 Book 4, Chapter 5 of the Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Book 4, Chapter 5. More about Claude Frollo. In 1482 Quasimodo was about twenty years of age, Claude Frollo about thirty-six. One had grown up, the other had grown old. Claude Frollo was no longer the simple scholar of the College of Torch, the tender protector of a little child, the young and dreamy philosopher who knew many things and was ignorant of many. He was a priest, austere, grave, morose, one charged with souls, Monsieur the Archdeacon of José, the bishop's second acolyte, having charge of the two deenies of Monterey and Chateau Four, and one hundred and seventy-four country curacies. He was an imposing and somber personage, before whom the choir boys in Albenin Jacket trembled, as well as the Mashako and the brothers of St. Augustine, and the metutinal clerks of Notre-Dame, when he passed slowly beneath the lofty arches of the choir, majestic, beautiful, with arms folded and his head so bent upon his breast that all one saw of his face was his large bald brow. Dom Claude Frollo had, however, abandoned neither science nor the education of his young brother, those two occupations of his life. But as time went on some bitterness had been mingled with these things which were so sweet. In the long run, says Paul d'Iacré, the best lard turns rancid. Little Jehan Frollo, sir named Dumoulin of the mill because of the place where he had been reared, had not grown up in the direction which Claude would have liked to impose upon him. The big brother counted upon a pious, docile, learned, and honorable pupil. Like the little brother, like those young trees which deceive the gardener's hopes and turn obstinately to the quarter whence they receive sun and air, the little brother did not grow and did not multiply, but only put forth fine, bushy, and luxuriant branches on the side of laziness, ignorance, and debauchery. He was a regular devil and a very disorderly one who made Dom Claude scowl. But very droll and very subtle which made the big brother smile. Claude had confided him to that same college of torchee where he had passed his early years in study and meditation, and it was a grief to him that this sanctuary, formerly edified by the name of Frollo, should today be scandalized by it. He sometimes preached Jehan very long and severe sermons which the latter intrepidly endured. After all, the young scapegrace had a good heart as can be seen in all comedies. But the sermon over he nonetheless tranquilly resumed the course of seditions and enormities. Now it was a beijon or yellow beak as they called the new arrivals at the university whom he had been mauling by way of welcome, a precious tradition which has been carefully preserved to our own day. Again he had set in movement a band of scholars who had flung themselves upon a wine shop in classic fashion. Quasi classico excitati had then beaten the tavern keeper with offensive cudgels and joyously pillaged the tavern, even to smashing in the hog's heads of wine in the cellar. And then it was a fine report in Latin which the sub-monitor of torchee carried piteously to Dom Claude with his dullerous marginal comment. Rixa prima causa vinum optimum potetum. Finally it was said, a thing quite horrible in a boy of sixteen, that his debauchery often extended as far as the rude aglatani. Claude, saddened and discouraged in his human affections, by all this, had flung himself eagerly into the arms of learning, that sister which at least does not laugh in your face, and which always pays you, though in money that is sometimes a little hollow, for the attention which you have paid to her. Hence he became more and more learned, and at the same time as a natural consequence more and more rigid as a priest, more and more sad as a man. There are for each of us several parallelisms between our intelligence, our habits, and our character, which develop without a break and break only in the great disturbances of life. As Claude Frollo had passed through nearly the entire circle of human learning, positive, exterior, and permissible, since his youth he was obliged, unless he came to a halt, ubi, defuit, or bis, to proceed further and seek other elements for the insatiable activity of his intelligence. The antique symbol of the serpent biting its tail is, above all, applicable to science. It would appear that Claude Frollo had experienced this. Many grave persons affirm that, after having exhausted the fos of human learning, he had dared to penetrate into the niphos. He had, they said, tasted in succession all the apples of the tree of knowledge, and whether from hunger or disgust, had ended by tasting the forbidden fruit. He had taken his place by turns, as the reader has seen, in the conferences of the theologians in Sarbonne, in the assemblies of the doctors of art, after the manner of Saint-Hilaire, in the disputes of the decretalists, after the manner of Saint-Martin, in the congregations of physicians at the Holy Water-Font of Notre-Dame, at Coupan-Nostro-Domino. All the dishes permitted and approved, which those four great kitchens called the four faculties could elaborate and serve to the understanding he had devoured, and had been satiated with them before his hunger was appeased. Then he had penetrated further, lower, beneath all that finished, material, limited knowledge. He had perhaps risked his soul, and had seated himself in the cavern at that mysterious table of the alchemists, of the astrologers, of the hermetics, of which Avaroë-Gayom de Paris and Nicolas Flamel hold the end of the Middle Ages, and which extends in the east by the light of the seven-branched candlestick to Solomon, Pythagoras, and Zoroaster. It is, at least, what was supposed, whether rightly or not. It is certain that the arch-deacon often visited the cemetery of the Saint-in-Ossence, where it is true his father and mother had been buried, with other victims of the plague of 1466. But that he appeared far less devout before the cross of their grave than before the strange figures with which the tomb of Nicolas Flamel and Claude Pernell erected just beside it was loaded. It is certain that he had frequently been seen to pass along the Rue de Lombard, and furtively enter a little house which formed the corner of the Rue de Accravan and the Rue Maravot. It was the house which Nicolas Flamel had built, where he had died about 1417, and which, constantly deserted since that time, had already begun to fall in ruins. Zoro greatly had the hermetics and the alchemists of all countries wasted away the walls merely by carving their names upon them. Some neighbors even affirmed that they had once seen, through an air-hole, arch-deacon Claude excavating, turning over, digging up the earth in the two cellars, whose supports had been daubed with numberless couplets and hieroglyphics by Nicolas Flamel himself. It was supposed that Flamel had buried the philosopher's stone in the cellar, and the alchemists, for the space of two centuries, from Magistri to Father Pasifique, never ceased to worry the soil until the house, so cruelly ransacked and turned over, ended by falling into dust beneath their feet. Again, it is certain that the arch-deacon had been seized with a singular passion for the symbolical door of Notre-Dame, that page of a conjuring book written in stone, by Bishop Gaïum de Paris, who has, no doubt, been damned for having affixed so infernal affrontispiece to the sacred poem chanted by the rest of the edifice. Arch-deacon Claude had the credit also of having fathomed the mystery of the Colossus of St. Christopher, and of that lofty enigmatical statue which then stood at the entrance of the vestibule, and which the people in derision called Lancière L'Agrie. But what everyone might have noticed was the interminable hours which he often employed, seated upon the parapet of the area in front of the church, in contemplating the sculptures of the front, examining now the foolish virgins with their lamps reversed, now the wise virgins with their lamps upright, again calculating the angle of the vision of that raven which belongs to the left front, and which is looking at a mysterious point inside the church, where is concealed the philosopher stone if it be not in the cellar of Nicholas Flamel. It was, let us remark in passing, a singular fate for the Church of Notre-Dame at that epic to be so beloved in two different degrees, and with so much devotion, by two beings so dissimilar as Claude and Quasimodo. Beloved by one, a sort of instinctive and savage half-man, for its beauty, for its stature, for the harmonies which emanated from its magnificent ensemble. Beloved by the other, a learned and passionate imagination for its myth, for the sense which it contains, for the symbolism scattered beneath the sculptures of its front, like the first text underneath the second in a palimpsest, in a word for the enigma which it is eternally propounding to the understanding. Furthermore, it is certain that the archdeacon had established himself in that one of the two towers which looks upon the grave, just beside the frame for the bells, a very secret little cell, into which no one, not even the bishop, entered without his leave, it was said. This tiny cell had formerly been made almost at the summit of the tower, among the raven's nests, by Bishop Hugo de Bessonçon, who had wrought sorcery there in his day. What that cell contained no one knew, but from the strand of the terrain at night there was often seen to appear, disappear, and reappear, at brief and regular intervals, at a little dormer window opening upon the back of the tower, a certain red, intermittent, singular light which seemed to follow the panting breaths of a bellows, and to proceed from a flame rather than from a light. In the darkness, at that height, it produced a singular effect, and the good-wife said, There's the archdeacon blowing, hell is sparkling up yonder! There were no great proofs of sorcery in that, after all, but there was still enough smoke to warrant a surmise of fire, and the archdeacon bore a tolerably formidable reputation. We ought to mention, however, that the sciences of Egypt, that necromancy and magic, even the whitest, even the most innocent, had no more inventum'd enemy, no more pitiless denunciator before the gentleman of the officiality of Notre-Dame. Whether this was sincere horror, or the game played by the thief who shouts Stop Thief at all events, it did not prevent the archdeacon from being considered by the learned heads of the chapter as a soul who had ventured into the vestibule of hell, who was lost in the caves of the cabal, groping amid the shadows of the occult sciences. Neither were the people deceived thereby. With any one who possessed any sagacity, Quasimodo passed for the demon, Claude Frollo, for the sorcerer. It was evident that the bell-ringer was to serve the archdeacon for a given time, at the end of which he would carry away the latter's soul by way of payment. Thus the archdeacon, in spite of the excessive austerity of his life, was in bad odor among all pious souls, and there was no devout no so inexperienced that it could not smell him out to be a magician. And if, as he grew older, abysses had formed in his science, they had also formed in his heart. That, at least, is what one had grounds for believing on scrutinizing that face upon which the soul was only seen to shine through a somber cloud. Whence that large bald brow, that head forever bent, that breast