Page 117 (1/1)

"Vah!" he cried, with a senseless burst of laughter However, the movement of the bass was accelerated, and, in proportion as it described a wider angle, Quasimodo's eye opened also rand peal began; the whole tower treroaned at once, from the piles of the foundation to the trefoils of its summit Then Quasimodo boiled and frothed; he went and came; he trembled fro riot, presented to the talls of the tower alternately its brazen throat, whence escaped that teues away Quasimodo stationed himself in front of this open throat; he crouched and rose with the oscillations of the bell, breathed in this overwhelazed by turns at the deep place, which swarmed with people, two hundred feet below hiue which came, second after second, to howl in his ear

It was the only speech which he understood, the only sound which broke for him the universal silence He swelled out in it as a bird does in the sun All of a sudden, the frenzy of the bell seized upon hireat bell as it passed, as a spider lies in wait for a fly, and flung hiht and main Then, suspended above the abyss, borne to and fro by the for of the bell, he seized the brazen monster by the ear-laps, pressed it between both knees, spurred it on with his heels, and redoubled the fury of the peal with the whole shock and weight of his body Meanwhile, the tower trenashed his teeth, his red hair rose erect, his breast heaving like a bellows, his eye flashed fla, beneath hireat bell of Notre- Dame nor Quasimodo: it was a dream, a ind, a te to a flying crupper, a strange centaur, half man, half bell; a sort of horrible Astolphus, borne away upon a prodigious hippogriff of living bronze

The presence of this extraordinary being caused, as it were, a breath of life to circulate throughout the entire cathedral It see to the growing superstitions of the crowd, a mysterious emanation which animated all the stones of Notre-Dame, and made the deep bowels of the ancient church to palpitate It sufficed for people to know that he was there, to make thealleries and the fronts in motion And the cathedral did indeed seem a docile and obedient creature beneath his hand; it waited on his will to raise its great voice; it was possessed and filled with Quasimodo, as with a familiar spirit One would have said that he made the immense edifice breathe He was everywhere about it; in fact, he multiplied himself on all points of the structure Now one perceived with affright at the very top of one of the towers, a fantastic dwarf cli outside above the abyss, leaping fro to ransack the belly of so the crows Again, in some obscure corner of the church one ca and scowling; it was Quasiht, upon a bell tower, of an enor furiously at the end of a rope; it was Quasiht a hideous for the frail balustrade of carved lacework, which crowns the towers and borders the circuain it was the hunchback of Notre-Dahborhood, the whole church took on so fantastic, supernatural, horrible; eyes and s, the ht and day, with outstretched neck and open jaws, around theAnd, if it was a Christreat bell, which seemed to eht mass, such an air was spread over the sorand portal was devouring the throng, and that the rose as watching it And all this caod of this tees believed him to be its demon: he was in fact its soul