Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Victor Marie Hugo (1802–1885). Notre Dame de Paris.
The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction. 1917.

III Book XI

III. The Marriage of Phœbus

TOWARDS the evening of that day, when the bishop’s officers of justice came to remove the shattered remains of the Archdeacon from the Parvis, Quasimodo had disappeared.

This circumstance gave rise to many rumours. Nobody doubted, however, that the day had at length arrived when, according to the compact, Quasimodo—otherwise the devil—was to carry off Claude Frollo—otherwise the sorcerer. It was presumed that he had broken the body in order to extract the soul, as a monkey cracks a nut-shell to get at the kernel.

It was for this reason the Archdeacon was denied Christian burial.

Louis XI died the following year, in August, 1483.

As for Pierre Gringoire, he not only succeeded in saving the goat, but gained considerable success as a writer of tragedies. It appears that after dabbling in astronomy, philosophy, architecture, hermetics—in short, every variety of craze—he returned to tragedy, which is the craziest of the lot. This is what he called “coming to a tragic end.” Touching his dramatic triumphs, we read in the royal privy accounts for 1483:

“To Jehan Marchand and Pierre Gringoire, carpenter and composer, for making and composing the Mystery performed at the Châtelet of Paris on the day of the entry of Monsieur the Legate; for duly ordering the characters, with properties and habiliments proper to the said Mystery, as likewise for constructing the wooden stages necessary for the same: one hundred livres.”

Phœbus de Châteaupers also came to a tragic end—he married.