Notre-Dame de Paris
the layers of hewn stone were all cracked at their joints, and
grass was growing on that platform which no feet touched. The
monument made a horrible profile against the sky; especially at
night when there was a little moonlight on those white skulls, or
when the breeze of evening brushed the chains and the skeletons,
and swayed all these in the darkness. The presence of this gibbet
sufficed to render gloomy all the surrounding places.
The mass of masonry which served as foundation to the odious
edifice was hollow. A huge cellar had been constructed there,
closed by an old iron grating, which was out of order, into which
were cast not only the human remains, which were taken from the
chains of Montfaucon, but also the bodies of all the unfortunates
executed on the other permanent gibbets of Paris. To that deep
charnel-house, where so many human remains and so many crimes
have rotted in company, many great ones of this world, many
innocent people, have contributed their bones, from Enguerrand de
Marigni, the first victim, and a just man, to Admiral de Coligni,
who was its last, and who was also a just man.
As for the mysterious disappearance of Quasimodo, this is all
that we have been able to discover.
About eighteen months or two years after the events which
terminate this story, when search was made in that cavern for the
body of Olivier le Daim, who had been hanged two days previously,
and to whom Charles VIII. had granted the favor of being buried
in Saint Laurent, in better company, they found among all those
hideous carcasses two skeletons, one of which held the other in
its embrace. One of these skeletons, which was that of a woman,
still had a few strips of a garment which had once been white,
and around her neck was to be seen a string of adrézarach beads
with a little silk bag ornamented with green glass, which was
open and empty. These objects were of so little value that the
executioner had probably not cared for them. The other, which
held this one in a close embrace, was the skeleton of a man. It
was noticed that his spinal column was crooked, his head seated
on his shoulder blades, and that one leg was shorter than the
other. Moreover, there was no fracture of the vertebrae at the
nape of the neck, and it was evident that he had not been hanged.
Hence, the man to whom it had belonged had come thither and had
died there. When they tried to detach the skeleton which he held
in his embrace, he fell to dust.
NOTE
ADDED TO THE DEFINITIVE EDITION.
It is by mistake that this edition was announced as augmented by
many _new_ chapters. The word should have been _unpublished_. In
fact, if by new, _newly made_ is to be understood, the chapters
added to this edition are not new. They were written at the same
time as the rest of the work; they date from the same epoch, and
sprang from the same thought, they have always formed a part of
the manuscript of “Notre-Dame-de-Paris.” Moreover, the author
cannot comprehend how fresh developments could be added to a work
of this character after its completion. This is not to be done at
will. According to his idea, a romance is born in a manner that
is, in some sort, necessary, with all its chapters; a drama is
born with all its scenes. Think not that there is anything
arbitrary in the numbers of parts of which that whole, that
mysterious microcosm which you call a drama or a romance, is
composed. Grafting and soldering take badly on works of this
nature, which should gush forth in a single stream and so remain.
The thing once done, do not change your mind, do not touch it up.
The book once published, the sex of the work, whether virile or
not, has been recognized and proclaimed; when the child has once
uttered his first cry he is born, there he is, he is made so,
neither father nor mother can do anything, he belongs to the air
and to the sun, let him live or die, such as he is. Has your book
been a failure? So much the worse. Add no chapters to an
unsuccessful book. Is it incomplete? You should have completed it
when you conceived it. Is your tree crooked? You cannot
straighten it up. Is your romance consumptive? Is your romance
not capable of living? You cannot supply it with the breath which
it lacks. Has your drama been born lame? Take my advice, and do
not provide it with a wooden leg.
Hence the author attaches particular importance to the public
knowing for a certainty that the chapters here added have not
been made expressly for this reprint. They were not published in
the preceding editions of the book for a very simple reason. At
the time when “Notre-Dame-de-Paris” was printed the first time,
the manuscript of these three chapters had been mislaid. It was
necessary to rewrite them or to dispense with them. The author
considered that the only two of these chapters which were in the
least important, owing to their extent, were chapters on art and
history which in no way interfered with the groundwork of the
drama and the romance, that the public would not notice their
loss, and that he, the author, would alone be in possession of
the secret. He decided to omit them, and then, if the whole truth
must be confessed, his indolence shrunk from the task of
rewriting the three lost chapters. He would have found it a
shorter matter to make a new romance.
Now the chapters have been found, and he avails himself of the
first opportunity to restore them to their place.
