Notre-Dame de Paris (Oxford World's Classics)
Page 60
Quatre-Nations: now the Institut de France, across the Seine from the Louvre.
Glaber Radulphus: the monastic chronicler Raoul Glaber, writing in the eleventh century.
column … cannon: the column in the Place Vendôme.
Vyasa: Hindu ascetic, traditional author of the Mahabharata.
Rétif de la Bretonne: a printer who wrote literally hundreds of novels about the life of the poor in his day.
Moniteur. the newspaper Le Moniteur universel, founded in 1789 on the model of contemporary English papers.
Robert d’Estouteville: he died, in fact, in 1479 and was succeeded by his son.
marriage: Jeanne married Louis de Bourbon in 1465.
‘League of the public weal’: formed 1464–5 against Louis, with Burgundian help.
entry in 14[67]: in 1467; the two last figures are omitted by Hugo.
Montlhéry: the rebel forces defeated the royal army there in 1465.
Constable: that is, Saint-Pol.
our rector: Thibaut, already introduced as a notorious gambler.
Conservancy: the court which dealt with cases relating to University privileges.
Puits-qui-parle: more prosaically known today as Puits de l’Ermite (Hermit’s Well).
Trou-aux-Rats: here, and elsewhere, the omission of the ‘r’ sound in popular speech in Paris of the day is exploited for the sake of wordplay. Thus, ‘tu ora’ sounded to the Parisian ear like ‘Trou-aux-Rats’.
eighteen years ago: the coronation of Louis XI was indeed in 1461, but there is no way that the Reims chronology can be squared with the other events of the story, laid in 1482. Esmeralda is about 16, Quasimodo about 20 in 1482, but the revelations of Mahiette at this point in the story have to be accepted as they are told. After all, the discrepancy of some four years is minor compared to that of twenty in the case of Gringoire. It will be seen in the course of this chapter that the time scale is repeatedly mentioned, but what is important is the age at which the sachette began her brief life of shame—14; she saw a chance of true love with the birth of her daughter, lost it with the baby’s disappearance (and the substitution of the little monster ‘about 4 years old’), and has been trying to atone for the past sixteen years.
clairet: a light red wine; the word ‘claret’ comes from it, but refers to the wines of the Bordeaux region rather than to the colour, and to speak of claret from Beaune today would be absurd.
demi-queues: vessels containing’ 27 septiers of 8 Parisian pints each’.
cinquantenier: one who has charge of fifty men.
Espérance: the Bourbon motto.
Madame the Maid: Joan of Arc, in 1429.
Pâquerette: the diminutive of her name, presumably implying familiarity; both words were then used for ‘daisy’.
sixteen years ago: this time the chronology agrees with the Parisian side of the story, that is, the sachette’s own testimony.
Poland …: in French, Pologne, Catalogne, Valogne makes her confusion more intelligible.
tabellionage: the office of scrivener.
John Comenius: pioneer educationalist (1592–1670); born in Moravia, died in Amsterdam.
That age …: quotation from La Fontaine’s fable The Two Pigeons.
du Bartas: Guillaume du Bartas, poet (1540–90).
Saint Genestus: an actor reputedly converted to Christianity in the course of an anti-Christian play and martyred under Diocletian. Best known through Rotrou’s tragedy of the same name (1646).
Saint Eustache’s day: apparently a misprint for Eustase. The obscure abbot of that name is commemorated on 29 March, and his name appears in Hugo’s manuscript. The much better known Eustache has 20 September as his feast day. Hugo wanted the events to take place on a Saturday (sabbath) for the association with witchcraft.
1823 … UGÈNE: Eugène Hugo, Victor’s brother, was certified insane in 1823—a private joke?
Manou: for Manes, from whom Manicheism is named?
Ezekiel: according to Sauval, who tells the story, a rabbi in the thirteenth century.
Montaigu cappette: the very short cloaks for which the poor scholars of the Collège de Montaigu were ridiculed gave them their nickname.
haudriette: see the beginning of Book Four.
per ipsum …: the conclusion of the solemn prayer in the canon of the mass: Frollo is saying what Hugo had found in the Dictionnaire infernal under various headings.
Psellos: Byzantine statesman and Platonist of the eleventh century. His Dialogue on the Energy and Operation of Daemons was translated into Latin by Ficino before 1479, and became an important source for Renaissance poets.
Raymond Lull: Catalan mystic philosopher, died 1316.
Coupe-Gueule … Coupe-Gorge: both words mean ‘throat’, but gueule is more vulgar; the change in name actually took place.
Petits-Carreaux: the rue des Petits Carreaux still exists, near the Halles (and the Court of Miracles).
