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      NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS

      Also known as:

      _THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME_

      By Victor Hugo

      Translated by Isabel F. Hapgood

      PREFACE.

      A few years ago, while visiting or, rather, rummaging about
      Notre-Dame, the author of this book found, in an obscure nook of
      one of the towers, the following word, engraved by hand upon the
      wall:—

       ἈΝÁΓΚΗ.

      These Greek capitals, black with age, and quite deeply graven in
      the stone, with I know not what signs peculiar to Gothic
      caligraphy imprinted upon their forms and upon their attitudes,
      as though with the purpose of revealing that it had been a hand
      of the Middle Ages which had inscribed them there, and especially
      the fatal and melancholy meaning contained in them, struck the
      author deeply.

      He questioned himself; he sought to divine who could have been
      that soul in torment which had not been willing to quit this
      world without leaving this stigma of crime or unhappiness upon
      the brow of the ancient church.

      Afterwards, the wall was whitewashed or scraped down, I know not
      which, and the inscription disappeared. For it is thus that
      people have been in the habit of proceeding with the marvellous
      churches of the Middle Ages for the last two hundred years.
      Mutilations come to them from every quarter, from within as well
      as from without. The priest whitewashes them, the archdeacon
      scrapes them down; then the populace arrives and demolishes them.

      Thus, with the exception of the fragile memory which the author
      of this book here consecrates to it, there remains to-day nothing
      whatever of the mysterious word engraved within the gloomy tower
      of Notre-Dame,—nothing of the destiny which it so sadly summed
      up. The man who wrote that word upon the wall disappeared from
      the midst of the generations of man many centuries ago; the word,
      in its turn, has been effaced from the wall of the church; the
      church will, perhaps, itself soon disappear from the face of the
      earth.

      It is upon this word that this book is founded.

      March, 1831.

        CONTENTS

         PREFACE.

         VOLUME I.

         BOOK FIRST.

         CHAPTER I. THE GRAND HALL.

         CHAPTER II. PIERRE GRINGOIRE.

         CHAPTER III. MONSIEUR THE CARDINAL.

         CHAPTER IV. MASTER JACQUES COPPENOLE.

         CHAPTER V. QUASIMODO.

         CHAPTER VI. ESMERALDA.

         BOOK SECOND.

         CHAPTER I. FROM CHARYBDIS TO SCYLLA.

         CHAPTER II. THE PLACE DE GRÈVE.

         CHAPTER III. KISSES FOR BLOWS.

         CHAPTER IV. THE INCONVENIENCES OF FOLLOWING A PRETTY WOMAN
         THROUGH THE STREETS IN THE EVENING.

         CHAPTER V. RESULT OF THE DANGERS.

         CHAPTER VI. THE BROKEN JUG.

         CHAPTER VII. A BRIDAL NIGHT.

         BOOK THIRD.

         CHAPTER I. NOTRE-DAME.

         CHAPTER II. A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF PARIS.

         BOOK FOURTH.

         CHAPTER I. GOOD SOULS.

         CHAPTER II. CLAUDE FROLLO.

         CHAPTER III. _IMMANIS PECORIS CUSTOS, IMMANIOR IPSE_.

         CHAPTER IV. THE DOG AND HIS MASTER.

         CHAPTER V. MORE ABOUT CLAUDE FROLLO.

         CHAPTER VI. UNPOPULARITY.

         BOOK FIFTH.

         CHAPTER I. _ABBAS BEATI MARTINI_.

         CHAPTER II. THIS WILL KILL THAT.

         BOOK SIXTH.

         CHAPTER I. AN IMPARTIAL GLANCE AT THE ANCIENT MAGISTRACY.

         CHAPTER II. THE RAT-HOLE.

         CHAPTER III. HISTORY OF A LEAVENED CAKE OF MAIZE.

         CHAPTER IV. A TEAR FOR A DROP OF WATER.

         CHAPTER V. END OF THE STORY OF THE CAKE.

         VOLUME II.

         BOOK SEVENTH.

         CHAPTER I. THE DANGER OF CONFIDING ONE’S SECRET TO A GOAT.

         CHAPTER II. A PRIEST AND A PHILOSOPHER ARE TWO DIFFERENT
         THINGS.

         CHAPTER III. THE BELLS.

         CHAPTER IV. ἈΝÁΓΚΗ.

         CHAPTER V. THE TWO MEN CLOTHED IN BLACK.

         CHAPTER VI. THE EFFECT WHICH SEVEN OATHS IN THE OPEN AIR CAN
         PRODUCE.

         CHAPTER VII. THE MYSTERIOUS MONK.

         CHAPTER VIII. THE UTILITY OF WINDOWS WHICH OPEN ON THE RIVER.

         BOOK EIGHTH.

         CHAPTER I. THE CROWN CHANGED INTO A DRY LEAF.

         CHAPTER II. CONTINUATION OF THE CROWN WHICH WAS CHANGED INTO A
         DRY LEAF.

         CHAPTER III. END OF THE CROWN WHICH WAS TURNED INTO A DRY
         LEAF.

         CHAPTER IV. _LASCIATE OGNI SPERANZA_—LEAVE ALL HOPE BEHIND, YE
         WHO ENTER HERE.

         CHAPTER V. THE MOTHER.

         CHAPTER VI. THREE HUMAN HEARTS DIFFERENTLY CONSTRUCTED.

         BOOK NINTH.

         CHAPTER I. DELIRIUM.

         CHAPTER II. HUNCHBACKED, ONE EYED, LAME.

         CHAPTER III. DEAF.

         CHAPTER IV. EARTHENWARE AND CRYSTAL.

         CHAPTER V. THE KEY TO THE RED DOOR.

         CHAPTER VI. CONTINUATION OF THE KEY TO THE RED DOOR.

         BOOK TENTH.

         CHAPTER I. GRINGOIRE HAS MANY GOOD IDEAS IN SUCCESSION.—RUE
         DES BERNARDINS.

         CHAPTER II. TURN VAGABOND.

         CHAPTER III. LONG LIVE MIRTH.

         CHAPTER IV. AN AWKWARD FRIEND.

         CHAPTER V. THE RETREAT IN WHICH MONSIEUR LOUIS OF FRANCE SAYS
         HIS PRAYERS.

         CHAPTER VI. LITTLE SWORD IN POCKET.

         CHAPTER VII. CHATEAUPERS TO THE RESCUE.

         BOOK ELEVENTH.

         CHAPTER I. THE LITTLE SHOE.

         CHAPTER II. THE BEAUTIFUL CREATURE CLAD IN WHITE. (Dante.)

         CHAPTER III. THE MARRIAGE OF PHOEBUS.

         CHAPTER IV. THE MARRIAGE OF QUASIMODO.

         NOTE.

         FOOTNOTES.

      VOLUME I.

      BOOK FIRST.

      CHAPTER I. THE GRAND HALL.

      Three hundred and forty-eight years, six months, and nineteen
      days ago to-day, the Parisians awoke to the sound of all the
      bells in the triple circuit of the city, the university, and the
      town ringing a full peal.

      The sixth of January, 1482, is not, however, a day of which
      history has preserved the memory. There was nothing notable in
      the event which thus set the bells and the _bourgeois_ of Paris
      in a ferment from early morning. It was neither an assault by the
      Picards nor the Burgundians, nor a hunt led along in procession,
      nor a revolt of scholars in the town of Laas, nor an entry of
      “our much dread lord, monsieur the king,” nor even a pretty
      hanging of male and female thieves by the courts of Paris.
      Neither was it the arrival, so frequent in the fifteenth century,
      of some plumed and bedizened embassy. It was barely two days
      since the last cavalcade of that nature, that of the Flemish
      ambassadors charged with concluding the marriage between the
      dauphin and Marguerite of Flanders, had made its entry into
      Paris, to the great annoyance of M. le Cardinal de Bourbon, who,
      for the sake of pleasing the king, had been obliged to assume an
      amiable mien towards this whole rustic rabble of Flemish
      burgomasters, and to regale them at his Hôtel de Bourbon, with a
      very “pretty morality, allegorical satire, and farce,” while a
      driving rain drenched the magnificent tapestries at his door.

      What put the “whole population of Paris in commotion,” as Jehan
      de Troyes expresses it, on the sixth of January, was the double
      solemnity, united from time immemorial, of the Epiphany and the
      Feast of Fools.

      On that day, there was to be a bonfire on the Place de Grève, a
      maypole at the Chapelle de Braque, and a mystery at the Palais de
      Justice. It had been cried, to the sound of the trumpet, the
      preceding evening at all the cross roads, by the provost’s men,
      clad in handsome, short, sleeveless coats of violet camelot, with
      large white crosses upon their breasts.

      So the crowd of citizens, male and female, having closed their
      houses and shops, thronged from every direction, at early morn,
      towards some one of the three spots designated.

      Each had made his choice; one, the bonfire; another, the maypole;
      another, the mystery play. It must be stated, in honor of the
      good sense of the loungers of Paris, that the greater part of
      this crowd directed their steps towards the bonfire, which was
      quite in season, or towards the mystery play, which was to be
      presented in the grand hall of the Palais de Justice (the courts
      of law), which was well roofed and walled; and that the curious
      left the poor, scantily flowered maypole to shiver all alone
      beneath the sky of January, in the cemetery of the Chapel of
      Braque.

      The populace thronged the avenues of the law courts in
      particular, because they knew that the Flemish ambassadors, who
      had arrived two days previously, intended to be present at the
      representation of the mystery, and at the election of the Pope of
      the Fools, which was also to take place in the grand hall.

      It was no easy matter on that day, to force one’s way into that
      grand hall, although it was then reputed to be the largest
      covered enclosure in the world (it is true that Sauval had not
      yet measured the grand hall of the Château of Montargis). The
      palace place, encumbered with people, offered to the curious
      gazers at the windows the aspect of a sea; into which five or six
      streets, like so many mouths of rivers, discharged every moment
      fresh floods of heads. The waves of this crowd, augmented
      incessantly, dashed against the angles of the houses which
      projected here and there, like so many promontories, into the
      irregular basin of the place. In the centre of the lofty
      Gothic[1] façade of the palace, the grand staircase, incessantly
      ascended and descended by a double current, which, after parting
      on the intermediate landing-place, flowed in broad waves along
      its lateral slopes,—the grand staircase, I say, trickled
      incessantly into the place, like a cascade into a lake. The
      cries, the laughter, the trampling of those thousands of feet,
      produced a great noise and a great clamor. From time to time,
      this noise and clamor redoubled; the current which drove the
      crowd towards the grand staircase flowed backwards, became
      troubled, formed whirlpools. This was produced by the buffet of
      an archer, or the horse of one of the provost’s sergeants, which
      kicked to restore order; an admirable tradition which the
      provostship has bequeathed to the constablery, the constablery to
      the _maréchaussée_, the _maréchaussée_ to our _gendarmeri_ of
      Paris.

      Thousands of good, calm, _bourgeois_ faces thronged the windows,
      the doors, the dormer windows, the roofs, gazing at the palace,
      gazing at the populace, and asking nothing more; for many
      Parisians content themselves with the spectacle of the
      spectators, and a wall behind which something is going on becomes
      at once, for us, a very curious thing indeed.

      If it could be granted to us, the men of 1830, to mingle in
      thought with those Parisians of the fifteenth century, and to
      enter with them, jostled, elbowed, pulled about, into that
      immense hall of the palace, which was so cramped on that sixth of
      January, 1482, the spectacle would not be devoid of either
      interest or charm, and we should have about us only things that
      were so old that they would seem new.

      With the reader’s consent, we will endeavor to retrace in
      thought, the impression which he would have experienced in
      company with us on crossing the threshold of that grand hall, in
      the midst of that tumultuous crowd in surcoats, short, sleeveless
      jackets, and doublets.

      And, first of all, there is a buzzing in the ears, a dazzlement
      in the eyes. Above our heads is a double ogive vault, panelled
      with wood carving, painted azure, and sown with golden
      fleurs-de-lis; beneath our feet a pavement of black and white
      marble, alternating. A few paces distant, an enormous pillar,
      then another, then another; seven pillars in all, down the length
      of the hall, sustaining the spring of the arches of the double
      vault, in the centre of its width. Around four of the pillars,
      stalls of merchants, all sparkling with glass and tinsel; around
      the last three, benches of oak, worn and polished by the trunk
      hose of the litigants, and the robes of the attorneys. Around the
      hall, along the lofty wall, between the doors, between the
      windows, between the pillars, the interminable row of all the
      kings of France, from Pharamond down: the lazy kings, with
      pendent arms and downcast eyes; the valiant and combative kings,
      with heads and arms raised boldly heavenward. Then in the long,
      pointed windows, glass of a thousand hues; at the wide entrances
      to the hall, rich doors, finely sculptured; and all, the vaults,
      pillars, walls, jambs, panelling, doors, statues, covered from
      top to bottom with a splendid blue and gold illumination, which,
      a trifle tarnished at the epoch when we behold it, had almost
      entirely disappeared beneath dust and spiders in the year of
      grace, 1549, when du Breul still admired it from tradition.

      Let the reader picture to himself now, this immense, oblong hall,
      illuminated by the pallid light of a January day, invaded by a
      motley and noisy throng which drifts along the walls, and eddies
      round the seven pillars, and he will have a confused idea of the
      whole effect of the picture, whose curious details we shall make
      an effort to indicate with more precision.

