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Author’s Biography
Victor Hugo was born on the 26th of February, 1802, at Besan?on, where his father, an officer in Moreau’s army, was commanding a battalion. His first three years were spent in Corsica; in 1805 his mother took her family to Paris, but rejoined her husband, at Avellino, in South Italy, in 1807. General Hugo, as the father presently became, was appointed a governor in Spain, from which the English under Wellington dislodged himself and his family in 1812. Returning to Paris, Victor was put to school until 1818, when he made up his mind that literature should be his profession. That he was still under classical influences was proved by his first volume, the “Odes et Poésies” of 1822. It gained him a pension from Louis XVIII, and was followed next year by his earliest novel, “Han d’Islande.” The romantic movement now spread to France, and Hugo was one of its earliest adherents; he took the lead in revolt by publishing his “Odes” in 1826 and his “Cromwell” in 1827. It was in the preface to the latter that his famous formula of the Romantic faith was issued. He first took a place, however, among the leading lyric poets of Europe with his “Orientales” of 1829. This was a crowning year in Victor Hugo’s career; it saw the production of “Hernani” and the composition of “Marion Delorme” and “Le Dernier Jour d’un Condamné.” From this time forth his plays, novels, and lyrical poems were poured forth in three parallel and continuous streams. “Notre-Dame de Paris” was published on the 13th of February, 1831. For the next ten years the life of Victor Hugo was one of continual prosperity and ever-ascending fame. Among his dramas, “Ruy Blas” belongs to 1838, and among the collections of his poems “Les Voix Intérieures” to 1837. He was elected to the French Academy in 1841 and created a peer of France in 1845. He had been in sympathy with the Government, but when the Royalists fell and Napoleon arrived on the scene, Victor Hugo became a violent radical. As a member of the Legislative Assembly he opposed the Coup d’état, and was exiled at the close of 1851, taking up his residence in Brussels. Here the violence of his attacks on Napoleon III led to his expulsion from Belgium, and in the summer of 1852 he settled at St. Héliers, in Jersey, whence he sent out the fierce sheaf of “Les Chatiments” in the following year. Jersey, in its turn, became too hot to hold him, and in the autumn of 1855 he took up his abode at Hauteville House, Guernsey, where he resided for fifteen years. His occupation during the earlier part of his stay at Guernsey was the composition of “La Légende des Siècles,” the first portion of which appeared in 1859. Victor Hugo’s huge novel, “Les Misérables,” was published in 1862, and his fantastic work on Shakespeare in 1864. Two grotesquely romantic novels, “Les Travailleurs de la Mer” and “L’Homme Qui Rit,” belong respectively to 1866 and 1869. The Napoleon dynasty having fallen, Hugo immediately reappeared in France (September 5, 1870) and endured his share of the sufferings of the siege of Paris. After somewhat unsuccessfully acting a part in the politics of reconstruction, Hugo withdrew to Brussels, from which town he was driven in May, 1871, for his expressed sympathy with the Paris Commune. He now retired from the feuds of politics and devoted himself mainly to poetry, only one novel, “Quatre-vingt-treize,” 1874, belonging to this latest period of his career. From December, 1871, the residence of Hugo was Paris, where he lived with his widowed daughter-in-law and her children; in 1875 he was elected a perpetual senator. For fourteen years he enjoyed, in full serenity and strength, the splendours of an old age of extreme celebrity; it was said that he entered, during his lifetime, into immortality. In the spring of 1885 he took a chill while riding, as he loved to do, on the outside of an omnibus. His heart gradually gave way, and he died on the 22d of May. He received from the city of Paris a funeral of extreme pomp, and the Panthéon was prepared for his reception, after the coffin had been lying in public state, for twenty-four hours, under the Arc de Triomphe.
