'
LI B RAHY
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1849
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ji&c0nV' ofay,
THE
HUNCHBACK
OF
NOTRE-DAME.
BY VICTOR HUGO.
TRANSLATED EXPRESSLY FOR THIS EDITION ;
WITH A SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF THE AUTHOR;
BY FREDERIC SHOBERL
A NEW EDITION, REVISED.
LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET ;
AND BELL & BRADFUTE, EDINBURGH.
1849.
On E-S
CONTENTS.
Page
SKETCH OF THE LlFE AND WRITINGS OF VICTOR HUGO V
BOOK I.
r- CHAP.
I. The great Hall of the PaJace of Justice . . 1
i II. Pierre Gringoire - 14
j^Sv lit Monseigneur the Cardinal . . . -24
IV. Master Jacques Coppenole - - . - 31
V. Quasimodo - - ....40
v. VI La Esmeralda .... 46
BOOK II.
-^ L From Charybdis into Scylla - - 49
IL The Place de Gr eve .... .51
IIL The Poet puzzled 54
IV. Inconveniences of following a handsome Girl in the
Street at Night - - . ' . - 63
V Sequel of Inconveniences - ... 67
VI The broken Jug - ... - _ 69
VII. A Wedding Night - . &
BOOK III.
I. Notre- Dame - - 98
IL Bird's-Eye View of Paris . . - - 106
r
BOOK IV.
L The Foundling - - . . -130
II. Claude Frollo ..... .134
m lit The Bell-Ringer of Notre-Dame . 139
*1V. The Dog and his Master - - - 146
BOOK V.
L Ancient Administration of Justice . _ 154
II. The Trouaux Rats ... - - 164
IIL Sister Gudule * . .168
IV. The Pillory . ^ 18ft
a4
(0
j CONTENTS.
BOOK VI.
CHAP. Page
T Danger of trusting a Goat with a Secret - - - *|Jj
II II A Priest and a Philosopher are two different Persons 2
IIL The Bells - - " ' Sg
IV. Claude Frollo's Cell S
V. The two Men in Black - " 04/1
VI Captain Phoebus de Chateaupers - |*
VII. The Goblin-Monk - ~ A ~ * ha m ~ r I 251
VIII. Utility of Windows looking towards the River - vu.
BOOK VII.
L The Crown transformed into a dry Leaf - - 260
II. Sequel to the Crown transformed into a dry Leaf - ^
IIL Conclusion of the Crown transformed into a dry Leaf 5
IV Lasciate Ogni Speranza - " " oqi
V. The Mother - - - - " " oq"c
VI. Three human Hearts differently constituted - - &&
BOOK VIII.
L A high Fever S
II. The Sanctuary - - " " ~ %ok
III. A human Heart in a Form scarcely human - - &*
IV. Earthenware and Crystal - - gg
V. The Key of the Porte Rouge - - g*
VL Sequel to the Key of the Porte Rouge - - *
BOOK IX.
I Gringoire has several capital Ideas one after another in
the Rue des Bernardins - - - " q
II. Turn Vagabond ... *
IIL -II Allegro - - - * " " 367
IV. A mischievous Friend 5 4. 'tt '
V. The Retreat where Monsieur Louis of France says his
Prayers - 417
VL A narrow Escape - - " "air
VIL Chateaupers to the Rescue - - - -
BOOK X.
421
L The little Shoe - - - * * *lt
II." La Creatura Bella Bianco vestita - - *g
IIL -Marriage of Captain Phoebus - - *
IV. Marriage of Quasimodo
SKETCH OF
THE LIFE AND WRITINGS
OP
VICTOR HUGO.
The author of the work here submitted to the public in an
English dress, though^till young, has distinguished himself
in almost every walk of imaginative literature: disputing
the prize with the best lyric poets of the day ; occupying
one of the most eminent positions on the stage; and hold-
ing the very first place among the contemporary novelists
of France. Of such a writer, the following particulars,
brief though they be, will, it is presumed, form an accept-
able Introduction to the attempt to transfuse the acknow-
ledged master-piece of his pen into our native language.
