Great edifices, like great mountains, are the work of centuries. Art often undergoes a transformation while they are pending, pendent opera interrupta; they proceed quietly in accordance with the transformed art.

Each wave of time contributes its alluvium, each race deposits its layer on the monument, each individual brings his stone. Thus do the beavers, thus do the bees, thus do men. The great symbol of architecture, Babel, is a hive.

Great edifices, like great mountains, are the work of centuries.

Art often undergoes a transformation while they are pending, pendent opera interrupta; they proceed quietly in accordance with the transformed art.

The man, the artist, the individual, is effaced in these great masses, which lack the name of their author; human intelligence is there summed up and totalized.

Time is the architect, the nation is the builder.

Not to consider here anything except the Christian architecture of Europe, that younger sister of the great masonries of the Orient, it appears to the eyes as an immense formation divided into three well-defined zones, which are superposed, the one upon the other:

Statues, stained glass, rose windows, arabesques, denticulations, capitals, bas-reliefs—she combines all these imaginings according to the arrangement which best suits her. Hence, the prodigious exterior variety of these edifices, at whose foundation dwells so much order and unity.

The trunk of a tree is immovable; the foliage is capricious.

The greater part of these privileges, it may be noted in passing, and there were some even better than the above, had been extorted from the kings by revolts and mutinies.

It is the course of things from time immemorial; the king only lets go when the people tear away.

There is an old charter which puts the matter naively: à propos of fidelity: Civibus fidelitas in reges, quae tamen aliquoties seditionibus interrupta, multa peperit privilegia.

Hence they complicated the whole effect, without disturbing it; completed, without overloading it.

Geometry is harmony.

Some fine mansions here and there made magnificent outlines against the picturesque attics of the left bank. The house of Nevers, the house of Rome, the house of Reims, which have disappeared;

To each of these characteristic monuments there is attached by a similarity of taste, fashion, and attitude, a certain number of houses scattered about in different quarters and which the eyes of the connoisseur easily distinguishes and furnishes with a date.

When one knows how to look, one finds the spirit of a century, and the physiognomy of a king, even in the knocker on a door.

The Paris of the present day has then, no general physiognomy. It is a collection of specimens of many centuries, and the finest have disappeared. The capital grows only in houses, and what houses!

Thus the historical significance of its architecture is being effaced every day. Monuments are becoming rarer and rarer, and one seems to see them gradually engulfed, by the flood of houses.

Our fathers had a Paris of stone; our sons will have one of plaster.

So far as the modern monuments of new Paris are concerned, we would gladly be excused from mentioning them. It is not that we do not admire them as they deserve. The Sainte-Geneviève of M.

So far as the modern monuments of new Paris are concerned, we would gladly be excused from mentioning them. It is not that we do not admire them as they deserve.

The Sainte-Geneviève of M. Soufflot is certainly the finest Savoy cake that has ever been made in stone.

The Palace of the Legion of Honor is also a very distinguished bit of pastry. The dome of the wheat market is an English jockey cap, on a grand scale.

Assuredly, this is an opera which it is worth the trouble of listening to.

Ordinarily, the noise which escapes from Paris by day is the city speaking; by night, it is the city breathing; in this case, it is the city singing.

Lend an ear, then, to this concert of bell towers;

… child, and gave him the name of Quasimodo, either because he desired thereby to mark the day, when he had found him, or because he wished to designate by that name to what a degree the poor little creature was incomplete, and hardly sketched out.

In fact, Quasimodo, blind, hunchbacked, knock-kneed, was only an “almost.”

… world, by the double fatality of his unknown birth and his natural deformity, imprisoned from his infancy in that impassable double circle, the poor wretch had grown used to seeing nothing in this world beyond the religious walls which had received him under their shadow.

Notre-Dame had been to him successively, as he grew up and developed, the egg, the nest, the house, the country, the universe.

There was certainly a sort of mysterious and preexisting harmony between this creature and this church.

The second effect of his misfortune was to render him malicious.

He was malicious, in fact, because he was savage; he was savage because he was ugly. There was logic in his nature, as there is in ours.

His strength, so extraordinarily developed, was a cause of still greater malevolence: “Malus puer robustus,” says Hobbes.

The other statues, those of the monsters and demons, cherished no hatred for him, Quasimodo. He resembled them too much for that. They seemed rather, to be scoffing at other men.

The saints were his friends, and blessed him; the monsters were his friends and guarded him.

So he held long communion with them. He sometimes passed whole hours crouching before one of these statues, in solitary conversation with it. If any one came, he fled like a lover surprised in his serenade.

The central spire and the two towers were to him as three great cages, whose birds, reared by himself, sang for him alone.

Yet it was these very bells which had made him deaf; but mothers often love best that child which has caused them the most suffering.

It is true that their voice was the only one which he could still hear. On this score, the big bell was his beloved. It was she whom he preferred out of all that family of noisy girls which bustled above him, on festival days.

It was the only speech which he understood, the only sound which broke for him the universal silence.

He swelled out in it as a bird does in the sun.

All of a sudden, the frenzy of the bell seized upon him; his look became extraordinary;

And all this came from Quasimodo.

Egypt would have taken him for the god of this temple; the Middle Ages believed him to be its demon: he was in fact its soul.

To such an extent was this disease that for those who know that Quasimodo has existed, Notre-Dame is today deserted, inanimate, dead. One feels that something has disappeared from it. That immense body is empty; it is a skeleton;

One feels that something has disappeared from it. That immense body is empty; it is a skeleton; the spirit has quitted it, one sees its place and that is all.

