"Have you read much fiction?" asked Leigh after a pause.
"Well, yes," with a laugh. "Government statistics and Blue Books generally." He wanted to alter the current of conversation if possible.
"I don't mean books of fiction dealing with figures of that kind, but works of fiction dealing with figures of another kind. With human figures, for instance? For instance, have you read Hugo's 'Notre Dame'?"
"Yes," with a frown.
"And Dickens's 'Old Curiosity Shop'?"
"Yes," with a shudder.
"And which do you consider the most hideous and loathsome, Quasimodo, Quilp, or Leigh?"
"Mr. Leigh, you surely are not adopting this means of punishing me for my heedlessness in hurrying just now? If so you are adopting an extremely painful way of reminding me of my rudeness."
"Painful means! Painful means! As I live under Heaven, this man is thinking of himself now! Thinking of himself still! He is thinking of the pain it gives him to remember I am a hump-backed cripple, and not of the pain it is to me to be the hump-backed cripple!--to be the owner of the accursed carrion carcase he would spurn into a sewer if he met one open and it were dark!"
Leigh paused and flamed and frothed.