Chapter 9 Notre-Dame de Paris (1) Volume 2 Dangerous and Dangerous (1)

Dangerous situation In January, night falls very early.When Gringoire came out of the Palais de Justice, the street was already dark.The falling night made him happy; he longed to go into some dark and lonely alley at once, so that he could think freely and let his philosopher bandage his poet's wound first.Moreover, he does not know where to settle down, only philosophy is his only shelter.His first foray into the theatre, having died prematurely, dared not go back to his lodgings in the floating barn opposite the Forage Harbor; he had hoped that the Lord Governor would give him a small reward for his wedding poems, so as to pay off Guillaume Du, the butcher-tax contractor in Paris. Six months' rent for Cox-Sill was twelve Paris soles, or twelve times the value of all his possessions, including his estimated shorts, shirt, and iron helmet.He hid temporarily in the small doorway of the prison-like house of the treasurer of the Sainte-Chapelle Church, thinking for a moment that since he could choose all the streets in Paris, he had to choose a place to spend the night.He remembered that last week he found a stepping stone for riding a donkey in front of the house of a counselor in the Ministry of Officials on the old shoe shop street, and thought to himself that this stone could be used as a pillow for beggars or poets when needed, That couldn't be better.Thank God for giving him such a good idea!He was going to go across the Palace of Justice Square to the old city, where there are old streets like sisters, such as Bucket Square Street, Old Nappy Street, Old Shoe Shop Street, Jewish Street, etc., criss-crossing in seven turns , is really a maze of twists and turns, and those ten-story buildings still stand there.

However, at this moment, he suddenly saw the mad pope's procession also coming out of the Palace of Justice, shouting, with torches lit, and his——Gringoire——the orchestra playing music, swarming in great numbers , blocking his way.Seeing this, the wound on his self-esteem was painful again, so he ran away.His misfortune had been miserable, his wounds were bleeding, and everything that reminded him of the festivities of that day was painful. He made up his mind to take the Pont Saint-Michel, but there were crowds of children running around with fountains and sky cannons. "Damn fireworks!" Gringoire said, and hurried back to the Exchange Bridge.Three banners are hung on some houses at the head of the bridge, with portraits of the king, the prince and Princess Margaret of Flanders, and six small banners with portraits of the Archduke of Austria and Bourbon in red. The Bishop, His Highness Beauberger, the Infante Francienne, the Prince Bastard of Bourbon, and someone else.All this was brightly lit by torches.The masses appreciated it.

"Lucky painter John Fulbeaux!" said Gringoire with a long sigh. As soon as the voice fell, he turned around and stopped looking at the big and small flags.There was a street ahead, dark and desolate, just the place to escape from all the reverberations and all the splendors of the festival.He got into it headlong, and after a while, his foot was tripped by something, he staggered, and fell to the ground.It turned out to be a maytree bouquet. In order to celebrate this grand festival, the secretaries of the Judiciary Palace brought it and placed it at the door of the official minister's house early in the morning.Gringoire held back this new encounter without saying a word, then got up and walked to the Seine.The small tower of the civil court and the large tower of the criminal court were all left behind, and walked along the big wall of the Royal Garden, stepped on the ankle-deep river beach with no paving stones, came to the west end of the old city, and looked out. Niu crossed Xiaozhou for a while.The islet is gone today, just under the bronze horse and the new bridge.At that time, he felt that the small island appeared like a pile of black things on the other side of the narrow whitish water surface, and by the light of a small lamp, he could vaguely see a beehive-like thatched hut, presumably it was a boathouse for cattle ferrying place of night.

"Lucky ferryman!" thought Gringoire. "You don't look forward to glory, you don't have to write wedding poems! The royal family is married, and the Burgundy grand duchess is none of your business! You know that the daisies bloom on the meadows in April to feed your cows. I don't know what other daisies there are in the world! And I'm booed as a poet, shivering with cold, twelve soles in debt, and the soles of my shoes are ground so transparent that I can make glass for your lampshade. Thank you! Boatman! Your little hut has opened my eyes and taught me to forget about Paris!"

Suddenly, from the bliss cottage, the sound of the huge double-gun cannon of St. John's Church woke him up from an almost poetic ecstasy.It turned out that the boatman on the ferry also had fun in this festival and set off a fireworks battle. The cannonball blasted Gringoire into a state of horror. "Damn festival!" he exclaimed. "Are you chasing me all over the place? Ah! my God! You're chasing me as far as the boatman's hut!" As soon as he finished speaking, he glanced at the Seine River at his feet, and suddenly had a terrible thought: "Oh! If the river were not so cold, I would rather throw myself into the river and die!"

