THE HUNCHBACK  OF NOTRE DAME.
23
shock of the clapper against the wall of brass
shook the wood-work upon which it was hung.
Quasimodo vibrated with the bell. "Vah!" he
would cry, with a burst of idiot laughter. Mean-
while the motion of the bell was accelerated, and
as the angle which it described became more and
more obtuse, the eye of Quasimodo glistened and
shone out with more phosphoric light. At length
the grand peal began : the whole tower trembled;
rafters, leads, stones, all groaned together, from
the piles of the foundation to the trefoils of the
parapet. Quasimodo then boiled over with de-
light; he foamed at the mouth; he ran backward
and forward; he trembled with the tower from
head to foot. The great bell, let loose, and as it
were, furious with rage, turned first to one side
and then to the other side of the tower its enor-
mous brazen throat, whence issued a roar that
might be heard to the distance of four leagues
around. Quasimodo placed himself before this
open mouth ; he crouched down and rose up, as
the hell swung to and fro, inhaled its boisterous
breath, and looked by turns at the abyss two hun-
dred feet deep below him, and at the enormous
tongue of brass which came ever and anon to
bellow in his ear. This was the only speech that
he could hear, the only sound that
broke the universal silence to which
he was doomed. He would spread
himself out in it like a bird in the
sun. All at once the frenzy of the
bell would seize him; his look be-
came wild; he would watch the
rocking engine, as a spider watches
a fly, and suddenly leap upon it.
'Then, suspended over the abyss,
carried to and fro in the formidable
oscillation of the bell, he seized the
brazen monster by the earlets,
.strained it with his knees, spurred
it with his heels, and with the whole
weight and-force of his body in-
creased the fury of the peal. While
the tower began to quake, he would
shout and grind his teeth, his red
hair bristled up, his breast heaved
and puffed like the bellows of a
forge, his eye flashed fire, and the
monstrous bell neighed breathless
under him. It was then no longer
the bell of Notre Dame and Qua-
simodo : it was a dream, a whirl-
wind, a tempest, vertigo astride of
uproar; a spirit clinging to a winged
monster; a strange centaur, half
man, half bell; a species of horrible
Astolpho, carried off by a prodigious
hippogriff of living brass.
The presence of this extraordinary
being seemed to infuse the breath
of life into the whole cathedral.
A sort of mysterious emanation
seemed—at least so the superstitious
multitude imagined—to issue from
him, to animate the stones of Notre
Dame, and to make the very en-
trails of the old church heave and
palpitate When it was known that
he was there, it was easy to fancy
that the thousand statues in the
galleries and over the porches moved
and were instinct with life. In
fact, the cathedral seemed to be a
docile and obedient creature in his
hands; waiting only his will to raise
her mighty voice ; being possessed
and filled with Quasimodo as with
a familiar genius. He might be
said to make the immense building
breathe. He was in fact, every
where; he multiplied himself at all
the points of the edifice. At one
time the spectator would be seized
with affright on beholding at the
top of one of the towers an odd-looking dwarf,
climbing, twining, crawling on all fours, de-
scending externally into the abyss, leaping
from one projecting point to another, and fum-
bling in the body of some sculptured Gorgon ;
it was Quasimodo unnesting the daws. At
another, the visitor stumbled in some dark
corner of the church upon a crouching, grim-
faced creature, a sort of living chimera—it was
Quasimodo musing. At another time might be
seen under a belfry an enormous head and a bun-
ale of ill-adjusted limbs furiously swinging at the
end of a rope—it was Quasimodo ringing the ves-
pers or the angelus. Frequently, at night, a hide-
ous figure might be seen wandering on the delicate
open-work balustrade which crowns the towers
and runs round the apis—it was still the Hunch-
back of Notre Dame. At such times, according to
the reports of the gossips of the neighborhood, the
T. °le church assumed a fantastic, supernatural,
rnghtful aspect; eyes and mouths opened here
ana there; the dogs, and the dragons, and the
grithns of stone, which keep watch day and night,
witn outstretched neck and open jaws, around the
monstrous cathedral, were heard to bark and
novvl, At Christmas, while the great bell, which
seemed to rattle in the throat, summoned the
tliA 81£ ile midnight mass, the gloomy facade of
ine cathedral wore such a strange and sinister air,
Î tXr e grand Porch seemed to "swallow the mul-
i?™! while the rose-window above it looked on.
-an tnis proceeded from Quasimodo.   Egypt would
have taken him for the god of the temple ; the
middle age believed him to be its demon ; he
was the soul of it. To such a point was he so, that
to those who knew that Quasimodo once existed
Notre Dame now appears deserted, inanimate,
dead. You feel that there is something wanting.
This immense body is void ; it is a skeleton : the
spmt has departed ; you see its place, and that is
ah,?ls ïk? a, skull; the sockets of the eyes are
still there, but the eyes themselves are gone.
Chapter IV.-The Dog and his Master.
There was, however, one human being whom
Quasimodo excepted from his antipathy, and to
whom he was as much, nay perhaps more strongly
attached than to his cathedral—that being was
Claude Frollo.                                            e
The thing was perfectly natural. Claude Frollo
had taken pity on him, adopted him, supported
him, brought him up. It was between Claude
Irollo's legs, that, when quite small, he had been
accustomed to seek refuge when teased by boys or
barked at by dogs. Claude Frollo had taught him
to speak, to read, to write. To crown all, Claude
Frollo had made him bell-ringer.


A LITTLE SHAPELESS, MOVING MASS.