always heaving with size? What secret thought caused his mouth to smile with so much bitterness, at the same moment that his scowling brows approached each other like two bulls on the point of fighting? Why was what hair he had left already gray? What was that internal fire which sometimes broke forth in his glance to such a degree that his eye resembled a hole pierced in the wall of a furnace? These symptoms of a violent moral preoccupation had acquired an especially high degree of intensity at the epic when this story takes place. More than once a choir boy had fled in terror at finding him alone in the church, so strange and dazzling was his look. More than once, in the choir, at the hour of the offices, his neighbor in the stalls had heard him mingle with the plain song at Omnem Tonum, unintelligible parentheses. More than once the laundry of the terrain charged with washing the chapter had observed, not without a fright, the marks of nails and clenched fingers on the surplus of Montseur the Archdeacon of José. However, he redoubled his severity and had never been more exemplary. By profession as well as by character he had always held himself aloof from women. He seemed to hate them more than ever. The mere rustling of a silken petticoat caused his hood to fall over his eyes. Upon this score he was so jealous of austerity and reserve that when the dame de Beaujeaux, the king's daughter, came to visit the cloister of Notre-Dame in the month of December 1481 he gravely opposed her entrance, reminding the bishop of the statute of the black book, dating from the vigil of St. Bartolomey, 1334, which interdicts access to the cloister to any woman whatever, old or young, mistress or maid. Upon which the bishop had been constrained to recite to him the ordinance of Legate-Odo, which accepts certain great dames, Alecoe, Magnates Mulieres, Coesine, Scandalo, Vitari, Non-Poussaint. And again the Archdeacon had protested, objecting that the ordinance of the Legate, which dated back to 1207, was interior by 127 years to the black book, and consequently was abrogated in fact by it. And he had refused to appear before the princess. It was also noticed that his horror for Bohemian women and gypsies had seemed to redouble for some time past. He had petitioned the bishop for an edict which expressly forbade the Bohemian women to come and dance and beat their tambourines on the plass of the parvée. And for about the same length of time he had been ransacking the moldy placards of the officialty in order to collect the cases of sorcerers and witches condemned to fire or the rope for complicity in crimes with rams, sows, or goats. CHAPTER VI The Archdeacon and the bell-ringer, as we have already said, were but little loved by the populace, great and small, in the vicinity of the cathedral. When Claude and Quasimodo went out together, which frequently happened, and when they were seen traversing in company, the valet behind the master, the cold, narrow, and gloomy streets of the block of Notre-Dame, more than one evil word, more than one ironical quaver, more than one insulting jest greeted them on their way, unless Claude Frollo, which was rarely the case, walked with head upright and raised, showing his severe and almost august brow to the dumb-founded jeerers. Both were in their quarter, like the poets of whom Ranier speaks. All sorts of persons run after poets, as warblers fly shrieking after owls. Sometimes a mischievous child wrist his skin and bones for the ineffable pleasure of driving a pin into Quasimodo's hump. Again a young girl, more bold and saucy than was fitting, brushed the priest's black robe, singing in his face the sardonic diddy. Nitch, nitch, the devil is caught. Sometimes a group of squalid old crones, squatting in a file under the shadow of the steps to a porch, scolded noisily as the archdeacon and the bell-ringer passed, and tossed them this encouraging welcome with a curse. Hum! There's a fellow whose soul is made like the other one's body! For a band of schoolboys and street-urchans, playing hopscotch, rose in a body and saluted him classically with some cry in Latin. Ia, Ia, Claudius come Claudo! But the insult generally passed unnoticed both by the priest and the bell-ringer. Quasimodo was too deaf to hear all those gracious things, and Claude was too dreamy. And of Book 4, Chapter 6, Book 5, Chapter 1 of the Hunchback of Notre-Dame, by Victor Hugo. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Book 5, Chapter 1, Abbas Beati Martini. Dom Claude's fame had spread far and wide. It procured for him at about the epic when he refused to see Madame de Beaujeu, a visit which he long remembered. It was in the evening. He had just retired, after the office, to his cannon cell in the cloister of Notre-Dame. This cell, with the exception possibly of some glass files, relegated to a corner and filled with a decidedly equivocal powder, which strongly resembled the alchemist's powder of projection, presented nothing strange or mysterious. There were indeed, here and there, some inscriptions on the walls, but they were pure sentences of learning and piety, extracted from good authors. The Archdeacon had just seated himself by the light of a three-gedded copper lamp before a vast coffer crammed with manuscripts. He had rested his elbow upon the open volume of a norious de-autune, de predesta natione et libiro arbitrio, and he was turning over, in deep meditation, the leaves of a printed folio which he had just brought, the sole product of the press which his cell contained. In the midst of his reverie there came a knock at his door. "'Who's there?' cried the learned man, in the gracious tone of a famished dog, disturbed over his bone. "'A voice without,' replied. "'Your friend, Jacques Poitier!' He went to open the door. It was, in fact, the king's physician, a person about fifty years of age whose harsh physiognomy was modified only by a crafty eye. Another man accompanied him. Both wore long, slate-colored robes, furred with miniver, girded and closed, with caps of the same stuff and hue. Their hands were concealed by their sleeves, their feet by their robes, their eyes by their caps. "'God help me, messieurs,' said the Archdeacon, showing them in. I was not expecting distinguished visitors at such an hour. And while speaking in this courteous fashion he cast an uneasy and scrutinizing glance from the physician to his companion. "'Tis never too late to come and pay a visit to so considerable alerted man as Dom Claude Frollo did Tierschapet,' replied Dr. Poitier, whose French comte accent made all his phrases drag along with the majesty of a train-robe. They're then ensued between the physician and the Archdeacon, one of those congratulatory prologues which, in accordance with custom, at that epoch, preceded all conversations between learned men, and which did not prevent them from detesting each other in the most cordial manner in the world. However, it is the same nowadays. Every wise man's mouth complimenting another wise man is a vase of honeyed all. Claude Frollo's felicitations to Jacques Poitier bore reference, principally, to the temporal advantages which the worthy physician had found means to extract in the course of his much envied career from each malady of the king, an operation of alchemy much better and more certain than the pursuit of the philosopher's stone. In truth, Monsieur le docteur Poitier, I felt great joy on learning of the bishopric given your nephew, my reverence in your Pierre-Verset. Is he not Bishop of Amiens? Yes, Monsieur, Archdeacon, it is a grace and mercy of God. Do you know that you made a great figure on Christmas Day at the beat of your company of the Chamber of Accounts, Monsieur, President? Vice President, Dom Claude, alas, nothing more. How is your superb house in the rue Saint-André-de-Arc coming on? Tis allouvre. I love greatly the apricot tree which is carved on the door with this play of words. Alabra Cotier, sheltered from reefs. Alas, Master Claude, all that masonry costeth me dear. In proportion, as the house is erected, I am ruined. Ho! Have you not your revenues from the jail and the bailiwick of the palais and the rents of all the houses, sheds, stalls, and booths of the enclosure? Tis a fine breast to suck. My Castellania Poissy has brought me nothing this year. But your toes of Trielle, of St. James, of St. Germain et Laet are always good. Sick score leavers, and not even Parisian leavers at that. You have your office of counsellor to the king. That is fixed. Yes, Brother Claude, but that accursed scenery of Poligny, which people make so much noise about, is worth not sixty gold crowns, year out and year in. In the compliments which Dom Claude addressed to Jacques Cotier, there was that sardinical, biting, and covertly mocking accent, and the sad, cruel smile of a superior and unhappy man, who toys for a moment by way of distraction with the dense prosperity of a vulgar man. The other did not perceive it. Upon my soul, said Claude at length, pressing his hand, I am glad to see you in such good health. Thanks, Master Claude. By the way, exclaimed Dom Claude, how is your royal patient? He payeth not sufficiently his physician, replied the doctor, casting a side glance at his companion. Thank you so, Gossip Cotier, said the latter. These words, uttered in a tone of surprise and reproach, drew upon this unknown personage the attention of the Archdeacon, which, to tell the truth, had not been diverted from him a single moment since the stranger had set foot across the threshold of his cell. It had even required all the thousand reasons which he had for handling tenderly Dr. Jacques Cotier, the all-powerful physician of King Louis XI, to induce him to receive the latter thus accompanied. Hence there was nothing very cordial in his manner when Jacques Cotier said to him, By the way, Claude, I bring you a colleague who has desired to see you on account of your reputation. Monsieur belongs to science, asked the Archdeacon, fixing his piercing eye upon Cotier's companion. He found beneath the brows of the stranger a glance no less piercing or less distrustful than his own. He was, so far as the feeble light of the lamp permitted one to judge, an old man about sixty years of age and of medium stature, who appeared somewhat sickly and broken in health. His profile, although of a very ordinary outline, had something powerful and severe about it. His eyes sparkled beneath a very deep supercillary arch, like a light in the depths of a cave, and beneath his cap which was well drawn down and fell upon his nose one recognized the broad expanse of a brow of genius. He took it upon himself to reply to the Archdeacon's question. Reverend Master, he said in a grave tone, your renown has reached my ears and I wish to consult you. I am but a poor provincial gentleman who removeeth his shoes before entering the dwellings of the learned. You must know my name. I am called Gossip Torengo. Strange name for a gentleman, said the Archdeacon to himself. Nevertheless he had a feeling that he was in the presence of a strong and earnest character. The instinct of his own lofty intellect made him recognize an intellect no less lofty under Gossip Torengo's furred cap, and as he gazed at the solemn face the ironical smile with Jacques Quartier's presence, called forth on his gloomy face, gradually disappeared as twilight fades on the horizon of night. Turn and silent he had resumed his seat in his great arm-chair. His elbow rested