January.
Beauty is perfect, beauty can do all things, beauty is the only thing
which does not exist by halves. The raven flies only by day, the owl
flies only by night, the swan flies by day and by night.

One morning, on awaking, she saw on her window two vases filled with
flowers. One was a very beautiful and very brilliant but cracked vase of
glass. It had allowed the water with which it had been filled to escape,
and the flowers which it contained were withered. The other was an
earthenware pot, coarse and common, but which had preserved all its
water, and its flowers remained fresh and crimson.

I know not whether it was done intentionally, but La Esmeralda took the
faded nosegay and wore it all day long upon her breast.

That day she did not hear the voice singing in the tower.

She troubled herself very little about it. She passed her days in
caressing Djali, in watching the door of the Gondelaurier house, in
talking to herself about Phoebus, and in crumbling up her bread for the
swallows.

She had entirely ceased to see or hear Quasimodo. The poor bellringer
seemed to have disappeared from the church. One night, nevertheless,
when she was not asleep, but was thinking of her handsome captain, she
heard something breathing near her cell. She rose in alarm, and saw by
the light of the moon, a shapeless mass lying across her door on the
outside. It was Quasimodo asleep there upon the stones.

CHAPTER V. THE KEY TO THE RED DOOR.

In the meantime, public minor had informed the archdeacon of the
miraculous manner in which the gypsy had been saved. When he learned it,
he knew not what his sensations were. He had reconciled himself to la
Esmeralda's death. In that matter he was tranquil; he had reached the
bottom of personal suffering. The human heart (Dora Claude had meditated
upon these matters) can contain only a certain quantity of despair.
When the sponge is saturated, the sea may pass over it without causing a
single drop more to enter it.

Now, with la Esmeralda dead, the sponge was soaked, all was at an end on
this earth for Dom Claude. But to feel that she was alive, and Phoebus
also, meant that tortures, shocks, alternatives, life, were beginning
again. And Claude was weary of all this.

When he heard this news, he shut himself in his cell in the cloister. He
appeared neither at the meetings of the chapter nor at the services. He
closed his door against all, even against the bishop. He rem