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By Root 790 0

sheaves, like water pouring from the countless holes of the rose in a watering-pot. Above the flame, the huge towers, each of which showed two sides, clear and trenchant, one all black, the other all red, seemed even larger than they were, from the immensity of the shadow which they cast, reaching to the very sky. Their innumerable carvings of demons and dragons assumed a mournful aspect. The restless light of the flames made them seem to move. There were serpents, which seemed to be laughing, gargoyles yelping, salamanders blowing the fire, dragons sneezing amid the smoke. And among these monsters, thus wakened from their stony slumbers by the flame, by the noise, there was one that walked about, and moved from time to time across the fiery front of the burning pile like a bat before a candle.

Doubtless this strange beacon would rouse from afar the wood-cutter on the hills of Bicêtre, in alarm at seeing the gigantic shadow of the towers of Notre-Dame cast flickering upon his moors.

The silence of terror fell upon the Vagrants, and while it lasted nothing was heard save the cries of consternation uttered by the clergy shut up in the cloisters, and more restive than horses in a burning stable, the stealthy sound of windows hastily opened and more hastily closed, the bustle and stir in the Hôtel-Dieu, the wind roaring through the flames, the last gasp of the dying, and the constant pattering of the leaden rain upon the pavement.

Meantime, the leaders of the Vagrants had withdrawn to the porch of the Gondalaurier house, and were holding council. The Duke of Egypt, seated on a post, gazed with religious awe at the magical pile blazing in the air at the height of two hundred feet. Clopin Trouillefou gnawed his brawny fists with rage.

“Impossible to enter!” he muttered between his teeth.

“An old witch of a church!” growled the aged gipsy Mathias Hungadi Spicali.

“By the Pope’s whiskers!” added a grey-haired old scamp who had served his time in the army, “here are church-spouts that beat the portcullis of Lectoure at spitting molten lead.”

“Do see that demon walking to and fro before the fire!” exclaimed the Duke of Egypt.

“By the Rood!” said Clopin, “it’s that damned bell-ringer; it’s Quasimodo!”

The gipsy shook his head. “I tell you that it is the spirit Sabnac, the great marquis, the demon of fortifications. He takes the form of an armed soldier, with a lion’s head. He turns men to stones, with which he builds towers. He commands fifty legions. It is surely he; I recognize him. Sometimes he is clad in a fine gown of figured gold made in the Turkish fashion.”

“Where is Bellevigne de l‘Etoile?” asked Clopin.

“He is dead,” replied a Vagrant woman.

Andry le Rouge laughed a foolish laugh. “Notre-Dame makes plenty of work for the hospital,” said he.

“Is there no way to force that door?” cried the King of Tunis, stamping his foot.

The Duke of Egypt pointed sadly to the two streams of boiling lead which still streaked the dark façade like two long phosphorescent spindles.

“Churches have been known to defend themselves before,” he observed with a sigh. “St. Sophia, at Constantinople, some forty years ago, thrice threw down the crescent of Mahomet merely by shaking her domes, which are her heads. Guillaume de Paris, who built this church, was a magician.”

“Must we then go home discomfited like a pack of wretched lackeys?” said Clopin, “and leave our sister here, to be hanged by those cowled wolves tomorrow!”

“And the sacristy, where there are cartloads of gold?” added a Vagabond whose name we regret that we do not know.

“By Mahomet’s beard!” cried Trouillefou.

“Let us make one more trial,” added the Vagabond.

Mathias Hungadi shook his head.

“We shall not enter by the door. We must find the weak spot in the old witch’s armor,—a hole, a back gate, any joint.”

“Who’ll join us?” said Clopin. “I shall have another try. By the way, where is that little student Jehan, who put on such a coat of mail?”

“He is probably dead,” answered some one; “we don’t hear his laugh.”

The King of Tunis frowned: “So much the worse. There