It is like a skull which still has holes for the eyes, but no longer sight.

When a little lad, it was between Claude Frollo’s legs that he was accustomed to seek refuge, when the dogs and the children barked after him. Claude Frollo had taught him to talk, to read, to write. Claude Frollo had finally made him the bellringer.

Now, to give the big bell in marriage to Quasimodo was to give Juliet to Romeo.

Hence Quasimodo’s gratitude was profound, passionate, boundless; and although the visage of his adopted father was often clouded or severe, although his speech was habitually curt, harsh, imperious, that gratitude never wavered for a single moment.

Lastly, and above all, it was gratitude. Gratitude so pushed to its extremest limit, that we do not know to what to compare it. This virtue is not one of those of which the finest examples are to be met with among men.

We will say then, that Quasimodo loved the archdeacon as never a dog, never a horse, never an elephant loved his master.

Dom Claude Frollo had, however, abandoned neither science nor the education of his young brother, those two occupations of his life. But as time went on, some bitterness had been mingled with these things which were so sweet.

In the long run, says Paul Diacre, the best lard turns rancid.

Little Jehan Frollo, surnamed (du Moulin) “of the Mill” because of the place where he had been reared, had not grown up in the direction which Claude would have liked to impose upon him.

… then ensued between the physician and the archdeacon one of those congratulatory prologues which, in accordance with custom, at that epoch preceded all conversations between learned men, and which did not prevent them from detesting each other in the most cordial manner in the world.

However, it is the same nowadays; every wise man’s mouth complimenting another wise man is a vase of honeyed gall.

Claude Frollo’s felicitations to Jacques Coictier bore reference principally to the temporal advantages which the worthy physician had found means to extract, in the course of his much envied career, from each malady of the king, an operation of alchemy much better and more certain …

So you deny the influence of philtres upon the blood, and unguents on the skin! You deny that eternal pharmacy of flowers and metals, which is called the world, made expressly for that eternal invalid called man!”

“I deny,” said Dom Claude coldly, “neither pharmacy nor the invalid. I reject the physician.”

“Then it is not true,” resumed Coictier hotly, “that gout is an internal eruption; that a wound caused by artillery is to be cured by the application of a young mouse roasted; that young blood, properly injected, restores youth to aged veins;

“You have said it,” replied Claude, who seemed absorbed in a profound meditation, and stood resting, his forefinger bent backward on the folio which had come from the famous press of Nuremberg. Then he added these mysterious words: “

Alas! alas! small things come at the end of great things; a tooth triumphs over a mass. The Nile rat kills the crocodile, the swordfish kills the whale, the book will kill the edifice.

”

The first monuments were simple masses of rock, “which the iron had not touched,” as Moses says.

Architecture began like all writing.

It was first an alphabet. Men planted a stone upright, it was a letter, and each letter was a hieroglyph, and upon each hieroglyph rested a group of ideas, like the capital on the column.

And this is so true, that not only every religious symbol, but every human thought, has its page and its monument in that immense book.

All civilization begins in theocracy and ends in democracy.

This law of liberty following unity is written in architecture. For, let us insist upon this point, masonry must not be thought to be powerful only in erecting the temple and in expressing the myth and sacerdotal symbolism;

This liberty goes very far. Sometimes a portal, a façade, an entire church, presents a symbolical sense absolutely foreign to worship, or even hostile to the Church. In the thirteenth century, Guillaume de Paris, and Nicholas Flamel, in the fifteenth, wrote such seditious pages.

Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie was a whole church of the opposition.

Thought was then free only in this manner; hence it never wrote itself out completely except on the books called edifices.

How much more solid, durable, unyielding, is a book of stone! In order to destroy the written word, a torch and a Turk are sufficient. To demolish the constructed word, a social revolution, a terrestrial revolution are required.

The barbarians passed over the Coliseum; the deluge, perhaps, passed over the Pyramids.

In the fifteenth century everything changes.

because the idea which has moved one generation wishes to move others also, and leave a trace. Now, what a precarious immortality is that of the manuscript! How much more solid, durable, unyielding, is a book of stone!

In order to destroy the written word, a torch and a Turk are sufficient.

To demolish the constructed word, a social revolution, a terrestrial revolution are required. The barbarians passed over the Coliseum; the deluge, perhaps, passed over the Pyramids.

The book is about to kill the edifice.

The invention of printing is the greatest event in history. It is the mother of revolution.

It is the mode of expression of humanity which is totally renewed; it is human thought stripping off one form and donning another; it is the complete and definitive change of skin of that symbolical serpent which since the days of Adam has represented intelligence.

In its printed form, thought is more imperishable than ever; it is volatile, irresistible, indestructible. It is mingled with the air. In the days of architecture it made a mountain of itself, and took powerful possession of a century and a place.

Now it converts itself into a flock of birds, scatters itself to the four winds, and occupies all points of air and space at once.

We repeat, who does not perceive that in this form it is far more indelible? It was solid, it has become alive. It passes from duration in time to immortality. One can demolish a mass; how can one extirpate ubiquity?

We repeat, who does not perceive that in this form it is far more indelible? It was solid, it has become alive. It passes from duration in time to immortality.

One can demolish a mass; how can one extirpate ubiquity?

If a flood comes, the mountains will have long disappeared beneath the waves, while the birds will still be flying about;

A magnificent decadence, however, for the ancient Gothic genius, that sun which sets behind the gigantic press of Mayence, still penetrates for a while longer with its rays that whole hybrid pile of Latin arcades and Corinthian columns.

It is that setting sun which we mistake for the dawn.

Nevertheless, from the moment when architecture is no longer anything but an art like any other; as soon as it is no longer the total art, the sovereign art, the tyrant art—it has no longer the power to retain the other arts.

Erat enim ut si mundus, ipse excutiendo semet, rejecta vetustate, candidam ecclesiarum vestem indueret. (Glaber Radolphus.)

A book is so soon made, costs so little, and can go so far!

How can it surprise us that all human thought flows in this channel? This does not mean that architecture will not still have a fine monument, an isolated masterpiece, here and there.

In Egyptian Orient, poetry has like the edifices, grandeur and tranquillity of line; in antique Greece, beauty, serenity, calm; in Christian Europe, the Catholic majesty, the popular naivete, the rich and luxuriant vegetation of an epoch of renewal.

The Bible resembles the Pyramids; the Iliad, the Parthenon; Homer, Phidias.

Dante in the thirteenth century is the last Romanesque church; Shakespeare in the sixteenth, the last Gothic cathedral.

in antique Greece, beauty, serenity, calm; in Christian Europe, the Catholic majesty, the popular naivete, the rich and luxuriant vegetation of an epoch of renewal. The Bible resembles the Pyramids; the Iliad, the Parthenon; Homer, Phidias.

Dante in the thirteenth century is the last Romanesque church; Shakespeare in the sixteenth, the last Gothic cathedral.

Thus, to sum up what we have hitherto said, in a fashion which is necessarily incomplete and mutilated, the human race has two books, two registers, two testaments: masonry and printing; the Bible of stone and the Bible of paper.

… the total products of printing down to our own days, does not that total appear to us like an immense construction, resting upon the entire world, at which humanity toils without relaxation, and whose monstrous crest is lost in the profound mists of the future?

It is the anthill of intelligence. It is the hive whither come all imaginations, those golden bees, with their honey.

The edifice has a thousand stories. Here and there one beholds on its staircases the gloomy caverns of science which pierce its interior. Everywhere upon its surface, art causes its arabesques, rosettes, and laces to thrive luxuriantly before the eyes.

Nevertheless, the prodigious edifice still remains incomplete. The press, that giant machine, which incessantly pumps all the intellectual sap of society, belches forth without pause fresh materials for its work. The whole human race is on the scaffoldings.

Each mind is a mason.

The humblest fills his hole, or places his stone. Rétif de La Bretonne brings his hod of plaster. Every day a new course rises. Independently of the original and individual contribution of each writer, there are collective contingents.

… cloth, his face buried in his hood of white lamb’s skin, of which his brows seemed to be of a piece, red, crabbed, winking, bearing majestically the load of fat on his cheeks which met under his chin, Master Florian Barbedienne, auditor of the Châtelet.

Now, the auditor was deaf. A slight defect in an auditor.

Master Florian delivered judgment, none the less, without appeal and very suitably. It is certainly quite sufficient for a judge to have the air of listening;

Hence he took great care to conceal his deafness from the eyes of all, and he generally succeeded so well that he had reached the point of deluding himself, which is, by the way, easier than is supposed.

All hunchbacks walk with their heads held high, all stutterers harangue, all deaf people speak low.

As for him, he believed, at the most, that his ear was a little refractory. It was the sole concession which he made on this point to public opinion, in his moments of frankness and examination of his conscience.

Having, then, thoroughly ruminated Quasimodo’s affair, he threw back his head and half closed his eyes, for the sake of more majesty and impartiality, so that, at that moment, he was both deaf and blind.

A double condition, without which no judge is perfect.

It was in this magisterial attitude that he began the examination.

Do you know that I am called Florian Barbedienne, actual lieutenant to monsieur the provost, and, moreover, commissioner, inquisitor, controller, and examiner, with equal power in provostship, bailiwick, preservation, and inferior court of judicature?—”

There is no reason why a deaf man talking to a deaf man should stop.

God knows where and when Master Florian would have landed, when thus launched at full speed in lofty eloquence, if the low door at the extreme end of the room had not suddenly opened, and given entrance to the provost in person.

… see whether he were still living, forgot his name, hardly knew how many years ago he had begun to die, and to the stranger, who questioned them about the living skeleton who was perishing in that cellar, the neighbors replied simply, “It is the recluse.”

Everything was then viewed without metaphysics, without exaggeration, without magnifying glass, with the naked eye.

The microscope had not yet been invented, either for things of matter or for things of the mind.

in Ireland, beneath the armorial bearings which surmount the grand door to Fortescue Castle, Forte scutum, salus ducum; in England, over the principal entrance to the hospitable mansion of the Earls Cowper: Tuum est.

At that time every edifice was a thought.

As there was no door to the walled cell of the Tour-Roland, these two words had been carved in large Roman capitals over the window—

Paquette was so gay and so pretty that she was called everywhere by no other name than la Chantefleurie—blossoming song. Poor girl! She had handsome teeth, she was fond of laughing and displaying them.

Now, a maid who loves to laugh is on the road to weeping; handsome teeth ruin handsome eyes.

