Three hundred and
forty-eight years, six months, and nineteen days ago to-day, 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 sixth 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 a ferment 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
Laas, nor an entry of “our much dread lord, monsieur the king,” nor
even a pretty hanging of male and female thieves by the courts of
Paris. Neither was it the arrival, so frequent in the fifteenth
century, of some plumed and bedizened 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 de Bourbon, who, for the
sake of pleasing the king, had been obliged to assume an amiable
mien towards this whole rustic rabble of Flemish burgomasters, and
to regale them at his Hôtel de 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 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 Grève, a maypole at the Chapelle de Braque,
and a mystery at the Palais de Justice. It had been cried, to the
sound of the trumpet, the preceding evening at all the cross roads,
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 Braque.
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 the 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 Sauval had not yet measured the grand hall of the Château
of Montargis). The palace 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 mouths 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 centre 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 buffet of an archer, or the horse of one of the
provost’s sergeants, which kicked to restore order; an admirable
tradition which the provostship has bequeathed to the constablery,
the constablery to the maréchaussée, the maréchaussée 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 and
we adopt it, like all the rest of
the world, to characterize the
architecture of the second half
of the Middle Ages, where the ogive is
the principle which succeeds the
architecture of the first period, of
which the semi-circle is the
father.
Thousands of good, calm,
bourgeois faces thronged 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 endeavor 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 ogive vault, panelled with wood carving, painted azure, and
sown with golden fleurs-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 Pharamond down: the lazy kings, with pendent 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,
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 almost entirely 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 motley and noisy throng which drifts
along the walls, and eddies round the seven pillars, and he will
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 Ravaillac
had not assassinated Henri IV., there would have been no documents
in the trial of Ravaillac deposited in the clerk’s office of the
Palais de Justice, no accomplices interested in causing the said
documents to disappear; hence, no incendiaries obliged, for 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,—I 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 Ravaillac 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 every one knows, upon
the law courts, after midnight on the seventh of March; second,
Théophile’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 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 linsey-woolsey, without sleeves, and a sur-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 Charles
VI. promulgated his edict of pardon? the slab where Marcel cut the
throats of Robert de Clermont and the Marshal 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 vault,
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 Biscornette to despair? and the delicate
woodwork of Hancy? What has time, what have men done with these
marvels? 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 great pillar, still ringing with the tattle of
the Patru.
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
row 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 marvellous 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
fairylike fancies of the Renaissance. The little open-work rose
window, pierced above the portal, was, in particular, a masterpiece
of lightness 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 effected 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, masked 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 midday. 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 clamor 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 those merry imps, who, after smashing the glass in a window, had
seated themselves hardily on the entablature, and from that point
despatched their gaze and their railleries both within and without,
upon the throng in the hall, and the throng upon the Place. It was
easy to see, from their parodied 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,
‘Joannes Frollo de Molendino!’” 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 Joannes Frollo, “these four hours and more; and I hope
that they will be reckoned to my credit in purgatory. I heard the
eight singers of the King of Sicily intone the first verse of seven
o’clock mass in the Sainte-Chapelle.”
“Fine singers!” replied the
other, “with voices even more pointed than their caps! Before
founding a mass for Monsieur Saint John, the king should have
inquired whether Monsieur Saint John 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 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 on the side towards the
fishwife; “a mass had to be founded. Would you wish the 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 of the 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 they laughing at? An honorable
man is Gilles Lecornu, brother of Master Jehan Lecornu, provost of
the king’s house, son of Master Mahiet Lecornu, first porter of the
Bois de Vincennes,—all bourgeois of Paris, all married, 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; but he perspired and panted
in vain; like a wedge entering the wood, his efforts served only to
bury still more deeply in the shoulders of his neighbors, 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.
“Abomination! scholars addressing
a bourgeois in that fashion in my day would have been flogged with
a fagot, which would have afterwards been used to burn them.”
The whole band burst into
laughter.
“Holà hé! 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 four nations, the four faculties, the
four feasts, the four procurators, the four electors, the four
booksellers.”
“Well,” began Jean Frollo once
more, “we must play the devil with them.” *
* 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, “hold your tongue, or I’ll
drop on your head!”
Master Andry 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, 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 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 Place Maubert
is sufficiently large!” interposed one of the clerks established on
the window-sill.
“Down with the rector, the
electors, and the procurators!” cried Joannes.
“We must have a bonfire this
evening in the Champ-Gaillard,” went on the other, “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 with Master Andry, the beadles and
the scribes; the theologians, the doctors and the decretists; the
procurators, the electors and the rector!”
“The end of the world has come!,’
muttered Master Andry, stopping up his ears.
“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 Jehan Frollo 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 that moment traversing
the Place. The students crowded into the window, saluted them as
they passed with sarcasms 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 recteur!
Holà hé! 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!”
“Holà hé! good day, monsieur le
recteur Thibaut! Tybalde aleator! Old fool! 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 of gambling 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 Thibautodé?” * cried Jehan du M.
Moulin.
* Thibaut au des,—Thibaut
of the dice.
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 Thibautodé, 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 the College of
Autun.”
“Hold on, here’s my shoe; you are
better placed than I, fling it in his face.”
“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 by Sainte-Geneviève 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-Geneviève! You have done me a wrong. ‘Tis true; he gave my
place in the nation of Normandy to little Ascanio Falzapada, who
comes from the province of Bourges, since he is an Italian.”
“That is an injustice,” said all
the scholars. “Down with the Chancellor of Sainte-Geneviève!”
“Ho hé! Master Joachim de
Ladehors! Ho hé! Louis Dahuille! Ho he Lambert Hoctement!”
“May the devil stifle the
procurator of the German nation!”
“And the chaplains of the
Sainte-Chapelle, with their gray amices; cum tunices grisis!”
“Seu de pellibus grisis
fourratis!”
“Holà hé! Masters of Arts! All
the beautiful black copes! all the fine red copes!”
“They make a fine tail for the
rector.”
“One would say that he was a Doge
of Venice on his way to his bridal with the sea.”
“Say, Jehan! here are the canons
of Sainte-Geneviève!”
“To the deuce with the whole set
of canons!”
“Abbé Claude Choart! Doctor
Claude Choart! Are you in search of Marie la Giffarde?”
“She is in the Rue de
Glatigny.”
“She is making the bed of the
king of the debauchees. She is paying her four deniers* quatuor
denarios.”
* An old French coin, equal
to the two hundred and
fortieth 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 wife on 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, still perched 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 Gilles Lecornu.
“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 bookselling. 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!” exclaimed 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, assumed 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 reserved 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 theatre 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 Moulin who struck the first spark from it.
“The mystery, and to the devil
with the Flemings!” 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 bows, which, in proportion as he
drew nearer, more and more resembled genuflections.
In the meanwhile, tranquillity
had gradually been restored. All that remained was that slight
murmur which always rises above the silence of a 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 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 honorable 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
Baudets. 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 veracious tale, and of
being, in consequence, responsible for it before our Lady
Criticism, it is not against us that the classic precept, Nec deus
intersit, could be invoked. Moreover, the costume of Seigneur
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 mien was
concerned, with a Breton archer from the guard of Monsieur de
Berry.