The gratitude of Quasimodo was in consequence
profound, impassioned, unbounded ; and though
the countenance of his foster-father was fre-
quently gloomy and morose, though his way of
speaking was habitually short, harsh, and impe-
rious, never had this gratitude ceased for a mo-
ment to sway him. The Archdeacon had in Quasi-
modo the most submissive of slaves, the most
docile of attendants, the most vigilant of warders.
After the poor bell-ringer had lost his hearing,
Claude Frollo and he conversed in language of
signs, mysterious and understood by themselves
alone. Thus the Archdeacon was the only human
creature with whom Quasimodo had kept up
communication. There were but two things in
the world with wliich he still had intercourse—
Notre Dame and Claude Frollo.
Nothing on earth can be compared with the em-
pire of the Archdeacon over the bell-ringer, and
the attachment of the bell-ringer to the Archdea-
con. A sign from Claude, and the idea of giving
him pleasure, would have sufficed to make Quasi-
modo throw himself from the top of the towers of
Notre Dame. It was truly extraordinary to see all
that physical strength, which had attained such a
surprising development in Quasimodo, placed im-
plicitly by him at the disposal of another. It be-
spoke undoubtedly filial submission, domestic
attachment ; but it proceeded also from the fasci-
nation which mind exercises upon mind. It was
an imperfect, distorted, defective organization,
with head abased aud supplicating eyes, before a
supenor, a lofty, a commanding intelligence ; but*
above all, it was gratitude—but gratitude so ear-
ned to its extreme limit that we know not what to
compare it with. This virtue is not one of those
of which the most striking examples are to be
sought among men. We shall therefore say that
Quasimodo loved the Archdeacon as never dog,
never horse, never elephant, loved his master.
In 1482 Quasimodo was about twenty, Claude
Frollo about thirty-six. The one had grown up,
the other began to grow old.
Claude Frollo was no longer the simple student
of the College of Torchi, the tender protector of
an orphan child, the young and thoughtful philos-
opher, so learned and yet so ignorant. He was
an austere, grave, morose, churchman, second
chaplain to the Bishop, Archdeacon of Josas, hav-
ing under him the two deaneries of Montlhery and
Chateaufort, and one hundred and seventy-four
parish priesis. He was a somber and awe-inspir-
ing personage, before whom trembled the singing
boys in albs and long coats, the precentors, the
brothers of St. Augustin, the clerk, who officiated
in the morning services at Notre Dame, as he
stalked slowly along beneath the lofty arches of
the choir, majestic, pensive, with arms folded and
head so bowed upon his bosom that
no part of his face was to be seen
but his bald and ample forehead.
Dom Claude Frollo, however, had
not meanwhile abandoned either
the sciences or the education of his
young brother, those two occupa-
tions of his life • but time had
dashed those fond pursuits with
the bitterness of disappointment.
Little Jehan Frollo, surnamed du
Moulin, from the place where he
had been nursed, had not as he grew
up taken that bent which Claude
was solicitous to give him. His
brother had reckoned upon a pious,
docile, and virtuous pupil; but the
youth, like those young trees, which
in spite of all the gardener's efforts,
obstinately turn toward the quarter
from which they receive air and
sun, grew and flourished, and threw
out luxuriant branches toward
idleness, ignorance, and debauchery
alone. Beckless of all restraint, he
was a downright devil, who often
made Dom Claude knit his brow,
but full of shrewdness and droll-
ery, which as often made him
laugh. Claude had placed him in
the same college of Torchi where
he had passed his early years in
study and retirement ; and it was
mortifying to him that this sanct-
uary, formerly edified by the name
of Frollo, should now be scandal-
ized by it. On this subject he fre-
quently read Jehan very severe and
very long lectures, to which the
latter listened with exemplary com-
posure. . After all, the young scape-
grace had a good heart; when the
lecture was over, he nevertheless
returned quietly to his profligate
courses. At one time it was a new-
comer whom he worried into the
payment of his footing—a precious
tradition which has been caretully
handed down to the present day;
at another he bad instigated a party
of the students to make a classic
attack upon some tavern, where,
after beating the keeper with blud-
geons, they merrily gutted the
house, staving even the wine-pipes
in the cellar. Then again there
would be a long report in Latin,
which the submonitor of Torchi
carried in woful wise to Dom Claude with this
painful marginal annotation : Bixa; prima causa
vinum optimum potatum. Lastly it was asserted
—0 horror of horrors in a Jad of sixteen !—that
his excesses oft-times carried him to the gaming
houses themselves.
Grieved and thwarted by these circumstances in
his human affections, Claude had thrown himself
with so much the more ardor into the arms of
Science, who at least does not laugh you in the
face, and always repays you, though some times
in rather hollow coin, for the attentions which
you have bestowed on her. Thus he became more
and more learned, and at the same time, by a
natural consequence, more and more rigid as a
priest, more and more gloomy as a man.
As Claude Frollo had from his youth traveled
through almost the entire circle of human knowl-
edge, positive, external, and lawful, he was forced,
unless he could make up his mind to stop where
he was, to seek further food for the insatiable
cravings of his understanding. The antique sym-
bol of the serpeut biting its tail is peculiarly ap-
propriate to science ; and it appears that Claude
Frollo knew this from experience. Several grave
persons affirmed that after exhausting the fas of
human knowledge he had dared to penetrate into
the nef as. He had, it was said, tasted successive-
ly all the apples of the tree of knowledge, and had
at last bitten at the forbidden fruit. He had taken
his place by turns, as our readers have seen, at
the conferences of the theologians inthe Sorbonne,
H