as usual on the table and his brow on his hand. After a few moments of reflection he motioned his visitors to be seated, and turning to Gossip Torengo he said, You come to consult me, Master, and upon what science? Your reverence, replied Torengo, I am ill, very ill. You are said to be a great Asculapius, and I have come to ask your advice in medicine. Medicine, said the Archdeacon, tossing his head. He seemed to meditate for a moment and then resumed. Gossip Torengo, since that is your name, turn your head and you will find my reply already written on the wall. Gossip Torengo obeyed and read this inscription engraved above his head. Medicine is the daughter of dreams, Jean Blicque. Meanwhile, Dr. Jacques Coitier had heard his companion's question with a displeasure which Dom Claude's response had but redoubled. He bent down to the ear of Gossip Torengo and said to him softly enough not to be heard by the Archdeacon, I warned you that he was mad. You insisted upon seeing him. It is very possible that he is right, madman as he is, Dr. Jacques, replied his comrade in the same low tone and with a bitter smile. As you please, replied Coitier dryly, then addressing the Archdeacon, you are clever at your trade, Dom Claude, and you are no more at a loss over Hippocrates than a monkey is over a nut. Medicine, a dream! I suspect that the pharmacopolists and the master physicians would insist upon stoning you if they were here. So you deny the influence of filters upon the blood and unguents on the skin. You deny that eternal pharmacy of flowers and metals which is called the world made expressly for that eternal invalid called man? I deny, said Dom Claude coldly, neither pharmacy nor the invalid. I reject the physician. Then it is not true, resumed Coitier hotly, that gout is an internal eruption, that a wound caused by artillery is to be cured by the application of a young mouse roasted, that young blood, thoroughly injected, restores youth to aged veins. It is not true that two and two make four, and that Improstathanus follows Opistathanus. The Archdeacon replied without perturbation. There are certain things of which I think in a certain fashion. Coitier became crimson with anger. There, there, my good Coitier, let us not get angry, said Gossip Toringo. Monsieur the Archdeacon is our friend. Coitier calmed down, muttering in a low tone. After all, he's mad. Pusket, do, Master Claude, resumed Gossip Toringo after a silence. You embarrass me greatly. I had two things to consult you upon, one touching my health and the other touching my star. Monsieur, returned the Archdeacon, if that be your motive, you would have done as well not to put yourself out of breath climbing my staircase. I do not believe in medicine. I do not believe in astrology. Indeed, said the man with surprise. Coitier gave a forced laugh. You see that he is mad, he said in a low tone to Gossip Toringo. He does not believe in astrology. The idea of imagining, pursued Dom Claude, that every ray of a star is a thread which is fastened to the head of a man. And what, then, do you believe in? exclaimed Gossip Toringo. The Archdeacon hesitated for a moment, then he allowed a gloomy smile to escape which seemed to give the lie to his response, Credo Indium. Dominim Nostrum added Gossip Toringo, making the sign of the cross. Amen, said Coitier. Reverend Master, resumed Toringo, I am charmed in soul to see you in such a religious frame of mind. But have you reached the point, great savant as you are, of no longer believing in science? No, said the Archdeacon, grasping the arm of Gossip Toringo, and array of enthusiasm lighted up his gloomy eyes. No, I do not reject science. I have not crawled so long, flat on my belly, with my nails in the earth, through the innumerable ramifications of its caverns, without perceiving far in front of me, at the end of the obscure gallery, a light, a flame, a something, the reflection no doubt, of the dazzling central laboratory where the patient and the wise have found out God. And in short, interrupted Toringo, what do you hold to be true and certain? Alchemy. Coitier exclaimed, pardon, dumb-clawed, alchemy has its use no doubt, but why blaspheme medicine and astrology? Not is your science of man, not is your science of the stars, said the Archdeacon commandingly. That's driving Epidorus and Caldia very fast, replied the physician with a grin. Listen, Monsieur Jacques, this is said in good faith. I am not the king's physician, and his majesty has not given me the garden of Daedalus in which to observe the constellations. Don't get angry, but listen to me. What truth have you deduced, I will not say from medicine, which is too foolish a thing, but from astrology? Sight to me the virtues of the vertical Bostropheten, the treasures of the number Xeroph and those of the number Zepharod. Will you deny, said Coitier, the sympathetic force of the collar bone and the cabalistics which are derived from it? An error, Monsieur Jacques, none of your formulas end in reality. Alchemy, on the other hand, has its discoveries. Will you contest results like this? Ice confined beneath the earth for a thousand years is transformed into rock crystals. Lead is the ancestor of all metals. For gold is not a metal, gold is light. Lead requires only four periods of two hundred years each to pass in succession from the state of lead to the state of red arsenic, from red arsenic to tin, from tin to silver. Are not these facts? But to believe in the collar bone and in the full line and in the stars is as ridiculous as to believe with the inhabitants of Grand Cathay that the golden orial turns into a mole and that grains of wheat turn into fish of the carp species. I have studied Hermetic science, exclaimed Coitier, and I affirm... The fiery Archdeacon did not allow him to finish. And I have studied medicine, astrology, and Hermetics. Here alone is the truth. As he spoke thus he took from the top of the coffer a file filled with the powder which we have mentioned above. Here alone is light. Hippocrates is a dream. Urania is a dream. Hermes a thought. Gold is the sun. To make gold is to be God. Herein lies the one and only science. I have sounded the depths of medicine and astrology, I tell you. Not. Nothingness. The human body. Shadows. The planets. Shadows. And he fell back in his armchair in a commanding and inspired attitude. Gossip Torengo watched him in silence. Coitier tried to grin, shrugged his shoulders imperceptibly, and repeated in a low voice. A madman. And, said Torengo suddenly, the wondrous result! Have you attained it? Have you made gold? If I had made it, replied the Archdeacon, articulating his word slowly, like a man who was reflecting, the king of France would be named Claude and not Louis. The stranger frowned. What am I saying? resumed Dom Claude with a smile of disdain. What would the throne of France be to me when I could rebuild the empire of the Orient? Very good, said the stranger. Oh, the poor fool! murmured Coitier. The Archdeacon went on, appearing to reply now only to his thoughts. But no, I am still crawling. I am scratching my face and knees against the pebbles of the subterranean pathway. I catch a glimpse. I do not contemplate. I do not read. I spell out. And when you know how to read, demanded the stranger, will you make gold? Who doubts it? said the Archdeacon. In that case our lady knows that I am greatly in need of money, and I should much desire to read in your books. Tell me, Reverend Master, is your science inimical or displeasing to our lady? Who's Archdeacon I am? Dom Claude contended himself with replying with tranquil haughture. That is true, my master. Well, will it please you to initiate me? Let me spell with you. Claude assumed the majestic and pontifical attitude of a Samuel. Old man, it requires longer years than remain to you to undertake this voyage across mysterious things. Your head is very gray. One comes forth from the cavern only with white hair, but only those with dark hair enter it. Science alone knows well how to hollow, wither, and dry up human faces. She needs not to have old age bring her faces already furrowed. Nevertheless, if the desire possesses you of putting yourself under discipline at your age, and of deciphering the formidable alphabet of the sages, come to me. Tis well, I will make the effort. I will not tell you, poor old man, to go and visit the sepulchral chambers of the pyramids of which ancient Herodotus speaks, nor the brick tower of Babylon, nor the immense white marble sanctuary of the Indian temple of Eclinga. I, no more than yourself, have seen the Chaldean masonry works constructed according to the sacred form of the Sikra, nor the temple of Solomon, which is destroyed, nor the stone doors of the sepulcher of the kings of Israel which are broken. We will content ourselves with the fragments of the Book of Hermes which we have here. I will explain to you the statue of St. Christopher, the symbol of the sower, and that of the two angels which are on the front of the Saint Chapelle, and one of which holds in his hands a vase, the other, a cloud. Dear Jacques Quartier, who had been unhorsed by the Archdeacons in petuous replies, regained his saddle and interrupted him with the triumphant tone of one learned man correcting another. Eras Amici Claudi, the symbol is not the number. You take Orpheus for Hermes. Tis you who are in error, replied the Archdeacon gravely. Daedalus is the base. Orpheus is the wall. Hermes is the edifice. That is all. You shall come when you will, he continued, turning to Torango. I will show you the little parcels of gold which remained at the bottom of Nicholas Flamel's Alembic, and you shall compare them with the gold of Gallium de Paris. I will teach you the secret virtues of the Greek word Paristira, but first of all I will make you read one after the other the marble letters of the alphabet, the granite pages of the book. We shall go to the portal of Bishop Gaome, and of Saint Jean Laurent at the Saint-Chapel, then to the house of Nicholas Flamel, Rue Manvaux, to his tomb, which is at the Saint-Innocence, to his two hospitals, Rue de Montmorency. I will make you read the hieroglyphics which covered the four great iron cramps on the portal of the hospital Saint-Gervais, and of the Rue de la Ferronnerie. We will spell out in company also the façade of Saint Combe, of Saint Jean-Vierve de Ardennes, of Saint Martin, of Saint Jacques de la Boucherie. For a long time, Gossip Torango, intelligent as was his glance, had appeared not to understand Dom Claude. He interrupted. Pas-ca-de, what are your books then? Here is one of them, said the Archdeacon. And opening the window of his cell he pointed out with his finger the immense church of Notre-Dame, which, outlining against the starry sky the black silhouette of its two towers, its stone flanks, its monstrous haunches, seemed an enormous two-headed sphinx seated in the middle of the city. The Archdeacon gazed at the gigantic edifice for some time in silence, then extending his right hand with a sigh towards the printed book which lay open on the table, and his left towards Notre-Dame, and turning a sad glance from the book to the church. Alas, he said, this will kill that. Quattier, who had eagerly approached the book, could not repress an exclamation. Eh, but now what is there so formidable in this? Glossa in Epistolus dit Pauly, Nurembergo Antonius Colburger, 1474. This is not new. Tis a book of Pierre Lombard, the Master of Sentences. Is