Motion Picture Story Magazine (Aug 1911-Jan 1912)

Notre Dame de Paris (Pathe Fieres) Adapted from the Novel of Victor Htigo By JOHN ELLERIDGE CHANDOS Her voice was like her dancing, like her beauty. It possessed the indefinable harmony that thrilled the nerves with a power of suggestion. Dark-haired, with a skin of the golden tone of Andalusia, she danced with slender feet, swaying arms and supple body, whirling rapidly about on an old Persian rug, and each time her radiant face came within close view, her black eyes seemed to dart flashes of lightning. To the humming of a Basque tambourine, her rounded arms were kept constantly in motion, and the lines of her form revealed itself in them as in her pure shoulders above a corsage of gold embroidery; and in the gracefully formed limbs displayed by her flying petticoat, in every swing and sway of her trim waist, was voiced Nature's call. I am made to be loved," was the song of her shapely and agile body, whatever the trilling verses from her lips : "Mon pere est oiseau, "Ma mere est oiselle." "Who is she?" asked Claude Frollo, imposing archdeacon, who had established himself in one of the two towers of Notre Dame to work sorcery when not occupied with religious duties. "Is she a nymph, or a goddess in disguise?" Quasimodo, the humpbacked bellringer, who accompanied Frollo, did not at once reply. His eyes and mouth were as wide open as those of the rest of the group in front of Notre Dame, where the girl was dancing. "She is a Gypsy," he said, with a grimace — his whole person was a grimace — "but the most beautiful I have ever seen." Quasimodo was appreciative, tho not moulded to please others. His bristling head was set low between huge shoulders 97 humped behind with a counterbalance in front, while his legs were so bent in at the knees that his feet were never on intimate terms with each other, but, in spite of his many deformities, including enormous, feet and hands, there was a fearsome air of vigor and courage about the bellringer, and those who saw the couple together often remarked that tall and morose Frollo had all the deformity of soul. Be that as it may, there was nothing creditable in the regard of either, the gloomy archdeacon or the savage-looking bell-ringer, while their eyes were riveted on the lovely young dancer. Spectators of all classes, numbering many hundreds, melted away when the dance was over, and the Gypsy went among them, passing her tambourine, but Frollo and Quasimodo remained, the former in absorbed revery, until the dancer approached, accompanied by a strange companion, her pet goat. She was not more than sixteen years of age, this ripe young beauty, with innocence in the windows of her soul and temptation on her pouting lips. Frollo stared hard at her and Quasimodo leered as she passed, the archdeacon, in spite of his reserve and austerity, the more ardent of the two. He had long shown the insatiable activity of high intelligence in all legitimate forms of human learning, and he had even penetrated the forbidden art of alchemy at his cloistered room in the tower of Notre Dame, only to grow weary of the tree of knowledge at a time of life when his baser senses, long slumbering, were at fever heat. With head bent on his breast and scowling eyes burning with passion, he watched the graceful girl until she passed thru the crowd and disappeared up a narrow street. "Let us follow," Quasimodo sug