For Quasimodo, he says,1 the cathedral had been successively “egg, nest, house, country and universe.” “One might almost say that he had espoused its form the way a snail does the form of its shell. It was his home, his hole, his envelope . . . He adhered to it, as it were, like a turtle to its carapace. This rugged cathedral was his armor.” All of these images were needed to tell how an unfortunate creature assumed the contorted forms of his numerous hiding-places in the corners of this complex structure.
