Frankenstein vs The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

by Charles Nodier; Victor Hugo

  QUASIMODO (sadly): I will bring him to you.

  ESMERALDA: Now! Go right away before night falls!

  QUASIMODO: First, I’ve got to light the candle before the Breviary, then I’ll go. Meanwhile, you go to that little cell, get changed and eat some food.

  ESMERALDA (going towards the cell): Yes, I will, but hurry! Hurry!

  QUASIMODO: I’m leaving.

  ESMERALDA: Thank you!

  (She goes into the cubicle. Quasimodo lights the candle by the prayer-book.)

  QUASIMODO (alone): She loves him! Oh! How she loves him! Well, that’s how it is. All there is to it is to be good-looking on the outside. Above all.

  (He leaves by the stairway on the left. A moment later, Claude Frollo enters through the opposite gallery.)

  CLAUDE FROLLO: Since I fled, since I tore myself away from that horrible spectacle, what have I done? Where did I go? I don’t know. I walked haphazardly, in a fever, a rage, a delirium. Ah, how I suffered! I suffered so much that, at times, I tore out my hair to see if it hadn’t turned white. But now what? It’s over, she must be dead by now! Hanging from that gibbet on the Place de Greve!

  (The Moon has risen. Esmeralda, dressed in a white dress with a white veil, silently comes out of her cell and walks by the colonnades at the back. Claude Frollo doesn’t see her. She disappears behind a pillar.)

  CLAUDE FROLLO: I have reached the bottom of possible sorrow. The human heart can contain only so much pain. When a sponge is bloated, an ocean may pass over it without leaving a single tear in it. Ah, the Breviary. If I could find in that Holy Book some consolation or some encouragement. (reading) “And a spirit passed before my face and I heard a breath and my hair stood on end.” (turning away with terror) Oh, I have made a bad mistake. I grasped a red-hot iron! Come, let’s return to my chambers. The poor dead thing is gone. She must be cold by now.

  (He turns towards the moonlit gallery and stops suddenly as he sees Esmeralda advancing slowly in the light, looking toward Heaven.)

  CLAUDE FROLLO (choking): God!

  (For each step she takes forward, he takes one back. When she is under the vaulted arch, he falls to his knees, head and arms spread. She does not see him and goes back into her cell.)

  CLAUDE FROLLO (mechanically): “A spirit passed before my face, and I heard a breath and my hair stood on end.”

  (Suddenly, Gringoire appears in the gallery.)

  GRINGOIRE (looking about): Where the Devil am I? I can’t find the cell of that Archdeacon.

  CLAUDE FROLLO: Gringoire!

  GRINGOIRE (aside, noticing Claude Frollo): It’s him.

  CLAUDE FROLLO: What are you doing here? Who are you looking for?

  GRINGOIRE: Who? Why, you, Reverend Master. You or Esmeralda.

  CLAUDE FROLLO: Esmeralda! What are you saying? Is she still alive?

  GRINGOIRE: No doubt. Didn’t you know?

  CLAUDE FROLLO: Then it wasn’t her spirit that I just saw pass before my eyes.

  GRINGOIRE: Assuredly.

  CLAUDE FROLLO: She was saved! But how? And by whom?

  GRINGOIRE: By Quasimodo.

  CLAUDE FROLLO: By Quasimodo? Ah, I see. Yes. He’s strangely devoted to her now.

  GRINGOIRE: He carried her in his arms right into Notre-Dame, and claimed asylum.

  CLAUDE FROLLO: Saved! She is saved!

  GRINGOIRE: Does that upset you?

  CLAUDE FROLLO: No! Oh, no! The torture begins again for me, perhaps, but at least I will bear less guilt.

  GRINGOIRE: But we should be careful. I’m really afraid that our poor Esmeralda may not be safe here for very long.

  CLAUDE FROLLO: What do you mean?

  GRINGOIRE: When Quasimodo so bravely carried her off, Torterue the Executioner was almost as happy as a dog who has had his bone snatched away. But the King’s Prosecutor, Master Jacques Charmolue reassured him. I heard him myself. He said: “Tomorrow, I’ll obtain a Special Warrant from the King, and day after, justice will be done!”

  CLAUDE FROLLO: Oh. Then it’s necessary to make her leave here.

  GRINGOIRE: Impossible! The Church is watched and guarded day and night. No one can leave, except those whom they’ve seen enter. When I presented myself just now, at the Red Gate, asking after you, they warned me to be sure to leave by the same door. All the others were locked.

