tain hour above all others, when the facade of
Notre-Dame should be admired. It is the moment when the sun, already
declining towards the west, looks the cathedral almost full in the face.
Its rays, growing more and more horizontal, withdraw slowly from the
pavement of the square, and mount up the perpendicular facade, whose
thousand bosses in high relief they cause to start out from the shadows,
while the great central rose window flames like the eye of a cyclops,
inflamed with the reflections of the forge.

This was the hour.

Opposite the lofty cathedral, reddened by the setting sun, on the stone
balcony built above the porch of a rich Gothic house, which formed the
angle of the square and the Rue du Parvis, several young girls were
laughing and chatting with every sort of grace and mirth. From the
length of the veil which fell from their pointed coif, twined with
pearls, to their heels, from the fineness of the embroidered chemisette
which covered their shoulders and allowed a glimpse, according to the
pleasing custom of the time, of the swell of their fair virgin bosoms,
from the opulence of their under-petticoats still more precious than
their overdress (marvellous refinement), from the gauze, the silk,
the velvet, with which all this was composed, and, above all, from the
whiteness of their hands, which certified to their leisure and idleness,
it was easy to divine they were noble and wealthy heiresses. They were,
in fact, Damoiselle Fleur-de-Lys de Gondelaurier and her companions,
Diane de Christeuil, Amelotte de Montmichel, Colombe de Gaillefontaine,
and the little de Champchevrier maiden; all damsels of good birth,
assembled at that moment at the house of the dame widow de Gondelaurier,
on account of Monseigneur de Beaujeu and Madame his wife, who were to
come to Paris in the month of April, there to choose maids of honor for
the Dauphiness Marguerite, who was to be received in Picardy from the
hands of the Flemings. Now, all the squires for twenty leagues around
were intriguing for this favor for their daughters, and a goodly number
of the latter had been already brought or sent to Paris. These four
maidens had been confided to the discreet and venerable charge of
Madame Aloise de Gondelaurier, widow of a former commander of the king's
cross-bowmen, who had retired with her only daughter to her house in the
Place du Parvis, Notre-Dame, in Paris.

The balcony on which these young girls stood opened from a ch