After twenty years looking down on the city, Quasimodo understands its habits and its histories like it is some great breathing thing, larger than the individuals who compose it, all unware of how beautiful they are. He is something smaller than a human being and he’s been taught that he’ll never be welcomed into the crowd, but if he could walk among them he’d be grateful for the squabbling and the stench and every imperfection that makes the city real. For one day, just one, he’ll have let himself believe he could be a mortal man.