cumbered with its
iron wheels, its stone gibbets, and all its paraphernalia of torture,
permanent and riveted to the pavement, the Greve, the Halles, the Place
Dauphine, the Cross du Trahoir, the Marche aux Pourceaux, that hideous
Montfaucon, the barrier des Sergents, the Place aux Chats, the Porte
Saint-Denis, Champeaux, the Porte Baudets, the Porte Saint Jacques,
without reckoning the innumerable ladders of the provosts, the bishop of
the chapters, of the abbots, of the priors, who had the decree of life
and death,--without reckoning the judicial drownings in the river Seine;
it is consoling to-day, after having lost successively all the pieces of
its armor, its luxury of torment, its penalty of imagination and fancy,
its torture for which it reconstructed every five years a leather bed
at the Grand Chatelet, that ancient suzerain of feudal society almost
expunged from our laws and our cities, hunted from code to code, chased
from place to place, has no longer, in our immense Paris, any more than
a dishonored corner of the Greve,--than a miserable guillotine, furtive,
uneasy, shameful, which seems always afraid of being caught in the act,
so quickly does it disappear after having dealt its blow.

CHAPTER III. KISSES FOR BLOWS.

When Pierre Gringoire arrived on the Place de Greve, he was paralyzed.
He had directed his course across the Pont aux Meuniers, in order
to avoid the rabble on the Pont au Change, and the pennons of Jehan
Fourbault; but the wheels of all the bishop's mills had splashed him as
he passed, and his doublet was drenched; it seemed to him besides, that
the failure of his piece had rendered him still more sensible to cold
than usual. Hence he made haste to draw near the bonfire, which was
burning magnificently in the middle of the Place. But a considerable
crowd formed a circle around it.

"Accursed Parisians!" he said to himself (for Gringoire, like a true
dramatic poet, was subject to monologues) "there they are obstructing my
fire! Nevertheless, I am greatly in need of a chimney corner; my shoes
drink in the water, and all those cursed mills wept upon me! That devil
of a Bishop of Paris, with his mills! I'd just like to know what use a
bishop can make of a mill! Does he expect to become a miller instead of
a bishop? If only my malediction is needed for that, I bestow it upon
him! and his cathedral, and his mills! Just see if those boobies will
put themselves out! Move aside! I'd like to