Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com

It was, moreover, noticed that, for some time past, his horror of gipsy-women and all Zingari in general
had remarkably increased. He had solicited from the Bishop an edict expressly forbidding gipsies to
dance or play the tambourine within the Parvis of the Cathedral; and simultaneously he was rummaging
among the musty archives of the Holy Office, in order to collect all the cases of necromancers and
sorcerers condemned to the flames or the halter for complicity in witchcraft with sows, he, or she-goats.
VI. Unpopularity
THE ARCHDEACON and the bell-ringer found, as we have said before, but little favour with the
people, great or small, in the purlieus of the Cathedral. If Claude and Quasimodo went abroad, as
occasionally happened, and they were seen in company—the servant following his master—traversing
the chilly, narrow, and gloomy streets in the vicinity of Notre Dame, many an abusive word, many a
mocking laugh or opprobrious gibe would harass them on their passage unless Claude Frollo—though
this was rare—walked with head erect and haughty bearing, offering a stern and well-nigh imperial front
to the startled gaze of his assailants.
The couple shared in the neighbourhood the fate of those poets of whom Régnier says:
“Toutes sortes de gens vont après les poètes,
Comme après les hiboux vont criant les fauvettes.” 53
Now some ill-conditioned monkey would risk his skin and bones for the ineffable pleasure of sticking a
pin in Quasimodo’s hump, or some pretty wench, with more freedom and impudence than was seemly,
would brush the priest’s black robe, thrusting her face into his, while she sang the naughty song
beginning:
“Niche, niche, le diable est pris!” 54
Anon, a group of squalid old women, crouching in the shade on the steps of a porch, would abuse the
Archdeacon and the bell-ringer roundly as they passed, or hurl after them with curses the flattering
remark: “There goes one whose soul is like the other one’s body!” Or, another time, it would be a band
of scholars playing at marbles or hopscotch who would rise in a body and salute them in classical
manner, with some Latin greeting such as “Eia! Eia! Claudius cum claudo!” 55
But, as a rule, these amenities passed unheeded by either the priest or the bell-ringer. Quasimodo was
too deaf, and Claude too immersed in thought to hear them.
Book V
I. The Abbot of St.-Martin’s
THE FAME of Dom Claude Frollo had spread abroad. To it, just about the time of his refusal to
encounter the Lady of Beaujeu, he owed a visit which remained long in his memory.
It happened one evening. Claude had just retired after the evening office to his canonical cell in the
cloister of Notre Dame. Beyond a few glass phials pushed away into a corner and containing some
powder which looked suspiciously like an explosive, the cell had nothing noteworthy or mysterious