82 lines
4.7 KiB
Markdown
82 lines
4.7 KiB
Markdown
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---
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date: 2017-04-09T10:58:08-04:00
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description: "The Grand Hall"
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featured_image: "/images/Pope-Edouard-de-Beaumont-1844.jpg"
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tags: ["scene"]
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title: "Chapter I: The Grand Hall"
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---
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Three hundred and forty-eight years, six months, and nineteen days ago
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to-day, the Parisians awoke to the sound of all the bells in the triple
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circuit of the city, the university, and the town ringing a full peal.
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The sixth of January, 1482, is not, however, a day of which history has
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preserved the memory. There was nothing notable in the event which thus
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set the bells and the bourgeois of Paris in a ferment from early morning.
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It was neither an assault by the Picards nor the Burgundians, nor a hunt
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led along in procession, nor a revolt of scholars in the town of Laas, nor
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an entry of “our much dread lord, monsieur the king,” nor even a pretty
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hanging of male and female thieves by the courts of Paris. Neither was it
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the arrival, so frequent in the fifteenth century, of some plumed and
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bedizened embassy. It was barely two days since the last cavalcade of that
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nature, that of the Flemish ambassadors charged with concluding the
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marriage between the dauphin and Marguerite of Flanders, had made its
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entry into Paris, to the great annoyance of M. le Cardinal de Bourbon,
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who, for the sake of pleasing the king, had been obliged to assume an
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amiable mien towards this whole rustic rabble of Flemish burgomasters, and
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to regale them at his Hôtel de Bourbon, with a very “pretty morality,
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allegorical satire, and farce,” while a driving rain drenched the
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magnificent tapestries at his door.
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What put the “whole population of Paris in commotion,” as Jehan de Troyes
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expresses it, on the sixth of January, was the double solemnity, united
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from time immemorial, of the Epiphany and the Feast of Fools.
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On that day, there was to be a bonfire on the Place de Grève, a maypole at
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the Chapelle de Braque, and a mystery at the Palais de Justice. It had
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been cried, to the sound of the trumpet, the preceding evening at all the
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cross roads, by the provost’s men, clad in handsome, short, sleeveless
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coats of violet camelot, with large white crosses upon their breasts.
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So the crowd of citizens, male and female, having closed their houses and
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shops, thronged from every direction, at early morn, towards some one of
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the three spots designated.
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Each had made his choice; one, the bonfire; another, the maypole; another,
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the mystery play. It must be stated, in honor of the good sense of the
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loungers of Paris, that the greater part of this crowd directed their
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steps towards the bonfire, which was quite in season, or towards the
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mystery play, which was to be presented in the grand hall of the Palais de
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Justice (the courts of law), which was well roofed and walled; and that
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the curious left the poor, scantily flowered maypole to shiver all alone
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beneath the sky of January, in the cemetery of the Chapel of Braque.
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The populace thronged the avenues of the law courts in particular, because
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they knew that the Flemish ambassadors, who had arrived two days
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previously, intended to be present at the representation of the mystery,
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and at the election of the Pope of the Fools, which was also to take place
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in the grand hall.
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It was no easy matter on that day, to force one’s way into that grand
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hall, although it was then reputed to be the largest covered enclosure in
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the world (it is true that Sauval had not yet measured the grand hall of
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the Château of Montargis). The palace place, encumbered with people,
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offered to the curious gazers at the windows the aspect of a sea; into
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which five or six streets, like so many mouths of rivers, discharged every
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moment fresh floods of heads. The waves of this crowd, augmented
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incessantly, dashed against the angles of the houses which projected here
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and there, like so many promontories, into the irregular basin of the
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place. In the centre of the lofty Gothic* façade of the palace, the grand
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staircase, incessantly ascended and descended by a double current, which,
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after parting on the intermediate landing-place, flowed in broad waves
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along its lateral slopes,—the grand staircase, I say, trickled
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incessantly into the place, like a cascade into a lake. The cries, the
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laughter, the trampling of those thousands of feet, produced a great noise
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and a great clamor. From time to time, this noise and clamor redoubled;
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the current which drove the crowd towards the grand staircase flowed
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backwards, became troubled, formed whirlpools. This was produced by the
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buffet of an archer, or the horse of one of the provost’s sergeants, which
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kicked to restore order; an admirable tradition which the provostship has
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bequeathed to the constablery, the constablery to the _maréchaussée_,
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the _maréchaussée_ to our _gendarmeri_ of Paris.
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