This now, is his entire work, such as he dreamed it, such as he
made it, good or bad, durable or fragile, but such as he wishes
it.
These recovered chapters will possess no doubt, but little value
in the eyes of persons, otherwise very judicious, who have sought
in “Notre-Dame-de-Paris” only the drama, the romance. But there
are perchance, other readers, who have not found it useless to
study the æsthetic and philosophic thought concealed in this
book, and who have taken pleasure, while reading
“Notre-Dame-de-Paris,” in unravelling beneath the romance
something else than the romance, and in following (may we be
pardoned these rather ambitious expressions), the system of the
historian and the aim of the artist through the creation of the
poet.
For such people especially, the chapters added to this edition
will complete “Notre-Dame-de-Paris,” if we admit that
“Notre-Dame-de-Paris” was worth the trouble of completing.
In one of these chapters on the present decadence of
architecture, and on the death (in his mind almost inevitable) of
that king of arts, the author expresses and develops an opinion
unfortunately well rooted in him, and well thought out. But he
feels it necessary to say here that he earnestly desires that the
future may, some day, put him in the wrong. He knows that art in
all its forms has everything to hope from the new generations
whose genius, still in the germ, can be heard gushing forth in
our studios. The grain is in the furrow, the harvest will
certainly be fine. He merely fears, and the reason may be seen in
the second volume of this edition, that the sap may have been
withdrawn from that ancient soil of architecture which has been
for so many centuries the best field for art.
Nevertheless, there are to-day in the artistic youth so much
life, power, and, so to speak, predestination, that in our
schools of architecture in particular, at the present time, the
professors, who are detestable, produce, not only unconsciously
but even in spite of themselves, excellent pupils; quite the
reverse of that potter mentioned by Horace, who dreamed amphoræ
and produced pots. _Currit rota, urcens exit_.
But, in any case, whatever may be the future of architecture, in
whatever manner our young architects may one day solve the
question of their art, let us, while waiting for new monument,
preserve the ancient monuments. Let us, if possible, inspire the
nation with a love for national architecture. That, the author
declares, is one of the principal aims of this book; it is one of
the principal aims of his life.
“Notre-Dame-de-Paris” has, perhaps opened some true perspectives
on the art of the Middle Ages, on that marvellous art which up to
the present time has been unknown to some, and, what is worse,
misknown by others. But the author is far from regarding as
accomplished, the task which he has voluntarily imposed on
himself. He has already pleaded on more than one occasion, the
cause of our ancient architecture, he has already loudly
denounced many profanations, many demolitions, many impieties. He
will not grow weary. He has promised himself to recur frequently
to this subject. He will return to it. He will be as
indefatigable in defending our historical edifices as our
iconoclasts of the schools and academies are eager in attacking
them; for it is a grievous thing to see into what hands the
architecture of the Middle Ages has fallen, and in what a manner
the botchers of plaster of the present day treat the ruin of this
grand art, it is even a shame for us intelligent men who see them
at work and content ourselves with hooting them. And we are not
speaking here merely of what goes on in the provinces, but of
what is done in Paris at our very doors, beneath our windows, in
the great city, in the lettered city, in the city of the press,
of word, of thought. We cannot resist the impulse to point out,
in concluding this note, some of the acts of vandalism which are
every day planned, debated, begun, continued, and successfully
completed under the eyes of the artistic public of Paris, face to
face with criticism, which is disconcerted by so much audacity.
An archbishop’s palace has just been demolished, an edifice in
poor taste, no great harm is done; but in a block with the
archiepiscopal palace a bishop’s palace has been demolished, a
rare fragment of the fourteenth century, which the demolishing
architect could not distinguish from the rest. He has torn up the
wheat with the tares; ’tis all the same. They are talking of
razing the admirable chapel of Vincennes, in order to make, with
its stones, some fortification, which Daumesnil did not need,
however. While the Palais Bourbon, that wretched edifice, is
being repaired at great expense, gusts of wind and equinoctial
storms are allowed to destroy the magnificent painted windows of
the Sainte-Chapelle. For the last few days there has been a
scaffolding on the tower of Saint Jacques de la Boucherie; and
one of these mornings the pick will be laid to it. A mason has
been found to build a little white house between the venerable
towers of the Palais de-Justice. Another has been found willing
to prune away Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the feudal abbey with three
bell towers. Another will be found, no doubt, capable of pulling