age, shaking their fists at the gloomy facade;
and both on the gypsy's account and his own he envied the wings of the
owls which flitted away above his head in flocks.

His shower of stone blocks was not sufficient to repel the assailants.

At this moment of anguish, he noticed, a little lower down than the
balustrade whence he was crushing the thieves, two long stone gutters
which discharged immediately over the great door; the internal orifice
of these gutters terminated on the pavement of the platform. An idea
occurred to him; he ran in search of a fagot in his bellringer's den,
placed on this fagot a great many bundles of laths, and many rolls of
lead, munitions which he had not employed so far, and having arranged
this pile in front of the hole to the two gutters, he set it on fire
with his lantern.

During this time, since the stones no longer fell, the outcasts ceased
to gaze into the air. The bandits, panting like a pack of hounds who are
forcing a boar into his lair, pressed tumultuously round the great
door, all disfigured by the battering ram, but still standing. They were
waiting with a quiver for the great blow which should split it open.
They vied with each other in pressing as close as possible, in order to
dash among the first, when it should open, into that opulent cathedral,
a vast reservoir where the wealth of three centuries had been piled up.
They reminded each other with roars of exultation and greedy lust, of
the beautiful silver crosses, the fine copes of brocade, the beautiful
tombs of silver gilt, the great magnificences of the choir, the
dazzling festivals, the Christmasses sparkling with torches, the
Easters sparkling with sunshine,--all those splendid solemneties wherein
chandeliers, ciboriums, tabernacles, and reliquaries, studded the altars
with a crust of gold and diamonds. Certainly, at that fine moment,
thieves and pseudo sufferers, doctors in stealing, and vagabonds, were
thinking much less of delivering the gypsy than of pillaging Notre-Dame.
We could even easily believe that for a goodly number among them la
Esmeralda was only a pretext, if thieves needed pretexts.

All at once, at the moment when they were grouping themselves round the
ram for a last effort, each one holding his breath and stiffening his
muscles in order to communicate all his force to the decisive blow, a
howl more frightful still than that which had burst forth and expired
beneath the beam, rose among them. Tho