The pillory was a simple cube of masonry, some ten feet high, and hollow within.  A horizontal wheel of oak was at the top, and to this the victim was bound in a kneeling posture.  A very steep flight of stone steps led to the wheel.

All the people laughed merrily when Quasimodo was seen in the pillory; and when he had been beaten by the public executioner, they added to the wretched sufferer’s misery by insults, and, occasionally, stones.  There was hardly a spectator in the crowd that had not some grudge, real or imagined, against the hunchback bell-ringer of Notre Dame.

Quasimodo had endured the torturer’s whip with patience, but he rebelled against the stones, and struggled in his fetters till the old pillory-wheel creaked on its timbers.  Then, as he could accomplish nothing by his struggles, his face became quiet again.

For a moment the cloud was lightened when the poor victim saw a priest seated on a mule approach in the roadway.  A strange smile came on the face of Quasimodo as he glanced at the priest; yet when the mule was near enough to the pillory for his rider to recognise the prisoner, the priest cast down his eyes, turned back hastily, as if in a hurry to avoid humiliating appeals, and not at all anxious to be greeted by a poor wretch in the pillory.

The priest was the archdeacon, Claude Frollo.  The smile on Quasimodo’s face became bitter and profoundly sad.

Time passed.  He had been there at least an hour and a half, wounded, incessantly mocked, and almost stoned to death.

Suddenly he again struggled in his chains with renewed despair, and breaking the silence which he had kept so stubbornly, he cried in a hoarse and furious voice, “Water!”

The exclamation of distress, far from exciting compassion, only increased the amusement of the Paris mob.  Not a voice was raised, except to mock at his thirst.

Quasimodo cast a despairing look upon the crowd, and repeated in a heartrending voice, “Water!”

Everyone laughed.  A woman aimed a stone at his head, saying, “That will teach you to wake us at night with your cursed chimes!”

“Here’s a cup to drink out of!” said a man, throwing a broken jug at his breast.

“Water!” repeated Quasimodo for the third time.

At this moment he saw the gypsy girl and her goat come through the crowd.  His eye gleamed.  He did not doubt that she, too, came to be avenged, and to take her turn at him with the rest.  He watched her nimbly climb the ladder.  Rage and spite choked him.  He longed to destroy the pillory; and had the lightning of his eye had power to blast, the gypsy girl would have been reduced to ashes long before she reached the platform.  Without a word she approached the sufferer, loosened a gourd from her girdle, and raised it gently to the parched lips of the miserable man.  Then from his eye a great tear trickled, and rolled slowly down the misshapen face, so long convulsed with despair.