_ A very happy personage in the year of grace 1482, was the
noble gentleman Robert d'Estouteville, chevalier, Sieur de
Beyne, Baron d'Ivry and Saint Andry en la Marche, counsellor
and chamberlain to the king, and guard of the provostship of
Paris. It was already nearly seventeen years since he had
received from the king, on November 7, 1465, the comet
year,* that fine charge of the provostship of Paris, which was
reputed rather a seigneury than an office. ~Dignitas~, says
Joannes Loemnoeus, ~quoe cum non exigua potestate politiam
concernente, atque proerogativis multis et juribus conjuncta
est~. A marvellous thing in '82 was a gentleman bearing the
king's commission, and whose letters of institution ran back
to the epoch of the marriage of the natural daughter of Louis
XI. with Monsieur the Bastard of Bourbon.
* This comet against which Pope Calixtus, uncle of Borgia,
ordered public prayers, is the same which reappeared in 1835.
The same day on which Robert d'Estouteville took the place
of Jacques de Villiers in the provostship of Paris, Master
Jehan Dauvet replaced Messire Helye de Thorrettes in the
first presidency of the Court of Parliament, Jehan Jouvenel
des Ursins supplanted Pierre de Morvilliers in the office of
chancellor of France, Regnault des Dormans ousted Pierre
Puy from the charge of master of requests in ordinary of the
king's household. Now, upon how many heads had the presidency,
the chancellorship, the mastership passed since Robert
d'Estouteville had held the provostship of Paris. It had been
"granted to him for safekeeping," as the letters patent said;
and certainly he kept it well. He had clung to it, he had
incorporated himself with it, he had so identified himself
with it that he had escaped that fury for change which
possessed Louis XI., a tormenting and industrious king, whose
policy it was to maintain the elasticity of his power by
frequent appointments and revocations. More than this; the
brave chevalier had obtained the reversion of the office for his
son, and for two years already, the name of the noble man
Jacques d'Estouteville, equerry, had figured beside his at the
head of the register of the salary list of the provostship of
Paris. A rare and notable favor indeed! It is true that
Robert d'Estouteville was a good soldier, that he had loyally
raised his pennon against "the league of public good," and
that he had presented to the queen a very marvellous stag in
confectionery on the day of her entrance to Paris in 14...
Moreover, he possessed the good friendship of Messire Tristan
l'Hermite, provost of the marshals of the king's household.
Hence a very sweet and pleasant existence was that of Messire
Robert. In the first place, very good wages, to which
were attached, and from which hung, like extra bunches of
grapes on his vine, the revenues of the civil and criminal
registries of the provostship, plus the civil and criminal
revenues of the tribunals of Embas of the Châtelet, without
reckoning some little toll from the bridges of Mantes and of
Corbeil, and the profits on the craft of Shagreen-makers of
Paris, on the corders of firewood and the measurers of salt.
Add to this the pleasure of displaying himself in rides about
the city, and of making his fine military costume, which
you may still admire sculptured on his tomb in the abbey
of Valmont in Normandy, and his morion, all embossed at
Montlhéry, stand out a contrast against the parti-colored
red and tawny robes of the aldermen and police. And then,
was it nothing to wield absolute supremacy over the sergeants
of the police, the porter and watch of the Châtelet, the two
auditors of the Châtelet, ~auditores castelleti~, the sixteen
commissioners of the sixteen quarters, the jailer of the Châtelet,
the four enfeoffed sergeants, the hundred and twenty mounted
sergeants, with maces, the chevalier of the watch with his
watch, his sub-watch, his counter-watch and his rear-watch?
Was it nothing to exercise high and low justice, the right
to interrogate, to hang and to draw, without reckoning petty
jurisdiction in the first resort (~in prima instantia~, as the
charters say), on that viscomty of Paris, so nobly appanaged
with seven noble bailiwicks? Can anything sweeter be imagined
than rendering judgments and decisions, as Messire Robert
d'Estouteville daily did in the Grand Châtelet, under the large
and flattened arches of Philip Augustus? and going, as he
was wont to do every evening, to that charming house situated
in the Rue Galilee, in the enclosure of the royal palace, which
he held in right of his wife, Madame Ambroise de Lore, to
repose after the fatigue of having sent some poor wretch to
pass the night in "that little cell of the Rue de Escorcherie,
which the provosts and aldermen of Paris used to make their
prison; the same being eleven feet long, seven feet and four
inches wide, and eleven feet high?"*
* Comptes du domaine, 1383.
