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Thus, as soon as they began to batter the grand door, the shower of rough blocks of stone began to fall, and it see demolished over their heads

Any one who could have beheld Quasihtened Independently of the projectiles which he had piled upon the balustrade, he had collected a heap of stones on the platfore were exhausted, he drew on the heap Then he stooped and rose, stooped and rose again with incredible activity His huge gnome's head bent over the balustrade, then an enormous stone fell, then another, then another From time to tiood execution, he said, "Hued The thick door on which they were venting their fury had already treht of their oaken battering-rath of a hundred men The panels cracked, the carved work flew into splinters, the hinges, at every blow, leaped from their pins, the planks yawned, the wood cru Fortunately for Quasimodo, there was reat door was yielding Although he did not hear it, every blow of the ram reverberated simultaneously in the vaults of the church and within it Froe, shaking their fists at the glooypsy's account and his own he envied the wings of the ohich flitted away above his head in flocks

His shower of stone blocks was not sufficient to repel the assailants

At this uish, he noticed, a little lower down than the balustrade whence he was crushing the thieves, two long stone gutters which discharged ireat door; the internal orifice of these gutters terminated on the pavement of the platforot in his bellringer's den, placed on this fagot a great many bundles of laths, and many rolls of lead, ed this pile in front of the hole to the two gutters, he set it on fire with his lantern

During this tiaze into the air The bandits, panting like a pack of hounds who are forcing a boar into his lair, pressed tuured by the battering ra with a quiver for the great blohich should split it open They vied with each other in pressing as close as possible, in order to dash a the first, when it should open, into that opulent cathedral, a vast reservoir where the wealth of three centuries had been piled up They rereedy lust, of the beautiful silver crosses, the fine copes of brocade, the beautiful tonificences of the choir, the dazzling festivals, the Christ with sunshine,--all those splendid solemneties wherein chandeliers, ciboriums, tabernacles, and reliquaries, studded the altars with a crust of gold and diamonds Certainly, at that fine , and vagabonds, were thinkingNotre-Daoodly nu them la Esmeralda was only a pretext, if thieves needed pretexts