Chapter I: Good Souls

Sixteen years previous to the epoch when this story takes place,
one fine morning, on Quasimodo Sunday, a living creature had been
deposited, after mass, in the church of Notre-Dame, on the wooden
bed securely fixed in the vestibule on the left, opposite that
great image of Saint Christopher, which the figure of Messire
Antoine des Essarts, chevalier, carved in stone, had been gazing
at on his knees since 1413, when they took it into their heads to
overthrow the saint and the faithful follower. Upon this bed of
wood it was customary to expose foundlings for public charity.
Whoever cared to take them did so. In front of the wooden bed was
a copper basin for alms.

The sort of living being which lay upon that plank on the morning
of Quasimodo, in the year of the Lord, 1467, appeared to excite
to a high degree, the curiosity of the numerous group which had
congregated about the wooden bed. The group was formed for the
most part of the fair sex. Hardly any one was there except old
women.

In the first row, and among those who were most bent over the
bed, four were noticeable, who, from their gray _cagoule_, a sort
of cassock, were recognizable as attached to some devout
sisterhood. I do not see why history has not transmitted to
posterity the names of these four discreet and venerable damsels.
They were Agnès la Herme, Jehanne de la Tarme, Henriette la
Gaultière, Gauchère la Violette, all four widows, all four dames
of the Chapel Étienne Haudry, who had quitted their house with
the permission of their mistress, and in conformity with the
statutes of Pierre d’Ailly, in order to come and hear the sermon.

However, if these good Haudriettes were, for the moment,
complying with the statutes of Pierre d’Ailly, they certainly
violated with joy those of Michel de Brache, and the Cardinal of
Pisa, which so inhumanly enjoined silence upon them.

“What is this, sister?” said Agnès to Gauchère, gazing at the
little creature exposed, which was screaming and writhing on the
wooden bed, terrified by so many glances.

“What is to become of us,” said Jehanne, “if that is the way
children are made now?”

“I’m not learned in the matter of children,” resumed Agnès, “but
it must be a sin to look at this one.”

“’Tis not a child, Agnès.”

“’Tis an abortion of a monkey,” remarked Gauchère.

“’Tis a miracle,” interposed Henriette la Gaultière.

“Then,” remarked Agnès, “it is the third since the Sunday of the
_Lætare_: for, in less than a week, we had the miracle of the
mocker of pilgrims divinely punished by Notre-Dame
d’Aubervilliers, and that was the second miracle within a month.”

“This pretended foundling is a real monster of abomination,”
resumed Jehanne.

“He yells loud enough to deafen a chanter,” continued Gauchère.
“Hold your tongue, you little howler!”

“To think that Monsieur of Reims sent this enormity to Monsieur
of Paris,” added la Gaultière, clasping her hands.

“I imagine,” said Agnès la Herme, “that it is a beast, an
animal,—the fruit of a Jew and a sow; something not Christian, in
short, which ought to be thrown into the fire or into the water.”

“I really hope,” resumed la Gaultière, “that nobody will apply
for it.”

“Ah, good heavens!” exclaimed Agnès; “those poor nurses yonder in
the foundling asylum, which forms the lower end of the lane as
you go to the river, just beside Monseigneur the bishop! what if
this little monster were to be carried to them to suckle? I’d
rather give suck to a vampire.”

“How innocent that poor la Herme is!” resumed Jehanne; “don’t you
see, sister, that this little monster is at least four years old,
and that he would have less appetite for your breast than for a
turnspit.”

The “little monster” we should find it difficult ourselves to
describe him otherwise, was, in fact, not a new-born child. It
was a very angular and very lively little mass, imprisoned in its
linen sack, stamped with the cipher of Messire Guillaume
Chartier, then bishop of Paris, with a head projecting. That head
was deformed enough; one beheld only a forest of red hair, one
eye, a mouth, and teeth. The eye wept, the mouth cried, and the
teeth seemed to ask only to be allowed to bite. The whole
struggled in the sack, to the great consternation of the crowd,
which increased and was renewed incessantly around it.

Dame Aloïse de Gondelaurier, a rich and noble woman, who held by
the hand a pretty girl about five or six years of age, and
dragged a long veil about, suspended to the golden horn of her
headdress, halted as she passed the wooden bed, and gazed for a
moment at the wretched creature, while her charming little
daughter, Fleur-de-Lys de Gondelaurier, spelled out with her
tiny, pretty finger, the permanent inscription attached to the
wooden bed: “Foundlings.”

“Really,” said the dame, turning away in disgust, “I thought that
they only exposed children here.”

She turned her back, throwing into the basin a silver florin,
which rang among the liards, and made the poor goodwives of the
chapel of Étienne Haudry open their eyes.

A moment later, the grave and learned Robert Mistricolle, the
king’s protonotary, passed, with an enormous missal under one arm
and his wife on the other (Damoiselle Guillemette la Mairesse),
having thus by his side his two regulators,—spiritual and
temporal.

“Foundling!” he said, after examining the object; “found,
apparently, on the banks of the river Phlegethon.”

“One can only see one eye,” observed Damoiselle Guillemette;
“there is a wart on the other.”

“It’s not a wart,” returned Master Robert Mistricolle, “it is an
egg which contains another demon exactly similar, who bears
another little egg which contains another devil, and so on.”

“How do you know that?” asked Guillemette la Mairesse.

“I know it pertinently,” replied the protonotary.

“Monsieur le protonotare,” asked Gauchère, “what do you
prognosticate of this pretended foundling?”

“The greatest misfortunes,” replied Mistricolle.

“Ah! good heavens!” said an old woman among the spectators, “and
that besides our having had a considerable pestilence last year,
and that they say that the English are going to disembark in a
company at Harfleur.”

“Perhaps that will prevent the queen from coming to Paris in the
month of September,” interposed another; “trade is so bad
already.”

“My opinion is,” exclaimed Jehanne de la Tarme, “that it would be
better for the louts of Paris, if this little magician were put
to bed on a fagot than on a plank.”

“A fine, flaming fagot,” added the old woman.

“It would be more prudent,” said Mistricolle.

For several minutes, a young priest had been listening to the
reasoning of the Haudriettes and the sentences of the notary. He
had a severe face, with a large brow, a profound glance. He
thrust the crowd silently aside, scrutinized the “little
magician,” and stretched out his hand upon him. It was high time,
for all the devotees were already licking their chops over the
“fine, flaming fagot.”

“I adopt this child,” said the priest.

He took it in his cassock and carried it off. The spectators
followed him with frightened glances. A moment later, he had
disappeared through the “Red Door,” which then led from the
church to the cloister.

When the first surprise was over, Jehanne de la Tarme bent down
to the ear of la Gaultière,—

“I told you so, sister,—that young clerk, Monsieur Claude Frollo,
is a sorcerer.”