BOOK SIXTH.
CHAPTER 1. AN IMPARTIAL GLANCE AT THE ANCIENT MAGISTRACY.
(continued)
It was he indeed.
It was Quasimodo, bound, encircled, roped, pinioned, and
under good guard. The squad of policemen who surrounded
him was assisted by the chevalier of the watch in person,
wearing the arms of France embroidered on his breast,
and the arms of the city on his back. There was nothing,
however, about Quasimodo, except his deformity, which could
justify the display of halberds and arquebuses; he was
gloomy, silent, and tranquil. Only now and then did his
single eye cast a sly and wrathful glance upon the bonds
with which he was loaded.
He cast the same glance about him, but it was so dull and
sleepy that the women only pointed him out to each other
in derision.
Meanwhile Master Florian, the auditor, turned over
attentively the document in the complaint entered against
Quasimodo, which the clerk handed him, and, having thus
glanced at it, appeared to reflect for a moment. Thanks to
this precaution, which he always was careful to take at the
moment when on the point of beginning an examination, he knew
beforehand the names, titles, and misdeeds of the accused,
made cut and dried responses to questions foreseen, and
succeeded in extricating himself from all the windings of
the interrogation without allowing his deafness to be too
apparent. The written charges were to him what the dog is to
the blind man. If his deafness did happen to betray him here
and there, by some incoherent apostrophe or some unintelligible
question, it passed for profundity with some, and for
imbecility with others. In neither case did the honor of the
magistracy sustain any injury; for it is far better that a judge
should be reputed imbecile or profound than deaf. Hence he
took great care to conceal his deafness from the eyes of all,
and he generally succeeded so well that he had reached the
point of deluding himself, which is, by the way, easier than
is supposed. All hunchbacks walk with their heads held
high, all stutterers harangue, all deaf people speak low. As
for him, he believed, at the most, that his ear was a little
refractory. It was the sole concession which he made on this
point to public opinion, in his moments of frankness and
examination of his conscience.
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