Notre-Dame De Paris

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Notre-Dame de Paris, by Victor Hugo This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Notre-Dame de Paris The Hunchback of Notre Dame Author: Victor Hugo Translator: Isabel F. Hapgood Release Date: April, 2001 [Etext #2610] Posting Date: November 13, 2009 Last Updated: October 27, 2016 Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS *** Produced by Peter Snow Cao NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS Also known as: THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME By Victor Hugo Translated by Isabel F. Hapgood PREFACE. A few years ago, while visiting or, rather, rummaging about Notre-Dame, the author of this book found, in an obscure nook of one of the towers, the following word, engraved by hand upon the wall:-- _ANANKE_. These Greek capitals, black with age, and quite deeply graven in the stone, with I know not what signs peculiar to Gothic caligraphy imprinted upon their forms and upon their attitudes, as though with the purpose of revealing that it had been a hand of the Middle Ages which had inscribed them there, and especially the fatal and melancholy meaning contained in them, struck the author deeply. He questioned himself; he sought to divine who could have been that soul in torment which had not been willing to quit this world without leaving this stigma of crime or unhappiness upon the brow of the ancient church. Afterwards, the wall was whitewashed or scraped down, I know not which, and the inscription disappeared. For it is thus that people have been in the habit of proceeding with the marvellous churches of the Middle Ages for the last two hundred years. Mutilations come to them from every quarter, from within as well as from without. The priest whitewashes them, the archdeacon scrapes them down; then the populace arrives and demolishes them. Thus, with the exception of the fragile memory which the author of this book here consecrates to it, there remains to-day nothing whatever of the mysterious word engraved within the gloomy tower of Notre-Dame,--nothing of the destiny which it so sadly summed up. The man who wrote that word upon the wall disappeared from the midst of the generations of man many centuries ago; the word, in its turn, has been effaced from the wall of the church; the church will, perhaps, itself soon disappear from the face of the earth. It is upon this word that this book is founded. March, 1831. 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