1---
 2date: 2017-04-09T10:58:08-04:00
 3description: "The Grand Hall"
 4featured_image: "/images/Pope-Edouard-de-Beaumont-1844.jpg"
 5tags: ["scene"]
 6title: "Chapter I: The Grand Hall"
 7---
 8
 9Three hundred and forty-eight years, six months, and nineteen days ago
10to-day, the Parisians awoke to the sound of all the bells in the triple
11circuit of the city, the university, and the town ringing a full peal.
12
13The sixth of January, 1482, is not, however, a day of which history has
14preserved the memory. There was nothing notable in the event which thus
15set the bells and the bourgeois of Paris in a ferment from early morning.
16It was neither an assault by the Picards nor the Burgundians, nor a hunt
17led along in procession, nor a revolt of scholars in the town of Laas, nor
18an entry of “our much dread lord, monsieur the king,” nor even a pretty
19hanging of male and female thieves by the courts of Paris. Neither was it
20the arrival, so frequent in the fifteenth century, of some plumed and
21bedizened embassy. It was barely two days since the last cavalcade of that
22nature, that of the Flemish ambassadors charged with concluding the
23marriage between the dauphin and Marguerite of Flanders, had made its
24entry into Paris, to the great annoyance of M. le Cardinal de Bourbon,
25who, for the sake of pleasing the king, had been obliged to assume an
26amiable mien towards this whole rustic rabble of Flemish burgomasters, and
27to regale them at his Hôtel de Bourbon, with a very “pretty morality,
28allegorical satire, and farce,” while a driving rain drenched the
29magnificent tapestries at his door.
30
31What put the “whole population of Paris in commotion,” as Jehan de Troyes
32expresses it, on the sixth of January, was the double solemnity, united
33from time immemorial, of the Epiphany and the Feast of Fools.
34
35On that day, there was to be a bonfire on the Place de Grève, a maypole at
36the Chapelle de Braque, and a mystery at the Palais de Justice. It had
37been cried, to the sound of the trumpet, the preceding evening at all the
38cross roads, by the provost’s men, clad in handsome, short, sleeveless
39coats of violet camelot, with large white crosses upon their breasts.
40
41So the crowd of citizens, male and female, having closed their houses and
42shops, thronged from every direction, at early morn, towards some one of
43the three spots designated.
44
45Each had made his choice; one, the bonfire; another, the maypole; another,
46the mystery play. It must be stated, in honor of the good sense of the
47loungers of Paris, that the greater part of this crowd directed their
48steps towards the bonfire, which was quite in season, or towards the
49mystery play, which was to be presented in the grand hall of the Palais de
50Justice (the courts of law), which was well roofed and walled; and that
51the curious left the poor, scantily flowered maypole to shiver all alone
52beneath the sky of January, in the cemetery of the Chapel of Braque.
53
54The populace thronged the avenues of the law courts in particular, because
55they knew that the Flemish ambassadors, who had arrived two days
56previously, intended to be present at the representation of the mystery,
57and at the election of the Pope of the Fools, which was also to take place
58in the grand hall.
59
60It was no easy matter on that day, to force one’s way into that grand
61hall, although it was then reputed to be the largest covered enclosure in
62the world (it is true that Sauval had not yet measured the grand hall of
63the Château of Montargis). The palace place, encumbered with people,
64offered to the curious gazers at the windows the aspect of a sea; into
65which five or six streets, like so many mouths of rivers, discharged every
66moment fresh floods of heads. The waves of this crowd, augmented
67incessantly, dashed against the angles of the houses which projected here
68and there, like so many promontories, into the irregular basin of the
69place. In the centre of the lofty Gothic* façade of the palace, the grand
70staircase, incessantly ascended and descended by a double current, which,
71after parting on the intermediate landing-place, flowed in broad waves
72along its lateral slopes,—the grand staircase, I say, trickled
73incessantly into the place, like a cascade into a lake. The cries, the
74laughter, the trampling of those thousands of feet, produced a great noise
75and a great clamor. From time to time, this noise and clamor redoubled;
76the current which drove the crowd towards the grand staircase flowed
77backwards, became troubled, formed whirlpools. This was produced by the
78buffet of an archer, or the horse of one of the provost’s sergeants, which
79kicked to restore order; an admirable tradition which the provostship has
80bequeathed to the constablery, the constablery to the _maréchaussée_,
81the _maréchaussée_ to our _gendarmeri_ of Paris.