Hugo II. de Bisuncio, 1326-1332.

There were no great proofs of sorcery in that, after all, but there was
still enough smoke to warrant a surmise of fire, and the archdeacon bore
a tolerably formidable reputation. We ought to mention however, that the
sciences of Egypt, that necromancy and magic, even the whitest, even the
most innocent, had no more envenomed enemy, no more pitiless denunciator
before the gentlemen of the officialty of Notre-Dame. Whether this
was sincere horror, or the game played by the thief who shouts, "stop
thief!" at all events, it did not prevent the archdeacon from being
considered by the learned heads of the chapter, as a soul who had
ventured into the vestibule of hell, who was lost in the caves of the
cabal, groping amid the shadows of the occult sciences. Neither were
the people deceived thereby; with any one who possessed any sagacity,
Quasimodo passed for the demon; Claude Frollo, for the sorcerer. It
was evident that the bellringer was to serve the archdeacon for a given
time, at the end of which he would carry away the latter's soul, by way
of payment. Thus the archdeacon, in spite of the excessive austerity of
his life, was in bad odor among all pious souls; and there was no devout
nose so inexperienced that it could not smell him out to be a magician.

And if, as he grew older, abysses had formed in his science, they had
also formed in his heart. That at least, is what one had grounds for
believing on scrutinizing that face upon which the soul was only seen
to shine through a sombre cloud. Whence that large, bald brow? that head
forever bent? that breast always heaving with sighs? What secret thought
caused his mouth to smile with so much bitterness, at the same moment
that his scowling brows approached each other like two bulls on the
point of fighting? Why was what hair he had left already gray? What was
that internal fire which sometimes broke forth in his glance, to such a
degree that his eye resembled a hole pierced in the wall of a furnace?

These symptoms of a violent moral preoccupation, had acquired an
especially high degree of intensity at the epoch when this story takes
place. More than once a choir-boy had fled in terror at finding him
alone in the church, so strange and dazzling was his look. More than
once, in the choir, at the hour of the offices, his neighbor in the
stalls had heard him mingle with the plain song, _ad omnem tonum_,
unintelligible parentheses. More th