Notre-Dame de Paris
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 Montfaucon, 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.
CHAPTER III. HISTORY OF A LEAVENED CAKE OF MAIZE.
At the epoch of this history, the cell in the Tour-Roland was
occupied. If the reader desires to know by whom, he has only to
lend an ear to the conversation of three worthy gossips, who, at
the moment when we have directed his attention to the Rat-Hole,
were directing their steps towards the same spot, coming up along
the water’s edge from the Châtelet, towards the Grève.
Two of these women were dressed like good _bourgeoises_ of Paris.
Their fine white ruffs; their petticoats of linsey-woolsey,
striped red and blue; their white knitted stockings, with clocks
embroidered in colors, well drawn upon their legs; the
square-toed shoes of tawny leather with black soles, and, above
all, their headgear, that sort of tinsel horn, loaded down with
ribbons and laces, which the women of Champagne still wear, in
company with the grenadiers of the imperial guard of Russia,
announced that they belonged to that class wives which holds the
middle ground between what the lackeys call a woman and what they
term a lady. They wore neither rings nor gold crosses, and it was
easy to see that, in their ease, this did not proceed from
poverty, but simply from fear of being fined. Their companion was
attired in very much the same manner; but there was that
indescribable something about her dress and bearing which
suggested the wife of a provincial notary. One could see, by the
way in which her girdle rose above her hips, that she had not
been long in Paris. Add to this a plaited tucker, knots of ribbon
on her shoes—and that the stripes of her petticoat ran
horizontally instead of vertically, and a thousand other
enormities which shocked good taste.
The two first walked with that step peculiar to Parisian ladies,
showing Paris to women from the country. The provincial held by
the hand a big boy, who held in his a large, flat cake.
We regret to be obliged to add, that, owing to the rigor of the
season, he was using his tongue as a handkerchief.
The child was making them drag him along, _non passibus æquis_,
as Virgil says, and stumbling at every moment, to the great
indignation of his mother. It is true that he was looking at his
cake more than at the pavement. Some serious motive, no doubt,
prevented his biting it (the cake), for he contented himself with
gazing tenderly at it. But the mother should have rather taken
charge of the cake. It was cruel to make a Tantalus of the
chubby-cheeked boy.
Meanwhile, the three demoiselles (for the name of _dames_ was
then reserved for noble women) were all talking at once.
“Let us make haste, Demoiselle Mahiette,” said the youngest of
the three, who was also the largest, to the provincial, “I
greatly fear that we shall arrive too late; they told us at the
Châtelet that they were going to take him directly to the
pillory.”
“Ah, bah! what are you saying, Demoiselle Oudarde Musnier?”
interposed the other Parisienne. “There are two hours yet to the
pillory. We have time enough. Have you ever seen any one
pilloried, my dear Mahiette?”
“Yes,” said the provincial, “at Reims.”
“Ah, bah! What is your pillory at Reims? A miserable cage into
which only peasants are turned. A great affair, truly!”
“Only peasants!” said Mahiette, “at the cloth market in Reims! We
have seen very fine criminals there, who have killed their father
and mother! Peasants! For what do you take us, Gervaise?”
It is certain that the provincial was on the point of taking
offence, for the honor of her pillory. Fortunately, that discreet
damoiselle, Oudarde Musnier, turned the conversation in time.
“By the way, Damoiselle Mahiette, what say you to our Flemish
Ambassadors? Have you as fine ones at Reims?”
“I admit,” replied Mahiette, “that it is only in Paris that such
Flemings can be seen.”
“Did you see among the embassy, that big ambassador who is a
hosier?” asked Oudarde.
“Yes,” said Mahiette. “He has the eye of a Saturn.”
“And the big fellow whose face resembles a bare belly?” resumed
Gervaise. “And the little one, with small eyes framed in red
eyelids, pared down and slashed up like a thistle head?”
“’Tis their horses that are worth seeing,” said Oudarde,
“caparisoned as they are after the fashion of their country!”