The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

by Victor Hugo

And to think that these people had been upon the point of instituting a revolt against the bailiff through impatience to hear his work! now that they had it they did not care for it. This same representation which had been begun amid so unanimous an acclamation! Eternal flood and ebb of popular favor!

while the giddy young girl of sixteen danced and whirled, for the pleasure of all, his revery seemed to become more and more sombre.

“Do you know what friendship is?” he asked. “Yes,” replied the gypsy; “it is to be brother and sister; two souls which touch without mingling, two fingers on one hand.” “And love?” pursued Gringoire. “Oh! love!” said she, and her voice trembled, and her eye beamed. “That is to be two and to be but one. A man and a woman mingled into one angel. It is heaven.”

The Church of Notre-Dame de Paris is still no doubt, a majestic and sublime edifice. But, beautiful as it has been preserved in growing old, it is difficult not to sigh, not to wax indignant, before the numberless degradations and mutilations which time and men have both caused the venerable monument to suffer, without respect for Charlemagne, who laid its first stone, or for Philip Augustus, who laid the last.