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:--

ANArKH.

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.

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 Hotel 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 Greve, 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 Chateau 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 facade 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 marechaussee, the marechaussee 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, Theophile'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.