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

> “We must have the mystery instantly,” resumed the student; “or else, my advice is that we should hang the bailiff of the courts, by way of a morality and a comedy.” “Well said,” cried the people, “and let us begin the hanging with his sergeants.” A grand acclamation followed. The four poor fellows began to turn pale, and to exchange glances. The crowd hurled itself towards them, and they already beheld the frail wooden railing, which separated them from it, giving way and bending before the pressure of the throng.

- 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/we-must-have

## 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)