of it. Let the reader picture to himself in bacchanal
form, Salvator Rosa's battle. There were no longer either scholars or
ambassadors or bourgeois or men or women; there was no longer any Clopin
Trouillefou, nor Gilles Lecornu, nor Marie Quatrelivres, nor Robin
Poussepain. All was universal license. The grand hall was no longer
anything but a vast furnace of effrontry and joviality, where every
mouth was a cry, every individual a posture; everything shouted and
howled. The strange visages which came, in turn, to gnash their teeth
in the rose window, were like so many brands cast into the brazier;
and from the whole of this effervescing crowd, there escaped, as from a
furnace, a sharp, piercing, stinging noise, hissing like the wings of a
gnat.

"Ho he! curse it!"

"Just look at that face!"

"It's not good for anything."

"Guillemette Maugerepuis, just look at that bull's muzzle; it only lacks
the horns. It can't be your husband."

"Another!"

"Belly of the pope! what sort of a grimace is that?"

"Hola he! that's cheating. One must show only one's face."

"That damned Perrette Callebotte! she's capable of that!"

"Good! Good!"

"I'm stifling!"

"There's a fellow whose ears won't go through!" Etc., etc.

But we must do justice to our friend Jehan. In the midst of this
witches' sabbath, he was still to be seen on the top of his pillar, like
the cabin-boy on the topmast. He floundered about with incredible fury.
His mouth was wide open, and from it there escaped a cry which no one
heard, not that it was covered by the general clamor, great as that
was but because it attained, no doubt, the limit of perceptible sharp
sounds, the thousand vibrations of Sauveur, or the eight thousand of
Biot.

As for Gringoire, the first moment of depression having passed, he
had regained his composure. He had hardened himself against
adversity.---"Continue!" he had said for the third time, to his
comedians, speaking machines; then as he was marching with great strides
in front of the marble table, a fancy seized him to go and appear in
his turn at the aperture of the chapel, were it only for the pleasure of
making a grimace at that ungrateful populace.--"But no, that would
not be worthy of us; no, vengeance! let us combat until the end," he
repeated to himself; "the power of poetry over people is great; I will
bring them back. We shall see which will carry the day, grimaces or
polite literature."

Alas! he had been left