Victor Hugo was born on the 26th of February, 1802,
at Besancon. At the age of five years he accompanied his
father, then a colonel in the French army, to Italy, where
this officer was afterwards appointed commandant of a
province, and was engaged in suppressing the hordes of
banditti |which then infested that country, and, among
others, the daring Fra Diavolo. Two years afterwards,
young Hugo, having returned to Paris, received his first in-
structions from his mother, who belonged to a family of La
Vendee, assisted by a royalist who was concealed in her
house, and who afterwards suffered death with Mallet, and an
ecclesiastic. Among the first books that he read were the
works of Polybius and Tacitus. In 1811 he went with his
Viii LIFE AND WRITINGS OP VICTOR HUGO.
mother and brothers to Spain, where his father, meanwhile
promoted to the rank of general, commanded two provinces.
He resided with them in the Macerano palace at Madrid, and
was destined to be page to King Joseph. In the following
year, when his patron was expelled from the Peninsula, his
mother returned with him and his brother Eugene to Pans.
His residence in Italy and Spain, the royalist sentiments and
religious spirit of his mother, and the enthusiasm of his
father for Napoleon, have given a tinge to his after-life
and to every page of his works.
At the age of thirteen, young Hugo made his first po-
etical essay in honour of Roland and chivalry. Soon after-
wards, by superior command, he was obliged to leave his
mother, who had quarrelled with her husband, probably
owing to the difference of their political opinions, and was
sent by his father to an establishment belonging to the
Gymnasium of Louis le Grand. Here, vexed at his sepa-
ration from his mother, he wrote a royalist tragedy, in ho-
nour of Louis XVIII. with Egyptian names, under the
title of Irtamene. From the academy of Cordien and De-
cote he sent a poem Sur les Avantages de I' Etude to the
French Academy, on which occasion he had for competitors
Lebrun, Delavigne, Saintine, and Loyson, who all made
their poetical debut at this time. The prize was not ad-
judged to Victor Hugo's performance, but it obtained ho-
nourable mention. The youthful poet concluded with this
reference to himself:
" 3Moi qui, toujours fuyant les citls et les coup,
De trois lustres a, peine aivu finir le cours."
The Academicians would not believe that the author was
only fifteen, and felt offended at what they considered an
attempt to impose upon them ; and when Hugo laid the
oertificate of his baptism before Raynouard, the reporter,
the prize was already adjudged.
In the following year, Victor's brother Eugene gained a
prize at the Jeux floraux of Toulouse. Victor's jealousy
was excited; and in 1819 he obtained two prizes from the
same Academy, for poems on the Statue of Henry IV. and
LIFE AND WRITINGS OP VICTOR HUGO. ix
the Virgins of Verdun. At Toulouse, the judges, like the
French Academicians, would not believe that the writer
was so young, and the president of the Academy made a
formal complaint on the subject. The " Ode on the Stsu
tue of Henry IV." was finished in a single night. He
was watching beside his sick mother, who lamented the
circumstance as preventing him from being a candidate,
since the next morning was the latest time for sending off
poems destined to compete for the prize. Early on the
following day the piece was finished, and, bedewed with
his mother's tears, it arrived in time at Toulouse.
In 1820 Victor Hugo again obtained the prize for his
poem of " Moses on the Nile," and was proclaimed maitre
es jeux fiorauco. These pursuits were not calculated to
further his study of the law, which he had chosen for his
profession, and which was besides obstructed by the cares
arising from the necessity of supporting himself, by politics,
which now began to engage his attention, and, above all,
by love. His terrific romance of " Hand'Islande," which
he commenced in 1820, but for which he could not find
a publisher till three years afterwards, was written for no
other purpose but to communicate his feelings to the object
who had long possessed his youthful affections, and whom
he was at length not permitted to see. At the same time
he composed his royalist and religious ' ' Odes," and, in con-
junction with a few friends, published the Conservateur
Litteraire, to which he contributed articles on Sir Walter
Scott, Byron, Moore, and also political satires. The trans-
lations from Lucan and Virgil, which about this time ap-
peared under the name of D'Auverney, and the Epistles
from Aristides to Brutus on Thou and You, were from his
pen.
In the Conservateur Litteraire he also wrote remarks on
the first Meditations Poetiques, the author of which had
not yet avowed himself. Every line of this article ex-
presses astonishment, profound admiration of the new
poet, and keen sarcasm on the first opinions that might be
anticipated from the public on this poet Lamartine. It
was not till two years after the publication of this article
that he became personally acquainted with Lamartine him-
X LIFE AND WRITINGS OF VICTOR HUGO.
self. Shortly after this, Chateaubriand, in a note to the
Conservateur, styled him enfant sublime, and this cir-
cumstance led to a friendly intercourse with him, which
subsisted several years.
