that bad taste may offer good taste, they offer. At this very hour deplorable spectacle! - some of them have possession of the Tuileries. One of them has made a deep gash in the very middle of the beautiful face of Philibert Delorme. And certainly we cannot consider it one of the least scandalous indications of our times, when we witness with what effrontery the clumsy architecture of this gentleman has written its sprawling lines over one of the most delicate façades of the Renaissance. PARIS, October 20, 1832. NOTRE-DAME. BOOK I. CHAPTER I. THE GREAT HALL. EXACTLY three hundred and forty-eight years, six months, and nineteen days have passed away since the Parisians were awakened by the noise of all the bells within the triple walls of the city, the University, and the town, ringing a full peal. Yet the 6th of January, 1482, was not a day of which history has preserved any record. There was nothing remarkable in the event which thus put in agitation so early in the morning the bells and the good people of Paris. It was neither an assault of Picards or of Burgundians, nor a shrine carried in procession, nor a revolt of scholars in the vigne de Laas, nor an entry of their most dread lord the king, nor a grand hanging up of thieves, male and female, at the Justice de Paris. Neither was it the sudden arrival, so frequent in the fifteenth century, of some ambassador and his train, all covered with lace and plumes. Scarcely two days had elapsed since the last cavalcade of this sort - that of the VOL. I.-1 Flemish envoys commissioned to conclude the marriage treaty between the Dauphin and Margaret of Flanders-had made its entry into Paris, to the great annoyance of Monsieur le Cardinal de Bourbon, who, to please the king, had been obliged to give a gracious reception to that rude train of Flemish burgomasters, and entertain them, at his Hôtel de Bourbon, with one of the rude dramatic exhibitions of the time, while a beating rain drenched the magnificent tapestry at his door. But on the 6th of January, that which set in motion the whole populaire of Paris, as old Jean de Troyes tells us, was the double holiday, united since time immemorial, - the Kings' Day and the Festival of Fools. On that day a bonfire was to be made in the Place de Grève, a maypole planted at the Chapelle de Braque, and a mystery performed at the Palais de Justice. Proclamation to that effect had been made the day before, by sound of trumpet, at the crossings of the streets, by the provost's men, dressed in fine sleeveless frocks of violet-colored camlet, with large white crosses on the breast. The crowd of people accordingly set out in the morning from all quarters of the town, leaving houses and shops shut up, towards one of the three places appointed. Each one had made his choice, for the bonfire, the maypole, or the mystery. It must be said, however, to the praise of the ancient good sense of the Parisian cockneys, that the greater part of the multitude directed their steps towards the bonfire, which was perfectly seasonable, or to |