And not only had Messire Robert d'Estouteville his special
court as provost and vicomte of Paris; but in addition he
had a share, both for eye and tooth, in the grand court of the
king. There was no head in the least elevated which had not
passed through his hands before it came to the headsman. It
was he who went to seek M. de Nemours at the Bastille Saint
Antoine, in order to conduct him to the Halles; and to conduct
to the Grève M. de Saint-Pol, who clamored and resisted,
to the great joy of the provost, who did not love monsieur the
constable.
Here, assuredly, is more than sufficient to render a life
happy and illustrious, and to deserve some day a notable page
in that interesting history of the provosts of Paris, where
one learns that Oudard de Villeneuve had a house in the Rue
des Boucheries, that Guillaume de Hangest purchased the
great and the little Savoy, that Guillaume Thiboust gave the
nuns of Sainte-Geneviève his houses in the Rue Clopin, that
Hugues Aubriot lived in the Hôtel du Pore-Epic, and other
domestic facts.
Nevertheless, with so many reasons for taking life patiently
and joyously, Messire Robert d'Estouteville woke up on the
morning of the seventh of January, 1482, in a very surly and
peevish mood. Whence came this ill temper? He could not
have told himself. Was it because the sky was gray? or was
the buckle of his old belt of Montlhéry badly fastened, so
that it confined his provostal portliness too closely? had he
beheld ribald fellows, marching in bands of four, beneath his
window, and setting him at defiance, in doublets but no shirts,
hats without crowns, with wallet and bottle at their side?
Was it a vague presentiment of the three hundred and seventy
livres, sixteen sous, eight farthings, which the future King
Charles VII. was to cut off from the provostship in the
following year? The reader can take his choice; we, for
our part, are much inclined to believe that he was in a bad
humor, simply because he was in a bad humor.
Moreover, it was the day after a festival, a tiresome day
for every one, and above all for the magistrate who is charged
with sweeping away all the filth, properly and figuratively
speaking, which a festival day produces in Paris. And then
he had to hold a sitting at the Grand Châtelet. Now, we
have noticed that judges in general so arrange matters that
their day of audience shall also be their day of bad humor,
so that they may always have some one upon whom to vent
it conveniently, in the name of the king, law, and justice.
However, the audience had begun without him. His lieutenants,
civil, criminal, and private, were doing his work,
according to usage; and from eight o'clock in the morning,
some scores of bourgeois and ~bourgeoises~, heaped and crowded
into an obscure corner of the audience chamber of Embas du
Châtelet, between a stout oaken barrier and the wall, had been
gazing blissfully at the varied and cheerful spectacle of civil
and criminal justice dispensed by Master Florian Barbedienne,
auditor of the Châtelet, lieutenant of monsieur the provost, in
a somewhat confused and utterly haphazard manner.
The hall was small, low, vaulted. A table studded with
fleurs-de-lis stood at one end, with a large arm-chair of carved
oak, which belonged to the provost and was empty, and a stool
on the left for the auditor, Master Florian. Below sat the
clerk of the court, scribbling; opposite was the populace; and
in front of the door, and in front of the table were many
sergeants of the provostship in sleeveless jackets of violet
camlet, with white crosses. Two sergeants of the Parloir-
aux-Bourgeois, clothed in their jackets of Toussaint, half red,
half blue, were posted as sentinels before a low, closed door,
which was visible at the extremity of the hall, behind the
table. A single pointed window, narrowly encased in the
thick wall, illuminated with a pale ray of January sun two
grotesque figures,--the capricious demon of stone carved as
a tail-piece in the keystone of the vaulted ceiling, and the
judge seated at the end of the hall on the fleurs-de-lis.
