Book One: The Great Hall

Three hundred and forty-eight years, six months and nineteen days ago, the Parisians were awakened by the sound of all the bells ringing in the triple circuit of the City, the University and the Town. It was the 6th of January 1482: the double feast of the Epiphany and of the Fools. There was to be a bonfire in the Place de Grève, a maypole at the Chapel of Braque, and a mystery play in the Great Hall of the Palace of Justice; and the whole population of Paris crowded into the Great Hall, from dawn, to see the play, and the Flemish ambassadors who had come to arrange the marriage of the Dauphin with Margaret of Flanders.

The author of the play was a poor young poet and philosopher, Pierre Gringoire. His mystery — The Good Judgement of Madame the Virgin Mary — was to begin at noon. The crowd waited, impatient, noisy, mocking; the students of the University, perched on the windows and the statues, jeered at everyone, especially the rector; the ambassadors were late. At last Gringoire's actors began, dressed as Labour, Clergy, Nobility and Merchandise; and no one listened. The ambassadors came in; they were announced, one by one, with long Flemish names; and one of them, Master Jacques Coppenole, a hosier of Ghent, a stout, rough, bold man of the people, stood up and said that this was dull, and that in Ghent at the Feast of Fools they elected a Pope of Fools — the man who could make the ugliest face. The crowd seized on it.

Gringoire stood behind a pillar, trembling for his play, watching the faces of the audience. Among the students heckling from the windows was a fair-haired, mischievous boy, Jehan Frollo, nicknamed "du Moulin," who shouted insults at everyone; and at the foot of a pillar a beggar, covered in sores, whined for alms — Clopin Trouillefou, who, as Gringoire would learn that night, was not crippled at all. The Cardinal de Bourbon arrived, magnificent in scarlet, and the play stopped again while the doorkeeper announced, one by one, the names of the cardinal's guests. Every time the actors began, someone else came in. Gringoire, who had counted on glory, began to understand that he was going to be ruined.

One after another, men stuck their heads through a broken rose window in a little chapel to make grimaces; the crowd booed or cheered. Then a face appeared that was so prodigious that the whole hall burst into applause. It was not a grimace at all. It was a face: a tetrahedron of a nose, a horseshoe mouth, a little left eye half hidden by a bristling red eyebrow, while the right eye disappeared entirely beneath an enormous wart; teeth broken and jagged like the battlements of a fortress, one of them projecting like an elephant's tusk; a forked chin; and over it all, a mixture of malice, amazement and sadness. And the body that belonged to it was as extraordinary: a great head bristling with red hair; between the shoulders an enormous hump, matched by another on the chest; legs so twisted that they could touch only at the knees; huge feet, monstrous hands; and with all this deformity, a formidable look of strength, agility and courage.

"It's Quasimodo, the bell-ringer! Quasimodo the hunchback! Quasimodo the one-eyed! Quasimodo the bandy-legged! Noel! Noel!" The women covered their faces. He was deaf. They crowned him with a tiara of cardboard, robed him in a mock cope, and carried him out on a litter, through the streets, in procession, as Pope of the Fools; and his face shone with a sad and proud joy.

Gringoire's play went on, to empty benches. And then even his last spectators ran to the windows, crying: "La Esmeralda! La Esmeralda in the square!" For outside, in the Place de Grève, a girl was dancing.