  CLAUDE FROLLO: Ah! Well, there’s a way.

  GRINGOIRE: What is it?

  CLAUDE FROLLO: You will switch clothes with Esmeralda. You will take her clothes, she will take yours.

  GRINGOIRE: That’s fine for the moment. And then?

  CLAUDE FROLLO: And then, she will leave with your clothes, and you will remain with hers.

  GRINGOIRE: But then, it’s I who will be hanged.

  CLAUDE FROLLO: Perhaps, but she will be saved.

  GRINGOIRE (scratching his ear): Hm. There’s an idea I’d never have gotten by myself.

  CLAUDE FROLLO: What do you say to it?

  GRINGOIRE: I say, Reverend Master, that they won’t hang me questionably, they’ll hang me positively.

  CLAUDE FROLLO: Didn’t she save your life at the Court of Miracles? It’s a debt you’re paying off.

  GRINGOIRE: There are many others I’m not paying!

  CLAUDE FROLLO: What’s wrong with you that you’re so attached to life?

  GRINGOIRE: Oh, a thousand reasons! The air, the sky, day, night, moonlight, my good friends the vagabonds, three long poems to finish, what else could I add? And then, I have the good luck of spending all my life with a man of genius–I mean, me! It’s very pleasant.

  CLAUDE FROLLO: Your head would make a fine horse bell! This life that you find so charming, who saved it for you? To whom do you owe breathing this air, seeing this sky and the ability to fill your empty brain with nonsense and follies? Without her, where would you be? You want her to die, even through you owe her your life, this beautiful, sweet, adorable creature, necesssary to the light of the world? Come, come, show a bit of mercy, Gringoire. Be generous in your turn; it’s she who showed you the way.

  GRINGOIRE: A moving plea, Reverend Master! That’s a queer idea you’ve got. After all, who knows? Perhaps, they won’t hang me. When they find me here, grotesquely dressed in a skirt and a wig, perhaps they’ll burst out laughing. And then, if they hang me, well, the rope is a death just like any other! Or to put it better, it’s not a death just like any other! It’s a death worthy of a philosopher who has vascillated all his life, a death marked by Pyrrhonism and hesitation, half-way between Heaven and Earth, leaving one in suspense. It’s a true philosopher’s death. Yes, it’s magnificent to die as one has lived.

  CLAUDE FROLLO: So, you agree then?

  GRINGOIRE: Ah! Upon my word, no! Me, to be hanged? It’s absurd. I won’t.

  (He strides away.)

  CLAUDE FROLLO (gritting his teeth): Farewell, then! But be mindful, I will find you again.

  GRINGOIRE (aside): Ay! I don’t want that devil of a man after me. (returning to Claude Frollo, aloud) Listen, Reverend Master, Archdeacon, there should be no ill-will between friends. You’ve taken an interest in this girl–my wife, I mean–that’s fine. You’ve devised a strategem to get her safely out of Notre-Dame. But your way is extremely unpleasant for me, Gringoire. Suppose I find another way? Is it absolutely necessary that I should be hanged for you to be satisfied?

  CLAUDE FROLLO: Stop your incessant babble! What is your plan then?

  GRINGOIRE (touching his nose with his finger): Let me think... Yes, that’s it! The Court of Miracles are brave lads. The Tribe of Egypt loves her. They will carry her off at the first word from me. At night, they’ll force the doors of the church, and under cover of the disarray that will ensue, they will easily carry her off. I can set it up for tomorrow night.

  CLAUDE FROLLO (aside): Yes, that way, I’ll still have her in my reach. (aloud) It’s a good plan. When your vagabonds have broken inside, come and find me. I’ve got the key to the cloister door. I’ll let you leave with her through there. It�
�s agreed.

  GRINGOIRE: It’s agreed. I may be safer with you than with the vagabonds anyway.

  (Quasimodo returns, entering through the staircase.)

  CLAUDE FROLLO: Quasimodo! Come, Gringoire. I don’t want to see him. (pulling Gringoire into the colonnades)

  GRINGOIRE (aside): I wish he wouldn’t want to see me either.

  QUASIMODO (to himself, sadly): She told me: “Bring him to me and I will love you.” Since I’m not bringing him, she’s going to hate me.

  (Esmeralda comes out of her cell, running.)

  ESMERALDA: You’re alone!

  QUASIMODO (head lowered): I wasn’t able to see him.

  ESMERALDA: You’ve got to find him. Wait for him! Wait for him all night if that’s what it takes. Go back!

