While the pensioner of Ghent and his eminence were exchanging very lowbows and a few words in voices still lower, a man of lofty stature, witha large face and broad shoulders, presented himself, in order to enterabreast with Guillaume Rym; one would have pronounced him a bull-dog bythe side of a fox. His felt doublet and leather jerkin made a spot onthe velvet and silk which surrounded him. Presuming that he was somegroom who had stolen in, the usher stopped him.
"Hold, my friend, you cannot pass!"
The man in the leather jerkin shouldered him aside.
"What does this knave want with me?" said he, in stentorian tones, whichrendered the entire hall attentive to this strange colloquy. "Don't yousee that I am one of them?"
"Your name?" demanded the usher.
"Jacques Coppenole."
"Your titles?"
"Hosier at the sign of the 'Three Little Chains,' of Ghent."
The usher recoiled. One might bring one's self to announce aldermen andburgomasters, but a hosier was too much. The cardinal was on thorns.All the people were staring and listening. For two days his eminence hadbeen exerting his utmost efforts to lick these Flemish bears into shape,and to render them a little more presentable to the public, and thisfreak was startling. But Guillaume Rym, with his polished smile,approached the usher.
"Announce Master Jacques Coppenole, clerk of the aldermen of the city ofGhent," he whispered, very low.
"Usher," interposed the cardinal, aloud, "announce Master JacquesCoppenole, clerk of the aldermen of the illustrious city of Ghent."
This was a mistake. Guillaume Rym alone might have conjured away thedifficulty, but Coppenole had heard the cardinal.
"No, cross of God?" he exclaimed, in his voice of thunder, "JacquesCoppenole, hosier. Do you hear, usher? Nothing more, nothing less. Crossof God! hosier; that's fine enough. Monsieur the Archduke has more thanonce sought his _gant_* in my hose."
* Got the first idea of a timing.
Laughter and applause burst forth. A jest is always understood in Paris,and, consequently, always applauded.
Let us add that Coppenole was of the people, and that the auditors whichsurrounded him were also of the people. Thus the communication betweenhim and them had been prompt, electric, and, so to speak, on a level.The haughty air of the Flemish hosier, by humiliating the courtiers,had touched in all these plebeian souls that latent sentiment of dignitystill vague and indistinct in the fifteenth century.
This hosier was an equal, who had just held his own before monsieur thecardinal. A very sweet reflection to poor fellows habituated to respectand obedience towards the underlings of the sergeants of the bailiff ofSainte-Genevieve, the cardinal's train-bearer.
Coppenole proudly saluted his eminence, who returned the salute of theall-powerful bourgeois feared by Louis XI. Then, while Guillaume Rym, a"sage and malicious man," as Philippe de Comines puts it, watched themboth with a smile of raillery and superiority, each sought his place,the cardinal quite abashed and troubled, Coppenole tranquil and haughty,and thinking, no doubt, that his title of hosier was as good as anyother, after all, and that Marie of Burgundy, mother to that Margueritewhom Coppenole was to-day bestowing in marriage, would have been lessafraid of the cardinal than of the hosier; for it is not a cardinalwho would have stirred up a revolt among the men of Ghent against thefavorites of the daughter of Charles the Bold; it is not a cardinalwho could have fortified the populace with a word against her tearsand prayers, when the Maid of Flanders came to supplicate her people intheir behalf, even at the very foot of the scaffold; while the hosierhad only to raise his leather elbow, in order to cause to fall yourtwo heads, most illustrious seigneurs, Guy d'Hymbercourt and ChancellorGuillaume Hugonet.
Nevertheless, all was over for the poor cardinal, and he was obliged toquaff to the dregs the bitter cup of being in such bad company.
