led pell-mell above this metropolis of universal thought. At its base
are written some ancient titles of humanity which architecture had
not registered. To the left of the entrance has been fixed the ancient
bas-relief, in white marble, of Homer; to the right, the polyglot Bible
rears its seven heads. The hydra of the Romancero and some other hybrid
forms, the Vedas and the Nibelungen bristle further on.

Nevertheless, the prodigious edifice still remains incomplete. The
press, that giant machine, which incessantly pumps all the intellectual
sap of society, belches forth without pause fresh materials for its
work. The whole human race is on the scaffoldings. Each mind is a mason.
The humblest fills his hole, or places his stone. Retif de le Bretonne
brings his hod of plaster. Every day a new course rises. Independently
of the original and individual contribution of each writer, there are
collective contingents. The eighteenth century gives the _Encyclopedia_,
the revolution gives the _Moniteur_. Assuredly, it is a construction
which increases and piles up in endless spirals; there also are
confusion of tongues, incessant activity, indefatigable labor, eager
competition of all humanity, refuge promised to intelligence, a new
Flood against an overflow of barbarians. It is the second tower of Babel
of the human race.

BOOK SIXTH.

CHAPTER I. AN IMPARTIAL GLANCE AT THE ANCIENT MAGISTRACY.

A very happy personage in the year of grace 1482, was the noble
gentleman Robert d'Estouteville, chevalier, Sieur de Beyne, Baron d'Ivry
and Saint Andry en la Marche, counsellor and chamberlain to the king,
and guard of the provostship of Paris. It was already nearly seventeen
years since he had received from the king, on November 7, 1465, the
comet year,* that fine charge of the provostship of Paris, which was
reputed rather a seigneury than an office. _Dignitas_, says Joannes
Loemnoeus, _quoe cum non exigua potestate politiam concernente, atque
proerogativis multis et juribus conjuncta est_. A marvellous thing in
'82 was a gentleman bearing the king's commission, and whose letters
of institution ran back to the epoch of the marriage of the natural
daughter of Louis XI. with Monsieur the Bastard of Bourbon.

* This comet against which Pope Calixtus, uncle of Borgia,
ordered public prayers, is the same which reappeared in 1835.

The same day on which Robert d'Estouteville took the place of Jacques
de