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THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME
THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME VICTOR HUGO PREFACE.
A few years ago while visiting or rather rummaging about
Notre-Dame the author of this book found in an obscure
nook of one of the towers the following word engraved by
hand upon the wall:--
~ANArKH~.
These Greek capitals black with age and quite deeply
graven in the stone with I know not what signs peculiar
to Gothic caligraphy imprinted upon their forms and upon
their attitudes as though with the purpose of revealing that
it had been a hand of the Middle Ages which had inscribed
them there and especially the fatal and melancholy meaning
contained in them struck the author deeply.
He questioned himself; he sought to divine who could have
been that soul in torment which had not been willing to quit
this world without leaving this stigma of crime or unhappiness
upon the brow of the ancient church.
Afterwards the wall was whitewashed or scraped down I
know not which and the inscription disappeared. For it is
thus that people have been in the habit of proceeding with
the marvellous churches of the Middle Ages for the last two
hundred years. Mutilations come to them from every quarter
from within as well as from without. The priest whitewashes
them the archdeacon scrapes them down; then the
populace arrives and demolishes them.
Thus with the exception of the fragile memory which the
author of this book here consecrates to it there remains
to-day nothing whatever of the mysterious word engraved
within the gloomy tower of Notre-Dame--nothing of the
destiny which it so sadly summed up. The man who wrote
that word upon the wall disappeared from the midst of the
generations of man many centuries ago; the word in its turn
has been effaced from the wall of the church; the church
will perhaps itself soon disappear from the face of the
earth.
It is upon this word that this book is founded.
March 1831.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
VOLUME I.
BOOK FIRST.
I. The Grand Hall
II. Pierre Gringoire
III. Monsieur the Cardinal
IV. Master Jacques Coppenole
V. Quasimodo
VI. Esmeralda
BOOK SECOND.
I. From Charybdis to Scylla
II. The Place de Gr?ve
III. Kisses for Blows
IV. The Inconveniences of Following a Pretty Woman through
the Streets in the Evening
V. Result of the Dangers
VI. The Broken Jug
VII. A Bridal Night
BOOK THIRD.
I. Notre-Dame
II. A Bird's-eye View of Paris
BOOR FOURTH.
I. Good Souls
II. Claude Frollo
III. Immanis Pecoris Custos Immanior Ipse
IV. The Dog and his Master
V. More about Claude Frollo
VI. Unpopularity
BOOK FIFTH.
I. Abbas Beati Martini
II. This will Kill That
BOOK SIXTH.
I. An Impartial Glance at the Ancient Magistracy
II. The Rat-hole
III. History of a Leavened Cake of Maize
IV. A Tear for a Drop of Water
V. End of the Story of the Cake
BOOK FIRST.
CHAPTER 1.
THE GRAND HALL.
Three hundred and forty-eight years six months and nineteen
days ago to-day the Parisians awoke to the sound of all
the bells in the triple circuit of the city the university and
the town ringing a full peal.
The sixth of January 1482 is not however a day of which
history has preserved the memory. There was nothing notable
in the event which thus set the bells and the bourgeois
of Paris in a ferment from early morning. It was neither an
assault by the Picards nor the Burgundians nor a hunt led
along in procession nor a revolt of scholars in the town of
Laas nor an entry of "our much dread lord monsieur the
king" nor even a pretty hanging of male and female thieves
by the courts of Paris. Neither was it the arrival so frequent
in the fifteenth century of some plumed and bedizened embassy.
It was barely two days since the last cavalcade of
that nature that of the Flemish ambassadors charged with
concluding the marriage between the dauphin and Marguerite
of Flanders had made its entry into Paris to the great annoyance
of M. le Cardinal de Bourbon who for the sake of pleasing the
king had been obliged to assume an amiable mien
towards this whole rustic rabble of Flemish burgomasters and
to regale them at his H?tel de Bourbon with a very "pretty
morality allegorical satire and farce" while a driving rain
drenched the magnificent tapestries at his door.
What put the "whole population of Paris in commotion" as
Jehan de Troyes expresses it on the sixth of January was
the double solemnity united from time immemorial of the
Epiphany and the Feast of Fools.
On that day there was to be a bonfire on the Place de
Gr?ve a maypole at the Chapelle de Braque and a mystery at
the Palais de Justice. It had been cried to the sound of the
trumpet the preceding evening at all the cross roads by the
provost's men clad in handsome short sleeveless coats of
violet camelot with large white crosses upon their breasts.
So the crowd of citizens male and female having closed
their houses and shops thronged from every direction at
early morn towards some one of the three spots designated.
Each had made his choice; one the bonfire; another the
maypole; another the mystery play. It must be stated in
honor of the good sense of the loungers of Paris that the
greater part of this crowd directed their steps towards the
bonfire which was quite in season or towards the mystery
play which was to be presented in the grand hall of the
Palais de Justice (the courts of law) which was well roofed
and walled; and that the curious left the poor scantily flowered
maypole to shiver all alone beneath the sky of January
in the cemetery of the Chapel of Braque.
The populace thronged the avenues of the law courts in
particular because they knew that the Flemish ambassadors
who had arrived two days previously intended to be present
at the representation of the mystery and at the election of
the Pope of the Fools which was also to take place in the
grand hall.
It was no easy matter on that day to force one's way into
that grand hall although it was then reputed to be the largest
covered enclosure in the world (it is true that Sauval had not
yet measured the grand hall of the Ch?teau of Montargis).
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