Produced by Peter Snow Cao
NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS
Also known as:
THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME
By Victor Hugo
Translated by Isabel F. Hapgood
PREFACE.
A few years ago, while visiting or, rather, rummaging about Notre-Dame,the author of this book found, in an obscure nook of one of the towers,the following word, engraved by hand upon the wall:--
_ANANKE_.
These Greek capitals, black with age, and quite deeply graven inthe stone, with I know not what signs peculiar to Gothic caligraphyimprinted upon their forms and upon their attitudes, as though with thepurpose of revealing that it had been a hand of the Middle Ages whichhad inscribed them there, and especially the fatal and melancholymeaning contained in them, struck the author deeply.
He questioned himself; he sought to divine who could have been that soulin torment which had not been willing to quit this world without leavingthis stigma of crime or unhappiness upon the brow of the ancient church.
Afterwards, the wall was whitewashed or scraped down, I know not which,and the inscription disappeared. For it is thus that people have been inthe habit of proceeding with the marvellous churches of the Middle Agesfor the last two hundred years. Mutilations come to them from everyquarter, from within as well as from without. The priest whitewashesthem, the archdeacon scrapes them down; then the populace arrives anddemolishes them.
Thus, with the exception of the fragile memory which the author of thisbook here consecrates to it, there remains to-day nothing whateverof the mysterious word engraved within the gloomy tower ofNotre-Dame,--nothing of the destiny which it so sadly summed up. Theman who wrote that word upon the wall disappeared from the midst of thegenerations of man many centuries ago; the word, in its turn, has beeneffaced from the wall of the church; the church will, perhaps, itselfsoon disappear from the face of the earth.
It is upon this word that this book is founded.
March, 1831.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
VOLUME I.
BOOK FIRST.
I. The Grand Hall II. Pierre Gringoire III. Monsieur the Cardinal IV. Master Jacques Coppenole V. Quasimodo VI. Esmeralda
BOOK SECOND. I. From Charybdis to Scylla II. The Place de Greve III. Kisses for Blows IV. The Inconveniences of Following a Pretty Woman through the Streets in the Evening V. Result of the Dangers VI. The Broken Jug VII. A Bridal Night
BOOK THIRD. I. Notre-Dame II. A Bird's-eye View of Paris
BOOR FOURTH. I. Good Souls II. Claude Frollo III. Immanis Pecoris Custos, Immanior Ipse IV. The Dog and his Master V. More about Claude Frollo VI. Unpopularity
BOOK FIFTH. I. Abbas Beati Martini II. This will Kill That
BOOK SIXTH. I. An Impartial Glance at the Ancient Magistracy II. The Rat-hole III. History of a Leavened Cake of Maize IV. A Tear for a Drop of Water V. End of the Story of the Cake
BOOK FIRST.
CHAPTER I. THE GRAND HALL.
Three hundred and forty-eight years, six months, and nineteen days agoto-day, the Parisians awoke to the sound of all the bells in the triplecircuit of the city, the university, and the town ringing a full peal.
The sixth of January, 1482, is not, however, a day of which history haspreserved the memory. There was nothing notable in the event whichthus set the bells and the bourgeois of Paris in a ferment from earlymorning. It was neither an assault by the Picards nor the Burgundians,nor a hunt led along in procession, nor a revolt of scholars in the townof Laas, nor an entry of "our much dread lord, monsieur the king," noreven a pretty hanging of male and female thieves by the courts of Paris.Neither was it the arrival, so frequent in the fifteenth century, ofsome plumed and bedizened embassy. It was barely two days since the lastcavalcade of that nature, that of the Flemish ambassadors charged withconcluding the marriage between the dauphin and Marguerite of Flanders,had made its entry into Paris, to the great annoyance of M. le Cardinalde Bourbon, who, for the sake of pleasing the king, had been obligedto assume an amiable mien towards this whole rustic rabble of Flemishburgomasters, and to regale them at his Hotel de Bourbon, with a very"pretty morality, allegorical satire, and farce," while a driving raindrenched the magnificent tapestries at his door.
What put the "whole population of Paris in commotion," as Jehan deTroyes expresses it, on the sixth of January, was the double solemnity,united from time immemorial, of the Epiphany and the Feast of Fools.
