the
pillory, and a mad woman called out, "Come down! Come down! You will go
up again!"

Presently Quasimodo was released, and the mob thereupon dispersed.

_III.--The Archdeacon's Passion_

In spite of the austerity of Claude Frollo's life, pious people
suspected him of magic. His silence and secretiveness encouraged this
feeling. He was known to be at work in the long hours of the night in
his cell in Notre Dame, and he wandered about the streets like a
spectre.

Whenever the gypsy girl placed her carpet within sight of Claude
Frollo's cell and began to dance the priest turned from his books and,
resting his head in his hands, gazed at her. Then he would go down into
the public thoroughfares, lured on by some burning passion within.

Quasimodo, too, would desist from his bell-ringing to look at the
dancing girl.

The hotter the fire of passion burned within the priest the farther
Esmeralda moved from him. He discovered that she was in love with
Captain Phoebus, her rescuer, and this knowledge added fuel to the
flames.

One purpose now was clear to him. He would give up all for the dancing
girl, and she should be his. But if Esmeralda refused to come to him,
then the archdeacon resolved that she should die before she married
anyone else. At any time he could have her arrested on the charge of
sorcery, and the goat's tricks would easily procure a conviction.

Captain Phoebus, having invited Esmeralda to meet him at a wineshop, the
priest followed the couple, and when the captain, to whom the girl was
the merest diversion, began to make love, Claude Frollo, unable to
contain himself, rushed in unobserved and stabbed him.

Captain Phoebus was taken up for dead, and the priest vanished as
silently as he had come. The soldiers of the watch found Esmeralda, and
said, "This is the sorceress who has stabbed our captain." So Esmeralda
was brought to trial on the charge of witchcraft, and every day the
priest from Notre Dame came into court.

It was a tedious process, for not only was the girl on trial, but the
goat also, in accordance with the custom of the times, was under arrest.

All that Esmeralda wanted to know was whether Phoebus was still alive,
and she was told by the judges he was dying.

The indictment against her was "that with her accomplice, the bewitched
goat, she did murder and stab, in league with the powers of darkness, by
the aid of charms and spells, a captain of the king's troops, one
Phoe