The Hunchback of Notre Dame

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The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Some years ago, while visiting the cathedral of Notre-Dame, or, to speak more properly, exploring every corner of it, the author of this book discovered, in a dark corner in one of the towers, this word, engraven upon the wall,—

'ANATKH.

These Greek capitals, black with age and deeply cut into the stone, with certain peculiarities of form and posture belonging to the Gothic calligraphy, as if to declare that they had been traced there by some hand of the Middle Ages, — above all, the dismal and fatal meaning they conveyed,—struck the author forcibly.

He asked himself, he strove to conjecture, what soul in pain this might be that would not quit the world without stamping this stigma of crime or misfortune on the walls of the old cathedral.

This work is in the public domain because it was published in the United States between 1923 and 1963 and although there may or may not have been a copyright notice, the copyright was not renewed. Unless its author has been dead for the required period, it is copyrighted in the countries or areas that do not apply the rule of the shorter term for US works. If your use will be outside the United States please check your local law.

Claude Frollo restrains Quasimodo from violence



Quasimodo being offered water by Esmeralda