How we cite our quotes:
Quote #1
The man who wrote this word on the wall disappeared many centuries ago, the word in its turn has disappeared from the wall of the church, the church itself will perhaps soon disappear from the face of the earth. (Author's Preface)
And you thought this book was all about fate; turns out it's all about time, too. In this passage, the author is asking the question: what won't disappear? Is it inevitable that everything is transient? We're not supposed to be able to come up with an answer two paragraphs into the novel, but we are supposed to keep this issue in mind as we read.
Quote #2
This feudal sovereign is almost banished; it is pursued in our books of law, driven from square to square, and would occupy in our immense Paris merely a shabby corner of the Grève, one miserable, furtive, worried, shamefaced guillotine, which always seems as if fearful of being caught in the act, so speedily does it disappear after striking the fatal blow. (II.II.6)
This is likely one of those "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" moments, because the narrator is comparing the pillory and gallows of the 15th century with the guillotine of the 18th and 19th centuries. While it might seem like a leap in progress in terms of cruel and unusual punishment (the guillotine was supposed to provide a quick and painless death, though it's debatable whether it delivered on that promise), the narrator is pointing out here that at the end of the day, it's still an execution. Really, all that has changed is the appearance. As a side note, we should mention that Victor Hugo was famously against the death penalty.
Quote #3
Time and revolutions, whose ravages are, at any rate, marked by impartiality and grandeur, have been joined by a host of architects, licensed, certified, and sworn, destroying with the discernment of bad taste, replacing Gothic latticework with the chicories of Louis XV for the greater glory of the Parthenon. (III.I.14)
All right, so now we have at least one clear statement on the narrator's opinion of time: it is impartial and marked by grandeur. Fair enough. The cathedral did suffer a lot of damage during the French Revolution, but hey, c'est la vie, even for a cathedral. But what the narrator just can't stand is the army of architects who go in and "renovate," which the narrator interprets for us as "ruin." Notre-Dame underwent some changes during the reign of Louis XV (during the 18th century) in an attempt to "update" its style (source), and it's clear from this passage that the narrator finds such deliberate destruction unforgivable.