what can you have to attach you so strongly to life?

from The Hunchback of Notre Dame

"What then? Why she will do out wearing your clothes, and you will stay behind with hers. You may get hanged perhaps, but she will be saved."

Gringoire scratched his ear and grimaced seriously.

"Well!" he said, "that's an idea that never would have crossed my brain."

At Dom Claude's unexpected proposal the open and benign countenance of the poet had become instantly overcast, like a smiling Italian landscape when a chance gust of wind suddenly dashes a cloud across the sun.

"Well, Gringoire, what do you say to the plan?"

"I say, master, that I shall not be hanged perhaps, but that I shall be hanged indubitably."

 "That does not concern us."

"The deuce it doesn't!"

"She saved your life. You are repaying a debt." 

 "But there are many debts that I don't pay."

"Master Pierre, you must do it!"

The archdeacon spoke imperatively.

"Listen, Dom Claude," replied the poet in consternation, "You may cling to that idea, but you are wrong. I don't see why I should get myself hanged instead of another."

"What can you have to attach you so strongly to life?"

"Ah, a thousand attachments!" 

 "What are they, pray tell."

 "What are they? The air, the sky, the morning, the evening, the moonlight, my good friends the Truands, our romps with the good-natured damsels, the beautiful architectural works of Paris to study, three big books to write, one of them against the bishop and his mills--I know not what else. Anaxagoras used to say he had been put in the world just to admire the sun. And then, I have the happiness of passing all my days, from morning till evening, with a man of genius, who is me, and that's very pleasant." 

 "Oh, you rattlebrain!" grumbled the archdeacon. Then he continued, "Well, tell me, that life you make out to be so charming, who saved that life for you? To whom are you indebted for air to breathe, for the sky to see, for being still able to amuse your larklike spirit with trash and foolery? But for her, where would you be? Would you have her die, she, by whom you live? Would you have her die, that creature, so lovely, so sweet, so adorable--a creature necessary to the light of the world--more divine than divinity itself--while you, half philosopher, half fool, a mere sketch of something, a kind of vegetable which fancies it walks and thinks, would continue to live with the life you have stolen from her, as useless as a taper at noonday? Come, Gringoire, a little pity! Be of generous mind. She has set an example for you!"

 The priest was vehement. Gringoire listened to him at first with an air of indecision, then became moved and concluded by pouting, which likened his wan face to that of a small baby in a seizure of colic.

 "You sound very pathetic!" he said, wiping away a tear. "Well, let me think about it. It's a queer idea of yours. After all," he pursued, after a pause, "who knows? Perhaps they won't hang me; there's many a slip between the cup and the lip. When they find me in that cell, so grotesquely muffled in cap and skirt, perhaps they'll roar with laughter. And then, if they do hang me, oh well, the rope is a death like any other. Or rather, it's not a death like any other. It's a death worthy of a philosopher who has been oscillating all his life, a death marked with Pyrrhonism and hesitation, which holds the middle between heaven and earth, which leaves on in suspense. It's a philosopher's death, and perhaps I was predestined to it. It is fine to die as one has lived."

 The priest interrupted him. "Agreed?"

 "After all, what is death?" continued Gringoire still in a burst of enthusiasm. "An upleasant moment, a toll, a passage form little to nothing. When someone asked Cercidas of Megalopolis if he would die willingly, 'Why not?' he replied, 'for after death I shall meet those great men, Pythagoras, among the philosophers, Hecataeus, among the historians, Homer, among the poets, and Olympus, among the musicians.'"

 The archdeacon held out his hand. "Then, we are agreed? You will come tomorrow?"

 This gesture brought Gringoire back to reality.

 "Faith, no!" he said, with the tone of a man just awaking. "Be hanged! That's too absurd! I will not."