Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com

here, the dead was alive.
The King began pacing slowly round this small edifice, examining it with care, while Maître Olivier,
who followed him, read aloud the items of the account:
“For making a great wooden cage of heavy beams, joists, and rafters, measuring nine feet in length and
eight in breadth, and seven feet high between roof and floor, mortised and bolted with great iron bolts;
which has been placed in a certain chamber situated in one of the towers of the Bastille Saint-Antoine; in
the which said cage is put and kept by command of our lord the King a prisoner, who before inhabited an
old, decayed, and unserviceable cage. Used in the building of the said new cage, ninety-six horizontal
beams and fifty-two perpendicular, ten joists, each three toises long. Employed in squaring, planing, and
fitting the same woodwork in the yard of the Bastille, nineteen carpenters for twenty days——”
“Fine solid timber, that!” remarked the King, rapping his knuckles on the wood.
“Used in this cage,” continued the other, “two hundred and twenty great iron bolts nine feet and eight
feet long, the rest of medium length, together with the plates and nuts for fastening the said bolts; the
said iron weighing in all three thousand seven hundred and thirty-five pounds; besides eight heavy iron
clamps for fixing the said cage in its place, altogether two hundred and eighteen pounds; without
reckoning the iron of the grating to the windows of the chamber and other items——”
“Here’s a deal of iron to restrain the levity of a spirit!”
“—The whole amounts to three hundred and seventeen livres, five sols, seven deniers.”
“Pasque-Dieu!” exclaimed the King. This oath, which was the favourite one of Louis XI, apparently
aroused some one inside the cage; there was sound of clanking chains being dragged across its floor,
and a feeble voice that seemed to issue from the tomb, wailed: “Sire! Sire, mercy!” The speaker was not
visible.
“Three hundred and seventeen livres, five sols, seven deniers!” repeated Louis XI.
The voice of lamentation which had issued from the cage chilled the blood of all present, even Maître
Olivier. The King alone gave no evidence of having heard it. At this command Olivier resumed his
reading, and his Majesty coolly continued his inspection of the cage.
“Besides the above, there has been paid to a mason, for making the holes to fix the window-grating and
the flooring of the chamber containing the cage, forasmuch as the floor would not otherwise have
supported the said cage by reason of its weight—twenty-seven livres, fourteen sols parisis——”
The voice began its wailing again. “Mercy, Sire! I swear to you it was Monsieur the Cardinal of Angers
who committed the treason—not I!”
“The mason’s charge is exorbitant!” said the King. “Go on, Olivier.”
Olivier went on: “To a joiner for window-frames, bedstead, closet-stool, and other things—twenty
livres, two sols parisis——”
The voice also went on: “Woe is me, Sire! will you not hear me? I protest it was not I who wrote that to
the Duke of Guyenne, but Monsieur the Cardinal Balue!”