BOOK IV.

CHAPTER I.

KINDLY SOULS.

It was sixteen years before the period of our story, one fine morning, on Quasimodo Sunday,1 that a young child had been deposited, after Mass, in the cathedral church of Notre-Dame, upon the bedstead fixed in the pavement on the left hand of the entrance, opposite to that great image of Saint Christopher which the stone figure of Messire Antoine des Essarts, knight, had been contemplating on his knees since the year 1413, at the time that it was thought proper to throw down both the saint and his faithful adorer. Upon this bedstead it was customary to expose foundlings to the charity of the public; any one took them that chose; and in the front of the bedstead was placed a copper basin for the reception of alms.

The sort of living creature that was found lying upon these planks on the morning of Quasimodo Sunday, in the year of our Lord 1467, appeared to excite, in a high degree, the curiosity of a very considerable group of persons collected round the bedstead, and consisting in great measure of individuals of the fair sex. Indeed, they were nearly all old

women.

In the front line of the spectators, and stooping the most intently over the bedstead, were to be seen four of them, who by their gray cagoule (a sort of cassock) appeared to be attached to some devout sisterhood. We know not why history should not hand down to posterity the names of these discreet and venerable demoiselles. They were Agnès la Herme, Jehanne de la Tarme, Henriette la Gaultière, and Gauchère la Violette; all four widows, all four bonnes-femmes of the Chapelle Étienne Haudry, who had come thus far from their house, with their mistress's leave, and conformably to the statutes of Pierre d'Ailly, to hear the sermon.

However, if these good Haudriettes were observing for the moment the statutes of Pierre d'Ailly, assuredly they were violating, to their heart's content, those of Michel de Brache and the Cardinal of Pisa, which so inhumanly prescribed silence to them.

"What can that be, sister?" said Agnès to Gauchère, as she looked at the little exposed creature, which lay screaming and twisting itself about upon the bedstead, frightened at being looked at by so many people.

"Bless me," said Jehanne, "what's to become of us all, if that's the way they make children now?"

"I'm no great judge of children," resumed Agnès, "but it must surely be a sin to look at such a one as this!"

"It's no child at all, Agnès -” "It's a misshapen baboon," observed Gauchère. "It's a miracle," said Henriette la Gaultière. "Then," remarked Agnès, "this is the third since Lætare Sunday; for it's not a week since we had the miracle of the mocker of pilgrims divinely punished by Our Lady of Aubervilliers, and that was the second miracle of the month."

"This pretended foundling's a very monster of abomination," resumed Jehanne.

"He brawls loud enough to deafen a chanter," added Gauchère ; "hold your tongue, you little bellower!"

"To say that it's monsieur of Reims that sends this monstrosity to monsieur of Paris!" exclaimed La Gaultière, clasping her hands.

"I imagine," said Agnès la Herme, "that it's some strange animal - the offspring of some beastly Jew or other - something, at all events, that's not Christian, and so must be thrown into the water or into the fire."

"Surely," resumed La Gaultière, "nobody'll ask to have it!"

"Ah, my God!" exclaimed Agnès, "those poor nurses that live down there in the foundling-house at the bottom of the alley, going down to the river, close by the lord bishop's, - suppose some one should go and take them this little monster to suckle! I'd rather give suck to a vampire."

"Is she a simpleton, that poor La Herme!" rejoined Jehanne. "Don't you see, my dear sister, that this little monster is at least four years old, and would n't have half so much appetite for your breast as for a piece of roast meat."

In fact, the "little monster" (for we ourselves should be much puzzled to give it any other denomination) was not a new-born infant. It was a little, angular, restless mass, imprisoned in a canvas bag marked with the cipher of Messire Guillaume Chartier, then Bishop of Paris, - with a head peeping out at one end of it. This head was very deformed, exhibiting only a forest of red hair, one eye, a mouth, and some teeth. The eye was weeping, the mouth was crying, and the teeth seemed to desire, above all things, to bite. The whole lump was struggling violently in the bag, to the great wonderment of the increasing and incessantly renewing crowd around it.

Dame Aloïse de Gondelaurier, a wealthy and noble lady, holding by the hand a pretty little girl about six years of age, and drawing after her a long veil attached to the golden horn of her coif, stopped as she was passing before the bedstead, and looked for a moment at the unfortunate creature; while her charming little daughter, Fleur-de-Lys de Gondelaurier, all clad in silk and velvet, was spelling with her pretty finger, upon the permanent label attached to the bedstead, the words ENFANTS TROUVÉS.

"Really," said the lady, turning away with disgust, "I thought they exposed here nothing but children."

She turned her back, at the same time throwing into the basin a silver florin, which rang among the liards, and opened wide the eyes of the poor bonnesfemmes of the Chapelle Étienne Haudry.

A moment afterwards, the grave and learned Robert Mistricolle, king's prothonotary, passed by, with an enormous missal under one arm and his wife under the other (Damoiselle Guillemette-laMairesse), having thus at his side his two regulators, the spiritual and the temporal.

"Foundling, indeed!" said he, after examining the living lump; "yes - found, apparently, upon the parapet of the river Phlegethon!"

"It has but one eye visible," observed Damoiselle Guillemette; "it has a great wart upon the other."

"It's no wart," exclaimed Maître Robert Mistricolle; "it's an egg, that contains just such another demon, which has upon its eye another little egg enclosing another devil and so on."

"How do you know that?" asked Guillemette-laMairesse.

"I know it for very sufficient reasons," answered the prothonotary.

"Monsieur the prothonotary," asked Gauchère, "what do you prognosticate from this pretended foundling?"

"The greatest calamities," answered Mistricolle. "Ah, my God!" said an old woman among the bystanders, "withal that there was a consider able pestilence last year, and that they say the English are going to land in great company at Harfleur!"

"Perhaps that 'll prevent the queen from coming