As a practical philosopher of the streets of Paris, Gringoire had remarked that nothing is more favourable to a state of reverie than to follow a pretty woman without knowing whither she is going. In this voluntary surrender of one’s free will – in this fancy of another, while that other is totally unconscious of it – there is a mixture of fantastic independence with blind obedience, something intermediate between slavery and freedom, which was pleasing to Gringoire, whose mind, essentially mixed, undecided and complex, held the medium between all extremes in constant suspense amongst all human propensities and neutralising one of them by another. He compared himself willingly to the tomb of Mahomet, attracted by two lodestones in opposite directions, hesitating eternally between the top and the bottom, between the roof and the pavement, between fall and ascension, between the zenith and the nadir.
Victor Hugo, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”
A Bird's Eye View of Fashion, Food, Travel, Culture, Beverage and Curiosity 