Aux Houls …: the word for ‘drunk’, saoul, sounded like the word for ‘bear’; thus the rue aux Houls, or Ours, invited the mocking jingle.
‘The knowledge … table’: an anachronistic quotation from the Essays of Montaigne (1533–92).
rue Galiache: the word just used for ‘scabby’ was galeux, whence Jehan’s drunken association of ideas.
laces: the equivalent of buttoning up his flies.
Paternoster: Phoebus drunkenly includes St Michael in the Lord’s Prayer, when his name in fact comes into the formula for confession.
Rully: now Reuilly; Hugo quotes details from an account of such a muster held in 1467.
sabouleux: see note to p. 77.
Hugh of Saint Victor’s Didascalon: twelfth-century treatise, properly Didascalion, on arts and theology.
maîtres des requêtes: counsellors reporting directly to the king, whose role became increasingly important under the monarchy.
Bophomet… Templars: the Templars had been suppressed in the fourteenth century on charges of witchcraft, supported by evidence extorted by torture. Hugo is once again using the Dictionnaire infernal.
Inferno: the chapter heading comes from the device inscribed on the gates of hell, according to Dante.
‘forgetting’: whence oubliette.
caffardum: a kind of hood.
Garofalo: Benvenuto Tisi, died 1559.
Queue-en-Brie: there really is such a village, some 22 kilometres east of Paris, but Seebacher shows in a detailed note that the description applies more accurately to a village called la Queue-les-Yvelines, some 50 kilometres west of Paris, where Hugo is known to have stayed in 1821 and where he became involved in a duel.
La Fontaine: in his fable The Fox and the Stork.
Gazette des Tribunaux: Court Reports.
Themis: goddess of justice.
acton: a padded leather jacket worn under a coat of mail.
Colombe: her friend, de Gaillefontaine.
Masaccio: Florentine artist (1401–28), precursor of Raphael.
dismal psalms: the Latin text is from the Vulgate, but the English text and references are all to the Authorized Version, which varies slightly.
Montfaucon: for a full description, see the final chapter.
In the fields …: the original specified the villages (now suburbs) of Issy and Vanves to rhyme with chanvre, hemp.
Fortunate senex: Virgil, Bucolics, i. 46.
Job …: the middle phrase of the quotation is the latter part of verse 12, inserted between two parts of verse 15.
Louis XII: reigned 1498–1515.
two marshals …: the incident took place in 1358; Hugo confuses several details.
Pyrrhonist: Gringoire has already been described as a sceptical philosopher; Pyrrho (died 276 BC) was the best-known exponent of the attitude and immensely influential in the Renaissance.
Phoebus, comte de Foix: Froissart gives a detailed, and famous, description of Gaston Phoebus, comte de Foix (1331–91).
Il padelt: not Turkish, but Gringoire’s erudition is always
suspect.
Bito: Gringoire seems to be confused again. Bito and his brother Cleobis replaced two missing bulls to draw their mother’s chariot to the temple so that she could do her duty as priestess of Hera.
Aux sonneurs …: the pun, and many others in this book, depend on a systematized version of Parisian speech at the time, where the sound ‘r’ and many plurals were silent; thus sols neufs sounded like sonneurs, and pour les like poulets.
Mistigri: the knave of clubs in some card games.
Caillouville: near the abbey of Saint-Wandrille in Normandy, it was famous for the dense rows of saints in the church.
Quae cantica …: the words are from St Augustine.
Saint Goguelu: the Holy Face was a full-size wooden statue of Christ in the cathedral at Lucca. Known as Volto santo, it had been put there in the eleventh or twelfth century and was much venerated. A copy was placed in the Paris church of Saint-Sépulcre and was known as Saint-Voult de Lucques. This soon became corrupted into Vaudelu, to Godelu, until finally it took a form the people recognized, Goguelu, meaning ‘braggart’. Linguistically this footnote contributed by Jehan is interesting enough, but, drunk as he is, sounds hardly realistic.
in paradiso …: the word ‘parvis’ really does come from the Latin paradisum, but apart from the pun, there is an uneasy parody of Christ’s promise to the penitent thief about paradise (Luke 23: 43).
Luxuriosa res…: Proverbs 20: 1.
Vinum …: Rule of St Benedict, ch. 40.
Ecnoma: Roman naval victory off Sicily over the Carthaginians in 256 BC; Alexander and Gustavus Adolphus (King of Sweden 1611–32) used the wedge formation on land.
rue Coupe-Gueule: see note to p. 305.
Lectoure: in Armagnac; besieged in 1473 by royal troops.
