this cry, which alarmed the gypsy, delighted a troop of
children who were prowling about there.

"It is the recluse of the Tour-Roland," they exclaimed, with wild
laughter, "it is the sacked nun who is scolding! Hasn't she supped?
Let's carry her the remains of the city refreshments!"

All rushed towards the Pillar House.

In the meanwhile, Gringoire had taken advantage of the dancer's
embarrassment, to disappear. The children's shouts had reminded him that
he, also, had not supped, so he ran to the public buffet. But the little
rascals had better legs than he; when he arrived, they had stripped the
table. There remained not so much as a miserable _camichon_ at five sous
the pound. Nothing remained upon the wall but slender fleurs-de-lis,
mingled with rose bushes, painted in 1434 by Mathieu Biterne. It was a
meagre supper.

It is an unpleasant thing to go to bed without supper, it is a still
less pleasant thing not to sup and not to know where one is to sleep.
That was Gringoire's condition. No supper, no shelter; he saw himself
pressed on all sides by necessity, and he found necessity very crabbed.
He had long ago discovered the truth, that Jupiter created men during a
fit of misanthropy, and that during a wise man's whole life, his destiny
holds his philosophy in a state of siege. As for himself, he had never
seen the blockade so complete; he heard his stomach sounding a parley,
and he considered it very much out of place that evil destiny should
capture his philosophy by famine.

This melancholy revery was absorbing him more and more, when a song,
quaint but full of sweetness, suddenly tore him from it. It was the
young gypsy who was singing.

Her voice was like her dancing, like her beauty. It was indefinable
and charming; something pure and sonorous, aerial, winged, so to speak.
There were continual outbursts, melodies, unexpected cadences, then
simple phrases strewn with aerial and hissing notes; then floods of
scales which would have put a nightingale to rout, but in which harmony
was always present; then soft modulations of octaves which rose and
fell, like the bosom of the young singer. Her beautiful face followed,
with singular mobility, all the caprices of her song, from the wildest
inspiration to the chastest dignity. One would have pronounced her now a
mad creature, now a queen.

The words which she sang were in a tongue unknown to Gringoire, and
which seemed to him to be unknown to herself, so lit