# Quote — Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

> Meanwhile, the dancer remained motionless upon the threshold. Her appearance had produced a singular effect upon these young girls. It is certain that a vague and indistinct desire to please the handsome officer animated them all, that his splendid uniform was the target of all their coquetries, and that from the moment he presented himself, there existed among them a secret, suppressed rivalry, which they hardly acknowledged even to themselves, but which broke forth, none the less, every instant, in their gestures and remarks. Nevertheless, as they were all very nearly equal in beauty, they contended with equal arms, and each could hope for the victory.

- Author: [Victor Hugo](https://www.leafyquotes.com/victor-hugo.md)
- Book: [The Hunchback of Notre-Dame](https://www.leafyquotes.com/victor-hugo/the-hunchback-of-notre-dame.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Hunchback_of_Notre-Dame#Quotes) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/victor-hugo/the-hunchback-of-notre-dame/meanwhile-the-dancer

## More from this book

> When they tried to detach this skeleton from the one it embraced, it crumbled to dust.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/victor-hugo/the-hunchback-of-notre-dame/when-they-tried.md)

> Oh, why am I not of stone, like you?

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/victor-hugo/the-hunchback-of-notre-dame/oh-why-am-i-not.md)

> It was, in truth, a spectacle worthy of a more intelligent spectator than Phœbus, to see how these beautiful maidens, with their envenomed and angry tongues, wound, serpent-like, and glided and writhed around the street dancer. They were cruel and graceful; they searched and rummaged maliciously in her poor and silly toilet of spangles and tinsel. There was no end to their laughter, irony, and humiliation. Sarcasms rained down upon the gypsy, and haughty condescension and malevolent looks. One would have thought they were young Roman dames thrusting golden pins into the breast of a beautiful slave. One would have pronounced them elegant greyhounds, circling, with inflated nostrils, round a poor woodland fawn, whom the glance of their master forbade them to devour.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/victor-hugo/the-hunchback-of-notre-dame/it-was-in-truth.md)