As for the scholars, they swore.

This was their day, their feast of fools, their saturnalia, the annual orgy of the corporation of Law clerks and of the school.

There was no turpitude which was not sacred on that day.

And then there were gay gossips in the crowd--Simone Quatrelivres, Agnes la Gadine, and Rabine Piedebou.

Was it not the least that one could do to swear at one's ease and revile the name of God a little, on so fine a day, in such good company as dignitaries of the church and loose women?
So they did not abstain; and, in the midst of the uproar, there was a frightful concert of blasphemies and enormities of all the unbridled tongues, the tongues of clerks and students restrained during the rest of the year, by the fear of the hot iron of Saint Louis.