After the death of his mother in 1821, he took a small
house in a sequestered quarter, but refused to accept money
from his father, and laboured day and night, that he might
be the sooner in a condition to claim the hand of his mis-
tress, to whom he was united in the following year. His
juvenile friend, Delon, was implicated in the conspiracy of
Saumur. Hugo wrote to his mother, offering the fugitive
an asylum in his house. This letter fell into the hands of
the police ; it was read by Louis XVIII. himself, and the
first vacant pension was conferred on the writer.
So long as Victor Hugo adhered exclusively to the roy-
alists, he drew upon himself scarcely any thing but cen-
sure in Paris, and it must be confessed that his earliest
performances, clever as they were, afforded scope for criti-
cism. His poetical compositions were more highly appre-
ciated than his prose. His " Odes" of 1822 gained
him more applause than his Han d'Islande and Bug
Jargal. The first, which has appeared in English, " is a
northern romance, in which the youthful novelist has
turned to great account the savage wilds, gloomy lakes,
stormy seas, pathless caves, and ruined fortresses, of Scan-
dinavia. A being, savage as the scenery around him
human in his birth, but more akin to the brute in his na
ture, diminutive but with a giant's strength, whos
pastime is assassination, who lives literally as well as
metaphorically on blood, is the hero : and round this mon-
ster are grouped some of the strangest, ghastliest, and yet
not wholly unnatural beings which it is possible for the
imagination to conceive, while gentler forms relieve the
monotony of crime and horror." *
Hugo's second romance, * Bug Jargal," which has
also been recently given to the English reader in the
Library of Romance, is a tale of the insurrection in St.
Domingo but, according to the critic whom we have just
* Edinburgh Review, No. cxvi.
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF VICTOR HUGO- XI
quoted, te the essential improbability of such a character
as Bug Jargal, a negro of the noblest moral and intellectual
character, passionately in love with a white woman, yet
tempering the wildest passion with the deepest respect,
and sacrificing even life at last in her behalf and that of
her husband, is too violent a call upon the imagination :
but, setting aside the defects of the plot, no reader of the tale
can forget the entrancing interest of the scenes in the camp
of the insurgent chief Biassou, or the death struggle be-
tween Habihrah and D'Auverney, on the brink of the cata-
ract. The latter, in particular, is drawn with such intense
force, that the reader seems almost to be a witness of the
changing fortunes of the fight, and can hardly breathe
freely till he comes to the close."
In 1823-4, Victor Hugo produced a poetical mis-
cellany, with the title of La Muse Fran false. In 1-824,
his poem " Napoleon" obtained deserved applause. For
a narrative of the tour which he made in Switzerland in
1825, in company with Nodier, he has not been able to
find a publisher. In 1827, he composed his Ode a la
Colonne, which gained him general admiration. His
father died in the following year, and his last hours were
cheered by the enthusiasm with which his son celebrated
the exploits of his emperor.
About this period the hostilities between the adherents
of the romantic and the classic school were renewed with
vehemence ; for a while this quarrel engrossed the atten-
tion of the public even in a still greater degree than poli-
tics ; and Hugo, at the head of a little band, waged war
against the numerous host of the classicists with variable
success. His drama entitled " Cromwell," (1827) not
adapted for the stage, full of admirable passages, but fre-
quently lame, weak, and absurd, was rather a defeat than
a victory. The Orientates (1828) gave a severe blow to
classicism : never had a Frenchman produced such lyrics.
This work is replete with simple, natural feeling, and
glowing inspiration.
His next performance, Le dernier Jour d'un Condamne,
published in 1829, though it has no pretensions to the
character of a regular tale, is, in its way, perhaps, the most
XIV LIFE AND WRITINGS OF VICTOR HUGO.
startling to our continental neighbours, would offend the
severer taste of the English reader.
Since the publication of this work, which has placed
Victor Hugo indisputably at the head of the romance-
writers of his country, he has chiefly directed his attention
to the drama. Two pieces, Le Roi s 'amuse and Lucrece
Borgia, have been the result, but of these it has been
observed, that they partake too largely of the besetting sin
of the modern French school of imaginative literature,
and that in them scarcely any humane or generous emo-
tion leavens the mass of licentiousness, incest, and mur-
der, in which they deal. The former was nevertheless
brought out at the Theatre Francais, but the represent-
ation was forbidden by the minister Argout, on account of
passages which were supposed to contain allusions to the
Orleans family. In consequence of this interdict, the di-
rectors of the theatre refused to fulfil their contract with
the author, who therefore instituted legal proceedings
against them, but, we believe, without accomplishing his
object.
