The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Introduction

Distance bells ring. They are heard all over Paris. These are the Bells of Notre Dame. A great cathedral in the middle of Paris. A beautiful building. But who is it that rings them? Clopin will tell you. Clopin is a common Gypsy along with many others. Today he is in front of Notre Dame in a puppet show box ready to entertain the local children and tell the tale of the mysterious bell ringer.

'Morning in Paris, the city awakes to the bells of Notre Dame. The fisherman fishes, the bakerman bakes to the bells of Notre Dame. To the big bells as loud as the thunder! To the little bells soft as a psalm. And some say the soul of the city's the toll of the bells. The bells of Notre Dame,' Clopin sang as some children approached him.

"Listen, they're beautiful no? So many colours of sound, so many changing moods. Because you know, they do not ring all by themselves," Clopin said.

"They don't?" His puppet self asked

"No silly boy. Up there, high, high in the dark bell tower lives a mysterious bell ringer. Who is this strange creature?"

"Who?"

"What is he?"

"What?"

"How did he come to be there?"

"How?"

"Hush," Clopin hit the puppet with a stick making the children laugh, "Clopin will tell you. It is a tale, a tale of a man and a monster."

We transition to the past, twenty years before our story begins. On the river, a boat carrying four gipsies and a baby is making its way into Paris. And the child was causing them trouble with its crying.

'Dark was the night when our tale was begun on the docks near Notre Dame.'

"Shut it up will you!" Quasi's dad told his wife.

"We'll be spotted!" The other gipsy said

"Hush little one," the mother tried to comfort her child.

'Four frightened gipsies, slid silently under the docks near Notre Dame.'

"Four guilders for safe passage into Paris," the one rowing the boat to them.

'But a trap had been laid for the gipsies. And they gazed up in fear and alarm at figure whose clutches were iron as much as the bells!'

"Judge Claude Frollo!" Quasi's dad said in horror.

'The bells of Notre Dame!'

On a black horse sat the most feared judge in all of Paris; Frollo.

'Frollo longed to purge the world of vice and sin. And he saw corruption everywhere except within.'

The two gipsies and Quasi's dad were put in chains and taken away leaving the mother and the child.

"Bring these gipsy vermin to the palace of justice," Frollo ordered.

"You there, what are you hiding?" One of Frollo's guards asked the mother, attempting to take the child from her.

"Stolen goods, no doubt," Frollo assumed, "take them from her."

"She ran!"

And that she did. She escaped with the child but Frollo was hot on her tail, determined to catch her before she could escape. She took every way she saw to try to outrun the judge following her. She escaped down a small alleyway and ran to Notre Dame. She banged on the door begging for sanctuary but it was too late. Frollo took the child from her and pushed her on the steps of Notre Dame, killing her.

Frollo looked at the thing he held in his arm. Confused by the babies cries, he opened the blanket it was wrapped in to reveal a small, deformed child. Seeing the child, Frollo panicked and looked around for anything or anywhere to kill the child. In front of him was a well. A perfect place to kill a child. Frollo rode over to it and was ready to dispose of the child when...

"Stop!" Cried the Archdeacon.

"This is an unholy demon. I'm sending to hell where it belongs," Frollo told the Archdeacon.

The Archdeacon held the mother in his arms, 'see there the innocent blood you have spilt on the steps of Notre Dame.'

"I am guiltless, she ran, I pursued," Frollo defended himself.

'Now you would add this child's blood to your guilt on the steps of Notre Dame!'

"My conscience is clear!"

'You can lie to yourself and your minions. You can claim that you haven't a qualm. But you never can, run from nor hide what you've done from the eyes! The very eyes of Notre Dame!'

'And for one time in his life, of power and control, Frollo felt a twinge of fear for his immortal soul.'

"What must I do?" Frollo asked

"Care for the child, and raise it as your own," The Archdeacon told him.

"What? I'm to be settled with this misshapen-?" Frollo looked at the child, "Very well, let him live with you and your church."

"Live here? Where?"

"Anywhere. Just so he's kept locked away where no one else can see. The bell tower perhaps. And who knows, our Lord works in mysterious ways. Even this foul creature may yet prove one day to be of use to me.'

"Also, little did anybody know that Frollo had taken in another child before Quasimodo, a girl with ice powers and a gypsy, named Maddie. But no one knew about her except for her sister, who forgot about her." Said the Narrator.

Back to Clopin and his puppets.

"And Frollo gave the child a cruel name. A name that means half-formed; Quasimodo."

'Now here is a riddle to guess if you can, sing the bells of Notre Dame. Who is the monster and who is the man? Sing the bells bells bells bells bells bells bells bells. Bells of Notre Dame!'