This is one of these novels that must be read, and as you read it, you'll feel sheepish that you haven't already read it. The French are lucky to have this author.
I'll talk about the story itself shortly. But what surprises a modern reader most about The Hunchback of Notre Dame is how experimental it is, especially for its time. See for instance how Victor Hugo frequently breaks the fourth wall, or how he plays with the readers' perceptions of who, exactly, are the story's "good" and "bad" characters. The reader doesn't really see Claude Frollo for who he is until nearly halfway through the story, and on some level the story actually has multiple protagonists and antagonists, all sharing various and unusual allegiances to each other. Hunchback of course has plenty of the usual 19th century novel characteristics, but also enough experimental qualities that I think it's fair to call this a proto-modern novel.
What vastly separates this work from most overrated "experimental" 20th century literature is how Hugo first and foremost offers the reader a great, great tale, and his literary experiments buttress that tale, making the telling even better. He never confuses the experiment with the vehicle; the story is the vehicle. In stark, stark contrast, a typical 20th century experimental novel (think Dorothy Richardson or James Joyce) puts the experiment front and center, and the story is either unreadable or an afterthought. Readers want to read good books, not to be subjected to experiments.
Yet another surprise: this is a stunningly information-dense and history-dense novel, but the author moves the plot along so engagingly that you never notice how much you're learning... until the book ends, and you're (somehow?) suddenly conversant in Late Middle Ages Paris culture, history, architecture--even aesthetics. See Chapter I of Book III ("Notre Dame"), which stands out as a beautiful commentary on the author's own aesthetic, as he reveals his utter mortification at the various architectural barbarisms his era committed on the ultimate medieval cathedral. This could be a chapter in an architecture textbook, a monograph on the confluence of aesthetics and morality, or even a short article on the various socioethical declines of modernity. Quite striking.
[A quick affiliate link to Amazon for those readers who would like to support my work here: if you purchase your Amazon products via any affiliate link from this site, or from my sister site Casual Kitchen, I will receive a small affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you!]
Now onto the jokes! There's humor here for every literacy level, from the abstruse ("Your stool halts like a distich of Martial's; it has one hexameter and one pentameter foot"), to jokes for language geeks (see for example Sister Gudule's cell, originally named Tu, Ora [you/thou, pray] is later renamed with the near-homonym as Trou aux Rats [the Rathole]), to Charlie Chaplin-grade slapstick humor (see for example a deaf court magistrate attempting to interrogate the equally deaf Quasimodo, resulting in a funny but also sad metaphor for the injustices of the "justice" system).
I'll let you find the adolescent humor (my favorite kind!) on your own--there's plenty of that in there too.
A brief comment on political satire. Note that it is never safe to mock your current king, no matter the era. It's somewhat safer to mock kings from a different era--and in Hugo's case, of a different line too, as Louis XI, France's king during the story's era, was part of the Valois dynasty, not part of the House of Bourbon, in power during Hugo's own day. Ironically, the Bourbons were literally in the midst of being re-overthrown as Hugo was completing his manuscript.
Finally, a couple of comments on the English translation used (or better said, ill-used) in this 1996 Modern Library edition. It's actually shocking that there's no mention of the translator's name, anywhere. The editors don't call it an "anonymous" translation--in fact, they don't say anything about the translation at all. But in actuality, this is a version of an 1833 translation by Frederic Shoberl (1775–1853). One giveaway comes from the appearance of the word "elucubrated" ("...and at night he elucubrated a memorial against the Bishop of Paris..." [Book IX, Chapter 1]), which is Shoberl's literal (and I mean literal) translation of the past tense of the French verb élucubrer.[1] And this translation--plagiarized as it is by the publisher[2]--is spectacular, featuring a faithful translation of Hugo's incredible wordplay as well as his hilarious (and sometimes hilariously awful) punning. It reminds me of Michael Kandel's extraordinary translations of the highly idiosyncratic novels of Stanislaw Lem.
[For any French language geeks out there: here's an online copy of the book in the original French.]
Footnotes:
[1] This is one of those delicious, hilariously specific French verbs meaning "to produce a piece of writing or an idea with great difficulty, typically late at night by candlelight." Just like I elucubrated this book review!
[2] Just because something is in the public domain doesn't mean the publisher can dispense with both scholarship and publishing ethics. Note that the Modern Library has since reissued this novel with a newer translation by Catherine Liu. I haven't read it.
[Readers, what follows are my notes, quotes and plot points from the text. There are spoilers in here, please be warned! Feel free to skip them.]
Notes:
Book I
Chapter 1: The Great Hall of the Palace of Justice
3ff Paris January 1482, a grand peal of all the bells throughout the city to announce the Epiphany and the Festival of Fools. The author sets the scene here telling the reader "all that we should see around us would be so ancient as to appear absolutely new."
6 Good Dickens-style paragraph here describing how the author wouldn't have to describe the old Palace of Justice at all if it weren't for the 1618 fire that burned it down. Hugo writes, "I might say to the reader, 'Go, look at it,' and thus we should both be spared trouble, myself the trouble of writing, and him that of perusing, an indifferent description. This demonstrates the novel truth--that great events have incalculable consequences."
10 Good scene here where young students are mocking the King's master furrier because of his name "Lecornu."
11 Another demi-elite gets mocked by some of these young students as one threatens to jump onto his head. "Master Andry lifted his eyes, appeared to be measuring for a moment the height of the pillar, estimating the weight of the wag, mentally multiplying this weight by the square of the velocity, and he held his tongue." [Nice translation work here too, thank you Frederic Shoberl.]
13ff Everything is running late ("Noon alone had been punctual to its time.") and the crowd gets restive, potentially violent. Finally one of the actors, terrified but dressed like the god Jupiter, comes out and says the play will begin shortly, calming the crowd.
Chapter 2: Pierre Gringoire
16ff Two young women converse with one of the actors, Pierre Gringoire, who also wrote the play;
19 The crowd is still waiting patiently: "...the best way to make the public wait with patience is to affirm that you are just going to begin."
20ff The play is filled with blatantly obvious characters with allegorical names, but playwright Pierre Gringoire listens to it with rapt attention: "...he was completely absorbed in that kind of ecstatic contemplation with which an author sees his ideas drop one by one from the lips of the actor... With pain we record it, this first ecstasy was soon disturbed." The mendicant had climbed another one of the pillars while the young wag from before made a loud comment about him, and then during the stunned silence following, the mendicant cries out "Charity, if you please!" The young wag makes a snarky remark at him and throws a coin at him. "The latter pocketed, without wincing, both the money and the sarcasm."
23 Hugo mocks the play, facetiously calling it "Pindaric" while noting that "the poet ought to have developed this original idea in the compass of somewhat less than two hundred verses." And then right in the middle of one of the most emphatic lines of the play, there's a loud announcement of the arrival of the Cardinal.
Chapter 3: Monseigneur the Cardinal
24ff Musings here on the playwright Pierre Gringoire and his interest in having the Cardinal see his play; on Gringoire's vastly inflated vanity; on the fact that he's upset that the announcement of the Cardinal took away the crowd's attention from his play.
26 Hilarious comments from the author here, mocking the Cardinal himself for being caught between various political poles in his country, plus the expression "bibamus papaliter": let us drink like a Pope.
28 Comments on "the liberties of that day engrafted on the matters of the age," [this is a reference to Carnival and how various temporary inversions to the social order are tolerated as sort of a safety valve to maintain order the rest of the year: on this day regular people can mock the authorities, even the church, in ways they couldn't get away with normally.] Note also the comment here about bottles of wine, doctored by a physician, "cordially presented to Edward IV by Louis XI that would one day rid Louis XI of Edward IV." [This is a reference to the kings of France and England towards the end of the Hundred Years' War and the rumor that Louis poisoned Edward].
28ff Still more dignitaries enter the great room, each loudly announced, and wrecking the play still further; the author points out specifically Guillaume Rym, from the city of Ghent, with "a physiognomy compounded of that of the monkey and the diplomatist... "A man of rare genius, who in times of revolution would have raised himself to distinction, but was forced in the fifteenth century to resort to the hollows of intrigue." Sarcastic comments here about the entry of Louis XI "the first sapper in Europe." [This is likely a reference to Louis XI breaking down the feudal order of his era and centralizing power.] The crowd marvels at the respect the Cardinal pays to such an apparently insignificant person as the man from Ghent.
Chapter 4: Master Jacques Coppenole
30ff Another emissary from Ghent, Jacques Coppenole, demands that he has announced as "a hosier," appalling the usher who is to announce his arrival. Coppenole makes a multi-layered pun about how "the Archduke has more than once sought his gloves among my hose." Because he was a plebeian just like the audience there was an instant, electric connection between the French people and him at his defiance at the elites here. Then Coppenole sits just above where the mendicant had been sitting, they recognize each other shake hands and talk in a low tone. The Cardinal demanded that the mendicant be thrown into the river, but then Coppenole says "that varlet is a friend of mine." "From that moment Master Coppenole had great influence over the populace at Paris, as well as at Ghent." [Also note the expression "men of that kidney," referring to one's temperament or nature.]
33 Here the Cardinal makes his own pun and gets laughs from it, and then the author recaps the whole preposterous scene, then reminding the audience about poor Pierre Gringoire, as "we had all quite and clean forgotten him; and this was precisely what he was afraid of." He asks the citizen next to him "don't you think they had better go on?" (referring to the play), and the person answers "With what?"
34 The cardinal laughs as he realizes they missed half of the play, and Guillaume Rym replies, "we ought to be glad that we have escaped half of the play. The loss is so much gained." [The turns of phrase here are Shakespearean, you can tell this is going to be a fun novel. Dickens never wrote anything this good.]
