 Book I. CHAPTER I. OF THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE-DOM by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabel F. Hapgood, read by Mark Douglas Nelson. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. 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—a narc. These Greek capitals, black with age, and quite deeply graven in the stone, with, I know not what signs peculiar to Gothic calligraphy imprinted upon their forms and upon their attitudes, as though with the purpose of revealing that it had been a hand of the Middle Ages which had inscribed them there, and especially the fatal and melancholy meaning contained in them struck the author deeply. He questioned himself. He sought to divine who could have been that sold in torment which had not been willing to quit this world without leaving this 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 in the habit of proceeding with the marvellous churches of the Middle Ages for the last two hundred years. Mutilations come to them from every quarter, from within as well as from without. The priest whitewashes them, the arch-deacon scrapes them down, then the populace arrives and demolishes them. Thus, with the exception of the fragile memory which the author of this book here consecrates to it, there remains today nothing whatever of the mysterious word engraved within the gloomy tower of Notre-Dame, nothing of the destiny which it so sadly summed up. The man who wrote that word upon the wall disappeared from the midst of the generations of man many centuries ago. The word, in its turn, has been effaced from the wall of the church. The church will, perhaps itself, soon disappear from the face of the earth. It is upon this word that this book is founded. March 1831 Book I. CHAPTER I. THE GRAND HALL Three hundred and forty-eight years, six months, and nineteen days ago today, the Parisians awoke to the sound of all the bells in the triple circuit of the city, the university and the town ringing a full peal. The 6th of January, 1482, is not, however, a day of which history has preserved the memory. There was nothing notable in the event which thus set the bells and the bourgeois of Paris in affirmant from early morning. 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 town of Laus, nor an entry of our much-dread Lord Monsieurs the King, nor even a pretty hanging of male and female thieves in the courts of Paris. Neither was it the arrival, so frequent in the fifteenth century, of some plumed and bedisoned embassy. It was barely two days since the last cavalcade of that nature, that of the Flemish ambassadors charged with concluding the marriage between the Dauphin and Marguerite of Flanders had made its entry into Paris to the great annoyance of M. Le Cardinal Le Bourbon, who, for the sake of pleasing the King, had been obliged to assume an amiable mean towards this whole rustic rabble of Flemish burgomasters and to regale them at his hôtel du Bourbon with a very pretty morality, allegorical satire and farce, while a driving rain drenched the magnificent tapestries at his door. What put the whole population of Paris in commotion, as Jehan de Troyes expresses it, on the 6th 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 at the Place de Grève, a maypole at the Chapelle de Brac, and a mystery at the Palais de Justice. It had been cried, to the sound of the trumpet, the proceeding evening at all the crossroads by the provost's men, clad in handsome, short, sleeveless coats of violet camelot, with large white crosses upon their breasts. So the crowd of citizens, male and female, having closed their houses and shops, thronged from every direction at early morn towards some one 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 sense of the loungers of Paris, that the greater part of this crowd directed their steps towards the bonfire, which was quite in season or towards the mystery play, which was to be presented in the grand hall of the Palais de Justice, the Courts of Law, which was well roofed and walled, and that the curious left the poor scantily-flowered maypole to shiver all alone beneath the sky of January in the cemetery of the chapel of Brac. The populace thronged the avenues of the law courts in particular, because they knew that the Flemish ambassadors, who had arrived two days previously, intended to be present at the representation of the mystery, and at the election of the Pope of Fools, which was also to take place in the grand hall. It was no easy matter on that day to force one's way into that grand hall, although it was then reputed to be the largest covered enclosure in the world. It is true that Sovald had not yet measured the grand hall of the Chateau of Montargues. The Palais Place, encumbered with people, offered to the curious gazers at the windows the aspect of a sea, into which five or six streets, like so many miles of rivers, discharged every moment fresh floods of heads. The waves of this crowd, augmented incessantly, dashed against the angles of the houses which projected here and there, like so many promontories, into the irregular basin of the Place. In the center of the lofty gothic façade of the palace, the grand staircase, incessantly ascended and descended by a double current, which, after parting on the intermediate landing place, flowed in broad waves along its lateral slopes. The grand staircase, I say, trickled incessantly into the Place, like a cascade into a lake. The cries, the laughter, the trampling of those thousands of feet produced a great noise and a great clamor. From time to time this noise and clamor redoubled. The current, which drove the crowd towards the grand staircase, flowed backwards, became troubled, formed whirlpools. This was produced by the Buffett of an Archer, or the horse of one of the provost sergeants, which kicked to restore order. An admirable tradition which the provost ship has bequeathed to the Constabulary, the Constabulary to the Mara-chaussée, the Mara-chaussée to our gendarmerie of Paris. Thousands of good, calm bourgeois faces throng the windows, the doors, the dormer windows, the roofs, gazing at the palace, gazing at the populace, and asking nothing more. For many Parisians content themselves with the spectacle of the spectators, and a wall behind which something is going on becomes at once, for us, a very curious thing indeed. If it could be granted to us, the men of 1830, to mingle in thought with 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 would not be devoid of either interest or charm, and we should have about us only things that were so old that they would seem new. With the reader's consent we will endeavour to retrace in thought the impression which he would have experienced in company with us on crossing the threshold of that grand hall, in the midst of that tumultuous crowd in surcoats, short, sleeveless jackets, and doublets. And first of all there is a buzzing in the ears, a dazzlement in the eyes. Above our heads is a double ojai vault, paneled with wood carving, painted azure, and sewn with golden fleur-de-lis. Beneath our feet a pavement of black and white marble, alternating. A few paces distant, an enormous pillar, then another, then another, seven pillars in all, down the length of the hall, sustaining the spring of the arches of the double vault in the centre of its width. Around four of the pillars, stalls of merchants, all sparkling with glass and tinsel. Around the last three, benches of oak, worn and polished by the trunk-hose of the litigants, and the robes of the attorneys. Around the hall, along the lofty wall, between the doors, between the windows, between the pillars, the interminable row of all the kings of France, from Pheromon down, the lazy kings, with pedant arms and downcast eyes, the valiant and combative kings, with heads and arms raised boldly heavenward. Then, in the long-pointed windows, glass of a thousand hues. At the wide entrances to the hall, rich doors, finely sculptured. And all, the vaults, pillars, walls, jams, paneling door statues, covered from top to bottom with a splendid blue and gold illumination, which, a trifle tarnished at the epic when we behold it, had almost entirely disappeared beneath dust and spiders in the year of grace 1549, when De Bruyle 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 motley and noisy throng which drifts along the walls, and eddies round the seven pillars, and he'll have a confused idea of the whole effect of the picture, whose curious details we shall make an effort to indicate with more precision. It is certain that if Rava Yaak had not assassinated Henri IV, there would have been no documents in the trial of Rava Yaak deposited in the clerk's office of the Palais de Justice. No accomplices interested in causing the said documents to disappear. Hence, no incendiaries were obliged, for the lack of better means, to burn the clerk's office in order to burn the documents, and to burn the Palais de Justice in order to burn the clerk's office. Consequently, in short, no conflagration in 1618. The old Palais would be standing still, with its ancient grand hall. I should be able to say to the reader, go and look at it, and we should thus both escape the necessity, eye of making and he of reading, a description of it, such as it is, which demonstrates a new truth, that great events have incalculable results. It is true that it may be quite possible in the first place that Rava Yaak 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 very plausible explanations exist. First, the great flaming star, a foot broad, and a cubit high, which fell from heaven, as everyone knows, upon the law courts, after midnight, on the seventh of March. Second, Théophile's quatrain. Sure it was but a sorry game, when at Paris, same 