Immanis Pecoris Custos, Immanior Ipse — The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

In 1482 Quasimodo is bellringer, and Notre-Dame is his whole world, from egg and nest to house, country, and universe. Unknown birth and deformity shut him in. He climbs the towers as if he had tamed them, and he fits the church as a snail fits its shell. Frollo taught him speech, but at fourteen the bells deafen him, and he falls silent so others will not laugh. Such a body, the narrator says, bends the mind. He is malicious because he is savage, and savage because he is ugly. Men gave him hatred, and he learned it. The statues do not laugh. He talks to the stone for hours, and flees if someone living comes.

He loves the bells most, and big Marie is his favourite. At a full peal he rushes up, caresses her, then rides the swinging bronze above the abyss until man and bell are one storm. People come to think him the soul of the church. Egypt would have called him the temple's god, the narrator says, and the Middle Ages its demon. Without him, Notre-Dame is a skull that still has holes for the eyes, and no longer any sight.