More about Claude Frollo — The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

In 1482 Claude Frollo is about thirty-six, austere archdeacon of Josas, and no longer the young scholar. Choirboys tremble as he passes. Learning and his brother have both soured. Jehan, called of the Mill, mauls students, wrecks a wine-shop, and is said at sixteen to haunt the Rue de Glatigny. Sermons do not change him, so Claude grips his studies all the harder.

With lawful knowledge finished, he is said to have turned to alchemy and the hermetic arts. He broods at the tomb of Nicolas Flamel, and rumour has him digging in Flamel's cellars for the philosopher's stone. A secret cell in the tower over the Grève shows a red, pulsing light, which goodwives call the spark of hell. The narrator treats this as smoke, not proof, yet Quasimodo is taken for the demon and Claude for the sorcerer, who must one day pay with his soul. The same gulfs open in his heart. He shrinks from women, refuses to appear before the Dame de Beaujeu, and his dread of Bohemian women grows. He wants their dancing forbidden on the cathedral square, and he collects cases of sorcerers condemned for crimes with animals.