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 unfortunate fact of the fire is certain. Very little to-day remains, thanks to this catastrophe, thanks, above all, to the successive restorations which have completed what it spared, very little remains of that first dwelling of the kings of France, of that elder palace of the Louvre, already so old in the time of Philip the Handsome, that they sought there for the traces of the magnificent buildings erected by King Robert and described by Helgaldus. Nearly everything has disappeared. What has become of the Chamber of the Chancellery, where Saint Louis consummated his marriage, the garden where he administered justice, clad in a coat of Camelot, a surcoat of Lindsay Woolsey without sleeves, and a surmantle of black sandal, as he lay upon the carpet with Jean Vie. Where is the Chamber of the Emperor Sigismonde, and that of Charo IV, that of Jean the Landless? Where is the staircase, from which Charo VI promulgated his edict of pardon? The slab where Marcel cut the throats of Robert de Clermont and the Marchel of Champagne in the presence of the Dauphin. The wicket where the bulls of Pope Benedict were torn, and whence those who had brought them departed decked out in derision in copes and mitres, and making an apology through all Paris. And the grand hall with its gilding, its azure, its statues, its pointed arches, its pillars, its immense vaults, all fretted with carvings. And the gilded chamber, and the stone lion which stood at the door, with lowered head and tail between his legs, like the lions on the throne of Solomon, in the humiliated attitude which befits force in the presence of justice. And the beautiful doors, and the stained glass, and the chased ironwork which drove Biscournet to despair, and the delicate woodwork of Anci. What has time, what have men done with these marbles? What have they given us in return for all this gallic history, for all this gothic art? The heavy, flattened arches au monsieur de Brosset, that awkward architect of the Saint-Gervais portail. So much for art. And, as for history, we have the gossiping reminiscences of the great pillar, still ringing with the tattle of the patroux. It is not much. Let us return to the veritable grand hall of the veritable old palace. The two extremities of this gigantic parallelogram were 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 have given gargantua an appetite, say, such a slice of marble as was never beheld in the world. The other, by the chapel where Louis XI had himself sculptured on his knees before the Virgin, and whither he caused to be brought, without heeding the two gaps thus made in the role of royal statues, the statues of Charlemagne and of Saint-Louis, two saints whom he supposed to be great in favor in heaven, as kings of France. This chapel, quite new, having been built only six years, was entirely in that charming taste of delicate architecture, of marvelous sculpture, of fine and deep chasing, which marks with us the end of the Gothic era, and which is perpetuated to about the middle of the sixteenth century in the fairy-like fancies of the Renaissance. The little open work rose window, pierced above the portal, was, in particular, a masterpiece of likeness and grace. One would have pronounced it a star of lace. In the middle of the hall, opposite the great door, a platform of gold brocade placed against the wall, a special entrance to which had been affected through a window in the corridor of the gold chamber, had been erected for the Flemish emissaries and the other great personages invited to the presentation of the mystery play. It was upon the marble table that the mystery was to be enacted, as usual. 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 upper surface of which, within view of the whole hall, was to serve as the theatre, and whose interior, massed by tapestries, was to take the place of dressing-rooms for the personages of the piece. A ladder, naively placed on the outside, was to serve as means of communication between the dressing-room and the stage, and lend its rude rungs to entrances as well as to exits. There was no personage, however unexpected, no sudden change, no theatrical effect which was not obliged to mount that ladder. Innocent and venerable infancy of art and contrivances. Four of the bailiff of the palace's sergeants, perfunctory guardians of all the pleasures of the people, on days of festival as well as on days of execution, stood at the four corners of the marble table. The piece was only to begin with the twelfth stroke of the great palace-clock sounding mid-day. It was very late, no doubt, for a theatrical representation, but they had been obliged to fix the hour to suit the convenience of the ambassadors. Now this whole multitude had been waiting since morning. A goodly number of curious, good people had been shivering since daybreak before the grand staircase of the palace. Some even affirmed that they had passed the night across the threshold of the great door, in order to make sure that they should be the first to pass in. The crowd grew more dense every moment, and, like water, which rises above its normal level, began to mount along the walls, to swell around the pillars, to spread out on the entablatures, on the cornices, on the window-sills, on all the salient points of the architecture, on all the reliefs of the sculpture. Hence discomfort, impatience, weariness, the liberty of a day of cynicism and folly, the quarrels which break forth for all sorts of causes, a pointed elbow, an iron-shod shoe, the fatigue of long waiting, had already, long before the hour appointed for the arrival of the ambassadors, imparted a harsh and bitter accent to the clamour of these people who were shut in, fitted into each other, pressed, trampled upon, stifled. Nothing was to be heard but imprecations on the Flemish, the provost of the merchants, the cardinal de Bourbon, the bailiff of the courts, Madame Marguerite of Austria, the sergeants with their rods, the cold, the heat, the bad weather, the bishop of Paris, the pope of the Fools, the pillars, the statues, that closed door, that open window, all to the vast amusement of a band of scholars and lackeys scattered through the mass, who mingled with all this discontent their teasing remarks and their malicious suggestions, and pricked the general bad temper with a pin, so to speak. Among the rest there was a group of these merry imps, who, after smashing the glass in a window, had seated themselves heartily on the entablature, and from that point dispatched their gaze and their raileries, both within and without, upon the throng in the hall, and the throng upon the plas. It was easy to see, from their parody gestures, their ringing laughter, the bantering appeals which they exchanged with their comrades, from one end of the hall to the other, that these young clerks did not share the weariness and fatigue of the rest of the spectators, and that they understood very well the art of extracting, for their own private diversion, from that which they had under their eyes, a spectacle which made them await the other with patience. "'Upon my soul, so it's you, Joann's Frollo de Molandino!' cried one of them to a sort of little, light-haired imp, with a well-favored and malign countenance clinging to the acanthus leaves of a capital. "'You are well named John of the Mill, for your two arms and your two legs have the air of four wings fluttering on the breeze. How long have you been here?' "'By the mercy of the devil,' retorted Joann's Frollo, "'these four hours and more, and I hope they will be reckoned to my credit in purgatory. I heard the eight singers of the King of Sicily entone the first verse of Seven O'Clock Mass in the Saint-Chapelle.' "'Fine singers!' replied the other, with voices even more pointed than their caps. Before founding a mass for Montseuse-Saint-Jean, the King should have inquired whether Montseuse-Saint-Jean likes Latin droned out in a Provençal accent. "'He did it for the sake of employing those accursed singers of the King of Sicily!' cried an old woman sharply from among the crowd beneath the window. "'I just put it to you, a thousand leavers parisie 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 on the side towards the fish-wife. "'A mass had to be founded. Would you wish the King to fall ill again?' "'Bravely spoken, Sir Gilles Lacornou, 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 of the poor furrier of the King's robes. "'Lacornou! Gilles Lacornou!' said some. "'Cornutus et hersutus! Horned and hairy!' another went on. "'He, of course!' continued the small imp on the capital. "'What are they laughing at? An honourable man is Gilles Lacornou, brother of master Jehan Lacornou, provost of the King's house, son of master Mahier Lacornou, first porter of the Bois de Vincennes, all bourgeois of Paris, all married from father to son!' The gait he redoubled. The big furrier, without uttering a word in reply, tried to escape all the eyes riveted upon him from all sides. But he perspired and panted in vain. Like a wedge entering the wood, his effort served only to bury still more deeply in the shoulders of his neighbours, his large, apoplectic face, purple with spite and rage. At length one of these, as fat, short, and venerable as himself, came to his rescue. "'Ah, abomination! Scholars addressing a bourgeois in that fashion in my day would have been flogged with a faggot which would have afterwards been used to burn them!' The whole bend burst into laughter. "'Olaé! Who is scolding so? Who is that screech-out of evil fortune?' "'Hold! I know him!' said one of them, Tis-Master André Mounier. "'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 four nations, the four faculties, the four feasts, the four procuretors, the four lectors, the four