Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com

listening to. In general, the murmur that rises up from Paris during the daytime is the city talking; at night
it is the city breathing; but this is the city singing. Lend your ear, then, to this tutti of the bells; diffuse
over the ensemble the murmur of half a million of human beings, the eternal plaint of the river, the
ceaseless rushing of the wind, the solemn and distant quartet of the four forests set upon the hills, round
the horizon, like so many enormous organ-cases; muffle in this, as in a sort of twilight, all of the great
central peal that might otherwise be too hoarse or too shrill, and then say whether you know of anything
in the world more rich, more blithe, more golden, more dazzling, than this tumult of bells and
chimes—this furnace of music, these ten thousand brazen voices singing at once in flutes of stone, three
hundred feet high—this city which is now but one vast orchestra—this symphony with the mighty uproar
of a tempest.
Book IV
I. Charitable Souls
SIXTEEN years before the events here recorded took place early on Quasimodo or Low-Sunday
morning, a human creature had been deposited after Mass on the plank bed fastened to the pavement on
the left of the entrance to Notre Dame, opposite the “great image” of Saint Christopher, which the
kneeling stone figure of Messire Antoine des Essarts, knight, had contemplated since 1413. Upon this
bed it was customary to expose foundling children to the charity of the public; any one could take them
away who chose. In front of the bed was a copper basin for the reception of alms.
The specimen of humanity lying on this plank on the morning of Quasimodo-Sunday, in the year of our
Lord 1467, seemed to invite, in a high degree, the curiosity of the very considerable crowd which had
collected round it. This crowd was largely composed of members of the fair sex; in fact, there were
hardly any but old women.
In front of the row of spectators, stooping low over the bed, were four of them whom by their gray
cagoules—a kind of hooded cassock—one recognised as belonging to some religious order. I see no
reason why history should not hand down to posterity the names of these discreet and venerable dames.
They were: Agnès la Herme, Jehanne de la Tarme, Henriette la Gaultière, and Gauchére la Violette—all
four widows, all four bedes-women of the Chapelle Etienne-Haudry, who, with their superior’s
permission, and conformably to the rules of Pierre d’Ailly, had come to hear the sermon.
However, if these good sisters were observing for the moment the rules of Pierre d’Ailly, they were
certainly violating to their heart’s content those of Michel de Brache and the Cardinal of Pisa, which so
inhumanly imposed silence upon them.
“What can that be, sister?” said Agnès la Herme as she gazed at the little foundling, screaming and
wriggling on its wooden pallet, terrified by all these staring eyes.
“What are we coming to,” said Jehanne, “if this is the kind of children they bring into the world now?”
“I am no great judge of children,” resumed Agnès, “but it must surely be a sin to look at such a one as
this.”
“It’s not a child, Agnès.”