The reader has, probably, not forgotten the impudent beggar who had beenclinging fast to the fringes of the cardinal's gallery ever since thebeginning of the prologue. The arrival of the illustrious guests hadby no means caused him to relax his hold, and, while the prelatesand ambassadors were packing themselves into the stalls--like genuineFlemish herrings--he settled himself at his ease, and boldly crossedhis legs on the architrave. The insolence of this proceeding wasextraordinary, yet no one noticed it at first, the attention of allbeing directed elsewhere. He, on his side, perceived nothing thatwas going on in the hall; he wagged his head with the unconcern of aNeapolitan, repeating from time to time, amid the clamor, as from amechanical habit, "Charity, please!" And, assuredly, he was, out of allthose present, the only one who had not deigned to turn his head at thealtercation between Coppenole and the usher. Now, chance ordained thatthe master hosier of Ghent, with whom the people were already in livelysympathy, and upon whom all eyes were riveted--should come and seathimself in the front row of the gallery, directly above the mendicant;and people were not a little amazed to see the Flemish ambassador, onconcluding his inspection of the knave thus placed beneath his eyes,bestow a friendly tap on that ragged shoulder. The beggar turned round;there was surprise, recognition, a lighting up of the two countenances,and so forth; then, without paying the slightest heed in the world tothe spectators, the hosier and the wretched being began to converse in alow tone, holding each other's hands, in the meantime, while the ragsof Clopin Trouillefou, spread out upon the cloth of gold of the dais,produced the effect of a caterpillar on an orange.
The novelty of this singular scene excited such a murmur of mirth andgayety in the hall, that the cardinal was not slow to perceive it; hehalf bent forward, and, as from the point where he was placed he couldcatch only an imperfect view of Trouillerfou's ignominious doublet,he very naturally imagined that the mendicant was asking alms, and,disgusted with his audacity, he exclaimed: "Bailiff of the Courts, tossme that knave into the river!"
"Cross of God! monseigneur the cardinal," said Coppenole, withoutquitting Clopin's hand, "he's a friend of mine."
"Good! good!" shouted the populace. From that moment, Master Coppenoleenjoyed in Paris as in Ghent, "great favor with the people; for men ofthat sort do enjoy it," says Philippe de Comines, "when they are thusdisorderly." The cardinal bit his lips. He bent towards his neighbor,the Abbe of Saint Genevieve, and said to him in a low tone,--"Fineambassadors monsieur the archduke sends here, to announce to us MadameMarguerite!"
"Your eminence," replied the abbe, "wastes your politeness on theseFlemish swine. _Margaritas ante porcos_, pearls before swine."
"Say rather," retorted the cardinal, with a smile, "_Porcos anteMargaritam_, swine before the pearl."
The whole little court in cassocks went into ecstacies over this playupon words. The cardinal felt a little relieved; he was quits withCoppenole, he also had had his jest applauded.
Now, will those of our readers who possess the power of generalizing animage or an idea, as the expression runs in the style of to-day, permitus to ask them if they have formed a very clear conception of thespectacle presented at this moment, upon which we have arrested theirattention, by the vast parallelogram of the grand hall of the palace.
In the middle of the hall, backed against the western wall, a largeand magnificent gallery draped with cloth of gold, into which enter inprocession, through a small, arched door, grave personages, announcedsuccessively by the shrill voice of an usher. On the front benches werealready a number of venerable figures, muffled in ermine, velvet, andscarlet. Around the dais--which remains silent and dignified--below,opposite, everywhere, a great crowd and a great murmur. Thousands ofglances directed by the people on each face upon the dais, a thousandwhispers over each name. Certainly, the spectacle is curious, and welldeserves the attention of the spectators. But yonder, quite at the end,what is that sort of trestle work with four motley puppets upon it, andmore below? Who is that man beside the trestle, with a black doubletand a pale face? Alas! my dear reader, it is Pierre Gringoire and hisprologue.
We have all forgotten him completely.
&
nbsp; This is precisely what he feared.
From the moment of the cardinal's entrance, Gringoire had never ceasedto tremble for the safety of his prologue. At first he had enjoined theactors, who had stopped in suspense, to continue, and to raise theirvoices; then, perceiving that no one was listening, he had stopped them;and, during the entire quarter of an hour that the interruption lasted,he had not ceased to stamp, to flounce about, to appeal to Gisquette andLienarde, and to urge his neighbors to the continuance of the prologue;all in vain. No one quitted the cardinal, the embassy, and thegallery--sole centre of this vast circle of visual rays. We must alsobelieve, and we say it with regret, that the prologue had begun slightlyto weary the audience at the moment when his eminence had arrived, andcreated a diversion in so terrible a fashion. After all, on the galleryas well as on the marble table, the spectacle was the same: the conflictof Labor and Clergy, of Nobility and Merchandise. And many peoplepreferred to see them alive, breathing, moving, elbowing each other inflesh and blood, in this Flemish embassy, in this Episcopal court, underthe cardinal's robe, under Coppenole's jerkin, than painted, deckedout, talking in verse, and, so to speak, stuffed beneath the yellow amidwhite tunics in which Gringoire had so ridiculously clothed them.
