Good Souls — The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

On Quasimodo Sunday in 1467, sixteen years before the story, a deformed child is laid on the foundling bed in Notre-Dame, opposite Saint Christopher, with a copper basin for alms. It writhes in a linen sack marked with the bishop's cipher: red hair, one weeping eye, a mouth, and teeth. Four widows of the Chapel Étienne Haudry lead the outcry: Agnès la Herme, Jehanne de la Tarme, Henriette la Gaultière, and Gauchère la Violette. They call the child a monkey and a monster, fit for fire or water. They think it about four years old, and they hope nobody will take it.

Aloïse de Gondelaurier, with little Fleur-de-Lys, turns away in disgust and throws a silver florin. Robert Mistricolle, the king's protonotary, speaks of the river of hell, of a demon's egg in the shut eye, and of the greatest misfortunes. The crowd begins to relish a burning. A severe young priest pushes through, says that he adopts the child, hides it in his cassock, and vanishes by the Red Door into the cloister. Jehanne de la Tarme then whispers to la Gaultière that she had said so: the young clerk, Monsieur Claude Frollo, is a sorcerer.