In fifteenth-century Paris, a disfigured man named Quasimodo, who was abandoned as an infant in …
It is certain that if Ravaillac had not assassinated Henry IV, there would have been no documents of his trial deposited in the Rolls Office of the Palace of Justice, and no accomplices interested in the destruction of those documents; consequently, no incindiaries obliged, for want of better means, to burn the Palace of Justice in order to burn the Rolls Office; of course there would have been no fire in 1618. The old palace would still be standing with its old great hall, and I might then say to the reader, "Go, look at it," and thus we would both be spared trouble—myself the trouble of writingm and him that of perusing, an indifferent description. This demonstrates the novel truth that great events have incalculable consequenses.
— The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Illustrated Classics) by Victor Hugo (Page 8)
A typically wry tangent from Victor Hugo, or part of one. To further the entertainment, he goes on in the next paragraph to admit that Ravaillac's accomplices may very well had nothing to do with the fire in the first place, but that it might have been caused by a meteor, or perhaps the frivolity of Justice herself.