After all, these were no great proofs of sorcery; but still there was sufficient smoke to warrant the supposition of flame, and the Archdeacon therefore stood in decidedly bad odour. And yet we are bound to say that the occult sciences, that necromancy, magic—even of the whitest and most innocent—had no more virulent foe, no more merciless denouncer before the Holy Office of Notre-Dame than himself. Whether this abhorrence was sincere, or merely the trick of the pickpocket who cries “Stop thief!” it did not prevent the learned heads of the Chapter regarding him as a soul adventuring into the very fore-court of hell, lost among the holes and underground workings of the Cabala, groping in the baleful gloom of occult science. The people, of course, were not to be hood-winked for a moment—any one with a grain of sense could see that Quasimodo was a demon, and Claude Frollo a sorcerer; and it was patent that the bell-ringer was bound to the Archdeacon for a certain time, after which he would carry off his master’s soul in guise of payment. Consequently, in spite of the excessive austerity of his life, the Archdeacon was in bad repute with all pious people, and there was no devout nose, however inexperienced, that did not smell out the wizard in him.

Yet, if with advancing years deep fissures had opened in his mind, in his heart they were no less deep. So, at least, they had reason to think who narrowly scanned that face in which the soul shone forth as through a murky cloud. Else why that bald and furrowed brow, that constantly bowed head, those sighs that forever rent his breast? What secret thought sent that bitter smile to his lips at the selfsame moment that his frowning brows approached each other like two bulls about to fight? Why were his remaining hairs already gray? Whence came that inward fire that blazed at times in his eyes, till they looked like holes pierced in the wall of a furnace?

These symptoms of violent moral preoccupation had developed to an extraordinary degree of intensity at the period of our narrative. More than once had a chorister boy fled in terror when coming upon him suddenly in the Cathedral, so strange and piercing was his gaze. More than once, at the hour of service, had the occupant of the next stall in the choir heard him interspersing the plain song, ad omnem tonum, with unintelligible parentheses. More than once had the laundress of the terrain, whose duty it was to “wash the Chapter,” noticed with alarm the marks of finger-nails and clinched hands in the surplice of Monsieur the Archdeacon of Josas.

However, he grew doubly austere, and his life had never been more exemplary. By inclination, as well as by calling, he had always kept severely aloof from women; now he seemed to hate them more virulently than ever. The mere rustle of a silken kirtle was sufficient to make him bring his cowl down over his eyes. So jealous were his reserve and his austerity on this point, that when the King’s daughter, the Lady of Beaujeu, came in December, 1481, to visit the cloister of Notre-Dame, he earnestly opposed her admittance, reminding the Bishop of the statute in the Black Book, dated Saint-Bartholomew’s Eve, 1334, forbidding access to the cloister to every woman whatsoever, “young or old, mistress or serving- maid.” Upon which the Bishop had been constrained to quote the ordinance of the legate Odo, which makes exception in favour of “certain ladies of high degree, who might not be turned away without offence”—“aliquæ magnates mulieres, quæ sine scandale vitari non possunt.” But the Archdeacon persisted in his protest, objecting that the legate’s ordinance, dating from as far back as 1207, was anterior to the Black Book by a hundred and twenty-seven years, and thus practically abrogated by it, and he refused to appear before the princess.

It was, moreover, noticed that, for some time past, his horror of gipsy-women and all Zingari in general had remarkably increased. He had solicited from the Bishop an edict expressly forbidding gipsies to dance or play the tambourine within the Parvis of the Cathedral; and simultaneously he was rummaging