IV.—­The Attack on Notre Dame

Quasimodo did not stop running and shouting “Sanctuary!” till he reached a cell built over the aisles in Notre Dame.  Here he deposited Esmeralda carefully, untied the ropes which bruised her arms, and spread a mattress on the floor; then he left her, and returned with a basket of provisions.

The girl lifted her eyes to thank him, but could not utter a word, so frightful was he to look at.  Quasimodo only said, “I frighten you because I am ugly.  Do not look at me, then, but listen.  All day you must stay here, at night you can walk anywhere about the church.  But, day or night, do not leave the church, or you will be lost.  They would kill you, and I should die.”  Then he vanished, but when she awoke next morning she saw him at the window of her cell.

“Don’t be frightened,” he said.  “I am your friend.  I only came to see if you were asleep.  I am deaf, you did not know that?  I never realised how ugly I was till now.  I seem to you like some awful beast, eh?  And you—­you are a sunbeam!”

As the days went by calm returned to Esmeralda’s soul, and with calm had come the sense of security, and with security hope.

Two forces were now at work to remove her from Notre Dame.

The archdeacon, leaving Paris to avoid her execution, had returned—­to learn where Esmeralda was situated.  From his cell in Notre Dame he observed her movements, and, in his madness, jealous of Quasimodo’s service to her, resolved to have her removed.  If she still refused him he would give her up to justice.

Esmeralda’s friends, all the gypsies, vagrants, cutthroats, and pick-pockets of Paris, to the number of six thousand, also resolved that they would forcibly rescue her from Notre Dame, lest some evil should overtake her.  Paris at that time had neither police nor adequate city watchmen.

At midnight the monstrous army of vagrants set out, and it was not until they were outside the church that they lit their torches.  Quasimodo, every night on the watch, at once supposed that the invaders had some foul purpose against Esmeralda, and determined to defend the church at all cost.

The battle raged furiously at the great west doors.  Hammers, pincers, and crow-bars were at work outside.  Quasimodo retaliated by heaving first a great beam of wood, and then stones and other missiles on the besiegers.  Finally, when they had reared a tall ladder to the first gallery, and had crowded it with men, Quasimodo, by sheer force, pushed the ladder away, and it tottered and fell right back.  The battle only ended on the arrival of a large company of King’s Archers, when the vagrants, defeated by Quasimodo, retired fighting.

While the battle raged Claude Frollo, with the aid of a disreputable young student of his acquaintance, persuaded Esmeralda to leave the church by a secret door at the back, and to escape by the river.  The priest was so hidden in his cloak that the girl did not recognise him till they were alone in the city.  In the Greve, at the foot of the public scaffold where the gallows stood, Claude Frollo made his last appeal.