Imagine, in fact, at the provost's table, leaning upon his
elbows between two bundles of documents of cases, with his
foot on the train of his robe of plain brown cloth, his face
buried in his hood of white lamb's skin, of which his brows
seemed to be of a piece, red, crabbed, winking, bearing
majestically the load of fat on his cheeks which met under his
chin, Master Florian Barbedienne, auditor of the Châtelet.
Now, the auditor was deaf. A slight defect in an auditor.
Master Florian delivered judgment, none the less, without
appeal and very suitably. It is certainly quite sufficient
for a judge to have the .air of listening; and the venerable
auditor fulfilled this condition, the sole one in justice, all
the better because his attention could not be distracted by
any noise.
Moreover, he had in the audience, a pitiless censor of his
deeds and gestures, in the person of our friend Jehan Frollo
du Moulin, that little student of yesterday, that "stroller,"
whom one was sure of encountering all over Paris, anywhere
except before the rostrums of the professors.
"Stay," he said in a low tone to his companion, Robin
Poussepain, who was grinning at his side, while he was
making his comments on the scenes which were being unfolded
before his eyes, "yonder is Jehanneton du Buisson. The
beautiful daughter of the lazy dog at the Marché-Neuf!--Upon
my soul, he is condemning her, the old rascal! he has no more
eyes than ears. Fifteen sous, four farthings, parisian,
for having worn two rosaries! 'Tis somewhat dear. ~Lex
duri carminis~. Who's that? Robin Chief-de-Ville,
hauberkmaker. For having been passed and received master of
the said trade! That's his entrance money. He! two gentlemen
among these knaves! Aiglet de Soins, Hutin de Mailly
Two equerries, ~Corpus Christi~! Ah! they have been playing
at dice. When shall I see our rector here? A hundred livres
parisian, fine to the king! That Barbedienne strikes like a
deaf man,--as he is! I'll be my brother the archdeacon, if
that keeps me from gaming; gaming by day, gaming by night,
living at play, dying at play, and gaming away my soul after
my shirt. Holy Virgin, what damsels! One after the other
my lambs. Ambroise Lécuyere, Isabeau la Paynette, Bérarde
Gironin! I know them all, by Heavens! A fine! a fine!
That's what will teach you to wear gilded girdles! ten sous
parisis! you coquettes! Oh! the old snout of a judge! deaf
and imbecile! Oh! Florian the dolt! Oh! Barbedienne the
blockhead! There he is at the table! He's eating the
plaintiff, he's eating the suits, he eats, he chews, he crams,
he fills himself. Fines, lost goods, taxes, expenses, loyal
charges, salaries, damages, and interests, gehenna, prison, and
jail, and fetters with expenses are Christmas spice cake and
marchpanes of Saint-John to him! Look at him, the pig!--Come!
Good! Another amorous woman! Thibaud-la-Thibaude,
neither more nor less! For having come from the Rue
Glatigny! What fellow is this? Gieffroy Mabonne, gendarme
bearing the crossbow. He has cursed the name of the
Father. A fine for la Thibaude! A fine for Gieffroy! A
fine for them both! The deaf old fool! he must have mixed
up the two cases! Ten to one that he makes the wench pay
for the oath and the gendarme for the amour! Attention,
Robin Poussepain! What are they going to bring in? Here
are many sergeants! By Jupiter! all the bloodhounds of the
pack are there. It must be the great beast of the hunt--a
wild boar. And 'tis one, Robin, 'tis one. And a fine one too!
~Hercle~! 'tis our prince of yesterday, our Pope of the Fools,
our bellringer, our one-eyed man, our hunchback, our grimace!
'Tis Quasimodo!"
It was he indeed.
It was Quasimodo, bound, encircled, roped, pinioned, and
under good guard. The squad of policemen who surrounded
him was assisted by the chevalier of the watch in person,
wearing the arms of France embroidered on his breast,
and the arms of the city on his back. There was nothing,
however, about Quasimodo, except his deformity, which could
justify the display of halberds and arquebuses; he was
gloomy, silent, and tranquil. Only now and then did his
single eye cast a sly and wrathful glance upon the bonds
with which he was loaded.
He cast the same glance about him, but it was so dull and
sleepy that the women only pointed him out to each other
in derision.