So she was la Chantefleurie. She and her mother earned a precarious living; they had been very destitute since the death of the minstrel;

I assure you that we were all weeping also. She said: ‘Oh, my little daughter! my pretty little daughter! where art thou?’—and it wrung your very heart. I weep still when I think of it.

Our children are the marrow of our bones, you see.

—My poor Eustache! thou art so fair!—If you only knew how nice he is! yesterday he said to me: ‘I want to be a gendarme, that I do.’ Oh! my Eustache!

It was one of those spectres, half light, half shadow, such as one beholds in dreams and in the extraordinary work of Goya, pale, motionless, sinister, crouching over a tomb, or leaning against the grating of a prison cell.

It was neither a woman, nor a man, nor a living being, nor a definite form; it was a figure, a sort of vision, in which the real and the fantastic intersected each other, like darkness and day.

It was with difficulty that one distinguished, beneath her hair which spread to the ground, a gaunt and severe profile; her dress barely allowed the extremity of a bare foot to escape, which contracted on the hard, cold pavement.

One would have said that she had turned to stone with the cell, ice with the season. Her hands were clasped, her eyes fixed.

At first sight one took her for a spectre; at the second, for a statue.

Nevertheless, at intervals, her blue lips half opened to admit a breath, and trembled, but as dead and as mechanical as the leaves which the wind sweeps aside.

She added, after a silence, “ ’Tis a festival, I am forgotten. People do well.

Why should the world think of me, when I do not think of it? Cold charcoal makes cold ashes.

”

So the hourglass was turned over once more, and they left the hunchback fastened to the plank, in order that justice might be accomplished to the very end.

The populace, especially in the Middle Ages, is in society what the child is in the family.

As long as it remains in its state of primitive ignorance, of moral and intellectual minority, it can be said of it as of the child—

Then the wretched man, unable to break his collar, like that of a chained wild beast, became tranquil once more; only at intervals a sigh of rage heaved the hollows of his chest. There was neither shame nor redness on his face.

He was too far from the state of society, and too near the state of nature to know what shame was.

Moreover, with such a degree of deformity, is infamy a thing that can be felt?

Moreover, all this was mingled in him, with great pretentions to elegance, toilet, and a fine appearance.

Let the reader reconcile these things as best he can. I am simply the historian.

He had remained, therefore, for several minutes, leaning in silence against the carved jamb of the chimney, and thinking or not thinking, when Fleur-de-Lys suddenly turned and addressed him. After all, the poor young girl was pouting against the dictates of her heart.

He was a priest. His costume could be plainly discerned, and his face resting on both his hands. But he stirred no more than if he had been a statue. His eyes, intently fixed, gazed into the Place.

It was something like the immobility of a bird of prey, who has just discovered a nest of sparrows, and is gazing at it.

“ ’Tis monsieur the archdeacon of Josas,” said Fleur-de-Lys.

In that narrow chamber, surrounded by that sombre frame of hangings and woodwork, she was incomparably more beautiful and more radiant than on the public square.

She was like a torch which has suddenly been brought from broad daylight into the dark.

The noble damsels were dazzled by her in spite of themselves. Each one felt herself, in some sort, wounded in her beauty. Hence, their battle front (may we be allowed the expression,) was immediately altered, although they exchanged not a single word.

Each one felt herself, in some sort, wounded in her beauty. Hence, their battle front (may we be allowed the expression,) was immediately altered, although they exchanged not a single word. But they understood each other perfectly.

Women’s instincts comprehend and respond to each other more quickly than the intelligences of men.

An enemy had just arrived; all felt it—all rallied together. One drop of wine is sufficient to tinge a glass of water red;

But they understood each other perfectly. Women’s instincts comprehend and respond to each other more quickly than the intelligences of men. An enemy had just arrived; all felt it—all rallied together.

One drop of wine is sufficient to tinge a glass of water red; to diffuse a certain degree of ill temper throughout a whole assembly of pretty women, the arrival of a prettier woman suffices, especially when there is but one man present.

Hence the welcome accorded to the gypsy was marvellously glacial. They surveyed her from head to foot, then exchanged glances, and all was said; they understood each other.

There was no end to their laughter, irony, and humiliation. Sarcasms rained down upon the gypsy, and haughty condescension and malevolent looks. One would have thought they were young Roman dames thrusting golden pins into the breast of a beautiful slave.

One would have pronounced them elegant grayhounds, circling, with inflated nostrils, round a poor woodland fawn, whom the glance of their master forbade them to devour.

After all, what was a miserable dancer on the public squares in the presence of these highborn maidens?

So, when you addressed me, I was as foolish as an ass before a turnspit. But what would you have, messire?

One must eat every day, and the finest Alexandrine verses are not worth a bit of Brie cheese.

Now, I made for Madame Marguerite of Flanders, that famous epithalamium, as you know, and the city will not pay me, under the pretext that it was not excellent; as though one could give a tragedy of Sophocles for four crowns!

peals from the belfry for a high mass, rich scales drawn over the smaller bells for a wedding, for a christening, and mingling in the air like a rich embroidery of all sorts of charming sounds.

The old church, all vibrating and sonorous, was in a perpetual joy of bells.

One was constantly conscious of the presence of a spirit of noise and caprice, who sang through all those mouths of brass. Now that spirit seemed to have departed; the cathedral seemed gloomy, and gladly remained silent;

how it breaks in inward sobs, and dull convulsions, until it has rent its dikes and burst its bed. The austere and glacial envelope of Claude Frollo, that cold surface of steep and inaccessible virtue, had always deceived Jehan.