      It is certain, that if Ravaillac had not assassinated Henri IV.,
      there would have been no documents in the trial of Ravaillac
      deposited in the clerk’s office of the Palais de Justice, no
      accomplices interested in causing the said documents to
      disappear; hence, no incendiaries obliged, for lack of better
      means, to burn the clerk’s office in order to burn the documents,
      and to burn the Palais de Justice in order to burn the clerk’s
      office; consequently, in short, no conflagration in 1618. The old
      Palais would be standing still, with its ancient grand hall; I
      should be able to say to the reader, “Go and look at it,” and we
      should thus both escape the necessity,—I of making, and he of
      reading, a description of it, such as it is. Which demonstrates a
      new truth: that great events have incalculable results.

      It is true that it may be quite possible, in the first place,
      that Ravaillac had no accomplices; and in the second, that if he
      had any, they were in no way connected with the fire of 1618. Two
      other very plausible explanations exist: First, the great flaming
      star, a foot broad, and a cubit high, which fell from heaven, as
      every one knows, upon the law courts, after midnight on the
      seventh of March; second, Théophile’s quatrain,—

    “Sure, ’twas but a sorry game
    When at Paris, Dame Justice,
    Through having eaten too much spice,
    Set the palace all aflame.”

      Whatever may be thought of this triple explanation, political,
      physical, and poetical, of the burning of the law courts in 1618,
      the unfortunate fact of the fire is certain. Very little to-day
      remains, thanks to this catastrophe,—thanks, above all, to the
      successive restorations which have completed what it spared,—very
      little remains of that first dwelling of the kings of France,—of
      that elder palace of the Louvre, already so old in the time of
      Philip the Handsome, that they sought there for the traces of the
      magnificent buildings erected by King Robert and described by
      Helgaldus. Nearly everything has disappeared. What has become of
      the chamber of the chancellery, where Saint Louis consummated his
      marriage? the garden where he administered justice, “clad in a
      coat of camelot, a surcoat of linsey-woolsey, without sleeves,
      and a sur-mantle of black sandal, as he lay upon the carpet with
      Joinville?” Where is the chamber of the Emperor Sigismond? and
      that of Charles IV.? that of Jean the Landless? Where is the
      staircase, from which Charles VI. promulgated his edict of
      pardon? the slab where Marcel cut the throats of Robert de
      Clermont and the Marshal of Champagne, in the presence of the
      dauphin? the wicket where the bulls of Pope Benedict were torn,
      and whence those who had brought them departed decked out, in
      derision, in copes and mitres, and making an apology through all
      Paris? and the grand hall, with its gilding, its azure, its
      statues, its pointed arches, its pillars, its immense vault, all
      fretted with carvings? and the gilded chamber? and the stone
      lion, which stood at the door, with lowered head and tail between
      his legs, like the lions on the throne of Solomon, in the
      humiliated attitude which befits force in the presence of
      justice? and the beautiful doors? and the stained glass? and the
      chased ironwork, which drove Biscornette to despair? and the
      delicate woodwork of Hancy? What has time, what have men done
      with these marvels? What have they given us in return for all
      this Gallic history, for all this Gothic art? The heavy flattened
      arches of M. de Brosse, that awkward architect of the
      Saint-Gervais portal. So much for art; and, as for history, we
      have the gossiping reminiscences of the great pillar, still
      ringing with the tattle of the Patru.

      It is not much. Let us return to the veritable grand hall of the
      veritable old palace. The two extremities of this gigantic
      parallelogram were occupied, the one by the famous marble table,
      so long, so broad, and so thick that, as the ancient land
      rolls—in a style that would have given Gargantua an appetite—say,
      “such a slice of marble as was never beheld in the world”; the
      other by the chapel where Louis XI. had himself sculptured on his
      knees before the Virgin, and whither he caused to be brought,
      without heeding the two gaps thus made in the row of royal
      statues, the statues of Charlemagne and of Saint Louis, two
      saints whom he supposed to be great in favor in heaven, as kings
      of France. This chapel, quite new, having been built only six
      years, was entirely in that charming taste of delicate
      architecture, of marvellous sculpture, of fine and deep chasing,
      which marks with us the end of the Gothic era, and which is
      perpetuated to about the middle of the sixteenth century in the
      fairylike fancies of the Renaissance. The little open-work rose
      window, pierced above the portal, was, in particular, a
      masterpiece of lightness and grace; one would have pronounced it
      a star of lace.

      In the middle of the hall, opposite the great door, a platform of
      gold brocade, placed against the wall, a special entrance to
      which had been effected through a window in the corridor of the
      gold chamber, had been erected for the Flemish emissaries and the
      other great personages invited to the presentation of the mystery
      play.

      It was upon the marble table that the mystery was to be enacted,
      as usual. It had been arranged for the purpose, early in the
      morning; its rich slabs of marble, all scratched by the heels of
      law clerks, supported a cage of carpenter’s work of considerable
      height, the upper surface of which, within view of the whole
      hall, was to serve as the theatre, and whose interior, masked by
      tapestries, was to take the place of dressing-rooms for the
      personages of the piece. A ladder, naively placed on the outside,
      was to serve as means of communication between the dressing-room
      and the stage, and lend its rude rungs to entrances as well as to
      exits. There was no personage, however unexpected, no sudden
      change, no theatrical effect, which was not obliged to mount that
      ladder. Innocent and venerable infancy of art and contrivances!

      Four of the bailiff of the palace’s sergeants, perfunctory
      guardians of all the pleasures of the people, on days of festival
      as well as on days of execution, stood at the four corners of the
      marble table.

      The piece was only to begin with the twelfth stroke of the great
      palace clock sounding midday. It was very late, no doubt, for a
      theatrical representation, but they had been obliged to fix the
      hour to suit the convenience of the ambassadors.

      Now, this whole multitude had been waiting since morning. A
      goodly number of curious, good people had been shivering since
      daybreak before the grand staircase of the palace; some even
      affirmed that they had passed the night across the threshold of
      the great door, in order to make sure that they should be the
      first to pass in. The crowd grew more dense every moment, and,
      like water, which rises above its normal level, began to mount
      along the walls, to swell around the pillars, to spread out on
      the entablatures, on the cornices, on the window-sills, on all
      the salient points of the architecture, on all the reliefs of the
      sculpture. Hence, discomfort, impatience, weariness, the liberty
      of a day of cynicism and folly, the quarrels which break forth
      for all sorts of causes—a pointed elbow, an iron-shod shoe, the
      fatigue of long waiting—had already, long before the hour
      appointed for the arrival of the ambassadors, imparted a harsh
      and bitter accent to the clamor of these people who were shut in,
      fitted into each other, pressed, trampled upon, stifled. Nothing
      was to be heard but imprecations on the Flemish, the provost of
      the merchants, the Cardinal de Bourbon, the bailiff of the
      courts, Madame Marguerite of Austria, the sergeants with their
      rods, the cold, the heat, the bad weather, the Bishop of Paris,
      the Pope of the Fools, the pillars, the statues, that closed
      door, that open window; all to the vast amusement of a band of
      scholars and lackeys scattered through the mass, who mingled with
      all this discontent their teasing remarks, and their malicious
      suggestions, and pricked the general bad temper with a pin, so to
      speak.

      Among the rest there was a group of those merry imps, who, after
      smashing the glass in a window, had seated themselves hardily on
      the entablature, and from that point despatched their gaze and
      their railleries both within and without, upon the throng in the
      hall, and the throng upon the Place. It was easy to see, from
      their parodied gestures, their ringing laughter, the bantering
      appeals which they exchanged with their comrades, from one end of
      the hall to the other, that these young clerks did not share the
      weariness and fatigue of the rest of the spectators, and that
      they understood very well the art of extracting, for their own
      private diversion from that which they had under their eyes, a
      spectacle which made them await the other with patience.

      “Upon my soul, so it’s you, ‘Joannes Frollo de Molendino!’” cried
      one of them, to a sort of little, light-haired imp, with a
      well-favored and malign countenance, clinging to the acanthus
      leaves of a capital; “you are well named John of the Mill, for
      your two arms and your two legs have the air of four wings
      fluttering on the breeze. How long have you been here?”

      “By the mercy of the devil,” retorted Joannes Frollo, “these four
      hours and more; and I hope that they will be reckoned to my
      credit in purgatory. I heard the eight singers of the King of
      Sicily intone the first verse of seven o’clock mass in the
      Sainte-Chapelle.”

      “Fine singers!” replied the other, “with voices even more pointed
      than their caps! Before founding a mass for Monsieur Saint John,
      the king should have inquired whether Monsieur Saint John likes
      Latin droned out in a Provençal accent.”

      “He did it for the sake of employing those accursed singers of
      the King of Sicily!” cried an old woman sharply from among the
      crowd beneath the window. “I just put it to you! A thousand
      _livres parisi_ for a mass! and out of the tax on sea fish in the
      markets of Paris, to boot!”

      “Peace, old crone,” said a tall, grave person, stopping up his
      nose on the side towards the fishwife; “a mass had to be founded.
      Would you wish the king to fall ill again?”

      “Bravely spoken, Sire Gilles Lecornu, master furrier of king’s
      robes!” cried the little student, clinging to the capital.

      A shout of laughter from all the students greeted the unlucky
      name of the poor furrier of the king’s robes.

      “Lecornu! Gilles Lecornu!” said some.

      “_Cornutus et hirsutus_, horned and hairy,” another went on.

      “He! of course,” continued the small imp on the capital, “What
      are they laughing at? An honorable man is Gilles Lecornu, brother
      of Master Jehan Lecornu, provost of the king’s house, son of
      Master Mahiet Lecornu, first porter of the Bois de Vincennes,—all
      _bourgeois_ of Paris, all married, from father to son.”

      The gayety redoubled. The big furrier, without uttering a word in
      reply, tried to escape all the eyes riveted upon him from all
      sides; but he perspired and panted in vain; like a wedge entering
      the wood, his efforts served only to bury still more deeply in
      the shoulders of his neighbors, his large, apoplectic face,
      purple with spite and rage.

      At length one of these, as fat, short, and venerable as himself,
      came to his rescue.

      “Abomination! scholars addressing a _bourgeois_ in that fashion
      in my day would have been flogged with a fagot, which would have
      afterwards been used to burn them.”

      The whole band burst into laughter.

      “Holà hé! who is scolding so? Who is that screech owl of evil
      fortune?”

      “Hold, I know him” said one of them; “’tis Master Andry Musnier.”

      “Because he is one of the four sworn booksellers of the
      university!” said the other.

      “Everything goes by fours in that shop,” cried a third; “the four
      nations, the four faculties, the four feasts, the four
      procurators, the four electors, the four booksellers.”

      “Well,” began Jean Frollo once more, “we must play the devil with
      them.”[2]

      “Musnier, we’ll burn your books.”

      “Musnier, we’ll beat your lackeys.”

      “Musnier, we’ll kiss your wife.”

      “That fine, big Mademoiselle Oudarde.”

      “Who is as fresh and as gay as though she were a widow.”

      “Devil take you!” growled Master Andry Musnier.

      “Master Andry,” pursued Jean Jehan, still clinging to his
      capital, “hold your tongue, or I’ll drop on your head!”

      Master Andry raised his eyes, seemed to measure in an instant the
      height of the pillar, the weight of the scamp, mentally
      multiplied that weight by the square of the velocity and remained
      silent.

      Jehan, master of the field of battle, pursued triumphantly:

      “That’s what I’ll do, even if I am the brother of an archdeacon!”

      “Fine gentry are our people of the university, not to have caused
      our privileges to be respected on such a day as this! However,
      there is a maypole and a bonfire in the town; a mystery, Pope of
      the Fools, and Flemish ambassadors in the city; and, at the
      university, nothing!”

      “Nevertheless, the Place Maubert is sufficiently large!”
      interposed one of the clerks established on the window-sill.

      “Down with the rector, the electors, and the procurators!” cried
      Joannes.

      “We must have a bonfire this evening in the Champ-Gaillard,” went
      on the other, “made of Master Andry’s books.”

      “And the desks of the scribes!” added his neighbor.

      “And the beadles’ wands!”

      “And the spittoons of the deans!”

      “And the cupboards of the procurators!”

      “And the hutches of the electors!”

      “And the stools of the rector!”

      “Down with them!” put in little Jehan, as counterpoint; “down
      with Master Andry, the beadles and the scribes; the theologians,
      the doctors and the decretists; the procurators, the electors and
      the rector!”

      “The end of the world has come!” muttered Master Andry, stopping
      up his ears.

      “By the way, there’s the rector! see, he is passing through the
      Place,” cried one of those in the window.

      Each rivalled his neighbor in his haste to turn towards the
      Place.

      “Is it really our venerable rector, Master Thibaut?” demanded
      Jehan Frollo du Moulin, who, as he was clinging to one of the
      inner pillars, could not see what was going on outside.

      “Yes, yes,” replied all the others, “it is really he, Master
      Thibaut, the rector.”

      It was, in fact, the rector and all the dignitaries of the
      university, who were marching in procession in front of the
      embassy, and at that moment traversing the Place. The students
      crowded into the window, saluted them as they passed with
      sarcasms and ironical applause. The rector, who was walking at
      the head of his company, had to support the first broadside; it
      was severe.

      “Good day, monsieur le recteur! Holà hé! good day there!”

      “How does he manage to be here, the old gambler? Has he abandoned
      his dice?”

      “How he trots along on his mule! her ears are not so long as
      his!”

      “Holà hé! good day, monsieur le recteur Thibaut! _Tybalde
      aleator_! Old fool! old gambler!”

      “God preserve you! Did you throw double six often last night?”

      “Oh! what a decrepit face, livid and haggard and drawn with the
      love of gambling and of dice!”

      “Where are you bound for in that fashion, Thibaut, _Tybalde ad
      dados_, with your back turned to the university, and trotting
      towards the town?”

      “He is on his way, no doubt, to seek a lodging in the Rue
      Thibautodé?”[3] cried Jehan du M. Moulin.

