the gipsy from him. Nevertheless, such was his reverence for the priest, so deeply were gratitude, devotion, and love for this man rooted in his heart, that they resisted, even at this supreme moment, the fangs of jealousy and despair. The moment that Claude Frollo was concerned, the bloodthirsty, deadly resentment he would have felt against any other individual was turned in the poor bell-ringer’s breast simply into an increase of his sorrow.

At the moment when his thoughts were thus fixed upon the priest, as the dawn was beginning to gleam upon the buttresses, he beheld on the upper story of the Cathedral, at the angle of the balustrade that runs round the outside of the chancel, a figure advancing in his direction. He recognised it—it was the Archdeacon.

Claude was moving with a slow and heavy step. He did not look before him as he walked, his face was turned aside towards the right bank of the Seine, and he held his head up as if endeavouring to obtain a view of something across the roofs. The owl has often that sidelong attitude, flying in one direction while it gazes in another. In this manner the priest passed along above Quasimodo without catching sight of him.

The deaf spectator, petrified by this sudden apparition, saw the figure disappear through the door leading to the stair of the northern tower, which, as the reader is aware, commands a view of the Hôtel-de-Ville.

Quasimodo rose and followed the Archdeacon, mounting the stair after him to find out why the priest was going there. Not that the poor bell-ringer had any definite idea of what he himself was going to do or say, or even what he wanted. He was full of rage and full of dread. The Archdeacon and the Egyptian clashed together in his heart.

On reaching the top of the tower, and before issuing from the shade of the stair-case, he cautiously investigated the position of the priest. The Archdeacon had his back towards him. An openwork balustrade surrounds the platform of the steeple; the priest, whose eyes were fixed upon the town, was leaning forward against that side of the square balustrade which faces the Pont Notre-Dame.

With noiseless tread Quasimodo stole up behind him, to see what he was so intently gazing at, and the priest’s attention was so entirely absorbed elsewhere that he did not hear the step of the hunchback near him.

It is a magnificent and enchanting spectacle—and yet more so in those days—that view of Paris from the summit of the towers of Notre-Dame, in the sparkling light of a summer’s dawn. It must have been a day early in July. The sky was perfectly serene; a few lingering stars, here and there, were slowly fading, and eastward, in the clearest part of the sky, hung one of great brilliancy. The sun was on the point of rising. Paris was beginning to stir, the endless variety of outline presented by its building on the eastern side showing up vividly in the singularly pure white light, while the gigantic shadow of the steeples crept from roof to roof, traversing the great city from one end to the other. Already voices and sounds were arising in several quarters of the town; here the clang of a bell, there the stroke of a hammer, elsewhere the complicated clatter of a cart in motion. The smoke from chimneys curled up here and there out of the mass of roofs, as if through the fissures of some great solfatara. The river, swirling its waters under its many bridges, round the points of innumerable islands, was diapered in shimmering silver. Around the city, outside the ramparts, the view melted into a great circle of fleecy vapour, through which the indefinite line of the plain and the soft undulation of the hills was faintly visible. All sorts of indeterminate sounds floated over the half-awakened city. In the east, a few downy white flakes, plucked from the misty mantle of the hills, fled across the sky before the morning breeze.

Down in the Parvis, some housewives, milk-pot in hand, were pointing out to one another in astonishment the extraordinary condition of the great door of Notre-Dame, and the two streams of lead congealed between the fissures of the stones. This was all that remained of the tumult of the night before. The pile kindled by Quasimodo between the towers was extinct. Tristan had already cleared the débris from the