it because it is printed? You have said it, replied Claude, who seemed absorbed in a profound meditation, and stood resting his four-finger bent backward on the folio which had come from the famous press of Nuremberg. Then he added these mysterious words. Alas, alas, small things come at the end of great things, a tooth triumphs over a mass. The Nile rat kills the crocodile, the swordfish kills the whale, the book will kill the edifice. The curfew of the cloister sounded at the moment when Master Schock was repeating to his companion in low tones his eternal refrain. He is mad. To which his companion this time replied, I believe that he is. It was the hour when no stranger could remain in the cloister. The two visitors withdrew. Master, said Gossip Torringo, as he took leave of the Archdeacon, I love wise men and great minds, and I hold you in singular esteem. Come to-morrow to the palace de Tornel and inquire for the abbey de Saint-Martin of Tours. The Archdeacon returned to his chamber dumbfounded, comprehending at last who Gossip Torringo was, and recalling that passage of the register of Saint-Martin of Tours, Abbas Beati Martini, Silicet Rex Franciet, asked Canonicus de Constitutine et Habet Parvam Probendum, Quam Habet Sanctus Venantius, et debet sedere in sede tesaurari. It is asserted that after that epoch the Archdeacon had frequent conferences with Louis XI when his majesty came to Paris, and that Dom Claude's influence quite overshadowed that of Olivier LaDame and Jacques Quotier, who, as was his habit, rudely took the king to task on that account. End of Book 5, Chapter 1 Book 5, Chapter 2 of the Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Book 5, Chapter 2. This Will Kill That. Our Lady-readers will pardon us if we pause for a moment to seek what could have been the thought concealed beneath those enigmatic words of the Archdeacon. This Will Kill That. The Book Will Kill The Edifice. To our mind this thought had two faces. In the first place it was a priestly thought. It was the affright of the priest in the presence of a new agent, the printing press. It was the terror and dazzled amazement of the men of the sanctuary in the presence of the luminous press of Gutenberg. It was the pulpit and the manuscript taking the alarm at the printed word, something similar to the stupor of a sparrow which should behold the angel legion unfold his six million wings. It was the cry of the prophet who already hears emancipated humanity roaring and swarming, who beholds in the future intelligence sapping faith, opinion dethroning belief, the world shaking off Rome. It was the prognostication of the philosopher who sees human thought, volatized by the press, evaporating from the theocratic recipient. It was the terror of the soldier who examines the brazen battering ram and says, the tower will crumble. It signified that one power was about to succeed another power. It meant the press will kill the church. But underlying this thought, the first and most simple one no doubt, there was in our opinion another newer one, a corollary of the first less easy to perceive and more easy to contest, a view as philosophical and belonging no longer to the priest alone but to the savant and the artist. It was a pre-sentiment that human thought in changing its form was about to change its mode of expression, that the dominant idea of each generation would no longer be written with the same matter and in the same manner, that the book of stone so solid and so durable was about to make way for the book of paper, more solid and still more durable. In this connection the Archdeacon's vague formula had a second sense. It meant printing will kill architecture. In fact, from the origin of things down to the 15th century of the Christian era, inclusive, architecture is the great book of humanity, the principal expression of man in his different stages of development, either as a force or as an intelligence. When the memory of the first races felt itself overloaded, when the mass of reminiscences of the human race became so heavy and so confused that speech naked and flying ran the risk of losing them on the way, men transcribed them on the soil in a manner which was at once the most visible, most durable and most natural. They sealed each tradition beneath the monument. The first monuments were simple masses of rock, which the iron had not touched, as Moses says. Architecture began like all writing. It was first an alphabet. Men planted a stone upright, it was a letter, and each letter was a hieroglyph, and upon each hieroglyph rested a group of ideas like the capital on the column. This is what the earliest races did everywhere, at the same moment, on the surface of the entire world. We find the standing stones of the Celts in Asian Siberia, in the pompas of America. Later on they made words. They placed stone upon stone. They coupled those syllables of granite and attempted some combinations. The Celtic Dolmen and Cromlec, the Etruscan tumulus, the Hebrew Galgal are words. Some, especially the tumulus, are proper names. Sometimes even when men had a great deal of stone and a vast plain, they wrote a phrase. The immense pile of karnak is a complete sentence. At last they made books. Traditions had brought forth symbols, beneath which they disappeared like the trunk of a tree beneath its foliage. All these symbols in which humanity placed faith continue to grow, to multiply, to intersect, to become more and more complicated. The first monuments no longer suffice to contain them. They were overflowing in every part. These monuments hardly expressed now the primitive tradition, people like themselves, naked and prone upon the earth. The symbol felt the need of expansion in the edifice. Then architecture was developed in proportion with human thought. It became a giant, with a thousand heads and a thousand arms, and fixed all this floating symbolism in an eternal, visible, palpable form. While Daedalus, who his force measured, while Orpheus, who his intelligence sang, the pillar which is a letter, the arcade which is a syllable, the pyramid which is a word, all said in movement at once by a law of geometry and by a law of poetry, grouped themselves, combined, amalgamated, descended, ascended, placed themselves side by side on the soil, ranged themselves in stories in the sky, until they had written under the dictation of the general idea of an epoch those marvelous books which were also marvelous edifices. The Pagoda of Eclinga, the Ramsion of Egypt, the Temple of Solomon. The generating idea, the word, was not only at the foundation of all these edifices, but also in the form. The Temple of Solomon, for example, was not alone the binding of the holy book, it was the holy book itself. On each one of its concentric walls the priests could read the word translated and manifested to the eye, and thus they followed its transformations from sanctuary to sanctuary, until they seized it in its last tabernacle under its most concrete form, which still belonged to architecture, the arch. Thus the word was enclosed in an edifice, but its image was upon its envelope, like the human form on the coffin of a mummy. And not only the form of edifices, but the sight selected for them revealed the thought which they represented, according as the symbol to be expressed was graceful or grave. Greece crowned her mountains with a temple harmonious to the eye. India disemboweled hers to chisel therein those monstrous subterranean pagodas, born up by gigantic rows of granted elephants. Thus during the first 6,000 years of the world, from the most immemorial pagoda of Hindustan to the cathedral of Cologne, architecture was the great handwriting of the human race. And this is so true, that not only every religious symbol, but every human thought has its page and its monument in that immense book. All civilization begins in theocracy and ends in democracy. This law of liberty following unity is written in architecture. For let us insist upon this point. Masonry must not be thought to be powerful only in erecting the temple and in expressing the myth and sacerdotal symbolism. In inscribing in hieroglyphs upon its pages of stone the mysterious tables of the law. If it were thus, as there comes in all human society a moment when the sacred symbol is worn out and becomes obliterated under freedom of thought, when man escapes from the priest, when the excrescence of philosophies and systems devour the face of religion, architecture could not reproduce this new state of human thought. Its leaves, so crowded on the face, would be empty on the back. Its work would be mutilated, its book would be incomplete. But no. Let us take as an example the Middle Ages where we see more clearly because it is nearer to us. During its first period, while theocracy is organizing Europe, while the Vatican is rallying and reclassing about itself the elements of a Rome made from the Rome which lies in ruins around the capital, while Christianity is seeking all the stages of society amid the rubbish of interior civilization and rebuilding with its ruins a new hierarchic universe, the keystone to whose vault is the priest. One first hears a dull echo from that chaos and then little by little one sees arising from beneath the breath of Christianity, from beneath the hand of the barbarians, from the fragments of the dead Greek and Roman architectures, that mysterious Romanesque architecture, sister of the theocratic masonry of Egypt and of India, in alterable emblem of pure Catholicism, unchangeable hieroglyph of the papal unity. All the thought of that day is written, in fact, in this somber Romanesque style. One feels everywhere in it authority, unity, the impenetrable, the absolute Gregory VII, always the priest, never the man, everywhere caste, never the people. But the Crusades arrive. They are a great popular movement, and every great popular movement, whatever may be its cause and object, always sets free the spirit of liberty from its final precipitate. New things spring into life every day. Here opens the stormy period of the Jackereys, Prageries and Beaks. Authority waivers, unity is divided. Feudalism demands to share with theocracy, while awaiting the inevitable arrival of the people, who will assume the part of the lion. Quia nominorlio, seniori pierces through sacerdotalism, the commonality through seniori. The face of Europe is changed. Well, the face of architecture is changed also. Like civilization it has turned a page, and the new spirit of the time finds her ready to write at its dictation. It returns from the Crusades with the pointed arch, like the nations with liberty. Then, while Rome is undergoing gradual dismemberment, Romanesque architecture dies. The hieroglyph deserts the cathedral and betakes itself to blazing the dungeon keep in order to lend prestige to feudalism. The cathedral itself, that edifice formerly so dogmatic, invaded henceforth by the bourgeoisie, by the community, by liberty, escapes the priest and falls into the power of the artist. The artist builds it after his own fashion. Farewell to mystery, myth, law. Fancy and comprice, welcome. Provided the priest has his basilica and his altar, he has nothing to say. The four walls belong to the artist. The architectural book belongs no longer to the priest, to religion, to Rome. It is the property of poetry, of imagination, of the people. Hence, the rapid and innumerable transformations of that architecture, which owns but three centuries, so striking after the stagnant immobility of the Romanesque architecture, which owns six or seven. Nevertheless, art marches on with giant strides. Popular genius amid originality accomplished the task which the bishops formerly fulfilled. Each race writes its line upon the book as it passes. It erases the ancient Romanesque hieroglyphs on the frontest pieces of cathedrals, and at the most one only sees dogma cropping out here and there, beneath the new symbol which it has deposited. The popular drapery hardly permits the religious skeleton to be suspected. One cannot even form an idea of the liberties which the architects then take even toward the church. There are capitals knitted of nuns and monks, shamelessly coupled as on the hall of chimney pieces in the Palais de Justice in Paris. There is Noah's adventure carved to the last detail as under the great portal of Bourges. There is a Bacchanalian monk with asses' ears and glass in hand laughing in the face of a whole community as on the lavatory of the abbey of Beauchervie. There exists at that epic, for thought written in stone, a privilege exactly comparable to our present liberty of the press. It is the liberty of architecture. This liberty goes very far. Sometimes a portal, a façade, an entire church presents a symbolical sense absolutely foreign to worship, or even hostile to the church. In the thirteenth century, Gallium de Paris and Nicolas Flamel in the fifteenth wrote such seditious pages. Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie was a whole church of the opposition. Thought was then free only in this manner, hence it never wrote itself out completely except on the books called Edifices. Thought, under the form of edifice, could have beheld itself burned in the public square by the hands of the executioner in its manuscript form if it had been sufficiently imprudent to risk itself thus. Thought as the door of a church would have been a spectator of the punishment of thought as a book. Having thus only this resource, masonry, in order to make its way to the light, flung itself upon it from all quarters. Thus the immense quantity of cathedrals which have covered Europe, a number so prodigious that one can hardly believe it even after having verified it. All the material forces, all the intellectual forces of society converged towards the same point, architecture. In this manner, under the pretext of building churches to God, art was developed in its magnificent proportions. Everyone, whoever was born a poet, became an architect. Genius, scattered in the masses, repressed in every quarter under feudalism as under a testudo of brazen bucklers, finding no issue except in the direction of architecture, gushed forth through that art, and its Iliads assumed the form of cathedrals. All other arts obeyed and placed themselves under the discipline of architecture. They were the workmen of the great work. The architect, the poet, the master, summed up in his person the sculpture which carved his facades, painting which illuminated his windows, music which set his bells to peeling, and breathe into his organs. There was nothing down to poor poetry, properly speaking, that which persisted in vegetating in manuscripts which was not forced, in order to make something of itself, to come and frame itself in the edifice in the shape of a hymn or of prose. The same part after all which the tragedies of Aeschylus had played in the sacerdotal festivals of Greece, Genesis in the Temple of Solomon. Thus down to the time of Gutenberg, architecture is the principal writing, the universal writing. In that granite book, begun by the Orient, continued by Greek and Roman antiquity, the Middle Ages wrote the last page. Moreover this phenomenon of an architecture of the people following an architecture of caste, which we have just been observing in the Middle Ages, is reproduced with every analogous movement in the human intelligence at the other great epics of history. Thus in order to enunciate here only summarily a law which it would require volumes to develop, in the high Orient the cradle of primitive times, after Hindu architecture came Phoenician architecture, that opulent mother of Arabian architecture. In antiquity, after Egyptian architecture, of which Etruscan style and Cyclopean monuments, or but one variety, came Greek architecture, of which the Roman style is only a continuation. Surcharged with the Carthaginian dome. In modern times, after Romanesque architecture came Gothic architecture. And by separating the three series into their component parts, we shall find in the three eldest sisters, Hindu architecture, Egyptian architecture, Romanesque architecture, the same symbol. That is to say, theocracy, caste, unity, dogma, myth, God. And for the three younger sisters, Phoenician architecture, Greek architecture, Gothic architecture, whatever, nevertheless, may be the diversity of form inherent in their nature, the same signification also. That is to say, liberty, the people, man. In the Hindu, Egyptian, or Romanesque architecture, one feels the priest, nothing but the priest, whether he calls himself Brahmin, Magian, or Pope. It is not the same in the architectures of the people. They are richer and less sacred. In the Phoenician, one feels the merchant. In the Greek, the Republican. In the Gothic, the citizen. The general characteristics of all theocratic architecture are immutability, horror of progress, the preservation of traditional lines, the consecration of the primitive types, the constant bending of all the forms of men and of nature to the incomprehensible caprices of the symbol. These are dark books, which the initiated alone understand how to decipher. Moreover, every form, every deformity even, has their a sense which renders it inviolable. Do not ask of Hindu, Egyptian, Romanesque masonry to reform their design or to improve their statuary. Every attempt at perfecting is an impiety to them. In these architectures it seems as though the rigidity of the dogma had spread over the stone like a sort of second petrification. The general characteristics of popular masonry, on the contrary, are progress, originality, opulence, perpetual movement. They are already sufficiently detached from religion to think of their beauty, to take care of it, to correct, without relaxation, their perure of statues or arabasques. They are of the age. They have something human which they mingle incessantly with the divine symbol under which they still produce. Hence, edifices comprehensible to every soul, to every intelligence, to every imagination, symbolical still, but as easy to understand as nature. Between theocratic architecture and this there is the difference that lies between a sacred language and a vulgar language, between hieroglyphics and art, between Solomon and Phidias. If the reader will sum up what we have hitherto briefly, very briefly indicated, neglecting a thousand proofs and also a thousand objections of detail he will be led to this. That architecture was, down to the fifteenth century, the chief register of humanity, that in that interval not a thought which is in any degree complicated made its appearance in the world, which has not been worked into an edifice, that every popular idea and every religious law has had its monumental records, that the human race has, in short, had no important thought which it has not written in stone. And why? Because every thought, either philosophical or religious, is interested in perpetuating itself, because the idea which has moved one generation wishes to move others also and leave a trace. Now what a precarious immortality is that of the manuscript. How much more solid, durable, unyielding is a book of stone. In order to destroy the written word, a torch and a turk are sufficient. To demolish the constructed word, a social revolution, a terrestrial revolution are required. The barbarians passed over the Colosseum. The deluge perhaps passed over the pyramids. In the fifteenth century everything changes. Human thought discovers a mode of perpetuating itself, not only more durable and more resisting than architecture, but still more simple and easy. Architecture is dethroned, Gutenberg's letters of lead are about to supersede Orpheus's letters of stone. The invention of printing is the greatest event in history. It is the mother of revolution. It is the mode of expression of humanity which is totally renewed. It is human thought stripping off one form and donning another. It is the complete and definitive change of skin of that symbolical serpent which, since the days of Adam, has represented intelligence. In its printed form thought is more imperishable than ever. It is volatile, irresistible, indestructible. It is mingled with the air. In the days of architecture it made a mountain of itself and took powerful possession of a century and a place. Now it converts itself into a flock of birds, scatters itself to the forewinds, and occupies all points of air and space at once. We repeat, who does not perceive that in this form it is far more indelible? It was solid, it has become alive. It passes from duration in time to immortality. One can demolish a mass, how can one extirpate ubiquity? If a flood comes the mountains will have long disappeared beneath the waves, while the birds will still be flying about. And if a single arc floats on the surface of the Cataclysm they will light upon it, will float with it, will be present with it at the ebbing of the waters, and the new world which emerges from this chaos will behold, on its awakening, the thought of the world which has been submerged, soaring above it, winged, and living. And when one observes that this mode of expression is not only the most conservative, but also the most simple, the most convenient, the most practicable for all. When one reflects that it does not drag after it a bulky baggage, and does not set in motion a heavy apparatus, when one compares thought forced, in order to transform itself into an edifice, to put in motion four or five other arts and tons of gold, a whole mountain of stones, a whole forest of timberwork, a whole nation of workmen. When one compares it to the thought which becomes a book, and for which a little paper, a little ink, and a pen suffice, how can one be surprised that human intelligence should have quitted architecture for printing? Cut the primitive bed of a river abruptly, with a canal hollowed out below its level, and the river will desert its bed. Just how, beginning with the discovery of printing, architecture withers away little by little, becomes lifeless and bare. How one feels the water sinking, the sap departing, the thought of the times and of the people withdrawing from it. The chill is almost imperceptible in the fifteenth century. The press is, as yet, too weak, and at the most, draws from powerful architecture a super-abundance of life. But practically beginning in the sixteenth century, the malady of architecture is visible. It is no longer the expression of society. It becomes classic art in a miserable manner. From being Gallic, European, Indigenous, it becomes Greek and Roman. From being true and modern, it becomes pseudo-classic. It is this decadence which is called the Renaissance. A magnificent decadence, however, for the ancient Gothic genius, that sun which sets behind the gigantic press of Mayans, still penetrates for a while longer with its rays that whole hybrid pile of Latin arcades and Corinthian columns. It is that setting