booksellers.' "'Well,' began Jean Frollo once more, we must play the devil with them. "'Mounier, we'll burn your books! Mounier, we'll beat your lackeys! Mounier, we'll kiss your wife! That fine mademoiselle who dod! Who is as fresh and as gay though she were a widow? "'Devil take you!' growled Master André Mounier. "'Master André, pursue Jean Jehan still clinging to his capital. Hold your tongue, or I'll drop on your head!' Master André raised his eyes, seemed to measure in an instant the height of the pillar, the weight of the scamp, mentally multiplied that weight by the square of the velocity, and remained silent. "'Jehan, master of the field of battle, pursue triumphantly. "'That's what I'll do, even if I am the brother of an arch-deacon!' "'Fine gentry are our people of the university, not to have caused our privileges to be respected on such a day as this. However, there is a maypole and a bonfire in the town, a mystery, pope of the fools, and Flemish ambassadors in the city, and at the university, nothing. Nevertheless, the plasma bear is sufficiently large,' interposed one of the clerks established on the windowsill. "'Down with the rector, the electors, and the pro-curators!' cried Jehan's. "'We must have a bonfire this evening in the sham-gayard,' went on the other, made of Master André's books. "'And the desks of the scribes,' added his neighbour, "'and the Beatles wands, and the spatoons of the deans, and the cupboards of the pro-curators, and the hudges of the electors, and the stools of the rector. "'Down with them,' put in little Jehan, as counter-point. "'Down with Master André, the Beatles and the scribes, that theologians, the doctors, and the decretists, the pro-curators, the electors, and the rector. "'The end of the world has come,' muttered Master André, stopping up his ears. "'By the way, there's the rector. See, he is passing through the plaza,' cried one of those in the window. Each rivaled his neighbour in his haste to turn towards the plaza. "'Is it really our venerable rector, Master Thibault?' Demanded Jehan, Frollo Dumoulin, 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 Thibault, 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 that moment traversing the plaza. The students crowded into the window, saluted them as they passed with sarcasm and ironical applause. The rector, who was walking at the head of his company, had to support the first broadside. It was severe. "'Good day, Monsieur le rector, au lait, good day there! How does he manage to be here, the old gambler? Has he abandoned his dice? How he trots along on his mule. Her ears are not so long as his. God preserve you! Did you throw double-six often last night? Oh, what a decrepit face, livid and haggard and drawn with the love of gambling and of dice! Where are you bound for in that fashion, Thibault? Thibault de Adados, 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 Thibault au-dey,' cried Jehan du Monsieur Moulin. The entire band repeated this quip in a voice of thunder, clapping their hands furiously. "'You are going to seek a lodging in the rue Thibault au-dey, or you not, Monsieur le rector, game-ster on the side of the devil?' Then came the turns of the other dignitaries. "'Down with the Beatles, down with the mace-bearers!' "'Tell me, Robin Puis-Pan, who is that yonder?' "'He is Jebert de Souilly, Gerbertus de Solliaco, the chancellor of the College of Outtune. "'Hold on, here's my shoe. You are a better place than I. Fling it in his face!' "'Saternalitios mitimos eche nuques!' "'Down with the six theologians, with their white surpluses!' "'Or those theologians, I thought they were the white geese given by Saint-Jean-viève to the city for the thief of Rogni. "'Down with the doctors, down with the cardinal disputations and quibblers!' "'My captain, you, chancellor of Saint-Jean-viève, you have done me a wrong. "'Tis true. He gave my place in the nation of Normandy to little Ascani of Asapada, who comes from the province of Borges, since he is an Italian.' "'That is an injustice,' said all the scholars. "'Down with the chancellor of Saint-Jean-viève!' "'Oe, Master Joaquim de la Douze! Oe, Louis de Huit! Oe, Lambert-Hautemann! "'May the devil stifle the procurator of the German nation and the chaplains of the Champ Chapelle with their gray amuses come to Nikke's greases! "'See you do Pellibus' greases for artis. "'Oe, Master of Arts, all the beautiful black copes, all the fine red copes. They make a fine tale for the rector. One would say that he was a doge of Venice on his way to his bridle with the sea. Say, Jehan, here are the cannons of Saint-Jean-viève, to the Douze with a whole set of cannons. "'Abbe Clochot, Dr. Clochot, are you in search of Marie Lagaffard?' "'She is in the Rue de Glatigny. She is making the bed of the king of the debauches. She is paying her four deniers, Quartier Deniaros. "'Out, Ounum, bomb-boom! Would you like to have her pay you in the face?' "'Comrades, Mr. Simon Saint-Gouin, the elector of Picardie, with his wife on the cropper. "'Post-Equitaine-Séclate-Atraura, behind the horsemen sits black care. "'Gourage, Master Simon! Good day, Mr. Elector! Good night, Madame Electresse!' "'How happy they are to see all that!' Say, Jehan de Melendino still perched in the foliage of his capital. Meanwhile, the sworn bookseller of the university, Master André Mounier, was inclining his ear to the furrier of the king's robes, Master Gilles Lacournoux. "'I tell you, sir, that the end of the world has come. No one has ever beheld such outbreaks among the students. It is the accursed inventions of 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 book-selling. It is the end of the world that is drawing nigh.' "'I see that plainly, from the progress of velvet stuffs,' said the fur merchant. At this moment, midday sounded. "'Ha!' explained the entire crowd in one voice. The scholars held their peace. Then a great hurly-burly ensued, a vast movement of feet, hands, and heads. A general outbreak of coughs and handkerchiefs. Each one arranged himself, assuming his post, raised himself up and grouped himself. Then came a great silence. All necks remained outstretched, all mouths remained open. All glances were directed towards the marble table. Nothing made its appearance there. The bailiff's four sergeants were still there—stiff, motionless, as painted statues. All eyes turned to the Estrade Reserve for the Flemish envoys. The door remained closed, the platform empty. This crowd had been waiting since daybreak for three things. Noonday, the Embassy from Flanders, 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. Nothing came. The dais remained empty, the theater dumb. In the meantime Wrath had succeeded to impatience. Irritated words circulated in a low tone. Still it is true. The mystery, the mystery, they murmured in hollow voices. Heads began to ferment. A tempest, which was only rumbling in the distance as yet, was floating on the surface of this crowd. It was Jehan du Milan who struck the first spark from it. The mystery, and to the devil with the flammings, he exclaimed at the full 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 a morality and a comedy. Well said, cried the people, and let us begin the hanging with his sergeants. A grand acclamation followed. The four poor fellows began to turn pale and to exchange glances. The crowd hurled itself towards them, and they already 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 have described above, was raised, and afforded passage to a personage, the mere sight of whom suddenly stopped the crowd, and changed its wrath into 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 boughs, which, in proportion as he drew nearer, more and more resembled genuflections. In the meanwhile tranquility had gradually been restored. All that remained was that slight murmur which always rises above the silence of a crowd. Messieurs de Begeois, said he, and mademoiselle de Begeoises, we shall have the honour of reclaiming and representing, before his eminence, Monsieur the Cardinal, a very beautiful morality which has for its title, the good judgment of Madame the Virgin Mary. I am to play Jupiter. His eminence is, at this moment, escorting the very honourable embassy of the Duke of Austria, which is detained at present listening to the harangue of Monsieur the Rector of the University at the gate Baudet. As soon as his illustrious eminence the Cardinal arrives we will begin. It is certain that nothing less than the intervention of Jupiter was required to save the four unfortunate sergeants of the bailiff of the courts. If we had the happiness of having invented this very voracious tale and of being, in consequence, responsible for it before our lady criticism, it is not against us that the classic precept, Necdaeus interceit, could be invoked. Moreover, the costume of Signor Jupiter was very handsome and contributed not a little towards calming the crowd by attracting all its attention. Jupiter was clad in a coat of mail, covered with black velvet, with gilt nails. And had it not been for the rouge and the huge red beard, each of which covered one half of his 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, and in which the eyes of the initiated easily recognized thunderbolts, had not his feet been flesh-colored and banded with ribbons in Greek fashion, he might have borne comparison, so far as the severity of his main was concerned, with a Breton archer from the guard of Montseur-de-Berry. Chapter 2 Pierre Gringoire Nevertheless, as he harangued them, the satisfaction and admiration unanimously excited by his costume were dissipated by his words, and when he reached that untoward conclusion, as soon as his illustrious eminence the cardinal arrives, we will begin. His voice was drowned in a thunder of hooting. "'Begin instantly! The mystery, the mystery immediately!' shrieked the people. And above all the voices that of Joanne de Molandino was audible, piercing the uproar like the fife's derisive serenade. "'Commands, instantly!' yelped the scholar. "'Down with Jupiter and the cardinal de Bourbon!' vociferated Robin Puispan and the other clerks perched in the window. "'The morality! This very instant!' repeated the crowd. "'This very instant! The sack of the rope for the comedians and the cardinal!' Poor Jupiter, haggard, frightened, pale beneath his rouge, dropped his thunderbolt, took his cap in his hand. Then he bowed and trembled and stammered. "'His eminence, the ambassadors, madame Marguerite of Flanders!' He did not know what to say. In truth he was afraid of being hung. Hung by the populace for waiting, hung by the cardinal for not having waited. He saw between the two dilemmas only an abyss, that is to say a gallows. Luckily someone came to rescue him from his embarrassment and assumed the responsibility. An individual who was standing beyond the railing in the free space around the marble table, and whom no one had yet caught sight of, since his long, thin body was completely sheltered from every visual ray by the diameter of the pillar against which he was leaning, this individual, we say, tall, gaunt, pallid, blonde, still young, although already wrinkled about the brow and cheeks, with brilliant eyes and a smiling mouth, clad in garments of black surge, worn and shining with age, approached the marble table, and made a sign to the poor sufferer. But the other was so confused that he did not see him. The newcomer advanced another step. "'Jupiter,' he said, "'my dear Jupiter!' The other did not hear. At last the tall, blonde, driven out of patience, shrieked almost in his face. "'Michel Jebon!' "'Who calls me?' said Jupiter, as though awakened with a start. "'I,' replied the person, clad in black. "'Ah,' said Jupiter. "'Begin at once,' went on the other. "'Satisfy the populace. I undertake to appease the bailiff, who will appease Montseur the Cardinal.' Jupiter breathed once more. "'Messigneur's the bourgeois,' he cried, at the top of his lungs to the crowd, which continued to hoot him. "'We are going to begin at once!' "'Evoe, Jupiter! Plaud de des Quivés! All hail, Jupiter! Applaud, citizens!' shouted the scholars. "'Noel! Noel! Good, good!' shouted the people. The hand-claping was deafening, and Jupiter had already withdrawn under his tapestry, while the hall still trembled with acclamations. "'In the meanwhile, the personage who had so magically turned the tempest into dead calm, as our old, endear Cornier puts it, had modestly retreated to the half-shadow of his pillar, and would, no doubt, have remained invisible there, motionless and mute as before, had he not been plucked by the sleeve by two young women, who, standing in the front row of the spectators, had noticed his colloquy with Michel G. Bourne, Jupiter.' "'Master!' said one of them, making him a sign to approach. "'Hold your tongue, my dear Leonade!' said her neighbor, pretty, fresh, and very brave, in consequence of being dressed up in her best attire. "'He is not a clerk. He is a layman. You must not say Master to him, but Messier!' "'Messier!' said Leonade.' The stranger approached the railing. "'What would you have of me, damsels?' he asked, with alacrity. "'Oh, nothing!' replied Leonade, in great confusion. "'It is my neighbor, Giscette La Jancienne, who wishes to speak with you.' "'Not so!' replied Giscette, blushing. It was Leonade who called you Master. I only told her to say Messier.' The two young girls dropped their eyes. The man, who asked nothing better than to enter into conversation, looked at them with a smile. "'So you have nothing to say to me, damsels?' "'Oh, nothing at all,' replied Giscette. "'Nothing,' said Leonade.' The tall, light-haired young man retreated a step, but the two curious maidens had no mind to let slip their prize. "'Messier!' said Giscette, with the impetuosity of an open sluice or of a woman who was made up her mind. "'Do you know that soldier who is to play the part of Madame the Virgin in the mystery?' "'You mean the part of Jupiter?' replied the stranger.' "'Eh, yes,' said Leonade. "'Isn't she stupid?' "'So you know Jupiter?' "'Michel Gibon?' replied the unknown. "'Yes, madame. "'He has a fine beard,' said Leonade. "'Will what they are about to say here be fine?' inquired Giscette timidly. "'Very fine, mademoiselle,' replied the unknown, without the slightest hesitation. "'What is it to be?' said Leonade. "'The good judgment of Madame the Virgin—a morality, if you please, damsel. "'Ah, that makes the difference,' responded Leonade. A brief silence ensued, broken by the stranger. "'It is a perfectly new morality, and one which has never yet been played.' "'Then it is not the same one,' said Giscette, that was given two years ago on the day of the entrance of Montseur the Legate and where three handsome maids played the parts. "'Of sirens,' said Leonade. "'And all naked,' added the young man.' Leonade lowered her eyes modestly. Giscette glanced at her and did the same. He continued with a smile. "'It was a very pleasant thing to see. Today it is a morality made expressly for Madame the Damoiselle of Flanders. "'Will they sing shepherd songs?' inquired Giscette. "'Fie,' said the stranger. "'In a morality you must not confound styles. If it were a farce, well and good.' "'That is a pity,' resumed Giscette. That day, at the Ponceau Fountain, there were wild men and women who fought and assumed many aspects as they sang little motes and bergerettes. "'That which is suitable for a Legate,' returned the stranger, with a good deal of dryness, is not suitable for a princess. And beside them,' resumed Leonade, played many brass instruments, making great melodies. "'And for the refreshment of the passers-by,' continued Giscette, the fountain spouted through three mouths, wine, milk, and hippocross, of which every one drank, who wished. And a little below the Ponceau at the trinity, pursued Leonade, there was a passion performed and without any speaking. "'How well I remember that,' exclaimed Giscette, God on the cross, and the two thieves on the right and left. Here the young gossips, growing warm at the memory of the entrance of Montseur the Legate, both began to talk at once, and further on at the painter's gate there were other personages very richly clad. And at the fountain of St. Innocent that huntsman who was chasing a hind with a great clamour of dogs and hunting-horns, and at the Paris slaughter-houses, stages representing the fortress of Dieppe. And when the Legate passed, you remember, Giscette, they made the assault, and the English all had their throats cut, and against the gate of the Châtelet there were very fine personages, and on the Port-au-Change, which was all draped above, and when the Legate passed, they let fly on the bridge more than two hundred sorts of birds. Wasn't it beautiful, Leonade? "'It will be better to-day,' finally resumed their interlocutor, who seemed to listen to them with impatience. "'Do you promise us that this mystery will be fine?' said Giscette. "'Without doubt,' he replied, then he added, with a certain emphasis. "'I am the author of it, damsels.' "'Truly,' said the young girls, quite taken aback. "'Truly,' replied the poet, bridling a little. "'That is to say, there are two of us. Jehan Marshan, who has sawed the planks and erected the framework of the theatre and the woodwork, and I, who have made the piece. "'My name is Pierre Gringoire.' "'The author of this cid could not have said Pierre Corgnier with more pride.' "'Our readers have been able to observe that a certain amount of time must have already elapsed from the moment when Jupiter had retired beneath the tapestry to the instant when the author of the new morality had thus abruptly revealed himself to the innocent admiration of Giscette and Leonade. Remarkable fact, that whole crowd, so tumultuous but a few moments before, now waited amiably on the word of the comedian, which proves the eternal truth, still experienced every day in our theatres, that the best means of making the public wait patiently is to assure them that one is about to begin instantly. However, scholar Jehan had not fallen asleep. "'O la eh!' he shouted suddenly, in the midst of the peaceable waiting which had followed the tumult. "'Jupiter, madame the virgin, buffoons of the devil, are you jeering at us? The peace! The peace! Commence, or we will commence again!' That was all that was needed. The music of high and low instruments immediately became audible from the interior of the stage. The tapestry was raised. Four personages, in motley attire and painted faces, emerged from it, climbed the steep ladder of the theatre, and arrived upon the upper platform, arranged themselves in a line before the public, whom they saluted with profound reverences. Then the symphony ceased. The mystery was about to begin. The four personages, after having reaped a rich reward of applause for their reverences, began, in the midst of profound silence, a prologue, which we gladly spare the reader. Moreover, as happens in our own day, the public was more occupied with the costumes that the actors wore than with the roles that they were enacting, and in truth they were right. All four were dressed in party-colored robes of yellow and white, which were distinguished from each other only by the nature of the stuff. The first was of gold and silver brocade. The second of silk. The third of wool. The fourth of linen. The first of these personages carried in his right hand a sword. The second, two golden keys. The third, a pair of scales. The fourth, a spade. And, in order to aid sluggish minds, which would have not seen clearly through the transparency