      The entire band repeated this quip in a voice of thunder,
      clapping their hands furiously.

      “You are going to seek a lodging in the Rue Thibautodé, are you
      not, monsieur le recteur, gamester on the side of the devil?”

      Then came the turns of the other dignitaries.

      “Down with the beadles! down with the mace-bearers!”

      “Tell me, Robin Pouissepain, who is that yonder?”

      “He is Gilbert de Suilly, _Gilbertus de Soliaco_, the chancellor
      of the College of Autun.”

      “Hold on, here’s my shoe; you are better placed than I, fling it
      in his face.”

      “_Saturnalitias mittimus ecce nuces_.”

      “Down with the six theologians, with their white surplices!”

      “Are those the theologians? I thought they were the white geese
      given by Sainte-Geneviève to the city, for the fief of Roogny.”

      “Down with the doctors!”

      “Down with the cardinal disputations, and quibblers!”

      “My cap to you, Chancellor of Sainte-Geneviève! You have done me
      a wrong. ’Tis true; he gave my place in the nation of Normandy to
      little Ascanio Falzapada, who comes from the province of Bourges,
      since he is an Italian.”

      “That is an injustice,” said all the scholars. “Down with the
      Chancellor of Sainte-Geneviève!”

      “Ho hé! Master Joachim de Ladehors! Ho hé! Louis Dahuille! Ho hé
      Lambert Hoctement!”

      “May the devil stifle the procurator of the German nation!”

      “And the chaplains of the Sainte-Chapelle, with their gray
      _amices; cum tunices grisis_!”

      “_Seu de pellibus grisis fourratis_!”

      “Holà hé! Masters of Arts! All the beautiful black copes! all the
      fine red copes!”

      “They make a fine tail for the rector.”

      “One would say that he was a Doge of Venice on his way to his
      bridal with the sea.”

      “Say, Jehan! here are the canons of Sainte-Geneviève!”

      “To the deuce with the whole set of canons!”

      “Abbé Claude Choart! Doctor Claude Choart! Are you in search of
      Marie la Giffarde?”

      “She is in the Rue de Glatigny.”

      “She is making the bed of the king of the debauchees.”

      “She is paying her four deniers[4] _quatuor denarios_.”

      “_Aut unum bombum_.”

      “Would you like to have her pay you in the face?”

      “Comrades! Master Simon Sanguin, the Elector of Picardy, with his
      wife on the crupper!”

      “_Post equitem sedet atra cura_—behind the horseman sits black
      care.”

      “Courage, Master Simon!”

      “Good day, Mister Elector!”

      “Good night, Madame Electress!”

      “How happy they are to see all that!” sighed Joannes de
      Molendino, still perched in the foliage of his capital.

      Meanwhile, the sworn bookseller of the university, Master Andry
      Musnier, was inclining his ear to the furrier of the king’s
      robes, Master Gilles Lecornu.

      “I tell you, sir, that the end of the world has come. No one has
      ever beheld such outbreaks among the students! It is the accursed
      inventions of this century that are ruining
      everything,—artilleries, bombards, and, above all, printing, that
      other German pest. No more manuscripts, no more books! printing
      will kill bookselling. It is the end of the world that is drawing
      nigh.”

      “I see that plainly, from the progress of velvet stuffs,” said
      the fur-merchant.

      At this moment, midday sounded.

      “Ha!” exclaimed the entire crowd, in one voice.

      The scholars held their peace. Then a great hurly-burly ensued; a
      vast movement of feet, hands, and heads; a general outbreak of
      coughs and handkerchiefs; each one arranged himself, assumed his
      post, raised himself up, and grouped himself. Then came a great
      silence; all necks remained outstretched, all mouths remained
      open, all glances were directed towards the marble table. Nothing
      made its appearance there. The bailiff’s four sergeants were
      still there, stiff, motionless, as painted statues. All eyes
      turned to the estrade reserved for the Flemish envoys. The door
      remained closed, the platform empty. This crowd had been waiting
      since daybreak for three things: noonday, the embassy from
      Flanders, the mystery play. Noonday alone had arrived on time.

      On this occasion, it was too much.

      They waited one, two, three, five minutes, a quarter of an hour;
      nothing came. The dais remained empty, the theatre dumb. In the
      meantime, wrath had succeeded to impatience. Irritated words
      circulated in a low tone, still, it is true. “The mystery! the
      mystery!” they murmured, in hollow voices. Heads began to
      ferment. A tempest, which was only rumbling in the distance as
      yet, was floating on the surface of this crowd. It was Jehan du
      Moulin who struck the first spark from it.

      “The mystery, and to the devil with the Flemings!” he exclaimed
      at the full force of his lungs, twining like a serpent around his
      pillar.

      The crowd clapped their hands.

      “The mystery!” it repeated, “and may all the devils take
      Flanders!”

      “We must have the mystery instantly,” resumed the student; “or
      else, my advice is that we should hang the bailiff of the courts,
      by way of a morality and a comedy.”

      “Well said,” cried the people, “and let us begin the hanging with
      his sergeants.”

      A grand acclamation followed. The four poor fellows began to turn
      pale, and to exchange glances. The crowd hurled itself towards
      them, and they already beheld the frail wooden railing, which
      separated them from it, giving way and bending before the
      pressure of the throng.

      It was a critical moment.

      “To the sack, to the sack!” rose the cry on all sides.

      At that moment, the tapestry of the dressing-room, which we have
      described above, was raised, and afforded passage to a personage,
      the mere sight of whom suddenly stopped the crowd, and changed
      its wrath into curiosity as by enchantment.

      “Silence! silence!”

      The personage, but little reassured, and trembling in every limb,
      advanced to the edge of the marble table with a vast amount of
      bows, which, in proportion as he drew nearer, more and more
      resembled genuflections.

      In the meanwhile, tranquillity had gradually been restored. All
      that remained was that slight murmur which always rises above the
      silence of a crowd.

      “Messieurs the _bourgeois_,” said he, “and mesdemoiselles the
      _bourgeoises_, we shall have the honor of declaiming and
      representing, before his eminence, monsieur the cardinal, a very
      beautiful morality which has for its title, ‘The Good Judgment of
      Madame the Virgin Mary.’ I am to play Jupiter. His eminence is,
      at this moment, escorting the very honorable embassy of the Duke
      of Austria; which is detained, at present, listening to the
      harangue of monsieur the rector of the university, at the gate
      Baudets. As soon as his illustrious eminence, the cardinal,
      arrives, we will begin.”

      It is certain, that nothing less than the intervention of Jupiter
      was required to save the four unfortunate sergeants of the
      bailiff of the courts. If we had the happiness of having invented
      this very veracious tale, and of being, in consequence,
      responsible for it before our Lady Criticism, it is not against
      us that the classic precept, _Nec deus intersit_, could be
      invoked. Moreover, the costume of Seigneur Jupiter, was very
      handsome, and contributed not a little towards calming the crowd,
      by attracting all its attention. Jupiter was clad in a coat of
      mail, covered with black velvet, with gilt nails; and had it not
      been for the rouge, and the huge red beard, each of which covered
      one-half of his face,—had it not been for the roll of gilded
      cardboard, spangled, and all bristling with strips of tinsel,
      which he held in his hand, and in which the eyes of the initiated
      easily recognized thunderbolts,—had not his feet been
      flesh-colored, and banded with ribbons in Greek fashion, he might
      have borne comparison, so far as the severity of his mien was
      concerned, with a Breton archer from the guard of Monsieur de
      Berry.

      CHAPTER II. PIERRE GRINGOIRE.

      Nevertheless, as he harangued them, the satisfaction and
      admiration unanimously excited by his costume were dissipated by
      his words; and when he reached that untoward conclusion: “As soon
      as his illustrious eminence, the cardinal, arrives, we will
      begin,” his voice was drowned in a thunder of hooting.

      “Begin instantly! The mystery! the mystery immediately!” shrieked
      the people. And above all the voices, that of Johannes de
      Molendino was audible, piercing the uproar like the fife’s
      derisive serenade: “Commence instantly!” yelped the scholar.

      “Down with Jupiter and the Cardinal de Bourbon!” vociferated
      Robin Poussepain and the other clerks perched in the window.

      “The morality this very instant!” repeated the crowd; “this very
      instant! the sack and the rope for the comedians, and the
      cardinal!”

      Poor Jupiter, haggard, frightened, pale beneath his rouge,
      dropped his thunderbolt, took his cap in his hand; then he bowed
      and trembled and stammered: “His eminence—the ambassadors—Madame
      Marguerite of Flanders—.” He did not know what to say. In truth,
      he was afraid of being hung.

      Hung by the populace for waiting, hung by the cardinal for not
      having waited, he saw between the two dilemmas only an abyss;
      that is to say, a gallows.

      Luckily, some one came to rescue him from his embarrassment, and
      assume the responsibility.

      An individual who was standing beyond the railing, in the free
      space around the marble table, and whom no one had yet caught
      sight of, since his long, thin body was completely sheltered from
      every visual ray by the diameter of the pillar against which he
      was leaning; this individual, we say, tall, gaunt, pallid, blond,
      still young, although already wrinkled about the brow and cheeks,
      with brilliant eyes and a smiling mouth, clad in garments of
      black serge, worn and shining with age, approached the marble
      table, and made a sign to the poor sufferer. But the other was so
      confused that he did not see him. The new comer advanced another
      step.

      “Jupiter,” said he, “my dear Jupiter!”

      The other did not hear.

      At last, the tall blond, driven out of patience, shrieked almost
      in his face,—

      “Michel Giborne!”

      “Who calls me?” said Jupiter, as though awakened with a start.

      “I,” replied the person clad in black.

      “Ah!” said Jupiter.

      “Begin at once,” went on the other. “Satisfy the populace; I
      undertake to appease the bailiff, who will appease monsieur the
      cardinal.”

      Jupiter breathed once more.

      “Messeigneurs the _bourgeois_,” he cried, at the top of his lungs
      to the crowd, which continued to hoot him, “we are going to begin
      at once.”

      “_Evoe Jupiter! Plaudite cives_! All hail, Jupiter! Applaud,
      citizens!” shouted the scholars.

      “Noël! Noël! good, good,” shouted the people.

      The hand clapping was deafening, and Jupiter had already
      withdrawn under his tapestry, while the hall still trembled with
      acclamations.

      In the meanwhile, the personage who had so magically turned the
      tempest into dead calm, as our old and dear Corneille puts it,
      had modestly retreated to the half-shadow of his pillar, and
      would, no doubt, have remained invisible there, motionless, and
      mute as before, had he not been plucked by the sleeve by two
      young women, who, standing in the front row of the spectators,
      had noticed his colloquy with Michel Giborne-Jupiter.

      “Master,” said one of them, making him a sign to approach.

      “Hold your tongue, my dear Liénarde,” said her neighbor, pretty,
      fresh, and very brave, in consequence of being dressed up in her
      best attire. “He is not a clerk, he is a layman; you must not say
      master to him, but messire.”

      “Messire,” said Liénarde.

      The stranger approached the railing.

      “What would you have of me, damsels?” he asked, with alacrity.

      “Oh! nothing,” replied Liénarde, in great confusion; “it is my
      neighbor, Gisquette la Gencienne, who wishes to speak with you.”

      “Not so,” replied Gisquette, blushing; “it was Liénarde who
      called you master; I only told her to say messire.”

      The two young girls dropped their eyes. The man, who asked
      nothing better than to enter into conversation, looked at them
      with a smile.

      “So you have nothing to say to me, damsels?”

      “Oh! nothing at all,” replied Gisquette.

      “Nothing,” said Liénarde.

      The tall, light-haired young man retreated a step; but the two
      curious maidens had no mind to let slip their prize.

      “Messire,” said Gisquette, with the impetuosity of an open
      sluice, or of a woman who has made up her mind, “do you know that
      soldier who is to play the part of Madame the Virgin in the
      mystery?”

      “You mean the part of Jupiter?” replied the stranger.

      “Hé! yes,” said Liénarde, “isn’t she stupid? So you know
      Jupiter?”

      “Michel Giborne?” replied the unknown; “yes, madam.”

      “He has a fine beard!” said Liénarde.

      “Will what they are about to say here be fine?” inquired
      Gisquette, timidly.

      “Very fine, mademoiselle,” replied the unknown, without the
      slightest hesitation.

      “What is it to be?” said Liénarde.

      “‘The Good Judgment of Madame the Virgin,’—a morality, if you
      please, damsel.”

      “Ah! that makes a difference,” responded Liénarde.

      A brief silence ensued—broken by the stranger.

      “It is a perfectly new morality, and one which has never yet been
      played.”

      “Then it is not the same one,” said Gisquette, “that was given
      two years ago, on the day of the entrance of monsieur the legate,
      and where three handsome maids played the parts—”

      “Of sirens,” said Liénarde.

      “And all naked,” added the young man.

      Liénarde lowered her eyes modestly. Gisquette glanced at her and
      did the same. He continued, with a smile,—

      “It was a very pleasant thing to see. To-day it is a morality
      made expressly for Madame the Demoiselle of Flanders.”

      “Will they sing shepherd songs?” inquired Gisquette.

      “Fie!” said the stranger, “in a morality? you must not confound
      styles. If it were a farce, well and good.”

      “That is a pity,” resumed Gisquette. “That day, at the Ponceau
      Fountain, there were wild men and women, who fought and assumed
      many aspects, as they sang little motets and bergerettes.”

      “That which is suitable for a legate,” returned the stranger,
      with a good deal of dryness, “is not suitable for a princess.”

      “And beside them,” resumed Liénarde, “played many brass
      instruments, making great melodies.”

