Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com

The word acted on the truands like the order to mount on a regiment, and the entire band—men,
women, and children—poured out of the tavern with a great clatter of arms and iron. The moon was
obscured. The Court of Miracles lay in utter darkness—not a single light was to be seen, but it was far
from being deserted. A great crowd of men and women stood in the Place talking to one another in low
voices. There was a continuous deep hum, and many a weapon flashed in the gloom.
Clop in mounted on a great stone. “To your ranks, Argot!” cried he. “To your ranks, Egypt! To your
ranks, Galilee!”
A movement ran through the darkness. The vast multitude seemed to be forming in columns. After a few
minutes the King of Tunis once more lifted up his voice:
“Now, then, silence on the march through Paris! The password is ‘Dagger in pouch.’ Torches not to be
lighted till we reach Notre Dame! March!”
Ten minutes later the horsemen of the night-watch were fleeing in terror before a long procession,
black and silent, pouring down towards the Pont-au-Change through the tortuous streets that run in
every direction through the dense quarter of the Halles.
IV. An Awkward Friend
QUASIMODO on that night was not asleep. He had just gone his last round through the church. He had
failed to remark that at the moment when he was closing the doors the Archdeacon had passed near him
and evinced some annoyance at seeing him bolt and padlock with care the enormous iron bars which
gave the wide doors the solidity of a wall. Dome Claude seemed even more preoccupied than usual.
Moreover, since the nocturnal adventure in the cell, he treated Quasimodo with constant unkindness; but
in vain he used him harshly, sometimes even striking him—nothing could shake the submissive patience,
the devoted resignation of the faithful bell-ringer. From the Archdeacon he would endure
anything—abuse, threats, blows—without a murmur of reproach, without even a sigh of complaint. The
utmost that he did was to follow Dome Claude with an anxious eye if he mounted the stair of the tower;
but the Archdeacon had of himself abstained from appearing again before the gipsy girl.
That night, then, Quasimodo, after a glance at his poor forsaken bells, Jacqueline, Marie, Thibauld,
had ascended to the top of the northern tower, and there, after setting down his dark-lantern on the
leads, he fell to contemplating Paris. The night, as we have said, was very dark. Paris, which, speaking
broadly, was not lighted at all at that period, presented to the eye a confused mass of black blots, cut
here and there by the pale windings of the river. Quasimodo saw not a light except in the window of a
distant edifice, whose vague and sombre outline was distinguishable high above the roofs in the direction
of the Porte Saint-Antoine. Here, too, some one kept vigil.
While his eye thus lingered over the dark and misty scene, the bell-ringer felt an indescribable sense of
anxiety rising within him. For several days he had been on the watch. He had constantly noticed men of
sinister aspect loitering round the church and never taking their eyes off the gipsy girl’s hiding-place. He
feared lest some plot should be hatching against the unfortunate refugee. He conceived her to be an
object of popular hatred, as he was himself, and that something might very well be going to happen in
the immediate future. Thus he remained on his tower on the lookout—“Revant dans son revoir”—Musing
in his musery—as Rabelais says, his eye by turns on the cell and on Paris, keeping safe watch, like a
trusty dog, with a thousand suspicions in his mind.