Chapter 38 Notre Dame de Paris (3) Volume 6 A drop of water, a tear (2)

two mouse holes We left the Place de la Rhea with Gringoire yesterday in order to follow Esmeralda, and now the magistrate will allow us to come back and talk about this place. It was ten o'clock in the morning.Everything in the square indicated that it was the day after the festival.Rubbish, ribbons, rags, crown feathers, drops of torch wax, the remnants of public gluttony lay everywhere on the flagstone floor.As mentioned earlier, many citizens wandered around, kicking the embers of fireworks, standing in front of the pillar pavilion, thinking about the gorgeous curtains of yesterday, and still have fun, and they also used the nails to hang the curtains. Ornamental.Vendors of cider and straw ale rolled their casks through the crowd, and some busy passers-by came and went.Shopkeepers stand in front of their shops talking and greeting each other.There was talk of festivals, ambassadors, Coppenol, and the Mad Pope, all vying to see who could tell the most details and laugh the most.At this moment, four policemen on horseback had just set up posts on the four sides of the Column of Shame, and suddenly attracted a large part of the people scattered in the square to surround them.In order to watch a small torture, these people had to suffer, standing there motionless, feeling bored and panicked.

The judge has watched the lively farce being played out in various parts of the square. If you now turn your eyes to the ancient Roland Tower, which is half Gothic and half Romanesque, on the west corner of the river bank, you will find that its front corner is There is a communal prayer book, ornately decorated, with a canopy on the top to keep out the rain, and a fence around it to prevent theft, but it allows people to reach in and read it.Next to this prayer book is a small window opening in the shape of a pointed arch. The window is protected by two crossed iron bars, and the window faces the square; this is the only window opening in a small house, through which air and sunlight enter the house; The cell had no door, and had been hewn out of the thick wall at the ground floor of the tower.The interior is quiet and quiet, especially when the outside happens to be the most crowded and noisy square in Paris. At this time, there are many tourists and people's voices are boiling, so the quietness in the room seems more profound, and the silence is more lifeless.

For nearly three hundred years, this cottage has been famous in Paris.At first, in order to commemorate her father who died in the Crusades, Madame Rolande, the owner of the Roland Tower, asked someone to dig out this hut on the wall of her house, imprisoned herself in it, and closed the door forever. The door was simply blocked, no matter the severe winter or summer, only the window was always open.Of the whole house she left only this little room, and gave the rest to the poor and to God.The distraught lady waited to die in this prepared tomb for twenty years, praying day and night for her father's dead soul, falling asleep in the dust, not even using a stone as a pillow. Ken, dressed in black sackcloth all day long, survived on the bread and water that kind passers-by put on the edge of the window opening.In this way, after giving alms to others, she also received alms from others.When she was dying, that is, when she moved into another tomb, she left the original tomb forever for those sad mothers, widows or daughters, because they would have many regrets to ask God's forgiveness for others or for themselves, and would rather leave Bury himself alive in anguish or harsh confession.Her poor contemporaries mourned her with tears and thanksgiving, but they deeply regretted that this pious woman, because she had no patrons, could not be canonized.Those of them who were a little heretical, hoping that things would be easier in heaven than in Rome, simply prayed to God for the dead, since the pope would not allow them.Most people remember Madame Rolande only as sacred, and his shabby clothes as sacred objects.In order to commemorate this lady, the city of Paris specially placed a public prayer book next to the window opening of the hut, allowing passers-by to stop at any time, even if they just pray; let people think of giving when praying. Alms, so that the poor hermits who have taken refuge in this cave after Madame Rolande, may not die of utter starvation and oblivion.

In medieval cities, such graves were not uncommon.In the busiest street, in the busiest market place, even in the middle of the road, under the hooves of the horses, under the wheels, it is not uncommon to find a burrow, a well, a barred and fenced hut, in which there are A soul prays day and night, willingly passes its life in some unceasing lamentation, in some great penitence.This terrible hut between house and tomb, city and cemetery, which is like a middle link, this living person who is isolated from the world and lives as if dead, this lamp that has exhausted its last drop of oil in the dark, this thread flickers in the dark. The light of the remaining life in the tomb, the sound of breathing, speaking, and endless prayers in this stone box, this face that is always turned to the underworld, these eyes that have been illuminated by another sun, this pair The ear clinging to the wall of the tomb, the soul imprisoned in the body, the body imprisoned in the prison, the groaning of the painful soul tightly wrapped in the double oppression of the body and the granite, all these strange and strange phenomena can be seen today It can cause us to think in various ways, but at the time it was not noticed by the masses at all.In that era, people were more than pious, but lacked reasoning and insight. They would not take into account so many aspects of a religious act.They look at things in general, extol, reverence, and, if necessary, consecrate the sacrifice, but never analyze the suffering it endured, and only show a little pity for it.From time to time they gave the miserable ascetic a little food, and looked through the window to see if he was still alive, never asking his name, and never knowing how many years he had been dying.If a stranger asked who belonged to this rotting skeleton in the burrow, if it was a man, the person next to him would simply answer: "A monk." If it was a woman, he would respond: "A hermit." .”

That's how people looked at everything back then, no metaphysics, no rhetoric, no magnifying glass, everything was observed with the naked eye.Regardless of the material world or the spiritual world, the microscope had not yet been invented. Moreover, although people are not surprised by hermitages, such things, as has been said, are indeed commonplace in various cities.In Paris, there are quite a lot of small houses dedicated to praying to God and confessing, almost all of which are inhabited.Indeed, the clergy took great care not to leave such huts empty, which would have meant that the zeal of the faithful had cooled, and so the lepers were shut in as soon as there were no penitents.In addition to the hut on the beach square, there is another one on Eagle Mountain, another one in the tomb of the Holy Child Cemetery, and the location of the other one is no longer clear, I think it may be in the Clichon mansion.There are also many other places whose traces can only be found in legends because their buildings have been lost.The university town also had its hermitage, and on the hill of Saint-Genrivieve lived a medieval man like Job, who sang the seven psalms of confession every day on a dunghill in the depths of a cistern. Singing louder at night, from the beginning, and singing like this for thirty years.Today, archaeologists have walked into Nengyanjing Street, thinking that they can still hear his singing!

Here we only refer to the cottage in the Laurent Tower, which should be said to have never lost the nuns.After Madame Rolande's death there was rarely a year or two free.Many women come here, weeping for their parents, crying for their parents, crying for their lovers, crying for their own faults, until they die.The wisecracking Parisians, who interfered in everything, even those that did not concern them, insisted that widows were rarely seen among these women. In accordance with the fashion of the time, an inscription was carved on the wall in Latin, indicating to the literate passer-by the pious use of the hut.A short motto was written above the door to explain the purpose of a building, a custom that lasted until the sixteenth century.Therefore, in France today, people can still see the words "Serious Waiting" above the small door of the cell in the mansion of the Lord Tourville;

① The original text is Latin. ②According to the records of "The Book of Job in the Old Testament", disasters fell on Job, and he repented asceticly and was finally saved. ③ The original text is Latin. Beneath the coat of arms above the gate of Fortstead Castle in Ireland, Mighty Shield, Savior of the Leader; This is because at that time, any building was an embodiment of an idea. The little brick-and-mortar room in the Tower Laurent had no door, so above the opening was inscribed in large Roman letters two words: You, pray. ③ The common people see things according to their sense, and they don't pay so much attention to subtleties. They prefer to say that Louis the Great is the Porte Saint-Denis, so they named this gloomy and dank cave the Mouse Hole.Although this name is not as elegant as the previous one, it is much more vivid.