Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com

He first proceeded to deposit on a corner of the pillory a black hour-glass, the upper cup of which was
filled with red sand, which ran into the lower receptacle; he then divested himself of his party-coloured
doublet, and dangling from his right hand there appeared a scourge with long, slender, white
thongs—shining, knotted, interlaced—and armed with metal claws. With his left hand he carelessly drew
the shirtsleeve up his right arm as high as the shoulder.
At this Jehan Frollo, lifting his curly, fair head above the crowd (for which purpose he had mounted on
the shoulders of Robin Poussepain), shouted: “Walk up, walk up, ladies and gentlemen, and see them
scourge Maître Quasimodo, bell-ringer to my brother the reverend archdeacon of Josas, a rare specimen
of Oriental architecture, with a domed back, and twisted columns for legs!”
And the crowd roared again, especially the young people.
The torturer now stamped his foot; the wheel began to move. Quasimodo swayed under his bonds, and
the amazement suddenly depicted on that misshapen countenance gave a fresh impulse to the peals of
laughter round about.
Suddenly, at the moment when the wheel in its rotation presented to Master Pierrat Quasimodo’s
enormous back, the torturer raised his arm, the thongs hissed shrilly through the air, like a handful of
vipers, and fell with fury on the shoulders of the hapless wretch.
Quasimodo recoiled as if suddenly startled out of sleep. Now he began to understand. He writhed in his
bonds, the muscles of his face contracted violently in surprise and pain, but not a sound escaped him. He
only rolled his head from side to side, like a bull stung in the flank by a gadfly.
A second stroke followed the first, then a third, and another, and another. The wheel ceased not to turn,
nor the lashes to rain down. Soon the blood began to flow; it trickled in a thousand streams over the dark
shoulders of the hunchback, and the keen thongs, as they swung round in the air, scattered it in showers
over the multitude.
Quasimodo had resumed, in appearance at least, his former impassibility. At first he had striven, silently
and without any great external movement, to burst his bonds. His eye kindled, his muscles contracted, his
limbs gathered themselves up. The effort was powerful, strenuous, desperate, and the cords and straps
were strained to their utmost tension; but the seasoned bonds of the provostry held. They cracked, but
that was all. Quasimodo desisted, exhausted by the effort, and the stupefaction on his face was succeeded
by an expression of bitter and hopeless discouragement. He closed his single eye, dropped his head upon
his breast, and gave no further sign of life.
Thenceforward he did not stir; nothing could wring a movement from him—neither the blood, that did
not cease to flow, nor the strokes which fell with redoubled fury, nor the violence of the torturer, who
had worked himself into a state of frenzy, nor the shrill and strident whistle of the scourge.
At length an usher of the Châtelet, clad in black, mounted on a black horse, and stationed at the foot of
the ladder since the beginning of the chastisement, pointed with his ebony staff to the hour-glass. The
torturer held his hand, the wheel stopped. Quasimodo slowly reopened his eye.
The scourging was over. Two assistants of the torturer bathed the lacerated shoulders of the culprit,
applied to them some kind of unguent which immediately closed the wounds, and threw over his back a
yellow cloth shaped like a chasuble; Pierrat Torterue meanwhile letting the blood drain from the lashes of