The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

Louis XI sleeps in the Bastille rather than his palace. A candle burns in his room, and its light matches the burning atop Notre-Dame. Four figures gather in the king’s room. Olivier le Daim stands beside the sitting king, holding a manuscript. Two Flemish ambassadors, Guillaume Rym and Jacques Coppenole, watch the elderly king peer at his papers. A guard stands nearby. As the ambassadors quibble, the king complains that Le Daim and his manuscript will ruin France. The manuscript contains the list of expenses generated by the Parisian nobility. The king complains about the nobles bleeding government funds.

As the list of expenses continues, the king complains that a condemned prisoner is being kept and fed, yet he quickly approves the cost of execution and torture devices. After hearing about a particularly large cage, the king leads the men out through the Bastille to view the cage. He admiringly walks around the wooden cage, designed to replace an older cage that held a prisoner for 14 years. From inside the cage, the prisoner proclaims their innocence. As the king exits, Le Daim reveals that the prisoner was once a bishop who was found guilty of treason.

Satisfied, the king returns to his room to work at his desk. He is interrupted by the arrival of Jacques Coictier, who brings news of a riot, led by the Court of Miracles. Coictier pleads with the king not to wait until morning. The king hesitates. Two men, captured during the riot, are dragged into the room. One is too drunk to say anything useful. The other is Gringoire, who is threatened with execution and thus begs for mercy. The king grants mercy but, after Gringoire flees, admits that he has ongoing chest pain. Coictier, the king’s doctor, earns his keep by reiterating the seriousness of the king’s health complaints. He secures a noble position for his nephew by assuring the king that he will seek a new cure. As Le Daim intervenes about an administrative issue, the king demands to be shaved. He watches the fires through the window and assures Coppenole that his guards will deal with the rioters, though Coppenole is less certain. He predicts that the people’s hour will come when the Bastille falls and the common people begin executing kings and nobles. They talk about how riots begin. Le Daim excitedly announces that the rioters are acting against the king. They have attacked Notre-Dame, he explains, to seize a witch who has claimed sanctuary there. Since those claiming sanctuary are under the king’s protection, the rioters oppose the king. The king angrily demands that soldiers stop the rioters and that the witch be hanged. After issuing the order, he drops to his knees and prays for forgiveness. Dismissing everyone but Le Daim, he again demands to be shaved. Coppenole notes to Rym that the king can be cruel when he is not well.

Now free, Gringoire desperately seeks out Frollo, who complains that he is late for their meeting. Gringoire gives Frollo the password used by the thieves: “little blade on the prowl” (491). Frollo reveals that he plans to let the thieves into the bell-tower using his key. They set off for Notre-Dame.

Atop Notre-Dame, Quasimodo realizes that he cannot fight off the intruders. Below, Phoebus leads the king’s guards into the square. They fight the rioters. Clopin Trouillefou kills many enemies using his scythe, but he and the thieves are eventually defeated and forced to flee, leaving bodies strewn across the square. Quasimodo watches the battle and falls to his knees in thanks. When he rushes to find Esmeralda, however, her room is empty.

Esmeralda wakes as the riot begins. Certain that the people breaking into the cathedral want to hang her, she cowers in bed, praying for help. The door opens, and she sees Gringoire and a man disguised in a cloak (Frollo). Gringoire tells her that they have come to rescue her and Djali. As they descend from the tower, however, she feels perturbed by the cloaked man. He unlocks the rear cathedral door, revealing a small boat that will allow them to escape along the Seine. In the boat, Esmeralda huddles near Gringoire, who makes small talk about the king as they travel upstream, oblivious to her fear. Frollo sighs when he recalls seeing Jehan’s corpse strewn on the statue. The familiar sigh makes Esmeralda shiver. As they continue up the river, Gringoire chats about sin and lust. In the near distance, the crowd chants for the witch in Notre-Dame to be hanged. Gringoire is conflicted. He wants to save Djali and Esmeralda but personally can save only one. Since he trusts Frollo to help Esmeralda, he decides to save the goat. When they reach shore, he steals off into the darkness with Djali. Esmeralda is alone with the hooded figure. As he drags her toward the Place de Grève, she does not have the strength to resist. The square seems abandoned as Frollo pulls back his hood, revealing his identity. Standing before the gallows, he offers again to save her. If she does not love him, he says, she will be hanged. Claiming to love her, he demands that she not mention Phoebus, lest he be overcome with jealousy.