On that day, there was to be a bonfire on the Place de Greve, a maypoleat the Chapelle de Braque, and a mystery at the Palais de Justice. Ithad been cried, to the sound of the trumpet, the preceding evening atall the cross roads, by the provost's men, clad in handsome, short,sleeveless coats of violet camelot, with large white crosses upon theirbreasts.
So the crowd of citizens, male and female, having closed their housesand shops, thronged from every direction, at early morn, towards someone of the three spots designated.
Each had made his choice; one, the bonfire; another, the maypole;another, the mystery play. It must be stated, in honor of the good senseof the loungers of Paris, that the greater part of this crowd directedtheir steps towards the bonfire, which was quite in season, or towardsthe mystery play, which was to be presented in the grand hall of thePalais de Justice (the courts of law), which was well roofed and walled;and that the curious left the poor, scantily flowered maypole to shiverall alone beneath the sky of January, in the cemetery of the Chapel ofBraque.
The populace thronged the avenues of the law courts in particular,because they knew that the Flemish ambassadors, who had arrived two dayspreviously, intended to be present at the representation of the mystery,and at the election of the Pope of the Fools, which was also to takeplace in the grand hall.
It was no easy matter on that day, to force one's way into that grandhall, although it was then reputed to be the largest covered enclosurein the world (it is true that Sauval had not yet measured the grand hallof the Chateau of Montargis). The palace place, encumbered with people,offered to the curious gazers at the windows the aspect of a sea; intowhich five or six streets, like so many mouths of rivers, dischargedevery moment fresh floods of heads. The waves of this crowd, augmentedincessantly, dashed against the angles of the houses which projectedhere and there, like so many promontories, into the irregular basin ofthe place. In the centre of the lofty Gothic* facade of the palace, thegrand staircase, incessantly ascended and descended by a double current,which, after parting on the intermediate landing-place, flowed in broadwaves along its lateral slopes,--the grand staircase, I say, trickledincessantly into the place, like a cascade into a lake. The cries, thelaughter, the trampling of those thousands of feet, produced a greatnoise and a great clamor. From time to time, this noise and clamorredoubled; the current which drove the crowd towards the grand staircaseflowed backwards, became troubled, formed whirlpools. This was producedby the buffet of an archer, or the horse of one of the provost'ssergeants, which kicked to restore order; an admirable tradition whichthe provostship has bequeathed to the constablery, the constablery tothe _marechaussee_, the _marechaussee_ to our _gendarmeri_ of Paris.
* The word Gothic, in the sense in which it is generally employed,is wholly unsuitable, but wholly consecrated. Hence we accept it andwe adopt it, like all the rest of the world, to characterize thearchitecture of the second half of the Middle Ages, where the ogive isthe principle which succeeds the architecture of the first period, ofwhich the semi-circle is the father.
Thousands of good, calm, bourgeois faces thronged the windo
ws, thedoors, the dormer windows, the roofs, gazing at the palace, gazingat the populace, and asking nothing more; for many Parisians contentthemselves with the spectacle of the spectators, and a wall behind whichsomething is going on becomes at once, for us, a very curious thingindeed.
If it could be granted to us, the men of 1830, to mingle in thoughtwith those Parisians of the fifteenth century, and to enter with them,jostled, elbowed, pulled about, into that immense hall of the palace,which was so cramped on that sixth of January, 1482, the spectacle wouldnot be devoid of either interest or charm, and we should have about usonly things that were so old that they would seem new.
With the reader's consent, we will endeavor to retrace in thought,the impression which he would have experienced in company with uson crossing the threshold of that grand hall, in the midst of thattumultuous crowd in surcoats, short, sleeveless jackets, and doublets.
And, first of all, there is a buzzing in the ears, a dazzlement inthe eyes. Above our heads is a double ogive vault, panelled with woodcarving, painted azure, and sown with golden fleurs-de-lis; beneathour feet a pavement of black and white marble, alternating. A few pacesdistant, an enormous pillar, then another, then another; seven pillarsin all, down the length of the hall, sustaining the spring of the archesof the double vault, in the centre of its width. Around four of thepillars, stalls of merchants, all sparkling with glass and tinsel;around the last three, benches of oak, worn and polished by the trunkhose of the litigants, and the robes of the attorneys. Around the hall,along the lofty wall, between the doors, between the windows, betweenthe pillars, the interminable row of all the kings of France, fromPharamond down: the lazy kings, with pendent arms and downcast eyes;the valiant and combative kings, with heads and arms raised boldlyheavenward. Then in the long, pointed windows, glass of a thousand hues;at the wide entrances to the hall, rich doors, finely sculptured; andall, the vaults, pillars, walls, jambs, panelling, doors, statues,covered from top to bottom with a splendid blue and gold illumination,which, a trifle tarnished at the epoch when we behold it, had almostentirely disappeared beneath dust and spiders in the year of grace,1549, when du Breul still admired it from tradition.