35ff The play continues, and more dignitaries are announced over the top of it, and no one in the audience pays any attention to the play whatsoever. "With what anguish of spirit did [Pierre Gringoire] see his whole edifice of glory and poesy tumbling down piecemeal... Oh! The incessant flowing and ebbing of popular favour!" Then Coppenole rises from his seat and mocks the play, demanding to begin "the choosing of the Pope" in the Flemish fashion, where the ugliest face is chosen "Pope" by acclamation. He wants to get things going and everyone agrees.
Chapter 5: Quasimodo
38ff Suddenly the festival of fools get some momentum thanks to Coppenole. "The grimaces began." Everyone regardless of their rank in society was laughing aloud: the author creates this scene really well. The poor playwright Gringoire "was left to be the only spectator of his play: every back was turned upon him" except for one man who Gringoire thanks profusely: "You are the only one who has paid any attention to the piece. What do you think of it?" The man responds, "it is stupid enough." Finally, we meet Quasimodo who is unbelievably ugly, the author describes him: "He looked like a giant who had been broken in pieces and ill-soldered together." Normally those trying to be "elected Pope" are supposed to make strange grimaces when they put their heads through the window to be viewed by the crowd. But Quasimodo, using just his normal face, immediately won the competition! The people went to fetch the mock robe and pasteboard tiara of the "pope of fools" and "Quasimodo suffered them to be put upon him with a kind of proud docility."
Chapter 6: La Esmeralda
43ff The hall is left practically empty as Gringoire finishes off his play, the few people remaining began suddenly looking out the windows of the hall, shouting "La Esmeralda! La Esmeralda!" and totally ignoring Gringoire's play. Gringoire then mutters something about Parisians being asses, and then tells his actors, "If I am paid you shall be."
Book II
Chapter 1: From Charybdis into Scylla
46ff Gringoire walks the streets of Paris thinking about his dramatic failure. "In fact, philosophy was his only refuge; for he knew not where he should find a lodging." He sees his own band marching up the palace with the procession of the pope of fools. He walks around the Cité mournfully, even thinking of drowning himself in the Seine: "'Ah!' said he, 'how gladly would I drown myself, only the water is so cold!'" He heads over to the Place de Grève to see if he can get some free food.
Chapter 2: The Place de Grève
48ff [Interesting to see the author mourn "the inundation of new buildings which is rapidly swallowing up all the ancient structures of Paris." And making these comments in 1830! I shudder to think what he would write about the Centre Pompidou...] Also a description of the Place de Grève as "that poor turret, cooped up between two paltry erections of the time of Louis XV." [I wonder if the translator actually meant to add the pun on "erections" here? If so, he made it a lot funnier than the original French: "à cette pauvre tourelle étranglée entre deux masures du temps de Louis XV." which you could translate as "that poor turret, strangled between two hovels from the time of Louis XV."] Another pun here about the changes in architecture of the city: how homes used to have their gables facing the streets, but now houses are built with their fronts facing the streets. "During the last two centuries the houses have turned round."
49 Note the reference to "that fever of St. Vallier," [a reference to the guillotine era of France] "...the most monstrous of all diseases, because it did not proceed from God but from man." Further references here to the shamefaced guillotine [this is an extended metaphor comparing the very public and diversified methods of execution from the feudal era with the "furtive" guillotine of the more recent era, where they would take the contraption away rather than leave it out for everyone to see.]
Chapter 3: The Poet Puzzled
50ff Gringoire draws near a bonfire and is fascinated by a young girl dancing, an Andalucian, a gypsy girl. She sings and does tricks with a goat, and the crowd loves it; but a bald-headed man yells at her to stop, crying out "Sacrilege! Profanation!" The girl recognizes him and says, "it is that hateful man!" Also, an old hag from some dark corner of the Place also shouts at her repeatedly to stop singing. Gringoire finds no food and finds no place to sleep. "He had long since discovered the truth, that Jupiter created man in a fit of misanthropy, and that, throughout the whole life of the philosopher, his destiny keeps his philosophy in a state of siege." He hears the girl singing and listens in a state of rapture.
55ff The Pope of Fools procession arrives; we see Quasimodo with a look of pride on his face, a stark contrast to all the humiliation and contempt and disgust he had experienced before. "...the hunchback was strong, the bandy-legged dwarf was active, the deaf bell-ringer was spiteful, three qualities which tend to temper ridicule." As a procession goes by the same bald man races up and snatches Quasimodo's crosier. Gringoire recognizes him, it is Dom Claude Frollo the Archdeacon. Everyone is afraid that Quasimodo would tear him limb from limb, but he instead drops to his knees before Claude. "Then ensued between them a strange dialogue of signs and gestures." Quasimodo then follows him away, while Gringoire continues to wonder where he'll find supper.
Chapter 4: Serious Results of Following a Pretty Girl in the Street at Night
58ff Gringoire follows the gypsy girl deeper and deeper into the city, she notices him and looks at him with uneasiness. Suddenly she is struggling in the grasp of two men, and as she cries out Gringoire boldly steps up to them. Quasimodo turns out to be one of the men and he gives Gringoire a backhanded blow, knocking him senseless. Quasimodo then drags the girl away. Suddenly the captain of the archers, along with a squad of soldiers, surrounds them and rescues her, while his men seize Quasimodo, while the other man disappears. The girls asks the Captain's name ("Captain Phoebus de Châteaupers, at your service, my dear"), and she slides down his horse and vanishes into the night.
Chapter 5: A Chapter of Accidents
62ff Gringoire is recovering his senses after getting BTFO by Quasimodo. A bunch of gamins [street urchins] pass by, dragging a paillasse [a straw mattress] stolen from a recently deceased ironmonger. They accidentally drop it on Gringoire and are about to set fire on it as he emerges from beneath it and begins hobbling away. The boys, thinking that it was the ironmonger's ghost, jump up and run away, leaving the straw mattress behind. As Hugo puts it: "The paillasse was left in possession of the field of battle." [Once again the language here is hilarious, as the straw mattress won the field, not Gringoire and certainly not the urchins.]
Chapter 6: The Broken Jug
64ff Gringoire, running away, realizes the boys ran away too, leaving "precisely the hospitable bed" he had been seeking. But he can't find his way back, and even stumbles into a group of cripples and beggars, all asking for charity in various languages. They all turn out to be fake cripples, and he finds himself surrounded by them in the thieves' tavern, which is named the Cour des Miracles [another glorious pun: here is where these fake lame and fake crippled beggars, as they shed their costumes, immediately "got up and walked"]. They grab him. "...his soul was not in danger, but merely his life, because he lacked that excellent mediator between the ruffian and the honest man--the purse."
70 An art history in-joke here "Gringoire had descended from Michelangelo to [Jacques] Callot." In this tavern there are all sorts of people: one teaching another how to look like he has epilepsy, another learning how to foam at the mouth by chewing a bit of soap, others preparing their "sores" for tomorrow; they take him to their leader, who turns out to be Clopin Trouillefou [who, by begging out loud, disrupted Gringoire's play at the beginning of the novel.] They threaten to kill him with sort of a pseudo-court scene here. Also note how the author breaks the fourth wall as Gringoire "quite coolly answers--I [Victor Hugo himself] never could make out how he recovered sufficient firmness to talk so resolutely." [Beautiful to see the author wonder at his own character and do so in direct conversation through the pages with his reader.] Eventually Gringoire joins the "men of Slang." [Again, ironic for a playwright. Also this reminds me of the various slang-related chapters in Le Ton beau de Marot, Douglas Hofstadter's long but beautiful book on the subtleties of language translation. See in particular Chapter 7.]
76 A nerd-grade pun here: "Your stool halts like a distich of Martial's; it has one hexameter and one pentameter foot."
76ff Gringoire is tested for his pickpocketing skills, he fails spectacularly. He is offered one more reprieve from hanging by the group if one of the wenches among them will take him. They all say no, even one who was a bit indecisive worries that her own husband would beat her. Suddenly the crowd begins chanting "La Esmeralda! La Esmeralda!" as the gypsy girl appears with her goat. Everyone draws back respectfully for her to pass. She offers to take him for her husband. Gringoire, with a noose literally around his neck, thinks he is dreaming. She hands a clay jug to him and tells him to drop it on the ground, breaking it. One of the thieves says "Sister, he is thy husband. For four years. Go."
Chapter 7: A Wedding-Night
80ff Gringoire still thinks he's dreaming, but he also wonders if maybe he's the hero of some fairy tale; he tries to put his arm around La Esmeralda, but she leaps away, suddenly holding a dagger in her hand, and even her goat is threatening him. She only "married' him to save him from being hanged--and Gringoire realizes "I am not so triumphant in love affairs as I imagined." Later he asks here how she escaped from Quasimodo's clutches, and she shudders with horror, then smiles, but doesn't tell him how.
87ff W now get some backstory on Pierre Gringoire: his father was hanged and his mother was murdered, orphaning him at six. "I was good for nothing, and therefore set up for a poet." And then he met the Archdeacon of Notre Dame who saw to his education. [The way Gringoire narrates his life story sounds preposterous and hilariously exaggerated to the reader; note also his over-exaggerated, grandiose, SAT-word speaking style. La Esmeralda asks him in a complete non-sequitur: "Phoebus, what does that mean?" and then she drops one of her bracelets. When Gringoire stoops to pick it up, she and the goat vanish from the room.
Book III
Chapter 1: Notre Dame
[This chapter is a joy to read, you really get a sense of the author's aesthetic, and his deep disappointment at how "modernity" in his era completely fails to respect the beautiful medieval architecture of his city, burying it under Englightenment-era trash architecture.]
