about it; in fact, he multiplied himself on all points of the
structure. Now one perceived with affright at the very top of one of
the towers, a fantastic dwarf climbing, writhing, crawling on all
fours, descending outside above the abyss, leaping from projection to
projection, and going to ransack the belly of some sculptured gorgon; it
was Quasimodo dislodging the crows. Again, in some obscure corner of the
church one came in contact with a sort of living chimera, crouching
and scowling; it was Quasimodo engaged in thought. Sometimes one caught
sight, upon a bell tower, of an enormous head and a bundle of disordered
limbs swinging furiously at the end of a rope; it was Quasimodo ringing
vespers or the Angelus. Often at night a hideous form was seen wandering
along the frail balustrade of carved lacework, which crowns the towers
and borders the circumference of the apse; again it was the hunchback of
Notre-Dame. Then, said the women of the neighborhood, the whole church
took on something fantastic, supernatural, horrible; eyes and mouths
were opened, here and there; one heard the dogs, the monsters, and the
gargoyles of stone, which keep watch night and day, with outstretched
neck and open jaws, around the monstrous cathedral, barking. And, if
it was a Christmas Eve, while the great bell, which seemed to emit the
death rattle, summoned the faithful to the midnight mass, such an air
was spread over the sombre facade that one would have declared that
the grand portal was devouring the throng, and that the rose window was
watching it. And all this came from Quasimodo. Egypt would have taken
him for the god of this temple; the Middle Ages believed him to be its
demon: he was in fact its soul.

To such an extent was this disease that for those who know that
Quasimodo has existed, Notre-Dame is to-day deserted, inanimate, dead.
One feels that something has disappeared from it. That immense body is
empty; it is a skeleton; the spirit has quitted it, one sees its place
and that is all. It is like a skull which still has holes for the eyes,
but no longer sight.

CHAPTER IV. THE DOG AND HIS MASTER.

Nevertheless, there was one human creature whom Quasimodo excepted from
his malice and from his hatred for others, and whom he loved even more,
perhaps, than his cathedral: this was Claude Frollo.

The matter was simple; Claude Frollo had taken him in, had adopted him,
had nourished him, had reared him. When a little lad