Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com

Trahoir, the Marché-aux-Pourceaux or pig-market, awful Montfaucon, the Barrière-des-Sergents, the
Place-au-Chats, the Porte Saint-Denis, Champeaux, the Porte Baudets, the Porte Saint-Jacques, not to
mention the pillories under the jurisdiction of the Bishop, of the Chapters, of the Abbots, of the Priors;
nor the judicial drownings in the Seine—it is consoling, we repeat, to reflect that after losing, one by one,
all the pieces of its dread panoply: its multiplicity of executions, its fantastically cruel sentences, its rack
at the Grand Châtelet—the leather stretcher of which had to be renewed every five years—that ancient
suzerain of feudal society is to-day well-nigh banished from our laws and our cities, tracked from code to
code, hunted from place to place, till in all great Paris it has but one dishonoured corner it can call its
own—in the Place de Grève; but one wretched guillotine, furtive, craven, shameful, that always seems to
fear being caught red-handed, so quickly does it vanish after dealing its fatal blow.
III. Besos Para Golpes
BY 22 the time Pierre Grainier reached the Place de Grève he was chilled to the bone. He had made his
way across the Pont-aux-Meuniers—the Millers’ bridge—to avoid the crowd on the Pont-au-Change and
the sight of Jehan Fourbault’s banners; but the wheel of the episcopal mills had splashed him as he
passed, and his coat was wet through. In addition, it seemed to him that the failure of his play made him
feel the cold more keenly. He hastened, therefore, to get near the splendid bonfire burning in the middle
of the Place, but found it surrounded by a considerable crowd.
“Perdition take these Parisians!” said he to himself—for as a true dramatic poet, Grainier was greatly
addicted to monologue—“now they prevent me getting near the fire—and Heaven knows I have need of
a warm corner! My shoes are veritable sponges, and those cursed mill-wheels have been raining upon
me. Devil take the Bishop of Paris and his mills! I’d like to know what a bishop wants with a mill. Does
he expect he may some day have to turn miller instead of bishop? If he is only waiting for my curse to
effect this transformation, he is welcome to it, and may it include his cathedral and his mills as well.
Now, let us see if these varlets will make room for me. What are they doing there, I’d like to know.
Warming themselves—a fine pleasure indeed! Watching a pile of fagots burn—a grand spectacle, i’
faith!”
On looking closer, however, he perceived that the circle was much wider than necessary for merely
warming one’s self at the King’s bonfire, and that such a crowd of spectators was not attracted solely by
the beauty of a hundred blazing fagots. In the immense space left free between the crowd and the fire a
girl was dancing, but whether she was a human being, a sprite, or an angel, was what Grainier—sceptical
philosopher, ironical poet though he might be—was unable for the moment to determine, so dazzled was
he by the fascinating vision.
She was not tall, but her slender and elastic figure made her appear so. Her skin was brown, but one
guessed that by day it would have the warm golden tint of the Andalusian and Roman women. Her small
foot too, so perfectly at ease in its narrow, graceful shoe, was quite Andalusian. She was dancing,
pirouetting, whirling on an old Persian carpet spread carelessly on the ground, and each time her radiant
face passed before you, you caught the flash of her great dark eyes.
The crowd stood round her open-mouthed, every eye fixed upon her, and in truth, as she danced thus to
the drumming of a tambourine held high above her head by her round and delicate arms, slender, fragile,
airy as a wasp, with her gold-laced bodice closely moulded to her form, her bare shoulders, her gaily
striped skirt swelling out round her, affording glimpses of her exquisitely shaped limbs, the dusky masses