So he made up his mind.Since you can't get rid of the Mad Pope, you can't get rid of John Fulbeau's banners, May-tree bouquets, firecrackers and firecrackers, why don't you just go boldly into the festive revelry, go to the beach square! "Go to the beach square, at least there is the lingering flame of the fireworks to warm your body; the cold meals provided for the public in the city must have set up three big larders full of king's desserts, at least you can go to check the crumbs and chat For dinner." Two River Beach Plaza The former river beach square is now indistinguishable.All that is seen today is the elegant little bell tower at the north corner of the square; it is this little bell tower, which has been disfigured beyond recognition after several rough whitewashes, and its vivid edges of carving have become bloated and rough, and may soon be like all the old buildings in Paris. The frontage of the city, quickly swallowed up by the rising tide of new houses, will also be submerged without a trace.

Anyone passing the Place de la Rhein, like us, cannot fail to look at this little belfry, sandwiched between two ruined houses of the Louis XV era, without looking at it with sympathy and pity; anyone can easily imagine it. The original appearance of all the buildings that belonged to it at the time, and the panorama of this ancient Gothic square in the fifteenth century can be reproduced from it. The square at that time was like today's, an irregular trapezoid, with the banks of the Seine on one side and a series of narrow and dark tall houses on the other three sides.During the day, you can watch the various styles of buildings around the square, all of which are carved out of stone or wood. There are all kinds of residential architectural styles in the Middle Ages, which can be traced back from the fifteenth century to the eleventh century. The lattice windows of the arched windows, up to the pointed arched windows, which replace the Romanesque arched windows, are complete; this Romanesque arched window, on the corner of the square facing the Seine, on the side of the tannery, the Roland Tower. The first floor of the old house, under the pointed-arched windows, still retains this style.At night, all that could be seen of this mass of buildings was the black jagged shadow of the roofs, which encircled the square like a chain of sharp angles.For one of the fundamental differences between the cities of the past and the cities of the present is that in today's cities the fronts of the houses face the squares and streets, whereas formerly it was the gables of the houses.For two centuries, the orientation of houses has been reversed in exactly the same direction.

In the center of the east side of the square stands a building, bulky and jumbled, consisting of three overlapping dwellings.This colossal building has three names, which can explain its history, purpose and architectural style; the Prince's House, because Charles V lived here when he was crown prince; the Chamber of Commerce, because it used to be the town hall; The four-story building is supported by a series of thick columns.Everything that a good city like Paris needs is here: a chapel in which to pray to God; There is an armory full of guns.This is because the citizens of Paris know that in any case, prayers and appeals alone are not enough to protect the rights of Parisian citizens, so some kind of rusty and sophisticated ballista has always been stored in the attic of the city hall.

The beach has been a dreary sight ever since, and it remains so today, partly because of the repulsive thought it elicits, and partly because of the eerie building built by Dominique Bocardo. The Town Hall replaced the Pillars Pavilion.It should be noted that in the center of the square paved with flagstones, a gallows and a column of shame, as they were called in those days, side by side for many years, have also done no little harm, making it a horrible sight. , forcing people to look away from this horrible square.How many vigorous athletes have ruined their lives here!It was also here that fifty years later the guillotine phobia, the so-called Saint Valier's fever, occurred: the most horrific of all diseases, because it did not come from God, but from man.By the way, the death penalty was rampant here three hundred years ago, and there are still iron mills, stone gallows everywhere, and all kinds of instruments of torture sunk into the stone pavement and left there all the year round, all of which blocked the river beach, vegetable market, and Chujun Square. , the Church of the Cross of Travais, the Pig Market, the eerie Mount of the Eagle, the Headhunters, the Cat Square, the Porte Saint-Denis, the Porte de Chambord, the Porte Bodé, the Porte Saint-Jacques, not to mention the Prefects, the Bishops, It is a little comforting to think that the priests, abbots, and abbots of the clergy have laid down countless "ladders" here; not to mention the drowning ground in the Seine;Today, pieces of death's armor have fallen, and its ostentatious torture, whimsical punishment, and the torture of replacing a leather bed in Dabao every five years have all been abolished one after another; death, the old man of feudal society Overlord, almost expelled from our laws, expelled from our cities, prosecuted from code to code, driven from square after square, and now in our vast Paris there is only one shameful man on the beach square There was a wretched guillotine in the corner, furtive, frightened, disgraceful, as if in constant fear of being caught red-handed for any wrongdoing--for it fled as soon as it did its work, and all that How can you not feel gratified!