E. G.
Author's Preface
To The Edition of 1832
The announcement that this edition was furnished with several fresh chapters was incorrect; they should have been described as hitherto unpublished. For, if by fresh one understands newly written, then the chapters added to this edition are not fresh ones. They were written at the same time as the rest of the work; they date from the same period, were engendered by the same thought, and from the first formed part of the manuscript of Notre-Dame de Paris. Moreover, the author cannot imagine adding new developments to a work of this nature, the thing being once finished and done with. That cannot be done at will. To his idea, a novel is, in a sense, necessarily born with all its chapters complete, a drama with all its scenes. Do not let us think there is anything arbitrary in the particular number of parts which go to make up that whole—that mysterious microcosm which we call a novel or a drama. Neither joins nor patches are ever effectual in such a work, which ought to be fashioned in a single piece, and so be left, as best may be. The thing once done, listen to no second thoughts; attempt no touchings up of the book once given to the world, its sex, virile or otherwise, once recognised and acknowledged; the child, having once uttered its first cry, is born, is fashioned in that way and no other; father or mother are powerless to alter it, it belongs to the air and the sun; let it live or die as it is. Is your book a failure? Tant pis, but do not add chapters to those which have already failed. Is it defective?—it should have been completed before birth. Your tree is gnarled? You will not straighten it out. Your novel phthisical, not viable? You will never give it the life that is lacking to it. Your drama is born lame? Believe me, it is futile to supply it with a wooden leg.
The author is therefore particularly anxious that the public should know that the interpolated chapters were not written expressly for this new edition. They were not included in the previous editions for a very simple reason. When Notre-Dame de Paris was being printed the first time, the packet of manuscript containing these chapters went astray, so that they would either have had to be rewritten or omitted. The author considered that the only chapters of real import were the two dealing specially with art and history, but that their omission would in no way disturb the course of the drama; and that the public being unconscious of their absence, he alone would be in the secret of this hiatus. He decided then for the omission, not only for the above reason, but because, it must be confessed, his indolence shrank affrighted from the task of rewriting the lost chapters. Rather would he have written a new book altogether.
Meanwhile, these chapters have reappeared, and the author seizes the first opportunity to restore them to their proper place, thus presenting his work complete—such as he imagined it, well or ill, lasting or perishable; but in the form he desired it to have.
Paris, October 20, 1832.
Author's Preface
To The Edition of 1831
Some years ago, when visiting, or, more properly speaking, thoroughly exploring the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, the writer came upon the word
’ANáGKH1
graven on the wall in a dim corner of one of the towers.
In the outline and slope of these Greek capitals, black with age and deeply scored into the stone, there were certain peculiarities characteristic of Gothic calligraphy which at once betrayed the hand of the medi?val scribe.
But most of all, the writer was struck by the dark and fateful significance of the word; and he pondered long and deeply over the identity of that anguished soul that would not quit the world without imprinting this stigma of crime or misfortune on the brow of the ancient edifice.
Since then the wall has been plastered over or scraped—I forget which—and the inscription has disappeared. For thus, during the past two hundred years, have the marvellous churches of the Middle Ages been treated. Defacement and mutilation have been their portion—both from within and from without. The priest plasters them over, the architect scrapes them; finally the people come and demolish them altogether.
Hence, save only the perishable memento dedicated to it here by the author of this book, nothing remains of the mysterious word graven on the sombre tower of Notre-Dame, nothing of the unknown destiny it so mournfully recorded. The man who inscribed that word passed centuries ago from among men; the word, in its turn, has been effaced from the wall of the Cathedral; soon, perhaps, the Cathedral itself will have vanished from the face of the earth.
This word, then, the writer has taken for the text of his book.
February, 1831.
___________________
1 Fate, destiny.
BOOK I
Chapter 1 - The Great Hall
Precisely three hundred and forty-eight years six months and nineteen days ago1 Paris was awakened by the sound of the pealing of all the bells within the triple enclosing walls of the city, the Univeristy, and the town.
Yet the 6th of January, 1482, was not a day of which history has preserved the record. There was nothing of peculiar note in the event which set all the bells and the good people of Paris thus in motion from early dawn. It was neither an assault by Picards or Burgundians, nor a holy image carried in procession, nor a riot of the students in the vineyard of Laas, nor the entry into the city of “our most dread Lord the King,” nor even a fine stringing up of thieves, male and female, at the Justice of Paris. Neither was it the unexpected arrival, so frequent in the fifteenth century, of some foreign ambassador with his beplumed and gold-laced retinue. Scarce two days had elapsed since the last cavalcade of this description, that of the Flemish envoys charged with the mission to conclude the marriage between the Dauphin and Margaret of Flanders, had made its entry into Paris, to the great annoyance of Monsieur the Cardinal of Bourbon, who, to please the King, had been obliged to extend a gracious reception to this boorish company of Flemish burgomasters, and entertain them in his H?tel de Bourbon with a “most pleasant morality play, drollery, and farce,” while a torrent of rain drenched the splendid tapestries at his door.
