f in the morning in the corner of her
cell for fear some inhabitants of the neighboring attics might see her
through the window.

When the thought of Phoebus left her time, the gypsy sometimes thought
of Quasimodo. He was the sole bond, the sole connection, the sole
communication which remained to her with men, with the living.
Unfortunate girl! she was more outside the world than Quasimodo. She
understood not in the least the strange friend whom chance had given
her. She often reproached herself for not feeling a gratitude which
should close her eyes, but decidedly, she could not accustom herself to
the poor bellringer. He was too ugly.

She had left the whistle which he had given her lying on the ground.
This did not prevent Quasimodo from making his appearance from time to
time during the first few days. She did her best not to turn aside with
too much repugnance when he came to bring her her basket of provisions
or her jug of water, but he always perceived the slightest movement of
this sort, and then he withdrew sadly.

Once he came at the moment when she was caressing Djali. He stood
pensively for several minutes before this graceful group of the goat and
the gypsy; at last he said, shaking his heavy and ill-formed head,--

"My misfortune is that I still resemble a man too much. I should like to
be wholly a beast like that goat."

She gazed at him in amazement.

He replied to the glance,--

"Oh! I well know why," and he went away.

On another occasion he presented himself at the door of the cell (which
he never entered) at the moment when la Esmeralda was singing an old
Spanish ballad, the words of which she did not understand, but which had
lingered in her ear because the gypsy women had lulled her to sleep
with it when she was a little child. At the sight of that villanous form
which made its appearance so abruptly in the middle of her song, the
young girl paused with an involuntary gesture of alarm. The unhappy
bellringer fell upon his knees on the threshold, and clasped his large,
misshapen hands with a suppliant air. "Oh!" he said, sorrowfully,
"continue, I implore you, and do not drive me away." She did not wish to
pain him, and resumed her lay, trembling all over. By degrees, however,
her terror disappeared, and she yielded herself wholly to the slow and
melancholy air which she was singing. He remained on his knees with
hands clasped, as in prayer, attentive, hardly breathing, his gaze
riveted up