Beadle's New York Dime Library, No. 144 — page 15: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

mete oe \ —_ ’ ee ee ee —s THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE-DAME. 15 black specks crossing each other on the pavement, | its roof; the hotel of the abbot St.Maur, having the! perceptible between two chimneys of the Rue de la caused everything to appear in motion to the eye: these were the elevated station of the spectator. — Lastly, in the intervals between those roofs, those spires, and those numberless peculiarities of buildings which waved, notched, twisted, the outline of the Uni. versity in so whimsical a manner, were to be seen, here and there, tue mossy frayment of a massive wall, a solid round tower, an embattled gateway, belonging to the inclosure of Philip Augustus. Beyond these were green fields ad high roads, along which were a few striae houses, which became thinner and thinner. in the distance. .Some of these suburban hamlets were already places of consequence. Setting out from la Tournelle, there was first the Bourg St. Victor, with its bridge of ope arch over the Bieve, its abbey, where was to be seen the epitaph of Louis le Gros, and its church with an octagon steeple flanked by four beltries of the eleventh century ; then the Bourg St. Marceau which had already three churches and a convent; then leav- ingthe mill of the Gobelins and its four white walls on the left, there was the taubourg St. Jacques, with its beautiful sculptured cross ; the Church of St. Jacques du Haut Pas, a charming pointed Gothic structure ; St, Magloire, »# beautiful nave of the fourteenth century, converted Pg Napoleon into a magazine for hay: Notre- Dame des amps, containing Byzantine mosaics. Lastly, after leaving in the open country the Carthusian convent, a rich sturcture contemporary with tlie Palace of Justice, and the ruins of Vauvert, the haunt of dan- gerous persons, the éye fell, to the west, upon the three | Roman pinnacles of St. Germain des Pres. The village | ably sharp and elevated roof of the modern palace, of St. Germain, already alarge parish was composed | | clumps oi old oaks here and there forming tufts like | with ivy, gates in ruins, erumtling and sha appearance of a castle, a strong tower, por'tcullises, Cossenerie ; the ladder of the Croix du Trahoir, in its | the escutcheon of the abbot; the hotel of the Count4 of the Halle au Ble; the remains of the ancient in- | d'Etampes, the keep of which, in ruin at the top, ap-/ closure of Philip Augustus, to be distinguished here | peared jagged to the eye like the comb of ‘a cock; and there, drowned by the houses, towers 7 — ess - enormous Caulifiowers; swans disporting ‘in the cleat) ments of walls ; the quay, with its thousan shops and water of the fish-ponds, all streaked with light and its bloody slaughter-houses,; the Seine covered with shade; the dwelling of the lions with its low, pointed” craft, from the Port an Foin to the For-L’Eveque, and arches supported by short Saxon pillars, its iron grat- | you will have a taint image of the central trapezium of | ing, and its perpetual bellowing; beyond all these the | the Ville as it was im 1452 scaly spire of the Ave Maria; ov the leit the residence of the provost ot Paris, flanked by four turrets of deli- | otherof louses, the Ville presented at cate workmauship; at the bottom,;in the cefter, the Hotel St. Pol, properly so called, with its numerous | circumference frem west to east, and form | facades, its successive erbellish ments from the time of | inclosure of convents and chapels within, that of the Charles V., the bybrid excrescenees with Which the) fortificatfons which encon:passed Paris. whims of architects had loaded it in the course of two centuries, with all the apsides of {ts ¢hupel§, all the gables of its galleries, a thousand weatliercocks mark- ing the four winds, and its two lofty contiguous towers, whosge coni¢al roots, surrounded at their base with bat- | only by the wall of Paris. people diminished by distance and the | loopholes, bastions, and over the large Saxon doorway crossing always black with. people; the circular walls gardens and cultivated growmdls, which were b Besides these two quarters, the one of palaces, the bird ieature—a Thus, imme- . diately adjvining’ to the park of Tournelles, between — the Street St. Autoine and the old street of the Temple, .. thete was St. Catherine's, with its.imu.ense extent of ~ Between the old and the a Stellan eee ae A long zorie’of abbeys, which bordered yeah whale | & secon tlements, looked like sharp-pointed hats with thé brims | new street of the Temple there wes the Temple, yng : turned out, | tall cluster ot ‘gloonry toavers, stauding. in