him. All was stone around him;
before his eyes, gaping monsters; below, quite at the bottom, in the
Place, the pavement; above his head, Quasimodo weeping.

In the Parvis there were several groups of curious good people, who were
tranquilly seeking to divine who the madman could be who was amusing
himself in so strange a manner. The priest heard them saying, for their
voices reached him, clear and shrill: "Why, he will break his neck!"

Quasimodo wept.

At last the archdeacon, foaming with rage and despair, understood that
all was in vain. Nevertheless, he collected all the strength which
remained to him for a final effort. He stiffened himself upon the spout,
pushed against the wall with both his knees, clung to a crevice in the
stones with his hands, and succeeded in climbing back with one foot,
perhaps; but this effort made the leaden beak on which he rested
bend abruptly. His cassock burst open at the same time. Then, feeling
everything give way beneath him, with nothing but his stiffened and
failing hands to support him, the unfortunate man closed his eyes and
let go of the spout. He fell.

Quasimodo watched him fall.

A fall from such a height is seldom perpendicular. The archdeacon,
launched into space, fell at first head foremost, with outspread hands;
then he whirled over and over many times; the wind blew him upon
the roof of a house, where the unfortunate man began to break up.
Nevertheless, he was not dead when he reached there. The bellringer saw
him still endeavor to cling to a gable with his nails; but the surface
sloped too much, and he had no more strength. He slid rapidly along the
roof like a loosened tile, and dashed upon the pavement. There he no
longer moved.

Then Quasimodo raised his eyes to the gypsy, whose body he beheld
hanging from the gibbet, quivering far away beneath her white robe with
the last shudderings of anguish, then he dropped them on the archdeacon,
stretched out at the base of the tower, and no longer retaining the
human form, and he said, with a sob which heaved his deep chest,--"Oh!
all that I have ever loved!"

CHAPTER III. THE MARRIAGE OF PHOEBUS.

Towards evening on that day, when the judiciary officers of the bishop
came to pick up from the pavement of the Parvis the dislocated corpse of
the archdeacon, Quasimodo had disappeared.

A great many rumors were in circulation with regard to this adventure.
No one doubted but that the day had come when, in ac