      “And for the refreshment of the passers-by,” continued Gisquette,
      “the fountain spouted through three mouths, wine, milk, and
      hippocrass, of which every one drank who wished.”

      “And a little below the Ponceau, at the Trinity,” pursued
      Liénarde, “there was a passion performed, and without any
      speaking.”

      “How well I remember that!” exclaimed Gisquette; “God on the
      cross, and the two thieves on the right and the left.” Here the
      young gossips, growing warm at the memory of the entrance of
      monsieur the legate, both began to talk at once.

      “And, further on, at the Painters’ Gate, there were other
      personages, very richly clad.”

      “And at the fountain of Saint-Innocent, that huntsman, who was
      chasing a hind with great clamor of dogs and hunting-horns.”

      “And, at the Paris slaughter-houses, stages, representing the
      fortress of Dieppe!”

      “And when the legate passed, you remember, Gisquette? they made
      the assault, and the English all had their throats cut.”

      “And against the gate of the Châtelet, there were very fine
      personages!”

      “And on the Port au Change, which was all draped above!”

      “And when the legate passed, they let fly on the bridge more than
      two hundred sorts of birds; wasn’t it beautiful, Liénarde?”

      “It will be better to-day,” finally resumed their interlocutor,
      who seemed to listen to them with impatience.

      “Do you promise us that this mystery will be fine?” said
      Gisquette.

      “Without doubt,” he replied; then he added, with a certain
      emphasis,—“I am the author of it, damsels.”

      “Truly?” said the young girls, quite taken aback.

      “Truly!” replied the poet, bridling a little; “that is, to say,
      there are two of us; Jehan Marchand, who has sawed the planks and
      erected the framework of the theatre and the woodwork; and I, who
      have made the piece. My name is Pierre Gringoire.”

      The author of the “Cid” could not have said “Pierre Corneille”
      with more pride.

      Our readers have been able to observe, that a certain amount of
      time must have already elapsed from the moment when Jupiter had
      retired beneath the tapestry to the instant when the author of
      the new morality had thus abruptly revealed himself to the
      innocent admiration of Gisquette and Liénarde. Remarkable fact:
      that whole crowd, so tumultuous but a few moments before, now
      waited amiably on the word of the comedian; which proves the
      eternal truth, still experienced every day in our theatres, that
      the best means of making the public wait patiently is to assure
      them that one is about to begin instantly.

      However, scholar Johannes had not fallen asleep.

      “Holà hé!” he shouted suddenly, in the midst of the peaceable
      waiting which had followed the tumult. “Jupiter, Madame the
      Virgin, buffoons of the devil! are you jeering at us? The piece!
      the piece! commence or we will commence again!”

      This was all that was needed.

      The music of high and low instruments immediately became audible
      from the interior of the stage; the tapestry was raised; four
      personages, in motley attire and painted faces, emerged from it,
      climbed the steep ladder of the theatre, and, arrived upon the
      upper platform, arranged themselves in a line before the public,
      whom they saluted with profound reverences; then the symphony
      ceased.

      The mystery was about to begin.

      The four personages, after having reaped a rich reward of
      applause for their reverences, began, in the midst of profound
      silence, a prologue, which we gladly spare the reader. Moreover,
      as happens in our own day, the public was more occupied with the
      costumes that the actors wore than with the roles that they were
      enacting; and, in truth, they were right. All four were dressed
      in parti-colored robes of yellow and white, which were
      distinguished from each other only by the nature of the stuff;
      the first was of gold and silver brocade; the second, of silk;
      the third, of wool; the fourth, of linen. The first of these
      personages carried in his right hand a sword; the second, two
      golden keys; the third, a pair of scales; the fourth, a spade:
      and, in order to aid sluggish minds which would not have seen
      clearly through the transparency of these attributes, there was
      to be read, in large, black letters, on the hem of the robe of
      brocade, MY NAME IS NOBILITY; on the hem of the silken robe, MY
      NAME IS CLERGY; on the hem of the woolen robe, MY NAME IS
      MERCHANDISE; on the hem of the linen robe, MY NAME IS LABOR. The
      sex of the two male characters was briefly indicated to every
      judicious spectator, by their shorter robes, and by the cap which
      they wore on their heads; while the two female characters, less
      briefly clad, were covered with hoods.

      Much ill-will would also have been required, not to comprehend,
      through the medium of the poetry of the prologue, that Labor was
      wedded to Merchandise, and Clergy to Nobility, and that the two
      happy couples possessed in common a magnificent golden dolphin,
      which they desired to adjudge to the fairest only. So they were
      roaming about the world seeking and searching for this beauty,
      and, after having successively rejected the Queen of Golconda,
      the Princess of Trebizonde, the daughter of the Grand Khan of
      Tartary, etc., Labor and Clergy, Nobility and Merchandise, had
      come to rest upon the marble table of the Palais de Justice, and
      to utter, in the presence of the honest audience, as many
      sentences and maxims as could then be dispensed at the Faculty of
      Arts, at examinations, sophisms, determinances, figures, and
      acts, where the masters took their degrees.

      All this was, in fact, very fine.

      Nevertheless, in that throng, upon which the four allegories vied
      with each other in pouring out floods of metaphors, there was no
      ear more attentive, no heart that palpitated more, not an eye was
      more haggard, no neck more outstretched, than the eye, the ear,
      the neck, and the heart of the author, of the poet, of that brave
      Pierre Gringoire, who had not been able to resist, a moment
      before, the joy of telling his name to two pretty girls. He had
      retreated a few paces from them, behind his pillar, and there he
      listened, looked, enjoyed. The amiable applause which had greeted
      the beginning of his prologue was still echoing in his bosom, and
      he was completely absorbed in that species of ecstatic
      contemplation with which an author beholds his ideas fall, one by
      one, from the mouth of the actor into the vast silence of the
      audience. Worthy Pierre Gringoire!

      It pains us to say it, but this first ecstasy was speedily
      disturbed. Hardly had Gringoire raised this intoxicating cup of
      joy and triumph to his lips, when a drop of bitterness was
      mingled with it.

      A tattered mendicant, who could not collect any coins, lost as he
      was in the midst of the crowd, and who had not probably found
      sufficient indemnity in the pockets of his neighbors, had hit
      upon the idea of perching himself upon some conspicuous point, in
      order to attract looks and alms. He had, accordingly, hoisted
      himself, during the first verses of the prologue, with the aid of
      the pillars of the reserve gallery, to the cornice which ran
      round the balustrade at its lower edge; and there he had seated
      himself, soliciting the attention and the pity of the multitude,
      with his rags and a hideous sore which covered his right arm.
      However, he uttered not a word.

      The silence which he preserved allowed the prologue to proceed
      without hindrance, and no perceptible disorder would have ensued,
      if ill-luck had not willed that the scholar Joannes should catch
      sight, from the heights of his pillar, of the mendicant and his
      grimaces. A wild fit of laughter took possession of the young
      scamp, who, without caring that he was interrupting the
      spectacle, and disturbing the universal composure, shouted
      boldly,—

      “Look! see that sickly creature asking alms!”

      Any one who has thrown a stone into a frog pond, or fired a shot
      into a covey of birds, can form an idea of the effect produced by
      these incongruous words, in the midst of the general attention.
      It made Gringoire shudder as though it had been an electric
      shock. The prologue stopped short, and all heads turned
      tumultuously towards the beggar, who, far from being disconcerted
      by this, saw, in this incident, a good opportunity for reaping
      his harvest, and who began to whine in a doleful way, half
      closing his eyes the while,—“Charity, please!”

      “Well—upon my soul,” resumed Joannes, “it’s Clopin Trouillefou!
      Holà hé, my friend, did your sore bother you on the leg, that you
      have transferred it to your arm?” So saying, with the dexterity
      of a monkey, he flung a bit of silver into the gray felt hat
      which the beggar held in his ailing arm. The mendicant received
      both the alms and the sarcasm without wincing, and continued, in
      lamentable tones,—

      “Charity, please!”

      This episode considerably distracted the attention of the
      audience; and a goodly number of spectators, among them Robin
      Poussepain, and all the clerks at their head, gayly applauded
      this eccentric duet, which the scholar, with his shrill voice,
      and the mendicant had just improvised in the middle of the
      prologue.

      Gringoire was highly displeased. On recovering from his first
      stupefaction, he bestirred himself to shout, to the four
      personages on the stage, “Go on! What the devil!—go on!”—without
      even deigning to cast a glance of disdain upon the two
      interrupters.

      At that moment, he felt some one pluck at the hem of his surtout;
      he turned round, and not without ill-humor, and found
      considerable difficulty in smiling; but he was obliged to do so,
      nevertheless. It was the pretty arm of Gisquette la Gencienne,
      which, passed through the railing, was soliciting his attention
      in this manner.

      “Monsieur,” said the young girl, “are they going to continue?”

      “Of course,” replied Gringoire, a good deal shocked by the
      question.

      “In that case, messire,” she resumed, “would you have the
      courtesy to explain to me—”

      “What they are about to say?” interrupted Gringoire. “Well,
      listen.”

      “No,” said Gisquette, “but what they have said so far.”

      Gringoire started, like a man whose wound has been probed to the
      quick.

      “A plague on the stupid and dull-witted little girl!” he
      muttered, between his teeth.

      From that moment forth, Gisquette was nothing to him.

      In the meantime, the actors had obeyed his injunction, and the
      public, seeing that they were beginning to speak again, began
      once more to listen, not without having lost many beauties in the
      sort of soldered joint which was formed between the two portions
      of the piece thus abruptly cut short. Gringoire commented on it
      bitterly to himself. Nevertheless, tranquillity was gradually
      restored, the scholar held his peace, the mendicant counted over
      some coins in his hat, and the piece resumed the upper hand.

      It was, in fact, a very fine work, and one which, as it seems to
      us, might be put to use to-day, by the aid of a little
      rearrangement. The exposition, rather long and rather empty, that
      is to say, according to the rules, was simple; and Gringoire, in
      the candid sanctuary of his own conscience, admired its
      clearness. As the reader may surmise, the four allegorical
      personages were somewhat weary with having traversed the three
      sections of the world, without having found suitable opportunity
      for getting rid of their golden dolphin. Thereupon a eulogy of
      the marvellous fish, with a thousand delicate allusions to the
      young betrothed of Marguerite of Flanders, then sadly cloistered
      in at Amboise, and without a suspicion that Labor and Clergy,
      Nobility and Merchandise had just made the circuit of the world
      in his behalf. The said dauphin was then young, was handsome, was
      stout, and, above all (magnificent origin of all royal virtues),
      he was the son of the Lion of France. I declare that this bold
      metaphor is admirable, and that the natural history of the
      theatre, on a day of allegory and royal marriage songs, is not in
      the least startled by a dolphin who is the son of a lion. It is
      precisely these rare and Pindaric mixtures which prove the poet’s
      enthusiasm. Nevertheless, in order to play the part of critic
      also, the poet might have developed this beautiful idea in
      something less than two hundred lines. It is true that the
      mystery was to last from noon until four o’clock, in accordance
      with the orders of monsieur the provost, and that it was
      necessary to say something. Besides, the people listened
      patiently.

      All at once, in the very middle of a quarrel between Mademoiselle
      Merchandise and Madame Nobility, at the moment when Monsieur
      Labor was giving utterance to this wonderful line,—

    In forest ne’er was seen a more triumphant beast;

      the door of the reserved gallery which had hitherto remained so
      inopportunely closed, opened still more inopportunely; and the
      ringing voice of the usher announced abruptly, “His eminence,
      Monseigneur the Cardinal de Bourbon.”

      CHAPTER III. MONSIEUR THE CARDINAL.

      Poor Gringoire! the din of all the great double petards of the
      Saint-Jean, the discharge of twenty arquebuses on supports, the
      detonation of that famous serpentine of the Tower of Billy,
      which, during the siege of Paris, on Sunday, the twenty-sixth of
      September, 1465, killed seven Burgundians at one blow, the
      explosion of all the powder stored at the gate of the Temple,
      would have rent his ears less rudely at that solemn and dramatic
      moment, than these few words, which fell from the lips of the
      usher, “His eminence, Monseigneur the Cardinal de Bourbon.”

      It is not that Pierre Gringoire either feared or disdained
      monsieur the cardinal. He had neither the weakness nor the
      audacity for that. A true eclectic, as it would be expressed
      nowadays, Gringoire was one of those firm and lofty, moderate and
      calm spirits, which always know how to bear themselves amid all
      circumstances (_stare in dimidio rerum_), and who are full of
      reason and of liberal philosophy, while still setting store by
      cardinals. A rare, precious, and never interrupted race of
      philosophers to whom wisdom, like another Ariadne, seems to have
      given a clew of thread which they have been walking along
      unwinding since the beginning of the world, through the labyrinth
      of human affairs. One finds them in all ages, ever the same; that
      is to say, always according to all times. And, without reckoning
      our Pierre Gringoire, who may represent them in the fifteenth
      century if we succeed in bestowing upon him the distinction which
      he deserves, it certainly was their spirit which animated Father
      du Breul, when he wrote, in the sixteenth, these naively sublime
      words, worthy of all centuries: “I am a Parisian by nation, and a
      Parrhisian in language, for _parrhisia_ in Greek signifies
      liberty of speech; of which I have made use even towards
      messeigneurs the cardinals, uncle and brother to Monsieur the
      Prince de Conty, always with respect to their greatness, and
      without offending any one of their suite, which is much to say.”

