In fact, Claude Frollo was no common person.
He belonged to one of those middle-class families which were calledindifferently, in the impertinent language of the last century, the high_bourgeoise_ or the petty nobility. This family had inherited from thebrothers Paclet the fief of Tirechappe, which was dependent upon theBishop of Paris, and whose twenty-one houses had been in the thirteenthcentury the object of so many suits before the official. As possessor ofthis fief, Claude Frollo was one of the twenty-seven seigneurs keepingclaim to a manor in fee in Paris and its suburbs; and for a long time,his name was to be seen inscribed in this quality, between the Hotelde Tancarville, belonging to Master Francois Le Rez, and the college ofTours, in the records deposited at Saint Martin des Champs.
Claude Frollo had been destined from infancy, by his parents, to theecclesiastical profession. He had been taught to read in Latin; he hadbeen trained to keep his eyes on the ground and to speak low. Whilestill a child, his father had cloistered him in the college of Torchi inthe University. There it was that he had grown up, on the missal and thelexicon.
Moreover, he was a sad, grave, serious child, who studied ardently, andlearned quickly; he never uttered a loud cry in recreation hour, mixedbut little in the bacchanals of the Rue du Fouarre, did not know what itwas to _dare alapas et capillos laniare_, and had cut no figure in thatrevolt of 1463, which the annalists register gravely, under the titleof "The sixth trouble of the University." He seldom rallied the poorstudents of Montaigu on the _cappettes_ from which they derived theirname, or the bursars of the college of Dormans on their shaved tonsure,and their surtout parti-colored of bluish-green, blue, and violet cloth,_azurini coloris et bruni_, as says the charter of the Cardinal desQuatre-Couronnes.
On the other hand, he was assiduous at the great and the small schoolsof the Rue Saint Jean de Beauvais. The first pupil whom the Abbe deSaint Pierre de Val, at the moment of beginning his reading oncanon law, always perceived, glued to a pillar of the schoolSaint-Vendregesile, opposite his rostrum, was Claude Frollo, armed withhis horn ink-bottle, biting his pen, scribbling on his threadbare knee,and, in winter, blowing on his fingers. The first auditor whom MessireMiles d'Isliers, doctor in decretals, saw arrive every Monday morning,all breathless, at the opening of the gates of the school of theChef-Saint-Denis, was Claude Frollo. Thus, at sixteen years of age, theyoung clerk might have held his own, in mystical theology, against afather of the church; in canonical theology, against a father of thecouncils; in scholastic theology, against a doctor of Sorbonne.
Theology conquered, he had plunged into decretals. From the "Master ofSentences," he had passed to the "Capitularies of Charlemagne;" and hehad devoured in succession, in his appetite for science, decretals upondecretals, those of Theodore, Bishop of Hispalus; those of Bouchard,Bishop of Worms; those of Yves, Bishop of Chartres; next the decretalof Gratian, which succeeded the capitularies of Charlemagne; thenthe collection of Gregory IX.; then the Epistle of _Superspecula_, ofHonorius III. He rendered clear and familiar to himself that vast andtumultuous period of civil law and canon law in conflict and at strifewith each other, in the chaos of the Middle Ages,--a period which BishopTheodore opens in 618, and which Pope Gregory closes in 1227.
Decretals digested, he flung himself upon medicine, on the liberal arts.He studied the science of herbs, the science of unguents; he became anexpert in fevers and in contusions, in sprains and abcesses. Jacquesd' Espars would have received him as a physician; Richard Hellain, as asurgeon. He also passed through all the degrees of licentiate, master,and doctor of arts. He studied the languages, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, atriple sanctuary then very little frequented. His was a veritable feverfor acquiring and hoarding, in the matter of science. At the age ofeighteen, he had made his way through the four faculties; it seemed tothe young man that life had but one sole object: learning.
It was towards this epoch, that the excessive heat of the summer of 1466caused that grand outburst of the plague which carried off more thanforty thousand souls in the vicomty of Paris, and among others, as Jeande Troyes states, "Master Arnoul, astrologer to the king, who was a veryfine man, both wise and pleasant." The rumor spread in the Universitythat the Rue Tirechappe was especially devastated by the malady. It wasthere that Claude's parents resided, in the midst of their fief. Theyoung scholar rushed in great alarm to the paternal mansion. Whenhe entered it, he found that both father and mother had died on thepreceding day. A very young brother of his, who was in swaddlingclothes, was still alive and crying abandoned in his cradle. This wasall that remained to Claude of his family; the young man took the childunder his arm and went off in a pensive mood. Up to that moment, he hadlived only in science; he now began to live in life.
