Some years ago, while visiting, or rather exploring, Notre - Dame, the author of this book discovered in an obscure corner of one of the towers this word, carved upon the wall:
"ANATKH"
These Greek characters, black with age and cut deep into the stone with the peculiarities of form and arrangement common to Gothic calligraphy that marked them the work of some hand in the Middle Ages, and above all the sad and mournful meaning which they expressed, forcibly impressed the author.
He questioned himself, he tried to divine what sad soul was loath to quit the earth without leaving behind this brand of crime or misery upon the brow of the old church.
Since then the wall has been whitewashed or scraped (I have forgotten which), and the inscription has vanished; for this is the way in which, for some two hundred years, we have treated the wonderful churches of the Middle Ages. They are mutilated in every part, inside as well as out. the priest whitewashes them, the archdeacon scrapes them; then come the people, who tear them down.
So, save for the frail memory which the author of this book here dedicates to it, nothing now remains of the mysterieous word engraved upon the dark tower of Notre - Dame, nothing of the unknown fate which is summed up so sadly. The man who write that word upon the wall faded away, many ages since, amidst passing generations of men; the word in its turn has faded from the church wall; the church itself, perhaps, will soon vanish from the earth.
Upon that word this book is based.*
March, 1831.
*In drawing attention to ananke, this "absent" word, Hugo inscribes two themes that are central to The Hunchback of Notre Dame and that will be central to his subsequent novels: the potentially destructive effects of the passage of time and the weight of fatality.
Taken from the Preface of The Hunchback of Notre Dame the novel.
