Chapter III: The Bells

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.