There is no earthly reason why a deaf man talking to a deaf man should ever stop. God alone knows where and when Maître Florian would have come to anchor, once launched in full sail on the ocean of his eloquence, had not the low door at the back of the hall suddenly opened, and given passage to Monsieur the Provost in person.

At his entrance Maître Florian did not stop, but wheeling half round, and suddenly aiming at the Provost the thunder-bolts which up to now he had launched at Quasimodo:

“Monseigneur,” he said, “I demand such penalty as shall seem fitting to you against the accused here present for flagrant and unprecedented contempt of court.”

He seated himself breathless, wiping away the great drops that fell from his forehead and splashed like tears upon the documents spread out before him. Messire Robert d’Estouteville knit his brows and signed to Quasimodo with a gesture so imperious and significant, that the deaf hunchback in some degree understood.

The Provost addressed him sternly: “What hast thou done, rascal, to be brought hither?”

The poor wretch, supposing that the Provost was asking his name, now broke his habitual silence and answered in hoarse, guttural tones, “Quasimodo.”

The answer corresponded so little with the question that the former unbridled merriment threatened to break out again, and Messire Robert, crimson with anger, roared, “Dost dare to mock me too, arch- rogue?”

“Bell-ringer of Notre-Dame,” continued Quasimodo, thinking that he must explain to the judges who he was.

“Bell-ringer!” returned the Provost, who, as we know, had risen that morning in so vile a temper that there was no need to add fresh fuel to the fire by such unwarrantable impudence. “Bell-ringer indeed! They shall ring a carillon of rods on thy back at every street corner of Paris. Hearest thou, rascal?”

“If it is my age you desire to know,” said Quasimodo, “I think I shall be twenty come Martinmas.”

This was going too far; the Provost could contain himself no longer.

“Ha, miserable knave, thou thinkest to make sport of the law! Sergeant of the rod, you will take this fellow to the pillory in the Grève and there flog him and turn him for an hour. He shall pay for this, tête- Dieu! And I command that this sentence be proclaimed by means of the four legally appointed trumpeters at the seven castellanies of the jurisdiction of Paris.”

The clerk proceeded forthwith to put the sentence on record.

“Ventre-Dieu! I call that giving judgment in good style!” said little Jehan Frollo of the Mill, from his secluded corner.

The Provost turned and again transfixed Quasimodo with blazing eye. “I believe the rascal said ’Ventre- Dieu!’ Clerk, you will add twelve deniers parisis as a fine for swearing, and let one-half of it go to the Church of Saint-Eustache. I have a particular devotion for Saint-Eustache.”

A few minutes later and the sentence was drawn up. The language was brief and simple. The legal procedure of the Provostry and bailiwick of Paris had not yet been elaborated by the President, Thibaut Baillet, and Roger Barmne, King’s advocate, and therefore not yet obscured by that forest of chicanery and circumlocution planted in it by these two lawyers at the beginning of the sixteenth century. All was still clear, rapid, and to the point. There was no beating about the bush, and straight before you, at the