Dear Diary:

This is excruciating. I saw her again today. Dancing. Again.

Not this. Anything but this. I must return to my studies.

Notre Dame has the secret. I know it. Nicolas Flamel - that great divine scientist who decoded the book of Abraham, nay, that great philosopher! - Nicolas Flamel has hidden his philosopher’s stone in Notre Dame. He has encoded his work, his formula for creating the philosopher’s stone into the walls and onto the statues. He has made of this truth a puzzle so complex that only a mind even greater than his own may find the secret. The secret of solidifying a sunbeam in a yard of dark earth - of turning lead into gold.

Just as La Esmeralda when she dances turns herself into radiance.

No! I must not think of her!

Oh, it is useless.

Poor Dom Claude, you are fighting fate now. Fate. What a ludicrous and tiny word for the hand of God! It has such strength; it needs only one single miserable thought to make a man weak or mad! The girl! We are caught in the terrible web of fate.

She is the fly, and I the spider. She is young and free, she flies. She seeks only the open air and the freedom to dance. But ah!, she is stopped at the fatal window, the entrance to life and light! She is caught in the toils of the spider, the hideous spider, spinning his intricate web. Alas, Claude! You are the spider, spinning your web of alchemy and science. I, the spider, I will destroy her. But Claude, you are the fly, too, and she the spider! I did seek science once, the open air, the broad daylight of eternal truth. But I have been caught at the very threshold of eternal life, in this web. With mangled head and broken wings, she approaches me on her dancing spider’s legs. I cannot escape her; my struggling is futile. With every effort I entangle myself.

It is our fate to cancel each other.

-Claude Frollo