Claude: You said, 'festival'...You are thinking about going to the festival...
Quasimodo: It's just that...you go every year.
Claude: I am a public official, I must go! But I don't enjoy a moment! Thieves and hustlers and the dregs of humankind, all mixed together in a shallow, drunken stupor.
Claude seemed to go back in time when he went to the festival for the first time. He tried his very best to keep Quasimodo from going outside as he kept asking for forgiveness. He needed to make him feel like the outside was an evil place mentioning how his mother left him to die.
Claude: Oh my dear Quasimodo, you don't know what it's like out there. I do...I do. The world is cruel, the world is wicked. It's I alone whom you can trust in this whole city! I am your only friend!
Quasimodo seemed to follow Claude's advice, feeling he was given the clarity of what he is, of how much Claude cared for him, or that is what Quasimodo thought. Claude quickly forgave him, before heading out back to the Palace of Justice. A new batch of thieves and cutthroats came that day, Claude felt no pleasure anymore when he led his men to torture them, if only he could torture Gringoire again, he thought. He saw a man with the corner of his eye, blonde with golden armor. He knew it was his new captain by the name of Pheobus. Upon giving Captain Pheobus a warm welcome he also explained about the gypsies, he seems disgusted talking about them and tried to brainwash Pheobus into letting them think Gypsies were a dangerous threat. For a moment he heard Maria's voice and remembered that time when she would show him the Court of Miracles. That is where he would strike next if he would to have a gypsy prisoner.
Claude: For twenty years I've been taking care of the gypsies. One by one... and yet, for all of my success, they have thrived. I believe they have a safe haven, within the walls of this very city. A nest, if you will. They call it the Court of Miracles.
As soon as the captain asked how Frollo would take them down, he couldn't do but smile at him as he made the symbolism clear. He heard the crowd in front of the cathedral, he knew it was time to attend the festival, he gave a short sigh and looked the other way.
Claude: Oh duty calls. Have you ever attended a peasant festival captain?
Claude knew he could trust Pheobus for he looked loyal and obedient like a dog and this was a step closer to his wish, a wish he tend to fulfill for his father and the triplets.
YOU ARE READING
Genesis Chronicorum β1: Hellfire
Historical FictionThe first book of my Genesis Chronicles. Before Claude Frollo became Judge and the most feared man in all of Paris, before his hatred for Gypsies, Frollo was but a young man who just wanted to live with the love of his life. Unfortunately, that neve...
