The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Victor Hugo
Preface
Some years ago, while visiting, or rather exploring, Notre-Dame, the author of this book discovered in an obscure corner of one of the towers this word, carved upon the wall:
‘ANáTKHa
These Greek characters, black with age and cut deep into the stone with the peculiarities of form and arrangement common to Gothic calligraphy that marked them the work of some hand in the Middle Ages, and above all the sad and mournful meaning which they expressed, forcibly impressed the author.
He questioned himself, he tried to divine what sad soul was loath to quit the earth without leaving behind this brand of crime or misery upon the brow of the old church.
Since then the wall has been whitewashed or scraped （I have forgotten which）， and the inscription has vanished; for this is the way in which, for some two hundred years, we have treated the wonderful churches of the Middle Ages. They are mutilated in every part, inside as well as out. The priest whitewashes them, the archdeacon scrapes them; then come the people, who tear them down.
So, save for the frail memory which the author of this book here dedicates to it, nothing now remains of the mysterious word engraved upon the dark tower of Notre-Dame, nothing of the unknown fate which it summed up so sadly. The man who wrote that word upon the wall faded away, many ages since, amidst passing generations of men; the word in its turn has faded from the church wall; the church itself, perhaps, will soon vanish from the earth.
Upon that word this book is based.1
MARCH, 1831.
BOOK ONE
CHAPTER I
The Great Hall
Three hundred and forty-eight years, six months, and nineteen days ago today the Parisians were awakened by the sound of loud peals from all the bells within the triple precincts of the City, the University, and the Town.
And yet the 6th of January, 1482, is not a day of which history takes much note. There was nothing extraordinary about the event which thus set all the bells and the citizens of Paris agog from early dawn. It was neither an attack from the Picards or the Burgundians, nor some shrine carried in procession, nor was it a student revolt in the vineyard of Laas, nor an entry of “our greatly to be dreaded Lord the King,” nor even the execution of thieves of either sex at the Palace of Justice. Neither was it the arrival, so frequent during the fifteenth century, of some plumed and laced embassy. It was scarcely two days since the last cavalcade of this sort, that of the Flemish ambassadors empowered to arrange a marriage between the Dauphinb and Margaret of Flanders, had entered Paris, to the great annoyance of Cardinal Bourbon, who, to please the king, was forced to smile upon all this rustic rout of Flemish burgomasters, and to entertain them at his own mansion with “a very fine morality and farce,” while a driving rain-storm drenched the splendid tapestries at his door.
That which “stirred the emotions of the whole populace of Paris,” as Jehan de Troyes expresses it, on January 6, was the double festival, celebrated from time immemorial, of Epiphany and the Feast of Fools.2
Upon that day there was to be a bonfire at the Place de Grève, a Maypole at the Braque chapel, and a mystery or miracle play at the Palace of Justice. All these things had been proclaimed in the streets, to the sound of trumpets, by the provost’s men, in fine coats of purple camlet, with big white crosses on the breast.
A crowd of citizens with their wives and daughters had therefore been making their way from every quarter, towards the places named, ever since early dawn. Each had decided for himself, in favor of the bonfire, the Maypole, or the mystery. It must be confessed, to the glory of the proverbial good sense of Parisian idlers, that the majority of the crowd turned towards the bonfire, which was most seasonable, or towards the miracle play which was to be performed in the great hall of the Palace of Justice, well roofed in and between four walls; and that most of the pleasure-seekers agreed to leave the poor Maypole with its scanty blossoms to shiver alone beneath the January sky, in the cemetery of the Braque chapel.
The people swarmed most thickly in the avenues leading to the Palace, because it was known that the Flemish ambassadors who arrived two nights before proposed to be present at the performance of the miracle play and election of the Pope of Fools, which was also to take place in the great hall.
It was no easy matter to make a way into the great hall upon that day, although it was then held to be the largest enclosure under cover in the world （at that time, Sauvalc had not yet measured the great hall of the castle at Montargis）。 The courtyard, filled with people, looked to the spectators at the windows like a vast sea into which five or six streets, like the mouths of so many rivers, constantly disgorged new waves of heads. The billowing crowd, growing ever greater, dashed against houses projecting here and there like so many promontories in the irregular basin of the courtyard. In the middle of the lofty Gothic fa?ade of the Palace was the great staircase, up and down which flowed an unending double stream, which, after breaking upon the intermediate landing, spread in broad waves over its two side slopes; the great staircase, I say, poured a steady stream into the courtyard, like a waterfall into a lake. Shouts, laughter, and the tramp of countless feet made a great amount of noise and a great hubbub. From time to time the hubbub and the noise were redoubled; the current which bore this throng towards the great staircase was turned back, eddied, and whirled. Some archer had dealt a blow, or the horse of some provost’s officer had administered a few kicks to restore order,—an admirable tradition, which has been faithfully handed down through the centuries to our present Parisian police.