① Saint Valier is the general of Charles VIII.In order to obtain the right to inherit Naples, Charles VIII launched a war against Italy, which resulted in a disastrous defeat, resulting in the death of a large number of French people.This "fever" refers to this catastrophe. ② refers to crushing.This is a kind of torture in the Middle Ages. First, the limbs of the prisoner are cut off, and then the prisoner's body is crushed into a meat paste with an iron mill. ③ It is also a kind of torture. The prisoner is tied to a leather bed frame and brutally flogged. Three "kiss for beating"

(Besos Para Golpes) Pierre Gringoire came to the Place de la Rhein, numb with cold.To avoid the noisy crowd on the Exchange Bridge, and the banner painted by John Fulbeau, he deliberately took the Mill Bridge; but all those water mill wheels of the Bishop were spinning, and he was splashed all over when he passed. , Even the coarse cloth jacket is soaked.Moreover, he felt that due to the tragic failure of the script performance, he became more and more afraid of the cold. So, he hurriedly approached the fireworks that were burning vigorously in the center of the square.However, there are huge crowds of people around the fireworks, and they are completely surrounded. "Damn Parisian!" he said to himself, for Gringoire, a true poet of drama, was a master of monologues. "They stopped the fire for me! But I urgently need to stand in some corner of the fireplace and warm myself.The shoes on my feet drank enough water, and those damn water mills cried and cried, pouring me all over!The Bishop of Paris runs a mill, what an obsession!I should like to know what a bishop would do with a mill!Did he expect to be turned from a bishop to a miller?If he owes me only the curse for this, I will give it to him at once, to his cathedral and mill!Please look at these idlers, if they move their positions!I'd like to know what they're doing there!They are warming themselves by the fire, how wonderful!Looking at thousands of bundles of firewood burning, how spectacular it is! " Before I left, I took a closer look, only to find that the circle formed by the crowd was much larger than the range required for heating, and the audience did not flock here simply because they were attracted by the beautiful scenery of thousands of bundles of firewood burning. It turned out that in a wide open space between the crowd and the fireworks, a girl was dancing. Whether this girl was a man, a fairy, or an angel, Gringoire, though he was a skeptical philosopher and a satirical poet, could not be sure, because the dazzling sight fascinated him. up. She was not tall, but her slender figure was upright and slender, so he seemed to think she was tall.She had a dark complexion, but one could guess that in the daytime she looked like an Andalusian girl or a Roman girl with a beautiful golden luster.Her delicate little feet, also Andalusian, looked snug and comfortable in the elegant shoes.She dances, twirls, swirls on an old Persian rug that is thrown carelessly at her feet; and every time she spins, her radiant face flashes past you, with her big black eyes I cast lightning-like glances at you. The eyes of everyone around her were fixed, and their mouths were opened wide.Sure enough, she flew like this, with her round and clean arms raised high above her head, humming a Basque tambourine; her head was slender, weak, and turned like a wasp. Agile; in a golden corset, flat and without folds, in a colorful and puffy gown; with bare shoulders, and skirts that are lifted here and there to reveal a pair of graceful thin legs; black hair, and flaming eyes; stunner. "Indeed, it is an elf, a nymph, a goddess, a Dionysus of Mount Menarus," thought Gringoire. Just at this time, a braid of the "elf" fell apart, and a brass hairpin stuck in the braid rolled to the ground. "Ah! No! It's a gypsy girl," said Gringoire blurted out. Any hallucinations disappeared in an instant. She danced again.He picked up two swords from the ground, put the sword ends on his forehead, and then turned the swords in one direction, while her body turned in the opposite direction. She was, indeed, a gypsy girl.After all, although the Gringoire illusion has disappeared, the whole picturesque landscape still has its charm.The fireworks shone on her, and the bright red light, brilliant and brilliant, flickered on the faces of the spectators, and on the brown forehead of the gypsy girl, and cast a whitish reflection into the depths of the square. Figures swayed on the dark ancient facade and on the stone arms on both sides of the gallows. Among the thousands of faces flushed by the fire, one seemed to be gazing at the dancing girl more intently than all the others.It was a man's face, stern, cool, and gloomy.What kind of clothes this man is wearing, because he is blocked by the crowd around him, it is impossible to tell. He is no more than thirty-five years old; but he is already bald, with only a few sparse and gray hairs on his temples; his forehead is broad and high. Xuan, began to be carved with wrinkles; however, extraordinary sparks of youth, fiery vitality, and deep lust burst out from those deep sunken eyes. He kept pouring all these emotions into the gypsy girl; when he saw this twenty-eight-year-old girl flying and spinning like crazy, and watching everyone fascinated, his dreamy His expression looked increasingly gloomy. From time to time a smile flitted across his lips, and at the same time he let out a sigh, but the smile was much more painful than the sigh. The girl danced out of breath, and finally stopped. The crowd applauded warmly with love. "Belle!" cried the gypsy girl. At this moment, Gringoire saw running towards a beautiful kid, white, agile, quick-witted, shiny with oil, with gold-dyed horns and feet, and a gold collar around its neck.Gringoire hadn't noticed the kid at first, because it had been lying in a corner of the carpet, watching its master dance.