Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com

“Ohé! Hennequin Dandéche! Ohé! Jehan Pincebourde!” they bawled at the pitch of their voices, “old
Eustache Moubon, the ironmonger at the corner, is just dead. We’ve got his straw mattress, and we’re
going to make a bonfire of it. Come on!”
And with that they flung the mattress right on top of Grainier, whom they had come up to without
perceiving, while at the same time one of them took a handful of straw and lit it at the Blessed Virgin’s
lamp.
“Mort-Christ!” gasped Grainier, “am I going to be too hot now?”
The moment was critical. He was on the point of being caught between fire and water. He made a
superhuman effort—such as a coiner would make to escape being boiled alive—staggered to his feet,
heaved the mattress back upon the boys, and fled precipitately.
“Holy Virgin!” yelled the gamins, “it is the ironmonger’s ghost!”
And they too ran away.
The mattress remained master of the field. Belleforêt, Father Le Juge, and Corrozet assert that next day
it was picked up by the clergy of that district and conveyed with great pomp and ceremony to the
treasury of the Church of Saint Opportune, where, down to 1789 the sacristan drew a handsome income
from the great miracle worked by the image of the Virgin at the corner of the Rue Mauconseil, the which,
by its mere presence, had on the memorable night between the sixth and seventh of January, 1482,
exorcised the defunct Eustache Moubon, who, to balk the devil, had, when dying, cunningly hidden his
soul in his mattress.
VI. The Broken Pitcher
AFTER running for some time as fast as his legs could carry him without knowing whither, rushing head
foremost into many a street corner, leaping gutters, traversing numberless alleys, courts, and streets,
seeking flight and passage among the endless meanderings of the old street round the Halles, exploring in
his blind panic what the elegant Latin of the Charters describes as “tota via, cheminum et viaria,” our
poet suddenly drew up short, first because he was out of breath, and secondly because an unexpected
idea gripped his mind.
“It appears to me, Maitre Pierre Grainier,” he apostrophized himself, tapping his forehead, “that you
must be demented to run thus. Those little ragamuffins were just as frightened of you as you of them. If I
mistake not, you heard the clatter of their sabots making off southward, while you were fleeing to the
north. Now of two things one: either they ran away, and the mattress, forgotten in their flight, is precisely
the hospitable bed you have been searching for since the morning, and which Our Lady conveys to you
miraculously as a reward for having composed in her honour a Morality accompanied by triumphs and
mummeries; or, on the other hand, the boys have not run away, and, in that case, they have set fire to the
mattress, which will be exactly the fire you are in need of to cheer, warm, and dry you. In either
case—good fire or good bed—the mattress is a gift from Heaven. The thrice-blessed Virgin Mary at the
corner of the Rue Mauconseil has maybe caused Eustache Moubon to die for that identical purpose, and
it is pure folly on your part to rush off headlong, like a Picard running from a Frenchman, leaving behind
what you are seeking in front—decidedly you are an idiot!”