Let the reader picture to himself now, this immense, oblong hall,illuminated by the pallid light of a January day, invaded by a motleyand noisy throng which drifts along the walls, and eddies round theseven pillars, and he will have a confused idea of the whole effect ofthe picture, whose curious details we shall make an effort to indicatewith more precision.
It is certain, that if Ravaillac had not assassinated Henri IV., therewould have been no documents in the trial of Ravaillac deposited in theclerk's office of the Palais de Justice, no accomplices interested incausing the said documents to disappear; hence, no incendiaries obliged,for lack of better means, to burn the clerk's office in order to burnthe documents, and to burn the Palais de Justice in order to burn theclerk's office; consequently, in short, no conflagration in 1618. Theold Palais would be standing still, with its ancient grand hall; Ishould be able to say to the reader, "Go and look at it," and we shouldthus both escape the necessity,--I of making, and he of reading, adescription of it, such as it is. Which demonstrates a new truth: thatgreat events have incalculable results.
It is true that it may be quite possible, in the first place, thatRavaillac had no accomplices; and in the second, that if he had any,they were in no way connected with the fire of 1618. Two other veryplausible explanations exist: First, the great flaming star, a footbroad, and a cubit high, which fell from heaven, as every one knows,upon the law courts, after midnight on the seventh of March; second,Theophile's quatrain,--
"Sure, 'twas but a sorry game When at Paris, Dame Justice, Through having eaten too much spice, Set the palace all aflame."
Whatever may be thought of this triple explanation, political, physical,and poetical, of the burning of the law courts in 1618, the unfortunatefact of the fire is certain. Very little to-day remains, thanks to thiscatastrophe,--thanks, above all, to the successive restorations whichhave completed what it spared,--very little remains of that firstdwelling of the kings of France,--of that elder palace of the Louvre,already so old in the time of Philip the Handsome, that they soughtthere for the traces of the magnificent buildings erected by King Robertand described by Helgaldus. Nearly everything has disappeared. What hasbecome of the chamber of the chancellery, where Saint Louis consummatedhis marriage? the garden where he administered justice, "clad in acoat of camelot, a surcoat of linsey-woolsey, without sleeves, and asur-mantle of black sandal, as he lay upon the carpet with Joinville?"Where is the chamber of the Emperor Sigismond? and that of Charles IV.?that of Jean the Landless? Where is the staircase, from which CharlesVI. promulgated his edict of pardon? the slab where Marcel cut thethroats of Robert de Clermont and the Marshal of Champagne, in thepresence of the dauphin? the wicket where the bulls of Pope Benedictwere torn, and whence those who had brought them departed decked out, inderision, in copes and mitres, and making an apology through all Paris?and the grand hall, with its gilding, its azure, its statues, itspointed arches, its pillars, its immense vault, all fretted withcarvings? and the gilded chamber? and the stone lion, which stood at thedoor, with lowered head and tail between his legs, like the lions on thethrone of Solomon, in the humiliated attitude which befits force in thepresence of justice? and the beautiful doors? and the stained glass?and the chased ironwork, which drove Biscornette to despair? and thedelicate woodwork of Hancy? What has time, what have men done with thesemarvels? What have they given us in return for all this Gallic history,for all this Gothic art? The heavy flattened arches of M. de Brosse,that awkward architect of the Saint-Gervais portal. So much for art;and, as for history, we have the gossiping reminiscences of the greatpillar, still ringing with the tattle of the Patru.