Sabnac: as for most of Spicali’s demonology, Hugo quotes from the Dictionnaire infernal.
forty years ago now: the Turks took Constantinople in 1453, thirty years ago.
footboys …: at the time the word ‘laquais’, here translated footboy, simply meant a foot soldier, rather than a flunkey, and the number of discharged troops roaming the countryside after the Hundred Years War had become a proverbial nuisance; it is likely that this is what Hugo had in mind.
Pharamond: one of the kingly statues.
toises: a variable measure, usually about 6 feet.
Cyrus: the very fashionable novel Le Grand Cyrus (1653) was said to include Madame Pilou as stated, but Louis XI’s bed is nothing to do with it.
Fifty sols … cloaks: all the facts and figures which so annoy the king come from account books published by Sauval and others, but dates are, as usual, random; the Palais clock, for example, was renovated in 1472.
King Edward: Edward IV of England.
Louis de Luxembourg: the comte de Saint-Pol, already mentioned, executed in 1475.
Cardinal Balue: Jean de la Balue (1421–91), Bishop of Evreux, then of Angers, was imprisoned in such a cage (which he is reputed to have designed, though not for his own use) at Loches in 1469, for allegedly conspiring with Louis XI’s enemies. He was released in 1480. Many of the details in fact apply to him rather than to the unfortunate Bishop of Verdun.
Guillaume de Harancourt: or Haraucourt, of a leading family in Lorraine. Made Bishop of Verdun in 1456, he was arrested with Balue and caged in the Bastille in 1469, but released in April 1482 on agreeing to accept the see of Ventimiglia. He eventually was allowed back to Lorraine, where he died in 1500.
bailiff of the Palais de Justice: the post was held by Coictier himself at the time, though Hugo seems conveniently to have forgotten.
Musagetes: ‘leader of the Muses’.
Matthias Corvinus: King of Hungary and Bohemia, died 1490.
Monroyal: French version of Regiomontanus, ‘from Kønigsberg’ (Franconia, not Prussia), as Johann Müller, a noted astronomer, was known.
Hugonet: see p. 46.
Jehan Fourbault: he is mentioned at the end of Book Two, Ch. I, as having contributed banners to the decorations.
Boucicaut: died in 1367.
Grandson: battle in 1476.
avoyer Scharnachtal: an avoyer was a chief magistrate; in the case of Scharnachtal, of Berne.
Bastille: the irony is not just the implicit reference to its fall in 1789, but to the fact that by the time Hugo wrote the words, the Bourbons had just been evicted again by the July Revolution.
Saint-Lô: although Hugo twice wrote the name of this Norman town, in which there was an abbey called Sainte-Croix, it seems that the true reference is to the castle chapel of Saint-Laud at Angers (pronounced the same).
lances:, a lance was a troop of six horsemen.
St Hugh: the only English Bishop Hugh to be canonized was Hugh of Avalon, a Carthusian monk who became Bishop of Lincoln; he died in 1200, well before the first King Edward came to the throne (1274), and the allusion remains obscure.
Saint Paul: the church of that name in Paris.
Saint-Gervais: Gringoire has rushed all the way back to the town centre; Saint-Gervais is near the Hôtel de Ville.
Taurinum obsessor …: the epitaph has just been translated: ‘at once besieger and besieged at Turin’.
P. Matthieu: Histoire de Louis XI (1628), a major source for Book Ten.
Ascalaphus: son of Acheron; Hugo does not explain the allusion, but Gringoire must have been thinking of his metamorphosis.
geometry: in the original sense of measuring distances and directions by instinct, not solving abstract problems.
Gabelle: the much-resented salt tax.
Philippe V: known as Philippe the Long; his reign was from 1316 to 1322, but the position of the adjective in the original is deliberately ambiguous.
Dante: Hugo himself gives Dante as the source for this chapter heading, actually referring to the angel of humility in Purgatorio, xii. 89–90. Unlike the universally familiar title to Book Eight, Ch. IV, this is by no means a well-known quotation.
1483: in fact from the accounts for 1502; see p. 32.
160 toises: some 330 yards outside the walls.
Marigni… Coligny. the first was executed in 1315, the other was one of the chief victims of the massacre of St Bartholomew’s Day, 1572.
Olivier le Daim … before: executed in May 1484. The church of Saint-Laurent is near the site of Montfaucon (and today near the Gare de l’Est).
1 The word Gothic in the sense in which it is generally used is quite improper, but firmly established. We accept it therefore and adopt it, like everyone else, to denote the architecture of the second half of the Middle Ages, of which the pointed arch is the principle, in succession to the architecture of the earlier period, which derived from the round arch. V.H.