      There was then neither hatred for the cardinal, nor disdain for
      his presence, in the disagreeable impression produced upon Pierre
      Gringoire. Quite the contrary; our poet had too much good sense
      and too threadbare a coat, not to attach particular importance to
      having the numerous allusions in his prologue, and, in
      particular, the glorification of the dauphin, son of the Lion of
      France, fall upon the most eminent ear. But it is not interest
      which predominates in the noble nature of poets. I suppose that
      the entity of the poet may be represented by the number ten; it
      is certain that a chemist on analyzing and pharmacopolizing it,
      as Rabelais says, would find it composed of one part interest to
      nine parts of self-esteem.

      Now, at the moment when the door had opened to admit the
      cardinal, the nine parts of self-esteem in Gringoire, swollen and
      expanded by the breath of popular admiration, were in a state of
      prodigious augmentation, beneath which disappeared, as though
      stifled, that imperceptible molecule of which we have just
      remarked upon in the constitution of poets; a precious
      ingredient, by the way, a ballast of reality and humanity,
      without which they would not touch the earth. Gringoire enjoyed
      seeing, feeling, fingering, so to speak an entire assembly (of
      knaves, it is true, but what matters that?) stupefied, petrified,
      and as though asphyxiated in the presence of the incommensurable
      tirades which welled up every instant from all parts of his
      bridal song. I affirm that he shared the general beatitude, and
      that, quite the reverse of La Fontaine, who, at the presentation
      of his comedy of the “Florentine,” asked, “Who is the ill-bred
      lout who made that rhapsody?” Gringoire would gladly have
      inquired of his neighbor, “Whose masterpiece is this?”

      The reader can now judge of the effect produced upon him by the
      abrupt and unseasonable arrival of the cardinal.

      That which he had to fear was only too fully realized. The
      entrance of his eminence upset the audience. All heads turned
      towards the gallery. It was no longer possible to hear one’s
      self. “The cardinal! The cardinal!” repeated all mouths. The
      unhappy prologue stopped short for the second time.

      The cardinal halted for a moment on the threshold of the estrade.
      While he was sending a rather indifferent glance around the
      audience, the tumult redoubled. Each person wished to get a
      better view of him. Each man vied with the other in thrusting his
      head over his neighbor’s shoulder.

      He was, in fact, an exalted personage, the sight of whom was well
      worth any other comedy. Charles, Cardinal de Bourbon, Archbishop
      and Comte of Lyon, Primate of the Gauls, was allied both to Louis
      XI., through his brother, Pierre, Seigneur de Beaujeu, who had
      married the king’s eldest daughter, and to Charles the Bold
      through his mother, Agnes of Burgundy. Now, the dominating trait,
      the peculiar and distinctive trait of the character of the
      Primate of the Gauls, was the spirit of the courtier, and
      devotion to the powers that be. The reader can form an idea of
      the numberless embarrassments which this double relationship had
      caused him, and of all the temporal reefs among which his
      spiritual bark had been forced to tack, in order not to suffer
      shipwreck on either Louis or Charles, that Scylla and that
      Charybdis which had devoured the Duc de Nemours and the Constable
      de Saint-Pol. Thanks to Heaven’s mercy, he had made the voyage
      successfully, and had reached home without hindrance. But
      although he was in port, and precisely because he was in port, he
      never recalled without disquiet the varied haps of his political
      career, so long uneasy and laborious. Thus, he was in the habit
      of saying that the year 1476 had been “white and black” for
      him—meaning thereby, that in the course of that year he had lost
      his mother, the Duchesse de la Bourbonnais, and his cousin, the
      Duke of Burgundy, and that one grief had consoled him for the
      other.

      Nevertheless, he was a fine man; he led a joyous cardinal’s life,
      liked to enliven himself with the royal vintage of Challuau, did
      not hate Richarde la Garmoise and Thomasse la Saillarde, bestowed
      alms on pretty girls rather than on old women,—and for all these
      reasons was very agreeable to the _populace_ of Paris. He never
      went about otherwise than surrounded by a small court of bishops
      and abbés of high lineage, gallant, jovial, and given to
      carousing on occasion; and more than once the good and devout
      women of Saint Germain d’ Auxerre, when passing at night beneath
      the brightly illuminated windows of Bourbon, had been scandalized
      to hear the same voices which had intoned vespers for them during
      the day carolling, to the clinking of glasses, the bacchic
      proverb of Benedict XII., that pope who had added a third crown
      to the Tiara—_Bibamus papaliter_.

      It was this justly acquired popularity, no doubt, which preserved
      him on his entrance from any bad reception at the hands of the
      mob, which had been so displeased but a moment before, and very
      little disposed to respect a cardinal on the very day when it was
      to elect a pope. But the Parisians cherish little rancor; and
      then, having forced the beginning of the play by their authority,
      the good _bourgeois_ had got the upper hand of the cardinal, and
      this triumph was sufficient for them. Moreover, the Cardinal de
      Bourbon was a handsome man,—he wore a fine scarlet robe, which he
      carried off very well,—that is to say, he had all the women on
      his side, and, consequently, the best half of the audience.
      Assuredly, it would be injustice and bad taste to hoot a cardinal
      for having come late to the spectacle, when he is a handsome man,
      and when he wears his scarlet robe well.

      He entered, then, bowed to those present with the hereditary
      smile of the great for the people, and directed his course slowly
      towards his scarlet velvet arm-chair, with the air of thinking of
      something quite different. His cortege—what we should nowadays
      call his staff—of bishops and abbés invaded the estrade in his
      train, not without causing redoubled tumult and curiosity among
      the audience. Each man vied with his neighbor in pointing them
      out and naming them, in seeing who should recognize at least one
      of them: this one, the Bishop of Marseilles (Alaudet, if my
      memory serves me right);—this one, the primicier of
      Saint-Denis;—this one, Robert de Lespinasse, Abbé of
      Saint-Germain des Prés, that libertine brother of a mistress of
      Louis XI.; all with many errors and absurdities. As for the
      scholars, they swore. This was their day, their feast of fools,
      their saturnalia, the annual orgy of the corporation of law
      clerks and of the school. There was no turpitude which was not
      sacred on that day. And then there were gay gossips in the
      crowd—Simone Quatrelivres, Agnès la Gadine, and Rabine Piédebou.
      Was it not the least that one could do to swear at one’s ease and
      revile the name of God a little, on so fine a day, in such good
      company as dignitaries of the church and loose women? So they did
      not abstain; and, in the midst of the uproar, there was a
      frightful concert of blasphemies and enormities of all the
      unbridled tongues, the tongues of clerks and students restrained
      during the rest of the year, by the fear of the hot iron of Saint
      Louis. Poor Saint Louis! how they set him at defiance in his own
      court of law! Each one of them selected from the new-comers on
      the platform, a black, gray, white, or violet cassock as his
      target. Joannes Frollo de Molendin, in his quality of brother to
      an archdeacon, boldly attacked the scarlet; he sang in deafening
      tones, with his impudent eyes fastened on the cardinal, “_Cappa
      repleta mero_!”

      All these details which we here lay bare for the edification of
      the reader, were so covered by the general uproar, that they were
      lost in it before reaching the reserved platforms; moreover, they
      would have moved the cardinal but little, so much a part of the
      customs were the liberties of that day. Moreover, he had another
      cause for solicitude, and his mien as wholly preoccupied with it,
      which entered the estrade the same time as himself; this was the
      embassy from Flanders.

      Not that he was a profound politician, nor was he borrowing
      trouble about the possible consequences of the marriage of his
      cousin Marguerite de Bourgoyne to his cousin Charles, Dauphin de
      Vienne; nor as to how long the good understanding which had been
      patched up between the Duke of Austria and the King of France
      would last; nor how the King of England would take this disdain
      of his daughter. All that troubled him but little; and he gave a
      warm reception every evening to the wine of the royal vintage of
      Chaillot, without a suspicion that several flasks of that same
      wine (somewhat revised and corrected, it is true, by Doctor
      Coictier), cordially offered to Edward IV. by Louis XI., would,
      some fine morning, rid Louis XI. of Edward IV. “The much honored
      embassy of Monsieur the Duke of Austria,” brought the cardinal
      none of these cares, but it troubled him in another direction. It
      was, in fact, somewhat hard, and we have already hinted at it on
      the second page of this book,—for him, Charles de Bourbon, to be
      obliged to feast and receive cordially no one knows what
      _bourgeois_;—for him, a cardinal, to receive aldermen;—for him, a
      Frenchman, and a jolly companion, to receive Flemish
      beer-drinkers,—and that in public! This was, certainly, one of
      the most irksome grimaces that he had ever executed for the good
      pleasure of the king.

      So he turned toward the door, and with the best grace in the
      world (so well had he trained himself to it), when the usher
      announced, in a sonorous voice, “Messieurs the Envoys of Monsieur
      the Duke of Austria.” It is useless to add that the whole hall
      did the same.

      Then arrived, two by two, with a gravity which made a contrast in
      the midst of the frisky ecclesiastical escort of Charles de
      Bourbon, the eight and forty ambassadors of Maximilian of
      Austria, having at their head the reverend Father in God, Jehan,
      Abbot of Saint-Bertin, Chancellor of the Golden Fleece, and
      Jacques de Goy, Sieur Dauby, Grand Bailiff of Ghent. A deep
      silence settled over the assembly, accompanied by stifled
      laughter at the preposterous names and all the _bourgeois_
      designations which each of these personages transmitted with
      imperturbable gravity to the usher, who then tossed names and
      titles pell-mell and mutilated to the crowd below. There were
      Master Loys Roelof, alderman of the city of Louvain; Messire
      Clays d’Etuelde, alderman of Brussels; Messire Paul de Baeust,
      Sieur de Voirmizelle, President of Flanders; Master Jehan
      Coleghens, burgomaster of the city of Antwerp; Master George de
      la Moere, first alderman of the kuere of the city of Ghent;
      Master Gheldolf van der Hage, first alderman of the _parchons_ of
      the said town; and the Sieur de Bierbecque, and Jehan Pinnock,
      and Jehan Dymaerzelle, etc., etc., etc.; bailiffs, aldermen,
      burgomasters; burgomasters, aldermen, bailiffs—all stiff,
      affectedly grave, formal, dressed out in velvet and damask,
      hooded with caps of black velvet, with great tufts of Cyprus gold
      thread; good Flemish heads, after all, severe and worthy faces,
      of the family which Rembrandt makes to stand out so strong and
      grave from the black background of his “Night Patrol”; personages
      all of whom bore, written on their brows, that Maximilian of
      Austria had done well in “trusting implicitly,” as the manifest
      ran, “in their sense, valor, experience, loyalty, and good
      wisdom.”

      There was one exception, however. It was a subtle, intelligent,
      crafty-looking face, a sort of combined monkey and diplomat phiz,
      before whom the cardinal made three steps and a profound bow, and
      whose name, nevertheless, was only, “Guillaume Rym, counsellor
      and pensioner of the City of Ghent.”

      Few persons were then aware who Guillaume Rym was. A rare genius
      who in a time of revolution would have made a brilliant
      appearance on the surface of events, but who in the fifteenth
      century was reduced to cavernous intrigues, and to “living in
      mines,” as the Duc de Saint-Simon expresses it. Nevertheless, he
      was appreciated by the “miner” of Europe; he plotted familiarly
      with Louis XI., and often lent a hand to the king’s secret jobs.
      All which things were quite unknown to that throng, who were
      amazed at the cardinal’s politeness to that frail figure of a
      Flemish bailiff.

      CHAPTER IV. MASTER JACQUES COPPENOLE.

      While the pensioner of Ghent and his eminence were exchanging
      very low bows and a few words in voices still lower, a man of
      lofty stature, with a large face and broad shoulders, presented
      himself, in order to enter abreast with Guillaume Rym; one would
      have pronounced him a bull-dog by the side of a fox. His felt
      doublet and leather jerkin made a spot on the velvet and silk
      which surrounded him. Presuming that he was some groom who had
      stolen in, the usher stopped him.

      “Hold, my friend, you cannot pass!”

      The man in the leather jerkin shouldered him aside.

      “What does this knave want with me?” said he, in stentorian
      tones, which rendered the entire hall attentive to this strange
      colloquy. “Don’t you see that I am one of them?”

      “Your name?” demanded the usher.

      “Jacques Coppenole.”

      “Your titles?”

      “Hosier at the sign of the ‘Three Little Chains,’ of Ghent.”

      The usher recoiled. One might bring one’s self to announce
      aldermen and burgomasters, but a hosier was too much. The
      cardinal was on thorns. All the people were staring and
      listening. For two days his eminence had been exerting his utmost
      efforts to lick these Flemish bears into shape, and to render
      them a little more presentable to the public, and this freak was
      startling. But Guillaume Rym, with his polished smile, approached
      the usher.

      “Announce Master Jacques Coppenole, clerk of the aldermen of the
      city of Ghent,” he whispered, very low.

      “Usher,” interposed the cardinal, aloud, “announce Master Jacques
      Coppenole, clerk of the aldermen of the illustrious city of
      Ghent.”

      This was a mistake. Guillaume Rym alone might have conjured away
      the difficulty, but Coppenole had heard the cardinal.

      “No, cross of God?” he exclaimed, in his voice of thunder,
      “Jacques Coppenole, hosier. Do you hear, usher? Nothing more,
      nothing less. Cross of God! hosier; that’s fine enough. Monsieur
      the Archduke has more than once sought his _gant_[5] in my hose.”

      Laughter and applause burst forth. A jest is always understood in
      Paris, and, consequently, always applauded.

      Let us add that Coppenole was of the people, and that the
      auditors which surrounded him were also of the people. Thus the
      communication between him and them had been prompt, electric,
      and, so to speak, on a level. The haughty air of the Flemish
      hosier, by humiliating the courtiers, had touched in all these
      plebeian souls that latent sentiment of dignity still vague and
      indistinct in the fifteenth century.

