-do-wells of all nations,
Spaniards, Italians, Germans,--of all religions, Jews, Christians,
Mahometans, idolaters, covered with painted sores, beggars by day, were
transformed by night into brigands; an immense dressing-room, in a word,
where, at that epoch, the actors of that eternal comedy, which theft,
prostitution, and murder play upon the pavements of Paris, dressed and
undressed.

It was a vast place, irregular and badly paved, like all the squares of
Paris at that date. Fires, around which swarmed strange groups, blazed
here and there. Every one was going, coming, and shouting. Shrill
laughter was to be heard, the wailing of children, the voices of
women. The hands and heads of this throng, black against the luminous
background, outlined against it a thousand eccentric gestures. At times,
upon the ground, where trembled the light of the fires, mingled with
large, indefinite shadows, one could behold a dog passing, which
resembled a man, a man who resembled a dog. The limits of races and
species seemed effaced in this city, as in a pandemonium. Men, women,
beasts, age, sex, health, maladies, all seemed to be in common among
these people; all went together, they mingled, confounded, superposed;
each one there participated in all.

The poor and flickering flames of the fire permitted Gringoire to
distinguish, amid his trouble, all around the immense place, a hideous
frame of ancient houses, whose wormeaten, shrivelled, stunted facades,
each pierced with one or two lighted attic windows, seemed to him, in
the darkness, like enormous heads of old women, ranged in a circle,
monstrous and crabbed, winking as they looked on at the Witches'
Sabbath.

It was like a new world, unknown, unheard of, misshapen, creeping,
swarming, fantastic.

Gringoire, more and more terrified, clutched by the three beggars as by
three pairs of tongs, dazed by a throng of other faces which frothed and
yelped around him, unhappy Gringoire endeavored to summon his presence
of mind, in order to recall whether it was a Saturday. But his efforts
were vain; the thread of his memory and of his thought was broken; and,
doubting everything, wavering between what he saw and what he felt, he
put to himself this unanswerable question,--

"If I exist, does this exist? if this exists, do I exist?"

At that moment, a distinct cry arose in the buzzing throng which
surrounded him, "Let's take him to the king! let's take him to the
king!"

"Holy Virg