you."

Phoebus forced a sneer,--

"Me! Not the least in the world! Ah! yes, certainly!"

"Remain, then!" she continued imperiously, "and let us see the end."

The unlucky captain was obliged to remain. He was somewhat reassured by
the fact that the condemned girl never removed her eyes from the bottom
of the cart. It was but too surely la Esmeralda. In this last stage of
opprobrium and misfortune, she was still beautiful; her great black eyes
appeared still larger, because of the emaciation of her cheeks; her pale
profile was pure and sublime. She resembled what she had been, in
the same degree that a virgin by Masaccio, resembles a virgin of
Raphael,--weaker, thinner, more delicate.

Moreover, there was nothing in her which was not shaken in some sort,
and which with the exception of her modesty, she did not let go at
will, so profoundly had she been broken by stupor and despair. Her body
bounded at every jolt of the tumbrel like a dead or broken thing; her
gaze was dull and imbecile. A tear was still visible in her eyes, but
motionless and frozen, so to speak.

Meanwhile, the lugubrious cavalcade has traversed the crowd amid cries
of joy and curious attitudes. But as a faithful historian, we must state
that on beholding her so beautiful, so depressed, many were moved with
pity, even among the hardest of them.

The tumbrel had entered the Parvis.

It halted before the central portal. The escort ranged themselves in
line on both sides. The crowd became silent, and, in the midst of this
silence full of anxiety and solemnity, the two leaves of the grand door
swung back, as of themselves, on their hinges, which gave a creak like
the sound of a fife. Then there became visible in all its length, the
deep, gloomy church, hung in black, sparely lighted with a few candles
gleaming afar off on the principal altar, opened in the midst of the
Place which was dazzling with light, like the mouth of a cavern. At the
very extremity, in the gloom of the apse, a gigantic silver cross
was visible against a black drapery which hung from the vault to the
pavement. The whole nave was deserted. But a few heads of priests could
be seen moving confusedly in the distant choir stalls, and, at the
moment when the great door opened, there escaped from the church a
loud, solemn, and monotonous chanting, which cast over the head of the
condemned girl, in gusts, fragments of melancholy psalms,--

"_Non timebo millia populi circumdantis me: