Notre-Dame de Paris | Page 4

itself soon disappear from the face of the earth.
It is upon this word that this book is founded.
March, 1831.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

VOLUME I.
BOOK FIRST.
I. The Grand Hall II. Pierre Gringoire III. Monsieur the Cardinal IV.
Master Jacques Coppenole V. Quasimodo VI. Esmeralda
BOOK SECOND. I. From Charybdis to Scylla II. The Place de Grève
III. Kisses for Blows IV. The Inconveniences of Following a Pretty
Woman through the Streets in the Evening V. Result of the Dangers VI.
The Broken Jug VII. A Bridal Night
BOOK THIRD. I. Notre-Dame II. A Bird's-eye View of Paris
BOOR FOURTH. I. Good Souls II. Claude Frollo III. Immanis Pecoris
Custos, Immanior Ipse IV. The Dog and his Master V. More about
Claude Frollo VI. Unpopularity
BOOK FIFTH. I. Abbas Beati Martini II. This will Kill That
BOOK SIXTH. I. An Impartial Glance at the Ancient Magistracy II.
The Rat-hole III. History of a Leavened Cake of Maize IV. A Tear for a
Drop of Water V. End of the Story of the Cake

BOOK FIRST.






CHAPTER 1.
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