It is not much. Let us return to the veritable grand hall of theveritable old palace. The two extremities of this gigantic parallelogramwere occupied, the one by the famous marble table, so long, so broad,and so thick that, as the ancient land rolls--in a style that would havegiven Gargantua an appetite--say, "such a slice of marble as was neverbeheld in the world"; the other by the chapel where Louis XI. hadhimself sculptured on his knees before the Virgin, and whither he causedto be brought, without heeding the two gaps thus made in the row ofroyal statues, the statues of Charlemagne and of Saint Louis, two saintswhom he supposed to be great in favor in heaven, as kings of France.This chapel, quite new, having been built only six years, was entirelyin that charming taste of delicate architecture, of marvelloussculpture, of fine and deep chasing, which marks with us the end ofthe Gothic era, and which is perpetuated to about the middle of thesixteenth century in the fairylike fancies of the Renaissance. Thelittle open-work rose window, pierced above the portal, was, inparticular, a masterpiece of lightness and grace; one would havepronounced it a star of lace.
In the middle of the hall, opposite the great door, a platform of goldbrocade, placed against the wall, a special entrance to which had beeneffected through a window in the corridor of the gold chamber, hadbeen erected for the Flemish emissaries and the other great personagesinvited to the presentation of the mystery play.
It was upon the marble table that the mystery was to be enacted, asusual. It had been arranged for the purpose, early in the morning;its rich slabs of marble, all scratched by the heels of law clerks,supported a cage of carpenter's work of considerable height, the uppersurface of which, within view of the whole hall, was to serve as thetheatre, and whose interior, masked by tapestries, was to take the placeof dressing-rooms for the personages of the piece. A ladder, naivelyplaced on the outside, was to serve as means of communication betweenthe dressing-room and the stage, and lend its rude rungs to entrances aswell as to exits. There was no personage, however unexpected, no suddenchange, no theatrical effect, which was not obliged to mount thatladder. Innocent and venerable infancy of art and contrivances!
Four of the bailiff of the palace's sergeants, perfunctory guardians ofal
l the pleasures of the people, on days of festival as well as on daysof execution, stood at the four corners of the marble table.
The piece was only to begin with the twelfth stroke of the great palaceclock sounding midday. It was very late, no doubt, for a theatricalrepresentation, but they had been obliged to fix the hour to suit theconvenience of the ambassadors.
Now, this whole multitude had been waiting since morning. A goodlynumber of curious, good people had been shivering since daybreak beforethe grand staircase of the palace; some even affirmed that they hadpassed the night across the threshold of the great door, in order tomake sure that they should be the first to pass in. The crowd grew moredense every moment, and, like water, which rises above its normal level,began to mount along the walls, to swell around the pillars, to spreadout on the entablatures, on the cornices, on the window-sills, onall the salient points of the architecture, on all the reliefs of thesculpture. Hence, discomfort, impatience, weariness, the liberty of aday of cynicism and folly, the quarrels which break forth for all sortsof causes--a pointed elbow, an iron-shod shoe, the fatigue of longwaiting--had already, long before the hour appointed for the arrivalof the ambassadors, imparted a harsh and bitter accent to the clamor ofthese people who were shut in, fitted into each other, pressed, trampledupon, stifled. Nothing was to be heard but imprecations on the Flemish,the provost of the merchants, the Cardinal de Bourbon, the bailiff ofthe courts, Madame Marguerite of Austria, the sergeants with their rods,the cold, the heat, the bad weather, the Bishop of Paris, the Pope ofthe Fools, the pillars, the statues, that closed door, that open window;all to the vast amusement of a band of scholars and lackeys scatteredthrough the mass, who mingled with all this discontent their teasingremarks, and their malicious suggestions, and pricked the general badtemper with a pin, so to speak.
Among the rest there was a group of those merry imps, who, aftersmashing the glass in a window, had seated themselves hardily onthe entablature, and from that point despatched their gaze and theirrailleries both within and without, upon the throng in the hall, and thethrong upon the Place. It was easy to see, from their parodied gestures,their ringing laughter, the bantering appeals which they exchanged withtheir comrades, from one end of the hall to the other, that theseyoung clerks did not share the weariness and fatigue of the rest of thespectators, and that they understood very well the art of extracting,for their own private diversion from that which they had under theireyes, a spectacle which made them await the other with patience.
"Upon my soul, so it's you, 'Joannes Frollo de Molendino!'" cried oneof them, to a sort of little, light-haired imp, with a well-favored andmalign countenance, clinging to the acanthus leaves of a capital; "youare well named John of the Mill, for your two arms and your two legshave the air of four wings fluttering on the breeze. How long have youbeen here?"
