snugness, with passionate contortion and horror, that is so
characteristic of Gothic art. Esmeralda is somewhat an
exception; she and the goat traverse the story like two
children who have wandered in a dream. The finest moment of
the book is when these two share with the two other leading
characters, Dom Claude and Quasimodo, the chill shelter of
the old cathedral. It is here that we touch most intimately
the generative artistic idea of the romance: are they not all
four taken out of some quaint moulding, illustrative of the
Beatitudes, or the Ten Commandments, or the seven deadly
sins? What is Quasimodo but an animated gargoyle? What is
the whole book but the reanimation of Gothic art?

It is curious that in this, the earliest of the five great
romances, there should be so little of that extravagance that
latterly we have come almost to identify with the author's
manner. Yet even here we are distressed by words, thoughts,
and incidents that defy belief and alienate the sympathies.
The scene of the IN PACE, for example, in spite of its
strength, verges dangerously on the province of the penny
novelist. I do not believe that Quasimodo rode upon the
bell; I should as soon imagine that he swung by the clapper.
And again the following two sentences, out of an otherwise
admirable chapter, surely surpass what it has ever entered
into the heart of any other man to imagine (vol. ii. p. 180):
"Il souffrait tant que par instants il s'arrachait des
poignees de cheveux, POUR VOIR S'ILS NE BLANCHISSAIENT PAS."
And, p. 181: "Ses pensees etaient si insupportables qu'il
prenait sa tete a deux mains et tachait de l'arracher de ses
epaules POUR LA BRISER SUR LE PAVE."