Meanwhile Master Florian, the auditor, turned over
attentively the document in the complaint entered against
Quasimodo, which the clerk handed him, and, having thus
glanced at it, appeared to reflect for a moment. Thanks to
this precaution, which he always was careful to take at the
moment when on the point of beginning an examination, he knew
beforehand the names, titles, and misdeeds of the accused,
made cut and dried responses to questions foreseen, and
succeeded in extricating himself from all the windings of
the interrogation without allowing his deafness to be too
apparent. The written charges were to him what the dog is to
the blind man. If his deafness did happen to betray him here
and there, by some incoherent apostrophe or some unintelligible
question, it passed for profundity with some, and for
imbecility with others. In neither case did the honor of the
magistracy sustain any injury; for it is far better that a judge
should be reputed imbecile or profound than deaf. Hence he
took great care to conceal his deafness from the eyes of all,
and he generally succeeded so well that he had reached the
point of deluding himself, which is, by the way, easier than
is supposed. All hunchbacks walk with their heads held
high, all stutterers harangue, all deaf people speak low. As
for him, he believed, at the most, that his ear was a little
refractory. It was the sole concession which he made on this
point to public opinion, in his moments of frankness and
examination of his conscience.
Having, then, thoroughly ruminated Quasimodo's affair, he
threw back his head and half closed his eyes, for the sake of
more majesty and impartiality, so that, at that moment, he was
both deaf and blind. A double condition, without which no
judge is perfect. It was in this magisterial attitude that he
began the examination.
"Your name?"
Now this was a case which had not been "provided for by
law," where a deaf man should be obliged to question a
deaf man.
Quasimodo, whom nothing warned that a question had been
addressed to him, continued to stare intently at the judge,
and made no reply. The judge, being deaf, and being in no way
warned of the deafness of the accused, thought that the latter
had answered, as all accused do in general, and therefore he
pursued, with his mechanical and stupid self-possession,--
"Very well. And your age?"
Again Quasimodo made no reply to this question. The judge
supposed that it had been replied to, and continued,--
"Now, your profession?"
Still the same silence. The spectators had begun, meanwhile,
to whisper together, and to exchange glances.
"That will do," went on the imperturbable auditor, when he
supposed that the accused had finished his third reply. "You
are accused before us, ~primo~, of nocturnal disturbance;
~secundo~, of a dishonorable act of violence upon the person of
a foolish woman, ~in proejudicium meretricis; tertio~, of rebellion
and disloyalty towards the archers of the police of our lord,
the king. Explain yourself upon all these points.---Clerk,
have you written down what the prisoner has said thus far?"
At this unlucky question, a burst of laughter rose from the
clerk's table caught by the audience, so violent, so wild, so
contagious, so universal, that the two deaf men were forced
to perceive it. Quasimodo turned round, shrugging his hump
with disdain, while Master Florian, equally astonished, and
supposing that the laughter of the spectators had been
provoked by some irreverent reply from the accused, rendered
visible to him by that shrug of the shoulders, apostrophized
him indignantly,--
"You have uttered a reply, knave, which deserves the halter.
Do you know to whom you are speaking?"
This sally was not fitted to arrest the explosion of general
merriment. It struck all as so whimsical, and so ridiculous,
that the wild laughter even attacked the sergeants of the Parloi-
aux-Bourgeois, a sort of pikemen, whose stupidity was part
of their uniform. Quasimodo alone preserved his seriousness,
for the good reason that he understood nothing of what was
going on around him. The judge, more and more irritated,
thought it his duty to continue in the same tone, hoping
thereby to strike the accused with a terror which should react
upon the audience, and bring it back to respect.
