Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com

solitary converse with it. If any one happened upon him, he would fly like a lover surprised in a serenade.
And the Cathedral not only represented society; it was his world, it was all Nature to him. He dreamed
of no other gardens but the stained windows ever in flower, no shade but that cast by the stone foliage
spreading full of birds from the tufted capitals of the Roman pillars, no mountains but the colossal towers
of the Cathedral, no ocean but Paris roaring round their base.
But what he loved best of all in that material edifice, that which awakened his soul and set the poor
wings fluttering that lay so sadly folded when in that dreary dungeon, what brought him nearest to
happiness, was the bells. He loved them, fondled them, talked to them, understood them. From the
carillon in the transept steeple to the great bell over the central doorway, they all shared in his affection.
The transept belfry and the two towers were to him three great cages, the birds in which, taught by him,
would sing for him alone. Yet it was these same bells which had made him deaf; but mothers are often
fondest of the child who has made them suffer most.
True, theirs were the only voices he could still hear. For this reason the great bell was his best beloved.
She was his chosen one among that family of boisterous sisters who gambolled round him in high-days
and holidays. This great bell was called Marie. She was alone in the southern tower with her sister
Jacqueline, a bell of smaller calibre, hanging in a cage beside hers. This Jacqueline had been christened
after the wife of Jean Montagu, who had given it to the church—a donation which had not prevented him
from figuring at Montfaucon without his head. In the northern tower were six other bells, and six smaller
ones shared the transept belfry with the wooden bell, which was only rung from the afternoon of Maundy
Thursday till the morning of Easter eve. Quasimodo had thus fifteen bells in his seraglio, but big Marie
was the favourite. What words shall describe his delight on the days when the full peal was rung? The
moment the Archdeacon gave the word, he was up the spiral stair-case of the steeple quicker than any
one else would have come down. He entered breathless into the aerial chamber of the great bell, gazed at
her for a moment with doting fondness, then spoke softly to her and patted her as you would a good steed
before starting on a long journey; sympathizing with her in the heavy task that lay before her. These
preliminary caresses over, he called out to his assistants, waiting ready in the lower floor of the tower, to
begin. These hung themselves to the ropes, the windlass creaked, and the huge metal dome set itself
slowly in motion. Quasimodo, quivering with excitement, followed it with his eye. The first stroke of the
clapper against its brazen wall shook the wood-work on which he was standing. Quasimodo vibrated
with the bell. “Vah!” he shouted with a burst of insane laughter. Meanwhile the motion of the bell
quickened, and in the same measure as it took a wider sweep, so the eye of Quasimodo opened more and
more and blazed with a phosphorescent light.
At length the full peal began; the whole lower wood-work and blocks of stone trembled and groaned
together from the piles of the foundation to the trefoils on its summit. Quasimodo, foaming at the mouth,
ran to and fro, quivering with the tower from head to foot. The bell, now in full and furious swing,
presented alternately to each wall of the tower its brazen maw, from which poured forth that tempestuous
breath which could be heard four leagues distant. Quasimodo placed himself in front of this gaping
throat, crouched down and rose again at each return of the bell, inhaled its furious breath, gazed in turn at
the teeming square two hundred feet below and at the enormous brazen tongue which came at measured
intervals to bellow in his ear. It was the only speech he understood, the only sound that broke for him the
universal silence. He revelled in it like a bird in the sunshine.
Then, at a certain point, the frenzy of the bell would catch him; his expression grew strange and weird;