sun which we mistake for the dawn. Nevertheless, from the moment when architecture is no longer anything but an art like any other, as soon as it is no longer the total art, the sovereign art, the tyrant art, it has no longer the power to retain the other arts. So they emancipate themselves, break the yoke of the architect and take themselves off, each one in its own direction. Each one of them gains by this divorce. Isolation aggrandizes everything. Sculpture becomes statuary. The image trade becomes painting. The canon becomes music. One would pronounce it an empire dismembered at the death of its Alexander and whose provinces become kingdoms. Hence Raphael, Michelangelo, Jean-Gogion, Palestrina, those splendors of the dazzling 16th century. Thought emancipates itself in all directions at the same time as the arts. The archheretics of the Middle Ages had already made large incisions into Catholicism. The 16th century breaks religious unity. Before the invention of printing reform would have been merely a schism. Printing converted it into a revolution. Take away the press, heresy is innervated. Whether it be Providence or fate, Gutenberg is the precursor of Luther. Nevertheless, when the sun of the Middle Ages is completely set, when the Gothic genius is forever extinct upon the horizon, architecture grows dim, loses its color, becomes more and more effaced. The printed book, the gnawing worm of the edifice, sucks and devours it. It becomes bare, denuded of its foliage, and grows visibly emaciated. It is petty, it is poor, it is nothing. It no longer expresses anything, not even the memory of the art of another time. Reduced to itself, abandoned by the other arts, because human thought is abandoning it, it summons bunglers in place of artists. Glass replaces the painted windows. The stone cutter succeeds the sculptor. Farewell all sap, all originality, all life, all intelligence. It drags along a lamentable workshop mendicant from copy to copy. Michelangelo, who no doubt felt even in the sixteenth century that it was dying, had a last idea, an idea of despair. That titan of art piled the pantheon on the Parthenon and made Saint Peter's at Rome. A great work, which deserved to remain unique, the last originality of architecture. The signature of a giant artist at the bottom of the colossal register of stone which was closed forever. With Michelangelo dead, what does this miserable architecture which survived itself in the state of Aspector do? It takes Saint Peter in Rome, copies it, and parodies it. It is a mania, it is a pity. Each century has its Saint Peter's of Rome. In the seventeenth century the Val de Grasse. In the eighteenth Saint Jean-Vierve. Each country has its Saint Peter's of Rome. London has one, Petersburg has another, Paris has two or three. The insignificant testament, the last dotage of a decrepit grand art falling back into infancy before it dies. If, in place of the characteristic monuments which we have just described, we examine the general aspect of art from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, we notice the same phenomena of decay and thysis. Beginning with Francois II the architectural form of the edifice effaces itself more and more, and allows the geometrical form, like the bony structure of an emaciated invalid to become prominent. Fine lines of art give way to the cold and inexorable lines of geometry. An edifice is no longer an edifice. It is a polyhedron. Meanwhile architecture is tormented in her struggles to conceal this nudity. Look at the Greek pediment inscribed upon the Roman pediment and vice versa. It is still the pantheon on the Parthenon, Saint Peter's of Rome. Here are the brick houses of Henri IV with their stone corners, the Place Royale, the Place Dauphin. Here are the churches of Louis XIII, heavy, squat, thick set, crowded together, loaded with a dome like a hump. Here is the Mazarin architecture, that wretched Italian pasticcio of the Four Nations. Here are the palaces of Louis XIV, long barracks for courtiers, stiff, cold, tiresome. Here finally is Louis XV, with chicory leaves and vermicelli and all the warts and all the fungi, which disfigure that decrepit, toothless, and coquettish old architecture. From François II to Louis XV the evil has increased in geometrical progression. Art has no longer anything but skin upon its bones. It is miserably perishing. Meanwhile, what becomes of printing? All the life which is leaving architecture comes to it. In proportion, as architecture ebbs, printing swells and grows. That capital of forces which human thought had been expending in edifices, it henceforth expends in books. Thus, from the sixteenth century onward, the press, raised to the level of decaying architecture, contends with it and kills it. In the seventeenth century it is already sufficiently the sovereign, sufficiently triumphant, sufficiently established in its victory, to give to the world the feast of a great literary century. In the eighteenth, having reposed for a long time at the court of Louis XIV, it seizes again the old sort of Luther, puts it into the hand of Voltaire, and rushes impetuously to the attack of that ancient Europe, whose architectural expression it has already killed. At the moment when the eighteenth century comes to an end, it has destroyed everything. In the nineteenth it begins to reconstruct. Now we ask which of the three arts has really represented human thought for the last three centuries, which translates it, which expresses not only its literary and scholastic vagaries, but its vast, profound, universal movement, which constantly superposes itself without a break, without a gap upon the human race, which walks a monster with a thousand legs, architecture, or printing. It is printing. Let the reader make no mistake, architecture is dead, irretrievably slain by the printed book, slain because it endures for a shorter time, slain because it costs more. Every cathedral represents millions. Let the reader now imagine what an investment of funds it would require to rewrite the architectural book, to cause thousands of edifices to swarm once more upon the soil, to return to those epics when the throng of monuments was such, according to the statement of an eyewitness, that one would have said that the world in shaking itself had cast off its old garments in order to cover itself with a white vesture of churches. Irat inem utsimundus ipsi exutiando semet, rejecta vetustate, candida ecclesiarium vestem induret, glaber redolphus. A book is so soon made, cost so little, and can go so far. How can it surprise us that all human thought flows in this channel? This does not mean that architecture will not still have a fine monument, an isolated masterpiece here and there. We may still have, from time to time, under the rain of printing, a column made, I suppose, by a whole army from melted cannon, as we had under the rain of architecture, Iliads and Roman seros, Mahat Bharata and Naimolungan Leads made by a whole people, with rhapsodies piled up and melted together. The great accident of an architect of genius may happen in the 20th century, like that of Dante in the 13th, but architecture will no longer be the social art, the collective art, the dominating art, the grand poem, the grand edifice, the grand work of humanity will no longer be built, it will be printed. And henceforth, if architecture should arise again accidentally, it will no longer be mistress. It will be subservient to the law of literature, which formerly received the law from it. The respective positions of the two arts will be inverted. It is certain, that in architectural epics, the poems, rare it is true, resemble the monuments. In India, vayasa is branching, strange, impenetrable as a pagoda. In Egyptian-orient, poetry has like the edifices, grandeur and tranquility of line. In antique Greece, beauty, serenity, calm. In Christian Europe, the Catholic majesty, the popular naivete, the rich and luxuriant vegetation of an epoch of renewal. The Bible resembles the pyramids, the Iliad, the Parthenon, Homer, Phidias, Dante in the 13th century is the last Romanesque church, Shakespeare in the 16th, the last Gothic cathedral. Thus, to sum up what we have hitherto said, in a fashion which is necessarily incomplete and mutilated, the human race has two books, two registers, two testaments, masonry and printing, the Bible of stone and the Bible of paper. No doubt, when one contemplates these two Bibles, laid so broadly open in the centuries, it is permissible to regret the visible majesty of the writing of Granite, those gigantic alphabets formulated in colonnades, in pylons, in obelisks, those sorts of human mountains which cover the world and the past, from the pyramid to the bell tower, from Cheops to Strasburg. The past must be re-read upon these pages of marble. This book, written by architecture, must be admired and perused incessantly, but the grandeur of the edifice which printing erects in its turn must not be denied. That edifice is colossal. Some compiler of statistics has calculated that if all the volumes which have issued from the press since Gutenberg's day were to be piled one upon another, they would fill the space between the earth and the moon. But it is not that sort of grandeur of which we wish to speak. Nevertheless, when one tries to collect in one's mind a comprehensive image of the total products of printing, down to our own days, does not that total appear to us like an immense construction resting upon the entire world at which humanity toils without relaxation and whose monstrous crest is lost in the profound mists of the future? It is the anthill of intelligence. It is the hive wither come all imaginations, those golden bees with their honey. The edifice has a thousand stories. Here and there one beholds on its staircases the gloomy caverns of science which pierce its interior. Everywhere upon its surface art causes its arabesques, rosettes, and laces to thrive luxuriously before the eyes. There every individual work, however capricious and isolated it may seem, has its place and its projection. Harmony results from the whole, from the Cathedral of Shakespeare to the Mosque of Byron, a thousand tiny bell-towers are piled pell-mell above this metropolis of universal thought. At its base are written some ancient titles of humanity which architecture had not registered. To the left of the entrance has been fixed the ancient bar-relief in white marble of Homer. To the right the polyglot Bible rears its seven heads. The Hydra of the Roman Cerro and some other hybrid forms, the Vitas and the Nibalung and Bristle further on. Nevertheless the prodigious edifice still remains incomplete. The press, that giant machine which incessantly pumps all the intellectual sap of society, belches forth without pause fresh materials for its work. The whole human race is on the scaffoldings. Each mind is a mason. The humblest fills his hole or places his stone. Retif de la Breton brings his heart of plaster. Every day a new course rises. Independently of the original and individual contribution of each rider there are collective contingents. The eighteenth century gives the Encyclopedia. The Revolution gives the Monitor. Assuredly, it is a construction which increases and piles up in endless spirals. There also are confusion of tongues, incessant activity, indefatigable labour, eager competition of all humanity, refuge, promise to intelligence, a new flood against an overflow of barbarians. It