THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME

TABLE OF CONTENTS.




VOLUME I.

BOOK FIRST.

I. The Grand Hall
II. Pierre Gringoire
III. Monsieur the Cardinal
IV. Master Jacques Coppenole
V. Quasimodo
VI. Esmeralda

BOOK SECOND.
I. From Charybdis to Scylla
II. The Place de Grève
III. Kisses for Blows
IV. The Inconveniences of Following a Pretty Woman through
the Streets in the Evening
V. Result of the Dangers
VI. The Broken Jug
VII. A Bridal Night

BOOK THIRD.
I. Notre-Dame
II. A Bird's-eye View of Paris

BOOR FOURTH.
I. Good Souls
II. Claude Frollo
III. Immanis Pecoris Custos, Immanior Ipse
IV. The Dog and his Master
V. More about Claude Frollo
VI. Unpopularity

BOOK FIFTH.
I. Abbas Beati Martini
II. This will Kill That

BOOK SIXTH.
I. An Impartial Glance at the Ancient Magistracy
II. The Rat-hole
III. History of a Leavened Cake of Maize
IV. A Tear for a Drop of Water
V. End of the Story of the Cake

CHAPTER I. THE GRAND HALL.



Three hundred and forty-eight years, six months, and nineteen days ago
to-day, the Parisians awoke to the sound of all the bells in the triple
circuit of the city, the university, and the town ringing a full peal.

The sixth of January, 1482, is not, however, a day of which history has
preserved the memory. There was nothing notable in the event which
thus set the bells and the bourgeois of Paris in a ferment from early
morning. It was neither an assault by the Picards nor the Burgundians,
nor a hunt led along in procession, nor a revolt of scholars in the town
of Laas, nor an entry of "our much dread lord, monsieur the king," nor
even a pretty hanging of male and female thieves by the courts of Paris.
Neither was it the arrival, so frequent in the fifteenth century, of
some plumed and bedizened embassy. It was barely two days since the last
cavalcade of that nature, that of the Flemish ambassadors charged with
concluding the marriage between the dauphin and Marguerite of Flanders,
had made its entry into Paris, to the great annoyance of M. le Cardinal
de Bourbon, who, for the sake of pleasing the king, had been obliged
to assume an amiable mien towards this whole rustic rabble of Flemish
burgomasters, and to regale them at his Hôtel de Bourbon, with a very
"pretty morality, allegorical satire, and farce," while a driving rain
drenched the magnificent tapestries at his door.

What put the "whole population of Paris in commotion," as Jehan de
Troyes expresses it, on the sixth of January, was the double solemnity,
united from time immemorial, of the Epiphany and the Feast of Fools.

On that day, there was to be a bonfire on the Place de Grève, a maypole
at the Chapelle de Braque, and a mystery at the Palais de Justice. It
had been cried, to the sound of the trumpet, the preceding evening at
all the cross roads, by the provost's men, clad in handsome, short,
sleeveless coats of violet camelot, with large white crosses upon their
breasts.

So the crowd of citizens, male and female, having closed their houses
and shops, thronged from every direction, at early morn, towards some
one of the three spots designated.

Each had made his choice; one, the bonfire; another, the maypole;
another, the mystery play. It must be stated, in honor of the good sense
of the loungers of Paris, that the greater part of this crowd directed
their steps towards the bonfire, which was quite in season, or towards
the mystery play, which was to be presented in the grand hall of the
Palais de Justice (the courts of law), which was well roofed and walled;
and that the curious left the poor, scantily flowered maypole to shiver
all alone beneath the sky of January, in the cemetery of the Chapel of
Braque.