Quotes from "Notre-Dame de Paris" (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)

- Frollo's insights - Evil?

This is my favourite scene, when Esmeralda has been arrested and will be killed, under charge of being a witch and killing Phoebus, what she in fact didn't do. It had been Frollo who, spying on Esmeralda and Phoebus, and realizing he was going to simply take her and throw her away like trash, lost his mind and stabbed him. He isnt dead, but Esmeralda doesnt know that. She goes through torture until she can't stand no longer and confess to be a witch.

She is cold, hurt, in a dark, silence and freezing cell, with iron rings on her ankles and so on. Frollo, dying of remorse for keeping silent about the deal with Phoebus, goes see her.

(...) The light affected her eyes so sensibly that she closed them. When she reopened them the door was closed, the lantern was placed on a step of the staircase; a man, alone, was standing before her. A cagoule fell to his feet, a caflardum colour concealed his face. Nothing was seeing of his person nor his hands. It was a long black winding-sheet standing on end, and under which something was perceived to move. She looked steadily for some minutesat this sort of spectre. Meanwhile neither of them spoke. (...)

At lenght the prisoner broke silence, "Who are you?"

"A Priest"

The word, the accent, the sound of the voice, made her start. The priest continued in a hollow tone, "Are you perpared?"

"For what?"

"For death."

"Oh! Said she; will it be soon?"

"To-morrow"

Her head, which she had raised joyfully, fell back again upon her bosom. "That's very long!" Murmured she. "What could it signify to them if it had been to-day?"

"You are very wretched, then?" Asked the priest, after a short silence.

"I'm very cold, " answered she.

(...)

The priest's eyes appeared to be wandering from under his hood around the dungeon. "Without light!-without fire!-in the water! 'Tis horrible!"

"Yes," answered she, with the bewildered air which misery had given her. "The day is for everyone-why do they give me nothing but night?"

(...)All at once she started to weep like a child. "I want to go away from here, Monsieur, I'm cold and there are creatures crawiling over me."

"Well, then follow me."

So saying, the priest took her arm. The poor girl was frozen to her very vitals, and yet that hand felt cold to her.

"Oh!" murmured she, "it's the icy hand of death. Who are you?" The priest raised his hood. (...)

"Ha!", cried she, her hands before her eyes and with convulsive shiver, "It's the Priest!"

(...)

She began to murmur in a low tone, "Finish! Finish! - the last blow!" And her head sank between her shoulders, like a sheep awaiting the stroke of the butcher.

"You have a horror of me, then?" said he at length.

She did not answer.

"Have you a horror of me, then?" repeated he.

Her lips contracted as if she was smiling, "Yes," said she; "the executioner taunts the condemned! For months he follows me-threatens me-terrifies me. But for him, my God, how happy I was! It is he that has cast meinto this abyss! Oh heavens, it is he that killed-it is he that killed my Phoebus!" Here, bursting into sobs, and raising her eyes towards the priest, "O Wretch!- who are you? What have I done to you? Do you hate me so, then? Alas! what have you against me?"

"I love thee!!" cried the priest.

Her tears suddenly ceased; she looked at him with an idiotic air. He had fallen on his knees, and was looking her through with eyes of fire.

"Dost thou hear? - I love thee!" Cried he again.

"What love!", said the wretched girl, shuddering.

He continued, "The love of the damned."

Both remained for some minutes silent, crushed under the weight of their emotions-he maddened-she stupefied.

"Listen," said the priest at lenght, and a strange calm came over him; "thou shalt know all. I am about to tell thee what hitherto I have scarcely dared tell myself, when secretly I have interrogated my conscience in those deep hours of the night when it has been so dark that is seemed as if God could no longer see me. Listen-before I met thee, young girl, I was happy- "

"And I too!" sighed she feebly.

"Interrupt me not. Yes - I was happy; at last I thought myself so. I was pure- my soul was filled with limpid light. No head ever rose more lofty or more radiant than mine. Priests consulted me about castity, doctors upon doctrine. Yes, science was everything to me; it was a sister and a sister sufficied me.

(...)

And then I avoided women. Besides, I had only to open a book for all the impure vapours of the brain to evaporate before the splendour of science. (...)

Alas! If victory stayed not with me, the fault is in God, who made the man an the demon of equal strenght. Listen - one day- "

Here the priest stopped; and the prisioner heard issuing from his bosom sighs which seemed to rend him. He resumed -

"One day I was leaning agaist the window of my cell. What book was I reading then? Oh! all that's confusion in my head. I was reading. The window overlooked a square. I heard the sound of the tambourine and music. Angry at being disturbed in my rverie, I look into the square. What I saw - there were others that saw it too- and yet it was not a spectacle for human eyes. There, in the meedle of the pavement-it was noon- a burning sun- a creature was dancing- a creature so beautiful that GOd wuld have preferred to her to the Virgin- would have chosen her for His mother- would have been born of her, if she had existed when he became a man.(...)

Oh, the splendent figure, which stood out like something luminous even in the sunlight itself! Alas! young girl, it was thou! Surprised, intoxicated, enchanged, I suffered myself to look. I look at thee so long that all at once I shuddered with affright. I felt that fate ws laying hold on me.

(...)

Yes, from that day forward, there was a man I knew not. I had recourse to all my remedies- the cloister-the altar-the labour-books. Folly! How hollow does science sound when a head full of passions in despair strikes against it! (...) I sought thee, I saw thee again. Misery! When I had seen thee twice, I wished to see thee a thousand times - I wished to see you always!(...)