of these attributes, there was to be read in large black letters on the hem of the robe of brocade, my name is nobility. On the hem of the silken robe, my name is clergy. On the hem of the woollen robe, my name is merchandise. On the hem of the linen robe, my name is labour. The sex of the two male characters was briefly indicated to every judicious spectator by their shorter robes, and by the cap which they wore on their heads, while the two female characters, less briefly clad, were covered with hoods. Much ill-will would also have been required, not to comprehend, through the medium of the poetry of the prologue, that labour was wedded to merchandise, and clergy to nobility, and that the two happy couples possessed in common a magnificent golden dolphin, which they desired to adjudge to the fairest only. So they were roaming about the world, seeking and searching for this beauty, and, after having successively rejected the queen of Galcanda, the princess of Trebizond, the daughter of the grand con of Tartary, etc., labour and clergy, nobility and merchandise, had come to rest upon the marble table of the palais de justice, and to utter, in the presence of the honest audience, as many sentences and maxims as could then be dispensed at the faculty of arts, at examinations, sophisms, determinances, figures, and acts where the masters took their degrees. All this was, in fact, very fine. Nevertheless, in that throng upon which the four allegories vied with each other in pouring out floods of metaphors, there was no ear more attentive, no heart that palpitated more, not an eye was more haggard, no neck more outstretched than the eye, the ear, the neck, and the heart of the author, of the poet, of that brave Pierre Gringoire, who had not been able to resist a moment before the joy of telling his name to two pretty girls. He had retreated a few paces from them, behind his pillar, and there he listened, looked, enjoyed. The amiable applause which had greeted the beginning of his prologue was still echoing in his bosom, and he was completely absorbed in that species of ecstatic contemplation with which an author beholds his ideas fall one by one from the mouth of the actor into the vast silence of the audience. Worthy Pierre Gringoire. It pains us to say it, but this first ecstasy was speedily disturbed. Hardly had Gringoire raised this intoxicating cup of joy and triumph to his lips when a drop of bitterness was mingled with it. A tattered mendicant, who could not collect any coins, lost as he was in the midst of the crowd, and who had not probably found sufficient indemnity in the pockets of his neighbors, had hit upon the idea of perching himself upon some conspicuous point in order to attract looks and alms. He had, accordingly, hoisted himself during the first verses of the prologue, with the aid of the pillars of the reserve gallery, to the cornice which ran round the balustrade at its lower edge, and there he had seated himself, soliciting the attention and the pity of the multitude, with his rags and a hideous sore which covered his right arm. However, he uttered not a word. The silence which he preserved allowed the prologue to proceed without hindrance, and no perceptible disorder would have ensued if ill luck had not willed that the scholar Joanne should catch sight from the heights of his pillar of the mendicant and his grimaces. A wild fit of laughter took possession of the young scamp, who, without caring that he was interrupting the spectacle and disturbing the universal composure, shouted boldly, Look! See that sickly creature asking alms! Anyone who has thrown a stone into a frog pond, or fired a shot into a covey of birds, can form an idea of the effect produced by these incongruous words in the midst of the general attention. It may gringoise shudder, as though it had been an electric shock. The prologue stopped short, and all heads turned tumultuously towards the beggar, who, far from being disconcerted by this, saw in this incident a good opportunity for reaping his harvest, who had begun to whine in a doleful way, half closing his eyes the while. Charity, please! Well, upon my soul, resumed Joanne, its clopantry foe! All away, my friend, did your sore bother you on the leg that you have transferred it to your arm? So, saying, with the dexterity of a monkey, he flung a bit of silver into the gray-felt hat which the beggar held in his ailing arm. The mendigot received both the alms and the sarcasm without wincing, and continued in lamentable tones, Charity, please! This episode considerably distracted the attention of the audience, and a goodly number of the spectators, among them Robin Pouspan, and all the clerks at their head, gaily applauded this eccentric duet, which the scholar, with his shrill voice and the mendicant, had just improvised in the middle of the prologue. Gringoire was highly displeased. On recovering from his first stupefaction, he bestirred himself to shout to the four personages on the stage, Go on! What the devil! Go on! without even daining to cast a glance of disdain upon the two interrupters. At that moment he felt someone pluck at the hem of his ser-tue. He turned round, and not without ill-humour, and found considerable difficulty in smiling, but he was obliged to do so nevertheless. It was the pretty arm of Jisquette La Jancienne, which, passing through the railing, was soliciting his attention in this manner. Monsieur, said the young girl, are they going to continue? Of course, replied Gringoire, a good deal shocked by the question. In that case, Monsieur, she resumed, would you have the courtesy to explain to me what they are about to say, interrupted Gringoire? Well, listen! No, said Jisquette, but what they have said so far! Gringoire started, like a man whose wound has been probed to the quick. A plague on the stupid and dull-witted little girl, he muttered between his teeth. From that moment forth Jisquette was nothing to him. In the meantime the actors had obeyed his injunction, and the public, seeing that they were beginning to speak again, began once more to listen, not without having lost many beauties in the sort of soldered joint which was formed between the two portions of the piece thus abruptly cut short. Gringoire commented on it bitterly to himself. Nevertheless, tranquility was gradually restored, the scholar held his piece, the mendicant counted over some coins in his hat, and the piece resumed the upper hand. It was, in fact, a very fine work, and one which, as it seems to us, might be put to use today by the aid of a little rearrangement. The exposition, rather long and rather empty, that is to say, according to the rules, was simple, and Gringoire, in the candid sanctuary of his own conscience, admired its clearness. As the reader may surmise, the four allegorical personages were somewhat weary with having traversed the three sections of the world without having found suitable opportunity for getting rid of their golden dolphin. Thereupon, a eulogy of the marvellous fish, with a thousand delicate illusions to the young betrothed of margarita flanders, then sadly cloistered in at Ambois, and without a suspicion that labour and clergy, nobility and merchandise had just made the circuit of the world in his behalf. The sad dolphin was then young, was handsome, was stout, and above all, magnificent origin of all royal virtues, he was the son of the Lion of France. I declare that this bold metaphor is admirable, and that the natural history of the theatre, on a day of allegory and royal marriage songs, is not in the least startled by a dolphin who is the son of a lion. It is precisely these rare and penderic mixtures which prove the poet's enthusiasm. Nevertheless, in order to play the part of critic also, the poet might have developed this beautiful idea in something less than two hundred lines. It is true that the mystery was to last from noon until four o'clock, in accordance with the orders of Monsieur the Provost, and that it was necessary to say something, besides, the people listened patiently. All at once, in the very middle of a quarrel between Mademoiselle merchandise and Madame nobility, at the moment when Monsieur Leiber was giving utterance to this wonderful line. In Forrest, Nair was seen a more triumphant beast. The door of the reserved gallery, which had hitherto remained so importunally closed, opened still more inopportunely, and the ringing voice of the usher announced abruptly, Here's eminence, Monseigneur the Cardinal de Brabant. End of Chapter 2 Book I. Chapter 3 Of the Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 3 Monseigneur the Cardinal Poor Gringoire! The din of all the great double-patards of the Saint-Jean, the discharge of twenty archibuses on supports, the detonation of that famous serpentine of the Tower of Billy, which, during the siege of Paris on Sunday the 26th of September, 1465, killed seven Burgundians at one blow. The explosion of all the powder stored at the gate of the temple would have rent his ears less rudely at that solemn and dramatic moment than these few words which fell from the lips of the usher. Here's eminence, Monseigneur the Cardinal de Brabant. It is not that Pierre Gringoire either feared or disdained Monseigneur the Cardinal. He had neither the weakness nor the audacity for that. A true eclectic, as it would be expressed nowadays, Gringoire was one of those firm and lofty, moderate and calm spirits which always know how to bear themselves amid all circumstances. Stare in dimidio rerum, and who are full of reason and of liberal philosophy while still setting store by Cardinals. A rare, precious, and never interrupted race of philosophers to whom wisdom, like another Ariadne, seems to have given a clue of thread which they have been walking along unwinding since the beginning of