Esmeralda — The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

Gringoire hopes again when Quasimodo, Coppenole, and the procession leave, and the crowd follows. The hope dies at once: they were the whole audience. The hall is nearly empty. A few women, old men, children, and scholars remain. The music for the Virgin has gone with the Pope of the Fools, and he tells the actors to skip it. Nearby townsmen speak of rent. The treasury has let the Hôtel de Navarre to the historian Guillaume Alixandre.

A scholar shouts that La Esmeralda is in the Place. Everyone left runs to the windows. The mystery stops because the ladder has been stolen, just as Jupiter should climb with his thunder. Gringoire gives up, last to leave, and goes down the stairs calling the Parisians a rabble, come for a mystery they would not hear. He does not know the word Esmeralda, except that it is Egyptian.