Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com

with a wide mass of shadow. The city appeared to be rousing itself from its slumbers. Distant tocsins
uttered their warning plaints. The truands howled, panted, blasphemed, and climbed steadily higher,
while Quasimodo, impotent against so many enemies, trembling for the gipsy girl as he saw those savage
faces approaching nearer and nearer to his gallery, implored a miracle from heaven, and wrung his
hands in despair.
V. The Closet Where Monsieur Louis of France Recites His Orisons
THE READER perhaps remembers that Quasimodo, a moment before catching sight of the nocturnal
band of truands and scrutinizing Paris from the height of his steeple, saw but a single remaining light
twinkling at a window in the topmost storey of a grim and lofty building beside the Porte Saint-Antoine.
The building was the Bastille, the twinkling light was the taper of Louis XI.
The King had, in fact, been in Paris these two days past, and was to set out again the next day but one
for his citadel of Montilz-les-Tours. He made but rare and short visits to his good city of Paris, not
feeling himself sufficiently surrounded there by pitfalls, gibbets, and Scottish archers.
That day he had come to sleep at the Bastille. The great chamber, five toises square, which he had at
the Louvre, with its splendid chimney-pieces bearing the effigies of twelve great beasts and thirteen great
prophets, and his bed, eleven feet by twelve, were little to his taste. He felt lost amid all these grandeurs.
The good homely King preferred the Bastille, with a chamber and bed of more modest proportions;
besides, the Bastille was stronger than the Louvre.
This chambrette which the King reserved for his own use in the famous prison was spacious enough,
nevertheless, and occupied the uppermost storey of a turret forming part of the donjon-keep. It was a
circular apartment hung with matting of shining straw, the rafters of the ceiling being decorated with
raised fleurs de lis in gilt metal interspaced with colour, and wainscotted with rich carvings sprinkled
with metal rosettes and painted a beautiful vivid green made of a mixture of orpiment and fine indigo.
There was but one window, a long pointed one, latticed by iron bars and iron wire, and still further
darkened with fine glass painted with the arms of the King and Queen, each pane of which had cost
twenty-two sols.
There was also but one entrance, a door of the contemporary style under a flattened arch, furnished
inside with a tapestry hanging, and outside with one of those porches of Irish wood—delicate structures
of elaborately wrought cabinet-work which still abounded in old mansions a hundred and fifty years ago.
“Although they disfigure and encumber the places,” says Sauval in desperation, “our old people will not
have them removed, but keep them in spite of everybody.”
Not a single article of the ordinary furniture of a room was to be seen here—neither benches, nor
trestles, nor forms; neither common box-stools, nor handsome ones supported by pillars and carved feet
at four sols apiece. There was one folding arm-chair only, a very magnificent one, its frame painted with
roses on a crimson ground, and the seat of crimson Cordova leather with a quantity of gold-headed
nails. The solitary state of this chair testified to the fact that one person alone was entitled to be seated in
the room. Beside the chair and close under the window was a table covered by a cloth wrought with
figures of birds. On the table was a much-used inkstand, a few sheets of parchment, some pens, and a
goblet of chased silver; farther off, a charcoal brasier and a prie-dieu covered with crimson velvet and
ornamented with gold bosses. Finally, at the other end of the room, an unpretentious bed of red and