The merry scholar had never dreamed that there was boiling lava, furious and profound, beneath the snowy brow of Aetna.

We do not know whether he suddenly became conscious of these things;

But all this caressing hypocrisy did not have its usual effect on the severe elder brother.

Cerberus did not bite at the honey cake.

The archdeacon’s brow did not lose a single wrinkle.

“

The gallows is a balance which has a man at one end and the whole earth at the other. ’Tis fine to be the man.

”

she seeks the spring, the open air, liberty: oh, yes! but let her come in contact with the fatal network, and the spider issues from it, the hideous spider! Poor dancer! poor, predestined fly! Let things take their course, Master Jacques, ’tis fate!

Alas! Claude, thou art the spider! Claude, thou art the fly also!

Thou wert flying towards learning, light, the sun. Thou hadst no other care than to reach the open air, the full daylight of eternal truth;

Alas! that pane of glass which is further on, that transparent obstacle, that wall of crystal, harder than brass, which separates all philosophies from the truth, how wouldst thou have overcome it?

Oh, vanity of science! how many wise men come flying from afar, to dash their heads against thee! How many systems vainly fling themselves buzzing against that eternal pane!

”

Jehan flung back his blonde and curly head, and said, half-closing his eyes disdainfully—

“We have a brother who is an archdeacon and a fool.”

“Corne de Dieu!” exclaimed Phoebus, “the worthy man!”

“Captain Phoebus,” he said, and his tone vibrated with bitterness, “you forget your appointment.”

The rages of men like Phoebus are milk-soups, whose ebullition is calmed by a drop of cold water.

This simple remark caused the sword which glittered in the captain’s hand to be lowered.

“Do I love thee, angel of my life!” exclaimed the captain, half kneeling. “My body, my blood, my soul, all are thine; all are for thee. I love thee, and I have never loved any one but thee.”

The captain had repeated this phrase so many times, in many similar conjunctures, that he delivered it all in one breath, without committing a single mistake.

At this passionate declaration, the gypsy raised to the dirty ceiling which served for the skies a glance full of angelic happiness.

At this passionate declaration, the gypsy raised to the dirty ceiling which served for the skies a glance full of angelic happiness.

“Oh!” she murmured, “this is the moment when one should die!”

Phoebus found “the moment” favorable for robbing her of another kiss, which went to torture the unhappy archdeacon in his nook. “Die!” exclaimed the amorous captain, “What are you saying, my lovely angel? ’Tis a time for living, or Jupiter is only a scamp!

The captain’s face assumed an expression of mingled surprise and disdain, of carelessness and libertine passion.

“Ah, bah!” said he, “do people marry?”

The Bohemian turned pale, and her head drooped sadly on her breast.

“My beautiful love,” resumed Phoebus, tenderly, “what nonsense is this?

A great thing is marriage, truly! one is none the less loving for not having spit Latin into a priest’s shop!

”

’tis I, the servant, who will care for them. You will let me polish your spurs, brush your doublet, dust your riding-boots. You will have that pity, will you not, Phoebus? Meanwhile, take me! here, Phoebus, all this belongs to thee, only love me!

We gypsies need only air and love.

”

The scholar went his way, and Gringoire set out to follow the crowd which was mounting the staircase of the great chamber.

In his opinion, there was nothing like the spectacle of a criminal process for dissipating melancholy, so exhilaratingly stupid are judges as a rule.

The populace which he had joined walked and elbowed in silence.

“Hum!” replied Gringoire. “

I distrust a sweetness which hath pinched nostrils and thin lips.

”

A counsellor having remarked that the gentlemen were fatigued, and that it would be a long time to wait until the torture was at an end, the president replied that a magistrate must know how to sacrifice himself to his duty.

“What an annoying and vexatious hussy,” said an aged judge, “to get herself put to the question when one has not supped!”

She had not calculated her strength when she faced the torture.

Poor child, whose life up to that time had been so joyous, so pleasant, so sweet, the first pain had conquered her!

“Humanity forces me to tell you,” remarked the king’s procurator, “that in confessing, it is death that you must expect.”

On the part of the audience there was the feeling of impatience gratified which one experiences at the theatre at the end of the last entr’acte of the comedy, when the curtain rises and the conclusion is about to begin.

On the part of the judges, it was the hope of getting their suppers sooner.

The little goat also bleated with joy. He tried to run towards his mistress, but they had tied him to the bench.

A miserable human existence, once interred there; farewell light, air, life, ogni speranza—every hope; it only came forth to the scaffold or the stake.

Sometimes it rotted there; human justice called this forgetting.

Between men and himself, the condemned man felt a pile of stones and jailers weighing down upon his head; and the entire prison, the massive bastille was nothing more than an enormous, complicated lock, which barred him off from the rest of the world.

Poor fly, who could not have lifted even one of its blocks of stone!

Assuredly, Providence and society had been equally unjust; such an excess of unhappiness and of torture was not necessary to break so frail a creature.

There she lay, lost in the shadows, buried, hidden, immured. Any one who could have beheld her in this state, after having seen her laugh and dance in the sun, would have shuddered.

All this was mixed, broken, floating, disseminated confusedly in her thought. She no longer felt, she no longer knew, she no longer thought; at the most, she only dreamed.

Never had a living creature been thrust more deeply into nothingness.