90ff Comments from the author here about the foolish unimprovements made to Notre Dame: the author critiques the removal of statues, the addition of "that tasteless and heavy door of wood;" on how the "architects, the artists, of our own days" [this is sarcasm, obviously] "bedaubed" this beautiful cathedral with yellow plaster, committing various ravages and disfigurings of Gothic architecture. [This passage is actually quite striking: Victor Hugo was kind of an anti-Enlightenment, anti-modernity guy long before it was cool; he saw the beauty of the Middle Ages and hated that it was violated by the so-called aesthetics of the early Enlightenment. He saw it!] "It is thus that the wonderful art of the Middle Ages has been treated in almost every country, especially in France." Mournful comments here on the "decline of architecture." [Once again I shudder to imagine what Victor Hugo would think of the Pompidou Centre or the various Brutalist architecture that populates cities all over the world today. No matter how bad things get, they can always get worse.]
93 [Wonderful quote here]: "Thus, to sum up the points to which we have directed attention, three kinds of ravages nowadays disfigure Gothic architecture: wrinkles and warts on the epidermis--these are the works of Time; wounds, contusions, fractures, from brutal violence--these other works of revolutions from Luther to Mirabeau; mutilations, amputations, dislocations of members, restorations--this is the barbarous Greek and Roman work of professors, according to Vitruvius and Vignole. That magnificent art which the Vandals produced the academies have murdered. With Time and revolutions, whose ravages are, at any rate, marked by impartiality and grandeur, has been associated a host of architects, duly bred, duly certified, and duly sworn, despoiling with the discernment of bad taste, substituting the chicories of Louis XV for the Gothic lacework, for the greater glory of the Parthenon. This is truly the ass's kick to the expiring lion; the old oak throwing out its leafy crown, to be bitten, gnawed, and torn by caterpillars." [This quote will resonate beautifully with anyone who's appalled and disgusted by modernity's worst aspects, especially in art and architecture. At once Hugo makes you feel less alone, while it also makes you realize this problem is absolutely nothing new: it long predates our generation and will long follow it.]
94ff Now the author's own commentary on the architecture of Notre dame, "a transition edifice" by his words; this section is a fascinating discussion of the history of architecture! Also further on here there's a noteworthy set of expressions of what architecture actually means, semiotically speaking: "the offspring of nations," "the deposit left by a people," "the residuum of the successive evaporations of human society." "Time is the architect, the nation is the mason."
Chapter 2: A Bird's-Eye View of Paris
97ff Now a view of Paris from the top of the towers of Notre Dame; discussion of the birth of the city on the Isle de la Cité; on the city's expansion; on various Kings' building and enclosures that were overrun by more and more houses as the city kept growing outward. "Thus, so far back as the fifteenth century, to come down no farther, Paris had already worn out the three concentric circles of walls" built around it. Also on the latest wall, built by Louis XV, "a miserable wall of mud and dirt, worthy of the kind who constructed it and the poet by whom it was celebrated: "La mur murant Paris rend Paris murmurant." [The wall walling Paris makes Paris murmur]
100 "The King never grants any boon but what is wrung from him by the people."
102ff Extended extended discussion of what Paris looks like in those days. [Admittedly the novel has lost a little of its pacing here.]
113ff Here Victor Hugo gives a compressed historical timeline of the city's architectural character in 1482 as "a city formed of two strata only, the bastard Roman and the Gothic, for the pure Roman had long before disappeared... As for the Celtic stratum, no specimens of that were now to be found even in digging wells. Fifty years later, when the Renaissance came to blend with this unity so severe and yet so diversified the dazzling luxury of its fantasies and its systems, its extravagancies of Roman arches, Greek columns, and Gothic ellipses... Paris was perhaps still more beautiful, though less harmonious to the eye and the mind... Since that time the great city has been daily increasing in deformity."
115 "Our fathers had a Paris of stone; our children will have a Paris of plaster."
Book IV
Chapter 1: The Foundling
119ff A foundling is left at Notre Dame, and some nuns, breaking their vow of silence, see how ugly the infant is: "What will the world come to if that is the way they make children nowadays?" one of them says. Another character walks by and says "A foundling! Found apparently on the bank of the Phlegethon." [Heh] A priest is been listening to these comments, all insulting, and he steps forward and says, "I adopt this child," and carries him away. One of the nuns calls the priest, Claude Frollo, a sorcerer.
Chapter 2: Claude Frollo
122ff Background on Claude Frollo: he came from a petty nobility family, he went through a theological education then proceeded to medicine and liberal arts, learning Latin, Greek and Hebrew, "the triple sanctuary at that time but little frequented."
124ff When Claude is 19 his parents die from the plague, leaving him and his infant brother, whom he took under his roof. This new responsibility taught him "there was something in the world besides the speculations of the Sorbonne and the verses of Homer; that human beings have need of affection; that life without love is but a dry wheel, creaking and grating as it revolves." It was at this point of his life that Claude finds the ugly infant in the bed of foundlings. "When he had taken the child out of the sack he found him to be, in fact, a monster of deformity." Claude baptizes him and names him Quasimodo. [Note also the pun here, Quasimodo is the name of the Sunday after Easter: Quasimodo Sunday, but also the word Quasimodo means "almost" or "in the manner of," thus suggesting "the incomplete and scarcely finished state of the poor little creature."]
Chapter 3: The Bell-Ringer of Notre Dame
127ff [This is yet another quite beautiful chapter, describing Quasimodo's youth, his nature, his mind, his "conjoinment" with the edifice of Notre Dame, and how he loved the bells of the church more than anything else.] "Now, by the year 1482 Quasimodo had grown up. He had been for several years bell-ringer to the cathedral of Notre Dame, thanks to his foster father, Claude Frollo... In process of time curious attachment grew up between the bell-ringer and the church. Cut off forever from society by the double fatality of his own known parentage and his distorted form, imprisoned from childhood within these impassable boundaries, the poor fellow was accustomed to see no object in the world beyond the religious walls which had taken him under their protection. Notre Dame had been successively, to him, as he grew up and expanded, his egg, his nest, his home, his country, the universe. A sort of mysterious and pre-existent harmony had grown up between this creature and the edifice."
128ff With difficulty, Claude taught Quasimodo to speak, but then becoming a bell-ringer caused him to lose his hearing. "Thus the only gate which nature had left wide open between him and the world was suddenly closed, and for ever."
129ff The author describes the "peculiar medium" of Quasimodo's mind, how he perceives reality differently, in a refracted and confused way, how he was a mischievous savage in some ways; on his incredible strength, although he had no malice in his heart; and although he knew also that he was despised, rejected and hated, and how he adopted this malignity in himself. "He had picked up the weapon with which he had been wounded."
130ff On Quasimodo's love for the bells. "He loved them, he caressed them, he talked to them, he understood them-from the chimes in the steeple of the transept to the great Bell above the porch." The passage that follows describing Quasimodo's joy "on the days of the great peals" is quite moving as well: on how he would talk kindly to the big bell, pat it with his hand "and pity her for the labour she was about to undergo." How he would go into a frenzy as the big bell rang.
133 On how Quasimodo was the soul of Notre Dame. "To such a point was he so that to those who knew that Quasimodo once existed Notre Dame now appears deserted, inanimate, dead. You feel that there is something wanting. This immense body is void; it is a skeleton: the spirit is departed; you see its place, and that is all. It is like a skull: the sockets of the eyes are still there, but the eyes themselves are gone."
Chapter 4: The Dog and His Master
133ff On Quasimodo's absolute dedication and love towards Claude Frollo.
134 "In 1482 Quasimodo was about twenty, Claude Frollo about thirty-six. The one had grown up, the other began to grow old."
134ff At this point Claude had become a very important figure in the church, with 174 parish priests under him; he became an awe-inspiring personage, but his infant brother, Jehan, had grown up "reckless of all restraint, he was a downright devil." He scandalized the same school that Claude had gone to, although he had a good heart. On his various scandals and trouble he gets into, including "his excesses oftimes carried him to the Rue de Glatigny itself." [This was a zone of prostitution and the Paris underworld.]
135ff At the same time Claude, disappointed deeply by his brother, throws himself into his science. "Thus he became more and more learned, and at the same time, by a natural consequence, more and more rigid as a priest, more and more gloomy as a man." The author talks about how Claude enters into deeper and more dangerous aspects of science, getting into alchemy and astrology and other "forbidden knowledge," and word gets around about this, even though he otherwise lives an exemplary life. [Like his brother he has his own addictions, note the reference here to the grave of Nicolas Flamel and Claude Pernelle, this is a reference to 14th century scientists who studied the occult, alchemy, etc. Note also the reference to the Philosopher's Stone.]
Book V
Chapter 1: Ancient Administration of Justice
140ff On Robert d'Estouteville, Provost of Paris, on his tremendous income from the courts as well as various taxes and tolls in throughout the city. He administered justice, and had the "right to burn, to hang, to draw."
143 Note the comment here about the court judge/auditor, Master Florian, who is totally deaf, which actually assists him in giving judgments without appeal.
143ff Jehan Frollo is in court today, mocking everything in a quiet voice to his friend Robin, and to everyone's surprise Quasimodo, bound, is brought into the court. Of course both the judge and Quasimodo are deaf! The court roars with laughter his attempts to interrogate Quasimodo, then [in a bit of a device] the Provost himself happens at this very moment to enter the court in in an ill temper, and he finishes the job here, sentencing Quasimodo to be flogged and then fined for swearing--even though it was Jehan Frollo who actually shouted out the curse. The clerks then says to Master Florian, "The poor fellow is deaf." and the deaf court auditor, not understanding at all, pretends to hear him and simply says, "In this case let him have another hour in the pillory." [This scene is a good satire of the unfairness of the Paris justice system of the day.]
Chapter 2: The Trou aux Rats [The Rathole]
148 "With the reader's permission we shall conduct him back to the Place de Grève, which we yesterday acquitted with Gringoire to follow La Esmeralda." Long discussion here of the tradition of anchorite-type behavior in the old days in Paris and various examples of it, including the Tour-Roland where Madame Roland mourned her husband in a small cell. Then a long discussion of the inscriptions that would be on buildings all over Europe in this day and age, and how this particular location had the two word inscription Tu, ora [pray, thou] and so the people called it "Trou aux Rats" [a close homonym].
