When they had passed through the door of the cell, its pale rays fell
upon the priest's countenance. Quasimodo looked him full in the face, a
trembling seized him, and he released the priest and shrank back.

The gypsy, who had advanced to the threshold of her cell, beheld
with surprise their roles abruptly changed. It was now the priest who
menaced, Quasimodo who was the suppliant.

The priest, who was overwhelming the deaf man with gestures of wrath and
reproach, made the latter a violent sign to retire.

The deaf man dropped his head, then he came and knelt at the gypsy's
door,--"Monseigneur," he said, in a grave and resigned voice, "you shall
do all that you please afterwards, but kill me first."

So saying, he presented his knife to the priest. The priest, beside
himself, was about to seize it. But the young girl was quicker than be;
she wrenched the knife from Quasimodo's hands and burst into a frantic
laugh,--"Approach," she said to the priest.

She held the blade high. The priest remained undecided.

She would certainly have struck him.

Then she added with a pitiless expression, well aware that she was about
to pierce the priest's heart with thousands of red-hot irons,--

"Ah! I know that Phoebus is not dead!"

The priest overturned Quasimodo on the floor with a kick, and, quivering
with rage, darted back under the vault of the staircase.

When he was gone, Quasimodo picked up the whistle which had just saved
the gypsy.

"It was getting rusty," he said, as he handed it back to her; then he
left her alone.

The young girl, deeply agitated by this violent scene, fell back
exhausted on her bed, and began to sob and weep. Her horizon was
becoming gloomy once more.

The priest had groped his way back to his cell.

It was settled. Dom Claude was jealous of Quasimodo!

He repeated with a thoughtful air his fatal words: "No one shall have
her."

BOOK TENTH.

CHAPTER I. GRINGOIRE HAS MANY GOOD IDEAS IN SUCCESSION.--RUE DES
BERNARDINS.

As soon as Pierre Gringoire had seen how this whole affair was
turning, and that there would decidedly be the rope, hanging, and other
disagreeable things for the principal personages in this comedy, he had
not cared to identify himself with the matter further. The outcasts
with whom he had remained, reflecting that, after all, it was the best
company in Paris,--the outcasts had continued to interest themselves in
behalf of the gypsy. He had