Esmeralda and Djali are tried and sentenced to death

The trial of Esmeralda and Djali ends in a death sentence for both, after a court interprets circumstantial testimony and the goat’s trained tricks as conclusive proof of witchcraft and murder. Its decisive force lies not only in the verdict but in the way accusation becomes legal certainty: a disputed crown, a witness’s fearful associations, and a familiar public performance are assembled into a case the judges do not explain before condemning the accused.

Jurisdiction and the setting of the trial

The hearing takes place in the Palais de Justice, within a city where authority is divided among overlapping jurisdictions. In the account of fifteenth-century Paris, the island belongs to the bishop, the right bank to the provost of the merchants, and the left bank to the Rector, while the provost of Paris exercises royal rather than municipal authority. These divisions are more than a map of the city: they describe a legal order in which different officials and institutions claim distinct powers. The University’s scholars, for example, may be tried on the island and punished on the right bank, unless the Rector intervenes under the privileges secured for the University.

That background makes the proceedings against Esmeralda legible as an exercise of institutional power rather than a neutral search for truth. The court gathers testimony, hears an advocate for the accused, and receives the king’s advocate’s account of the case; it also treats alleged sorcery as a matter requiring action against an animal as well as a person. The narrative notes that animal trials were not unimaginable in the period, recalling the prosecution of a sow at Corbeil in 1466. In this courtroom, Djali is formally treated as a second accused, so the proceedings extend the charge from Esmeralda to the animal whose behavior the authorities interpret as evidence.

Testimony and the disputed crown

La Falourdel, an elderly woman who says she has lived for forty years at Pont Saint-Michel and regularly paid her dues, describes the events at her house. She recalls receiving two visitors: a black-clad man whose face was concealed except for his eyes, and a handsome officer. The men ask for her upper room and give her a crown. According to her account, the black-clad visitor disappears while she is upstairs; the officer later leaves and returns with a young girl and a goat. La Falourdel says that she hears a cry, then sees a dark figure fall toward the water. Her testimony mixes what she says she witnessed with her suspicion of the goat, which she associates with witchcraft.

The crown becomes a disputed piece of evidence. The court asks whether La Falourdel has brought the leaf into which it was said to have changed; she produces one, and it is passed through the courtroom before Jacques Charmolue identifies it as a birch leaf and calls it proof of magic. A counsellor then asks who gave her the crown. La Falourdel answers that it was the officer. The king’s advocate, however, counters with the deposition attributed to the wounded Phoebus de Châteaupers: Phoebus had described a black-clad stranger pressing him to meet the accused and giving him money when he said he had none; Phoebus then paid La Falourdel. The advocate presents this account as resolving the discrepancy and calls the crown money from hell. Pierre Gringoire, who had been doubtful, is persuaded by the argument. The shift is significant: a contested chain of payment is treated as confirmation of the prosecution’s supernatural explanation.

Djali’s performance becomes evidence

When the court brings in the second accused, Djali crosses the room to Esmeralda and settles at her feet, seeking her attention. She remains motionless and does not respond to the goat. The tenderness of the greeting offers no protection against the court’s interpretation of the animal. Instead, the proceedings turn Djali’s tricks into demonstrations of guilt. The procurator warns that the goat may face the gallows or the stake if the supposed witchcraft continues, and Jacques Charmolue uses Esmeralda’s tambourine to prompt Djali to indicate the time. Djali strikes seven times with a hoof.

Charmolue continues with tricks involving the date and month, performances the spectators may previously have applauded in the public square. Inside the court, however, the same acts acquire a different meaning: the courtroom audience takes them as evidence that the animal is possessed. The prosecutor then empties a bag of movable letters that Djali wears around its neck. Djali selects letters that spell Phoebus’s name. The court treats this as the decisive link between the goat, the accused, and the alleged attack on Phoebus. The episode exposes how setting changes the meaning assigned to an act. A public trick becomes, under judicial authority, proof of an occult conspiracy; Esmeralda’s reputation as a dancer is displaced by the court’s image of her as a criminal accomplice.

Verdict and sentence

By the time the president addresses Esmeralda directly, she appears unresponsive to the people and activity around her. A police officer has to rouse her. Asked whether she persists in denying that she and Djali, through sorcery, murdered and stabbed Phoebus during the night of March 29, she reacts with distress when Phoebus is named. Her attachment to him is visible in that response, but the court reads the case as a question of guilt, not of her feeling for the supposed victim.

Her lawyer offers a brief defense based on the Salic Law, arguing that its stated penalty for a convicted witch is a fine of eight thousand deniers, equivalent to two hundred gold sous. The king’s extraordinary advocate answers that the text has been abrogated. A councillor calls for a vote because the crime is considered manifest and it is late. The judges vote without leaving the room and assent without stating their reasons. The procedure is hurried; the verdict nevertheless carries the force of a formal judgment. The lawyer’s appeal to an older legal text does not alter the result, and the court records a conviction for sorcery, magic, debauchery, and murder.

The sentence orders that, at the king’s chosen time, Esmeralda be taken in a tumbrel, barefoot and with a rope around her neck, to make public penance before the great portal of Notre-Dame Cathedral with a two-pound wax torch. She is then to be taken to Place de Grève and hanged; Djali is sentenced to die as well. The judgment also requires Esmeralda to pay three gold lions to the ecclesiastical court. These terms specify both the punishment and its public, religious, and financial dimensions. The scene ends with Esmeralda being carried away, believing the experience unreal. The sentence establishes the immediate threat that shapes what follows, while the unreasoned vote and the court’s transformation of performance into proof leave the trial’s central injustice visible in its own procedure.