Notre-Dame De Paris

  In 1482, Quasimodo was about twenty years of age; Claude Frollo, aboutthirty-six. One had grown up, the other had grown old.

  Claude Frollo was no longer the simple scholar of the college of Torch,the tender protector of a little child, the young and dreamy philosopherwho knew many things and was ignorant of many. He was a priest, austere,grave, morose; one charged with souls; monsieur the archdeacon of Josas,the bishop's second acolyte, having charge of the two deaneries ofMontlhery, and Chateaufort, and one hundred and seventy-four countrycuracies. He was an imposing and sombre personage, before whom the choirboys in alb and in jacket trembled, as well as the machicots*, and thebrothers of Saint-Augustine and the matutinal clerks of Notre-Dame,when he passed slowly beneath the lofty arches of the choir, majestic,thoughtful, with arms folded and his head so bent upon his breast thatall one saw of his face was his large, bald brow.

  * An official of Notre-Dame, lower than a beneficed clergyman,higher than simple paid chanters.

  Dom Claude Frollo had, however, abandoned neither science nor theeducation of his young brother, those two occupations of his life. Butas time went on, some bitterness had been mingled with these thingswhich were so sweet. In the long run, says Paul Diacre, the best lardturns rancid. Little Jehan Frollo, surnamed (_du Moulin_) "of the Mill"because of the place where he had been reared, had not grown up in thedirection which Claude would have liked to impose upon him. The bigbrother counted upon a pious, docile, learned, and honorable pupil. Butthe little brother, like those young trees which deceive the gardener'shopes and turn obstinately to the quarter whence they receive sun andair, the little brother did not grow and did not multiply, but onlyput forth fine bushy and luxuriant branches on the side of laziness,ignorance, and debauchery. He was a regular devil, and a very disorderlyone, who made Dom Claude scowl; but very droll and very subtle, whichmade the big brother smile.

  Claude had confided him to that same college of Torchi where he hadpassed his early years in study and meditation; and it was a grief tohim that this sanctuary, formerly edified by the name of Frollo, shouldto-day be scandalized by it. He sometimes preached Jehan very long andsevere sermons, which the latter intrepidly endured. After all, theyoung scapegrace had a good heart, as can be seen in all comedies.But the sermon over, he none the less tranquilly resumed his course ofseditions and enormities. Now it was a _bejaune_ or yellow beak (as theycalled the new arrivals at the university), whom he had been mauling byway of welcome; a precious tradition which has been carefully preservedto our own day. Again, he had set in movement a band of scholars,who had flung themselves upon a wine-shop in classic fashion, quasi_classico excitati_, had then beaten the tavern-keeper "with offensivecudgels," and joyously pillaged the tavern, even to smashing in thehogsheads of wine in the cellar. And then it was a fine report in Latin,which the sub-monitor of Torchi carried piteously to Dom Claude withthis dolorous marginal comment,--_Rixa; prima causa vinum optimumpotatum_. Finally, it was said, a thing quite horrible in a boy ofsixteen, that his debauchery often extended as far as the Rue deGlatigny.

  Claude, saddened and discouraged in his human affections, by all this,had flung himself eagerly into the arms of learning, that sister which,at least does not laugh in your face, and which always pays you, thoughin money that is sometimes a little hollow, for the attention which youhave paid to her. Hence, he became more and more learned, and, at thesame time, as a natural consequence, more and more rigid as apriest, more and more sad as a man. There are for each of us severalparallelisms between our intelligence, our habits, and our character,which develop without a break, and break only in the great disturbancesof life.