Chapter 3: Sister Gudule
152ff The readers eavesdrops on three gossips talking about whoever it is inside the cell of Tour-Roland. One of the women is leading a boy by the hand who's carrying a cake but who can't eat it, we learn that they're bringing it to Sister Gudule, who resides in the cell; the three ladies are shallow as hell, they are all "toppers," topping each other over and over again here, and mocking the third woman, who's from Reims, about how little she knows about Paris; one of the women tells the story about a woman who turned to prostitution and by age twenty, already seen as old, now earning less in prostitution than she earned with her needlework when she was much younger. She then had a daughter, little Agnes, who she brought to gypsies for a fortune telling. The next day the baby was gone, replaced with a hideous, deformed one-eyed little monster; later the gypsies were found some distance away from the city with possible evidence that they had abducted and perhaps killed the baby girl, and maybe even eating her. The mother's hair turned gray the next day and then she disappeared. They then talk about La Esmeralda.
161 [A subtle funny scene here illustrating the solipsism and narrow world view of the "city girls" and how clueless they are of the rest of France]: as the woman from Reims resumes her story she talks about this woman who "did actually go by the gate of Vesle, not only out of the town, but out of the world." One of the women doesn't understand, so the first woman clarifies "The Vesle is our river." "Oh, she drowned!"
162 We learn that the monstrous baby that was substituted for the woman's daughter Agnes was later left as a foundling at Notre Dame, thus he is Quasimodo.
162ff Another subtle scene here: The three women, "the worthy trio" as the author sarcastically calls them, walk right by the Tour-Roland where they were going to donate the cake to the woman in the cell, forgetting the entire purpose of their errand so deep they are in their gossip and pointless conversation. Thus the young boy, seeing that they went right by Sister Gudule's cell, asks his mother "Now may I eat the cake?" And the author writes "Had the boy been less hasty, that is to say, less greedy, he would have waited till the party had returned to the house of Master Andry Musnier..." But it turns out his question simply served to remind the women that they forgot to donate the cake! Also when one of the women goes up to the window to see the recluse, she instantly puts on a fake facial expression of profound pity--even with a tear trembling in her eye. It turns out the recluse, Sister Gudule, is the woman who lost her baby Agnes to the gypsies. They see a tiny pink shoe, that of her lost infant. [It's amazing how this author can draw the reader into a completely different substory in a matter of pages, creating a whole mood and vibe out of whole cloth, and yet still somehow still tie it in organically to the main story. It's quite something, and it shows how pathetic much of modern fiction is by comparison.]
Chapter 4: The Pillory
168ff A crowd gathers at the Place de Grève around the pillory and gallows to see the punishments that were to be given that day; the crowd hoots and laughs as Quasimodo is brought forth, it's even more ironic because the day before he was hailed and proclaimed Pope and Prince of Fools at the very same spot. The city torturer arrives with his whip and Quasimodo is turned on the wheel as he is lashed, at first he lurches in surprise, then tries to free himself from his bonds, but then simply shrink into a despondent stupor. "Thenceforward he stirred not." Next he was put in the stocks for another full hour, again to the malignant mirth of the people watching, and then a discussion of the so-called "public vengeance" aspect of this era's "justice" system, as people would shout insults and occasionally throw stones at him.
173 "The wretched sufferer, finding, like a chained beast, that he could not break his collar, again became quiet; though at times a sigh of rage heaved all the cavities of his chest. Not a blush, not a trace of shame, was to be discerned in his face. He was too far from the social state and two near to the state of nature to know what shame is. Besides, is it possible that disgrace can be felt by one cast in a mould of such extreme deformity? But rage, hatred, despair, slowly spread over that hideous face a cloud which gradually became more and more black, more and more charged with an electricity that darted in a thousand flashes from the eye of the Cyclops." [This is good writing.]
173ff And then Claude Frollo rides up on a mule, but then suddenly turns around and races away. Quasimodo calls for water, he endures more insults and abuse from the populace, and then La Esmeralda arrives and offers him water, which would have been a sublime moment--in fact the populace were themselves moved by it--but then the woman in the cell, the recluse, shouts out "Cursed be thou, spawn of Egypt, Egyptian child-stealer!"
175-6 The chapter ends with the boy from Chapter 3 telling his mother that a dog came and bit a great piece out of the cake, "so I ate some too."
Book VI
Chapter 1: The Danger of Trusting a Goat with a Secret
177ff A group of girls hopes to be selected as ladies of honor for the Daiphinesse Marguerite; on the young Captain Phoebus who has no interest in the woman betrothed to him, Fleur-de-Lys de Gondelaurier. He tries his best to control his tendency to swear as he's in a room with a bunch of well-born ladies.
181 The author describes Phoebus' history here, "he was fond of the tavern" and "he distributed his love so promiscuously that he reserved a very small portion of it for [Fleur-de-Lys]." "The reader must reconcile these things as well as he can; I am but the historian." [The author's voice breaks in here in an interesting way.]
181 We learn that the captain is the soldier who rescued La Esmeralda; she is now dancing in the street outside the window. The Captain calls her, and they speak together in front of the various girls, who look askance at her and make comments about her. Her goat enters the house, and everyone wants to know what is in the leather bag around the goat's neck. "That is my secret." La Esmeralda replies. One of the girls opens the bag and empties out its contents, it is a set of wooden pieces of the alphabet, and the goat arranges the pieces to spell "PHOEBUS." Dramas ensue. The Captain leaves Fleur-de-Lys' house and follows La Esmeralda.
Chapter 2: A Priest and a Philosopher Are Two Different Persons
189ff Claude Frollo observes the scene below from his cell high up in the cathedral, he is staring at La Esmeralda. "...you would have said that Claude Frollo had nothing alive about him but his eyes." He watches her dancing on the street, also seeing a sort of companion nearly, someone who kept the spectators back and stayed with the goat. Claude wonders who that man could be, and he races downstairs--seeing Quasimodo likewise staring at the street while descending. As Claude gets down to the street level, La Esmeralda has already gone, leaving only the man, who is performing tricks for the crowd. It is Pierre Gringoire. Claude motions him to follow him into the church. Gringoire is acting ashamed in the presence of the man who once saw to his boyhood education. Claude tells him "There are many things which I want you to explain." [This is one of those implausible Dickensian coincidences that the story "needs" to have happen--you don't want the reader thinking about it too much because it's so wildly implausible that it strains credulity. Dickens' novels are full of this kind of thing.] Gringoire explains that a band of beggars taught him twenty different herculean feats that he uses to earn his daily bread. "I grant that it is a sorry employment of my intellectual faculties, and that man was not made to play the tambourine and to carry chairs between his teeth. But, my reverend master, in order to live one must get a livelihood."
193ff Claude then asks Gringoire how it is that he's in the company of the Egyptian dancing girl, and Gringoire says "It is because she is my wife and I am her husband." Claude can't believe it. But Pierre then responds "I swear that she allows me no more familiarity than if I were an utter stranger" as he relates the whole story. They talk about La Esmeralda's chastity; that as long as she remains pure the charm around around her neck will help her find her parents. The reader gets a long backstory about La Esmeralda's upbringing, her travels, her ethnicity, her language. The reader learns that La Esmeralda has a notion that they were just two people who hated her: the recluse in the cell of the Tour-Roland and a certain priest; as Gringoire tells this he fails to notice his this disturbed Claude Frollo "not a little." We also learn more about the goat, Djali, who La Esmeralda taught to put together movable letters to form the word Phoebus--in fact she was able to teach the goat to spell out the word Phoebus in just two months. They both wonder what "Phoebus" actually means, whether it is a word or a name: neither of them knows.
196 "Thou wilt swear that thou hast never touched her?"
"What! The goat?"
"No, the girl."
Pierre Gringoire then asks Claude, "How can this concern you?" and Claude "crimsoned like the cheek of a bashful girl." He makes up a sort of excuse and then sends Gringoire away. [One of the reasons this novel strikes me as proto-modern is how Hugo flouts the usual routine of clearly establishing who the good guys and bad guys are early on in the story. In fact it isn't really until this chapter--just about halfway through the book!--that we get some clear intimations that Frollo is not a good guy, and yet we still don't really know for sure who exactly the story's antagonist really is, nor really who the protagonist is either. Hugo is playing with standard novel-type structures and it makes the novel even more fun.]
Chapter 3: The Bells
197ff After Quasimodo's punishment and time in the pillory, the church's bells seem to ring with less spirit, less energy. The author speculates: is this because Quasimodo is filled with rage and vexation? Or was it because Quasimodo was "neglecting" the bells for "a more beautiful and lovely object?"
Chapter 4: Claude Frollo's Cell
199ff Claude's young brother Jehan Frollo bemoans his empty purse. "How cruelly thou hast been gutted by dice, Venus, and the tavern! There thou art, empty, wrinkled, flaccid." [!!!one!] He has an internal debate with himself and then resolves to go to his brother. "I shall get a lecture, but then I shall get a crown."
200 Amusing scene here where Jehan walks by various cook shops, seeing enormous joints of meat roasting in the windows, and "he cast a sheep's eye" at them. [I had to look that one up: it means to cast a foolishly lovesick glance at someone. And for the French geeks, we see an example here where the translator takes a fair amount of license to insert this "sheep's eye" idiom, as it is not at all in the original version. Hugo's original phrase, idiomatic in different ways, is "et il donna un regard d’amour à la cyclopéenne rôtisserie" ("and he gave a loving look/cast a loving glance at the Cyclopean rotisserie") whereas Shoberl renders it in English as "and he cast a sheep's eye at the gigantic apparatus" which seems like a rather weak translation. On one level this doesn't matter at all, but now that I've ingested Douglas Hofstadter's interminable book on language translation I can't seem to unsee these things.]