      This hosier was an equal, who had just held his own before
      monsieur the cardinal. A very sweet reflection to poor fellows
      habituated to respect and obedience towards the underlings of the
      sergeants of the bailiff of Sainte-Geneviève, the cardinal’s
      train-bearer.

      Coppenole proudly saluted his eminence, who returned the salute
      of the all-powerful _bourgeois_ feared by Louis XI. Then, while
      Guillaume Rym, a “sage and malicious man,” as Philippe de Comines
      puts it, watched them both with a smile of raillery and
      superiority, each sought his place, the cardinal quite abashed
      and troubled, Coppenole tranquil and haughty, and thinking, no
      doubt, that his title of hosier was as good as any other, after
      all, and that Marie of Burgundy, mother to that Marguerite whom
      Coppenole was to-day bestowing in marriage, would have been less
      afraid of the cardinal than of the hosier; for it is not a
      cardinal who would have stirred up a revolt among the men of
      Ghent against the favorites of the daughter of Charles the Bold;
      it is not a cardinal who could have fortified the populace with a
      word against her tears and prayers, when the Maid of Flanders
      came to supplicate her people in their behalf, even at the very
      foot of the scaffold; while the hosier had only to raise his
      leather elbow, in order to cause to fall your two heads, most
      illustrious seigneurs, Guy d’Hymbercourt and Chancellor Guillaume
      Hugonet.

      Nevertheless, all was over for the poor cardinal, and he was
      obliged to quaff to the dregs the bitter cup of being in such bad
      company.

      The reader has, probably, not forgotten the impudent beggar who
      had been clinging fast to the fringes of the cardinal’s gallery
      ever since the beginning of the prologue. The arrival of the
      illustrious guests had by no means caused him to relax his hold,
      and, while the prelates and ambassadors were packing themselves
      into the stalls—like genuine Flemish herrings—he settled himself
      at his ease, and boldly crossed his legs on the architrave. The
      insolence of this proceeding was extraordinary, yet no one
      noticed it at first, the attention of all being directed
      elsewhere. He, on his side, perceived nothing that was going on
      in the hall; he wagged his head with the unconcern of a
      Neapolitan, repeating from time to time, amid the clamor, as from
      a mechanical habit, “Charity, please!” And, assuredly, he was,
      out of all those present, the only one who had not deigned to
      turn his head at the altercation between Coppenole and the usher.
      Now, chance ordained that the master hosier of Ghent, with whom
      the people were already in lively sympathy, and upon whom all
      eyes were riveted—should come and seat himself in the front row
      of the gallery, directly above the mendicant; and people were not
      a little amazed to see the Flemish ambassador, on concluding his
      inspection of the knave thus placed beneath his eyes, bestow a
      friendly tap on that ragged shoulder. The beggar turned round;
      there was surprise, recognition, a lighting up of the two
      countenances, and so forth; then, without paying the slightest
      heed in the world to the spectators, the hosier and the wretched
      being began to converse in a low tone, holding each other’s
      hands, in the meantime, while the rags of Clopin Trouillefou,
      spread out upon the cloth of gold of the dais, produced the
      effect of a caterpillar on an orange.

      The novelty of this singular scene excited such a murmur of mirth
      and gayety in the hall, that the cardinal was not slow to
      perceive it; he half bent forward, and, as from the point where
      he was placed he could catch only an imperfect view of
      Trouillerfou’s ignominious doublet, he very naturally imagined
      that the mendicant was asking alms, and, disgusted with his
      audacity, he exclaimed: “Bailiff of the Courts, toss me that
      knave into the river!”

      “Cross of God! monseigneur the cardinal,” said Coppenole, without
      quitting Clopin’s hand, “he’s a friend of mine.”

      “Good! good!” shouted the populace. From that moment, Master
      Coppenole enjoyed in Paris as in Ghent, “great favor with the
      people; for men of that sort do enjoy it,” says Philippe de
      Comines, “when they are thus disorderly.” The cardinal bit his
      lips. He bent towards his neighbor, the Abbé of Sainte-Geneviève,
      and said to him in a low tone,—“Fine ambassadors monsieur the
      archduke sends here, to announce to us Madame Marguerite!”

      “Your eminence,” replied the abbé, “wastes your politeness on
      these Flemish swine. _Margaritas ante porcos_, pearls before
      swine.”

      “Say rather,” retorted the cardinal, with a smile, “_Porcos ante
      Margaritam_, swine before the pearl.”

      The whole little court in cassocks went into ecstacies over this
      play upon words. The cardinal felt a little relieved; he was
      quits with Coppenole, he also had had his jest applauded.

      Now, will those of our readers who possess the power of
      generalizing an image or an idea, as the expression runs in the
      style of to-day, permit us to ask them if they have formed a very
      clear conception of the spectacle presented at this moment, upon
      which we have arrested their attention, by the vast parallelogram
      of the grand hall of the palace.

      In the middle of the hall, backed against the western wall, a
      large and magnificent gallery draped with cloth of gold, into
      which enter in procession, through a small, arched door, grave
      personages, announced successively by the shrill voice of an
      usher. On the front benches were already a number of venerable
      figures, muffled in ermine, velvet, and scarlet. Around the
      dais—which remains silent and dignified—below, opposite,
      everywhere, a great crowd and a great murmur. Thousands of
      glances directed by the people on each face upon the dais, a
      thousand whispers over each name. Certainly, the spectacle is
      curious, and well deserves the attention of the spectators. But
      yonder, quite at the end, what is that sort of trestle work with
      four motley puppets upon it, and more below? Who is that man
      beside the trestle, with a black doublet and a pale face? Alas!
      my dear reader, it is Pierre Gringoire and his prologue.

      We have all forgotten him completely.

      This is precisely what he feared.

      From the moment of the cardinal’s entrance, Gringoire had never
      ceased to tremble for the safety of his prologue. At first he had
      enjoined the actors, who had stopped in suspense, to continue,
      and to raise their voices; then, perceiving that no one was
      listening, he had stopped them; and, during the entire quarter of
      an hour that the interruption lasted, he had not ceased to stamp,
      to flounce about, to appeal to Gisquette and Liénarde, and to
      urge his neighbors to the continuance of the prologue; all in
      vain. No one quitted the cardinal, the embassy, and the
      gallery—sole centre of this vast circle of visual rays. We must
      also believe, and we say it with regret, that the prologue had
      begun slightly to weary the audience at the moment when his
      eminence had arrived, and created a diversion in so terrible a
      fashion. After all, on the gallery as well as on the marble
      table, the spectacle was the same: the conflict of Labor and
      Clergy, of Nobility and Merchandise. And many people preferred to
      see them alive, breathing, moving, elbowing each other in flesh
      and blood, in this Flemish embassy, in this Episcopal court,
      under the cardinal’s robe, under Coppenole’s jerkin, than
      painted, decked out, talking in verse, and, so to speak, stuffed
      beneath the yellow amid white tunics in which Gringoire had so
      ridiculously clothed them.

      Nevertheless, when our poet beheld quiet reestablished to some
      extent, he devised a stratagem which might have redeemed all.

      “Monsieur,” he said, turning towards one of his neighbors, a
      fine, big man, with a patient face, “suppose we begin again.”

      “What?” said his neighbor.

      “Hé! the Mystery,” said Gringoire.

      “As you like,” returned his neighbor.

      This semi-approbation sufficed for Gringoire, and, conducting his
      own affairs, he began to shout, confounding himself with the
      crowd as much as possible: “Begin the mystery again! begin
      again!”

      “The devil!” said Joannes de Molendino, “what are they jabbering
      down yonder, at the end of the hall?” (for Gringoire was making
      noise enough for four.) “Say, comrades, isn’t that mystery
      finished? They want to begin it all over again. That’s not fair!”

      “No, no!” shouted all the scholars. “Down with the mystery! Down
      with it!”

      But Gringoire had multiplied himself, and only shouted the more
      vigorously: “Begin again! begin again!”

      These clamors attracted the attention of the cardinal.

      “Monsieur Bailiff of the Courts,” said he to a tall, black man,
      placed a few paces from him, “are those knaves in a holy-water
      vessel, that they make such a hellish noise?”

      The bailiff of the courts was a sort of amphibious magistrate, a
      sort of bat of the judicial order, related to both the rat and
      the bird, the judge and the soldier.

      He approached his eminence, and not without a good deal of fear
      of the latter’s displeasure, he awkwardly explained to him the
      seeming disrespect of the audience: that noonday had arrived
      before his eminence, and that the comedians had been forced to
      begin without waiting for his eminence.

      The cardinal burst into a laugh.

      “On my faith, the rector of the university ought to have done the
      same. What say you, Master Guillaume Rym?”

      “Monseigneur,” replied Guillaume Rym, “let us be content with
      having escaped half of the comedy. There is at least that much
      gained.”

      “Can these rascals continue their farce?” asked the bailiff.

      “Continue, continue,” said the cardinal, “it’s all the same to
      me. I’ll read my breviary in the meantime.”

      The bailiff advanced to the edge of the estrade, and cried, after
      having invoked silence by a wave of the hand,—

      “_Bourgeois_, rustics, and citizens, in order to satisfy those
      who wish the play to begin again, and those who wish it to end,
      his eminence orders that it be continued.”

      Both parties were forced to resign themselves. But the public and
      the author long cherished a grudge against the cardinal.

      So the personages on the stage took up their parts, and Gringoire
      hoped that the rest of his work, at least, would be listened to.
      This hope was speedily dispelled like his other illusions;
      silence had indeed, been restored in the audience, after a
      fashion; but Gringoire had not observed that at the moment when
      the cardinal gave the order to continue, the gallery was far from
      full, and that after the Flemish envoys there had arrived new
      personages forming part of the _cortège_, whose names and ranks,
      shouted out in the midst of his dialogue by the intermittent cry
      of the usher, produced considerable ravages in it. Let the reader
      imagine the effect in the midst of a theatrical piece, of the
      yelping of an usher, flinging in between two rhymes, and often in
      the middle of a line, parentheses like the following,—

      “Master Jacques Charmolue, procurator to the king in the
      Ecclesiastical Courts!”

      “Jehan de Harlay, equerry guardian of the office of chevalier of
      the night watch of the city of Paris!”

      “Messire Galiot de Genoilhac, chevalier, seigneur de Brussac,
      master of the king’s artillery!”

      “Master Dreux-Raguier, surveyor of the woods and forests of the
      king our sovereign, in the land of France, Champagne and Brie!”

      “Messire Louis de Graville, chevalier, councillor, and
      chamberlain of the king, admiral of France, keeper of the Forest
      of Vincennes!”

      “Master Denis le Mercier, guardian of the house of the blind at
      Paris!” etc., etc., etc.

      This was becoming unbearable.

      This strange accompaniment, which rendered it difficult to follow
      the piece, made Gringoire all the more indignant because he could
      not conceal from himself the fact that the interest was
      continually increasing, and that all his work required was a
      chance of being heard.

      It was, in fact, difficult to imagine a more ingenious and more
      dramatic composition. The four personages of the prologue were
      bewailing themselves in their mortal embarrassment, when Venus in
      person, (_vera incessa patuit dea_) presented herself to them,
      clad in a fine robe bearing the heraldic device of the ship of
      the city of Paris. She had come herself to claim the dolphin
      promised to the most beautiful. Jupiter, whose thunder could be
      heard rumbling in the dressing-room, supported her claim, and
      Venus was on the point of carrying it off,—that is to say,
      without allegory, of marrying monsieur the dauphin, when a young
      child clad in white damask, and holding in her hand a daisy (a
      transparent personification of Mademoiselle Marguerite of
      Flanders) came to contest it with Venus.

      Theatrical effect and change.

      After a dispute, Venus, Marguerite, and the assistants agreed to
      submit to the good judgment of time holy Virgin. There was
      another good part, that of the king of Mesopotamia; but through
      so many interruptions, it was difficult to make out what end he
      served. All these persons had ascended by the ladder to the
      stage.

      But all was over; none of these beauties had been felt nor
      understood. On the entrance of the cardinal, one would have said
      that an invisible magic thread had suddenly drawn all glances
      from the marble table to the gallery, from the southern to the
      western extremity of the hall. Nothing could disenchant the
      audience; all eyes remained fixed there, and the new-comers and
      their accursed names, and their faces, and their costumes,
      afforded a continual diversion. This was very distressing. With
      the exception of Gisquette and Liénarde, who turned round from
      time to time when Gringoire plucked them by the sleeve; with the
      exception of the big, patient neighbor, no one listened, no one
      looked at the poor, deserted morality full face. Gringoire saw
      only profiles.

      With what bitterness did he behold his whole erection of glory
      and of poetry crumble away bit by bit! And to think that these
      people had been upon the point of instituting a revolt against
      the bailiff through impatience to hear his work! now that they
      had it they did not care for it. This same representation which
      had been begun amid so unanimous an acclamation! Eternal flood
      and ebb of popular favor! To think that they had been on the
      point of hanging the bailiff’s sergeant! What would he not have
      given to be still at that hour of honey!

      But the usher’s brutal monologue came to an end; every one had
      arrived, and Gringoire breathed freely once more; the actors
      continued bravely. But Master Coppenole, the hosier, must needs
      rise of a sudden, and Gringoire was forced to listen to him
      deliver, amid universal attention, the following abominable
      harangue.