  As Claude Frollo had passed through nearly the entire circle of humanlearning--positive, exterior, and permissible--since his youth, hewas obliged, unless he came to a halt, _ubi defuit orbis_, to proceedfurther and seek other aliments for the insatiable activity of hisintelligence. The antique symbol of the serpent biting its tail is,above all, applicable to science. It would appear that Claude Frollo hadexperienced this. Many grave persons affirm that, after having exhaustedthe _fas_ of human learning, he had dared to penetrate into the _nefas_.He had, they said, tasted in succession all the apples of the tree ofknowledge, and, whether from hunger or disgust, had ended by tastingthe forbidden fruit. He had taken his place by turns, as the readerhas seen, in the conferences of the theologians in Sorbonne,--in theassemblies of the doctors of art, after the manner of Saint-Hilaire,--inthe disputes of the decretalists, after the manner of Saint-Martin,--inthe congregations of physicians at the holy water font of Notre-Dame,_ad cupam Nostroe-Dominoe_. All the dishes permitted and approved, whichthose four great kitchens called the four faculties could elaborate andserve to the understanding, he had devoured, and had been satiated withthem before his hunger was appeased. Then he had penetrated further,lower, beneath all that finished, material, limited knowledge; he had,perhaps, risked his soul, and had seated himself in the cavern atthat mysterious table of the alchemists, of the astrologers, of thehermetics, of which Averroes, Gillaume de Paris, and Nicolas Flamel holdthe end in the Middle Ages; and which extends in the East, by thelight of the seven-branched candlestick, to Solomon, Pythagoras, andZoroaster.

  That is, at least, what was supposed, whether rightly or not. Itis certain that the archdeacon often visited the cemetery of theSaints-Innocents, where, it is true, his father and mother had beenburied, with other victims of the plague of 1466; but that he appearedfar less devout before the cross of their grave than before the strangefigures with which the tomb of Nicolas Flamel and Claude Pernelle,erected just beside it, was loaded.

  It is certain that he had frequently been seen to pass along the Rue desLombards, and furtively enter a little house which formed the cornerof the Rue des Ecrivans and the Rue Marivault. It was the house whichNicolas Flamel had built, where he had died about 1417, and which,constantly deserted since that time, had already begun to fall inruins,--so greatly had the hermetics and the alchemists of all countrieswasted away the walls, merely by carving their names upon them. Someneighbors even affirm that they had once seen, through an air-hole,Archdeacon Claude excavating, turning over, digging up the earth in thetwo cellars, whose supports had been daubed with numberless couplets andhieroglyphics by Nicolas Flamel himself. It was supposed that Flamel hadburied the philosopher's stone in the cellar; and the alchemists, forthe space of two centuries, from Magistri to Father Pacifique, neverceased to worry the soil until the house, so cruelly ransacked andturned over, ended by falling into dust beneath their feet.

  Again, it is certain that the archdeacon had been seized with a singularpassion for the symbolical door of Notre-Dame, that page of a conjuringbook written in stone, by Bishop Guillaume de Paris, who has, no doubt,been damned for having affixed so infernal a frontispiece to the sacredpoem chanted by the rest of the edifice. Archdeacon Claude had thecredit also of having fathomed the mystery of the colossus of SaintChristopher, and of that lofty, enigmatical statue which then stood atthe entrance of the vestibule, and which the people, in derision,called "Monsieur Legris." But, what every one might have noticed was theinterminable hours which he often employed, seated upon the parapet ofthe area in front of the church, in contemplating the sculptures of thefront; examining now the foolish virgins with their lamps reversed, nowthe wise virgins with their lamps upright; again, calculating the angleof vision of that raven which belongs to the left front, and which islooking at a mysterious point inside the church, where is concealed thephilosopher's stone, if it be not in the cellar of Nicolas Flamel.

  It was, let us remark in passing, a singular fate for the Church ofNotre-Dame at that epoch to be so beloved, in two different degrees,and with so much devotion, by two beings so dissimilar as Claude andQuasimodo. Beloved by one, a sort of instinctive and savage half-man,for its beauty, for its stature, for the harmonies which emanated fromits magnificent ensemble; beloved by the other, a learned and passionateimagination, for its myth, for the sense which it contains, for thesymbolism scatt
ered beneath the sculptures of its front,--like the firsttext underneath the second in a palimpsest,--in a word, for the enigmawhich it is eternally propounding to the understanding.

  Furthermore, it is certain that the archdeacon had established himselfin that one of the two towers which looks upon the Greve, just besidethe frame for the bells, a very secret little cell, into which no one,not even the bishop, entered without his leave, it was said. This tinycell had formerly been made almost at the summit of the tower, among theravens' nests, by Bishop Hugo de Besancon* who had wrought sorcery therein his day. What that cell contained, no one knew; but from the strandof the Terrain, at night, there was often seen to appear, disappear,and reappear at brief and regular intervals, at a little dormer windowopening upon the back of the tower, a certain red, intermittent,singular light which seemed to follow the panting breaths of a bellows,and to proceed from a flame, rather than from a light. In the darkness,at that height, it produced a singular effect; and the goodwives said:"There's the archdeacon blowing! hell is sparkling up yonder!"