  QUASIMODO: I will. Hopefully, I’ll be luckier this time, perhaps.

  ESMERALDA: Next time, I’ll go with you.

  QUASIMODO (stopping): I think I heard you say that next time, you’d go with me? Oh, no! You mustn’t do that! First of all, they will take you again if you leave here. And then, if you find him, you will suffer too much.

  ESMERALDA: Why do you say this? Then you did see him!

  QUASIMODO: Yes, I did. I wanted to keep the pain to myself. But the truth is that, after having kept me waiting for a long while, he received me.

  ESMERALDA: Was he alone?

  QUASIMODO: No. He was with a young girl and an older woman. I told him there was someone who wished to speak to him. I understood that the young woman then asked me who it was. I answered that he would soon see. Upon hearing that, she looked at him with scorn. As for him, he spoke to me in a fit of passion. He held the hand of the girl to justify himself to the mother, and in fury, kicked me out.

  ESMERALDA: But why talk to him in front of strangers? If he had known it was about me... Ah, when I get to see him alone...

  QUASIMODO: My God! Do I have to tell you everything? So be it, then. Listen. I watched the house from the square. When he left, alone, I boldly grabbed the bridle of his horse. And I told him it was a woman who was waiting for him. A woman he loved. And then–oh, you’re going to get angry. He answered me with I don’t know what insults. It’s not my fault. I told him. She’s the Gypsy girl you love–Esmeralda! And he kicked me in the chest with his boot. I really beg your indulgence.

  ESMERALDA (joining her hands): Oh, my Phoebus. It’s all right, my friend, you can go now. I thank you.

  QUASIMODO: Ah! You don’t hold it against me! You are good! But for pity’s sake, don’t allow yourself to feel too much pain!

  ESMERALDA: Yes, yes. Now, go. Leave me alone.

  QUASIMODO: Goodbye. Don’t be too sad, I beg you! (starts to leave, then turns) Ah, wait, if you need me, whistle with this. (gives her a silver whistle) I can hear its noise.

  (Quasimodo exits left.)

  ESMERALDA (thinking herself alone): Phoebus! My Phoebus! My name, my name alone now horrifies him! Ah! This is reason to despair! But, no! If I see him again, just once, for a single minute, it will only take a word from me, a single glance, to get him back!

  (She turns around and suddenly sees Claude Frollo, who has entered noiselessly from the back.)

  ESMERALDA (uttering a scream): Ah, you again! Accursed man!

  CLAUDE FROLLO: Do I terrify you so much?

  ESMERALDA: Oh, the executioner taunts his victim! It’s you who threw me in the abyss! You who committed the crime of which I’m accused! The crime even my Phoebus believe I committed!

  CLAUDE FROLLO: Not that name! Don’t utter that name! Wretches that we are, it’s that name which has ruined us. Oh, young girl, you think yourself miserable, but you don’t know what true misfortune is. Oh, to love a woman and be hated by her! To love with all the furor of one’s soul, to feel that, for the least of her smiles, you would give your blood, your guts, your fame, your safety, your immortality and eternity, your life and the next! To regret not being a genius, a king, an archangel or a god to place oneself at her feet and become her greatest slave! And to see her fall in love with the shallow uniform of an unworthy soldier! To be there, seething with jealousy and rage, while she squanders treasures of love and beauty on a despicable, stupid braggart!

  ESMERALDA: My Phoebus!

  CLAUDE FROLLO: Shut up! I beg you! When you say that name, it’s as if you were grinding all the fibers of my heart between your teeth. Have mercy! Oh! Say you don’t wish to hear me? Ah, the day when a woman rejects such love as mine, I would have thought mountains would have moved by themselves.

  ESMERALDA: What have you done with my Phoebus?

  CLAUDE FROLLO: Ah. You are merciless.

  ESMERALDA: What have you done with my Phoebus?

  CLAUDE FROLLO: He is dead.

  ESMERALDA: You lie! He still lives. I saw him.

  CLAUDE FROLLO: You saw him! Beware.

  ESMERALDA: He’s alive and it’s he alone whom I love.

  CLAUDE FROLLO: Shut up!

  ESMERALDA: And I belong to him!

  CLAUDE FROLLO: To him? Never! Enough of this madness! You will belong to me!

  (He seizes her forcefully and drags her towards the cell.)

  ESMERALDA (struggling): Let me go, you murderer!

  CLAUDE FROLLO: You’re the murderer.

  ESMERALDA: Devil!

  CLAUDE FROLLO: You’re the Devil!