      “Messieurs the _bourgeois_ and squires of Paris, I don’t know,
      cross of God! what we are doing here. I certainly do see yonder
      in the corner on that stage, some people who appear to be
      fighting. I don’t know whether that is what you call a “mystery,”
      but it is not amusing; they quarrel with their tongues and
      nothing more. I have been waiting for the first blow this quarter
      of an hour; nothing comes; they are cowards who only scratch each
      other with insults. You ought to send for the fighters of London
      or Rotterdam; and, I can tell you! you would have had blows of
      the fist that could be heard in the Place; but these men excite
      our pity. They ought at least, to give us a moorish dance, or
      some other mummer! That is not what was told me; I was promised a
      feast of fools, with the election of a pope. We have our pope of
      fools at Ghent also; we’re not behindhand in that, cross of God!
      But this is the way we manage it; we collect a crowd like this
      one here, then each person in turn passes his head through a
      hole, and makes a grimace at the rest; time one who makes the
      ugliest, is elected pope by general acclamation; that’s the way
      it is. It is very diverting. Would you like to make your pope
      after the fashion of my country? At all events, it will be less
      wearisome than to listen to chatterers. If they wish to come and
      make their grimaces through the hole, they can join the game.
      What say you, Messieurs les _bourgeois_? You have here enough
      grotesque specimens of both sexes, to allow of laughing in
      Flemish fashion, and there are enough of us ugly in countenance
      to hope for a fine grinning match.”

      Gringoire would have liked to retort; stupefaction, rage,
      indignation, deprived him of words. Moreover, the suggestion of
      the popular hosier was received with such enthusiasm by these
      _bourgeois_ who were flattered at being called “squires,” that
      all resistance was useless. There was nothing to be done but to
      allow one’s self to drift with the torrent. Gringoire hid his
      face between his two hands, not being so fortunate as to have a
      mantle with which to veil his head, like Agamemnon of Timantis.

      CHAPTER V. QUASIMODO.

      In the twinkling of an eye, all was ready to execute Coppenole’s
      idea. _Bourgeois_, scholars and law clerks all set to work. The
      little chapel situated opposite the marble table was selected for
      the scene of the grinning match. A pane broken in the pretty rose
      window above the door, left free a circle of stone through which
      it was agreed that the competitors should thrust their heads. In
      order to reach it, it was only necessary to mount upon a couple
      of hogsheads, which had been produced from I know not where, and
      perched one upon the other, after a fashion. It was settled that
      each candidate, man or woman (for it was possible to choose a
      female pope), should, for the sake of leaving the impression of
      his grimace fresh and complete, cover his face and remain
      concealed in the chapel until the moment of his appearance. In
      less than an instant, the chapel was crowded with competitors,
      upon whom the door was then closed.

      Coppenole, from his post, ordered all, directed all, arranged
      all. During the uproar, the cardinal, no less abashed than
      Gringoire, had retired with all his suite, under the pretext of
      business and vespers, without the crowd which his arrival had so
      deeply stirred being in the least moved by his departure.
      Guillaume Rym was the only one who noticed his eminence’s
      discomfiture. The attention of the populace, like the sun,
      pursued its revolution; having set out from one end of the hall,
      and halted for a space in the middle, it had now reached the
      other end. The marble table, the brocaded gallery had each had
      their day; it was now the turn of the chapel of Louis XI.
      Henceforth, the field was open to all folly. There was no one
      there now, but the Flemings and the rabble.

      The grimaces began. The first face which appeared at the
      aperture, with eyelids turned up to the reds, a mouth open like a
      maw, and a brow wrinkled like our hussar boots of the Empire,
      evoked such an inextinguishable peal of laughter that Homer would
      have taken all these louts for gods. Nevertheless, the grand hall
      was anything but Olympus, and Gringoire’s poor Jupiter knew it
      better than any one else. A second and third grimace followed,
      then another and another; and the laughter and transports of
      delight went on increasing. There was in this spectacle, a
      peculiar power of intoxication and fascination, of which it would
      be difficult to convey to the reader of our day and our salons
      any idea.

      Let the reader picture to himself a series of visages presenting
      successively all geometrical forms, from the triangle to the
      trapezium, from the cone to the polyhedron; all human
      expressions, from wrath to lewdness; all ages, from the wrinkles
      of the new-born babe to the wrinkles of the aged and dying; all
      religious phantasmagories, from Faun to Beelzebub; all animal
      profiles, from the maw to the beak, from the jowl to the muzzle.
      Let the reader imagine all these grotesque figures of the Pont
      Neuf, those nightmares petrified beneath the hand of Germain
      Pilon, assuming life and breath, and coming in turn to stare you
      in the face with burning eyes; all the masks of the Carnival of
      Venice passing in succession before your glass,—in a word, a
      human kaleidoscope.

      The orgy grew more and more Flemish. Teniers could have given but
      a very imperfect idea of it. Let the reader picture to himself in
      bacchanal form, Salvator Rosa’s battle. There were no longer
      either scholars or ambassadors or _bourgeois_ or men or women;
      there was no longer any Clopin Trouillefou, nor Gilles Lecornu,
      nor Marie Quatrelivres, nor Robin Poussepain. All was universal
      license. The grand hall was no longer anything but a vast furnace
      of effrontry and joviality, where every mouth was a cry, every
      individual a posture; everything shouted and howled. The strange
      visages which came, in turn, to gnash their teeth in the rose
      window, were like so many brands cast into the brazier; and from
      the whole of this effervescing crowd, there escaped, as from a
      furnace, a sharp, piercing, stinging noise, hissing like the
      wings of a gnat.

      “Ho hé! curse it!”

      “Just look at that face!”

      “It’s not good for anything.”

      “Guillemette Maugerepuis, just look at that bull’s muzzle; it
      only lacks the horns. It can’t be your husband.”

      “Another!”

      “Belly of the pope! what sort of a grimace is that?”

      “Holà hé! that’s cheating. One must show only one’s face.”

      “That damned Perrette Callebotte! she’s capable of that!”

      “Good! Good!”

      “I’m stifling!”

      “There’s a fellow whose ears won’t go through!” Etc., etc.

      But we must do justice to our friend Jehan. In the midst of this
      witches’ sabbath, he was still to be seen on the top of his
      pillar, like the cabin-boy on the topmast. He floundered about
      with incredible fury. His mouth was wide open, and from it there
      escaped a cry which no one heard, not that it was covered by the
      general clamor, great as that was but because it attained, no
      doubt, the limit of perceptible sharp sounds, the thousand
      vibrations of Sauveur, or the eight thousand of Biot.

      As for Gringoire, the first moment of depression having passed,
      he had regained his composure. He had hardened himself against
      adversity.—“Continue!” he had said for the third time, to his
      comedians, speaking machines; then as he was marching with great
      strides in front of the marble table, a fancy seized him to go
      and appear in his turn at the aperture of the chapel, were it
      only for the pleasure of making a grimace at that ungrateful
      populace.—“But no, that would not be worthy of us; no, vengeance!
      let us combat until the end,” he repeated to himself; “the power
      of poetry over people is great; I will bring them back. We shall
      see which will carry the day, grimaces or polite literature.”

      Alas! he had been left the sole spectator of his piece. It was
      far worse than it had been a little while before. He no longer
      beheld anything but backs.

      I am mistaken. The big, patient man, whom he had already
      consulted in a critical moment, had remained with his face turned
      towards the stage. As for Gisquette and Liénarde, they had
      deserted him long ago.

      Gringoire was touched to the heart by the fidelity of his only
      spectator. He approached him and addressed him, shaking his arm
      slightly; for the good man was leaning on the balustrade and
      dozing a little.

      “Monsieur,” said Gringoire, “I thank you!”

      “Monsieur,” replied the big man with a yawn, “for what?”

      “I see what wearies you,” resumed the poet; “’tis all this noise
      which prevents your hearing comfortably. But be at ease! your
      name shall descend to posterity! Your name, if you please?”

      “Renauld Chateau, guardian of the seals of the Châtelet of Paris,
      at your service.”

      “Monsieur, you are the only representative of the muses here,”
      said Gringoire.

      “You are too kind, sir,” said the guardian of the seals at the
      Châtelet.

      “You are the only one,” resumed Gringoire, “who has listened to
      the piece decorously. What do you think of it?”

      “He! he!” replied the fat magistrate, half aroused, “it’s
      tolerably jolly, that’s a fact.”

      Gringoire was forced to content himself with this eulogy; for a
      thunder of applause, mingled with a prodigious acclamation, cut
      their conversation short. The Pope of the Fools had been elected.

      “Noël! Noël! Noël!”[6] shouted the people on all sides. That was,
      in fact, a marvellous grimace which was beaming at that moment
      through the aperture in the rose window. After all the
      pentagonal, hexagonal, and whimsical faces, which had succeeded
      each other at that hole without realizing the ideal of the
      grotesque which their imaginations, excited by the orgy, had
      constructed, nothing less was needed to win their suffrages than
      the sublime grimace which had just dazzled the assembly. Master
      Coppenole himself applauded, and Clopin Trouillefou, who had been
      among the competitors (and God knows what intensity of ugliness
      his visage could attain), confessed himself conquered: We will do
      the same. We shall not try to give the reader an idea of that
      tetrahedral nose, that horseshoe mouth; that little left eye
      obstructed with a red, bushy, bristling eyebrow, while the right
      eye disappeared entirely beneath an enormous wart; of those teeth
      in disarray, broken here and there, like the embattled parapet of
      a fortress; of that callous lip, upon which one of these teeth
      encroached, like the tusk of an elephant; of that forked chin;
      and above all, of the expression spread over the whole; of that
      mixture of malice, amazement, and sadness. Let the reader dream
      of this whole, if he can.

      The acclamation was unanimous; people rushed towards the chapel.
      They made the lucky Pope of the Fools come forth in triumph. But
      it was then that surprise and admiration attained their highest
      pitch; the grimace was his face.

      Or rather, his whole person was a grimace. A huge head, bristling
      with red hair; between his shoulders an enormous hump, a
      counterpart perceptible in front; a system of thighs and legs so
      strangely astray that they could touch each other only at the
      knees, and, viewed from the front, resembled the crescents of two
      scythes joined by the handles; large feet, monstrous hands; and,
      with all this deformity, an indescribable and redoubtable air of
      vigor, agility, and courage,—strange exception to the eternal
      rule which wills that force as well as beauty shall be the result
      of harmony. Such was the pope whom the fools had just chosen for
      themselves.

      One would have pronounced him a giant who had been broken and
      badly put together again.

      When this species of cyclops appeared on the threshold of the
      chapel, motionless, squat, and almost as broad as he was tall;
      _squared_ on the _base_, as a great man says; with his doublet
      half red, half violet, sown with silver bells, and, above all, in
      the perfection of his ugliness, the populace recognized him on
      the instant, and shouted with one voice,—

      “’Tis Quasimodo, the bellringer! ’tis Quasimodo, the hunchback of
      Notre-Dame! Quasimodo, the one-eyed! Quasimodo, the bandy-legged!
      Noël! Noël!”

      It will be seen that the poor fellow had a choice of surnames.

      “Let the women with child beware!” shouted the scholars.

      “Or those who wish to be,” resumed Joannes.

      The women did, in fact, hide their faces.

      “Oh! the horrible monkey!” said one of them.

      “As wicked as he is ugly,” retorted another.

      “He’s the devil,” added a third.

      “I have the misfortune to live near Notre-Dame; I hear him
      prowling round the eaves by night.”

      “With the cats.”

      “He’s always on our roofs.”

      “He throws spells down our chimneys.”

      “The other evening, he came and made a grimace at me through my
      attic window. I thought that it was a man. Such a fright as I
      had!”

      “I’m sure that he goes to the witches’ sabbath. Once he left a
      broom on my leads.”

      “Oh! what a displeasing hunchback’s face!”

      “Oh! what an ill-favored soul!”

      “Whew!”

      The men, on the contrary, were delighted and applauded.
      Quasimodo, the object of the tumult, still stood on the threshold
      of the chapel, sombre and grave, and allowed them to admire him.

      One scholar (Robin Poussepain, I think), came and laughed in his
      face, and too close. Quasimodo contented himself with taking him
      by the girdle, and hurling him ten paces off amid the crowd; all
      without uttering a word.

      Master Coppenole, in amazement, approached him.

      “Cross of God! Holy Father! you possess the handsomest ugliness
      that I have ever beheld in my life. You would deserve to be pope
      at Rome, as well as at Paris.”

      So saying, he placed his hand gayly on his shoulder. Quasimodo
      did not stir. Coppenole went on,—

      “You are a rogue with whom I have a fancy for carousing, were it
      to cost me a new dozen of twelve livres of Tours. How does it
      strike you?”

      Quasimodo made no reply.

      “Cross of God!” said the hosier, “are you deaf?”

      He was, in truth, deaf.

      Nevertheless, he began to grow impatient with Coppenole’s
      behavior, and suddenly turned towards him with so formidable a
      gnashing of teeth, that the Flemish giant recoiled, like a
      bull-dog before a cat.

      Then there was created around that strange personage, a circle of
      terror and respect, whose radius was at least fifteen geometrical
      feet. An old woman explained to Coppenole that Quasimodo was
      deaf.

      “Deaf!” said the hosier, with his great Flemish laugh. “Cross of
      God! He’s a perfect pope!”

      “Hé! I recognize him,” exclaimed Jehan, who had, at last,
      descended from his capital, in order to see Quasimodo at closer
      quarters, “he’s the bellringer of my brother, the archdeacon.
      Good-day, Quasimodo!”

      “What a devil of a man!” said Robin Poussepain still all bruised
      with his fall. “He shows himself; he’s a hunchback. He walks;
      he’s bandy-legged. He looks at you; he’s one-eyed. You speak to
      him; he’s deaf. And what does this Polyphemus do with his
      tongue?”

      “He speaks when he chooses,” said the old woman; “he became deaf
      through ringing the bells. He is not dumb.”

