All that Esmeralda wanted to know was whether Phoebus was still alive, and she was told by the judges he was dying.

The indictment against her was “that with her accomplice, the bewitched goat, she did murder and stab, in league with the powers of darkness, by the aid of charms and spells, a captain of the king’s troops, one Phoebus de Chateaupers.”  And it was vain that the girl denied vehemently her guilt.

“How do you explain the charge brought against you?” said the president.

“I have told you already I do not know,” said Esmeralda, in a broken voice.  “It was a priest—­a priest who is always pursuing me”

“That’s it,” said the president; “it is a goblin monk.”

The goat having performed his simple tricks in the presence of the court, and Esmeralda still refusing to admit her guilt, the president ordered her to be put to the question.

She was placed on the rack, and at the first turn of the screw promised to confess everything.  Then the lawyers put a number of questions to her, and Esmeralda answered “Yes” in every case.  It was plain that her spirit was utterly broken.

Then the court having read the confession, sentence was pronounced.  She was to be taken to the Greve, where the pillory stood, and, in atonement for the crimes confessed, there hanged and strangled on the city gibbet, “and likewise this your goat.”

“It must be a dream,” the girl murmured, when she heard the sentence.

But, if Esmeralda had yielded at the first turn of the rack, nothing would make her yield to Claude Frollo when he came to see her in prison.  In vain he promised her life and liberty if she would only agree to love him.  In vain he reproached her with having brought disturbance and disquiet into his soul.  All that Esmeralda could say was, “Have pity on me!—­have pity on me!” But she would not give up Phoebus.  And when the priest declared Phoebus was dead, she turned upon him and called him “monster and assassin!” Claude Frollo, unable to move her, decided to let her die, and the day of execution arrived.  As for Captain Phoebus, he recovered; but, as he was about to be engaged to a young lady of wealth, he thought it better to say nothing about the gypsy girl.

But Esmeralda was not hanged that day.  Just as the hangman’s assistants were about to do their work, Quasimodo, who had been watching everything from his gallery in Notre Dame, slid down by a rope to the ground, rushed at the two executioners, flung them to the earth with his huge fists, seized the gypsy girl, as a child might a doll, and with one bound was in the church, holding her above his head, and shouting in a tremendous voice, “Sanctuary!”

“Sanctuary!  Sanctuary!” The mob took up the cry, and ten thousand hands clapped approval.

The hangman stood stupefied.  Within the precincts of Notre Dame the prisoner was secure; the cathedral was a sure refuge, all human justice ended at its threshold.