Thus benumbed, frozen, petrified, she had barely noticed on two or three occasions, the sound of a trapdoor opening somewhere above her, without even permitting the passage of a little light, and through which a hand had tossed her a bit of black bread.

“Yes,” she replied, with the bewildered air which unhappiness had given her.

“The day belongs to everyone, why do they give me only night?”

“Do you know,” resumed the priest, after a fresh silence, “why you are here?”

“What love!” said the unhappy girl with a shudder.

“The love of a damned soul.”

Both remained silent for several minutes, crushed beneath the weight of their emotions; he maddened, she stupefied.

“Oh!” said the priest, “young girl, have pity upon me! You think yourself unhappy; alas! alas! you know not what unhappiness is.

Oh! to love a woman! to be a priest! to be hated!

to love with all the fury of one’s soul; to feel that one would give for the least of her smiles, one’s blood, one’s vitals, one’s fame, one’s salvation, one’s immortality and eternity, this life and the other;

“He is dead!” cried the priest.

“Dead!” said she, still icy and motionless “then why do you talk to me of living?”

He was not listening to her.

they devoured her on a heath, they drank her blood, they cracked her bones! Good Virgin, have pity upon me. My daughter, I want my daughter! What is it to me that she is in paradise?

I do not want your angel, I want my child!

I am a lioness, I want my whelp. Oh! I will writhe on the earth, I will break the stones with my forehead, and I will damn myself, and I will curse you, Lord, if you keep my child from me!

The unhappy woman flung herself upon that shoe; her consolation and her despair for so many years, and her vitals were rent with sobs as on the first day; because, for a mother who has lost her child, it is always the first day.

That grief never grows old. The mourning garments may grow white and threadbare, the heart remains dark.

At that moment, the fresh and joyous cries of children passed in front of the cell.

An execution was an habitual incident of the public highways, like the braising-pan of the baker or the slaughterhouse of the knacker.

The executioner was only a sort of butcher of a little deeper dye than the rest.

Hence Phoebus’s mind was soon at ease on the score of the enchantress Esmeralda, or Similar, as he called her, concerning the blow from the dagger of the Bohemian or of the surly monk (it mattered little which to him), and as to the issue …

But as soon as his heart was vacant in that direction, Fleur-de-Lys returned to it.

Captain Phoebus’s heart, like the physics of that day, abhorred a vacuum.

Queue-en-Brie was a very insipid place to stay at then, a village of farriers, and cowgirls with chapped hands, a long line of poor dwellings and thatched cottages, which borders the grand road on both sides for half a league;

“Oh, mon Dieu Jésus!” said her mother; “there are so many witches nowadays that I dare say they burn them without knowing their names.

One might as well seek the name of every cloud in the sky.

After all, one may be tranquil. The good God keeps his register.” Here the venerable dame rose and came to the window. “Good Lord! you are right, Phoebus,” said she. “The rabble is indeed great. There are people on all the roofs, blessed be God!

And then, it was touching to behold this protection which had fallen from a being so hideous upon a being so unhappy, a creature condemned to death saved by Quasimodo.

They were two extremes of natural and social wretchedness, coming into contact and aiding each other.

Meanwhile, after several moments of triumph, Quasimodo had plunged abruptly into the church with his burden. The populace, fond of all prowess, sought him with their eyes, beneath the gloomy nave, regretting that he had so speedily disappeared from their acclamations.

Then he became alarmed, he put his hands on his ears that he might no longer hear, turned his back that he might no longer see, and fled from the frightful vision with hasty strides.

But the vision was in himself.

When he reentered the streets, the passersby elbowing each other by the light of the shopfronts, produced upon him the effect of a constant going and coming of spectres about him. There were strange noises in his ears; extraordinary fancies disturbed his brain.

Every criminal who landed there was safe. There were in every suburb almost as many places of asylum as gallows.

It was the abuse of impunity by the side of the abuse of punishment; two bad things which strove to correct each other.

The palaces of the king, the hotels of the princes, and especially churches, possessed the right of asylum. Sometimes a whole city which stood in need of being repeopled was temporarily created a place of refuge. Louis XI made all Paris a refuge in 1467.

He raised his suppliant eye, and seeing that she was leading him back to her quarters, his whole face beamed with joy and tenderness. She tried to make him enter the cell; but he persisted in remaining on the threshold.

“No, no,” said he; “the owl enters not the nest of the lark.”

Then she crouched down gracefully on her couch, with her goat asleep at her feet. Both remained motionless for several moments, considering in silence, she so much grace, he so much ugliness. Every moment she discovered some fresh deformity in Quasimodo.

“Never have I seen my ugliness as at the present moment. When I compare myself to you, I feel a very great pity for myself, poor unhappy monster that I am! Tell me, I must look to you like a beast.

You, you are a ray of sunshine, a drop of dew, the song of a bird!

I am something frightful, neither man nor animal, I know not what, harder, more trampled under foot, and more unshapely than a pebble stone!”

Tell me, I must look to you like a beast. You, you are a ray of sunshine, a drop of dew, the song of a bird!

I am something frightful, neither man nor animal, I know not what, harder, more trampled under foot, and more unshapely than a pebble stone!

”

With security, hope had returned to her. She was outside the pale of society, outside the pale of life, but she had a vague feeling that it might not be impossible to return to it.

She was like a dead person, who should hold in reserve the key to her tomb.