Nevertheless, when our poet beheld quiet reestablished to some extent,he devised a stratagem which might have redeemed all.
"Monsieur," he said, turning towards one of his neighbors, a fine, bigman, with a patient face, "suppose we begin again."
"What?" said his neighbor.
"He! the Mystery," said Gringoire.
"As you like," returned his neighbor.
This semi-approbation sufficed for Gringoire, and, conducting his ownaffairs, he began to shout, confounding himself with the crowd as muchas possible: "Begin the mystery again! begin again!"
"The devil!" said Joannes de Molendino, "what are they jabbering downyonder, at the end of the hall?" (for Gringoire was making noise enoughfor four.) "Say, comrades, isn't that mystery finished? They want tobegin it all over again. That's not fair!"
"No, no!" shouted all the scholars. "Down with the mystery! Down withit!"
But Gringoire had multiplied himself, and only shouted the morevigorously: "Begin again! begin again!"
These clamors attracted the attention of the cardinal.
"Monsieur Bailiff of the Courts," said he to a tall, black man, placed afew paces from him, "are those knaves in a holy-water vessel, that theymake such a hellish noise?"
The bailiff of the courts was a sort of amphibious magistrate, a sortof bat of the judicial order, related to both the rat and the bird, thejudge and the soldier.
He approached his eminence, and not without a good deal of fear ofthe latter's displeasure, he awkwardly explained to him the seemingdisrespect of the audience: that noonday had arrived before hiseminence, and that the comedians had been forced to begin withoutwaiting for his eminence.
The cardinal burst into a laugh.
"On my faith, the rector of the university ought to have done the same.What say you, Master Guillaume Rym?"
"Monseigneur," replied Guillaume Rym, "let us be content with havingescaped half of the comedy. There is at least that much gained."
"Can these rascals continue their farce?" asked the bailiff.
"Continue, continue," said the cardinal, "it's all the same to me. I'llread my breviary in the meantime."
The bailiff advanced to the edge of the estrade, and cried, after havinginvoked silence by a wave of the hand,--
"Bourgeois, rustics, and citizens, in order to satisfy those who wishthe play to begin again, and those who wish it to end, his eminenceorders that it be continued."
Both parties were forced to resign themselves. But the public and theauthor long cherished a grudge against the cardinal.
So the personages on the stage took up their parts, and Gringoire hopedthat the rest of his work, at least, would be listened to. This hope wasspeedily dispelled like his other illusions; silence had indeed,been restored in the audience, after a fashion; but Gringoire hadnot observed that at the moment when the cardinal gave the order tocontinue, the gallery was far from full, and that after the Flemishenvoys there had arrived new personages forming part of the cortege,whose names and ranks, shouted out in the midst of his dialogue by theintermittent cry of the usher, produced considerable ravages in it. Letthe reader imagine the effect in the midst of a theatrical piece, of theyelping of an usher, flinging in between two rhymes, and often in themiddle of a line, parentheses like the following,--
"Master Jacques Charmolue, procurator to the king in the EcclesiasticalCourts!"
"Jehan de Harlay, equerry guardian of the office of chevalier of thenight watch of the city of Paris!"
"Messire Galiot de Genoilhac, chevalier, seigneur de Brussac, master ofthe king's artillery!"
"Master Dreux-Raguier, surveyor of the woods and forests of the king oursovereign, in the land of France, Champagne and Brie!"
"Messire Louis de Graville, chevalier, councillor, and chamberlain ofthe king, admiral of France, keeper of the Forest of Vincennes!"
"Master Denis le Mercier, guardian of the house of the blind at Paris!"etc., etc., etc.
This was becoming unbearable.
This strange accompaniment, which rendered it difficult to followthe piece, made Gringoire all the more indignant because he couldnot conceal from himself the fact that the interest was continuallyincreasing, and that all his work required was a chance of being heard.
