A Bridal Night — The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

Alone with Esmeralda, Gringoire decides the broken crock has made him her husband, and he clasps her waist. She slips free, a little poniard in her hand, and the goat Djali lowers gilded horns. The marriage, she says, was only to save him from the gibbet. He swears not to come near her without leave, and asks for supper. Bread, bacon, apples, and beer appear. He eats hungrily. She watches, her mind elsewhere, one hand on the goat.

She refuses him as husband or lover, though perhaps as a friend. Friendship, she says, is two souls that touch without mingling. Love is a man and a woman made one angel. She wants a helmet, a sword, and golden spurs, and she cannot love a man who cannot protect her. Quasimodo's name makes her hide her face. A green silk amulet, with glass like an emerald, must not be touched. He speaks of his hard life and of Dom Claude Frollo. She asks what Phœbus means. It is Latin for sun, he says, a god who was an archer. Her bracelet falls. When he stoops, she and the goat are gone behind a bolted door. He sleeps on a carved coffer.