bus de Chateaupers." And it was vain that the girl denied vehemently
her guilt.

"How do you explain the charge brought against you?" said the president.

"I have told you already I do not know," said Esmeralda, in a broken
voice. "It was a priest--a priest who is always pursuing me"

"That's it," said the president; "it is a goblin monk."

The goat having performed his simple tricks in the presence of the
court, and Esmeralda still refusing to admit her guilt, the president
ordered her to be put to the question.

She was placed on the rack, and at the first turn of the screw promised
to confess everything. Then the lawyers put a number of questions to
her, and Esmeralda answered "Yes" in every case. It was plain that her
spirit was utterly broken.

Then the court having read the confession, sentence was pronounced. She
was to be taken to the Greve, where the pillory stood, and, in atonement
for the crimes confessed, there hanged and strangled on the city gibbet,
"and likewise this your goat."

"It must be a dream," the girl murmured, when she heard the sentence.

But, if Esmeralda had yielded at the first turn of the rack, nothing
would make her yield to Claude Frollo when he came to see her in prison.
In vain he promised her life and liberty if she would only agree to love
him. In vain he reproached her with having brought disturbance and
disquiet into his soul. All that Esmeralda could say was, "Have pity on
me!--have pity on me!" But she would not give up Phoebus. And when the
priest declared Phoebus was dead, she turned upon him and called him
"monster and assassin!" Claude Frollo, unable to move her, decided to
let her die, and the day of execution arrived. As for Captain Phoebus,
he recovered; but, as he was about to be engaged to a young lady of
wealth, he thought it better to say nothing about the gypsy girl.

But Esmeralda was not hanged that day. Just as the hangman's assistants
were about to do their work, Quasimodo, who had been watching everything
from his gallery in Notre Dame, slid down by a rope to the ground,
rushed at the two executioners, flung them to the earth with his huge
fists, seized the gypsy girl, as a child might a doll, and with one
bound was in the church, holding her above his head, and shouting in a
tremendous voice, "Sanctuary!"

"Sanctuary! Sanctuary!" The mob took up the cry, and ten thousand hands
clapped approval.

The hangman stood stupefied. Within the precincts of Not