CHAPTER XXVIII.
IN THE LITTLE CHAPTER-HOUSE.
The sun was an hour high, and in Angers the shops and booths, after the early fashion of the day, were open or opening. Through all the gates country folk were pressing into the gloomy streets of the Black Town with milk and fruit; and at doors and windows housewives cheapened fish, or chaffered over the fowl for the pot. For men must eat, though there be gibbets in the Place Ste.-Croix: gaunt gibbets, high and black and twofold, each, with its dangling ropes, like a double note of interrogation.
But gibbets must eat also; and between ground and noose was so small a space in those days that a man dangled almost before he knew it. The sooner, then, the paniers were empty, and the clown, who pays for all, was beyond the gates, the better he, for one, would be pleased. In the market, therefore, was hurrying. Men cried their wares in lowered voices, and tarried but a little for the oldest customer. The bargain struck, the more timid among the buyers hastened to shut themselves into their houses again; the bolder, who ventured to the Place to confirm the rumour with their eyes, talked in corners and in lanes, avoided the open, and eyed the sinister preparations from afar. The shadow of the things which stood before the cathedral affronting the sunlight with their gaunt black
