Moreover, we are far from fancying that the new Pope of Fools realized clearly either his own feelings or those which he inspired. The mind lodged in that imperfect body was necessarily something dull and incomplete. Therefore what he felt at this instant was absolutely vague, indistinct, and confused to him. Joy only pierced the cloud; pride prevailed. The somber and unhappy face was radiant.
It was not therefore without surprise and fright that, at the moment when Quasimodo in this semi-intoxication passed triumphantly before the Maison-aux-Piliers, the spectators saw a man dart from the crowd and snatch from his hands, with a gesture of rage, his gilded crosier, the badge of his mock papacy.
This man, this rash fellow, was no other than the bald-headed character who, the instant before, mingling with the group about the gipsy girl, had chilled her blood with his words of menace and hatred. He was clad now in ecclesiastical garb. Just as he stepped forward from the crowd, Gringoire, who had not noticed him until then, recognized him. “Why!” said he with an exclamation of amazement, “it is my master in Hermetics, Dom Claude Frollo, the archdeacon! What the devil does he want with that ugly one-eyed man? He’ll be swallowed up alive!”
Indeed, a cry of terror rose. The terrible Quasimodo flung himself headlong from his barrow, and the women turned away their eyes that they might not see the archdeacon torn limb from limb.
He made but one bound towards the priest, gazed at him, and fell on his knees.
The priest tore from him his tiara, broke his crosier and broke his tinsel cope.
Quasimodo still knelt, with bowed head and clasped hands. Then followed between them a strange dialogue in signs and gestures, for neither spoke,—the priest, erect, angry, threatening, imperious; Quasimodo, prostrate, humble, suppliant. And yet it is very certain that Quasimodo could have crushed the priest with his thumb.
At last the archdeacon, rudely shaking Quasimodo’s powerful shoulder, signed to him to rise and follow.
Quasimodo rose.
Then the fraternity of fools, their first stupor over, strove to defend their pope, so abruptly dethroned. The thieves, the Galilees, and all the lawyers’ clerks yelped about the priest.
Quasimoto placed himself before the priest, put the muscles of his fists in play, and glared at his assailants, gnashing his teeth like an enraged bear.
The priest resumed his somber gravity, beckoned to Quasimodo, and withdrew silently.
Quasimodo walked before him, scattering the crowd as he passed.
When they had made their way through the people and the square, a swarm of curious idlers attempted to follow them. Quasimoto then took up the position of rearguard, and followed the archdeacon backwards, short, thickset, crabbed, monstrous, bristling, gathering himself together, licking his tusks, growling like a wild beast, and driving the crowd before him in waves, with a gesture or a look.
They vanished down a dark, narrow street, where none dared venture after them; so effectually did the mere image of Quasimodo grinding his teeth bar the way.
“Strange enough!” said Gringoire; “but where the devil am I to find supper?”
CHAPTER IV
The Inconveniences of Following a Pretty Woman in the Street at Night Gringoire determined to follow the gipsy girl at any risk. He had seen her go down the Rue de la Coutellerie with her goat; he therefore went down the Rue de la Coutellerie.
“Why not?” said he to himself.
Gringoire, being a practical philosopher of the streets of Paris, had observed that nothing is more favorable to reverie than the pursuit of a pretty woman when you don’t know where she is going. In this voluntary surrender of your own free will, this caprice yielding to another caprice, all unconscious of submission, there is a mixture of odd independence and blind obedience, a certain happy medium between slavery and liberty, which pleased Gringoire, a mind essentially mixed, undetermined, and complex, carrying everything to extremes, forever wavering betwixt all human propensities, and neutralizing them the one by the other. He frequently compared himself to Mahomet’s tomb, attracted in opposite directions by two loadstones, and perpetually trembling between top and bottom, between the ceiling and the pavement, between descent and ascent, between the zenith and the nadir.
If Gringoire were living now, what a golden mean he would observe between the classic and romantic schools!5
But he was not sufficiently primitive to live three hundred years, and ’t is a pity. His absence leaves a void but too deeply felt today.
However, nothing puts a man in a better mood for following people in the street （especially when they happen to be women）， a thing Gringoire was always ready to do, than not knowing where he is to sleep.