The publisher had some doubts of the pecuniary success of the novel, but these speedily disappeared, as edition after edition was called for. In the course of a year only, eight large editions had been disposed of, and the number of editions which have been issued since that time may be described as legion. From thinking, as he did originally, that he had made a bad bargain, M. Gosselin soon had reason to arrive at the conclusion that he had made a remarkably good one. Together with other publishers, he now pestered the author continually for more novels. Hugo protested that he had none to give them; but wearied at length by their importunities he furnished the titles of two stories he proposed to write, which were to be called the _Fils de la Bossue_ and _La Quinquengrogne_. The latter name was the popular designation of one of the towers of Bourbon l'Aschembault, and in the novel the author intended to complete the account of his views concerning the art of the Middle Ages. Notre-Dame was the cathedral, La Quinquengrogne was to be the dungeon. Victor Hugo wrote at this time his admirable descriptive work _Le Rhin_--a work full of learning, vivacity, and humour--but he never proceeded with the two projected novels. _Notre-Dame_ remained for many years the only romance in which the author revealed his marvellous power of moulding human sympathies, of throwing into imaginative conceptions the very form and substance of being, and of realizing a dead-past age as though it were that of the actual and the living. CHAPTER VI. 'MARION DE LORME' AND OTHER DRAMAS. That despotic monarch, Charles X., having been driven from his throne by the Revolution of July, 1830, there naturally followed the removal of the interdict from the theatres. Victor Hugo was at once applied to by the Comédie Française for his drama of _Marion de Lorme_, which had been in enforced abeyance. But when the political reaction was an absolute certainty, the sensitive mind of Hugo shrank from a demonstrative triumph. It is true that he was now in the full tide of masculine judgment, and that his ideas of progress and liberty were crystallized and matured; but he could not forget his early opinions. Though crudely formed, and based upon sentiment and not upon reason, they had been genuine and disinterested, and his chief feeling at this later period was not one of hatred of the King, but rather of rejoicing with the people.