She felt the terrible images which had so long persecuted her, gradually departing. All the hideous phantoms, Pierrat Torterue, Jacques Charmolue, were effaced from her mind, all, even the priest.

Day followed day. Calm gradually returned to the soul of la Esmeralda.

Excess of grief, like excess of joy is a violent thing which lasts but a short time. The heart of man cannot remain long in one extremity.

The gypsy had suffered so much, that nothing was left her but astonishment. With security, hope had returned to her.

To her the fact of Phoebus being alive was everything. After the series of fatal shocks which had overturned everything within her, she had found but one thing intact in her soul, one sentiment—her love for the captain.

Love is like a tree; it sprouts forth of itself, sends its roots out deeply through our whole being, and often continues to flourish greenly over a heart in ruins.

And the inexplicable point about it is that the more blind is this passion, the more tenacious it is. It is never more solid than when it has no reason in it.

And the inexplicable point about it is that the more blind is this passion, the more tenacious it is.

It is never more solid than when it has no reason in it.

La Esmeralda did not think of the captain without bitterness, no doubt. No doubt it was terrible that he also should have been deceived;

Once he came at the moment when she was caressing Djali. He stood pensively for several minutes before this graceful group of the goat and the gypsy; at last he said, shaking his heavy and ill-formed head—

“My misfortune is that I still resemble a man too much. I should like to be wholly a beast like that goat.”

She gazed at him in amazement.

Among the grotesque personages sculptured on the wall, there was one to whom he was particularly attached, and with which he often seemed to exchange fraternal glances. Once the gypsy heard him saying to it—

“Oh! why am not I of stone, like you!”

At last, one morning, la Esmeralda had advanced to the edge of the roof, and was looking into the Place over the pointed roof of Saint-Jean le Rond. Quasimodo was standing behind her.

The gypsy paid no heed to him. He said in a low voice as he gnashed his teeth—

“Damnation! That is what one should be like! ’Tis only necessary to be handsome on the outside!”

Meanwhile, she remained kneeling, and cried with extraordinary agitation—

Quasimodo’s eye flashed. He made a motion to fling himself on the captain. Then he drew himself up stiffly and said—

“Oh! how happy you are to have someone who loves you!”

He emphasized the words “someone,” and loosing the horse’s bridle—

When he learned it, he knew not what his sensations were. He had reconciled himself to la Esmeralda’s death. In that matter he was tranquil; he had reached the bottom of personal suffering.

The human heart (Dom Claude had meditated upon these matters) can contain only a certain quantity of despair. When the sponge is saturated, the sea may pass over it without causing a single drop more to enter it.

Now, with la Esmeralda dead, the sponge was soaked, all was at an end on this earth for Dom Claude. But to feel that she was alive, and Phoebus also, meant that tortures, shocks, alternatives, life, were beginning again.

… and Tournay, De Cupa Petrarum, which had given him a violent passion for architecture, an inclination which had replaced in his heart his passion for hermeticism, of which it was, moreover, only a natural corollary, since there is an intimate relation between hermeticism and masonry.

Gringoire had passed from the love of an idea to the love of the form of that idea.

One day he had halted near Saint Germain-l’Auxerrois, at the corner of a mansion called “For-l’Évêque” (the Bishop’s Tribunal), which stood opposite another called “For-le-Roi” (the King’s Tribunal).

“On my honor, yes!

First I loved women, then animals. Now I love stones. They are quite as amusing as women and animals, and less treacherous.

”

“Neither regret nor desire. I have arranged my mode of life.”

“What men arrange,” said Claude, “things disarrange.”

“I am a Pyrrhonian philosopher,” replied Gringoire, “and I hold all things in equilibrium.”

“You are, nevertheless, tolerably poor?”

“Poor, yes; unhappy, no.”

At that moment, a trampling of horses was heard, and our two interlocutors beheld defiling at the end of the street, a company of the king’s unattached archers, their lances borne high, an officer at their head.

“Envy for what, monsieur the archdeacon? their strength, their armor, their discipline? Better philosophy and independence in rags.

I prefer to be the head of a fly rather than the tail of a lion.

”

and how can I tell all? Anaxagoras said that he was in the world to admire the sun.

And then, from morning till night, I have the happiness of passing all my days with a man of genius, who is myself, which is very agreeable.

”

a death all stamped with Pyrrhonism and hesitation, which holds the middle station betwixt heaven and earth, which leaves you in suspense. ’Tis a philosopher’s death, and I was destined thereto, perchance.

It is magnificent to die as one has lived.

”

My dear brother, Jehan hath made of your counsels straw and dung to trample under foot. I have been well chastised for it, and God is extraordinarily just. As long as I had money, I feasted, I lead a mad and joyous life.

Oh! how ugly and crabbed behind is debauch which is so charming in front!

Now I have no longer a blank; I have sold my napery, my shirt and my towels; no more merry life! The beautiful candle is extinguished and I have henceforth, only a wretched tallow dip which smokes in my nose. The wenches jeer at me.

“Hurrah! hurrah!” he was shouting. “My first day in armor! Outcast! I am an outcast. Give me something to drink. My friends, my name is Jehan Frollo du Moulin, and I am a gentleman.

My opinion is that if God were a gendarme, he would turn robber.

Brothers, we are about to set out on a fine expedition.

“

Bury a crown to unearth a sou!

” said the king.

At each wicket, all heads were obliged to stoop, except that of the old man bent double with age. “Hum,” said he between his gums, for he had no longer any teeth, “we are already quite prepared for the door of the sepulchre.