200 A good example here of how this author instinctively--and subtly, and naturally--teaches the reader all sorts of things inside a great story: Note this parenthetical paragraph, quickly inserted, as Jehan rushes to get money from his brother: "He did not even take the time to throw a stone in passing, as it was then customary, at the mutilated statue of that Perinet Leclerc, who had surrendered the Paris of Charles VI to the English--a crime for which his effigy, defaced by stones and covered with mud, did penance for three centuries, at the corner of the Rues de la Harp and de Bussy, as in a perpetual pillory."
201ff Jehan races to the cathedral, climbs all the stairs, and walks into Claude's unlocked workshop, a cell like something Dr. Faustus would have, with parchments, skulls, manuscripts everywhere, he sees his brother mumbling to himself about alchemy. Jehan waits a while, wondering if his brother is going mad, and then says to himself, "'tis a long while to wait for a crown!" Jehan begins to wonder if his brother has gone mad: he "never dreamed of the lava, deep and furious, which boils beneath the snowy crest of Etna." ["Etna" as in Mount Etna, here refers to Jehan's impression of Claude's calm exterior].
206ff Jehan slips away from the door, and then pretends to walk up to it again, this time stepping noisily so brother doesn't suspect he had seen all this. He receives the expected lecture from his brother, and then repeatedly asked his brother for money, claiming it will be for an act of charity.
210 A Hamlet-like exchange here:
"Jehan, you are on a very slippery descent. Know whither you are going?"
"To the tavern," said Jehan.
"The tavern leads to the pillory."
"'Tis a lantern like any other; and it was perhaps the one with which Diogenes found his man."
"The pillory leads to the gallows."
"The gallows is a balance, which has a man at one end and all the world at the other. "Tis a fine thing to be a man."
"The gallows leads to hell."
"That is a rousing fire."
"Jehan, Jehan, the end will be bad."
"The beginning at least will have been good."
210 Suddenly someone arrives: Claude tells Jehan to hide himself, "and don't so much as breathe." Jehan uses this as an excuse to demand money: "I must have a florin for not breathing." And Claude throws his purse at him.
Chapter 5: The Two Men in Black
210ff As Jehan listens and watches from his hiding place, Claude greets a Master Jacques Charmolue: they have a discussion of alchemy, along with a discussion of information they are attempting to extract from another sorceror, Marc Cenaine via the torture work of Pierrat Torterue, the city torturer. Jacques also asks Claude if he wants to wants him to bring the Bohemian girl in under an indictment: "The archdeacon turned pale as death..."
213ff A striking (and foreshadowing) scene here: a fly gets caught in a spider web in Claude's study; as the spider springs on to the fly and is about to eat it, Jacques moves to set the fly free. Suddenly, Claude grabs his arm with incredible strength, shouting "meddle not with fatality!" and then says to no one in particular, "Oh, yes, yes! This is an emblem of the whole affair. It is young, it flies about, it is merry, it seeks the open air, the spring sunshine, liberty. Oh, yes! But it is stopped at the fatal window; it is caught in the toils of the spider, the hideous spider! Poor dancing-girl! Poor predestined fly! Be quiet, Master Jacques! It is fatality!--Alas, Claude! Thou are the spider. Claude, thou art the fly too! Thou didst seek science, the light, the sunshine; thou desiredst only to reach the free air, the broad daylight of eternal truth; but while darting toward the dazzling window, which opens into the other world, a world of brightness, intelligence and science, blind fly, silly doctor, thou didst not perceive that subtle spider's web, spread by Fate between the light and thee; thou rushedst into it, and now, with mangled head and broken wings, thou strugglest in the iron grip of fatality!" [We saw a chapter ago how shocked Jehan was to see his normal-seeming brother involved in occult activities. Here, the reader is even more shocked at this sudden reveal of Claude's self-evidently evil scheming--and perhaps worst of all, his internal demons.]
Chapter 6: Results of Seven Oaths Sworn in the Open Street
215ff As Jehan is leaving the church he hears a volley of oaths... and it's his friend Captain Phoebus, leaving the gathering and following after La Esmeralda. "I have just come from those affected prudes, and whenever I leave them I have my throat full of oaths; I am forced to turn them out or they would choke me outright--blood and thunder!" Jehan shows the captain his money and they go to drink. Claude, hearing the name Phoebus decides to follow them, and then overhears them talking about duels, harlots, and "drunken frolics. And then, hearing the sound of a tambourine in the distance, Phoebus tells Jehan he wants to avoid "La Smeralda" in public: "I always forget her devil of a name." Phoebus then whispers something into Jehan's ear and Jehan asks him "Are you sure she will come?" Phoebus answers, "You must be silly Jehan. Not the least doubt of it." Claude continues to follow them. [Yet again another Dickensian-grade coincidence right here--a rare triple coincidence: that Jehan and Phoebus happen to be friends in the first place, that they happen to meet right here and now, and that Claude happens to listen in and find out--to his shock--that this is the man La Esmeralda's mystery word "Phoebus" refers to. Dickensian grade!]
Chapter 7: The Goblin-Monk
219ff At La Pomme d'Eve, the celebrated tavern; there's carousing inside while Claude nervously walks to and fro outside. Jehan and Phoebus emerge, drunk, Jehan the more so. Jehan falls down asleep, Phoebus helps Jehan rest his head on some garbage on the street, and then heads off, as Claude follows him.
222 The author breaks the fourth wall yet again right here: "Like them we will leave Jehan sleeping beneath the canopy of heaven, and speed after them, if it so please the reader." Phoebus walks on the deserted streets of Paris at night and realizes he is being followed. This figure in Black approaches him, for some reason filling him with horror. The man grabs Phoebus' arm, and then shocks him by shouting out his name, and shocks him still more by saying "You have an assignation this evening" and giving him all the details of it. Phoebus is astounded, and tells him (his butchered version of) her name: "La Smeralda." Claude shouts "You liest!" at him, and the captain becomes so angry that he draws his sword and demands a duel; eventually the two of them settle down as Claude gives him money on condition that Phoebus take Claude with him and conceal him in a corner, to make sure the girl really is who he says he is.
Chapter 8: Utility of Windows Looking Toward the River
226 Yet another fourth wall breaking, in a fun way here: "Claude Frollo--for we presume that the reader, more intelligent than Phoebus, has discovered that the specter-monk was no other than the Archdeacon..."
226ff It turns out that it really is La Esmeralda who has the assignation with Phoebus, but she manipulates him by discussing her chastity, her desire to find her parents; she uses some excellent reverse psychology on him as she confesses her love to him, talks about them getting married, all the while protecting her virtue and fending off his aggressive advances. Suddenly Claude emerges from his hiding place, holding a dagger. La Esmeralda faints, and then the next thing the reader knows is she comes to herself surrounded by soldiers, carrying away the captain bathed in blood; the priest has vanished. One of the soldiers says to another, "'Tis a sorceress who has stabbed a captain." [The plot suddenly thickens quite a bit right here.]
Book VII
Chapter 1: The Coin Transformed into a Dry Leaf
233ff Pierre Gringoire is worried about La Esmeralda: she has been missing for a month, and even her goat is missing. The only thing he is worried about is her chastity. He hears about a trial for the murder of an officer, and learns to his horror that La Esmeralda is on trial for this crime. A witness is called: it is the old woman Falourdel, who runs the establishment where Phoebus had his assignation with La Esmeralda She claims that she heard a scream, and a specter in the habit of a priest ran off and jumped into the river, and then soldiers arrived and found the captain dead, a dagger in his bosom, while La Esmeralda lay there "shamming [faking] death."
238ff La Esmeralda is called to the stand; she begs to know whether Phoebus lives or not and she is told he is dying; also the goat Djali is even brought in as a second prisoner. "Nothing was more common in those days than to indict animals for sorcery." The court actually asks the goat what the hour is and it answers correctly, but it turns out that in order to make this "sorcery" all the more obvious, Jacques Charmolue was actually cueing the goat with a tambourine just as La Esmeralda would do on the streets. All the while she sits either silently or saying, "Oh, sirs, have pity upon me! I am but a poor girl." Jacques Charmolue then orders her to be tortured.
Chapter 2: Sequel to the Coin Transformed into a Dry Leaf
241ff La Esmeralda is led into the torture chamber; she is "stupified" by all the accoutrements there. She proclaims her innocence but the minute they begin torturing her she shrieks, confesses and wishes for death. Her spirit broken, she confesses to both sorcery and the murder of Captain Phoebus.
Chapter 3: Conclusion of the Coin Transformed into a Dry Leaf
246ff Court resumes, proctor Jacques Charmolue performance of theatrical closing argument, condemning La Esmeralda and the goat. During the proceedings, Djali the goat imitates and pantomimes the proctor's gesticulations. The court decides: La Esmeralda is condemned to be hanged.
Chapter 4: Lasciate Ogni Speranza [abandon all hope]
248ff La Esmeralda is led into the lower levels of a dungeon [apparently below Notre Dame, as we'll soon see]. "Poor girl! She could not have stirred the smallest of the stones of which it was built. There needed not such a profusion of misery and torture to crush so frail a creature." She is visited by a hooded figure who asks "Do you know why you are here?" He lowers his hood and she sees it is the priest, Claude Frollo. She asks him, "What have I done to you? Why should you hate me thus? What grudge have you against me?" Frollo answers, "I love thee!" and then tells a whole story about his attempts to escape the "influence" of women, all of which came to naught when he first saw La Esmeralda and became spellbound by her.
256 The reader learns here that Claude had attempted to abduct La Esmeralda, but Captain Phoebus was the one that rescued her. [This was the scene that Pierre Gringoire had seen when he saw Quasimodo attempting to capture her.]
257ff [It's amazing here to see Claude goes on here about "all that I have suffered" because of La Esmeralda, given her situation right now. This is classic, clinical-grade DARVO-type behavior right there! Just like when the narcissist tells you "Look what you made me do!"] He throws himself at her feet and implores her to go with him. She asks again what became of Captain Phoebus, and he responds that he must be dead. La Esmeralda rushes at him, enraged, and thrusts him away: "Begone, murderer! Leave me to die!... Nothing shall bring us together, not even hell itself." Claude slinks away.