the world, through the labyrinth of human affairs. One finds them in all ages ever the same, that is to say, always according to all times. And without reckoning our Pierre Gringoire, who may represent them in the fifteenth century, if we succeed in bestowing upon him the distinction which he deserves, it certainly was their spirit which animated Fr. de Bruel when he wrote in the sixteenth these naively sublime words worthy of all the centuries. I am a Parisian by nation and a Parisian in language, for Parisia, in Greek, signifies liberty of speech, of which I have made use even towards Mince and Eure's the Cardinals, uncle and brother to Montseur the Prince de Conte, always with respect to their greatness and without offending any one of their sweet which is much to say. There was then neither hatred for the Cardinal nor disdain for his presence, in the disagreeable impression produced upon Pierre Gringoire. Quite the contrary, our poet had too much good sense and too threadbare a quote not to attach particular importance to having the numerous illusions in his prologue, and in particular the glorification of the Dauphin, son of the Lion of France, fall upon the most eminent ear. But it is not interest which predominates in the noble nature of poets. I suppose that the entity of the poet may be represented by the number ten. It is certain that a chemist on analyzing and pharmacopolizing it, as Rabelais says, would find it composed of one part interest to nine parts of self-esteem. Now, at the moment when the door had opened to admit the Cardinal, the nine parts of self-esteem in Gringoire, swollen and expanded by the breadth of popular admiration, were in a state of prodigious augmentation, beneath which disappeared, as though stifled, that imperceptible molecule of which we have just remarked upon, in the Constitution of Poets. A precious ingredient, by the way, a ballast of reality and humanity, without which they would not touch earth. Gringoire enjoyed seeing, feeling, fingering, so to speak, an entire assembly, of knaves it is true, but what matters that, stupefied, petrified, and as though asphyxiated in the presence of the incommensurable tirades which weld up every instant from all parts of his bridal song. I affirm that he shared the general beatitude, and that, quite the reverse of La Fontaine, who at the presentation of his comedy of the Florentine, asked, Who is the ill-bred lout who made that rhapsody? Gringoire would gladly have inquired of his neighbour. Whose masterpiece is this? The reader can now judge of the effect produced upon him by the abrupt and unseasonable rival of the Cardinal. That which he had feared was only too fully realised. The entrance of his eminence upset the audience. All heads turned towards the gallery. It was no longer possible to hear oneself. The Cardinal! The Cardinal! repeated all mouths. The unhappy prologue stopped short for the second time. The Cardinal halted for a moment on the threshold of the astrod. While he was sending a rather indifferent glance around the audience, the tumult redoubled. Each person wished to get a better view of him. Each man vied with the other in thrusting his head over his neighbour's shoulder. He was, in fact, an exalted personage, the sight of whom was well worth any other comedy. Charles, Cardinal de Bourbaume, Archbishop and Comte of Lyon, primate of the Gauls, was allied both to Louis XI through his brother Pierre, Signore de Bourgeaux, who had married the King's eldest daughter, and to Charles the Bold, through his mother, Agnes of Burgundy. Now the dominating trait, the peculiar and distinctive trait of the character of the primate of the Gauls, was the spirit of the courtier and devotion to the powers that be. The reader conformed an idea of the numberless embarrassments which this double relationship had caused him, and of all the temporal reefs among which his spiritual bark had been forced to tack, in order not to suffer shipwreck on either Louis or Charles, that Scylla and that Charybdis, which had devoured the Duke de de Nemours and the Constable de Saint-Paul. Thanks to heaven's mercy he had made the voyage successfully, and had reached home without hindrance. But although he was in port, and precisely because he was in port, he never recalled without disquiet the varied haps of his political career, so long uneasy and laborious. Thus he was in the habit of saying that the year 1476 had been white and black for him, meaning thereby that in the course of that year he had lost his mother, the Duchess de la Bourbonnet, and his cousin, the Duke of Burgundy, and that one grief had consoled him for the other. Nevertheless he was a fine man. He had led a joyous Cardinal's life, like to enliven himself with the royal vintage of Chaleuil, did not hate Richard de la Garmoire and Thomas la Seillard, bestowed alms on pretty girls rather than on old women, and for all these reasons was very agreeable to the populace of Paris. He never went about otherwise than surrounded by a small court of bishops and abeys of high lineage, gallant, jovial, and given to carousing on occasion. And, more than once, the good and devout women of Saint-Germain-Dogère went passing at night beneath the brightly illuminated windows of Bourbonne, had been scandalized to hear the same voices which had entoned vespers for them during the day, caroling to the clinking of glasses the backick proverb of Benedict XII, that Pope who had added a third crown to the tiara, Bibamos papaliter. It was this justly acquired popularity, no doubt, which preserved him on his entrance from any bad reception at the hands of the mob, which had been so displeased but a moment before, and very little disposed to respect a cardinal on the very day when it was to elect a pope. But the Parisians cherished little rancor, and then, having forced the beginning of the play by their authority, the good bourgeois had got the upper hand of the cardinal and this triumph was sufficient for them. Moreover, the cardinal de Bourbonne was a handsome man. He wore a fine scarlet robe which he carried off very well, that is to say, he had all the women on his side, and, consequently, the best half of the audience. Assuredly it would be injustice and bad taste to whoot a cardinal for having come late to the spectacle when he is a handsome man and when he wears his scarlet robe well. He entered then, bowed to those present with the hereditary smile of the great for the people and directed his course slowly towards his scarlet velvet armchair, with the air of thinking of something quite different. His cortège, what we should nowadays call his staff, of bishops and abbeys invaded the astride in his train, not without causing redoubled tumults and curiosity among the audience. Each man vied with his neighbor in pointing them out and naming them, in seeing who should recognize at least one of them. This one, the Bishop of Marseille, Aloudette, if my memory serves me right, this one, the primacier of Saint-Denis, this one, Robert de l'Espanas, abbe of Saint-Germain-de-Pres, that libertine brother of a mistress of Louis XI, all with many errors and absurdities. 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, Simon Quattrelivre, Agnes Legardin, and Rabine Pierre de Beau. 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. Poor Saint-Louis! How they set him at defiance in his own court of law, each one of them selected from the newcomers on the platform a black, gray, white, or violet cassock as his target. Joannes Frollo de Molondine, in his quality of brother to an archdeacon, boldly attacked the scarlet. He sang in deafening tones with his imputed eyes fastened on the cardinal. Capa repleto miro! All these details which we hear lay bare for the edification of the reader were so covered by the general uproar that they were lost in it before reaching the reserved platforms. Moreover, they would have moved the cardinal but little, so much a part of the customs were the liberties of that day. Moreover, he had another cause for solicitude, and his mean as wholly preoccupied with it, which entered the Estrade the same time as himself. This was the embassy from Flanders. Not that he was a profound politician, nor was he borrowing trouble about the possible consequences of the marriage of his cousin Marguerite de Burgoyne to his cousin Charles de Fan de Vienne, nor as to how long the good understanding which had been patched up between the Duke of Austria and the King of France would last, nor how the King of England would take this disdain of his daughter. All that troubled him but little, and he gave a warm reception every evening to the wine of the Royal Vintage of Chaillot, without a suspicion that several flasks of that same wine, somewhat revised and corrected it is true by Dr. Quartier, cordially offered to Edward IV by Louis XI, would, some fine morning, rid Louis XI of Edward IV. The much honoured embassy of Monsieur the Duke of Austria brought the cardinal none of these cares, but it troubled him in another direction. It was, in fact, somewhat hard, and we have already hinted at it on the second page of this book. For him, Charles de Bourbonne, to be obliged to feast and receive cordially no one knows what bourgeois, for him a cardinal to receive aldermen, for him a Frenchman, a jolly companion to receive Flemish beer-drinkers, and that in public. This was certainly one of the most irksome grimaces that he had ever executed for the good pleasure of the King. So he turned toward the door, and with the best grace in the world, so well had he trained himself to it, when the usher announced, in a sonorous voice, Monsieur's the envoys of Montchure the Duke of Austria! It is useless to add that the whole hall did the same. Then arrived, two by two, with a gravity which made a contrast