Then aroused the idea of carrying thee off. One night I attempted it. There were two of us. Already we laid hold on thee, when that wretched officer (Phoebus) came upon us. He delived thee. Thus was he the beginning of thy misfortunes, of mine and of his own. (...) I should have thee - that there thou couldst not escape me - that you possessed me me long enough for me to posess three in my turn.(...) And there where I thought myself all-powerful, fate was more powerful than I. Alas! Alas!

(...)

* "CHILD, TORTURE ME WITH ONE HAND, BUT CARESS ME WITH THE OTHER! HAVE PITY, YOUNG GIRL, HAVE PITY ON ME!!"

> Watching... "The priest whom the young ladies had observed on the top of the northern tower, leaning over towards teh square, and so attentive to the gipsy girl's dancing, was in fact the Archdeacon Claude Frollo."
(...) ...yet in all that city the archdeacon saw but one spot on its pavement, the Place du Parvis; in all that crowd but one figure, the of the gipsy girl.
It would have been difficult to say what was the nature of that look, or whence arose the flame that issued from it. It was a fixed gaze, and yet full of trouble and tumult. And from the profound stillness of his whole body, only just agitated at intervals by an involuntary shiver, like a tree shaken by the wind, his stiffened elbows, more marble than the balustrade on which they leaned, and the petrified smile which contracted his countenance, one might have said that no part of Claude Frollo was alive but his eyes."

Talking with Gringoire, whom Frollo spotted by La Esmeralda:

"When they had proceeded a few steps Dom Claude, leaning his back against a pillar, looked steadfastly at Gringoire. This look was not the one which Gringoire had apprehended in his shame at being surprised by so grave and learned a personage neither scoff nor irony; it was serious, calm, and searching. The archdeacon was the first to break silence.
"Come, Maitre Pierre," said he, "you have many things to explain to me. And first, how is it that I have not seen you for the last two months, and that I meet with you again in the public street, in rare guise i'faith, half red, half yellow, like a Caudebec apple?"

Dom Claude listened in silence. All at once his sunken eye assumed an expression so sagacious and penetrating that Gringoire felt as if searched to his inmost soul by that look.
"Very well, Maitre Pierre; but how is it that you are now in company with that dancing-girl of Egypt?"
"Why, just," said Gringoire, "because she is my wife and I am her husband."
The priest's dark eye took fire. "And hast thou done that, miserable man?" he cried, furiously grasping Gringoire's arm;"and hast thou been so abandoned of God as to lay thy hand upon that girl?"
"By my chance of paradise, monseigneur," answered Gringoire, trembling in every limb,"I swear to you that I have never touched her, if that be what disturbs you so."

"Another time," continued the poet, smiling, "before I went to bed, I looked through her keyhole, and indeed I saw the most delicious damsel in her shift that ever stepped upon a bedside with her naked foot."
"Go to the devil with you!" cried the priest, with a terrible look; and pushing the amazed Gringoire by teh shoulders, he plunged with hasty strides under the darkest arches of the cathedral.

Chapter II - Showing that a priest and a philosopher are two different man

Frollo, partly a hidden alchemist, inside his small chamber in the Notre-Dame, where he executes his experiments and studings, being watched, unware, by his young brother, Jehan:

This master, however, leaning over a vast manuscript, adorned with singular paintings, appeared to be tormented by some idea which constantly mingled itself with his meditations; so at least Jehan thought, as he heard him exclaim, with the musing intermissions of a waking dreamer, who thinks aloud,- :
"Yes- so Manou said and Zoroaster taught - the sun is born of fire, the moon of the sun. Fire is the soul of universe; (...)
Flamel considers that it is more simple to operate on terrestrial fire. Flamel! there's predestination in the name! Flamma! Yes - fire. That is all. The diamond is charcoal - gold in fire. But how to extract it? Magistri affirms that there are certain names of women which possess so sweet and mysterious a charm that it is sufficient to pronouce them during the operation. Let us hear what Manou says about it: 'Where women are honoured, the divinities are complacent; where they are despised, it is useless to pray to God. The lips of a woman are constantly pure; they are as running waters, as rays of the sun. A woman's name should be pleasing, soft, and fanciful, should end with a long vowel, and resemble words of benediction."
Yes, indeed, the sage is right: Maria- Sophia- Esmeral...
Damnation! Ever that thought!"
And he closed his book with violence.
He passed his hands across his forehead, as if to chase some idea which haunted him.

going on with his mystic studies...

"Come, let us try," resumed the archdeacon eagerly. "If I succeed, I shall see the blue spark fly out of the head of the nail. Emen-Hetan! Emen-Hetan! That is not it. Sigeani! Sigeani! May this nail open the grave for whosoever bears the name of Phoebus!...A curse upon it! still- again - eternally the same idea!"
And he threw aside the hammer angrily. He then sank so low into his fauteuil and upon the table, that Jehan lost sight of him behind the high back of his chair. For some minutes he could see nothing but his convulsed hand clenched over a book. All at once Dom Claude arose, took a pair of compass, and engraved in silence on the wall, in capital letters, this Greek workd, -

'ANÁI'KH

"My brother is a fool," said Jehan to himself."It would have been much more simple to have written fatum (fate):everybody's not obliged to know Greek."
The archdeacon reseated himself in the fauteuil, and leaned his head on his two hands, like a sick person whose tembles are heavy and burning.

The scholar viewed his brother with surprise. (...)He knew not with that fury that sea of the human passions ferments and boils when it is refused all egress - how it gathers strenght, swells, and overflows - how it wears away the heart - how it breaks forth in inward sobs and stifled convulsions, until it has rent awy its dikes and even burst its bed. The austere and icy exterior of Claude Frollo, that cold surface of rugged and inaccessible virtue, had always deceived Jehan. The merry scholar never dreamed of the boiling, furious, and deep lava beneath the snowy brow of Etna."

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