Notre-Dame de Paris

by Victor Hugo

Quasimodo remained kneeling, with head bowed and hands clasped. There then took place between them a strange dialogue of signs and gestures, for neither spoke. The priest, upright, angry, menacing, imperious: Quasimodo prostrate, humble, suppliant. Yet it is certain that Quasimodo could have squashed the priest just with his thumb.

Bell-ringer of Notre-Dame at 14, a new disability had come to make him complete: the bells had ruptured his eardrums; he had become deaf. The only door that nature had left open for him on to the outer world had suddenly been closed for ever.

When the poor bell-ringer had gone deaf there was established between him and Claude Frollo a mysterious sign language understood by them alone. In that way the archdeacon was the only human being with whom Quasimodo had maintained communication. He was in touch with only two things in the world, Notre-Dame and Claude Frollo.