Chapter 5: The Mother
260ff Now the reader is at the Recluse's cell at Tour-Roland: she's experiencing even worse grief than normal today. She overhears some boys walking by, talking about the hanging of an Egyptian today; she springs to the window of her cell, sees the Archdeacon, and asks who will be hanged. Frollo says I know not, and then she learns that her lost child would have been the same age as La Esmeralda. She says to the priest, "I told her what she would come to."
Chapter 6: Three Human Hearts Differently Constituted
264ff "Phoebus, meanwhile, was not dead. Men of that kind are hard to kill." It turns out that Frollo, when he said "he must be dead," actually knew nothing about the matter, he only hoped it were true. But note that his survival "had not in the least affected the judicial proceedings. Justice in those days cared but little about propriety and accuracy in a criminal process; provided that the accused were hung, it was perfectly satisfied." Didn't even know what to think about the whole affair he thought he would look ridiculous if he got involved, and probably she was a sorceress. Note also this quote about Phoebus and his recovery: "...nature had amused herself in saving the patient in spite of the doctor's teeth."
266ff Phoebus decides to visit his betrothed, Fleur-de-Lys. It's pretty funny how she asks him, "What have you been doing with yourself these two months?" and he completely dodges the question, saying "I swear, You are so beautiful an archbishop could not help falling in love with you." [Game recognizes game!] He indicates that he was wounded and then makes up a story about having a duel with someone, and then gets kind of bogged down in this lie as his "imagination was not the most fertile." He learns from Fleur-de-Lys that there is going to be a hanging this morning.
269ff The two of them go out onto the balcony--Fleur-de-Lys is attempting here to escape Phoebus' rather forward amorous efforts as her mother had left them alone. They happen to see La Esmeralda led out to do her penance before her execution. Phoebus is shocked to see La Esmeralda: he attempts to play it down and not remember her but Fleur-de-Lys' jealousy is awakened.
272ff La Esmeralda is an absolute wreck, overwhelmed by despair as she's carried out through the crowd as men from the church perform the mass for the dead. The executioner's man hears her repeating the word "Phoebus"; as she is led forward she sees Claude Frollo. He whispers to her, "I can even yet save thee!" She replies, "Go to the fiend, thy master, or I will inform of thee!" He tells her, "They will not believe thee."
276 As La Esmeralda is led to the gallows, she sees Phoebus in the distance and screams with joy. But she merely sees him mutter something to Fleur-de-Lys and then hastily go inside, closing the window. Suddenly, Quasimodo, who was watching from an elevated place on the porch of Notre Dame, races down, swinging from a rope onto the platform, knocking the two executioners down with his fists, and carries off La Esmeralda. In one bound he was in the church yelling "Sanctuary!" at the top of his lungs. The mob quickly picks up the chant, repeating "Sanctuary! Sanctuary!" as once inside Notre Dame, "the prisoner was secure from molestation."
278 "...at that moment Quasimodo was really beautiful."
Book VIII
Chapter 1: A High Fever
280ff Claude Frollo races out of the cathedral and wanders around the city. "He saw plainly into the recesses of his soul, and shuddered." He pictures to himself the happiness he would have found "if she had not been a Bohemian, if he had not been a priest, if Phoebus had not existed. ...he would rather see her in the hands of the hangman than in the arms of the captain. But so acute was his anguish that at times he tore off his hair by handfuls." [This is a textbook example of narcissistic, gamma behavior right here. If he can't have her, nobody else can either.]
283 "It is remarkable that, during the whole of this torture, he never conceived any serious idea of putting an end to himself. The wretched man was tenacious of life. It is possible that he really saw hell gaping before him."
285ff He wanders through the town, practically hallucinating, seeing a confused chaos of objects blending into each other. He actually sees his own brother, and lays down, pretending he's drunk to avoid him. He arrives back at the church again, searching for Quasimodo, but instead sees what he imagines to be the ghost of La Esmeralda and her goat. He hears a voice repeating in his ear "A spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up." [This is a verse from the Book of Job, 4:15, from one of the speeches of Job's friend and dialectical partner Eliphaz.]
Chapter 2: The Sanctuary
289ff Comments here on the church having "right of sanctuary" as a counter-reaction against the power and impunity the king. Note that if the prisoner or criminal set foot out of the sanctuary, he would be condemned all over again. "...in this way the sanctuary was a prison as well as any place that bore the name." Quasimodo had placed La Esmeralda in a small cell where fugitives could stay, she was still sufficiently out of it after the awful experiences of the day that she thought she had actually been executed, and that Quasimodo was a deformed spirit who was bearing her away. She comes to herself and realizes that she's alive, that there's no longer a noose around her neck, and that Phoebus was alive but no longer loved her. She asks Quasimodo "Why did you save me?" He brings her clothes and his own dinner and his own bed for her to sleep on. She is horrified by how hideous he looks. He responds "I frighten you, I see... In the daytime you shall stay here; at night you can walk about all over the church. But stir not a step out of it either by night or by day, or they will catch you and kill you, and it will be the death of me." She realizes her goat Djali is there with her too, and she cries with a mix of joy and sorrow.
Chapter 3: A Human Heart in a Form Scarcely Human
293ff La Esmeralda wakes and sees the face of Quasimodo checking in on her; she is horrified by it. She takes him by the arm and brings him back after he slinks away. She looks at him; he looks at her. "Every moment she discovered in Quasimodo some new deformity... At the same time an air of such sadness and gentleness pervaded his whole figure that she began to be reconciled with it." She learns he is deaf. He tells her, "Never till now was I aware how hideous I am. When I compare myself with you I cannot help pitying myself, poor unhappy monster that I am! I must appear to you like a beast." She asks him why he saved her, and he reminds her that she brought him water when he was in the pillory. He gives her a whistle to call him with.
Chapter 4: Earthenware and Crystal
[One thing that's odd about La Esmeralda here is that she hasn't given a single thought to Pierre Gringoire for at least 100 pages.]
295ff Time passes, and La Esmeralda begins to recover emotionally. She still loves Phoebus, but she also wonders who the woman was who was with him: she concludes it is his sister. Discussion here also of the environs of the church, the chanting of the priests, the responses of the congregation, the bursting out of the organ and the bells. Some of her cheerfulness returns, but she is also continually repulsed by Quasimodo, she can't help herself but show aversion whenever he appears.
299ff Quasimodo learns about Phoebus and offers to go and fetch him for La Esmeralda, as he leaves to do so he stifles sobs. Quasimodo waits for a long time outside Fleur-de-Lys's family's mansion, there is a wedding this evening and the Phoebus "came not forth." Finally, outside the balcony window the Phoebus and a woman come out and kiss, as Quasimodo witnessed from below. "He thought of the miserable portion which Providence had allowed to him; that woman, love, and its pleasures, would be for ever passing before his eyes, but that he should never do more than witness the felicity of others." Phoebus and the woman are interrupted by an older woman and they all go inside. Finally the Phoebus leaves, and Quasimodo calls out to him. "Follow me, Captain, there is one who would speak with you." They have a back and forth, talking past each other; finally Phoebus says, "Tell her who sent thee that I am going to be married, and that she may go to the devil." Quasimodo tells her it is the Egyptian, and Phoebus is shocked and terrified, assuming she had been dead at least a month or two. Quasimodo fails to persuade Phoebus to come with him however, and when he returns, La Esmeralda is angry with him and sends him away. "From that day he avoided the presence of the Egyptian. He ceased to come to her cell."
Chapter 5: The Key of the Porte Rouge
304ff Claude Frollo learns not only that La Esmeralda is alive but also Phoebus as well. He shuts himself up in his cell, opening the door to no one, not even his brother. One night, in psychological agony, he goes to obtain the key of the Porte Rouge, which will let him into the cloisters [and give him access to La Esmeralda's cell.]
Chapter 6: Sequel to the Key of the Porte Rouge
306ff La Esmeralda awakens and sees Claude staring at her through the window; he comes into her room and clasps her in his arms; she tries to fight him off but then finds Quasimodo's whistle and uses it; Quasimodo is instantly there, wielding a blade above his head. The priest couldn't say anything to stop Quasimodo or make himself known to him because of his deafness. But because Quasimodo did not want to get blood on La Esmeralda, then he drags the priest by the leg out of the cell... and then sees who it is.
308 "The Egyptian, who had advanced to the threshold of the cell, saw with surprise the actors suddenly exchanging characters. It was now the priest's turn to threaten, Quasimodo's to supplicate." Quasimodo offers his cutlass to the priest, but La Esmeralda suddenly snatches it away and raises the blade at Claude. Claude runs away to his cell and "repeated the fatal phrase, 'Nobody shall have her!'"
Book IX
Chapter 1: Gringoire has Several Capital Ideas One After Another in the Rue de Bernadins
310ff Gringoire now knows that La Esmeralda has taken sanctuary in Notre Dame; he continues to perform "mountebank tricks" for a livelihood as he works on a legal protest ("a memorial") against the bishop of Paris [the translator uses the word "elucubrate" here [!], as in "he elucubrated a memorial," a wonderful literal translation of the original French verb élucubrer, which means "to work out a complicated idea at night." Holy cow, what a glorious, glorious verb!] Gringoire is walking the streets admiring the architecture of the church when Archdeacon Claude Frollo puts his hand heavily upon his shoulder. Pierre finds Claude greatly altered, pale his hair almost white. [Gringoire's character is interesting--there's a certain "goodness" in him, but also an intriguing mix of pathos and bathos too. And he's a totally half-baked intellectual too as he tries his best to make intellectual-sounding comments about architecture to his former master; he comes off as an inch deep on everything.]