"By the mercy of the devil," retorted Joannes Frollo, "these fourhours and more; and I hope that they will be reckoned to my credit inpurgatory. I heard the eight singers of the King of Sicily intone thefirst verse of seven o'clock mass in the Sainte-Chapelle."
"Fine singers!" replied the other, "with voices even more pointed thantheir caps! Before founding a mass for Monsieur Saint John, the kingshould have inquired whether Monsieur Saint John likes Latin droned outin a Provencal accent."
"He did it for the sake of employing those accursed singers of the Kingof Sicily!" cried an old woman sharply from among the crowd beneath thewindow. "I just put it to you! A thousand _livres parisi_ for a mass!and out of the tax on sea fish in the markets of Paris, to boot!"
"Peace, old crone," said a tall, grave person, stopping up his nose onthe side towards the fishwife; "a mass had to be founded. Would you wishthe king to fall ill again?"
"Bravely spoken, Sire Gilles Lecornu, master furrier of king's robes!"cried the little student, clinging to the capital.
A shout of laughter from all the students greeted the unlucky name ofthe poor furrier of the king's robes.
"Lecornu! Gilles Lecornu!" said some.
"_Cornutus et hirsutus_, horned and hairy," another went on.
"He! of course," continued the small imp on the capital, "What are theylaughing at? An honorable man is Gilles Lecornu, brother of Master JehanLecornu, provost of the king's house, son of Master Mahiet Lecornu,first porter of the Bois de Vincennes,--all bourgeois of Paris, allmarried, from father to son."
The gayety redoubled. The big furrier, without uttering a word in reply,tried to escape all the eyes riveted upon him from all sides; buthe perspired and panted in vain; like a wedge entering the wood, hisefforts served only to bury still more deeply in the shoulders of hisneighbors, his large, apoplectic face, purple with spite and rage.
At length one of these, as fat, short, and venerable as himself, came tohis rescue.
"Abomination! scholars addressing a bourgeois in that fashion in my daywould have been flogged with a fagot, which would have afterwards beenused to burn them."
The whole band burst into laughter.
"Hola he! who is scolding so? Who is that screech owl of evil fortune?"
"Hold, I know him" said one of them; "'tis Master Andry Musnier."
"Because he is one of the four sworn booksellers of the university!"said the other.
"Everything goes by fours in that shop," cried a third; "the fournations, the four faculties, the four feasts, the four procurators, thefour electors, the four booksellers."
"Well," began Jean Frollo once more, "we must play the devil withthem."*
* _Faire le diable a quatre_.
"Musnier, we'll burn your books."
"Musnier, we'll beat your lackeys."
"Musnier, we'll kiss your wife."
"That fine, big Mademoiselle Oudarde."
"Who is as fresh and as gay as though she were a widow."
"Devil take you!" growled Master Andry Musnier.
"Master Andry," pursued Jean Jehan, still clinging to his capital, "holdyour tongue, or I'll drop on your head!"
Master Andry raised his eyes, seemed to measure in an instant the heightof the pillar, the weight of the scamp, mentally multiplied that weightby the square of the velocity and remained silent.
Jehan, master of the field of battle, pursued triumphantly:
"That's what I'll do, even if I am the brother of an archdeacon!"
"Fine gentry are our people of the university, not to have caused ourprivileges to be respected on such a day as this! However, there is amaypole and a bonfire in the town; a mystery, Pope of the Fools, andFlemish ambassadors in the city; and, at the university, nothing!"
"Nevertheless, the Place Maubert is sufficiently large!" interposed oneof the clerks established on the window-sill.
"Down with the rector, the electors, and the procurators!" criedJoannes.
"We must have a bonfire this evening in the Champ-Gaillard," went on theother, "made of Master Andry's books."
"And the desks of the scribes!" added his neighbor.
"And the beadles' wands!"
"And the spittoons of the deans!"
"And the cupboards of the procurators!"
"And the hutches of the electors!"
"And the stools of the rector!"
"Down with them!" put in little Jehan, as counterpoint; "down withMaster Andry, the beadles and the scribes; the theologians, the doctorsand the decretists; the procurators, the electors and the rector!"
"The end of the world has come!,' muttered Master Andry, stopping up hisears.
