“Now, what in the world is she absorbed in?” thought Gringoire as he followed her gaze: “it can’t possibly be that grinning dwarf’s face carved in the keystone of the vaulting. Que diable! I can well stand the comparison!”

He raised his voice: “Mademoiselle!”

She seemed not to hear him.

He tried again still louder: “Mademoiselle Esmeralda!”

Labour lost. The girl’s mind was elsewhere and Gringoire’s voice had not the power to call it back. Fortunately, the goat struck in and began pulling its mistress gently by the sleeve.

“What is it, Djali?” said the gipsy quickly, as if starting out of a dream.

“It is hungry,” said Gringoire, delighted at any opening for a conversation.

Esmeralda began crumbling some bread, which Djali ate daintily out of the hollow of her hand.

Gringoire gave her no time to resume her musings. He hazarded a delicate question.

“So you will not have me for your husband?”

The girl looked at him steadily. “No,” she said.

“Nor for your lover?”

She thrust out her under lip and answered “No.”

“For a friend, then?” continued Gringoire.

She regarded him fixedly, then after a moment’s reflection, “Perhaps,” she replied.

This perhaps, so dear to the philosopher, encouraged Gringoire. “Do you know what friendship is?” he asked.

“Yes,” returned the gipsy. “It is to be like brother and sister; two souls that touch without mingling; two fingers of the same hand.”

“And love?” proceeded Gringoire.

“Oh, love,” she said, and her voice vibrated and her eyes shone, “that is to be two and yet only one—a man and a woman blending into an angel—it is heaven!”

As she spoke, the dancing girl of the streets glowed with a beauty which affected Gringoire strangely, and which seemed to him in perfect harmony with the almost Oriental exaltation of her words. Her chaste and rosy lips were parted in a half smile, her pure and open brow was ruffled for a moment by her thoughts, as a mirror is dimmed by a passing breath, and from under her long, dark, drooping lashes there beamed a sort of ineffable light, imparting to her face that ideal suavity which later on Raphael found at the mystic point of intersection of the virginal, the human, and the divine.

Nevertheless, Gringoire continued: “What must a man be, then, to win your favour?”

“He must be a man!”

“And I,” said he; “what am I, then?”