314ff Eventually Claude asks Pierre about La Esmeralda, telling Pierre that she will be hanged in three days, as she will be extracted from her sanctuary in Notre Dame. He asks Pierre to come to the church, and exchange clothes with her so that she can escape in his clothes and he can remain in the church in hers. Pierre begs off, worrying that he would be hanged, but then has his own idea; Claude, increasingly frustrated with him ("Eternal babbler! What is thy proposal?"), hears him out as he whispers his plan to him. They agree to meet tomorrow.
Chapter 2: Become a Vagabond
319ff Claude returns to his cell, finding Jehan waiting for him. He again asks for money and Claude refuses him, but then derisively throws his purse at him. "That is the last money thou shalt have from me." [It turns out this is literally true...]
Chapter 3: L'Allegro
321ff Back at the tavern of the Vagabonds, where there's more activity than usual. Plans appear to be afoot to save La Esmeralda, as the group is distributing weapons, even to the children. [This is a great scene here, you can really feel the chaos, the energy, the noise.] Pierre Gringoire sits absorbed in his thoughts in a corner. Jehan is there too, and he shouts out the group's battle plan in a rousing speech: to lay siege to Notre Dame, plunder the cathedral, rescue La Esmeralda from hanging and hang Quasimodo. At midnight they all rush out of the tavern. The horseman of the watch flee, panic-stricken, before this chaotic rabble.
Chapter 4: A Blundering Friend
328ff Quasimodo, unable to sleep, goes up the bell tower and surveys the city; a feeling of apprehension and uneasiness creeps over him as he sees suspicious-looking men prowling about the church. He imagines some plot might be in the works. He sees the Vagabonds in their procession. Note the discussion in the narrator's voice here of how these kinds of uprisings were by no means uncommon in towns of the Middle Ages: there were no police forces like there are today to control the masses; there was no real central regulating power in the city; sections of the city were divided up among different feudal landholders. "There was an endless confusion of watches, under-watches, and counter-watches, in defiance of which robbery, plunder, and sedition, were carried on by main force. Amid this disorder, then, it was no uncommon thing for a part of the rabble to make an attack upon a palace, a mansion, a house, in the most populous parts of the city."
333ff The Vagabonds begin beating on the great door of Notre Dame. Then, suddenly, a gigantic beam falls from the sky, crushing a dozen of them--and injuring even more after it bounced. The Vagabonds instantly scatter, they think that the moon threw this beam at them. They resume working at the door, now using the gigantic beam as a battering ram. Stones begin falling on them, killing and injuring still more of the Vagabonds. The author writes "The reader need not be told that this unexpected resistance, which so exasperated the Vagabonds, proceeded from Quasimodo." In a deus ex machina, there happens to be all sorts of building materials--stones, beams, timber, and even lead--on the roof of the tower, "a complete arsenal," left by workmen engaging in repairs.
337ff Quasimodo has yet another idea: he begins melting lead and running molten lead down the gutters onto the Vagabonds. It hits them just as they were regrouping themselves for a final effort to break down the door. They look up and think the church itself is attacking them. The Vagabond leaders retire to figure out what to do, and then Jehan arrives with a huge ladder from a nearby house. They raise the ladder and Jehan goes up first, leaping onto the balcony, but he is struck with horror as he sees Quasimodo waiting for him. Quasimodo pushes the ladder away from the wall with many other Vagabonds still on it, killing many of them, isolating Jehan on the roof. Jehan fires an arrow from a crossbow and hits Quasimodo in his arm, but "Quasimodo heeded it no more than he would have done the scratch of a pin." He then leaps onto Jehan, completely overpowering him, and removes his armor piece by piece, throwing it off the balcony of the church. He then swings Jehan around his head, until the Vagabonds below "heard a sound like that of a coconut broken by being dashed against a wall." Jayhan's death kindled more fury in the crowd of Vagabonds. "They were filled with shame and indignation at having been so long held in check before a church by a hunchback." They begin climbing the walls in many places. At the same time distant alarm bells throughout the city "were proclaiming that there was something amiss."
Chapter 5: The Retreat Where Monsieur Louis of France Says His Prayers
344ff [This chapter turns out to be a pretty ruthless satire of King Louis XI] King Louis XI happens to be in Paris right now, but is about to leave the day after tomorrow. He is staing in the Bastille; Hugo paints an image of him as old, skinny, wrinkly, not even dressed well. He's with the Flemish envoys, Guillaume Rym and Jacques Coppenole. [Nice job calling back to these characters from the very beginning of the novel and drawing them back into the story.] The king bitches about the cost of maintaining his house and various other aspects of his government, as a clerk reads out various expenditures from a long scroll. "I see about me none but people who fatten upon my leanness. Ye suck crowns out of me at every pore."
352ff The group wanders down to one of the jail cells--that the king is of course also paying for. As the clerk reads out the various features of the jail cells and then recites the cost, the king explodes in anger at the amount of money spent. At the same time a weak voice issues from the cage, begging for mercy from the King: "Mercy, for heaven's sake, sire! I assure your Majesty that it was the Cardinal d'Angers who did the treason, and not I." Everyone is horrified by the prisoner's moans, except the king and clerk, who appear not to hear and simply continue going over the list of expenses. As they leave and shut the door, the king says, "was there not someone in that cage?" Yes, he's told, it was the bishop of Verdun. The king replies, "Not a bad fellow for a bishop!" and then immediately returns to dictating to his clerk. [This is an interesting scene describing the tremendous psychological and moral/ethical remove between a large centralized head of state and the people that head of state governs. The king has an I-It relationship with his country and with the people in it, it could not be any further from an I-Thou relationship.]
356ff Suddenly, someone runs into the chamber and cries out "Sire! Sire! The people of Paris have risen in revolt!" The king, looking sideways at the Flemings, Rym and Coppenhole, shouts at the man "Be silent, or speak low!" As the king learns the details he seems to experience a sense of glee to learn that the rebellion will likely result in still greater royal power, at the expense of the various feudal authorities across the city. "By the faith of my soul, there must come a day when there shall be in France but one king, one liege-lord, one judge, one headsman as in Paradise there is but one God!" [There are multiple layers of irony here: first, the very people the king is utterly indifferent to are about to rise up and revolt--just as he commits a particularly gross act of indifference to the Bishop in the cell. But second, this revolt--because it is at the expense of one of the main feudal landholders in the city--is actually going to lead to the king centralizing still more power.]
359ff Two captured members of the mob are brought before the king--and one of them is Pierre Gringoire. (!) He is nearly taken away, but he holds forth--for one and a half full pages--flattering and begging the kind of mercy in his stilted, overly-literate language. "What a stain upon Alexander, if he had hanged Aristotle!" The king absent-mindedly scratches his knees and then says, "Bah! Let the varlet go!"
363ff [Another weirdly satirical scene here]: The king calls his doctor, saying he's in great pain; the doctor [who, in Hugo's words "had nothing to live upon but the ill health of the King"] tells him that he's very ill and his illness might prove fatal in less than three days. The two men then have a bizarre negotiation for a tremendous sum of money, and then the doctor gives him a cure to rub on his loins.
366 The reader now learns about Olivier, a sort of cringing, Talleyrand-type figure.
367ff The king now has a debate with the two Flemish men, Rym and Coppenole about the seriousness of this riot; the Flemish men try to tell him that is more serious than he thinks, but the king isn't convinced. They have a cynical discussion of the nature of insurrections and revolts, how they can be fomented, how they can be used to the regime's own ends, etc.
369ff Olivier returns and tells the king that the insurrection is much more serious: it is against the king himself. The king threatens to have his head right away, but then Oliver tells him coldly the story of La Esmeralda. The king then responds, "Exterminate the people, and hang the sorceress."
Chapter 6: A Narrow Escape
372ff Gringoire runs into Claude after barely escaping the King's clutches; Claude has a key to the church's towers.
Chapter 7: Châteaupers to the Rescue
373ff "The reader probably recollects the critical situation in which we left Quasimodo." [Heh, you think?] Quasimodo defends La Esmeralda desperately, never once thinking of himself; but then Phoebus leads a group of soldiers to Notre Dame and shows no quarter to the Vagabonds, crushing them. Note the vivid scene here of one of the lead Vagabonds Clopin Trouillefou, welding a huge scythe. "At each stroke he formed about him a large semicircle of dismembered limbs." The battle now over, Quasimodo races to La Esmeralda's cell, but he finds it empty.
Book X
Chapter 1: The Little Shoe
376ff La Esmeralda had been sleeping when the attack began, but all the noise awakens her. She prays to the Christian God despite being an "idolater and pagan" in Hugo's words: "For, be one's creed what it will, there are moments in life when one is always of the religion of the temple near which one happens to be." A man with a lantern arrives at her cell, it is Pierre Gringoire. But at his side is a silent figure in black. La Esmeralda asks Gringoire who he is, and he answers "He is my friend." The three leave the church out through a back exit and escape to a boat tied along in the river. Gringoire babbles nervously, and ultimately reveals Claude's identity by referring to "your hunchback."
382 It becomes clear here that Gringoire loves Djali the goat even more than La Esmeralda, he's actually genuinely worried about what might happen to Djali if they're captured.
384ff The three of them reach land near the Place de Grève. Pierre goes one way with the goat while Claude drags La Esmeralda toward the gallows and says, "Choose between us." She runs to it and says "I feel less horror of that than of you." He resumes DARVO-ing her; she resists, calling him a murderer and saying "Thou art old, Thou art ugly! Go thy way!" Claude responds, "Die then!" and then drags her toward the Tour-Roland, shouting out to Sister Gudule in her cell to hold La Esmeralda fast while Claude fetches the sergeants. [Creepy, vivid description here from Hugo]: "...the recluse held her with supernatural force. The bony fingers meeting round her wrist clasped her as firmly as if that hand had been riveted to her arm. More efficient than a chain or a ring of iron, it was a pair of living and intelligent pincers issuing from a wall."