"By the way, there's the rector! see, he is passing through the Place,"cried one of those in the window.
Each rivalled his neighbor in his haste to turn towards the Place.
"Is it really our venerable rector, Master Thibaut?" demanded JehanFrollo du Moulin, who, as he was clinging to one of the inner pillars,could not see what was going on outside.
"Yes, yes," replied all the others, "it is really he, Master Thibaut,the rector."
It was, in fact, the rector and all the dignitaries of
the university,who were marching in procession in front of the embassy, and at thatmoment traversing the Place. The students crowded into the window,saluted them as they passed with sarcasms and ironical applause. Therector, who was walking at the head of his company, had to support thefirst broadside; it was severe.
"Good day, monsieur le recteur! Hola he! good day there!"
"How does he manage to be here, the old gambler? Has he abandoned hisdice?"
"How he trots along on his mule! her ears are not so long as his!"
"Hola he! good day, monsieur le recteur Thibaut! _Tybalde aleator_! Oldfool! old gambler!"
"God preserve you! Did you throw double six often last night?"
"Oh! what a decrepit face, livid and haggard and drawn with the love ofgambling and of dice!"
"Where are you bound for in that fashion, Thibaut, _Tybalde ad dados_,with your back turned to the university, and trotting towards the town?"
"He is on his way, no doubt, to seek a lodging in the Rue Thibautode?"*cried Jehan du M. Moulin.
* _Thibaut au des_,--Thibaut of the dice.
The entire band repeated this quip in a voice of thunder, clapping theirhands furiously.
"You are going to seek a lodging in the Rue Thibautode, are you not,monsieur le recteur, gamester on the side of the devil?"
Then came the turns of the other dignitaries.
"Down with the beadles! down with the mace-bearers!"
"Tell me, Robin Pouissepain, who is that yonder?"
"He is Gilbert de Suilly, _Gilbertus de Soliaco_, the chancellor of theCollege of Autun."
"Hold on, here's my shoe; you are better placed than I, fling it in hisface."
"_Saturnalitias mittimus ecce nuces_."
"Down with the six theologians, with their white surplices!"
"Are those the theologians? I thought they were the white geese given bySainte-Genevieve to the city, for the fief of Roogny."
"Down with the doctors!"
"Down with the cardinal disputations, and quibblers!"
"My cap to you, Chancellor of Sainte-Genevieve! You have done me awrong. 'Tis true; he gave my place in the nation of Normandy to littleAscanio Falzapada, who comes from the province of Bourges, since he isan Italian."
"That is an injustice," said all the scholars. "Down with the Chancellorof Sainte-Genevieve!"
"Ho he! Master Joachim de Ladehors! Ho he! Louis Dahuille! Ho he LambertHoctement!"
"May the devil stifle the procurator of the German nation!"
"And the chaplains of the Sainte-Chapelle, with their gray _amices; cumtunices grisis_!"
"_Seu de pellibus grisis fourratis_!"
"Hola he! Masters of Arts! All the beautiful black copes! all the finered copes!"
"They make a fine tail for the rector."
"One would say that he was a Doge of Venice on his way to his bridalwith the sea."
"Say, Jehan! here are the canons of Sainte-Genevieve!"
"To the deuce with the whole set of canons!"
"Abbe Claude Choart! Doctor Claude Choart! Are you in search of Marie laGiffarde?"
"She is in the Rue de Glatigny."
"She is making the bed of the king of the debauchees. She is paying herfour deniers* _quatuor denarios_."
* An old French coin, equal to the two hundred andfortieth part of a pound.
"_Aut unum bombum_."
"Would you like to have her pay you in the face?"
"Comrades! Master Simon Sanguin, the Elector of Picardy, with his wifeon the crupper!"
"_Post equitem seclet atra eura_--behind the horseman sits black care."
"Courage, Master Simon!"
"Good day, Mister Elector!"
"Good night, Madame Electress!"
"How happy they are to see all that!" sighed Joannes de Molendino, stillperched in the foliage of his capital.
Meanwhile, the sworn bookseller of the university, Master Andry Musnier,was inclining his ear to the furrier of the king's robes, Master GillesLecornu.
"I tell you, sir, that the end of the world has come. No one has everbeheld such outbreaks among the students! It is the accursed inventionsof this century that are ruining everything,--artilleries, bombards,and, above all, printing, that other German pest. No more manuscripts,no more books! printing will kill bookselling. It is the end of theworld that is drawing nigh."
