Lasciate Ogni Speranza — The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

La Esmeralda lies chained in the inpace of the Tournelle, on wet straw beside a jug and a loaf. She cannot tell day from night, or waking from sleep. Sometimes a hand throws down black bread. One drop falls from the vault again and again. That sound is her only clock.

A cowled priest comes down and says she will die tomorrow. She is cold, and creatures crawl over her. When he bares his face she knows him from la Falourdel's: the face above Phœbus, the eye beside the dagger. He says he loves her, with the love of a damned soul. Her dancing broke his peace. An officer stopped his attempt to seize her. Afterwards he denounced her to the official. He watched the trial and the torture, and he shows a breast torn by his own dagger. He begs her to flee before the gibbet on the Grève. She asks for Phœbus. He says the captain is dead. She hurls him down the steps: nothing shall unite them, not hell itself. He leaves, thrusts his head back, and shouts that Phœbus is dead. She falls on her face. Only the drop of water is heard.