"So this is as much as to say, perverse and thieving knave
that you are, that you permit yourself to be lacking in
respect towards the Auditor of the Châtelet, to the magistrate
committed to the popular police of Paris, charged with searching
out crimes, delinquencies, and evil conduct; with controlling
all trades, and interdicting monopoly; with maintaining the
pavements; with debarring the hucksters of chickens, poultry,
and water-fowl; of superintending the measuring of fagots and
other sorts of wood; of purging the city of mud, and the air
of contagious maladies; in a word, with attending continually
to public affairs, without wages or hope of salary! Do you
know that I am called Florian Barbedienne, actual lieutenant
to monsieur the provost, and, moreover, commissioner, inquisitor,
controller, and examiner, with equal power in provostship,
bailiwick, preservation, and inferior court of judicature?--"
There is no reason why a deaf man talking to a deaf man
should stop. God knows where and when Master Florian
would have landed, when thus launched at full speed in lofty
eloquence, if the low door at the extreme end of the room had
not suddenly opened, and given entrance to the provost in
person. At his entrance Master Florian did not stop short,
but, making a half-turn on his heels, and aiming at the provost
the harangue with which he had been withering Quasimodo a
moment before,--
"Monseigneur," said he, "I demand such penalty as you
shall deem fitting against the prisoner here present, for
grave and aggravated offence against the court."
And he seated himself, utterly breathless, wiping away the
great drops of sweat which fell from his brow and drenched,
like tears, the parchments spread out before him. Messire
Robert d'Estouteville frowned and made a gesture so imperious
and significant to Quasimodo, that the deaf man in some
measure understood it.
The provost addressed him with severity, "What have you
done that you have been brought hither, knave?"
The poor fellow, supposing that the provost was asking his
name, broke the silence which he habitually preserved, and
replied, in a harsh and guttural voice, "Quasimodo."
The reply matched the question so little that the wild
laugh began to circulate once more, and Messire Robert
exclaimed, red with wrath,--
"Are you mocking me also, you arrant knave?"
"Bellringer of Notre-Dame," replied Quasimodo, supposing
that what was required of him was to explain to the judge
who he was.
"Bellringer!" interpolated the provost, who had waked up
early enough to be in a sufficiently bad temper, as we have
said, not to require to have his fury inflamed by such strange
responses. "Bellringer! I'll play you a chime of rods on
your back through the squares of Paris! Do you hear, knave?"
"If it is my age that you wish to know," said Quasimodo,
"I think that I shall be twenty at Saint Martin's day."
This was too much; the provost could no longer restrain
himself.
"Ah! you are scoffing at the provostship, wretch! Messieurs
the sergeants of the mace, you will take me this knave
to the pillory of the Grève, you will flog him, and turn
him for an hour. He shall pay me for it, ~tête Dieu~! And I
order that the present judgment shall be cried, with the
assistance of four sworn trumpeters, in the seven castellanies
of the viscomty of Paris."
The clerk set to work incontinently to draw up the account
of the sentence.
"~Ventre Dieu~! 'tis well adjudged!" cried the little scholar,
Jehan Frollo du Moulin, from his corner.
The provost turned and fixed his flashing eyes once more on
Quasimodo. "I believe the knave said '~Ventre Dieu~' Clerk,
add twelve deniers Parisian for the oath, and let the vestry
of Saint Eustache have the half of it; I have a particular
devotion for Saint Eustache."
In a few minutes the sentence was drawn up. Its tenor
was simple and brief. The customs of the provostship and
the viscomty had not yet been worked over by President
Thibaut Baillet, and by Roger Barmne, the king's advocate;
they had not been obstructed, at that time, by that lofty
hedge of quibbles and procedures, which the two jurisconsults
planted there at the beginning of the sixteenth century. All
was clear, expeditious, explicit. One went straight to the
point then, and at the end of every path there was immediately
visible, without thickets and without turnings; the wheel, the
gibbet, or the pillory. One at least knew whither one was
going.
The clerk presented the sentence to the provost, who
affixed his seal to it, and departed to pursue his round of
the audience hall, in a frame of mind which seemed destined
to fill all the jails in Paris that day. Jehan Frollo and
Robin Poussepain laughed in their sleeves. Quasimodo gazed
on the whole with an indifferent and astonished air.
However, at the moment when Master Florian Barbedienne
was reading the sentence in his turn, before signing it, the
clerk felt himself moved with pity for the poor wretch of a
prisoner, and, in the hope of obtaining some mitigation of the
penalty, he approached as near the auditor's ear as possible,
and said, pointing to Quasimodo, "That man is deaf."
He hoped that this community of infirmity would awaken
Master Florian's interest in behalf of the condemned man.
