Just one thing still automatically caught her ear: above her head the dampness seeped through the mouldering stones of the vault, and at regular intervals a drop of water broke away. She listened in a daze to the sound of each drop falling into the pool beside her. This drop of water falling into the pool was the only thing that still stirred around her, the only clock to mark the time, the only sound to reach down to her out of all the sounds being produced on the earth’s surface.
Of course this recalls the "drop of water" that she had given Quasimodo. It also reminds me of the following passage from Mark Twain's "Tom Sawyer":
"The poor unfortunate had starved to death. In one place, near at hand, a stalagmite had been slowly growing up from the ground for ages, builded by the water-drip from a stalactite overhead. The captive had broken off the stalagmite, and upon the stump had placed a stone, wherein he had scooped a shallow hollow to catch the precious drop that fell once in every three minutes with the dreary regularity of a clock-tick—a dessertspoonful once in four and twenty hours. That drop was falling when the Pyramids were new; when Troy fell; when the foundations of Rome were laid; when Christ was crucified; when the Conqueror created the British empire; when Columbus sailed; when the massacre at Lexington was 'news.' It is falling now; it will still be falling when all these things shall have sunk down the afternoon of history, and the twilight of tradition, and been swallowed up in the thick night of oblivion. Has everything a purpose and a mission? Did this drop fall patiently during five thousand years to be ready for this flitting human insect’s need? and has it another important object to accomplish ten thousand years to come?"