the, cen Continuing to ascend that amphitheatre of palaces | of a vas€ embattled inclosure.. Between the new street. - spredd out far over the ground, after erossing a “deep ravine parting the roofs of the Ville, the eve arrived at the logis d’Angouleme, a vast pile erected at various periods, parts of which were quite new and white, and harmonized no better with the whole than a red patch upon a blue doublet. At the same time the remark- des Presalone. Between the streets, of St. Martin and / St. Denisowas the inclosure of between the streets ot St. Denis and. Montorgueil, covered with lead, upon which glistening inerustations | Filles Diew. Busides the latter were to be seen, of fifteen or twenty streets in the rear; the sharp spire, of gilt copper rolled themselyes in a thousan” fan-| tumbling roo’s and the unpaved area of the Cour dea, of St. Sulpice marked one of the cornérs ot the bourg. | tastic arabesqnes, that roof so: curiously damasked, | Miracles. It was the only profaue link that intruded Close to it closure of the Fair of St. Germain, the site of the pretty little circular tower well covered with a cone of t be distinguished the quadrangular in- , gracefully Iitted itself from amidst the embrowvyed \ itself into this chain of convents, ruins of the ancient bnilding, whose old, chimsy tow- | ; present market; next, the ape of the abbey, @ ers, hellying Casks, and ctackea from top to bottom, | ficiently cbvions of itself in the agglomeration of-build-. , eb The fourth and last con were ready to tumble to pietes with ages Tu the rear) ingson the right bank which ocqupied the western of the Temple aud tiie street St. Murtin was the abbey: — of St. Martin, antidst its gardens—a superb fortified . church, whose girdle of towers and tiara of steeplom were surpassed in strength aud splendor by St. Germain thé Trinity ; and lastly, — ies ¢ rtment, which »was suf- lead ; the tile-kiln was further off, so were the Rue du 1 rosé the forest of spires of the palace ot the Tournelles. | dngle of the inclosure and covered the margin of the Four, which led to the mavorial oven, the mill, and | There was not a viewin the world, not exceptitig Cham- | river, was a uew knot of palaces and mansi ns that had re a aa tbe hespital for lepers, a small detached building but | bord or the Alhambra, more acrial, more impressive, indistinctly seen. ut what particularly attracted attention and fixed it for some time on this point, was the aby steht, ah is certain met this cen Spel which bad an a ernnes re) achurch and ae 8 pe residence, this a ene also, where the bishops o entertained for a night, that refectory to which t architect had given the air, thé beauty, and the eplen- did window of a cathedral, that elegant chapel of the Virgin, that noble dormitory, those spacious ote that portctllis, that drawbridge, that girdle of battle- ments cut out tothe eye upon the green sward of the surrounding fields, those courts where men-at-arms glistened among co of gold—the whole collerted and grou around three lofty.spires with. circular arches, firmly seated upon a Gothic choir, formed a magnificent object against the horizon. When, at le , after attentively surpering. the University, you to the right bank, to the Ville, the character of the scene suddenly changes. The Ville, in, fact, much more extensive than the Univer- sity, was also less compact, At the first sight you perceived that it was composed of several masses re- Spaenabay Cesttes. In the first. place, to the east, in a marsh into which Cwsar was enticed by Camulogenes, there was a series of palaces. Four nearly contiguous mansions, the hotels of Jouy, Sens, Barbeau, and the Queen’s House, mirrored their slated roots, diversified with slender turrets, in the waters of the Seine. Those four buildings filled the space between the Rue des Nonaindiers and the Abbey of the Celestins, the spire their large quadrangular windows with stone frames and transoms, the pointed: arches of their porches, surcharged with statues, and all those charming freaks of architecture which give to Gothic art the air of resorting to fresh combinations in every building. In the rear of these palaces ran, in all directions, some- times palisaded and embattled like a castle, some- times embowered in great trees like a Carthusian convent, the immense and multiform inclosure of that marvelous Hotel of St. Pol, where the king of France had superb accommodation for twenty- two princes equal in rank to the dauphin and the Duke of Burgundy, with their attendants and retinues, without reckoning distinguished nobles, or the em- peror when he visited Paris, or the lions which had their hotel apart from the royal habitation. Be it here