hese very bells which had made him deaf; but mothers often love best
that child which has caused them the most suffering.

It is true that their voice was the only one which he could still
hear. On this score, the big bell was his beloved. It was she whom he
preferred out of all that family of noisy girls which bustled above
him, on festival days. This bell was named Marie. She was alone in the
southern tower, with her sister Jacqueline, a bell of lesser size, shut
up in a smaller cage beside hers. This Jacqueline was so called from the
name of the wife of Jean Montagu, who had given it to the church, which
had not prevented his going and figuring without his head at Montfaucon.
In the second tower there were six other bells, and, finally, six
smaller ones inhabited the belfry over the crossing, with the wooden
bell, which rang only between after dinner on Good Friday and the
morning of the day before Easter. So Quasimodo had fifteen bells in his
seraglio; but big Marie was his favorite.

No idea can be formed of his delight on days when the grand peal was
sounded. At the moment when the archdeacon dismissed him, and said,
"Go!" he mounted the spiral staircase of the clock tower faster than any
one else could have descended it. He entered perfectly breathless into
the aerial chamber of the great bell; he gazed at her a moment, devoutly
and lovingly; then he gently addressed her and patted her with his
hand, like a good horse, which is about to set out on a long journey.
He pitied her for the trouble that she was about to suffer. After these
first caresses, he shouted to his assistants, placed in the lower story
of the tower, to begin. They grasped the ropes, the wheel creaked, the
enormous capsule of metal started slowly into motion. Quasimodo followed
it with his glance and trembled. The first shock of the clapper and
the brazen wall made the framework upon which it was mounted quiver.
Quasimodo vibrated with the bell.

"Vah!" he cried, with a senseless burst of laughter. However, the
movement of the bass was accelerated, and, in proportion as it described
a wider angle, Quasimodo's eye opened also more and more widely,
phosphoric and flaming. At length the grand peal began; the whole tower
trembled; woodwork, leads, cut stones, all groaned at once, from the
piles of the foundation to the trefoils of its summit. Then Quasimodo
boiled and frothed; he went and came; he trembled from head to foot with
the tower. The bel