But, in the first place, we have already observed that Master
Florian did not care to have his deafness noticed. In the
next place, he was so hard of hearing That he did not catch a
single word of what the clerk said to him; nevertheless, he
wished to have the appearance of hearing, and replied, "Ah!
ah! that is different; I did not know that. An hour more of
the pillory, in that case."
And he signed the sentence thus modified.
"'Tis well done," said Robin Poussepain, who cherished a
grudge against Quasimodo. "That will teach him to handle
people roughly."
THE RAT-HOLE.
The reader must permit us to take him back to the Place
de Grève, which we quitted yesterday with Gringoire, in
order to follow la Esmeralda.
It is ten o'clock in the morning; everything is indicative of
the day after a festival. The pavement is covered with rubbish;
ribbons, rags, feathers from tufts of plumes, drops of wax
from the torches, crumbs of the public feast. A goodly
number of bourgeois are "sauntering," as we say, here and
there, turning over with their feet the extinct brands of
the bonfire, going into raptures in front of the Pillar House,
over the memory of the fine hangings of the day before, and
to-day staring at the nails that secured them a last pleasure.
The venders of cider and beer are rolling their barrels among
the groups. Some busy passers-by come and go. The merchants
converse and call to each other from the thresholds of
their shops. The festival, the ambassadors, Coppenole, the
Pope of the Fools, are in all mouths; they vie with each
other, each trying to criticise it best and laugh the most.
And, meanwhile, four mounted sergeants, who have just
posted themselves at the four sides of the pillory, have
already concentrated around themselves a goodly proportion
of the populace scattered on the Place, who condemn themselves
to immobility and fatigue in the hope of a small execution.
If the reader, after having contemplated this lively and
noisy scene which is being enacted in all parts of the Place,
will now transfer his gaze towards that ancient demi-Gothic,
demi-Romanesque house of the Tour-Roland, which forms the
corner on the quay to the west, he will observe, at the angle
of the façade, a large public breviary, with rich illuminations,
protected from the rain by a little penthouse, and from thieves
by a small grating, which, however, permits of the leaves being
turned. Beside this breviary is a narrow, arched window,
closed by two iron bars in the form of a cross, and looking on
the square; the only opening which admits a small quantity
of light and air to a little cell without a door, constructed on
the ground-floor, in the thickness of the walls of the old house,
and filled with a peace all the more profound, with a silence
all the more gloomy, because a public place, the most populous
and most noisy in Paris swarms and shrieks around it.
This little cell had been celebrated in Paris for nearly three
centuries, ever since Madame Rolande de la Tour-Roland, in
mourning for her father who died in the Crusades, had caused
it to be hollowed out in the wall of her own house, in order
to immure herself there forever, keeping of all her palace
only this lodging whose door was walled up, and whose window
stood open, winter and summer, giving all the rest to the
poor and to God. The afflicted damsel had, in fact, waited
twenty years for death in this premature tomb, praying night
and day for the soul of her father, sleeping in ashes, without
even a stone for a pillow, clothed in a black sack, and
subsisting on the bread and water which the compassion of the
passers-by led them to deposit on the ledge of her window,
thus receiving charity after having bestowed it. At her death,
at the moment when she was passing to the other sepulchre,
she had bequeathed this one in perpetuity to afflicted women,
mothers, widows, or maidens, who should wish to pray much
for others or for themselves, and who should desire to inter
themselves alive in a great grief or a great penance. The
poor of her day had made her a fine funeral, with tears and
benedictions; but, to their great regret, the pious maid had
not been canonized, for lack of influence. Those among them
who were a little inclined to impiety, had hoped that the matter
might be accomplished in Paradise more easily than at Rome,
and had frankly besought God, instead of the pope, in behalf
of the deceased. The majority had contented themselves with
holding the memory of Rolande sacred, and converting her
rags into relics. The city, on its side, had founded in honor
of the damoiselle, a public breviary, which had been fastened
near the window of the cell, in order that passers-by might
halt there from time to time, were it only to pray; that prayer
might remind them of alms, and that the poor recluses, heiresses
of Madame Rolande's vault, might not die outright of
hunger and forgetfulness.
