hat
tumultuous crowd in surcoats, short, sleeveless jackets, and doublets.

And, first of all, there is a buzzing in the ears, a dazzlement in
the eyes. Above our heads is a double ogive vault, panelled with wood
carving, painted azure, and sown with golden fleurs-de-lis; beneath
our feet a pavement of black and white marble, alternating. A few paces
distant, an enormous pillar, then another, then another; seven pillars
in all, down the length of the hall, sustaining the spring of the arches
of the double vault, in the centre of its width. Around four of the
pillars, stalls of merchants, all sparkling with glass and tinsel;
around the last three, benches of oak, worn and polished by the trunk
hose of the litigants, and the robes of the attorneys. Around the hall,
along the lofty wall, between the doors, between the windows, between
the pillars, the interminable row of all the kings of France, from
Pharamond down: the lazy kings, with pendent arms and downcast eyes;
the valiant and combative kings, with heads and arms raised boldly
heavenward. Then in the long, pointed windows, glass of a thousand hues;
at the wide entrances to the hall, rich doors, finely sculptured; and
all, the vaults, pillars, walls, jambs, panelling, doors, statues,
covered from top to bottom with a splendid blue and gold illumination,
which, a trifle tarnished at the epoch when we behold it, had almost
entirely disappeared beneath dust and spiders in the year of grace,
1549, when du Breul still admired it from tradition.

Let the reader picture to himself now, this immense, oblong hall,
illuminated by the pallid light of a January day, invaded by a motley
and noisy throng which drifts along the walls, and eddies round the
seven pillars, and he will have a confused idea of the whole effect of
the picture, whose curious details we shall make an effort to indicate
with more precision.

It is certain, that if Ravaillac had not assassinated Henri IV., there
would have been no documents in the trial of Ravaillac deposited in the
clerk's office of the Palais de Justice, no accomplices interested in
causing the said documents to disappear; hence, no incendiaries obliged,
for lack of better means, to burn the clerk's office in order to burn
the documents, and to burn the Palais de Justice in order to burn the
clerk's office; consequently, in short, no conflagration in 1618. The
old Palais would be standing still, with its ancient grand hall; I
should be