l, furious, running riot, presented to the two
walls of the tower alternately its brazen throat, whence escaped that
tempestuous breath, which is audible leagues away. Quasimodo stationed
himself in front of this open throat; he crouched and rose with the
oscillations of the bell, breathed in this overwhelming breath, gazed
by turns at the deep place, which swarmed with people, two hundred feet
below him, and at that enormous, brazen tongue which came, second after
second, to howl in his ear.

It was the only speech which he understood, the only sound which broke
for him the universal silence. He swelled out in it as a bird does in
the sun. All of a sudden, the frenzy of the bell seized upon him; his
look became extraordinary; he lay in wait for the great bell as it
passed, as a spider lies in wait for a fly, and flung himself abruptly
upon it, with might and main. Then, suspended above the abyss, borne
to and fro by the formidable swinging of the bell, he seized the brazen
monster by the ear-laps, pressed it between both knees, spurred it on
with his heels, and redoubled the fury of the peal with the whole shock
and weight of his body. Meanwhile, the tower trembled; he shrieked and
gnashed his teeth, his red hair rose erect, his breast heaving like a
bellows, his eye flashed flames, the monstrous bell neighed, panting,
beneath him; and then it was no longer the great bell of Notre-Dame nor
Quasimodo: it was a dream, a whirlwind, a tempest, dizziness mounted
astride of noise; a spirit clinging to a flying crupper, a strange
centaur, half man, half bell; a sort of horrible Astolphus, borne away
upon a prodigious hippogriff of living bronze.

The presence of this extraordinary being caused, as it were, a breath of
life to circulate throughout the entire cathedral. It seemed as though
there escaped from him, at least according to the growing superstitions
of the crowd, a mysterious emanation which animated all the stones of
Notre-Dame, and made the deep bowels of the ancient church to palpitate.
It sufficed for people to know that he was there, to make them believe
that they beheld the thousand statues of the galleries and the fronts in
motion. And the cathedral did indeed seem a docile and obedient creature
beneath his hand; it waited on his will to raise its great voice; it
was possessed and filled with Quasimodo, as with a familiar spirit.
One would have said that he made the immense edifice breathe. He was
everywhere