"I see that plainly, from the progress of velvet stuffs," said thefur-merchant.
At this moment, midday sounded.
"Ha!" exclaimed the entire crowd, in one voice.
The scholars held their peace. Then a great hurly-burly ensued; a vastmovement of feet, hands, and heads; a general outbreak of coughs andhandkerchiefs; each one arranged himself, assumed his post, raisedhimself up, and grouped himself. Then came a great silence; all necksremained outstretched, all mouths remained open, all glances weredirected towards the marble table. Nothing made its appearance there.The bailiff's four sergeants were still there, stiff, motionless, aspainted statues. All eyes turned to the estrade reserved for the Flemishenvoys. The door remained closed, the platform empty. This crowd hadbeen waiting since daybreak for three things: noonday, the embassy fromFlanders, the mystery play. Noonday alone had arrived on time.
On this occasion, it was too much.
They waited one, two, three, five minutes, a quarter of an hour; nothingcame. The dais remained empty, the theatre dumb. In the meantime, wrathhad succeeded to impatience. Irritated words circulated in a low tone,still, it is true. "The mystery! the mystery!" they murmured, in hollowvoices. Heads began to ferment. A tempest, which was only rumbling inthe distance as yet, was floating on the surface of this crowd. It wasJehan du Moulin who struck the first spark from it.
"The mystery, and to the devil with the Flemings!" he exclaimed at thefull force of his lungs, twining like a serpent around his pillar.
The crowd clapped their hands.
"The mystery!" it repeated, "and may all the devils take Flanders!"
"We must have the mystery instantly," resumed the student; "or else,my advice is that we should hang the bailiff of the courts, by way of amorality and a comedy."
"Well said," cried the people, "and let us begin the hanging with hissergeants."
A grand acclamation followed. The four poor fellows began to turn pale,and to exchange glances. The crowd hurled itself towards them, and theyalready beheld the frail wooden railing, which separated them from it,giving way and bending before the pressure of the throng.
It was a critical moment.
"To the sack, to the sack!" rose the cry on all sides.
At that moment, the tapestry of the dressing-room, which we havedescribed above, was raised, and afforded passage to a personage, themere sight of whom suddenly stopped the crowd, and changed its wrathinto curiosity as by enchantment.
"Silence! silence!"
The personage, but little reassured, and trembling in every limb,advanced to the edge of the marble table with a vast amount of bows,which, in proportion as he drew nearer, more and more resembledgenuflections.
In the meanwhile, tranquillity had gradually been restored. All thatremained was that slight murmur which always rises above the silence ofa crowd.
"Messieurs the bourgeois," said he, "and mesdemoiselles the_bourgeoises_, we shall have the honor of declaiming and representing,before his eminence, monsieur the cardinal, a very beautiful moralitywhich has for its title, 'The Good Judgment of Madame the Virgin Mary.'I am to play Jupiter. His eminence is, at this moment, escorting thevery honorable embassy of the Duke of Austria; which is detained,at present, listening to the harangue of monsieur the rector of theuniversity, at the gate Baudets. As soon as his illustrious eminence,the cardinal, arrives, we will begin."
It is certain, that nothing less than the intervention of Jupiter wasrequired to save the four unfortunate sergeants of the bailiff of thecourts. If we had the happiness of having invented this very veracioustale, and of being, in consequence, responsible for it bef
ore our LadyCriticism, it is not against us that the classic precept, _Nec deusintersit_, could be invoked. Moreover, the costume of Seigneur Jupiter,was very handsome, and contributed not a little towards calming thecrowd, by attracting all its attention. Jupiter was clad in a coat ofmail, covered with black velvet, with gilt nails; and had it not beenfor the rouge, and the huge red beard, each of which covered one-half ofhis face,--had it not been for the roll of gilded cardboard, spangled,and all bristling with strips of tinsel, which he held in his hand, andin which the eyes of the initiated easily recognized thunderbolts,--hadnot his feet been flesh-colored, and banded with ribbons in Greekfashion, he might have borne comparison, so far as the severity of hismien was concerned, with a Breton archer from the guard of Monsieur deBerry.
CHAPTER II. PIERRE GRINGOIRE.