When Frollo slays some Gypsies on the steps of Notre Dame, he finds a deformed baby and attempts to drown him, but under the persuasion of the Archbishop, he ends up taking in the orphaned child out of guilt, and because this child is deformed and locks him up in the bell tower at the top of Notre Dame, where he spends most of his life. But the child, named Quasimodo (meaning “half-formed”) wishes to be free among the people of Paris, and gets his chance when his friends, three gargoyles named Victor, Hugo, and Laverne, encourage him to go down without Frollo noticing and go down to be part of the Festival Of Fools. There he meets Esmeralda, a beautiful Gypsy girl who frees him when the crowd nearly hangs him for being an outsider. At the same time, Frollo attempts to hunt Esmeralda down and make her his and exterminate the Gypsies, even going as far as planning to burn down all of Paris.
