Then the priest felt a large hand dragging him feet first out of the cell; it was there that he was to die. Fortunately for him, the moon had risen a few moments before.
When they had passed through the door of the cell, its pale rays fell upon the priest’s countenance. Quasimodo looked him full in the face, a trembling seized him, and he released the priest and shrank back.
The gypsy, who had advanced to the threshold of her cell, beheld with surprise their roles abruptly changed. It was now the priest who menaced, Quasimodo who was the suppliant.
The priest, who was overwhelming the deaf man with gestures of wrath and reproach, made the latter a violent sign to retire.
The deaf man dropped his head, then he came and knelt at the gypsy’s door,—“Monseigneur,” he said, in a grave and resigned voice, “you shall do all that you please afterwards, but kill me first.”
So saying, he presented his knife to the priest. The priest, beside himself, was about to seize it. But the young girl was quicker than he; she wrenched the knife from Quasimodo’s hands and burst into a frantic laugh,—“Approach,” she said to the priest.
She held the blade high. The priest remained undecided.
She would certainly have struck him.
Then she added with a pitiless expression, well aware that she was about to pierce the priest’s heart with thousands of red-hot irons,—
“Ah! I know that Phœbus is not dead!”