hought
that he recognized all the heads who had saluted him as Pope of the
Fools some months previously. One man who held a torch in one hand and
a club in the other, mounted a stone post and seemed to be haranguing
them. At the same time the strange army executed several evolutions, as
though it were taking up its post around the church. Quasimodo picked up
his lantern and descended to the platform between the towers, in order
to get a nearer view, and to spy out a means of defence.

Clopin Trouillefou, on arriving in front of the lofty portal of
Notre-Dame had, in fact, ranged his troops in order of battle. Although
he expected no resistance, he wished, like a prudent general, to
preserve an order which would permit him to face, at need, a sudden
attack of the watch or the police. He had accordingly stationed his
brigade in such a manner that, viewed from above and from a distance,
one would have pronounced it the Roman triangle of the battle of
Ecnomus, the boar's head of Alexander or the famous wedge of Gustavus
Adolphus. The base of this triangle rested on the back of the Place in
such a manner as to bar the entrance of the Rue du Parvis; one of its
sides faced Hotel-Dieu, the other the Rue Saint-Pierre-aux-Boeufs.
Clopin Trouillefou had placed himself at the apex with the Duke of
Egypt, our friend Jehan, and the most daring of the scavengers.

An enterprise like that which the vagabonds were now undertaking against
Notre-Dame was not a very rare thing in the cities of the Middle Ages.
What we now call the "police" did not exist then. In populous cities,
especially in capitals, there existed no single, central, regulating
power. Feudalism had constructed these great communities in a singular
manner. A city was an assembly of a thousand seigneuries, which
divided it into compartments of all shapes and sizes. Hence, a thousand
conflicting establishments of police; that is to say, no police at all.
In Paris, for example, independently of the hundred and forty-one lords
who laid claim to a manor, there were five and twenty who laid claim to
a manor and to administering justice, from the Bishop of Paris, who had
five hundred streets, to the Prior of Notre-Dame des Champs, who had
four. All these feudal justices recognized the suzerain authority of the
king only in name. All possessed the right of control over the roads.
All were at home. Louis XI., that indefatigable worker, who so largely
began the demolition of the f