tion of the priest. The priest's back was turned to him. There
is an openwork balustrade which surrounds the platform of the bell
tower. The priest, whose eyes looked down upon the town, was resting his
breast on that one of the four sides of the balustrades which looks upon
the Pont Notre-Dame.

Quasimodo, advancing with the tread of a wolf behind him, went to see
what he was gazing at thus.

The priest's attention was so absorbed elsewhere that he did not hear
the deaf man walking behind him.

Paris is a magnificent and charming spectacle, and especially at that
day, viewed from the top of the towers of Notre-Dame, in the fresh light
of a summer dawn. The day might have been in July. The sky was perfectly
serene. Some tardy stars were fading away at various points, and there
was a very brilliant one in the east, in the brightest part of the
heavens. The sun was about to appear; Paris was beginning to move. A
very white and very pure light brought out vividly to the eye all the
outlines that its thousands of houses present to the east. The giant
shadow of the towers leaped from roof to roof, from one end of the great
city to the other. There were several quarters from which were already
heard voices and noisy sounds. Here the stroke of a bell, there the
stroke of a hammer, beyond, the complicated clatter of a cart in motion.

Already several columns of smoke were being belched forth from the
chimneys scattered over the whole surface of roofs, as through the
fissures of an immense sulphurous crater. The river, which ruffles its
waters against the arches of so many bridges, against the points of so
many islands, was wavering with silvery folds. Around the city, outside
the ramparts, sight was lost in a great circle of fleecy vapors through
which one confusedly distinguished the indefinite line of the plains,
and the graceful swell of the heights. All sorts of floating sounds were
dispersed over this half-awakened city. Towards the east, the morning
breeze chased a few soft white bits of wool torn from the misty fleece
of the hills.

In the Parvis, some good women, who had their milk jugs in their
hands, were pointing out to each other, with astonishment, the singular
dilapidation of the great door of Notre-Dame, and the two solidified
streams of lead in the crevices of the stone. This was all that remained
of the tempest of the night. The bonfire lighted between the towers by
Quasimodo had died out. Tristan had alre