in the midst of the frisky ecclesiastical escort of Charles de Bourbonne, the eight and forty ambassadors of Maximilien of Austria, having at their head the reverent father-in-god Jean Abbot of Saint-Bartin, Chancellor of the Golden Fleece, and Jacques de Goye, Sire-Dobis, Grand-Bailiff of Gant. A deep silence settled over the assembly, accompanied by stifled laughter at the preposterous names and all the bourgeois designations which each of these personages transmitted with imperturbable gravity to the usher, who then tossed names and titles pell-mell and mutilated to the crowd below. There were Master Loire Relouffe, Alderman of the City of Louvain, Monsieur Clay Datouet, Alderman of Brussels, Monsieur Paul de Buste, Sire de Vormazelle, President of Flanders, Master Jehan Collagans, Burgermaster of the City of Antwerp, Master Georges Delamoyer, First Alderman of the Quare of the City of Gant, Master Geldof van der Hague, First Alderman of the Partius of the said Town, and the Sire de Birbec, and Jehan Pinnock, and Jehan de Marzelle, etc., etc., etc. Bailiffs, Alderman, Burgermasters, Burgermasters, Alderman, Bailiffs, all stiff, effectively grave, formal, dressed out in velvet and damask, hooded with caps of black velvet, with great tufts of Cyprus gold thread. Good, Flemish heads, after all, severe and worthy faces, of the family which Rembrandt makes to stand out so strong and gray from the black background of his night patrol. Personages, all of whom bore, written on their brows, that Maximilian of Austria had done well in trusting implicitly, as the manifest ran, in their sense, valor, experience, loyalty, and good wisdom. There was one exception, however. It was a subtle, intelligent, crafty-looking face, a sort of combined monkey and diplomat fizz, before whom the Cardinal made three steps and a profound bow, and whose name, nevertheless, was only Gaiome Reim, Counselor and Pensioner of the City of Gant. Few persons were then aware who Gaiome Reim was. A rare genius who, in a time of revolution, would have made a brilliant appearance on the surface of events, but who, in the fifteenth century, was reduced to cavernous intrigues and to living in minds, as the Duke de Saint-Simon expresses it. Nevertheless, he was appreciated by the miner of Europe. He plotted familiarly with Louis XI and often lent a hand to the king's secret jobs. All which things were quite unknown to that throng, who were amazed at the Cardinal's politeness to that frail figure of a Flemish bailiff. End of Chapter 3 Book I. Chapter 4 of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Book I. Chapter 4. Master Jacques Cappanol While the pensioner of Gant and his eminence were exchanging very low bows and a few words in voices still lower, a man of lofty stature with a large face and broad shoulders presented himself in order to enter a breast with Gaiome Reim. One would have pronounced him a bulldog by the side of a fox. His felt doublet and leather jerkin made a spot on the velvet and silk which surrounded him. Presuming that he was some groom 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 which rendered the entire hall attentive to this strange colloquy. Don't you see that I am one of them? Your name? demanded the usher. Jacques Cappanol. Your titles? Hosier at the sign of the three little chains of Gant. The usher recoiled. One might bring oneself to announce Alderman and Bergamasters, but a Hosier was too much. The cardinal was on thorns. All the people were staring and listening. For two days his eminence had been exerting his utmost efforts to lick these Flemish bears into shape and to render them a little more presentable to the public, and this freak was startling. But Gaiome Reim, with his polished smile, approached the usher. Announce Master Jacques Cappanol, clerk of the Alderman of the city of Gant, he whispered very low. Usher, interposed the cardinal, allowed. Announce Master Jacques Cappanol, clerk of the Alderman of the illustrious city of Gant. This was a mistake. Gaiome Reim alone might have conjured away the difficulty, but Cappanol had heard the cardinal. No cross of God, he exclaimed in his voice of thunder. Jacques Cappanol, Hosier, do you hear usher? Nothing more, nothing less. Cross of God, Hosier, that's fine enough. The Monsieur the Archduke has more than once sought his Gant in my hose. Laughter and applause burst forth. A jest is always understood in Paris, and consequently always applauded. Let us add that Cappanol was of the people, and that the auditors which surrounded him were also of the people. Thus the communication between him 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 dignity still vague and indistinct in the 15th century. This Hosier was an equal, who had just held his own before Monsieur the Cardinal. A very sweet reflection to poor fellows habituated to respect and obedience towards the underlings of the sergeants of the bailiff of Saint-Jean-Viev, the Cardinal's train-bearer. Cappanol proudly saluted his eminence, who returned the salute of the all-powerful bourgeois feared by Louis XI. Then, while Gaye-Om Rhyme, a sage and malicious man, as Philippe de Comenay puts it, watched them both with a smile of railery and superiority. Each sought his place. The Cardinal quite abashed and troubled. Cappanol, tranquil and haughty, and thinking, no doubt, that his title of Hosier was as good as any other, after all, and that Marie of Burgundy, mother to that marguerite whom Cappanol was to-day bestowing in marriage, would have been less afraid of the Cardinal than of the Hosier. For it is not a Cardinal who would have stirred up a revolt among the men of Ghent against the favourites of the daughter of Charles the Bold. It is not a Cardinal who could have fortified the populace with a word against her tears and prayers, when the maid of Flanders came to supplicate her people in their behalf, even at the very foot of the scaffold, while the Hosier had only to raise his leather elbow in order to cause to fall your two heads, the most illustrious in yours, Guy Daimbergour and Chancellor Gaye-Om Eugonay. Nevertheless it was over for the poor Cardinal, and he was obliged to coiff to the dregs the bitter cup of being in such bad company. The reader has probably not forgotten the impudent beggar who had been clinging fast to the fringes of the Cardinal's gallery ever since the beginning of the prologue. The arrival of the illustrious guests had by no means caused him to relax his hold, and while the prelates and ambassadors were packing themselves into the stalls, like genuine Flemish herrings, he settled himself at his ease, and boldly crossed his legs on the architrave. The insolence of this proceeding was extraordinary, yet no one noticed it at first, the attention of all being directed elsewhere. He, on his side, perceived nothing that was going on in the hall. He wagged his head with the unconcern of a neapolitan, repeating from time to time amid the clamour, as from a mechanical habit, Charity, please! And assuredly he was, out of all those present, the only one who had not deigned to turn his head at the altercation between Coppannol and the Usher. Now, chance ordained that the master hosier of Ghent, with whom the people were already in lively sympathy and upon whom all eyes were riveted, should come and seat himself in the front row of the gallery, directly above the mendicant, and people were not a little amazed to see the Flemish ambassador, on concluding his inspection of the nave 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 to the spectators, the hosier and the wretched being began to converse in a low tone, holding each other's hands, in the meantime, while the rags of clopantry faux, 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 and gaiety in the hall, that the cardinal was not slow to perceive it. He half bent forward, and, as from the point where he was placed, he could catch only an imperfect view of true faux's ignominious doublet. He very naturally imagined that the mendicant was asking alms, and disgusted with his audacity, he exclaimed, Bailiff of the courts, toss me that nave into the river! Cross of God, Monsignor the Cardinal, said Coppannol without quitting Clopan's hand, he is a friend of mine! Good! Good! shouted the populace. From that moment Master Coppannol enjoyed in Paris, as in Ghent, great favour with the people, for men of that sort do enjoy it, says Philippe de Cominé, when they are thus disorderly. The cardinal bit his lips. He bent towards his neighbour, the abbey of Saint-Jean-viève, and said to him in a low tone, Find ambassadors, Monsignor the Archduke sends here, to announce to us Madame Marguerite. Your eminence, replied the abbey, waste your politeness on these Flemish swine, Margueritas anti Porcos, pearls before swine. Say rather, retorted the cardinal with a smile, Porcos anti Margueritam, swine before the pearl. The whole little court in Cassex went into ecstasies over this play upon words. The cardinal felt a little relieved. He was quits with Coppannol, he also had had his jest applauded. Now, will those of our readers who possess the power of generalising an image or an idea, as the expression runs into the style of today, permit us to ask them if they have formed a very clear conception of the spectacle presented at this time? Upon which we have arrested their attention, by the vast parallelogram of the grand hall of the palace. In the middle of the hall, backed against the western wall, a large and magnificent gallery draped with cloth of gold, into which enter in procession, through a small arch door, grave personages announced successively by the shrill voice of an usher. On the front benches were already a number of venerable figures, muffled in ermine, velvet, and scarlet. Around the dais, which remained silent and dignified, below opposite, everywhere, a great crowd and a great murmur. Thousands of glances directed by the people on each face upon the dais, a thousand whispers over each name. Certainly this spectacle is curious, and well deserves the attention of the spectators. But yonder, quite at the end, what is that sort of trestle work with four motley puppets upon it, and more below? Who is that man beside the trestle, with a black doublet and a pale face? Alas, my dear reader, it is Pierre Gringois and his prologue. We have all forgotten him completely. This is precisely what he feared. From the moment of the Cardinal's entrance, Gringois had never ceased to tremble for the safety of his prologue. At first he had enjoined the actors, who had stopped in suspense, to continue, and to raise their voices. 