over which he ran his blood-shot eye
He found one minute’s respite. Plunging into the side aisle, he caught sight, behind a group of pillars, of a dim red light. He ran to it as to a star of safety. It was the modest lamp which illumined day and night the public breviary of Notre-Dame under its iron trellis. He cast his eye eagerly over the sacred book, in the hope of finding there some word of consolation or encouragement. The volume lay open at this passage of Job, over which he ran his blood-shot eye: “Then a spirit passed before my face, and I felt a little breath, and the hair of my flesh stood up.”
On reading these dismal words, he felt like a blind man who finds himself wounded by the stick he had picked up for his guidance. His knees bent under him, and he sank upon the pavement thinking of her who had died that day. So many hideous fumes passed through and out of his brain that he felt as if his head had become one of the chimneys of hell.
He must have remained long in that position— past thought, crushed and passive in the clutch of the Fiend. At last some remnant of strength returned to him, and he be-thought him of taking refuge in the tower, beside his faithful Quasimodo. He rose to his feet, and fear being still upon him, he took the lamp of the breviary to light him. It was sacrilege— but he was beyond regarding such trifles.
Slowly he mounted the stairway of the tower, filled with a secret dread which was likely to be shared by the few persons traversing the Parvis at that hour and saw the mysterious light ascending so late from loophole to loophole up to the top of the steeple.
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