CHAPTER II

Claude Frollo
IN truth, Claude Frollo was no ordinary person.
He belonged to one of those families which it was the foolish fashion of the last century to describe indiffer¬ ently as the upper middle class or lower aristocracy.
The family had inherited from the brothers Paclet the fief of Tirechappe, which was held of the Bishop of Paris, and the twenty-one houses of which had, since the thirteenth century, been the object of countless litigations in the Ecclesi¬ astical Court. As owner of this fief, Claude Frollo was one of the “seven times twenty-one” seigneurs claiming manorial dues in Paris and its suburbs ; and in that capacity his name was long to be seen inscribed between the Hôtel de Tancar- ville, belonging to Maître François le Rez, and the College of Tours, in the cartulary deposited at Saint-Martin des Champs.
From his childhood Claude Frollo had been destined by his parents for the priesthood. He had been taught to read in Latin; he had early been trained to keep his eyes down¬ cast, and to speak in subdued tones. While still quite a child his father had bound him to the monastic seclusion of the Collège de Torchi in the University, and there he had grown up over the missal and the lexicon.
He was, however, by nature a melancholy, reserved, seri¬ ous boy, studying with ardour and learning easily. He never shouted in the recreation hour; he mixed but little in the bacchanalia of the Rue du Fouarre; did not know what it was to dare alapas et capillos laniare / and had taken no