Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com

eside the tomb of Saint-Denis, the hounds stopped the chase and stood barking.
The churches usually had a cell set apart for these refugees. In I407, Nicolas Flamel had one built in
Saint-Jacquesde-la-Boucherie which cost him four livres, six sous, sixteen deniers parisis.
In Notre Dame it was a cell constructed over one of the side aisles, under the buttresses and facing
towards the cloister, exactly on the spot where the wife of the present concierge of the towers has made
herself a garden—which is to the hanging gardens of Babylon as a lettuce to a palm tree, as a portress to
Semiramis.
There it was that, after his frantic and triumphant course round the towers and galleries, Quasimodo
had deposited Esmeralda. So long as the course had lasted the girl had remained almost unconscious,
having only a vague perception that she was rising in the air—that she was floating—flying—being
borne upward away from the earth. Ever and anon she heard the wild laugh, the raucous voice of
Quasimodo in her ear: she half opened her eyes and saw beneath her confusedly the thousand roofs of
Paris, tile and slate like a red and blue mosaic—and above her head Quasimodo’s frightful and jubilant
face. Then her eye-lids closed; she believed that all was finished, that she had been executed during her
swoon, and that the hideous genio who had ruled her destiny had resumed possession of her soul and
was bearing it away. She dared not look at him, but resigned herself utterly.
But when the bell-ringer, panting and dishevelled, had deposited her in the cell of refuge, when she felt
his great hands gently untying the cords that cut her arms, she experienced that shock which startles out
of their sleep the passengers of a vessel that strikes on a rock in the middle of a dark night. So were her
thoughts awakened, and her senses returned to her one by one. She perceived that she was in Notre
Dame, she remembered that she had been snatched from the hands of the executioner, that Phœbus was
living, and that phœbus loved her no more; and these last two thoughts—the one so sweet, the other so
bitter—presenting themselves simultaneously to the poor creature, she turned to Quasimodo, who still
stood before her, filling her with terror, and said:
“Why did you save me?”
He looked at her anxiously, striving to divine her words. She repeated her question, at which he gave
her another look of profound sadness, and, to her amazement, hastened away.
In a few minutes he returned, carrying a bundle which he threw at her feet. It was some wearing
apparel deposited for her by some charitable women. At this she cast down her eyes over her person, saw
that she was nearly naked, and blushed. Life was coming back to her.
Quasimodo seemed to feel something of this modest shame. He veiled his eye with his broad hand and
left her once more, but this time with reluctant steps.
She hastened to clothe herself in the white robe and the white veil Supplied to her. It was the habit of a
novice of the Hôtel-Dieu.
She had scarcely finished when she saw Quasimodo returning, carrying a basket under one arm and a
mattress under the other. The basket contained a bottle and bread and a few other provisions. He set the
basket on the ground and said, “Eat.” He spread the mattress on the stone floor—“Sleep,” he said.
It was his own food, his own bed, that the poor bell-ringer had been to fetch.