, it was between
Claude Frollo's legs that he was accustomed to seek refuge, when the
dogs and the children barked after him. Claude Frollo had taught him
to talk, to read, to write. Claude Frollo had finally made him the
bellringer. Now, to give the big bell in marriage to Quasimodo was to
give Juliet to Romeo.

Hence Quasimodo's gratitude was profound, passionate, boundless; and
although the visage of his adopted father was often clouded or severe,
although his speech was habitually curt, harsh, imperious, that
gratitude never wavered for a single moment. The archdeacon had in
Quasimodo the most submissive slave, the most docile lackey, the most
vigilant of dogs. When the poor bellringer became deaf, there had
been established between him and Claude Frollo, a language of signs,
mysterious and understood by themselves alone. In this manner the
archdeacon was the sole human being with whom Quasimodo had preserved
communication. He was in sympathy with but two things in this world:
Notre-Dame and Claude Frollo.

There is nothing which can be compared with the empire of the archdeacon
over the bellringer; with the attachment of the bellringer for the
archdeacon. A sign from Claude and the idea of giving him pleasure would
have sufficed to make Quasimodo hurl himself headlong from the summit of
Notre-Dame. It was a remarkable thing--all that physical strength which
had reached in Quasimodo such an extraordinary development, and which
was placed by him blindly at the disposition of another. There was in
it, no doubt, filial devotion, domestic attachment; there was also the
fascination of one spirit by another spirit. It was a poor, awkward, and
clumsy organization, which stood with lowered head and supplicating eyes
before a lofty and profound, a powerful and superior intellect. Lastly,
and above all, it was gratitude. Gratitude so pushed to its extremest
limit, that we do not know to what to compare it. This virtue is not one
of those of which the finest examples are to be met with among men. We
will say then, that Quasimodo loved the archdeacon as never a dog, never
a horse, never an elephant loved his master.

CHAPTER V. MORE ABOUT CLAUDE FROLLO.

In 1482, Quasimodo was about twenty years of age; Claude Frollo, about
thirty-six. One had grown up, the other had grown old.

Claude Frollo was no longer the simple scholar of the college of Torch,
the tender protector of a little child, the young and dreamy phi