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The Cour des Miracles was, in fact, and's dram-shop, reddened quite as much with blood as ine

The spectacle which presented itself to his eyes, when his ragged escort finally deposited him at the end of his trip, was not fitted to bear him back to poetry, even to the poetry of hell It was more than ever the prosaic and brutal reality of the tavern Were we not in the fifteenth century, ould say that Gringoire had descended froreat fire which burned on a large, circular flagstone, the flas of a tripod, which was empty for the moment, some wormeaten tables were placed, here and there, haphazard, no lackey of a geoned to adjust their parallelisles Upon these tables glea pots of wine and beer, and round these pots were grouped es, purple with the fire and the wine There was aa woman of the town, thickset and brawny There was a sort of sha expression runs, histling as he undid the bandages fro the nuorous knee, which had been swathed since atures On the other hand, there was a wretched fellow, preparing with celandine and beef's blood, his "leg of God," for the next day Two tables further on, a pal the la the drone and the nasal drawl Further on, a young sca a lesson in epilepsy fro hi arid of his swelling, andat the sa, hold their noses All circumstances which, two centuries later, "seemed so ridiculous to the court," as Sauval says, "that they served as a pasti, and as an introduction to the royal ballet of Night, divided into four parts and danced on the theatre of the Petit-Bourbon" "Never," adds an eye witness of 1653, "have the sudden metamorphoses of the Court of Miracles been more happily presented Benserade prepared us for it by soallant verses"