remained standing—an immense accumulation of bailiwicks and seigneuries, crossing one another in all directions through the length and breadth of the city, embarrassing, entangling, overlapping one another—a useless thicket of watches, counter-watches, and out-watches, through the very midst of which stalked brigandage, rapine, and sedition, sword in hand. Under such condition of disorder, therefore, it excited no very great remark if a part of the populace laid violent hands on a palace, a mansion, or any ordinary dwelling-house in the most populated quarters of the city. In most cases the neighbours did not interfere in the matter unless the plundering extended to themselves. They stopped their ears to the report of the musketry, closed their shutters, barricaded their doors, and let the struggle exhaust itself with or without the assistance of the watch, and the next day it would be quietly said in Paris: “Last night étienne Barbette’s house was broken into,” or “The Marshal de Clermont was attacked,” etc. Hence, not only the royal residences, the Louvre, the Palais, the Bastille, the Tournelles, but the mansions of the nobility, such as the Petit-Bourbon, the Hôtel de Sens, the Hôtel d’Angoulême, and so on, had their battlemented walls and their fortified turrets over the entrances. The churches were protected by their sanctity. Some of them, nevertheless —among which was not Notre-Dame—were fortified. The Abbey of Saint-Germain- des-Prés was castellated like a baronial mansion, and more copper had been used there for bombards than for bells. These fortifications were still to be seen in 1610; now scarcely the church remains.

But to return to Notre-Dame.

The first arrangements completed—and it must be said, to the honour of the truand discipline, that Clopin’s orders were carried out in silence and with admirable precision— the worthy leader mounted the parapet of the Parvis, turned his face to Notre-Dame, and raising his harsh and churlish voice while he shook his torch—the light of which flaring in the wind and veiled at intervals by its own smoke, made the dark front of the Cathedral vanish and reappear by turns—

“Unto thee,” he cried, “Louis de Beaumont, Bishop of Paris, Councillor in the Court of Parliament, thus say I, Clopin Trouillefou, King of Tunis, Grand Coësre, Prince of Argot, Bishop of the Fools: Our sister, falsely condemned for witchcraft, has taken refuge in thy church. Thou art bound to accord her shelter and safeguard; but now the Parliament designs to take her thence, and thou consentest thereunto, so that she would be hanged to-morrow at the Grève if God and the truands were not at hand. We come to thee, then, Bishop. If thy church is sacred, our sister is so too; if our sister is not sacred, neither is thy church. Wherefore we summon thee to give up the maid if thou wouldst save thy church, or we will take the maid ourselves and plunder the church: which will most certainly happen. In token whereof I here set up my banner. And so God help thee, Bishop of Paris!”

Unfortunately Quasimodo could not hear these words, which were delivered with a sort of savage and morose dignity. A Vagabond handed Clopin his banner, which he gravely planted between two paving- stones. It was a pitchfork on which hung a gory piece of carrion.

This done, the King of Tunis turned about and cast his eye over his army, a ferocious multitude whose eyes gleamed almost as savagely as their pikes. After a moment’s pause —“Forward, lads!” he cried. “To your work, housebreakers!”

Thirty thick-set, strong-limbed men with hammers, pincers, and iron crowbars on their shoulders, stepped from the ranks. They advanced towards the main entrance of the church, ascended the steps, and immediately set to work on the door with pincers and levers. A large party of truands followed them to assist or look on, so that the whole flight of eleven steps was crowded with them.

The door, however, held firm. “The devil! but she’s hard and headstrong!” said one. “She’s old, and her gristle’s tough!” said another. “Courage, comrades!” said Clopin. “I wager my head against a slipper that you’ll have burst the door, got the maid, and stripped the high altar before ever there’s a beadle of them all awake. There—I believe the lock’s going.”

Clopin was interrupted by a frightful noise which at that moment resounded behind him. He turned round. An enormous beam had just fallen from on high, crushing a dozen truands on the steps of the church