ained thus
immured for several weeks. He was believed to be ill. And so he was, in
fact.

What did he do while thus shut up? With what thoughts was the
unfortunate man contending? Was he giving final battle to his formidable
passion? Was he concocting a final plan of death for her and of
perdition for himself?

His Jehan, his cherished brother, his spoiled child, came once to his
door, knocked, swore, entreated, gave his name half a score of times.
Claude did not open.

He passed whole days with his face close to the panes of his window.
From that window, situated in the cloister, he could see la Esmeralda's
chamber. He often saw herself with her goat, sometimes with Quasimodo.
He remarked the little attentions of the ugly deaf man, his obedience,
his delicate and submissive ways with the gypsy. He recalled, for he had
a good memory, and memory is the tormentor of the jealous, he recalled
the singular look of the bellringer, bent on the dancer upon a certain
evening. He asked himself what motive could have impelled Quasimodo to
save her. He was the witness of a thousand little scenes between the
gypsy and the deaf man, the pantomime of which, viewed from afar and
commented on by his passion, appeared very tender to him. He distrusted
the capriciousness of women. Then he felt a jealousy which he could
never have believed possible awakening within him, a jealousy which made
him redden with shame and indignation: "One might condone the captain,
but this one!" This thought upset him.

His nights were frightful. As soon as he learned that the gypsy was
alive, the cold ideas of spectre and tomb which had persecuted him for
a whole day vanished, and the flesh returned to goad him. He turned and
twisted on his couch at the thought that the dark-skinned maiden was so
near him.

Every night his delirious imagination represented la Esmeralda to him in
all the attitudes which had caused his blood to boil most. He beheld her
outstretched upon the poniarded captain, her eyes closed, her beautiful
bare throat covered with Phoebus's blood, at that moment of bliss when
the archdeacon had imprinted on her pale lips that kiss whose burn the
unhappy girl, though half dead, had felt. He beheld her, again, stripped
by the savage hands of the torturers, allowing them to bare and to
enclose in the boot with its iron screw, her tiny foot, her delicate
rounded leg, her white and supple knee. Again he beheld that ivory knee
which alone rem