he
credit also of having fathomed the mystery of the colossus of Saint
Christopher, and of that lofty, enigmatical statue which then stood at
the entrance of the vestibule, and which the people, in derision,
called "Monsieur Legris." But, what every one might have noticed was the
interminable hours which he often employed, seated upon the parapet of
the area in front of the church, in contemplating the sculptures of the
front; examining now the foolish virgins with their lamps reversed, now
the wise virgins with their lamps upright; again, calculating the angle
of vision of that raven which belongs to the left front, and which is
looking at a mysterious point inside the church, where is concealed the
philosopher's stone, if it be not in the cellar of Nicolas Flamel.

It was, let us remark in passing, a singular fate for the Church of
Notre-Dame at that epoch to be so beloved, in two different degrees,
and with so much devotion, by two beings so dissimilar as Claude and
Quasimodo. Beloved by one, a sort of instinctive and savage half-man,
for its beauty, for its stature, for the harmonies which emanated from
its magnificent ensemble; beloved by the other, a learned and passionate
imagination, for its myth, for the sense which it contains, for the
symbolism scattered beneath the sculptures of its front,--like the first
text underneath the second in a palimpsest,--in a word, for the enigma
which it is eternally propounding to the understanding.

Furthermore, it is certain that the archdeacon had established himself
in that one of the two towers which looks upon the Greve, just beside
the frame for the bells, a very secret little cell, into which no one,
not even the bishop, entered without his leave, it was said. This tiny
cell had formerly been made almost at the summit of the tower, among the
ravens' nests, by Bishop Hugo de Besancon* who had wrought sorcery there
in his day. What that cell contained, no one knew; but from the strand
of the Terrain, at night, there was often seen to appear, disappear,
and reappear at brief and regular intervals, at a little dormer window
opening upon the back of the tower, a certain red, intermittent,
singular light which seemed to follow the panting breaths of a bellows,
and to proceed from a flame, rather than from a light. In the darkness,
at that height, it produced a singular effect; and the goodwives said:
"There's the archdeacon blowing! hell is sparkling up yonder!"

*