remarked that the-apartments of a prince in those days consisted of not fewer than eleven rooms, from the hall of. parade to the oratory ex- clusive of galleries, and baths,and stoves and otler “‘superfious places’’ attached to each set of apart- ments; to say nothing of the private gardens of each of the king’s guests; of the kitchen, the cellars, the serv- ants’ rooms, the general refectories of the household; of the offices, where there were twenty-two general laboratories, from the bakehouse tothe wine-cellar; of places appropriated to games of every sort, t!:e mall, tennis, the ring; of aviaries, fish-ponds, menageries, stables, libraries, arsenals, foundries; Such was then the palace of 4 king, a Louvre, an Hotel St. Pol. It was | a city within a city. From the tower where we have taken our station, the Hotel St. Pol, though almost half concealed by the four great buildings above-mentioned, was still a right good sight. The three hotels which Charles V. had incorporated with his palace, though skillfully united to the principal building by long galleries with windows and small pillars, might be perfectly dig- hed, These were the Hotels of the Petit Muce, with the light balustrade which gracefully’ bordered Paris deemed themselves fortunate to be | | more magical, than this wood of pinnacles, beltries, chimneys, weathercocks, spirals, screws, lanterns, per- forated asif they had been struck by a Dipping-tool, pavilions an’ turrets a)l differing in form, height, and altitude. You would have taken it for an immense chess-board of stone. ; ' . To the right of the Tournelles that cluster ot enor- mous towers, black as ink, running one into another, and bound together, as it were, a circular ditch; that keep containing many more loopholes than win- dows; that draw-bridge always up; that portcullis al- ways down—that is the Kastile. Those black muzzles protruding between the battlements, and which you take at a distance for gutters, are cannon. At the foot of this formidable edifice, just wider its guns, is the Gate St. Antoine, hidden between its two towers. Beyond the Tournelles, as far as the wall of Charles V., were spread out the royal parks, diversified with rich patches of verdure and flowers, amidst which might be recognized by its labyrinth of trees and alleys the iamous garden which Louis XI. gave to Coictier. The doctor's observatory rose above the maze in the sprung up at the foot of tie Louvre. The ol of Philip tower rallied around, it. twenty-three other. towers, without reckoning turrets, »ppeared at a distuuce to be encased in the Gothic sunimits of the. hotel Alencon and of the Petit Beurbon, That t towers, the giant guardian of Paris, with its twenty- four heads ever erect, with its awonstrous ridges, cased in lead or scaled with slate, and glistening all over with © the reflection of metals, terminated in a striking man- . ner the configuration of the Ville to the west. Thus, an immense island, ea the of common houses, Nanked on the t and left by clusters of palaces, crowned,the one by the Louvre, the other by the Tournellées, bezirt on the north by a long belt of abbeys, and cultivated. inclosures, whole blended and amalgamated to eye: e these thousands of buildings, whore tile and setea roofs fermed so many strange chains, the ta figured, carved steeples and spires of the forty-four churches of the right. Lamk; myriads.of streets run- ning iu all directions, bounded on the ong, bani. by a high wall with square towers (the wall of the Univer- sity had circular towers); on the other by the Seine form of a detached massive column, having a small intersected by bridges aud studded with cra.t—suc room fer its capital. In this laboratory were concocted | W#s the Ville jn the Afteent' century. town which is still named after he | terrible astrological predictions. The site of it is now occupied by the Place Royale.. ; As we have already observed, the quarter of the Pal- ace, of which we have eudeavored to give tle reader | some idea, filled the angle which the wall of Charles _V. formed with the Seine to the east, like cells in a hive, had its beauty. Thereis something grand in the houses of a capital, asin the waves of the sea. In the first place the streets, crossing and entwin- ing, formed a hundred amusing figures; the environs of the Halles looked like a star with a thousand rays. The streets of St. Denis and St. Martin, with their num- berless ramifications, ran up one beside the other like | two thiek trees intermingling their branches; and then the streets of la Platerie, la Verrerie, and la Tix-* eranderieé, wound oyer the whole. There were some handsome buildings that overtopped the petrified un- adulation of this sea of