is the second Tower of Babel of the human race. Book 6 Chapter 1 Of the Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Book 6 Chapter 1 An Impartial Glance at the Ancient Magistracy A very happy personage in the year of Grace 1482 was the noble gentleman Robert d'Estovie, Chevalier, Sier-de-Bain, Berendivry, and Saint-André-en-La-Marché, councillor and chamberlain to the King, and guard of the Provost's Ship of Paris. It was already nearly seventeen years since he had received from the King, on November 7, 1465, the Comet Year, that fine charge of the Provost's Ship of Paris, which was reputed rather as seniorly than an office. Dignitas, says Johann's Lomnoes, cohe com non exigua potestate politiam concernente, at que prorogrativis multis et juribus conjoncta est. A marvelous thing in 82 was a gentleman bearing the King's commission, and whose letters of institution ran back to the epoch of the marriage of the natural daughter of Louis XI, with Montsueur, the bastard of Bourbonne. The same day in which Robert d'Estovie took the place of Jacques de Villiers in the Provost's Ship of Paris, Master Johann Dauvet replaced Messir Elie de Tourette in the first presidency of the Court of Parliament. Johann Jovenel de Orsan supplanted Pierre de Morvilliers in the office of the Chancellor of France. Renaud d'Orman ousted Pierre P. from the charge of Master of Requests in Ordinary of the King's Household. Now upon how many heads had the presidency, the Chancellor's Ship, the Master's Ship passed since Robert d'Estovie had held the Provost's Ship of Paris. It had been granted to him for safekeeping, as the letter's patent said, and certainly he kept it well. He had clung to it. He had incorporated himself with it. He had so identified himself with it that he had escaped that fury for change which possessed Louis XI, a tormenting and industrious king, whose policy it was to maintain the elasticity of his power by frequent appointments and revocations. More than this, the brave Chevalier had obtained the reversion of the office for his son, and for two years already the name of the noble man Jacques d'Estovie, equity, had figured beside his at the head of the register of the salary list of the Provost's Ship of Paris. A rare and notable favour indeed. It is true that Robert d'Estovie was a good soldier, that he had loyally raised his pen and against the League of Public Good, and that he had presented to the Queen a very marvellous stag in confectionery on the day of her entrance to Paris in XIV. Moreover, he possessed the good friendship of Messier Tristan Lermette, Provost of the Marshals of the King's Household. Hence, a very sweet and pleasant existence was that of Messier Robert. In the first place, very good wages, to which were attached, and from which hung, like extra bunches of grapes on his vine, the revenues of the civil and criminal registries of the Provost's Ship, plus the civil and criminal revenues of the tribunals of embass of the Châtelet, without reckoning some little toll from the bridges of Montaix and of Corbië, and the profits on the craft of chagrin-makers of Paris, on the quarters of Firewood and the measures of Salt. Add to this the pleasure of displaying himself in rides about the city, and of making his fine military costume, which you may still admire sculptured on his tomb in the Abbey of Valmont in Normandy, and his Maureen, all embossed at Montlaurie, stand out a contrast against the party-colored red and tawny robes of the alderman and police. And then was it nothing to wield absolute supremacy over the sergeants of the police, the porter and watch of the Châtelet, the two auditors of the Châtelet, auditories Castelleti, the sixteen commissioners of the sixteen quarters, the jailer of the Châtelet, the four and fjof sergeants, the hundred and twenty mounted sergeants with maces, the chevalier of the watch, with his watch, his sub-watch, his counter-watch, and his rear-watch? Was it nothing to exercise high and low justice, the right to interrogate, to hang and to draw, without reckoning petty jurisdiction in the First Resort, in Prima instantia, as the charters say, on that vicomte of Paris, so nobly a-panaged with seven noble bailiwicks? Can anything sweeter be imagined than rendering judgments and decisions as Messier Robert d'Estovie daily did in the Grand Châtelet, under the large and flattened arches of Philippe Augustus? And going, as he was want to do every evening, to that charming house situated in the Rue Galalie, in the enclosure of the Royal Palace, which he held in right of his wife, Madame Ambois de Lorée, to repose after the fatigue of having sent some poor wretch to pass the night in that little cell of the Rue de Escorterie, which the provosts and the aldermen of Paris used to make their prison, the same being eleven feet long, seven feet and four inches wide, and eleven feet high? And not only had Messier Robert d'Estovie his special court as provost and vicomte of Paris, but in addition he had a share, both for eye and tooth, in the Grand Court of the King. There was no head in the least elevated which had not passed through his hands before it came to the headsmen. It was he who went to seek Messier de Nemours at the Bastille-Saint-Antoine in order to conduct him to the Hall, and to conduct to the grave Messier de Saint-Paul, who clamored and resisted to the great joy of the provost, who did not love Montseur the Constable. Here, assuredly, is more than sufficient to render a life happy and illustrious, and to deserve some day a notable page in that interesting history of the provosts of Paris, where one learns that Udard de Villeneuve had a house in the Rue de Boucherie, that Gaillom de Angeste purchased the great and the little Savoy. That Gaillom de Thibault gave the nuns of Saint-Jean-Villave his houses in the Rue-Clo-Pan, that Uguet-Aubriot lived in the Hôtel du Poré Epique, and other domestic facts. Nevertheless, with so many reasons for taking life patiently and joyously, Messier Robert Destové woke up on the morning of the 7th of January, 1482, in a very surly and peevish mood. Whence came this ill temper? He could not have told himself. Was it because the sky was gray? Or was the buckle of his old belt of motlerie badly fastened, so that it confined his provostal portliness too closely? Had he beheld ribbled fellows marching in bands of four beneath his window, and setting him at defiance in doublets but no shirts, hats without crowns, with wallet and bottle at their side? Was it a vague presentiment of the three hundred and seventy leavers, sixteen souses, eight farthings which the future king sharrows the seventh was to cut off from the provost ship in the following year? The reader can take his choice. We, for our part, are much inclined to believe that he was in a bad humour simply because he was in a bad humour. Moreover, it was the day after a festival, a tiresome day for everyone, and above all for the magistrate who is charged with sweeping away all the filth properly and figuratively speaking which a festival day produces in Paris. And then he had to hold a sitting at the Grand Châtelet. Now we have noticed that judges in general so a range matters that their day of audience shall also be their day of bad humour, so that they may always have someone upon whom to vent it conveniently, in the name of the king, law, and justice. However, the audience had begun without him. His lieutenants, civil, criminal, and private, were doing his work, according to usage. And from eight o'clock in the morning some scores of bourgeois and bourgeoisie heaped and crowded into an obscure corner of the audience chamber of embass to Châtelet, between a stout oaken barrier and the wall, had been gazing blissfully at the varied and cheerful spectacle of civil and criminal justice dispensed by master Florian Barbedian, auditor of the Châtelet, lieutenant of Montseur-de-Provost, in a somewhat confused and utterly haphazard manner. The hall was small, low, vaulted. A table with fleur-de-lis stood at one end, with a large armchair of carved oak, which belonged to the provost and was empty, and a stool on the left for the auditor, master Florian. The low sat the clerk of the court, scribbling. Opposite was the populous, and in front of the door and in front of the table were many sergeants of the provost ship in sleeveless jackets of violet camelot, with white crosses. Two sergeants of the par-dois au bourgeois, clothed in their jackets of Toussaint, half red, half blue, were posted as sentinels before a low closed door, which was visible at the extremity of the hall behind the table. A single pointed window, narrowly encased in the thick wall, illuminated with a pale ray of January sun, two grotesque figures, the capricious demon of stone carved as a tailpiece in the keystone of the vaulted ceiling, and the judge seated at the end of the hall on the fleur-de-lis. Imagine, in fact, at the provost's table, leaning upon his elbows between two bundles of documents of cases, with his foot on the train of his robe of plain brown cloth, his face buried in his hood of white lambskin, of which his brows seemed to be of a piece, red, crabbed, winking, bearing majestically the load of fat on his cheeks which met under his chin, Master Florian Barbedien, auditor of the Châtelet. Now the auditor was deaf. A slight defect in an auditor. Master Florian delivered judgment, nonetheless, without appeal and very suitably. It is certainly quite sufficient for a judge to have the air of listening, and the venerable auditor fulfilled this condition, the sole one in justice, all the better, because his attention could not be distracted by any noise. Moreover, he had in the audience a pitiless censor of his deeds and gestures, in the person of our friend Jean Frollo Dumoulin, that little student of yesterday, that stroller whom one was sure of encountering all over Paris, anywhere except before the rostrums of the professors. Stay, he said in a low tone to his companion, Robin Pouspan, who was greening at his side while he was making his comments on the scenes which were being unfolded before his eyes. Yander is Jehanaton du Poisson, the beautiful daughter of the lazy dog at the Marché Nouff. Upon my soul, he is condemning her the old rascal. He has no more eyes than ears. Fifteen sews four farthings Parisian for having worn two rosaries. Tis somewhat dear. Lex Dury Carminis. Who's that? Robin Schiff-Devi, hobber-maker, for having been passed and received master of the said trade. That's his entrance money. Eh, two gentlemen among these knaves. Aglès des soins, outain de mêlis, two equaries. Corpus Christi. Ah, they have been playing at dice. When shall I see our rector here? A hundred leavers Parisian, fine to be the king. That barbarian strikes like a deaf man, as he is. I'll be my brother the Archdeacon if that keeps me from gaming. Gaming by day, gaming by night, living at play, dying at play, and gaming away my soul after my short. Holy Virgin, what damsels! One after the other, my lambs. Ambois-Lucier, Isabel-la-Penet, Berat-Geronin. I know them all by heavens. A fine. A fine. That's what would teach you to wear gilded girdles. Ten sews Parisie, you coquettes. Oh, the old snout of a judge, deaf and imbecile. Oh, Florian the dolt! Oh, Barbédian the blockhead! There he is at the table. He's eating the plaintiff. He's eating the suits. He eats. He chews. He crams. He fills himself. Fines. Lost goods. Taxes. Expenses. Loyal