  * Hugo II. de Bisuncio, 1326-1332.

  There were no great proofs of sorcery in that, after all, but there wasstill enough smoke to warrant a surmise of fire, and the archdeacon borea tolerably formidable reputation. We ought to mention however, that thesciences of Egypt, that necromancy and magic, even the whitest, even themost innocent, had no more envenomed enemy, no more pitiless denunciatorbefore the gentlemen of the officialty of Notre-Dame. Whether thiswas sincere horror, or the game played by the thief who shouts, "stopthief!" at all events, it did not prevent the archdeacon from beingconsidered by the learned heads of the chapter, as a soul who hadventured into the vestibule of hell, who was lost in the caves of thecabal, groping amid the shadows of the occult sciences. Neither werethe people deceived thereby; with any one who possessed any sagacity,Quasimodo passed for the demon; Claude Frollo, for the sorcerer. Itwas evident that the bellringer was to serve the archdeacon for a giventime, at the end of which he would carry away the latter's soul, by wayof payment. Thus the archdeacon, in spite of the excessive austerity ofhis life, was in bad odor among all pious souls; and there was no devoutnose so inexperienced that it could not smell him out to be a magician.

  And if, as he grew older, abysses had formed in his science, they hadalso formed in his heart. That at least, is what one had grounds forbelieving on scrutinizing that face upon which the soul was only seento shine through a sombre cloud. Whence that large, bald brow? that headforever bent? that breast always heaving with sighs? What secret thoughtcaused his mouth to smile with so much bitterness, at the same momentthat his scowling brows approached each other like two bulls on thepoint of fighting? Why was what hair he had left already gray? What wasthat internal fire which sometimes broke forth in his glance, to such adegree that his eye resembled a hole pierced in the wall of a furnace?

  These symptoms of a violent moral preoccupation, had acquired anespecially high degree of intensity at the epoch when this story takesplace. More than once a choir-boy had fled in terror at finding himalone in the church, so strange and dazzling was his look. More thanonce, in the choir, at the hour of the offices, his neighbor in thestalls had heard him mingle with the plain song, _ad omnem tonum_,unintelligible parentheses. More than once the laundress of the Terraincharged "with washing the chapter" had observed, not without affright,the marks of nails and clenched fingers on the surplice of monsieur thearchdeacon of Josas.

  However, he redoubled his severity, and had never been more exemplary.By profession as well as by character, he had always held himself alooffrom women; he seemed to hate them more than ever. The mere rustlingof a silken petticoat caused his hood to fall over his eyes. Upon thisscore he was so jealous of austerity and reserve, that when the Dame deBeaujeu, the king's daughter, came to visit the cloister of Notre-Dame,in the month of December, 1481, he gravely opposed her entrance,reminding the bishop of the statute of the Black Book, dating from thevigil of Saint-Barthelemy, 1334, which interdicts access to the cloisterto "any woman whatever, old or young, mistress or maid." Upon which thebishop had been constrained to recite to him the ordinance of LegateOdo, which excepts certain great dames, _aliquae magnates mulieres,quae sine scandalo vitari non possunt_. And again the archdeacon hadprotested, objecting that the ordinance of the legate, which dated backto 1207, was anterior by a hundred and twenty-seven years to the BlackBook, and consequently was abrogated in fact by it. And he had refusedto appear before the princess.

  It was also noticed that his horror for Bohemian women and gypsies hadseemed to redouble for some time past. He had petitioned the bishop foran edict which expressly forbade the Bohemian women to come and danceand beat their tambourines on the place of the Parvis; and for about thesame length of time, he had been ransacking the mouldy placards ofthe officialty, in order to collect the cases of sorcerers and witchescondemned to fire or the rope, for complicity in crimes with rams, sows,or goats.

  CHAPTER VI. UNPOPULARITY.