, bellowing, yelping, all limping and halting, all flinging
themselves towards the light, and humped up in the mire, like snails
after a shower.

Gringoire, still followed by his three persecutors, and not knowing
very well what was to become of him, marched along in terror among them,
turning out for the lame, stepping over the cripples in bowls, with his
feet imbedded in that ant-hill of lame men, like the English captain who
got caught in the quicksand of a swarm of crabs.

The idea occurred to him of making an effort to retrace his steps. But
it was too late. This whole legion had closed in behind him, and his
three beggars held him fast. So he proceeded, impelled both by this
irresistible flood, by fear, and by a vertigo which converted all this
into a sort of horrible dream.

At last he reached the end of the street. It opened upon an immense
place, where a thousand scattered lights flickered in the confused mists
of night. Gringoire flew thither, hoping to escape, by the swiftness of
his legs, from the three infirm spectres who had clutched him.

"_Onde vas, hombre_?" (Where are you going, my man?) cried the cripple,
flinging away his crutches, and running after him with the best legs
that ever traced a geometrical step upon the pavements of Paris.

In the meantime the legless man, erect upon his feet, crowned Gringoire
with his heavy iron bowl, and the blind man glared in his face with
flaming eyes!

"Where am I?" said the terrified poet.

"In the Court of Miracles," replied a fourth spectre, who had accosted
them.

"Upon my soul," resumed Gringoire, "I certainly do behold the blind who
see, and the lame who walk, but where is the Saviour?"

They replied by a burst of sinister laughter.

The poor poet cast his eyes about him. It was, in truth, that
redoubtable Cour des Miracles, whither an honest man had never
penetrated at such an hour; the magic circle where the officers of the
Chatelet and the sergeants of the provostship, who ventured thither,
disappeared in morsels; a city of thieves, a hideous wart on the face of
Paris; a sewer, from which escaped every morning, and whither returned
every night to crouch, that stream of vices, of mendicancy and
vagabondage which always overflows in the streets of capitals; a
monstrous hive, to which returned at nightfall, with their booty, all
the drones of the social order; a lying hospital where the bohemian, the
disfrocked monk, the ruined scholar, the ne'er