  ESMERALDA: Help! Help!

  (They are now close to the cell. Esmeralda uses Quasimodo’s whistle. Quasimodo enters, running, knife in hand. He leaps on Claude Frollo and tears Esmeralda away from him, throwing him to the ground.)

  CLAUDE FROLLO (getting up): Quasimodo!

  QUASIMODO (recognizing him and recoiling): Master!

  CLAUDE FROLLO: Ah! Wretch! You forget whom you struck!

  QUASIMODO: No. Because you’re still alive.

  CLAUDE FROLLO: Let me pass. Get out of my way!

  QUASIMODO (bending his knee and presenting the knife to him): You’ll have to kill me first.

  CLAUDE FROLLO: (reaching for the knife) If I must–

  ESMERALDA (snatching the knife and brandishing it at him): Don’t you dare! (Claude Frollo recoils) Coward!

  CLAUDE FROLLO (enraged): Oh! My time will come! And you, misshapen brute... The first time you were between me and this woman, you served me. This time, you dare defy me!

  QUASIMODO (still on his knees but threateningly): Beware the third time!

  CURTAIN

  Act V

  Scene XI

  The Little Slipper

  The Place de Greve, with its grim gibbet. To the right, in a cut-out fashion, we see the interior of La Sachette’s cell in the Roland Tower and the wall with the small garret window shut with crossed bars. We hear the distant clamor of the Tocsin. It is night, but dawn is coming by degrees.

  SACHETTE (lying on straw bed, a stone serving as her pillow): O my daughter, my daughter! My poor dear child! I will never see you again. It’s as if it had happened only yesterday. My God! My God! Taking her away from me so quickly it would have been better not to give her to me. Ah, wretch that I am to have gone out that day! O Lord, O Lord! To take her away from me that way, you mustn’t have seen me with her when I warmed her up so happily by my fire. When she laughed at me when I held her in my arms. When I raised her little feet to my lips. God, you would have had pity on me. You would not have separated me from the only joy that remained in my heart. Was I such a wretched creature, Lord, that you could not look at me before condemning me? Alas, alas, here’s her little slipper. But where is her foot? Where is the child? My daughter, what have they done to you, those vampires from Egypt! Lord, please, return her to me. My knees are raw from 15 years of praying to you. My God, isn’t that enough? Return her to me for one hour, one day, one minute. One minute, Lord, then hurl me down to Hell for all eternity, if that is your wish. Can you condemn a poor mother to 15 years of torture? Good Virgin Mary in Heaven! My Baby Jesus! The Gypsies took her from me, stole her from me. They ate her on their hearth. Ah, my daughter, my
daughter! I must have my daughter. What good is it to me if she is in paradise? I don’t want an angel, I want my child. I am a lioness, I want my cub! So much the worse if I blaspheme! As for me, I am nothing but a vile sinner! But my daughter is making me pious! I was full of religion for the love of her and through her smile, I saw you, my God, like an opening in Heaven. Oh, let me just once, just once more, a single time, put this slipper on her little foot and I will die, good Virgin, and bless you. Ah, 15 years. Can it be true? I will never see her again. Not even in Heaven! For as for me, I’m not headed there. Oh, what despair! This is her slipper and that’s all I have left of her!

  (Enter from the right Clopin Trouillefou, Chanteprune, Bellevigne and five or six vagabonds. They bear the body of Jehan Frollo.)

  CLOPIN TROUILLEFOU: Let’s stop and catch our breath a minute. (to Bellevigne) You, run and see if our passage through the Rue de la Mortellerie is still free.

  (Chanteprune leaves.)

  CLOPIN TROUILLEFOU: Poor Jehan. Is he still breathing?

  CHANTEPRUNE: No, Sire, he is dead.

  CLOPIN TROUILLEFOU: Thrown by Quasimodo from the top of the great gallery of Notre-Dame. Ah, that Quasimodo! Why did he defend the church against our assault with his huge stones and his melted lead? Gringoire said that he, like us, only sought to save Esmeralda?

  CHANTEPRUNE: He wasn’t warned of our plan. He didn’t understand. He’s deaf and he didn’t hear.

  (Bellevigne returns.)

  BELLEVIGNE: The passage is free.

  CLOPIN TROUILLEFOU: Quick! Quick! I hear Captain Phoebus’ guards coming. Hurry!

  (They leave by the left, carrying Jehan’s body. Gringoire enters in the corner, leading Esmeralda. Behind them is Claude Frollo, wrapped in his black monk cloak.)