Kisses for Blows — The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

On the Place de Grève a wide ring of people watches a young girl dance on a Persian rug to a Basque tambourine. She is slight and dark, and a copper piece falls from her hair: she is a gypsy. She spins two swords at her brow. A bald man of about thirty-five, grey at the temples, watches without looking away. Her white goat, Djali, taps the month, the day, and the hour, seven strokes as the Pillar House clock strikes seven, then mimics a captain and Jacques Charmolue. The bald man calls it sorcery, then sacrilege. From the dark, the recluse of the Tour-Roland shouts her down.

Gringoire has no money, and children empty the public table. The gypsy sings in a tongue he does not know, until that voice stops her. The Pope of the Fools arrives: Egypt, the Kingdom of Argot, Galilee, and the law clerks, with Quasimodo in cope and mitre on a litter, and with Gringoire's band around him. Gringoire recognises the bald man as Dom Claude Frollo. The archdeacon strips the mock regalia. Quasimodo kneels, then clears a path, and they vanish into a dark street. Gringoire asks where he can find supper.