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 and Leonard, and to urge his neighbours to the continuance of the prologue. All in vain. No one quitted the Cardinal, the Embassy, and the Gallery, sole centre of this vast circle of visual rays. We must also believe, and we say it with regret, that the prologue had begun slightly to weary the audience at the moment when his eminence had arrived, and created a diversion in so terrible a fashion. After all, on the Gallery, as well as on the marble table, the spectacle was the same, the conflict of labour and clergy, of nobility and merchandise. And many people preferred to see them alive, breathing, moving, elbowing each other in flesh and blood, in this Flemish Embassy, in this Episcopal Court, under the Cardinal's robe, under Campanot's jerkin, then painted, decked out, talking in verse, and so to speak, stuffed beneath the yellow amid white tunics in which gringoire had so ridiculously clothed them. Nevertheless, when our poet beheld quiet re-established to some extent, he devised a stratagem which might have redeemed all. Monsieur, he said, turning towards one of his neighbours, a fine big man with a patient face, suppose we begin again. What! said his neighbour. Eh, the mystery, said gringoire. As you like, returned his neighbour. This semi-approbation sufficed for gringoire, and conducting his own affairs, he began to shout, confounding himself with the crowd, as much as possible. Begin the mystery again! Begin again! The devil, said Joanna Stimellandino, what are they jabbering down yonder at the end of the hall? For gringoire was making noise enough for four. Say, comrades, isn't that mystery finished? They want to begin it all over again. That's not fair. No! No! shouted all the scholars. Down with the mystery! Down with it! But gringoire had multiplied himself, and only shouted the more vigorously. Begin again! Begin again! These clamours attracted the attention of the Cardinal. Monsieur Bailiff of the Courts, said he to a tall black man, placed a few paces from him. Are those knaves in a holy water vessel that they make such a hellish noise? The Bailiff of the Courts was a sort of amphibious magistrate, a sort of bat of the judicial order, related to both the rat and the bird, the judge and the soldier. He approached his eminence, and not without a good deal of fear of the latter's displeasure, he awkwardly explained to him the seeming disrespect of the audience. That noonday had arrived before his eminence, and that the comedians had been forced to begin without waiting 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 Gallum Rhyme? Monsignor replied Gallum Rhyme, let us be content with having escaped 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'll read my breviary in the meantime. The Bailiff advanced to the edge of the astride, and cried after having invoked silence by a wave of the hand. Beaujois, rustics and citizens! In order to satisfy those who wish the play to begin again and those who wish it to end, his eminence orders that it be continued. Both parties were forced to resign themselves, but the public and the author long cherished a grudge against the Cardinal. So the personages on the stage took up their parts, and Gringoire hoped that the rest of his work, at least, would be listened to. This hope was speedily dispelled like his other illusions. Silence had indeed been restored in the audience after a fashion. But Gringoire had not observed that, at the moment when the Cardinal gave the order to continue, the gallery was far from full, and that after the Flemish envoys there had arrived new personages forming part of the Cortège, whose names and ranks shouted out in the midst of his dialogue by the intermittent cry of the Usher, produced considerable ravages in it. Let the reader imagine the effect in the midst of a theatrical piece of the yelping of an Usher, flinging in between two rhymes and often in the middle of a line, parentheses like the following. Master Jacques Chameleux, Procurator to the King in the Ecclesiastical Courts. Jehan Darley, Aquary Guardian of the Office of Chevalier of the Night Watch of the City of Paris. Monsieur Galiol de Genouillac, Chevalier, Signor de Broussac, Master of the King's Artillery. Master Durre-Ragouillet, Surveyor of the Woods and Forests of the King Arsovereign in the Land of France, Champagne and Brie. Monsieur Louis de Gravie, Chevalier, Counselor and Chamberlain of the King, Admiral of France, Keeper of the Forest of Incennes. Master Denis Le Maussier, Guardian of the House of the Blind at Paris, etc., etc., etc. This was becoming unbearable. This strange accompaniment, which rendered it difficult to follow the piece, made Gringoire all the more indignant because he could not conceal from himself the fact that the interest was continually increasing and that all his work required was a chance of being heard. It was, in fact, difficult to imagine a more ingenious and more dramatic composition. The four personages of the prologue were bewailing themselves in their mortal embarrassment, when Venus, in person, Vera Incesa Patuit Dea, presented herself to them, clad in a fine robe bearing the heraldic device of the ship of the City of Paris. She had 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 it off, that is to say, without allegory, of marrying Montsieur the Dauphin, when a young child, clad in white damask and holding in her hand a daisy, a transparent personification of Mademoiselle Marguerite of Flanders, came to contest it with Venus. Theatrical effect and change. After a dispute, Venus, Marguerite, and the Assistants, agreed to submit to 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 had ascended by 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 invisible magic thread had suddenly drawn all glances from the marble table to the gallery, from the southern to the western extremity of the hall. Nothing could disenchant the audience. All eyes remained fixed there, and the newcomers and their cursed names and their faces and their costumes afforded a continual diversion. This was very distressing. With the exception of Giscette and Leonard, who turned round from time to time when Gringoire plucked them by the sleeve, with the exception of the 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 this whole erection of glory, and of poetry crumbled away bit by bit? And to think that these people had been upon the point of instituting a revolt against the bailiff through impatience to hear his work. Now that they had it, they did not care for it. This same representation which had been begun amid so unanimous an acclamation. Eternal flood and ebb of popular favor. To think that they had been on the point of hanging the bailiff sergeant, what would he not have given to be still at that hour of honey? But the usher's brutal monologue came to an end. Everyone had arrived, and Gringoire breathed freely once more. The actors continued bravely. But Master Caponeau, the hosier, must needs rise of a sudden, and Gringoire was forced to listen to him deliver, amid universal attention, the following abominable harangue. Monsieur's the begeois, and squires of Paris. I don't know, cross of God, what we are doing here. I certainly do see yonder in the corner on that stage some people who appear to be fighting. I don't know whether that is what you call a mystery, but it is not amusing. They quarrel with their tongues, and nothing more. I have been waiting for the first blow this quarter of an hour. Nothing comes. They are cowards who only scratch each other with insults. You ought to send for the fighters of London, or Rotterdam, and I can tell you, you would have had blows of the fist that could be heard in the place. But these men excite our pity. They ought at least to give us a Moorish dance, or some other mummer. 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 are not behindhand in that, cross of God. But this is the way we manage it. We collect a crowd like this one here. Then each person, in turn, 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 your pope after the fashion of my country? At all events, it will be less wearisome than to listen to chatterers. If they wish to come and make their grimaces through the hole, they can join the game. What say you, messieurs les bourgeois? You have here enough grotesque specimens of both sexes to allow of laughing in Flemish fashion. And there are enough of us ugly incontinence to hope for a fine grinning match. Gringoire would have liked to retort. Stupid faction, rage, indignation deprived him of words. Moreover, the suggestion of the popular hosier was received with such enthusiasm by these bourgeois who were flattered at being called squires that all resistance was useless. There was nothing to be done but to allow oneself to drift with the torrent. Gringoire hid his face between his two hands, not being so fortunate as to have a mantle with which to veil his head, like Agamemnon of Tamanthus.