Notre-Dame, Vol. 1

Angebote / Angebote:

Excerpt from Notre-Dame, Vol. 1: The History of a Crime, The Testimony of an Eye-Witness Some years ago, while visiting the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, or, to speak more properly, exploring every corner of it, the author of this book discovered, in a dark corner in one of the towers, this word, in Greek capital letters, engraven upon the wall - 'Ana'Tkh. These characters, black with age and deeply cut into the stone, with certain peculiarities of form and posture belonging to the Gothic calligraphy, as if to declare that they had been traced there by some hand of the middle ages - and, above all, the dismal and fatal meaning they conveyed - struck the author forcibly. He asked himself, he strove to imagine, what suffering spirit it might be, who had determined not to quit this life without stamping this memento of crime or misfortune on the walls of the old cathedral. Since then the wall has been washed over, or scraped - I remember not which - and the inscription has disappeared. For thus it is that the wonderful churches of the middle ages have been dealt with for two hundred years past. Mutilation attacks them in every direction, from within as well as from without, the priest smears them over - the architect scrapes them - then come the people and demolish them. Thus, excepting only the frail memory here preserved of it by the author of this book, nothing now remains of the mysterious word engraven in the gloomy tower of Notre-Dame - nothing of the unknown destiny which it so mournfully recorded. The man who wrote that word upon the wall, passed away several centuries ago from among men the word, in its turn, has passed away from the walls of the church - the church itself will soon, perhaps, pass away from the face of the earth. It is upon the text of that word that this bool has been written. The Great Hall. Exactly three hundred and forty-eight years, six months and nineteen days have passed away since the Parisians were awakened by the noise of all the bells within the triple walls of the city, the university, and the town, ringing a full peal. Yet the 6th of January, 1482, was not a day of which history has preserved any record. There was nothing remarkable in the event which thus put in agitation so early in the morning the bells and the good people of Paris. It was neither an assault of Picards or of Burgundians, nor a shrine carried in procession, nor a revolt of scholars in the vigne de Laas, nor an entry of their most dread lord the king, nor a grand hanging up of thieves, male and female, at the Justice de Paris. Neither was it the sudden arrival, so frequent in the fifteenth century, of some ambassador and his train, all covered with lace and plumes. Scarcely two days had elapsed since the last cavalcade of this sort, that of the Flemish envoys commissioned - to conclude the marriage treaty between the Dauphin and Margaret of Flanders, had made its entry into Paris, to the great annoyance of Monsieur le Cardinal de Bourbon, who, to please the king, had been obliged to give a gracious reception to that rude train of Flemish burgomasters, and entertain them at his Hotel de Bourbon, with one of the rude dramatic exhibitions of the time, while a beating rain drenched the magnificent tapestry at his door. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com