      “That he lacks,” remarks Jehan.

      “And he has one eye too many,” added Robin Poussepain.

      “Not at all,” said Jehan wisely. “A one-eyed man is far less
      complete than a blind man. He knows what he lacks.”

      In the meantime, all the beggars, all the lackeys, all the
      cutpurses, joined with the scholars, had gone in procession to
      seek, in the cupboard of the law clerks’ company, the cardboard
      tiara, and the derisive robe of the Pope of the Fools. Quasimodo
      allowed them to array him in them without wincing, and with a
      sort of proud docility. Then they made him seat himself on a
      motley litter. Twelve officers of the fraternity of fools raised
      him on their shoulders; and a sort of bitter and disdainful joy
      lighted up the morose face of the cyclops, when he beheld beneath
      his deformed feet all those heads of handsome, straight,
      well-made men. Then the ragged and howling procession set out on
      its march, according to custom, around the inner galleries of the
      Courts, before making the circuit of the streets and squares.

      CHAPTER VI. ESMERALDA.

      We are delighted to be able to inform the reader, that during the
      whole of this scene, Gringoire and his piece had stood firm. His
      actors, spurred on by him, had not ceased to spout his comedy,
      and he had not ceased to listen to it. He had made up his mind
      about the tumult, and was determined to proceed to the end, not
      giving up the hope of a return of attention on the part of the
      public. This gleam of hope acquired fresh life, when he saw
      Quasimodo, Coppenole, and the deafening escort of the pope of the
      procession of fools quit the hall amid great uproar. The throng
      rushed eagerly after them. “Good,” he said to himself, “there go
      all the mischief-makers.” Unfortunately, all the mischief-makers
      constituted the entire audience. In the twinkling of an eye, the
      grand hall was empty.

      To tell the truth, a few spectators still remained, some
      scattered, others in groups around the pillars, women, old men,
      or children, who had had enough of the uproar and tumult. Some
      scholars were still perched astride of the window-sills, engaged
      in gazing into the Place.

      “Well,” thought Gringoire, “here are still as many as are
      required to hear the end of my mystery. They are few in number,
      but it is a choice audience, a lettered audience.”

      An instant later, a symphony which had been intended to produce
      the greatest effect on the arrival of the Virgin, was lacking.
      Gringoire perceived that his music had been carried off by the
      procession of the Pope of the Fools. “Skip it,” said he,
      stoically.

      He approached a group of _bourgeois_, who seemed to him to be
      discussing his piece. This is the fragment of conversation which
      he caught,—

      “You know, Master Cheneteau, the Hôtel de Navarre, which belonged
      to Monsieur de Nemours?”

      “Yes, opposite the Chapelle de Braque.”

      “Well, the treasury has just let it to Guillaume Alixandre,
      historian, for six livres, eight sols, parisian, a year.”

      “How rents are going up!”

      “Come,” said Gringoire to himself, with a sigh, “the others are
      listening.”

      “Comrades,” suddenly shouted one of the young scamps from the
      window, “La Esmeralda! La Esmeralda in the Place!”

      This word produced a magical effect. Every one who was left in
      the hall flew to the windows, climbing the walls in order to see,
      and repeating, “La Esmeralda! La Esmeralda?” At the same time, a
      great sound of applause was heard from without.

      “What’s the meaning of this, of the Esmeralda?” said Gringoire,
      wringing his hands in despair. “Ah, good heavens! it seems to be
      the turn of the windows now.”

      He returned towards the marble table, and saw that the
      representation had been interrupted. It was precisely at the
      instant when Jupiter should have appeared with his thunder. But
      Jupiter was standing motionless at the foot of the stage.

      “Michel Giborne!” cried the irritated poet, “what are you doing
      there? Is that your part? Come up!”

      “Alas!” said Jupiter, “a scholar has just seized the ladder.”

      Gringoire looked. It was but too true. All communication between
      his plot and its solution was intercepted.

      “The rascal,” he murmured. “And why did he take that ladder?”

      “In order to go and see the Esmeralda,” replied Jupiter
      piteously. “He said, ‘Come, here’s a ladder that’s of no use!’
      and he took it.”

      This was the last blow. Gringoire received it with resignation.

      “May the devil fly away with you!” he said to the comedian, “and
      if I get my pay, you shall receive yours.”

      Then he beat a retreat, with drooping head, but the last in the
      field, like a general who has fought well.

      And as he descended the winding stairs of the courts: “A fine
      rabble of asses and dolts these Parisians!” he muttered between
      his teeth; “they come to hear a mystery and don’t listen to it at
      all! They are engrossed by every one, by Clopin Trouillefou, by
      the cardinal, by Coppenole, by Quasimodo, by the devil! but by
      Madame the Virgin Mary, not at all. If I had known, I’d have
      given you Virgin Mary; you ninnies! And I! to come to see faces
      and behold only backs! to be a poet, and to reap the success of
      an apothecary! It is true that Homerus begged through the Greek
      towns, and that Naso died in exile among the Muscovites. But may
      the devil flay me if I understand what they mean with their
      Esmeralda! What is that word, in the first place?—’tis Egyptian!”

      BOOK SECOND.

      CHAPTER I. FROM CHARYBDIS TO SCYLLA.

      Night comes on early in January. The streets were already dark
      when Gringoire issued forth from the Courts. This gloom pleased
      him; he was in haste to reach some obscure and deserted alley, in
      order there to meditate at his ease, and in order that the
      philosopher might place the first dressing upon the wound of the
      poet. Philosophy, moreover, was his sole refuge, for he did not
      know where he was to lodge for the night. After the brilliant
      failure of his first theatrical venture, he dared not return to
      the lodging which he occupied in the Rue Grenier-sur-l’Eau,
      opposite to the Port-au-Foin, having depended upon receiving from
      monsieur the provost for his epithalamium, the wherewithal to pay
      Master Guillaume Doulx-Sire, farmer of the taxes on cloven-footed
      animals in Paris, the rent which he owed him, that is to say,
      twelve sols parisian; twelve times the value of all that he
      possessed in the world, including his trunk-hose, his shirt, and
      his cap. After reflecting a moment, temporarily sheltered beneath
      the little wicket of the prison of the treasurer of the
      Sainte-Chappelle, as to the shelter which he would select for the
      night, having all the pavements of Paris to choose from, he
      remembered to have noticed the week previously in the Rue de la
      Savaterie, at the door of a councillor of the parliament, a
      stepping stone for mounting a mule, and to have said to himself
      that that stone would furnish, on occasion, a very excellent
      pillow for a mendicant or a poet. He thanked Providence for
      having sent this happy idea to him; but, as he was preparing to
      cross the Place, in order to reach the tortuous labyrinth of the
      city, where meander all those old sister streets, the Rues de la
      Barillerie, de la Vieille-Draperie, de la Savaterie, de la
      Juiverie, etc., still extant to-day, with their nine-story
      houses, he saw the procession of the Pope of the Fools, which was
      also emerging from the court house, and rushing across the
      courtyard, with great cries, a great flashing of torches, and the
      music which belonged to him, Gringoire. This sight revived the
      pain of his self-love; he fled. In the bitterness of his dramatic
      misadventure, everything which reminded him of the festival of
      that day irritated his wound and made it bleed.

      He was on the point of turning to the Pont Saint-Michel; children
      were running about here and there with fire lances and rockets.

      “Pest on firework candles!” said Gringoire; and he fell back on
      the Pont au Change. To the house at the head of the bridge there
      had been affixed three small banners, representing the king, the
      dauphin, and Marguerite of Flanders, and six little pennons on
      which were portrayed the Duke of Austria, the Cardinal de
      Bourbon, M. de Beaujeu, and Madame Jeanne de France, and Monsieur
      the Bastard of Bourbon, and I know not whom else; all being
      illuminated with torches. The rabble were admiring.

      “Happy painter, Jehan Fourbault!” said Gringoire with a deep
      sigh; and he turned his back upon the bannerets and pennons. A
      street opened before him; he thought it so dark and deserted that
      he hoped to there escape from all the rumors as well as from all
      the gleams of the festival. At the end of a few moments his foot
      came in contact with an obstacle; he stumbled and fell. It was
      the May truss, which the clerks of the clerks’ law court had
      deposited that morning at the door of a president of the
      parliament, in honor of the solemnity of the day. Gringoire bore
      this new disaster heroically; he picked himself up, and reached
      the water’s edge. After leaving behind him the civic Tournelle[7]
      and the criminal tower, and skirted the great walls of the king’s
      garden, on that unpaved strand where the mud reached to his
      ankles, he reached the western point of the city, and considered
      for some time the islet of the Passeur-aux-Vaches, which has
      disappeared beneath the bronze horse of the Pont Neuf. The islet
      appeared to him in the shadow like a black mass, beyond the
      narrow strip of whitish water which separated him from it. One
      could divine by the ray of a tiny light the sort of hut in the
      form of a beehive where the ferryman of cows took refuge at
      night.

      “Happy ferryman!” thought Gringoire; “you do not dream of glory,
      and you do not make marriage songs! What matters it to you, if
      kings and Duchesses of Burgundy marry? You know no other daisies
      (_marguerites_) than those which your April greensward gives your
      cows to browse upon; while I, a poet, am hooted, and shiver, and
      owe twelve sous, and the soles of my shoes are so transparent,
      that they might serve as glasses for your lantern! Thanks,
      ferryman, your cabin rests my eyes, and makes me forget Paris!”

      He was roused from his almost lyric ecstacy, by a big double
      Saint-Jean cracker, which suddenly went off from the happy cabin.
      It was the cow ferryman, who was taking his part in the
      rejoicings of the day, and letting off fireworks.

      This cracker made Gringoire’s skin bristle up all over.

      “Accursed festival!” he exclaimed, “wilt thou pursue me
      everywhere? Oh! good God! even to the ferryman’s!”

      Then he looked at the Seine at his feet, and a horrible
      temptation took possession of him:

      “Oh!” said he, “I would gladly drown myself, were the water not
      so cold!”

      Then a desperate resolution occurred to him. It was, since he
      could not escape from the Pope of the Fools, from Jehan
      Fourbault’s bannerets, from May trusses, from squibs and
      crackers, to go to the Place de Grève.

      “At least,” he said to himself, “I shall there have a firebrand
      of joy wherewith to warm myself, and I can sup on some crumbs of
      the three great armorial bearings of royal sugar which have been
      erected on the public refreshment-stall of the city.”

      CHAPTER II. THE PLACE DE GRÈVE.

      There remains to-day but a very imperceptible vestige of the
      Place de Grève, such as it existed then; it consists in the
      charming little turret, which occupies the angle north of the
      Place, and which, already enshrouded in the ignoble plaster which
      fills with paste the delicate lines of its sculpture, would soon
      have disappeared, perhaps submerged by that flood of new houses
      which so rapidly devours all the ancient façades of Paris.

      The persons who, like ourselves, never cross the Place de Grève
      without casting a glance of pity and sympathy on that poor turret
      strangled between two hovels of the time of Louis XV., can easily
      reconstruct in their minds the aggregate of edifices to which it
      belonged, and find again entire in it the ancient Gothic place of
      the fifteenth century.

      It was then, as it is to-day, an irregular trapezoid, bordered on
      one side by the quay, and on the other three by a series of
      lofty, narrow, and gloomy houses. By day, one could admire the
      variety of its edifices, all sculptured in stone or wood, and
      already presenting complete specimens of the different domestic
      architectures of the Middle Ages, running back from the fifteenth
      to the eleventh century, from the casement which had begun to
      dethrone the arch, to the Roman semicircle, which had been
      supplanted by the ogive, and which still occupies, below it, the
      first story of that ancient house de la Tour Roland, at the
      corner of the Place upon the Seine, on the side of the street
      with the Tannerie. At night, one could distinguish nothing of all
      that mass of buildings, except the black indentation of the
      roofs, unrolling their chain of acute angles round the place; for
      one of the radical differences between the cities of that time,
      and the cities of the present day, lay in the façades which
      looked upon the places and streets, and which were then gables.
      For the last two centuries the houses have been turned round.

      In the centre of the eastern side of the Place, rose a heavy and
      hybrid construction, formed of three buildings placed in
      juxtaposition. It was called by three names which explain its
      history, its destination, and its architecture: “The House of the
      Dauphin,” because Charles V., when Dauphin, had inhabited it;
      “The Marchandise,” because it had served as town hall; and “The
      Pillared House” (_domus ad piloria_), because of a series of
      large pillars which sustained the three stories. The city found
      there all that is required for a city like Paris; a chapel in
      which to pray to God; a _plaidoyer_, or pleading room, in which
      to hold hearings, and to repel, at need, the King’s people; and
      under the roof, an _arsenac_ full of artillery. For the
      _bourgeois_ of Paris were aware that it is not sufficient to pray
      in every conjuncture, and to plead for the franchises of the
      city, and they had always in reserve, in the garret of the town
      hall, a few good rusty arquebuses. The Grève had then that
      sinister aspect which it preserves to-day from the execrable
      ideas which it awakens, and from the sombre town hall of
      Dominique Bocador, which has replaced the Pillared House. It must
      be admitted that a permanent gibbet and a pillory, “a justice and
      a ladder,” as they were called in that day, erected side by side
      in the centre of the pavement, contributed not a little to cause
      eyes to be turned away from that fatal place, where so many
      beings full of life and health have agonized; where, fifty years
      later, that fever of Saint Vallier was destined to have its
      birth, that terror of the scaffold, the most monstrous of all
      maladies because it comes not from God, but from man.

      It is a consoling idea (let us remark in passing), to think that
      the death penalty, which three hundred years ago still encumbered
      with its iron wheels, its stone gibbets, and all its