It was, in fact, difficult to imagine a more ingenious and moredramatic composition. The four personages of the prologue were bewailingthemselves in their mortal embarrassment, when Venus in person, (_veraincessa patuit dea_) presented herself to them, clad in a fine robebearing the heraldic device of the ship of the city of Paris. Shehad come herself to claim the dolphin promised to the most beautiful.Jupiter, whose thunder could be heard rumbling in the dressing-room,supported her claim, and Venus was on the point of carrying itoff,--that is to say, without allegory, of marrying monsieur thedauphin, when a young child clad in white damask, and holding in herhand a daisy (a transparent personification of Mademoiselle Margueriteof Flanders) came to contest it with Venus.
Theatrical effect and change.
After a dispute, Venus, Marguerite, and the assistants agreed to submitto the good judgment of time holy Virgin. There was another good part,that of the king of Mesopotamia; but through so many interruptions,it was difficult to make out what end he served. All these persons hadascended by the ladder to the stage.
But all was over; none of these beauties had been felt nor understood.On the entrance of the cardinal, one would have said that an invisiblemagic thread had suddenly drawn all glances from the marble table to thegallery, from the southern to the western extremity of the hall. Nothingcould disenchant the audience; all eyes remained fixed there, andthe new-comers and their accursed names, and their faces, and theircostumes, afforded a continual diversion. This was very distressing.With the exception of Gisquette and Lienarde, who turned round from timeto time when Gringoire plucked them by the sleeve; with the exception ofthe big, patient neighbor, no one listened, no one looked at the poor,deserted morality full face. Gringoire saw only profiles.
With what bitterness did he behold his whole erection of glory and ofpoetry crumble away bit by bit! And to think that these people hadbeen upon the point of instituting a revolt against the bailiff throughimpatience to hear his work! now that they had it they did not care forit. This same representation which had been begun amid so unanimous anacclamation! Eternal flood and ebb of popular favor! To think that theyhad been on the point of hanging the bailiff's sergeant! What would henot have given to be still at that hour of honey!
But the usher's brutal monologue came to an end; every one had arrived,and Gringoire breathed freely once more; the actors continued bravely.But Master Coppenole, the hosier, must needs rise of a sudden, andGringoire was forced to listen to him deliver, amid universal attention,the following abo
minable harangue.
"Messieurs the bourgeois and squires of Paris, I don't know, cross ofGod! what we are doing here. I certainly do see yonder in the corner onthat stage, some people who appear to be fighting. I don't know whetherthat is what you call a "mystery," but it is not amusing; they quarrelwith their tongues and nothing more. I have been waiting for the firstblow this quarter of an hour; nothing comes; they are cowards who onlyscratch each other with insults. You ought to send for the fighters ofLondon or Rotterdam; and, I can tell you! you would have had blows ofthe fist that could be heard in the Place; but these men excite ourpity. They ought at least, to give us a moorish dance, or some othermummer! That is not what was told me; I was promised a feast of fools,with the election of a pope. We have our pope of fools at Ghent also;we're not behindhand in that, cross of God! But this is the way wemanage it; we collect a crowd like this one here, then each person inturn passes his head through a hole, and makes a grimace at the rest;time one who makes the ugliest, is elected pope by general acclamation;that's the way it is. It is very diverting. Would you like to make yourpope after the fashion of my country? At all events, it will be lesswearisome than to listen to chatterers. If they wish to come and maketheir grimaces through the hole, they can join the game. What say you,Messieurs les bourgeois? You have here enough grotesque specimens ofboth sexes, to allow of laughing in Flemish fashion, and there areenough of us ugly in countenance to hope for a fine grinning match."
Gringoire would have liked to retort; stupefaction, rage, indignation,deprived him of words. Moreover, the suggestion of the popular hosierwas received with such enthusiasm by these bourgeois who were flatteredat being called "squires," that all resistance was useless. There wasnothing to be done but to allow one's self to drift with the torrent.Gringoire hid his face between his two hands, not being so fortunateas to have a mantle with which to veil his head, like Agamemnon ofTimantis.
CHAPTER V. QUASIMODO.