Собор Парижской богоматери / Notre-Dame de Paris - стр. 10

Money showered into it.

All at once, she passed in front of Gringoire. Gringoire put his hand into his pocket to find it empty. The pretty girl stood there, waiting.

An unexpected incident came to his rescue.

“Will you take yourself off, you Egyptian grasshopper?” cried a sharp voice.

The young girl turned round. It was no longer the voice of the bald man; it was the voice of a woman.

Gringoire had taken advantage of the dancer’s embarrassment to disappear.

It is an unpleasant thing to go to bed without supper, it is a still less pleasant thing not to eat and not to know where to sleep. That was Gringoire’s condition. No supper, no shelter.

This melancholy was absorbing him more and more, when a song suddenly tore him from it. It was the young gypsy who was singing.

Her voice was like her dancing, like her beauty. It was indefinable and charming. The words which she sang were in a tongue unknown to Gringoire. He felt the tears in his eyes. Her song breathed joy, most of all.

The same woman’s voice interrupted the song.

“Will you hold your tongue, you cricket of hell?” it cried, still from the same obscure corner of the place.

The poor “cricket” stopped short. Gringoire covered up his ears.

At this moment the attention has been diverted by the procession of the Pope of the Fools, which, after having traversed many streets and squares, came to the Place de Grève.

It is difficult to convey an idea of what Quasimodo had felt. It was the first enjoyment of self-love that he had ever experienced. To that day, he had known only humiliation, disdain, disgust.

At the very moment when Quasimodo was passing the Pillar House, a man darted from the crowd to tear from his hands, with a gesture of anger, his crosier of gilded wood – the emblem of his mock popeship.

This man was the man with the bald brow, who, a moment earlier, chilled the poor gypsy with his words of hatred. Gringoire, who had not noticed him up to that time, recognized him: “Hold!” he said. “’tis my master, Dom Claude Frollo, the archdeacon! What the devil does he want of that old one-eyed fellow?”

A cry of terror arose, in fact. Quasimodo threw himself from the plank. He leaped to the priest, looked at him, and fell upon his knees.

The priest tore off his tiara, broke his crozier, and rent his tinsel cope.

Quasimodo remained on his knees, with head bent and hands clasped. Then there was a strange dialogue of signs and gestures, for neither of them spoke.

The archdeacon gave Quasimodo a powerful shake, made him a sign to rise and follow him.