This catastrophe was a crisis in Claude's existence. Orphaned, theeldest, head of the family at the age of nineteen, he felt himselfrudely recalled from the reveries of school to the realities of thisworld. Then, moved with pity, he was seized with passion and devotiontowards that child, his brother; a sweet and strange thing was a humanaffection to him, who had hitherto loved his books alone.
This affection developed to a singular point; in a soul so new, it waslike a first love. Separated since infancy from his parents, whom he hadhardly known; cloistered and immured, as it were, in his books; eagerabove all things to study and to learn; exclusively attentive up tothat time, to his intelligence which broadened in science, to hisimagination, which expanded in letters,--the poor scholar had not yethad time to feel the place of his heart.
This young brother, without mother or father, this little child whichhad fallen abruptly from heaven into his arms, made a new man of him.He perceived that there was something else in the world besides thespeculations of the Sorbonne, and the verses of Homer; that man neededaffections; that life without tenderness and without love was only a setof dry, shrieking, and rending wheels. Only, he imagined, for he was atthe age when illusions are as yet replaced only by illusions, that theaffections of blood and family were the sole ones necessary, and that alittle brother to love sufficed to fill an entire existence.
He threw himself, therefore, into the love for his little Jehan with thepassion of a character already profound, ardent, concentrated; that poorfrail creature, pretty, fair-haired, rosy, and curly,--that orphan withanother orphan for his only support, touched him to the bottom of hisheart; and grave thinker as he was, he set to meditating upon Jehanwith an infinite compassion. He kept watch and ward over him as oversomething very fragile, and very worthy of care. He was more than abrother to the child; he became a mother to him.
Little Jehan had lost his mother while he was still at the breast;Claude gave him to a nurse. Besides the fief of Tirechappe, he hadinherited from his father the fief of Moulin, which was a dependency ofthe square tower of Gentilly; it was a mill on a hill, near the chateauof Winchestre (Bicetre). There was a miller's wife there who was nursinga fine child; it was not far from the university, and Claude carried thelittle Jehan to her in his own arms.
From that time forth, feeling that he had a burden to bear, he took lifevery seriously. The thought of his little brother became not only hisrecreation, but the object of his studies. He resolved to consecratehimself entirely to a future for which he was responsible in the sightof God, and never to have any other wife, any other child than thehappiness and fortune of his brother. Therefore, he attached himselfmore closely than ever to the clerical profession. His merits, hislearning, his quality of immediate vassal of the Bishop of Paris, threwthe doors of the church wide open to him. At the age of twenty, byspecial dispensation of the Holy See, he was a priest, and served asthe youngest of the chaplains of Notre-Dame the altar which is called,because of the late mass which is said there, _altare pigrorum_.
There, plunged more deeply than ever in his dear books, which he quittedonly to run for an hour to the fief of Moulin, this mixture of learningand austerity, so rare at his age, had promptly acquired for himthe respect and admiration of the monastery. From the cloister, hisreputation a
s a learned man had passed to the people, among whom it hadchanged a little, a frequent occurrence at that time, into reputation asa sorcerer.
It was at the moment when he was returning, on Quasimodo day, fromsaying his mass at the Altar of the Lazy, which was by the side of thedoor leading to the nave on the right, near the image of the Virgin,that his attention had been attracted by the group of old womenchattering around the bed for foundlings.
Then it was that he approached the unhappy little creature, which was sohated and so menaced. That distress, that deformity, that abandonment,the thought of his young brother, the idea which suddenly occurred tohim, that if he were to die, his dear little Jehan might also be flungmiserably on the plank for foundlings,--all this had gone to his heartsimultaneously; a great pity had moved in him, and he had carried offthe child.
When he removed the child from the sack, he found it greatly deformed,in very sooth. The poor little wretch had a wart on his left eye, hishead placed directly on his shoulders, his spinal column was crooked,his breast bone prominent, and his legs bowed; but he appeared tobe lively; and although it was impossible to say in what languagehe lisped, his cry indicated considerable force and health. Claude'scompassion increased at the sight of this ugliness; and he made a vow inhis heart to rear the child for the love of his brother, in order that,whatever might be the future faults of the little Jehan, he should havebeside him that charity done for his sake. It was a sort of investmentof good works, which he was effecting in the name of his young brother;it was a stock of good works which he wished to amass in advance forhim, in case the little rogue should some day find himself short of thatcoin, the only sort which is received at the toll-bar of paradise.
He baptized his adopted child, and gave him the name of Quasimodo,either because he desired thereby to mark the day, when he had foundhim, or because he wished to designate by that name to what a degree thepoor little creature was incomplete, and hardly sketched out. In fact,Quasimodo, blind, hunchbacked, knock-kneed, was only an "almost."
CHAPTER III. _IMMANIS PECORIS CUSTOS, IMMANIOR IPSE_.