roofs. Atthe head of the Pont | aux Changeurs, behind which the Seine was seen foain- ing under the wheels of the Pont aux Meuniers, there was this Chatelet, no longer a Roman castle asin the | time of Juliam the Apostate, but a feudal castle of the thirteenth century, and of stone so hard that in three hours the pickaxe could not chip off a piece larger than your fist. There, too, was the rich square tower The center of ! ee ae _Jupiter—it was Montfaucon, | of St. Jacques de la Boucherie, with its angles all | blunted by sculptures, and already an object ot adini- ration, though it was not finished till the fifteenth century. ; | ' Tt had not then those four monsters which, | as fast as we -constructed it, we Beyond the walls, there were suburbs crowding - about the gates, but the honses cqmposi less DUinerous and more santlavel longing to the University. In the. year of the Bastile there were a score of huts prouped about the Cross of Faubin, with its curious sculptures, and the Abbey of St. Antoine des Chanis, wit : ‘them were inted towers; the fauubourg St. Denis, with the vast nclosure of St..Ladre; beyond the pate of Montmar-— - tre, la Grange Buteliere, belted witli » walls, behind it,.with its chalky declivities, Montmartre, which had then s#lmost as m churchés as wind- mills, but lias retained the mills only; for the terial brewl is now-a,days in more request. than epiritusl Lastly, bevond the Louvre were faubourg St. Honore, 7 seen the Louvre Augustus, that immense building, whose great . of hydra of . Romans termed it, then in those be-. | “ its flying buttresses; . | of which gracefully relieved their line of gables and ab igh, tees Mn fact. the rrdey Moe Pyac of the city then Popincourt, lost in the corntields, then Cour — battlements. Some greenish walls _ e water's | disgorged themselves on. the rivht bauk, and bridges ' fille, a jovial hamlet of . pot-louses; the Bourg St. edge, in front of these buildings, did not vent the 9 ae before palaces. This accumulation of | L@urent with its church, whose steeple seemed at a, eye from catching the beautiful angles of t fronts, dwellings of tradesmen and artizans, jammed together distance to belung to the gate of St, Martin, with its - the already a vy considerable — place, stretching away into de field. Ja Petite Bre-- taghe embosomed jin wood, and thé Marche aux’ Pourceanx, in the center of which styod the horrible’ caldron for builing the coiners of countérfeit money. Between la Courtille and St, Laurent your eye has already remarked, on the summit of a height, squatted npon desert plains, a xing of building re- sembliug ata distance a colunnade in spe. Lis wan neither a Parthenon, nor a Temple the ym piar ; . , Now, if the enumeration of so many edi , con. cise a8 we haye purposely nmiade it, has mot effaced in the mind of the reader the general mage of old. Paris will gompress our perched to this day at the corners of the roof, look | deseription into g few. words. In the center, the like four sphynxes, giving to modern Paris the eniwma | island of the City resembling in figure an enormous of the ancient to unravel. They were not erected tortoise; its bridges scaly with slates protruding like till the year 1526 by Rault, the sculptor. who had | feet. from beneath the gray shell of roofs. On thu twenty francs for his labor, There was the Maison aux | le‘t the dense, compact, bristling, trapezium of tie - Piliers, of which we have ¢onveyed some idea to the | University; on the right the vast senii-circle of the reader; there was St. Gervais, since spoiled by a porch tna good taste ; there was St. Mery, whose old pointed ‘arches were little less than circular: there was St. | Jean, the magnificent spire of which was. proverbial ; | there were twenty other buildings which did not dis- dain to bury their marvels in this chaos of deep, black, Ville, in which gardens more intermingled. The three divisicns, City, Uni- versity, and Ville, marbled by streets without nuim- ber; the Seine, the “nourishing Seine,” as Father Du Breul calls it, studded with boats and islands and intersected by bridges, rupning across the whole. narrow streets. Add to these the sculptured stone | All around ap immense plain checkered by hand- crosses, more DUuMerous éven than the gibbets, the | some villages and enitivated lands bearing all sorts burying-ground of the Innocents, the architectural en- | of crops, on the left Issy, Vanveres, Vangirard, Mon. closure of which was to be seen at a distance above the | trouge, Gentilly, with its round tower and its square roofs ; the pillory of the Halles, the top of which was | tower; on the right twenty others, from Con#ape tg <€om (E| 900) and buildings were murls ~ (E()