title: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (The Modern Library, 35.3)
author: Victor Hugo
description: Set in medieval Paris, Victor Hugos powerful historical romance The Hunchback of Notre-Dame has resonated with succeeding generations ever since its publication in 1837. It tells the story of the beautiful gypsy Esmeralda, condemned as a witch by the tormented archdeacon Claude Frollo, who lusts after her. Quasimodo, the deformed bell ringer of Notre-Dame Cathedral, having fallen in love with the kindhearted Esmeralda, tries to save her by hiding her in the cathedrals tower. When a crowd of Parisian peasants, misunderstanding Quasimodos motives, attacks the church in an attempt to liberate her, the story ends in tragedy.
zlib_text: * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Notre-Dame de Paris
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  AKA The Hunchback of Notre Dame
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Victor Hugo
  
  
  PREFACE.
  
  
  A few years ago, while visiting or, rather, rummaging about Notre-Dame, the
  author of this book found, in an obscure nook of one of the towers, the
  following word, engraved by hand upon the wall:--
  
    
  ~ANArKH~.  
  
  These Greek capitals, black with age, and quite deeply graven in the stone,
  with I know not what signs peculiar to Gothic caligraphy imprinted upon their
  forms and upon their attitudes, as though with the purpose of revealing that
  it had been a hand of the Middle Ages which had inscribed them there, and
  especially the fatal and melancholy meaning contained in them, struck the
  author deeply.
  
  He questioned himself; he sought to divine who could have been that soul in
  torment which had not been willing to quit this world without leaving this
  stigma of crime or unhappiness upon the brow of the ancient church.
  
  Afterwards, the wall was whitewashed or scraped down