The 6th of January, which “set the whole population of Paris in a stir,” as Jehan de Troyes relates, was the date of the double festival—united since time immemorial—of the Three Kings, and the Feast of Fools.
On this day there was invariably a bonfire on the Place de Gréve, a may-pole in front of the Chapelle de Braque, and a mystery-play at the Palais de Justice, as had been proclaimed with blare of trumpets on the preceding day in all the streets by Monsieur the Provost’s men, arrayed in tabards of violet camlet with great white crosses on the breast.
The stream of people accordingly made their way in the morning from all parts of the town, their shops and houses being closed, to one or other of these points named. Each one had chosen his share of the entertainments—some the bonfire, some the may-pole, others the Mystery. To the credit of the traditional good sense of the Paris “cit” be it said that the majority of the spectators directed their steps towards the bonfire, which was entirely seasonable, or the Mystery, which was to be performed under roof and cover in the great Hall of the Palais de Justice, and were unanimous in leaving the poor scantily decked may-pole to shiver alone under the January sky in the cemetery of the Chapelle de Braque.
The crowd flocked thickest in the approaches to the Palais, as it was known that the Flemish envoys intended to be present at the performance of the Mystery, and the election of the Pope of Fools, which was likewise to take place in the great Hall.
It was no easy matter that day to penetrate into the great Hall, then reputed the largest roofed-in space in the world. (It is true that, at that time, Sauval had not yet measured the great hall of the Castle of Montargis.) To the gazers from the windows, the square in front of the Palais, packed as it was with people, presented the aspect of a lake into which five or six streets, like so many river mouths, were each moment pouring fresh floods of heads. The ever-swelling waves of this multitude broke against the angles of the houses, which projected here and there, like promontories, into the irregular basin of the Place.
In the centre of the high Gothic 2 fa?de of the Palais was the great flight of steps, incessantly occupied by a double stream ascending and descending, which, after being broken by the intermediate landing, spread in broad waves over the two lateral flights.
Down this great stair-case the crowd poured continuously into the Place like a cascade into a lake, the shouts, the laughter, the trampling of thousands of feet making a mighty clamour and tumult. From time to time the uproar redoubled, the current which bore the crowd towards the grand stairs was choked, thrown back, and formed into eddies, when some archer thrust back the crowd, or the horse of one of the provost’s men kicked out to restore order; an admirable tradition which has been faithfully handed down through the centuries to our present gendarmerie of Paris.
Every door and window and roof swarmed with good, placid, honest burgher faces gazing at the Palais and at the crowd, and asking no better amusement. For there are many people in Paris quite content to be the spectators of spectators; and to us a wall, behind which something is going on, is a sufficiently exciting spectacle.
If we of the nineteenth century could mingle in imagination with these Parisians of the fifteenth century, could push our way with that hustling, elbowing, stamping crowd into the immense Hall of the Palais, so cramped on that 6th of January, 1482, the scene would not be without interest or charm for us, and we would find ourselves surrounded by things so old that to us they would appear quite new.
With the reader’s permission we will attempt to evoke in thought the impression he would have experienced in crossing with us the threshold of that great Hall amid that throng in surcoat, doublet, and kirtle.
At first there is nothing but a dull roar in our ears and a dazzle in our eyes. Overhead, a roof of double Gothic arches, panelled with carved wood, painted azure blue, and diapered with golden fleur de lis; underfoot, a pavement in alternate squares of black and white. A few paces off is an enormous pillar, and another—seven in all down the length of the hall, supporing in the centre line the springing arches of the double groining. Around the first four pillars are stalls all glittering with glassware and trinkets, and around the last three are oaken benches, worn smooth and shining by the breeches of the litigants and the gowns of the attorneys. Ranged along the lofty walls, between the doors, between the windows, between the pillars, is the interminable series of statues of the rulers of France from Pharamond downward; the “Rois fainèants,” with drooping eyes and indolent hanging arms; the valiant warrior kings, with head and hands boldly uplifted in the sight of heaven. The tall, pointed windows glow in a thousand colours; at the wide entrances to the Hall are richly carved doors; and the whole—roof, pillars, walls, cornices, doors, statues—is resplendent from top to bottom in a coating of blue and gold, already somewhat tarnished at the period of which we write, but which had almost entirely disappeared under dust and cobwebs in the year of grace 1549, when Du Breuil alluded to it in terms of admiration, but from hearsay only.