charges. Salaries. Damages. And interests. Gahena, prison and jail. And fetters with expenses are Christmas spice-cake and marsh-pan of St. John to him. Look at him, the pig. Come, good, another amorous woman. Thibault, la Thibault, neither more nor less, for having come from the Rue Glatigny. What fellow is this? Jefois Mabon, gendarm bearing the crossbow. He has cursed the name of the father. A fine for la Thibault. A fine for Jefois. A fine for them both. The deaf old fool. He must have mixed up the two cases. Ten to one that he makes the wench pay for the oath and the gendarm for the amour. Attention, Roban Pespin, what are they going to bring in? Here are many sergeants. Buy, Jupiter, all the bloodhounds of the packer there. It must be the great beast of the hunt, a wild boar. And tis one, Roban, tis one, and a fine one, too. Eh, clay, tis our prince of yesterday, our pope of the fools, our bell-ringer, our one-eyed man, our hunchback, our grimace, tis Quasimodo. It was he indeed. It was Quasimodo, bound, encircled, roped, pinioned, and under good guard. The squad of policemen who surrounded him was assisted by the chevalier of the watch in person, wearing the arms of France embroidered on his breast and the arms of the city on his back. There was nothing, however, about Quasimodo except his deformity which could justify the display of halberds and arquebuses. He was gloomy, silent, and tranquil. Only now and then did his single eye cast a sly and wrathful glance upon the bonds with which he was loaded. He cast the same glance about him, but it was so dull and sleepy that the women only pointed him out to each other in derision. Meanwhile, Master Floriam, the auditor, turned over attentively the document in the complaint entered against Quasimodo, which the clerk handed him and having thus glanced at it, appeared to reflect for a moment. Thanks to this precaution, which he always was careful to take at the moment when on the point of beginning an examination, he knew beforehand the names, titles, and misdeeds of the accused, made cut-and-dried responses to questions foreseen and succeeded in extricating himself from all the windings of the interrogation without allowing his deafness to be too apparent. The written charges were to him what the dog is to the blind man. If his deafness did happen to betray him here and there by some incoherent apostrophe or some unintelligible question, it passed for profundity with some and for imbecility with others. In neither case did the honor of the magistracy sustain any injury, for it is far better that a judge should be reputed imbecile or profound than deaf. Hence he took great care to conceal his deafness from the eyes of all, and he generally succeeded so well that he had reached the point of deluding himself, which is, by the way, easier than is supposed. All hunchbacks walk with their heads held high, all stutterers hurang, all deaf people speak low. As for him, he believed, at the most, that his ear was a little refractory. It was the sole concession which he made on this point to public opinion, in his moments of frankness and examination of his conscience. During then, thoroughly ruminated Quasimodo's affair, he threw back his head and half closed his eyes for the sake of more majesty and impartiality, so that, at that moment, he was both deaf and blind. A double condition without which no judge is perfect. It was in this magisterial attitude that he began the examination. Your name? Now this was a case which had not been provided for by law, where a deaf man should be obliged to question a deaf man. Quasimodo, whom nothing warned that a question had been addressed to him, continued to stare intently at the judge and made no reply. The judge, being deaf and being in no way warned of the deafness of the accused, thought that the latter had answered, as all accused do in general, and therefore he pursued, with his mechanical and stupid self-possession. Very well! And your age? Again, Quasimodo made no reply to this question. The judge supposed that it had been replied to and continued. Now your profession! Still the same silence. The spectators had begun meanwhile to whisper together and to exchange glances. That will do, went on the imperturbable auditor, when he supposed that the accused had finished his third reply. You are accused before us, primo, of nocturnal disturbance, secundo, of a dishonorable act of violence upon the person of a foolish woman. Improjudicium metricus, tertio, of rebellion and disloyalty towards the arches of the police of our Lord the King. Explain yourself upon all these points. Clerk, have you written down what the prisoner has said thus far? At this unlucky question a burst of laughter rose from the clerk's table, caught by the audience, so violent, so wild, so contagious, so universal, that the two deaf men were forced to perceive it. Quasimodo turned round, shrugging his hump with disdain, while Master Florian equally astonished and supposing that the laughter of the spectators had been provoked by some irreverent reply from the accused, rendered visibly to him by that shrug of the shoulders, apostrophized him indignity. You have uttered a replied nave which deserves the halter. Do you know to whom you are speaking? This sally was not fitted to arrest the explosion of general merriment. It struck all as so whimsical and so ridiculous that the wild laughter even attacked the sergeants of the Parois à Beaujois, a sort of pikeman, whose stupidity was part of their uniform. Quasimodo alone preserved his seriousness for the good reason that he understood nothing of what was going on around him. The judge, more and more irritated, thought at his duty to continue in the same tone, hoping thereby to strike the accused with a terror which should react upon the audience and bring it back to respect. So this is as much as to say, perverse and thieving nave that you are, that you permit yourself to be lacking in respect towards the auditor of the Châtelet, to the magistrate committed to the popular police of Paris, charged with searching out crimes, delinquencies, and evil conduct, with controlling all trades and interdicting monopoly, with maintaining the pavements, with debarring the hucksters of chickens, poultry, and waterfowl, of superintending the measuring of faggots and other sorts of wood, of purging the city of mud and the air of contagious maladies, in a word, with attending continually to public affairs, without wages or hope of salary. Do you know that I am called Florian Barbadien, actual lieutenant to Montseur the provost, and moreover commissioner, inquisitor, controller, and examiner, with equal power in provostship, bailiwick, preservation, and inferior court of judicature? There was no reason why a deaf man talking to a deaf man should stop. God knows where and when Master Florian would have landed, when thus launched at full speed in lofty eloquence, if the low door at the extreme end of the room had not suddenly opened, and given entrance to the provost in person. At his entrance Master Florian did not stop short, but, making a half turn on his heels, and aiming at the provost, the harangue with which he had been withering Quasimodo a moment before. Monseigneur said he, I demand such penalty as you shall deem fitting against the prisoner here present, for the grave and aggravated offence against the court. And he seated himself, utterly breathless, wiping away the great drops of sweat which fell from his brow and drenched like tears, the parchment spread out before him. M. Robert Destuvi frowned and made a gesture so imperious and significant to Quasimodo that the deaf man in some measure understood it. The provost addressed him with severity. What have you done that you have been brought hither, naive? The poor fellow, supposing that the provost was asking his name, broke the silence which he habitually preserved, and replied in a harsh and guttural voice, Quasimodo. The reply matched the question so little that the wild laugh began to circulate once more, and M. Robert exclaimed, red with wrath, Are you mocking me also, you errant naive? Bell-ringer of Notre-Dame, replied Quasimodo, supposing that what was required of him was to explain to the judge who he was. Bell-ringer, interpolated the provost, who had waked up early enough to be in a sufficiently bad temper, as we have said, not to require to have his fury inflamed by such strange responses. Bell-ringer, I'll play you a chime of rods on your back through the squares of Paris. Do you hear, naive? If it is my age that you wish to know, said Quasimodo, I think that I shall be twenty at St. Martin's Day. This was too much. The provost could no longer restrain himself. Ah, you are scoffing at the provost shipwretch! Messieurs the sergeants of the mace, you will take me this nave to the pillory of the Greve. You will flog him and turn him for an hour. He shall pay me for it, tet dur. And I order that the present judgment shall be cried, with the assistance of four sworn trumpeters in the seven castellanies of the vicomty of Paris. The clerk said to work incontinently to draw up the account of the sentence. Ventre dur, tis well adjudged, cried the little scholar Jehan Frolo de Moulin from his corner. The provost turned and fixed his flashing eyes once more on Quasimodo. I believe the nave said Ventre dur. Clerk, add twelve deniers Parisian for the oath and let the vestry of St. Eustache have the half of it. I have a particular devotion for St. Eustache. In a few minutes the sentence was drawn up. Its tenor was simple and brief. The customs of the provost ship and the vicomty had not yet been worked over by President Thibault Belet and by Roger Barnet, the king's advocate. They had not been obstructed at that time by that lofty hedge of quibbles and procedures, which the two jurist consults planted there at the beginning of the sixteenth century. All was clear, expeditious, explicit. One went straight to the point then, and at the end of every path there was immediately visible, without thickets and without turnings, the wheel, the jibbit, or the pillory. One at least knew whither one was going. The clerk presented the sentence to the provost, who affixed his seal to it, and departed to pursue his round of the audience hall, in a frame of mind which seemed destined to fill all the jails in Paris that day. Jean Frollo and Robin Poe's pan laughed in their sleeves. Quasimodo gazed on the hall with an indifferent and astonished air. However, at the moment when Master Florian Barbetienne was reading the sentence in his turn, before signing it, the clerk felt himself moved with pity for the poor wretch of a prisoner, and in the hope of obtaining some mitigation of the penalty, he approached as near the auditor's ear as possible, and said, pointing to Quasimodo, that man is deaf. He hoped that this community of infirmity would awaken Master Florian's interest in behalf of the condemned man. But in the first place we have already observed that Master Florian did not care to have his deafness noticed. In the next place he was so hard of hearing that he did not catch a single word of what the clerk said to him. Nevertheless he wished to have the appearance of hearing, and replied, Ah, ah, that is different. I did not know that. And hour more of the pillory in that case. And he signed the sentence thus modified. Tis well done, said Roban Puspan, who cherished a grudge against Quasimodo. That will teach him to handle people roughly.