It was the young gypsy who was singing.
Her voice was like her dancing, like her beauty.

It was indefinable and charming; something pure and sonorous, aerial, winged, so to speak.
There were continual outbursts, melodies, unexpected cadences, then simple phrases strewn with aerial and hissing notes; then floods of scales which would have put a nightingale to rout, but in which harmony was always present; then soft modulations of octaves which rose and fell, like the bosom of the young singer.

Her beautiful face followed, with singular mobility, all the caprices of her song, from the wildest inspiration to the chastest dignity.

One would have pronounced her now a mad creature, now a queen.
The words which she sang were in a tongue unknown to Gringoire, and which seemed to him to be unknown to herself, so little relation did the expression which she imparted to her song bear to the sense of the words.

Thus, these four lines, in her mouth, were madly gay,-- _Un cofre de gran riqueza Hallaron dentro un pilar, Dentro del, nuevas banderas Con figuras de espantar_.* * A coffer of great richness In a pillar's heart they found, Within it lay new banners, With figures to astound.
And an instant afterwards, at the accents which she imparted to this stanza,-- _Alarabes de cavallo Sin poderse menear, Con espadas, y los cuellos, Ballestas de buen echar_, Gringoire felt the tears start to his eyes.