part in the affray, and from every storey bullets rained upon

the truands. The Parvis was thick with smoke streaked with the flashing fire of the musketry. Through it the façade of Notre Dame was dimly discernible, and the tumble-down Hôtel-Dieu, with a wan face or two peering frightened from its many windowed roofs.
At last the truands gave way. Exhaustion, want of proper arms, the alarming effect of this surprise, the volleys from the windows, the spirited charge of the King’s men — all combined to overpower them. Breaking through the line of their assailants, they fled in all directions, leaving the Parvis heaped with their dead.
When Quasimodo, who had not for a moment ceased fighting, beheld this rout, he fell upon his knees and lifted
1 Besieger of Turin and himself besieged.
NOTRE DAME DE PARIS
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his hands to heaven. Then, frenzied with joy, he ran to the stairs, and ascended with the swiftness of a bird to that cell, the approaches to which he had so intrepidly defended. He had but one thought now — to go and fall on his knees at the feet of her whom he had saved for the second time.
He entered the cell — it was empty.