midnight
Sometimes one caught sight , upon a bell tower , of an enormous head and a bundle of disordered limbs swinging furiously at the end of a rope ; it was Quasimodo ringing vespers or the Angelus . Often at night a hideous form was seen wandering along the frail balustrade of carved lacework , which crowns the towers and borders the circumference of the apse ; again it was the hunchback of Notre-Dame . Then , said the women of the neighborhood , the whole church took on something fantastic , supernatural , horrible ; eyes and mouths were opened , here and there ; one heard the dogs , the monsters , and the gargoyles of stone , which keep watch night and day , with outstretched neck and open jaws , around the monstrous cathedral , barking . And , if it was a Christmas Eve , while the great bell , which seemed to emit the death rattle , summoned the faithful to the midnight mass , such an air was spread over the sombre façade that one would have declared that the grand portal was devouring the throng , and that the rose window was watching it . And all this came from Quasimodo . Egypt would have taken him for the god of this temple ; the Middle Ages believed him to be its demon : he was in fact its soul . To such an extent was this disease that for those who know that Quasimodo has existed , Notre-Dame is to-day deserted , inanimate , dead .