Abbas Beati Martini — The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

One evening Dom Claude sits in his canon's cell, a printed book open before him, when Jacques Coictier, the king's physician, arrives with a stranger. Claude's compliments list the doctor's wealth and quietly mock it. The stranger calls himself Gossip Tourangeau and asks advice on his health and his star. Claude refuses. He does not believe in medicine or astrology. Asked what he does believe, he says the creed, though a gloomy smile seems to contradict it, and then he names alchemy. Gold, he says, is light, and to make gold is to be God. He has not done it. If he had, the king of France would be called Claude, not Louis.

Tourangeau begs to learn. Claude answers that the true books are buildings of stone, and he points through the window at Notre-Dame, black against the stars. He looks from the printed folio to the church and says that this will kill that: the book will kill the building. At curfew the visitors leave. Tourangeau tells him to come to the Palace des Tournelles and ask for the Abbé de Sainte-Martin of Tours. Alone, Claude understands. That abbot, the register says, is the King of France.