390ff La Esmeralda cries out, "Alas! You seek your child, and I seek my parents!" Sister Gudule shows her the little shoe. Shocked, La Esmeralda opens the little bag that she wears around her neck and pulls out a matching shoe. Sister Gudule realizes that this is her child. She grabs a paving stone and shatters the bars on the window, and "frantic with joy," draws La Esmeralda into the cell. Soldiers advance towards them while La Esmeralda tells her newly-discovered mother that she is condemned to die. Sister Gudule laughs maniacally. "To lose her for fifteen years, and then to find her for a single minute!... God Almighty would not permit such doings." She hides La Esmeralda in her cell and (barely!) manages to persuade the soldiers that the girl had escaped. [The author builds some solid suspense here as her lies, stories and oaths are considered and questioned by the king's officials, and also confirmed--and in some cases contradicted--by different soldiers. This scene is well-sculpted.] But then when La Esmeralda hears Phoebus' voice giving orders, she cannot help herself: she cries out, "Phoebus! My Phoebus! Come hither!" But Phoebus had already galloped away, but the king's executioner, Tristan the Hermit, still there, cries out: "Two mice in the trap!"
400ff Sister Gudule continues to deny that La Esmeralda is in the cell while the soldiers fetch tools to break down the walls. Once the walls are broken down the woman tells them all whole story of her daughter's disappearance and return. The men are almost persuaded to set them free, but Tristan the Hermit completely nukes the entire situation by saying simply, "The King wills it." The two of them are dragged from the cell, both to be immediately hanged. A rope is placed around La Esmeralda's neck, and she is wrenched away Sister Gudule as the hangman, carrying La Esmeralda, ascends the ladder to the gallows. Gudule suddenly springs up and viciously bites the hangman's hand; she is brutally thrust back, hits her head, and dies. "The hangman, who had not set down the girl, continued to mount the ladder."
Chapter 2: La Creatura Bella Bianco Vestita
406ff Quasimodo, at the end of the battle against the Vagabonds, is now racing all over the church in a rage looking for La Esmeralda. As the soldiers and Tristan the Hermit enter the church, Quasimodo, not knowing their intentions and of course being deaf, actually leads them to all the possible places of concealment in the church. "Had the unfortunate girl been still there he must inevitably have betrayed her." [Hugo is really doing a great job here violating the reader's expectations; the reader sees all these ironic twists of fate, all these near-escapes, and yet still thinks "maybe there's a chance..." It's quite well done.] Quasimodo concludes that Claude must have taken her away. He then sees Claude walking on an upper level of the cathedral, and follows him.
409 The battle scene against the Vagabonds is quickly cleaned up: "Tristan had already caused the Place to be cleared, and the dead to be thrown into the Seine. Such Kings as Louis XI take care to have the pavements speedily washed after a massacre."
410ff Claude is looking at something in the distance from the upper level of the church. Quasimodo stands behind him, unseen, wondering where La Esmeralda is, but also what Claude is looking at. He sees the gibbet where she is to be hanged, and at that very moment he sees Sister Gudule bite the executioner's hand. He sees La Esmeralda being taken up to the gallows while Claude kneels down to see better, and the hanging begins. Claude bursts out in a demonic laugh: "Quasimodo heard not this laugh, but he saw it." Suddenly he rushes forward and pushes Claude off the roof. Claude's fall is broken partway down, and he finds himself some two hundred feet above the ground, hanging from a slowly bending leaden gutter. Quasimodo, above, cannot take his eyes away from La Esmeralda, while Claude struggles, slowly losing his grip. "There was something frightful in the silence of these two persons. While the Archdeacon, at the distance of a few feet, was experiencing the most horrible agonies, Quasimodo kept his eye fixed on the Grève and wept." [What a genuinely vivid and memorable scene.]
413ff The archdeacon falls to his death; Quasimodo sees La Esmeralda dangling from the gallows.
Chapter 3: The Marriage of Captain Phoebus
413ff [Denouement and wrap-up here] When the Claude's corpse was removed Quasimodo was nowhere to be found; everyone thus assumed that Claude a sorcerer and that either Quasimodo--or the devil himself--smashed his Claude's body to get at his soul, "just as monkeys crack the shell of a nut to get at the kernal." Louis XI also dies the following year. Pierre Gringoire "contrived to save the goat, and to gain applause as a tragic writer," describing himself facetiously as "having come to a tragic end."
414 "Phoebus de Châteaupers likewise 'came to a tragic end': he married."
Chapter 4: The Marriage of Quasimodo
414ff No one knows what became of Quasimodo. Comments here on the vault of Montfaucon, where the bodies of the condemned, including La Esmeralda's, were thrown after execution. A couple of years later, as another body was being removed from the vault to be reinterred elsewhere, two skeletons were found "in a singular posture." One had bits of a dress that had once been white. "The other, by which this first was closely embraced, was the skeleton of a man. It was remarked that the spine was crooked... and it was evident that the person to whom it belonged had not been hanged. He must have come hither and died in the place. When those who found the skeleton attempted to disengage it from that which it held in its grasp it crumbled to dust."
Vocab [The vocabulary list from this book is ludicrously long, further proof that our society has dramatically hypocognized since the 19th century]:
bedizened: to dress or decorate something in a showy, gaudy, or overly ornate manner
camlet: a durable, woven fabric originally made from a blend of camel hair and silk, and later adapted to use wool, cotton, or synthetic fibers
Pharamond: 5th century king of the Franks
rilievos: [the anglicized plural of the Italian word rilievo] refers to relief sculptures
acanthi: the plural form of the word acanthus.An acanthus is a type of flowering plant native to the Mediterranean region, known for its deep, lobed, and often spiny leaves.In architecture and art, it refers to a decorative motif that mimics the leaves of this plant
pursy: having a puckered appearance; purse-proud: proud because of one's wealth, especially in the absence of other distinctions
hypocras: a historical spiced wine made by sweetening red or white wine with honey or sugar and steeping it with spices like cinnamon, cloves, and ginger
varlet: similar to a squire, a servant and sidekick who could be relied on for help when a knight was just starting out. Later, varlet came to have the additional meaning of "rascal or rogue," possibly influenced by
Shakespeare, who frequently used it as an insult
luff: the forward, leading edge of a sailing vessel's sail (such as the main sail). Or, as a nautical verb, it means steering a boat closer into the wind until the sails begin to flap
architrave: an architectural term that refers to either the main horizontal beam resting directly on top of a row of columns, or the decorative molded frame surrounding a door or window
clapperclaw: an archaic English verb meaning to scold, berate, or verbally abuse
epithalamium: (or epithalamion) a song or poem specifically written to celebrate and bless a newly married couple [lit. epi- (upon) and thalamos (nuptial chamber)]
collation: [French] a snack or light meal
rebec: (or rebeck) an ancient wooden stringed instrument, usually featuring three strings and a pear-shaped body carved from a single piece of wood, played with a bow; An early ancestor of the modern violin
crosier: (also crozier) the stylized staff carried by high-ranking Christian bishops as a symbol of pastoral office and authority
paillasse: a straw mattress
phiz: informal slang for physiognomy
"tempus edax, homo edacior": time is voracious, man even more so
intercolumniation: the spacing between the columns in a classical building or colonnade
prothonotary: the chief clerk or principal officer of a court of law
decretal: an authoritative papal letter issued by the Pope that decides a specific point of canon law or church doctrine
Phlegeton: (also Phlegethon) one of the five rivers in the infernal regions of the underworld, along with the rivers Styx, Lethe, Cocytus, and Acheron
Astolpho: fictional character in the various legends of Charlemagne. Astolpho was one of Charlemagne's paladins
scapegrace: a reckless, unprincipled, or habitually mischievous person; an incorrigible scamp or rascal
morion: an open, brimmed helmet worn by European foot soldiers during the 16th and early 17th centuries, famously associated with Spanish conquistadors ["his morion which had received many a dint"]
groining: the projecting curved edge formed by the intersection of two vaults in architecture
hippocras: (also hypocras or ypocras) a sweet, spiced wine popular in medieval and early modern Europe made by steeping spices such as cinnamon, ginger, and cloves, along with sugar or honey, in red or white wine
marchpane: an early version of marzipan
"he cast a sheep's eye": to give a sideways glance, to give a shy, longing, or flirtatious glance toward someone
unzain: (or onzain) a small silver coin minted in France [from the French word onze for eleven]
toper: someone who habitually drinks alcohol, often to excess
shamming: pretending, faking, or simulating a condition, emotion, or appearance in order to deceive others
crepitation: a grating, crackling, or popping sound
chirurgeon: [archaic] a surgeon [lit. "a hand-worker" from Greek]
elucubrate: to work out or carefully craft something (usually a piece of writing or a complex idea) through long, intensive effort, classically done late at night
malison: [archaic] a curse or malediction
mephitic: vapor or gas that is foul-smelling, noxious, or poisonous. A powerful, suffocating, or toxic stench
empanoplied: to be fully armed or outfitted in complete armor or ceremonial regalia
tisane: a beverage made by steeping dried or fresh herbs, flowers, roots, leaves, seeds, or berries in hot water
compére: accomplice, henchman, crony
solfatara: a type of natural volcanic vent emitting hot vapors and sulfurous gases
parallelopipedon: a three-dimensional geometric solid formed by six parallelogram faces; A 3-D box that has been slanted or skewed, where opposite faces are both parallel and equal in dimensions
Media:
Paintings of David Teniers (1610-1690)
Paintings of Salvatore Rosa (1615-1673)
Paintings/prints of Jacques Callot (1592–1635), known for his vivid, often satirical etchings of beggars, hunchbacks, clowns, and the miseries of war
To Read:
Michael Psellus: On the Operation of Demons
Michael Psellus: Fourteen Byzantine Rulers: The Chronographia