He was recognised by the crowd in the streets, and shouts went up.

“It is Quasimodo, the bell-ringer!  Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre Dame!”

A pasteboard tiara and imitation robes were placed on him, and Quasimodo submitted with a sort of proud docility.  Then he was seated upon a painted barrow, and twelve men raised it to their shoulders; and the procession, which included all the vagrants and rascals of Paris, set out to parade the city.

There was a certain rapture in this journey for Quasimodo.  For the first time in his life he felt a thrill of vanity.  Hitherto humiliation and contempt had been his portion; and now, though he was deaf, he could enjoy the plaudits of the mob—­mob which he hated because he felt that it hated him.

Suddenly, as Quasimodo passed triumphantly along the streets, the spectators saw a man, dressed like a priest, dart out and snatch away the gilded crosier from the mock pope.

A cry of terror rose.  The terrible Quasimodo threw himself from his barrow, and everyone expected to see him tear the priest limb from limb.  Instead, he fell on his knees before the priest, and submitted to have his tiara torn from him and his crosier broken.

The fraternity of fools determined to defend their pope so abruptly dethroned; but Quasimodo placed himself in front of the priest, put his fists up, and glared at his assailants, so that the crowd melted before him.

Then, at the grave beckoning of the priest, Quasimodo followed, and the two disappeared down a narrow side street.

The one human being whom Quasimodo loved was this priest, Claude Frollo, Archbishop of Paris.  And this was quite natural.  For it was Claude Frollo who had found the hunchback—­a deserted, forsaken child left in a sack at the entrance to Notre Dame, and, in spite of his deformities, had taken him, fed him, adopted him, and brought him up.  Claude Frollo taught him to speak, to read, and to write, and had made him bell-ringer at Notre Dame.

Quasimodo grew up in Notre Dame.  Cut off from the world by his deformities, the church became his universe, and his gratitude was boundless when he was made bell-ringer.

The bells had made him deaf, but he could understand by signs Claude Frollo’s wishes, and so the archdeacon became the only human being with whom Quasimodo could hold any communication.  Notre Dame and Claude Frollo were the only two things in the world for Quasimodo, and to both he was the most faithful watchman and servant.  In the year 1482 Quasimodo was about twenty, and Claude Frollo thirty-six.  The former had grown up, the latter had grown old.

II.—­Esmeralda

On that same January 6, 1482, a young girl was dancing in an open space near a great bonfire in Paris.  She was not tall but seemed to be, so erect was her figure.  She danced and twirled upon an old piece of Persian carpet, and every eye in the crowd was riveted upon her.  In her grace and beauty this gypsy girl seemed more than mortal.