Victor Hugo's reading lies chiefly among English, Spa-
nish, and Italian authors. His acquaintance with English
literature, indeed, is apparent both in his poetry and his
romance ; it has been asserted, that in the characters and
incidents of this work in particular, a strong likeness to the
inventions of English writers may frequently be traced ;
but we doubt whether any unbiassed reader of this volume
will discover in it sufficient evidence to justify the charge
of imitation alleged against the author.
THE
HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE-DAME
VOLUME THE FIRST.
BOOK I.
CHAPTER I.
THE GREAT HALL OF THE PALACE OF JUSTICE.
It is this day three hundred and forty-eight years six
months and nineteen days since the good people of Paris
were awakened by a grand peal from all the bells in the
three districts of the City, the University, and the Ville.
The 6th of January, 1482, was, nevertheless, a day of
which history has not preserved any record. There was
nothing worthy of note in the event which so early set in
motion the bells and the citizens of Paris. It was neither
an assault of the Picards or the Burgundians, nor a pro-
cession with the shrine of some saint, nor a mutiny of the
students, nor an entry of our <( most redoubted lord, Mon-
sieur the king," nor even an execution of rogues of either
sex, before the Palace of Justice of Paris. Neither was it
an arrival of some bedizened and befeathered embassy, a
sight of frequent occurrence in the fifteenth century. It
was but two days since the last cavalcade of this kind, that
of the Flemish ambassadors commissioned to conclude a
marriage between the Dauphin and Margaret of Flanders,
had made its entry into Paris, to the great annoyance of
the Cardinal of Bourbon, who, in order to please the king,
2 THE HUNCHBACK OP NOTRE-DAME.
had been obliged to receive this vulgar squad of Flemish
burgomasters with a good grace, and to entertain them at
his hotel de Bourbon with a goodly morality, mummery,
and farce, while a deluge of rain drenched the magnificent
tapestry at his door.
What set in motion all the population of Paris on the
6*th of January was the double solemnity, united from time
immemorial, of the epiphany and the Festival of Fools.
On that day there was to be an exhibition of fireworks in
the Place de Greve, a May-tree planted at the chapel of
Braque, and a mystery performed at the Palace of Justice.
Proclamation had been made to this effect on the preceding
day, with sound of trumpet in the public places, by the
provost's officers in fair coats of purple camlet, with large
white crosses on the breast.
That morning, therefore, all the houses and shops re-
mained shut, and crowds of citizens of both sexes were to
be seen wending their way towards one of the three places
specified above. Be it, however, observed, to the honour of
the taste of the cockneys of Paris, that the majority of this
concourse were proceeding towards the fireworks, which
were quite seasonable, or to the mystery which was to be
represented in the great hall of the palace, well covered in
and sheltered, and that the curious agreed to let the poor
leafless May shiver all alone beneath a January sky in the
cemetery of the chapel of Braque.
All the avenues to the Palace of Justice were particularly
thronged, because it was known that the Flemish ambas-
sadors, who had arrived two days before, purposed to attend
the representation of the mystery, and the election of the
Pope of Fools, which was also to take place in the great
hall.
It was no easy matter on that day to get into this great
hall, though then reputed to be the largest room in the
world. To the spectators at the windows, the palace yard
crowded with people had the appearance of a sea, into
which five or six streets, like the mouths of so many rivers,
disgorged their living streams. The waves of this sea,
incessantly swelled by fresh accessions, broke against the
angles of the houses, projecting here and there like pro-
THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE-DAME. S
montories into the irregular basin of the Place. In the
centre of the lofty Gothic facade of the palace, the grand
staircase, with its double current ascending and descending,
poured incessantly into the Place like a cascade into a lake.
Great were the noise and the clamour produced by the
cries of some, the laughter of others, and the trampling of
the thousands of feet. From time to time, this clamour
and this noise were redoubled ; the current which pro-
pelled the crowd towards the grand staircase turned back,
agitated and whirling about. It was a dash made by an
archer, or the horse of one of the provost's sergeants kick-
ing and plunging to restore order an admirable man-
oeuvre, which the provosty bequeathed to the constablery,
the constablery to the marechaussee, and the marechaussee
to the present gendarmerie of Paris.
