CHAPTER VI

Unpopularity

The archdeacon and the bell-ringer, as we have already observed, were not held in much favor by the great and little folk about the cathedral. When Claude and Quasimodo went forth together, as they frequently did, and were seen in company, the man behind the master, traversing the cool, narrow, shady streets about Notre-Dame, more than one malicious speech, more than one satirical exclamation and insulting jest, stung them as they passed, unless Claude Frollo, though this was rare, walked with head erect, displaying his stern and almost majestic brow to the abashed scoffers.

Both were in their district like the “poets” of whom Régnier speaks:—

“All sorts of folks will after poets run,

As after owls song-birds shriek and fly.”

Now a sly brat would risk his bones for the ineffable delight of burying a pin in Quasimodo’s hump: and now a lovely young girl, full of fun, and bolder than need be, would brush against the priest’s black gown, singing in his ear the sarcastic song,—

“Hide, hide, for the devil is caught.”

Sometimes a squalid group of old women, squatting in a row in the shade upon the steps of some porch, scolded roundly as the archdeacon and the bell-ringer went by, and flung after them with curses this encouraging greeting: “Well, one of them has a soul as misshapen as the other one’s body!” Or else it would be a band of students and beetle-crushers^bo playing at hop-scotch, who jumped up in a body and hailed them in classic fashion with some Latin whoop and hoot: “Eia! eia! Claudius cum Claudo!”^bp

But usually all insults were unheeded by both priest and ringer. Quasimodo was too deaf and Claude too great a dreamer to hear them.