The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Book 11, Chapter 4 summary

What happens

1. Quasimodo vanishes from Notre-Dame on the day the gypsy and the archdeacon die.
2. Nighttime workers carry la Esmeralda’s body to the cellar beneath Montfaucon.
3. The narrator describes the decaying gallows and its cellar, which receives remains from execution sites across Paris.
4. About eighteen months or two years afterward, people seeking Olivier le Daim’s body discover two skeletons locked together.
5. The man’s bodily features identify Quasimodo, and his unbroken neck shows that he does not die by hanging.
6. When the searchers try to separate the embracing skeletons, the man’s skeleton falls into dust.

In this chapter

What to notice

The intact neck distinguishes this death from execution. The discovery explains Quasimodo’s disappearance through his final embrace.

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