Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com

One evening, when the curfew was ringing from all the steeples of Paris, the sergeants of the watch,
could they have entered the redoubtable Court of Miracles, might have remarked that a greater hubbub
than usual was going on in the tavern of the Vagabonds; that they were drinking deeper and swearing
harder. Without, in the Place, were a number of groups conversing in low tones, as when some great plot
is brewing, and here and there some fellow crouched down and sharpened a villainous iron blade on a
flagstone.
Meanwhile, in the tavern itself, wine and gambling formed so strong a diversion to the ideas that
occupied the Vagabonds, that it would have been difficult to gather from the conversation of the drinkers
what the matter was which so engaged them. Only they wore a gayer air than usual, and every one of
them had some weapon or other gleaming between his knees—a pruning hook, an axed, a broadsword,
or the crook of some ancient blunderbuss.
The hall, which was circular in form, was very spacious; but the tables were so crowded together and
the drinkers so numerous, that the whole contents of the tavern—men, women, benches, tankards,
drinkers, sleepers, gamblers, the able-bodied and the crippled—seemed thrown pell-mell together, with
about as much order and harmony as a heap of oysters hells. A few tallow candles guttered on the table;
but the real source of light to the tavern, that which sustained in the cabaret the character of the
chandelier in an opera house, was the fire. This cellar was so damp that the fire was never allowed to go
out, even in the height of summer; an immense fireplace with a carved chimney piece, and crowded with
heavy andirons and cooking utensils, contained one of those huge fires of wood and turf which in a
village street at night cast the deep red glow of the forge windows on the opposite wall. A great dog,
gravely seated in the ashes, was turning a spit hung with meat.
In spite of the prevailing confusion, after the first glance three principal groups might be singled out,
pressing round the several personages already known to the reader. One of these personages,
fantastically benzene with many an Oriental gaudy, was Manias Hungary Spica, Duke of Egypt and
Bohemia. The old rogue was seated cross legged on a table, his finger upraised, exhibiting in a loud
voice his skill in white and black magic to many an open-mouthed face that surrounded him.
Another crowd was gathered thick round our old friend the King of Tunis, armed to the teeth. Clop in
Trouillefou, with a very serious mien and in a low voice, was superintending the ransacking of an
enormous cask full of arms staved open before him and disgorging a profusion of axes, swords, firelocks,
coats of mail, lance and pike heads, crossbows and arrows, like apples and grapes from a cornucopia.
Each one took something from the heap—one a morion, another a rapier, a third a cross-hilted dagger.
The very children were arming, and even the worst cripples, mere torsos of men, all barbed and
cuirassed, were crawling about among the legs of the drinkers like so many great beetles.
And lastly, a third audience—much the noisiest, most jovial, and numerous of the lot—crowded the
benches and tables, listening to the haranguing and swearing of a flutelike voice which proceeded from a
figure dressed in a complete suit of heavy armour from casque to spurs. The individual thus trussed up in
full panoply was so buried under his warlike accoutrements that nothing of his person was visible but an
impudent tip-tilted nose, a lock of golden hair, a rosy mouth, and a pair of bold blue eyes. His belt
bristled with daggers and poniards, a large sword hung at one side, a rusty cross-bow at the other, a vast
jug of wine stood before him, and in his right arm he held a strapping wench with uncovered bosom.
Every mouth in his neighbourhood was laughing, drinking, swearing.
Add to these twenty minor groups; the serving men and women running to and fro with wine and