Faced with a choice of Frollo or death, Esmeralda drops to her knees. The gallows, she says, disgust her less than Frollo. Despairingly, Frollo rants about his passion for Esmeralda. He believes that he is cursed by fate to love her, only to be treated cruelly by the woman he loves. In horror, Esmeralda watches him weep. He looks up, lamenting that his love for her has cost him everything. Blaming Esmeralda for Jehan’s death, cursing her for tempting him, and scathing her for watching him weep without offering comfort, he offers to save her in exchange for a single kind word. When she calls Frollo a murderer, he hurls himself at her and tries to sexually assault her. She fights free, comparing him unfavorably to Phoebus. Dragging Esmeralda across the square, Frollo gives her a final chance to relent to his demands. She denies him. Frollo calls to Paquette, who reaches through the grill of the rathole and grabs Esmeralda. Frollo tells Paquette to take her revenge as he goes to fetch the guards.

Frollo leaves the square. Esmeralda begs Paquette to spare her life. Cackling, Paquette explains that she will take revenge against the Romany people for stealing her child. Esmeralda shouts that she is an orphan who lost her mother at a young age. They realize that they are mother and daughter, as each has a matching pink baby shoe. Paquette cries with joy, finally reunited with her daughter. She smashes open an entrance to the rathole and drags Esmeralda inside, coddling and holding her. Hearing the guards nearby, Esmeralda begs her mother for help. Paquette hides her from the guards, telling them that Esmeralda escaped. With some convincing, the guards accept her story. As they leave, the fearful Esmeralda hears Phoebus’s voice and calls out to him. Phoebus does not return, but the guards do. They smash into the rathole, seizing Esmeralda. Paquette, overcome with emotion, begs for her daughter’s life. The guards guiltily separate the recently reunited mother and daughter. As dawn breaks, a crowd gathers in the Place de Grève. A weeping guard drags Esmeralda to the gallows. Paquette follows, clinging to Esmeralda. She bites the hangman as he lays a noose around Esmeralda’s neck. He knocks Paquette back, and she falls on a cobblestone and dies. Esmeralda is carried to the gallows.

Quasimodo searches the cathedral for Esmeralda. He still believes that the thieves wanted her hanged, while the guards were trying to save her. Had he found her in the cathedral, the text notes, Quasimodo would have betrayed his beloved Esmeralda. Even when the guards leave, he searches for her to no avail. Returning to her room, overcome with pain, he hits his head against the wall and knocks himself out. When he wakes, he recalls that Frollo tried to rape Esmeralda. He feels conflicted between the woman he loves and his adoptive father. Importantly, however, he knows that Frollo has keys to Esmeralda’s room. He spots Frollo pacing anxiously in a tower above him. He sneaks up behind Frollo, who is too distracted to notice him.

Frollo stares out across the city as dawn breaks. Quasimodo follows Frollo’s gaze down to the Place de Grève. There, Esmeralda is carried to the gallows and hanged. Frollo breaks into an evil laugh at the moment of her death. Quasimodo leaps at Frollo, knocking him from the tower. Frollo falls and, as he calls out about “damnation,” catches hold of a waterspout. He begs Quasimodo for help but Quasimodo cannot look away from the distant gallows. He weeps for Esmeralda. Frollo tries to pull himself to safety but feels as though the entire stone cathedral is turning against him. The waterspout breaks, and he falls to his death, landing on a nearby roof and then rolling onto the street. Frollo dies before he hits the ground. Quasimodo continues to weep as he watches Esmeralda’s death. Casting a glance down to the dead Frollo, he laments “all [he has] loved” (536).

Quasimodo vanishes from Notre-Dame. According to rumors, he was a demon who carried Frollo’s damned soul to hell. Frollo does not receive a Christian burial. A year later, the king dies. Gringoire achieves success as a writer at last but continues to dabble in other pursuits. Phoebus marries Fleur-de-Lys but does not love her, so they lead an unhappy life.

Following her execution, Esmeralda’s body is thrown into the communal mass grave in the cellar of the Montfaucon, a prison in Paris, on top of the bodies of other condemned prisoners. Two years later, Olivier le Daim is thrown into the grave in a similar fashion. When his body is removed to be buried elsewhere, the excavators find two skeletons. They are wrapped together tightly, one belonging to a woman. The other skeleton is deformed and, the excavators note, did not die from hanging. As the guards move to separate the skeletons, the deformed skeleton crumbles to ash in their hands.