Night of March 29

Night of March 29 is fixed in the novel’s courtroom proceedings as the date on which Esmeralda is accused of attacking Phoebus de Châteaupers. Its significance comes from the prosecution’s effort to turn that date into proof of a supernatural crime, while the scene presents the accusation as a legal claim rather than an independently confirmed account of the night.

The Date in the Accusation

At the hearing, the president specifies the night of March 29 as the time when Esmeralda allegedly acted with Djali against Phoebus de Châteaupers, a captain in the king’s archers of the watch. The charge presents the supposed attack as the work of witchcraft and demands that Esmeralda say whether she continues to deny it. The date therefore anchors the accusation in a particular night, but the passage records what the court alleges, not a narration of the event itself.

Evidence and the Court’s Interpretation

The accusation follows a demonstration involving Djali’s movable letters. After the letters are scattered on the floor, the goat extracts the name Phoebus with a hoof. Those in court take this as compelling evidence of witchcraft, and the earlier image of Esmeralda as a graceful dancer is replaced, in their eyes, by the figure of a dangerous sorceress. The episode shows how the name associated with the case becomes part of the court’s interpretation; it does not establish what took place on March 29.

Esmeralda’s Response

When the president repeats the charge and presses her for an answer, Esmeralda hides her face and cries out in horror at the mention of Phoebus. The officers and court have to rouse her from her unresponsive state before questioning her. Her reaction makes clear that the accusation’s use of Phoebus’s name overwhelms her, but it neither verifies the alleged events nor supplies a fuller account of the night.

In a separate conversation with Claude Frollo, Esmeralda briefly recalls that she, too, had once been happy. That exchange offers no further particulars about March 29; the date remains in the narrative as the prosecution’s stated time for the alleged crime.