Notre-Dame de Paris

Author: Victor Hugo
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: On January 6, 1482, the Parisians awoke to the noise of all the clocks sounding with great volume in the city. This excited the entire people and was the celebration of the Kings' Day and the Feast of Fools. There was to be joy in the Greve, the planting of an elm chapel, and a mystery that was to be celebrated in the Palace of Justice. The madness of the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois women was to lead them from all sides in the morning, homes and shops closed, towards the three right-hand doors designed. It must be said that the largest party of this crowd was heading towards the joy, which was the season, and the mystery that was to be represented in the grand hall of the Palace, both covered and closed, and that the curious agreed to let the poor mayor rig a lottery all by himself under the January 6th. The piece was to begin at the twelfth stroke of noon, sounding from the Palace clock, played on an oratorical stage of gold brocade behind a curtain called the marble table. There was no doubt about a theatrical representation. Since the morning, the entire multitude had been waiting. It increased without ceasing, became denser at every moment. Thus the general, impatience, the quarrels that broke out at every turn, the fatigue of a long wait gave a sharp and terrible accent to the clamor of the people pressed, confined, crowd, closed, and stifled. One could only hear complaints and improvisations against the Flemish ambassadors arrived two days earlier to arrange the marriage of the Dauphin with Margaret of Flanders, the protectors of the merchants, the cardinal of Bourbon, the palace bailiff, the sergeants-at-arms, the cold, the hot, the bad time, the Pope of Fools, the archbishop of Paris, the pillars, the statues, this closed door, this open window, the great amusement of the bands of schoolchildren and the scattered ones in the mass who were all content with their pranks and their malice,