Notes

Sixteen years before the time of this story, on a good Sunday morning of the Quasimodo, a young child was laid at the church of Notre Dame on a small wooden table called the bed of the found children. The abandoned child was picked up. Only one head was seen of him, and that head was a deformed thing. A young priest named Claude Frollo had adopted the child. His parents had intended him from childhood to be a priest.

The summer of 1466 a great plague had killed more than forty thousand people in Paris. His father and mother had died, leaving a younger brother to Claude. The young man had raised him. When he had seen the abandoned child, he had thought that if he died his dear little Jehan might well also be thrown miserably on the board of the children-found, and he took the bag.

When he pulled that child out of the bag, he found it very deformed. But he had promised himself to raise him in order to redeem the possible faults of little Jehan. He had baptized him and had named him Quasimodo. Fourteen years later Quasimodo had become the bell-ringer of Our Lady and his adoptive archdeacon father.

Quasimodo was born blind, hunchbacked, and lame. It was out of great sorrow that Claude Frollo had taught him to speak. And he went deaf by ringing the bells. His misfortune had made him mean. Yet there was one person whom Quasimodo loved, Claude Frollo. The priest had taken him in, adopted him, fed him and raised him. He had taught her how to speak, read and write, and then he had made her a bell-ringer.

When the poor bell-ringer became deaf, he established between himself and the archdeacon a sign language, mysterious and understood by them alone. And the archdeacon was the human with whom Quasimodo had communication.

So Claude Frollo had not abandoned his younger brother’s education. The young Jehan Frollo was a real devil, which made Dom Claude frown. But, very funny, which made the big brother smile.

The archdeacon had moved into the one of the two towers that looks on the Place de Greve right next to the cage with the bells, a small room where no one enters, not even the bishop said. He had always distanced himself from women. He seemed to hate them more than ever, especially the gypsies. He even asked the bishop to forbid the gypsies to come and dance and play drums in Parvi Square.

On this morning of January 7, 1482, Quasimodo is in one of the rooms of the Palace of Justice, as he will be tried for trying to kidnap a woman; the bohemian Esmeralda. Dozens of bourgeois came to witness the spectacle of justice.

'Here,' said Jehan Frollo, who is also in the room, 'we are going to judge our Pope of Fools'

At this time Mr. Provost in person enters and asks the accused,

“What did you do to be here?”

Quasimodo, believing that the Provost Marshal asked him for his name….

‘Quasimodo.’
The crowd laughs and the provost cries, red with anger,

“Are you mocking me too?”

"Bell-ringer at Notre Dame." replied Quasimodo, believing that it is a matter of explaining to the judge who he is.
“Bell-ringer, I condemn you to receive a hundred lashes on the Place de Greve and two hours of pillory.”

'That’s a fair assessment,' cried schoolgirl Jehan Frollo, imitating the voice of the hunchback.

The Provost Marshal turns around and stares at the new Quasimodo.

‘Pardon, add an extra hour of pillory.’