Notre Dame des Paris, Quasimodo, Jacqueline, & The Bells Bells Bells Bells Bells Bells Bells

Jacqueline and I have been reading "The Hunchback of Notre Dame"--which is actually Notre Dame des Paris, of course of course--for awhile now. It's been slow going, with very little mention of Quasimodo or Esmerelda for the first 90 pages. Actually with very little mention of anybody--it's mostly about architecture so far. But we just started a chapter in which Quasimodo is featured, and tonight I was reading this bit--

"After all, he turned his face towards men only with reluctance; his cathedral was peopled with marble figures — kings, saints, bishops — who at least did not burst out laughing in his face, and who gazed upon him only with tranquillity and kindliness. The other statues, those of the monsters and demons, cherished no hatred for him, Quasimodo. He resembled them too much for that. They seemed, rather, to be scoffing at other men. The saints were his friends, and blessed him; the monsters were his friends and guarded him. So he held long communion with them. He sometimes passed whole hours crouching before one of these statues, in solitary conversation with it. If any one came, he fled like a lover surprised in his serenade."

And that made me think about Jacqueline and how she talks to churches and saints . . . and yes, they do answer her. There is usually an ongoing dialogue when you're in her presence, and while other characters--Mickey Mouse, our cats Roister and Jet, Babette from Raggedy Ann--do make appearances, it's mostly churches and saints. And thinking about the parallels between Quasimodo and Jacqueline was more than a bit disturbing, of course--for obvious reasons. So I tamped those thoughts down and kept on reading. And then I came to this bit:

"And the cathedral was not only society for him, but the universe, and all nature besides. He dreamed of no other hedgerows than the painted windows, always in flower; no other shade than that of the foliage of stone which spread out, loaded with birds, in the tufts of the Saxon capitals; of no other mountains than the colossal towers of the church; of no other ocean than Paris, roaring at their bases. What he loved above all else in the maternal edifice, that which aroused his soul, and made it open its poor wings, which it kept so miserably folded in its cavern, that which sometimes rendered him even happy, was the bells. He loved them, fondled them, talked to them, understood them. From the chime in the spire, over the intersection of the aisles and nave, to the great bell of the front, he cherished a tenderness for them all. The central spire and the two towers were to him as three great cages, whose birds, reared by himself, sang for him alone. Yet it was these very bells which had made him deaf; but mothers often love best that child which has caused them the most suffering." 

And of course that was just really ripping loose the seams of my heart. And just to make matters worse, as I read, Jacqueline was jingling a little bell that I'd bought her at a yard sale yesterday. 1

And if that's not enough, as I continued to read, I came upon this passage:

I mean, SERIOUSly, this is some Matrix level kind of shit. If it didn't happen all the time I would be freaking out right now.

Just sayin', sir.








1  Yeah, I know how unlikely that sounds, so I had her grab my Kindle and I took a picture. And then I prettied it up with the Deep Art app. And then I tried a couple different styles on Deep Art and couldn't decide which of two I liked best, so here are both of them: