There he stood, grave, motionless, absorbed in one look and one thought. All Paris lay at his feet, with the thousand spires of its edifices and its circular horizon of gentle hills — with its river winding under its bridges, and its people moving to and fro through its streets, — with the clouds of its smoke, — with the mountainous chain of its roofs which presses Notre-Dame in its doubled folds; but out .

of all the city, the archdeacon gazed at one corner only of the pavement, the Place du Parvis; in all that throng at but one figure, — the gypsy.

It would have been difficult to say what was the nature of this look, and whence proceeded the flame that flashed from it. It was a fixed gaze, which was, nevertheless, full of trouble and tumult.