The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

Chapter 6 The Effect which Seven Oaths in the Open Air can Produce

Chapter 7 The Mysterious Monk

Chapter 8 The Utility of Windows which Open on the River

Book VIII

Chapter 1 The Crown Changed into a Dry Leaf

Chapter 2 Continuation of the Crown which was Changed into a Dry Leaf.

Chapter 3 End of the Crown which was Turned into a Dry Leaf

Chapter 4 Lasciate Ogni Speranza—leave all hope behind, ye who enter here

Chapter 5 The Mother

Chapter 6 Three Human Hearts Differently Constructed

Book IX

Chapter 1 Delirium

Chapter 2 Hunchbacked, One Eyed, Lame

Chapter 3 Deaf

Chapter 4 Earthenware and Crystal

Chapter 5 The Key to the Red Door

Chapter 6 Continuation of The Key to The Red Door

Book X

Chapter 1 Gringoire has many Good Ideas in Succession.—Rue des Bernardins

Chapter 2 Turn Vagabond

Chapter 3 Long Live Mirth

Chapter 4 An Awkward Friend

Chapter 5 The Retreat in which Monsieur Louis of France says his Prayers

Chapter 6 Little Sword in Pocket

Chapter 7 Chateaupers to the Rescue

Book XI

Chapter 1 The Little Shoe

Chapter 2 The Beautiful Creature Clad in White. (Dante.)

Chapter 3 The Marriage of Phoebus

Chapter 4 The Marriage of Quasimodo

Note

Classic Literature: Words and Phrases Adapted from the Collins English Dictionary

About the Author

History of Collins

Copyright

About the Publisher

PREFACE (#u4855d675-b3b3-5124-85ea-b6878a326e31)

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 today 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 (#u4855d675-b3b3-5124-85ea-b6878a326e31)

BOOK I (#u4855d675-b3b3-5124-85ea-b6878a326e31)

CHAPTER 1 (#u4855d675-b3b3-5124-85ea-b6878a326e31)

The Grand Hall (#u4855d675-b3b3-5124-85ea-b6878a326e31)

Three hundred and forty-eight years, six months, and nineteen days ago today, 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.