of domestic architecture of the Middle Ages, going back from the fifteenth to the eleventh century; from the perpendicular window which was beginning to supersede the Gothic, to the circular arch which the Gothic had supplanted, and which still occupied underneath it the first story of that ancient house of the Tour-Rolland (or Roland's Tower), at the angle of the Place adjoining to the Seine, on the side of the Rue de la Tannerie. By night, nothing was distinguishable of that mass of buildings but the black indentation of their line of gables, extending its range of acute angles round three sides of the Place. For it is one of the essential differences between the towns of that day and those of the present, that now it is the fronts of the houses that look to the squares and streets, but then it was the backs. For two centuries post they have been turned fairly round.

In the centre of the eastern side of the Place rose a heavy and heterogeneous pile formed by three masses of building in juxtaposition. The whole was called by three several names, expressing its history, its purpose, and its architecture; it was called the Maison-au-Dauphin (or Dauphin's House), because Charles V., when dauphin, had lived in it; the Marchandise, because it was used as the Hôtel-de-Ville (or Town House); and the Maison-aux-Piliers (domus ad piloria, or Pillared House), on account of a series of large pillars which supported its three stories. The Town had there all that a good town like Paris wants, - a chapel to pray in; a plaidoyer (or courtroom), for holding magisterial sittings, and, on occasion, reprimanding the king's officers; and at the top of all, a magazine stored with artillery and ammunition. For the good people of Paris, well knowing that it was not sufficient, in every emergency, to plead and to pray for the franchises of their city, had always in reserve, in the garrets of the Hôtel-deVille, some few good rusty arquebusses or other.

La Grève (as this ancient square was familiarly and elliptically called) had then that sinister aspect which it still derives from the execrable ideas which it awakens, and from the gloomy-looking Hôtel-deVille, of Dominique Bocador's erection, which has taken the place of the Maison-aux-Piliers. It must be observed that a permanent gibbet and pillory, a justice and an échelle, as they were then called, erected side by side in the middle of the square, contributed not a little to make the passenger avert his eyes from this fatal spot, where so many beings in full life and health had suffered their last agony, and which was to give birth, fifty years later, to that Saint Vallier's fever, as it was called, - that terror of the scaffold, the most monstrous of all maladies, because it is inflicted not by the hand of God, but by that of man.

It is consolatory, let us observe, to reflect that capital punishment, which three centuries ago, with its iron wheels, with its stone gibbets, with all its apparatus for execution permanently fixed in the ground, still obstructed the Grève, the Halles, the Place Dauphine, the Croix du Trahoir, the Marché aux Pourceaux, the hideous Montfaucon, the Barrière des Sergents, the Place aux Chats, the Porte Saint-Denis, Champeaux, the Porte Baudets, the Porte Saint-Jacques, not to mention the innumerable échelles of the provosts, of the bishop, of the chapters, of the abbots, of the priors having justice, not to mention the judicial drownings in the river Seine, - it is consolatory to reflect, that now this ancient Dame to whom feudal society rendered its allegiance, every piece of her panoply, her profusion of executions, her refined and fanciful torments, her torture, for applying which she made afresh every five years a bed of leather in the Grand-Châtelet, lost one after another, herself nearly thrust out of our laws and towns, tracked from code to code, driven from place to place, now possesses in our vast metropolis of Paris but one dishonored corner of the Grève, but one miserable guillotine, stealthy, anxious, ashamed, afraid always, it seems, of being taken in the fact, so quickly does it disappear after giving its blow.

CHAPTER III.

BESOS PARA GOLPES.

WHEN Pierre Gringoire arrived at the Place de Grève, he was in a shiver. He had gone over the Pont-aux-Meuniers (or Miller's Bridge) to avoid the crowd on the Pont-au-Change and Jehan Fourbault's drapelets; but the wheels of all the bishop's mills had splashed him as he went by, so that his coat was wet through; and he thought that the fate of his piece had rendered him yet more chilly. Accordingly, he hastened towards the bonfire which was burning magnificently in the middle of the Place; but a considerable crowd encircled it.

"You damned Parisians!" said he to himself (for Gringoire, like a true dramatic poet, was subject to monologues), "so now you keep me from the fire! And yet I've some occasion for a chimney-corner: my shoes let in wet; and then, all those cursed mills have been raining upon me. The devil take the Bishop of Paris with his mills! I wonder what a bishop can do with a mill! Does he expect from being a bishop to turn miller? If he only wants my malediction to do so, I heartily give it him, and his cathedral, and his mills. Let us see now if any of these cockneys will stand aside. What are they doing there all this while? Warming themselves? a fine pleasure, truly! Looking at a hundred logs burning? - a fine sight, to be sure!"

On looking nearer, however, he perceived that the circle was much wider than was requisite to warm themselves comfortably at the bonfire, and that this concourse of spectators were not attracted solely by the beauty of a hundred blazing logs.

In a wide space left clear between the fire and the crowd a young girl was dancing. Whether she was a human being, a fairy, or an angel, was what Gringoire, sceptical philosopher and ironical poet as he was, could not at the first moment decide, so much was he fascinated by this dazzling vision.

She was not tall, but the elasticity of her slender shape made her appear so. She was brown; but it was evident that in the daylight her complexion would have that golden glow seen upon the women of Andalusia and of the Roman States. Her small foot too was Andalusian; for it was at once tight and easy in its light and graceful shoe. She was dancing, turning, whirling, upon an old Persian carpet spread negligently under her feet; and each time that, in turning round, her radiant countenance passed before you, her large black eyes seemed to flash upon you.

Around every look was fixed upon her, every mouth was open ; and, indeed, while she was dancing thus to the sound of the tambourine which her two round and delicate arms lifted aloft above her head, - slender, fragile, brisk as a wasp in the sunshine, with her golden corset without a plait, her parti-colored skirt swelling out below her slender