From his very first steps among men, he had felt himself, later on he had seen himself, spewed out, blasted, rejected. Human words were, for him, always a raillery or a malediction. As he grew up, he had found nothing but hatred around him. He had caught the general malevolence.

He had picked up the weapon with which he had been wounded.

After all, he turned his face towards men only with reluctance; his cathedral was sufficient for him. It was peopled with marble figures, — kings, saints, bishops, — �who at least did not burst out laughing in his face, and who gazed upon him only with tranquillity and kindliness. The other statues, those of the monsters and demons, cherished no hatred for him, Quasimodo. He resembled them too much for that. They seemed rather, to be