nd the unhappy
victim, except to jeer at his thirst. It is certain that at that moment
he was more grotesque and repulsive than pitiable, with his face purple
and dripping, his eye wild, his mouth foaming with rage and pain, and
his tongue lolling half out. It must also be stated that if a charitable
soul of a bourgeois or _bourgeoise_, in the rabble, had attempted to
carry a glass of water to that wretched creature in torment, there
reigned around the infamous steps of the pillory such a prejudice of
shame and ignominy, that it would have sufficed to repulse the good
Samaritan.

At the expiration of a few moments, Quasimodo cast a desperate glance
upon the crowd, and repeated in a voice still more heartrending:
"Drink!"

And all began to laugh.

"Drink this!" cried Robin Poussepain, throwing in his face a sponge
which had been soaked in the gutter. "There, you deaf villain, I'm your
debtor."

A woman hurled a stone at his head,--

"That will teach you to wake us up at night with your peal of a dammed
soul."

"He, good, my son!" howled a cripple, making an effort to reach him with
his crutch, "will you cast any more spells on us from the top of the
towers of Notre-Dame?"

"Here's a drinking cup!" chimed in a man, flinging a broken jug at his
breast. "'Twas you that made my wife, simply because she passed near
you, give birth to a child with two heads!"

"And my cat bring forth a kitten with six paws!" yelped an old crone,
launching a brick at him.

"Drink!" repeated Quasimodo panting, and for the third time.

At that moment he beheld the crowd give way. A young girl, fantastically
dressed, emerged from the throng. She was accompanied by a little white
goat with gilded horns, and carried a tambourine in her hand.

Quasimodo's eyes sparkled. It was the gypsy whom he had attempted to
carry off on the preceding night, a misdeed for which he was dimly
conscious that he was being punished at that very moment; which was
not in the least the case, since he was being chastised only for the
misfortune of being deaf, and of having been judged by a deaf man. He
doubted not that she had come to wreak her vengeance also, and to deal
her blow like the rest.

He beheld her, in fact, mount the ladder rapidly. Wrath and spite
suffocate him. He would have liked to make the pillory crumble into
ruins, and if the lightning of his eye could have dealt death, the gypsy
would have been reduced to powder before she reached the