however, is certain, there was no mind in that crowd, not even his own, though in turn the victor and the vanquished, that thought of drawing this parallel. Gringoire and his philosophy were lacking at this spectacle.
Presently Michel Noiret, appointed trumpeter to our lord the King, after imposing silence on the people, made proclamation of the sentence, pursuant to the ordinance and command of the Lord Provost. He then fell back behind the cart with his men.
Quasimodo, quite impassive, never stirred a muscle. All resistance was impossible to him by reason of what, in the parlance of the old criminal law, was described as “the strength and firmness of the bonds”—in other words, the cords and chains probably cut into his flesh. This tradition of the dungeon and the galleys has been handed down to us and carefully preserved among us civilized, tender-hearted, humane people in the shape of the manacles—not forgetting the bagnio and the guillotine, of course.
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