Victor Hugo - Victor Hugo - The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Title Page Victor Hugo The Hunchback of Notre Dame Translated by Isabel F. Hapgood

PREFACE. 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:— ANANKE . 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.

VOLUME I.

BOOK FIRST.

CHAPTER I. THE GRAND HALL.

CHAPTER II. PIERRE GRINGOIRE.

CHAPTER III. MONSIEUR THE CARDINAL.

CHAPTER IV. MASTER JACQUES COPPENOLE.

CHAPTER V. QUASIMODO.

CHAPTER VI. ESMERALDA.

BOOK SECOND.

CHAPTER I. FROM CHARYBDIS TO SCYLLA.

CHAPTER II. THE PLACE DE GREVE.

CHAPTER III. KISSES FOR BLOWS.

CHAPTER IV. THE INCONVENIENCES OF FOLLOWING A PRETTY WOMAN THROUGH THE STREETS IN THE EVENING.

CHAPTER V. RESULT OF THE DANGERS.

CHAPTER VI. THE BROKEN JUG.

CHAPTER VII. A BRIDAL NIGHT.

BOOK THIRD.

CHAPTER I. NOTRE-DAME.

CHAPTER II. A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF PARIS.

BOOK FOURTH.

CHAPTER I. GOOD SOULS.

CHAPTER II. CLAUDE FROLLO.

CHAPTER IV. THE DOG AND HIS MASTER.

CHAPTER V. MORE ABOUT CLAUDE FROLLO.

CHAPTER VI. UNPOPULARITY.

BOOK FIFTH.

CHAPTER II. THIS WILL KILL THAT.

BOOK SIXTH.

CHAPTER I. AN IMPARTIAL GLANCE AT THE ANCIENT MAGISTRACY.

CHAPTER II. THE RAT-HOLE.

CHAPTER III. HISTORY OF A LEAVENED CAKE OF MAIZE.

CHAPTER IV. A TEAR FOR A DROP OF WATER.

CHAPTER V. END OF THE STORY OF THE CAKE.

VOLUME II.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I. THE DANGER OF CONFIDING ONE’S SECRET TO A GOAT.

CHAPTER II. A PRIEST AND A PHILOSOPHER ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS.

CHAPTER III. THE BELLS.

CHAPTER IV. ANANKE.

CHAPTER V. THE TWO MEN CLOTHED IN BLACK.

CHAPTER VI. THE EFFECT WHICH SEVEN OATHS IN THE OPEN AIR CAN PRODUCE.

CHAPTER VII. THE MYSTERIOUS MONK.

CHAPTER VIII. THE UTILITY OF WINDOWS WHICH OPEN ON THE RIVER.

BOOK EIGHTH.

CHAPTER I. THE CROWN CHANGED INTO A DRY LEAF.

CHAPTER II. CONTINUATION OF THE CROWN WHICH WAS CHANGED INTO A DRY LEAF.

CHAPTER III. END OF THE CROWN WHICH WAS TURNED INTO A DRY LEAF.

CHAPTER IV. LASCIATE OGNI SPERANZA—LEAVE ALL HOPE BEHIND, YE WHO ENTER HERE.

CHAPTER V. THE MOTHER.

CHAPTER VI. THREE HUMAN HEARTS DIFFERENTLY CONSTRUCTED.

BOOK NINTH.

CHAPTER I. DELIRIUM.

CHAPTER II. HUNCHBACKED, ONE EYED, LAME.

CHAPTER III. DEAF.

CHAPTER IV. EARTHENWARE AND CRYSTAL.

CHAPTER V. THE KEY TO THE RED DOOR.

CHAPTER VI. CONTINUATION OF THE KEY TO THE RED DOOR.

BOOK TENTH.

CHAPTER I. GRINGOIRE HAS MANY GOOD IDEAS IN SUCCESSION.—RUE DES BERNARDINS.

CHAPTER II. TURN VAGABOND.

CHAPTER III. LONG LIVE MIRTH.

CHAPTER IV. AN AWKWARD FRIEND.

CHAPTER V. THE RETREAT IN WHICH MONSIEUR LOUIS OF FRANCE SAYS HIS PRAYERS.

CHAPTER VI. LITTLE SWORD IN POCKET.

CHAPTER VII. CHATEAUPERS TO THE RESCUE.

BOOK ELEVENTH.

CHAPTER I. THE LITTLE SHOE.

CHAPTER II. THE BEAUTIFUL CREATURE CLAD IN WHITE. (Dante.)

CHAPTER III. THE MARRIAGE OF PHOEBUS.

CHAPTER IV. THE MARRIAGE OF QUASIMODO.

NOTE. ADDED TO THE DEFINITIVE EDITION.

Imprint

Victor Hugo

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Translated by Isabel F. Hapgood

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:—

ANANKE .

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.

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 Hôtel de Bourbon, with a very “pretty morality, allegorical satire, and farce,” while a driving rain drenched the magnificent tapestries at his door.