AN IMPARTIAL GLANCE AT THE ANCIENT MAGISTRACY.

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.

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 Chatelet, 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 Montlhery, 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 Chatelet, the two auditors of the Chatelet, auditores

castelleti, the sixteen commissioners of

the sixteen quarters, the jailer of the Chatelet, 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 Chatelet, 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?"

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 Greve 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-Genevieve his houses in the Rue

Clopin, that Hugues Aubriot lived in the Hotel 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 Montlhery 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 Chatelet.

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 Chatelet, 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 Chatelet, 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 Chatelet.

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 Marche-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 Lecuyere, Isabeau la Paynette,

Berarde 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