The unreasoning and far from subtile piety of that day could not conceive of so many sides to an act of religion. It viewed the thing as a whole, and honored, venerated, sanctified the sacrifice if need be, but did not analyze the suffering, and pitied it but slightly. It occasionally bestowed some pittance on the wretched penitent, looked through the hole to see if he were still alive, knew not his name, hardly knew how many years it was since he began to die, and to the stranger who asked about the living skeleton rotting in that cellar, the neighbors simply answered, “That is the recluse.”
People saw things in this way then,—without metaphysics, without exaggeration, without magnifying-glass, with the naked eye. The microscope had not yet been invented, either for material or for spiritual things.
Besides, although people marvelled so little at them, instances of this kind of claustration in the heart of a town were really very frequent, as we just now observed. Paris contained a goodly number of these cells for praying to God and doing penance; they were almost all occupied. It is true that the clergy did not care to leave them empty, as that would imply luke-warmness among the faithful; and they therefore put lepers into them when they had no penitents. Besides the cell in the Place de Grève, there was one at Montfaucon, one at the charnel-house of the Cemetery of the Innocents, another,—I’ve forgotten just where,—at Clichon House, I believe; others again in many other places, traces of which may yet be found in popular tradition, for lack of monuments. The University had also cells of its own. On the mountain of St. Geneviève a kind of medi?val Job for thirty years sang the seven penitential psalms upon a dunghill, at the bottom of a cistern, beginning again whenever he reached the end, chanting louder by night,—magna voce per umbras; and even now the antiquary fancies that he hears his voice when he enters the street known as Rue Puits-qui-parle: the street of the Talking Well.
But to keep to the cell of the Tour-Roland, we should mention that it had never wanted for recluses. Since Madame Rolande’s death, it had seldom been vacant for more than a year. Many women had gone thither to weep, until death, for parents, lovers, or sins. Parisian malice, which interferes with everything, even those things which concern it least, asserted that very few widows had ever been seen within its walls.
As was the fashion of that period, a Latin inscription on the wall informed the learned passers-by of the pious purpose of this cell. The custom was retained until the middle of the sixteenth century, of explaining the purpose of a building by a brief device inscribed above the door. Thus we still read in France, over the gate of the prison belonging to the manor of the Lord of Tourville: “Sileto et spera;”bzin Ireland, under the escutcheon over the great door of Fortescue Castle: “Forte scutum, salus ducum;”ca and in England, over the main entrance to the hospitable manor of Earl Cowper: “Tuum est.”cbIn those days every edifice embodied a thought.
As there was no door to the walled cell in the Tour-Roland, some one had carved in Roman capitals over the window these two words:— “TU, ORA.”cc
Hence the people, whose mind never grasps such nice distinctions, and who are quite ready to translate Ludovico Magno into the Porte Saint-Denis, gave this dark, damp, gloomy cavern the name of the “Trou-aux-Rats,” or the Rat-Hole,—an explanation possibly less sublime, but certainly more picturesque than the other.
CHAPTER III
The Story of a Wheaten Cake At the time of which this story treats, the cell in the Tour-Roland was occupied. If the reader wishes to know by whom, he has but to listen to the conversation of three worthy gossips, who, at the moment when we drew his attention to the Rat-Hole, were walking directly that way, going from the Chatelet towards the Place de Grève, along the water’s edge.
Two of these women were dressed like good citizens of Paris. Their fine white gorgets; their petticoats of striped linsey-woolsey, red and blue; their white knitted stockings, with colored clocks, pulled well up over the leg; their square-toed shoes of tan-colored leather with black soles; and above all their head-dress,—a sort of tinsel horn overloaded with ribbons and lace, still worn by the women of Champagne and by the grenadiers of the Russian Imperial Guard,—proclaiming that they belonged to that class of rich tradesfolk occupying the middle ground between what servants call “a woman” and what they call “a lady.” They wore neither rings nor gold crosses; and it was easy to see that this was not from poverty, but quite simply from fear of a fine. Their companion was attired in much the same style; but there was something in her appearance and manner which bespoke the country notary’s wife. It was evident by the way in which her girdle was arranged high above her hips, that she had not been in Paris long; add to this a pleated gor get, knots of ribbon on her shoes, the fact that the stripes of her petticoat ran breadthwise and not lengthwise, and a thousand other enormities revolting to good taste.