ent there. The hook lay open at this passage of Job, over
which his staring eye glanced,--

"And a spirit passed before my face, and I heard a small voice, and the
hair of my flesh stood up."

On reading these gloomy words, he felt that which a blind man feels when
he feels himself pricked by the staff which he has picked up. His knees
gave way beneath him, and he sank upon the pavement, thinking of her who
had died that day. He felt so many monstrous vapors pass and discharge
themselves in his brain, that it seemed to him that his head had become
one of the chimneys of hell.

It would appear that he remained a long time in this attitude, no longer
thinking, overwhelmed and passive beneath the hand of the demon. At
length some strength returned to him; it occurred to him to take refuge
in his tower beside his faithful Quasimodo. He rose; and, as he was
afraid, he took the lamp from the breviary to light his way. It was a
sacrilege; but he had got beyond heeding such a trifle now.

He slowly climbed the stairs of the towers, filled with a secret fright
which must have been communicated to the rare passers-by in the Place
du Parvis by the mysterious light of his lamp, mounting so late from
loophole to loophole of the bell tower.

All at once, he felt a freshness on his face, and found himself at the
door of the highest gallery. The air was cold; the sky was filled with
hurrying clouds, whose large, white flakes drifted one upon another like
the breaking up of river ice after the winter. The crescent of the moon,
stranded in the midst of the clouds, seemed a celestial vessel caught in
the ice-cakes of the air.

He lowered his gaze, and contemplated for a moment, through the railing
of slender columns which unites the two towers, far away, through a
gauze of mists and smoke, the silent throng of the roofs of Paris,
pointed, innumerable, crowded and small like the waves of a tranquil sea
on a sum-mer night.

The moon cast a feeble ray, which imparted to earth and heaven an ashy
hue.

At that moment the clock raised its shrill, cracked voice. Midnight rang
out. The priest thought of midday; twelve o'clock had come back again.

"Oh!" he said in a very low tone, "she must be cold now."

All at once, a gust of wind extinguished his lamp, and almost at the
same instant, he beheld a shade, a whiteness, a form, a woman, appear
from the opposite angle of the tower. He started. Beside this woman was
a little goat, which m