_ After the morning in the pillory, the neighbors of Notre-
Dame thought they noticed that Quasimodo's ardor for
ringing had grown cool. Formerly, there had been peals for
every occasion, long morning serenades, which lasted from
prime to compline; peals from the belfry for a high mass,
rich scales drawn over the smaller bells for a wedding, for a
christening, and mingling in the air like a rich embroidery of
all sorts of charming sounds. The old church, all vibrating
and sonorous, was in a perpetual joy of bells. One was
constantly conscious of the presence of a spirit of noise and
caprice, who sang through all those mouths of brass. Now
that spirit seemed to have departed; the cathedral seemed
gloomy, and gladly remained silent; festivals and funerals
had the simple peal, dry and bare, demanded by the ritual,
nothing more. Of the double noise which constitutes a
church, the organ within, the bell without, the organ alone
remained. One would have said that there was no longer
a musician in the belfry. Quasimodo was always there,
nevertheless; what, then, had happened to him? Was it that
the shame and despair of the pillory still lingered in the
bottom of his heart, that the lashes of his tormentor's whip
reverberated unendingly in his soul, and that the sadness of
such treatment had wholly extinguished in him even his passion
for the bells? or was it that Marie had a rival in the heart
of the bellringer of Notre-Dame, and that the great bell and
her fourteen sisters were neglected for something more amiable
and more beautiful?
It chanced that, in the year of grace 1482, Annunciation
Day fell on Tuesday, the twenty-fifth of March. That day
the air was so pure and light that Quasimodo felt some
returning affection for his bells. He therefore ascended
the northern tower while the beadle below was opening wide
the doors of the church, which were then enormous panels of
stout wood, covered with leather, bordered with nails of gilded
iron, and framed in carvings "very artistically elaborated."
On arriving in the lofty bell chamber, Quasimodo gazed for
some time at the six bells and shook his head sadly, as though
groaning over some foreign element which had interposed
itself in his heart between them and him. But when he had
set them to swinging, when he felt that cluster of bells
moving under his hand, when he saw, for he did not hear it,
the palpitating octave ascend and descend that sonorous scale,
like a bird hopping from branch to branch; when the demon
Music, that demon who shakes a sparkling bundle of strette,
trills and arpeggios, had taken possession of the poor deaf
man, he became happy once more, he forgot everything, and
his heart expanding, made his face beam.
He went and came, he beat his hands together, he ran from
rope to rope, he animated the six singers with voice and
gesture, like the leader of an orchestra who is urging on
intelligent musicians.
"Go on," said he, "go on, go on, Gabrielle, pour out all thy
noise into the Place, 'tis a festival to-day. No laziness,
Thibauld; thou art relaxing; go on, go on, then, art thou rusted,
thou sluggard? That is well! quick! quick! let not thy
clapper be seen! Make them all deaf like me. That's it,
Thibauld, bravely done! Guillaume! Guillaume! thou art
the largest, and Pasquier is the smallest, and Pasquier does
best. Let us wager that those who hear him will understand
him better than they understand thee. Good! good! my
Gabrielle, stoutly, more stoutly! Eli! what are you doing up
aloft there, you two Moineaux (sparrows)? I do not see you
making the least little shred of noise. What is the meaning
of those beaks of copper which seem to be gaping when they
should sing? Come, work now, 'tis the Feast of the
Annunciation. The sun is fine, the chime must be fine
also. Poor Guillaume! thou art all out of breath, my
big fellow!"
He was wholly absorbed in spurring on his bells, all six of
which vied with each other in leaping and shaking their
shining haunches, like a noisy team of Spanish mules, pricked
on here and there by the apostrophes of the muleteer.
All at once, on letting his glance fall between the large
slate scales which cover the perpendicular wall of the bell
tower at a certain height, he beheld on the square a young
girl, fantastically dressed, stop, spread out on the ground a
carpet, on which a small goat took up its post, and a group of
spectators collect around her. This sight suddenly changed
the course of his ideas, and congealed his enthusiasm as a
breath of air congeals melted rosin. He halted, turned his
back to the bells, and crouched down behind the projecting
roof of slate, fixing upon the dancer that dreamy, sweet, and
tender look which had already astonished the archdeacon on
one occasion. Meanwhile, the forgotten bells died away
abruptly and all together, to the great disappointment of the
lovers of bell ringing, who were listening in good faith to the
peal from above the Pont du Change, and who went away
dumbfounded, like a dog who has been offered a bone and
given a stone. _