Victor Hugo: The Hunchback of Notre Dame

BOOK NINTH. CHAPTER 1. DELIRIUM. (continued)

But the vision was in himself.

When he re-entered the streets, the passers-by elbowing each other by the light of the shop-fronts, produced upon him the effect of a constant going and coming of spectres about him. There were strange noises in his ears; extraordinary fancies disturbed his brain. He saw neither houses, nor pavements, nor chariots, nor men and women, but a chaos of indeterminate objects whose edges melted into each other. At the corner of the Rue de la Barillerie, there was a grocer's shop whose porch was garnished all about, according to immemorial custom, with hoops of tin from which hung a circle of wooden candles, which came in contact with each other in the wind, and rattled like castanets. He thought he heard a cluster of skeletons at Montfauçon clashing together in the gloom.

"Oh!" he muttered, "the night breeze dashes them against each other, and mingles the noise of their chains with the rattle of their bones! Perhaps she is there among them!"

In his state of frenzy, he knew not whither he was going. After a few strides he found himself on the Pont Saint- Michel. There was a light in the window of a ground-floor room; he approached. Through a cracked window he beheld a mean chamber which recalled some confused memory to his mind. In that room, badly lighted by a meagre lamp, there was a fresh, light-haired young man, with a merry face, who amid loud bursts of laughter was embracing a very audaciously attired young girl; and near the lamp sat an old crone spinning and singing in a quavering voice. As the young man did not laugh constantly, fragments of the old woman's ditty reached the priest; it was something unintelligible yet frightful,--

          "Grève, aboie, Grève, grouille!
          File, file, ma quenouille,
          File sa corde au bourreau,
          Qui siffle dans le pre(au,
          Grève, aboie, Grève, grouille!

         "La belle corde de chanvre!
         Semez d'Issy jusqu'á Vanvre
         Du chanvre et non pas du ble(.
         Le voleur n'a pas vole(
         La belle corde de chanvre.

         "Grève, grouille, Grève, aboie!
         Pour voir la fille de joie,
         Prendre au gibet chassieux,
         Les fenêtres sont des yeux.
         Grève, grouille, Grève, aboie!"*