“‘You are an assassin,’ was what she said.
“The priest threw his arms furiously around her, and laughed a devil’s laugh. ‘Assassin—be it so!’ said he, ‘I will be thine. Thou wouldst not have me as a slave,—thou shalt have me as master. I have a place to which I’ll drag thee. Thou shalt go with me; I will make thee go. Thou art to die, fair one, or be mine! be the priest’s, the apostate’s, the assassin’s! To-night, dost hear? The grave or my bed!’
“The girl fought in his arms while he covered her with kisses.
“‘Do not bite me, monster!’ she shrieked. ‘Oh, the hateful, infectious monk! leave me! I will tear out that vile gray hair of yours.’
“He reddened, turned white, then released her, and regarded her moodily. She thought herself victorious, and went on: ‘I tell you I am for Phœbus; that it is Phœbus I love, because he is handsome. You, priest, are old and ugly. Begone.”
The unalterable and final decision was made. It sent Esmeralda to execution in the Place de Grève, and as the archdeacon watched the tragedy,—the judicial murder of an innocent creature for his own crime,—the revengeful hunchback pushed him violently from the tower of Notre Dame to meet a horrible death upon the pavement below.
Charles Reade deals with the kiss in the sturdy and energetic manner which usually characterizes his writings. In “Put Yourself in his Place,” the bursting of Ouseley Reservoir gives him one of his best opportunities for the display of vivid descriptive power and the production of startling effects and situations. One of the most exciting incidents attending the avalanche of water occasioned by the rupture of the embankment was the rescue of Grace Carden from the flood by her lover, Henry Little:
“He set his knee against the horizontal projection of the window, and that freed his left hand; he suddenly seized her arm with it, and, clutching it violently, ground his teeth together, and, throwing himself backward with a jerk, tore her out of the water by an effort almost superhuman. Such was the force exerted by the torrent on one side, and the desperate lover on the other, that not her shoes only, but her stockings, though gartered, were torn off her in that fierce struggle.
“He had her in his arms, and cried aloud, and sobbed over her, and kissed her wet cheeks, her lank hair, and her wet clothes, in a wild rapture. He went on kissing her and sobbing over her so wildly and so long, that Coventry, who had at first exulted with him at her rescue, began to rage with jealousy.