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diff --git a/themes/ananke/exampleSite/content/post/chapter-1.md b/themes/ananke/exampleSite/content/post/chapter-1.md deleted file mode 100644 index ff2a14f..0000000 --- a/themes/ananke/exampleSite/content/post/chapter-1.md +++ /dev/null @@ -1,81 +0,0 @@ ---- -date: 2017-04-09T10:58:08-04:00 -description: "The Grand Hall" -featured_image: "/images/Pope-Edouard-de-Beaumont-1844.jpg" -tags: ["scene"] -title: "Chapter I: The Grand Hall" ---- - -Three hundred and forty-eight years, six months, and nineteen days ago -to-day, the Parisians awoke to the sound of all the bells in the triple -circuit of the city, the university, and the town ringing a full peal. - -The sixth of January, 1482, is not, however, a day of which history has -preserved the memory. There was nothing notable in the event which thus -set the bells and the bourgeois of Paris in a ferment from early morning. -It was neither an assault by the Picards nor the Burgundians, nor a hunt -led along in procession, nor a revolt of scholars in the town of Laas, nor -an entry of “our much dread lord, monsieur the king,” nor even a pretty -hanging of male and female thieves by the courts of Paris. Neither was it -the arrival, so frequent in the fifteenth century, of some plumed and -bedizened embassy. It was barely two days since the last cavalcade of that -nature, that of the Flemish ambassadors charged with concluding the -marriage between the dauphin and Marguerite of Flanders, had made its -entry into Paris, to the great annoyance of M. le Cardinal de Bourbon, -who, for the sake of pleasing the king, had been obliged to assume an -amiable mien towards this whole rustic rabble of Flemish burgomasters, and -to regale them at his Hôtel de Bourbon, with a very “pretty morality, -allegorical satire, and farce,” while a driving rain drenched the -magnificent tapestries at his door. - -What put the “whole population of Paris in commotion,” as Jehan de Troyes -expresses it, on the sixth of January, was the double solemnity, united -from time immemorial, of the Epiphany and the Feast of Fools. - -On that day, there was to be a bonfire on the Place de Grève, a maypole at -the Chapelle de Braque, and a mystery at the Palais de Justice. It had -been cried, to the sound of the trumpet, the preceding evening at all the -cross roads, by the provost’s men, clad in handsome, short, sleeveless -coats of violet camelot, with large white crosses upon their breasts. - -So the crowd of citizens, male and female, having closed their houses and -shops, thronged from every direction, at early morn, towards some one of -the three spots designated. - -Each had made his choice; one, the bonfire; another, the maypole; another, -the mystery play. It must be stated, in honor of the good sense of the -loungers of Paris, that the greater part of this crowd directed their -steps towards the bonfire, which was quite in season, or towards the -mystery play, which was to be presented in the grand hall of the Palais de -Justice (the courts of law), which was well roofed and walled; and that -the curious left the poor, scantily flowered maypole to shiver all alone -beneath the sky of January, in the cemetery of the Chapel of Braque. - -The populace thronged the avenues of the law courts in particular, because -they knew that the Flemish ambassadors, who had arrived two days -previously, intended to be present at the representation of the mystery, -and at the election of the Pope of the Fools, which was also to take place -in the grand hall. - -It was no easy matter on that day, to force one’s way into that grand -hall, although it was then reputed to be the largest covered enclosure in -the world (it is true that Sauval had not yet measured the grand hall of -the Château of Montargis). The palace place, encumbered with people, -offered to the curious gazers at the windows the aspect of a sea; into -which five or six streets, like so many mouths of rivers, discharged every -moment fresh floods of heads. The waves of this crowd, augmented -incessantly, dashed against the angles of the houses which projected here -and there, like so many promontories, into the irregular basin of the -place. In the centre of the lofty Gothic* façade of the palace, the grand -staircase, incessantly ascended and descended by a double current, which, -after parting on the intermediate landing-place, flowed in broad waves -along its lateral slopes,—the grand staircase, I say, trickled -incessantly into the place, like a cascade into a lake. The cries, the -laughter, the trampling of those thousands of feet, produced a great noise -and a great clamor. From time to time, this noise and clamor redoubled; -the current which drove the crowd towards the grand staircase flowed -backwards, became troubled, formed whirlpools. This was produced by the -buffet of an archer, or the horse of one of the provost’s sergeants, which -kicked to restore order; an admirable tradition which the provostship has -bequeathed to the constablery, the constablery to the _maréchaussée_, -the _maréchaussée_ to our _gendarmeri_ of Paris. |