For a low door, a bent passer.

”

“Good, my people! bravely done! break these false lords! do your duty! at them! have at them! pillage them! take them! sack them! …

Ah! you want to be kings, messeigneurs? On, my people on!

”

“

Oh! I would burn you if you knew what there was in my head.

”

“Sire! will your majesty deign to hear me. Sire! break not in thunder over so small a thing as myself.

God’s great lightning doth not bombard a lettuce.

Sire, you are an august and, very puissant monarch; have pity on a poor man who is honest, and who would find it more difficult to stir up a revolt than a cake of ice would to give out a spark!

So saying, the unhappy Gringoire kissed the king’s slippers, and Guillaume Rym said to Coppenole in a low tone: “He doth well to drag himself on the earth.

Kings are like the Jupiter of Crete, they have ears only in their feet.

” And without troubling himself about the Jupiter of Crete, the hosier replied with a heavy smile, and his eyes fixed on Gringoire: “Oh! that’s it exactly! I seem to hear Chancellor Hugonet craving mercy of me.”

“Look, Coppenole,” said Rym, in a low voice. “Behold him between Coictier and Tristan. They are his whole court.

A physician for himself, a headsman for others.

”

“Sire, it is a repellent which will save you. We will apply to your loins the great defensive composed of cerate, Armenian bole, white of egg, oil, and vinegar. You will continue your ptisan and we will answer for your majesty.”

A burning candle does not attract one gnat alone.

Master Olivier, perceiving the king to be in a liberal mood, and judging the moment to be propitious, approached in his turn.

As he spoke thus, Master Olivier’s haughty face quitted its arrogant expression for a lowly one.

It is the only change which ever takes place in a courtier’s visage.

The king looked him well in the face and said in a dry tone—“I understand.”

… her head on her bed, her hands clasped over her head, full of anxiety and tremors, and, although a gypsy, an idolater, and a pagan, she began to entreat with sobs, mercy from the good Christian God, and to pray to our Lady, her hostess.

For even if one believes in nothing, there are moments in life when one is always of the religion of the temple which is nearest at hand.

She remained thus prostrate for a very long time, trembling in truth, more than praying, chilled by the ever-closer breath of that furious multitude, understanding nothing of this outburst, ignorant of what was being plotted, what was being done, what they wanted, but foreseeing a …

We are doing a laudable thing in saving mademoiselle, and yet we should be hung by order of the king if we were caught. Alas! human actions are taken by two handles. That is branded with disgrace in one which is crowned in another.

He admires Cicero who blames Catiline.

Is it not so, master? What say you to this philosophy? I possess philosophy by instinct, by nature, ut apes geometriam.—Come! no one answers me. What unpleasant moods you two are in! I must do all the talking alone.

“On my soul!” exclaimed Gringoire suddenly, “we are as cheerful and joyous as young owls! We preserve the silence of Pythagoreans or fishes! Pasque-Dieu! my friends, I should greatly like to have someone speak to me.

The human voice is music to the human ear.

’Tis not I who say that, but Didymus of Alexandria, and they are illustrious words. Assuredly, Didymus of Alexandria is no mediocre philosopher.—One word, my lovely child! say but one word to me, I entreat you.

“

But I cannot save you both!

”

It was a strong, cold hand. Her teeth chattered, she turned paler than the ray of moonlight which illuminated her. The man spoke not a word. He began to ascend towards the Place de Grève, holding her by the hand.

At that moment, she had a vague feeling that destiny is an irresistible force.

She had no more resistance left in her, she allowed herself to be dragged along, running while he walked. At this spot the quay ascended. But it seemed to her as though she were descending a slope.

“

It causes me less horror than you do.

”

A second blow completely shattered the old iron cross which barricaded the window. Then with her two hands, she finished breaking and removing the rusted stumps of the bars.

There are moments when woman’s hands possess superhuman strength.

A passage broken, less than a minute was required for her to seize her daughter by the middle of her body, and draw her into her cell. “Come let me draw you out of the abyss,” she murmured.

my daughter!” she said. “I have my daughter! here she is! The good God has given her back to me! Ha you! come all of you! Is there any one there to see that I have my daughter? Lord Jesus, how beautiful she is!

You have made me wait fifteen years, my good God, but it was in order to give her back to me beautiful.

—Then the gypsies did not eat her! Who said so? My little daughter! my little daughter! Kiss me. Those good gypsies! I love the gypsies!—It is really you! That was what made my heart leap every time that you passed by.

The other resumed, “

Tête Dieu! What was it that frightened archdeacon said?

Where is he?”

The unfortunate woman felt that all depended on her self-possession, and, although with death in her soul, she began to grin.

Mothers possess such strength.

“Bah!” said she, “the man is drunk. ’Tis more than a year since the tail of a stone cart dashed against my window and broke in the grating. And how I cursed the carter, too.”

“ ’Tis true,” said another archer, “I was there.”

Always and everywhere people are to be found who have seen everything.

This unexpected testimony from the archer re-encouraged the recluse, whom this interrogatory was forcing to cross an abyss on the edge of a knife. But she was condemned to a perpetual alternative of hope and alarm.

The recluse rushed upon her daughter with a roar of agony. She dragged her violently back, digging her nails into her neck.

A tigress mother does not stand on trifles.

But it was too late. Tristan had seen.

“

What is your king to me? I tell you that she is my daughter!

”