shed to have the appearance of hearing, and replied, "Ah! ah! that
is different; I did not know that. An hour more of the pillory, in that
case."

And he signed the sentence thus modified.

"'Tis well done," said Robin Poussepain, who cherished a grudge against
Quasimodo. "That will teach him to handle people roughly."

CHAPTER II. THE RAT-HOLE.

The reader must permit us to take him back to the Place de Greve, which
we quitted yesterday with Gringoire, in order to follow la Esmeralda.

It is ten o'clock in the morning; everything is indicative of the day
after a festival. The pavement is covered with rubbish; ribbons, rags,
feathers from tufts of plumes, drops of wax from the torches, crumbs of
the public feast. A goodly number of bourgeois are "sauntering," as we
say, here and there, turning over with their feet the extinct brands of
the bonfire, going into raptures in front of the Pillar House, over the
memory of the fine hangings of the day before, and to-day staring at the
nails that secured them a last pleasure. The venders of cider and beer
are rolling their barrels among the groups. Some busy passers-by
come and go. The merchants converse and call to each other from the
thresholds of their shops. The festival, the ambassadors, Coppenole,
the Pope of the Fools, are in all mouths; they vie with each other, each
trying to criticise it best and laugh the most. And, meanwhile, four
mounted sergeants, who have just posted themselves at the four sides
of the pillory, have already concentrated around themselves a goodly
proportion of the populace scattered on the Place, who condemn
themselves to immobility and fatigue in the hope of a small execution.

If the reader, after having contemplated this lively and noisy scene
which is being enacted in all parts of the Place, will now transfer
his gaze towards that ancient demi-Gothic, demi-Romanesque house of the
Tour-Roland, which forms the corner on the quay to the west, he will
observe, at the angle of the facade, a large public breviary, with rich
illuminations, protected from the rain by a little penthouse, and from
thieves by a small grating, which, however, permits of the leaves being
turned. Beside this breviary is a narrow, arched window, closed by two
iron bars in the form of a cross, and looking on the square; the only
opening which admits a small quantity of light and air to a little cell
without a door, constructed on the ground-floor, in the thick