Doors, windows, loopholes, the roofs of the houses,
swarmed with thousands of calm and honest faces gazing
at the palace and at the crowd, and desiring nothing more ;
for most of the good people of Paris are quite content with
the sight of the spectators ; nay, a blank wall, behind
which something or other is going forward, is to us an
object of great curiosity.
If it could be given to us mortals living in the year
1 830 to mingle in imagination with those Parisians of the
fifteenth century, and to enter with them, shoved, elbowed,
hustled, that immense hall of the palace so straitened for
room on the 6th of January, 1482, the sight would not be
destitute either of interest or of charm ; and all that we
should have around us would be so ancient as to appear
absolutely new. If it is agreeable to the reader, we will
endeavour to retrace in imagination the impressions which
he would have felt with us on crossing the threshold of the
great hall, amidst this motley crowd, coated, gowned, or
clothed in the paraphernalia of office.
In the first place, how one's ears are stunned with the
noise ! how one's eyes are dazzled ! Over head is a double
roof of pointed arches, ceiled with carved wood, painted
sky-blue, and studded with fleurs de lis in gold ; under
foot, a pavement of alternate squares of black and white
marble. A few paces from us stands an enormous pillar,
b 2
4 THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE-DA3IE.
then fttxotner, and another; in all, seven pillars, intersect-
ing the hall longitudinally, and supporting the return of
the double- vaulted roof. Around the first four pillars are
shops, glistening with glass and jewellery ; and around the
other three, benches worn and polished by the hose of the
pleaders and the gowns of the attorneys. Along the lofty
walls, between the doors, between the windows, between
the pillars, is ranged the interminable series of all the
kings of France ever since Pharamond : the indolent kings
with pendent arms and downcast eyes ; the valiant and
warlike kings with heads and hands boldly raised towards
heaven. The tall, pointed windows are glazed with panes
of a thousand hues ; at the outlets are rich doors, finely
carved ; and the whole, ceiling, pillars, walls, wainscot,
doors, statues, covered from top to bottom with a splendid
colouring of blue and gold, which, already somewhat tar-
nished at the time we behold it, was almost entirely buried
in dust and cobwebs in the year of grace 1549, when Du
Breul still admired it by tradition.
Now figure to yourself that immense oblong hall, illu-
mined by the dim light of a January day, stormed by a
motley and noisy crowd, pouring in along the walls, and
circling round the pillars, and you wiii have a faint idea
of the general outline of the picture ; the curious details
of which we shall endeavour to delineate more precisely.
It is certain that if Ravaillac had not assassinated
Henry IV. there would have been no documents of his
trial deposited in the Rolls Office of the Palace of Justice,
and no accomplices interested in the destruction of those
documents ; consequently, no incendiaries obliged, for want
of better means, to burn the Rolls Office in order to burn
the documents, and to burn the Palace of Justice in order
to burn the Rolls Office ; of course there would have been
no fire in 1618. The old palace would still be standing
with its old great hall ; and I might then say to the reader
Go, look at it and thus we should both be spared
trouble, myself the trouble of writing, and him that of
perusing, an indifferent description. This demonstrates
the novel truth that great events have incalculable con-
\^ sequences.
THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE -DAME. 5
It is, indeed, possible that the accomplices of Ravaillac
had no hand in the fire of 1 6" 1 8 . There are two other
plausible ways of accounting for it ; first, the great " star
of fire, a foot broad, and a foot and a half high," which
fell, as every body knows, from the sky upon the Palace
on the 7th of March, a*fter midnight ; secondly, this stanza
of Theophile :
Certes ce fut un triste jeu,
Quand a Paris dame Justice,
Pour avoir mange" trop d'epice,
Se mit tout le palais en feu.
Whatever may be thought of this threefold explanation,
political, physical, and poetical, of the burning of the
Palace of Justice in 1618, the fact of the fire is unfor-
tunately most Certain. Owing to this catastrophe,, and,
above all, to the successive restorations which have swept
away what it spared, very little is now left of this elder
Palace of the Louvre, already so ancient in the time of
Philip the Fair, that the traces of the magnificent build-
ings erected by King Robert, and described by Hegaldus,
had then to be sought for. What has become of the
Chancery Chamber, where St. Louis consummated his
marriage? the garden where he administered justice, habited
in a camlet coat, a surcoat of linsey-woolsey without
sleeves, and a mantle over all, of black serge, reclining
upon carpets with Joinville ? Where is the chamber of
the Emperor Sigismond ? that of Charles IV. ? that