He ceased to come to her cell.
At the most she occasionally caught a glimpse at the summit of the towers, of the bellringer’s face turned sadly to her.
But as soon as she perceived him, he disappeared.
We must admit that she was not much grieved by this voluntary absence on the part of the poor hunchback.
At the bottom of her heart she was grateful to him for it.
Moreover, Quasimodo did not deceive himself on this point.
She no longer saw him, but she felt the presence of a good genius about her.
Her provisions were replenished by an invisible hand during her slumbers.
One morning she found a cage of birds on her window.
There was a piece of sculpture above her window which frightened her.
She had shown this more than once in Quasimodo’s presence.
One morning, for all these things happened at night, she no longer saw it, it had been broken.
The person who had climbed up to that carving must have risked his life.
Sometimes, in the evening, she heard a voice, concealed beneath the wind screen of the bell tower, singing a sad, strange song, as though to lull her to sleep.
The lines were unrhymed, such as a deaf person can make.
Ne regarde pas la figure, Jeune fille, regarde le coeur. Le coeur d’un beau jeune homme est souvent difforme. Il y a des coeurs ou l’amour ne se conserve pas. Jeune fille, le sapin n’est pas beau, N’est pas beau comme le peuplier, Mais il garde son feuillage l’hiver. Helas! a quoi bon dire cela? Ce qui n’est pas beau a tort d’etre; La beaute n’aime que la beaute, Avril tourne le dos a Janvier. La beaute est parfaite, La beaute peut tout, La beaute est la seule chose qui n’existe pas a demi. Le corbeau ne vole que le jour, Le hibou ne vole que la nuit, Le cygne vole la nuit et le jour.
One morning, on awaking, she saw on her window two vases filled with flowers.
One was a very beautiful and very brilliant but cracked vase of glass.
It had allowed the water with which it had been filled to escape, and the flowers which it contained were withered.
The other was an earthenware pot, coarse and common, but which had preserved all its water, and its flowers remained fresh and crimson.
I know not whether it was done intentionally, but La Esmeralda took the faded nosegay and wore it all day long upon her breast.
That day she did not hear the voice singing in the tower.
She troubled herself very little about it.
She passed her days in caressing Djali, in watching the door of the Gondelaurier house, in talking to herself about Phoebus, and in crumbling up her bread for the swallows.
She had entirely ceased to see or hear Quasimodo.
The poor bellringer seemed to have disappeared from the church.
One night, nevertheless, when she was not asleep, but was thinking of her handsome captain, she heard something breathing near her cell.
She rose in alarm, and saw by the light of the moon, a shapeless mass lying across her door on the outside.
It was Quasimodo asleep there upon the stones.
CHAPTER V. THE KEY TO THE RED DOOR.
In the meantime, public minor had informed the archdeacon of the miraculous manner in which the gypsy had been saved.
When he learned it, he knew not what his sensations were.
He had reconciled himself to la Esmeralda’s death.
In that matter he was tranquil; he had reached the bottom of personal suffering.
The human heart (Dora Claude had meditated upon these matters) can contain only a certain quantity of despair.
When the sponge is saturated, the sea may pass over it without causing a single drop more to enter it.
Now, with la Esmeralda dead, the sponge was soaked, all was at an end on this earth for Dom Claude.
But to feel that she was alive, and Phoebus also, meant that tortures, shocks, alternatives, life, were beginning again.
And Claude was weary of all this.
When he heard this news, he shut himself in his cell in the cloister.
He appeared neither at the meetings of the chapter nor at the services.
He closed his door against all, even against the bishop.
He remained thus immured for several weeks.
He was believed to be ill.
And so he was, in fact.
What did he do while thus shut up?
With what thoughts was the unfortunate man contending?
Was he giving final battle to his formidable passion?
Was he concocting a final plan of death for her and of perdition for himself?
His Jehan, his cherished brother, his spoiled child, came once to his door, knocked, swore, entreated, gave his name half a score of times.