Moreover, this sort of tomb was not so very rare a thing in
the cities of the Middle Ages. One often encountered in
the most frequented street, in the most crowded and noisy
market, in the very middle, under the feet of the horses,
under the wheels of the carts, as it were, a cellar, a well, a
tiny walled and grated cabin, at the bottom of which a human
being prayed night and day, voluntarily devoted to some eternal
lamentation, to some great expiation. And all the reflections
which that strange spectacle would awaken in us to-day;
that horrible cell, a sort of intermediary link between a house
and the tomb, the cemetery and the city; that living being
cut off from the human community, and thenceforth reckoned
among the dead; that lamp consuming its last drop of oil in
the darkness; that remnant of life flickering in the grave;
that breath, that voice, that eternal prayer in a box of stone;
that face forever turned towards the other world; that eye
already illuminated with another sun; that ear pressed to the
walls of a tomb; that soul a prisoner in that body; that body
a prisoner in that dungeon cell, and beneath that double
envelope of flesh and granite, the murmur of that soul in
pain;--nothing of all this was perceived by the crowd.
The piety of that age, not very subtle nor much given to
reasoning, did not see so many facets in an act of religion.
It took the thing in the block, honored, venerated, hallowed
the sacrifice at need, but did not analyze the sufferings, and
felt but moderate pity for them. It brought some pittance to
the miserable penitent from time to time, looked through the
hole to see whether he were still living, forgot his name,
hardly knew how many years ago he had begun to die, and to
the stranger, who questioned them about the living skeleton
who was perishing in that cellar, the neighbors replied simply,
"It is the recluse."
Everything was then viewed without metaphysics, without
exaggeration, without magnifying glass, with the naked eye.
The microscope had not yet been invented, either for things of
matter or for things of the mind.
Moreover, although people were but little surprised by it,
the examples of this sort of cloistration in the hearts of cities
were in truth frequent, as we have just said. There were in
Paris a considerable number of these cells, for praying to God
and doing penance; they were nearly all occupied. It is true
that the clergy did not like to have them empty, since that
implied lukewarmness in believers, and that lepers were put
into them when there were no penitents on hand. Besides the
cell on the Grève, there was one at Montfauçon, one at the
Charnier des Innocents, another I hardly know where,--at
the Clichon House, I think; others still at many spots where
traces of them are found in traditions, in default of memorials.
The University had also its own. On Mount Sainte-Geneviève
a sort of Job of the Middle Ages, for the space of thirty
years, chanted the seven penitential psalms on a dunghill
at the bottom of a cistern, beginning anew when he had
finished, singing loudest at night, ~magna voce per umbras~,
and to-day, the antiquary fancies that he hears his voice
as he enters the Rue du Puits-qui-parle--the street of the
"Speaking Well."
To confine ourselves to the cell in the Tour-Roland, we must
say that it had never lacked recluses. After the death of
Madame Roland, it had stood vacant for a year or two,
though rarely. Many women had come thither to mourn,
until their death, for relatives, lovers, faults. Parisian
malice, which thrusts its finger into everything, even into
things which concern it the least, affirmed that it had beheld
but few widows there.
In accordance with the fashion of the epoch, a Latin
inscription on the wall indicated to the learned passer-by the
pious purpose of this cell. The custom was retained until
the middle of the sixteenth century of explaining an edifice
by a brief device inscribed above the door. Thus, one still
reads in France, above the wicket of the prison in the seignorial
mansion of Tourville, ~Sileto et spera~; in Ireland, beneath
the armorial bearings which surmount the grand door to
Fortescue Castle, ~Forte scutum, salus ducum~; in England,
over the principal entrance to the hospitable mansion of the
Earls Cowper: ~Tuum est~. At that time every edifice was
a thought.
As there was no door to the walled cell of the Tour-Roland,
these two words had been carved in large Roman capitals
over the window,--
TU, ORA.
And this caused the people, whose good sense does not
perceive so much refinement in things, and likes to translate
_Ludovico Magno_ by "Porte Saint-Denis," to give to this dark,
gloomy, damp cavity, the name of "The Rat-Hole." An explanation
less sublime, perhaps, than the other; but, on the other hand,
more picturesque. _