asimodo was lost in conjectures, it seemed to
him that the movement had re-appeared in the Rue du Parvis, which is
prolonged into the city perpendicularly to the facade of Notre-Dame.
At length, dense as was the darkness, he beheld the head of a column
debouch from that street, and in an instant a crowd--of which nothing
could be distinguished in the gloom except that it was a crowd--spread
over the Place.

This spectacle had a terror of its own. It is probable that this
singular procession, which seemed so desirous of concealing itself under
profound darkness, maintained a silence no less profound. Nevertheless,
some noise must have escaped it, were it only a trampling. But this
noise did not even reach our deaf man, and this great multitude, of
which he saw hardly anything, and of which he heard nothing, though it
was marching and moving so near him, produced upon him the effect of a
rabble of dead men, mute, impalpable, lost in a smoke. It seemed to
him, that he beheld advancing towards him a fog of men, and that he saw
shadows moving in the shadow.

Then his fears returned to him, the idea of an attempt against the gypsy
presented itself once more to his mind. He was conscious, in a confused
way, that a violent crisis was approaching. At that critical moment he
took counsel with himself, with better and prompter reasoning than one
would have expected from so badly organized a brain. Ought he to awaken
the gypsy? to make her escape? Whither? The streets were invested, the
church backed on the river. No boat, no issue!--There was but one
thing to be done; to allow himself to be killed on the threshold of
Notre-Dame, to resist at least until succor arrived, if it should
arrive, and not to trouble la Esmeralda's sleep. This resolution once
taken, he set to examining the enemy with more tranquillity.

The throng seemed to increase every moment in the church square. Only,
he presumed that it must be making very little noise, since the windows
on the Place remained closed. All at once, a flame flashed up, and in
an instant seven or eight lighted torches passed over the heads of the
crowd, shaking their tufts of flame in the deep shade. Quasimodo then
beheld distinctly surging in the Parvis a frightful herd of men and
women in rags, armed with scythes, pikes, billhooks and partisans, whose
thousand points glittered. Here and there black pitchforks formed horns
to the hideous faces. He vaguely recalled this populace, and t