Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com
Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com
Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com
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hands like a white drapery; but he held her with anxious care, as if fearful of breaking or brushing the<br />
bloom off her—as if he felt that she was something <strong>de</strong>licate and exquisite and precious, and ma<strong>de</strong> for<br />
other hands than his.<br />
At moments he seemed hardly to dare to touch her, even with his breath; then again he would strain her<br />
tightly to his bony breast as if she were his only possession, his treasure—as the mother of this child<br />
would have done. His cyclops eye, bent upon her, enveloped her in flood of ten<strong>de</strong>rness, of grief, and pity,<br />
and then rose flashing with <strong>de</strong>termined courage. Women laughed and cried, the crowd stamped with<br />
enthusiasm, for at this moment Quasimodo had a beauty of his own. Verily, this orphan, this foundling,<br />
this outcast, was won<strong>de</strong>rful to look upon: he felt himself august in his strength; he looked that society<br />
from which he was banished, and against whose plans he had so forcefully intervened, squarely in the<br />
face; he boldly <strong>de</strong>fied that human justice from which he had just snatched its prey, all these tigers now<br />
forced to gnash their empty jaws, these myrmidons of the law, these judges, these executioners—this<br />
whole force of the King which he, the meanest of his subjects, had set at naught by the force of God.<br />
Then, too, how affecting was this protection offered by a creature so misshapen to one so<br />
unfortunate—a girl con<strong>de</strong>mned to <strong>de</strong>ath, save by Quasimodo!—the extremes of physical and social<br />
wretchedness meeting and assisting one another.<br />
Meanwhile, after tasting his triumph for a few brief moments, Quasimodo sud<strong>de</strong>nly plunged with his<br />
bur<strong>de</strong>n into the church. The people, ever <strong>de</strong>lighted at a display of prowess, followed him with their eyes<br />
through the dim nave, only regretting that he had so quickly withdrawn himself from their acclamations.<br />
Sud<strong>de</strong>nly he reappeared at one end of the gallery of royal statues, which he traversed, running like a<br />
madman, lifting his booty high in his arms and shouting “Sanctuary!” The plaudits of the crowd burst<br />
forth anew. Having dashed along the gallery, he vanished again into the interior of the Cathedral, and a<br />
moment afterward reappeared on the upper platform, still bearing the Egyptian in his arms, still running<br />
madly, still shouting “Sanctuary!” and the multitu<strong>de</strong> still applauding. At last he ma<strong>de</strong> his third<br />
appearance on the summit of the tower of the great bell, from whence he seemed to show exultingly to the<br />
whole city the woman he had rescued, and his thun<strong>de</strong>ring voice—that voice which was heard so seldom,<br />
and never by him at all, repeated thrice with frenzied vehemence, even into the very clouds: “Sanctuary!<br />
Sanctuary! Sanctuary!”<br />
“Noël! Noël!” roared the people in return, till the immense volume of acclamation resoun<strong>de</strong>d upon the<br />
opposite shore of the river to the astonishment of the crowd assembled in the Place <strong>de</strong> Grève, and among<br />
them the recluse, whose hungry eye was still fixed upon the gibbet.<br />
Book IX<br />
I. Delirium<br />
CLAUDE FROLLO was no longer in <strong>Notre</strong> <strong>Dame</strong> when his adopted son so abruptly cut the fatal noose<br />
in which the unhappy Arch<strong>de</strong>acon had caught the Egyptian and himself at the same time. On entering the<br />
sacristy, he had torn off alb, cope, and stole, had tossed them into the hands of the amazed verger,<br />
escaped by the private door of the cloister, or<strong>de</strong>red a wherryman of the “Terrain” to put him across to<br />
the left bank of the Seine, and had plunged into the steep streets of the University, knowing not whither<br />
he went, meeting at every step bands of men and women pressing excitedly towards the Pont