BOOK FIRST CHAPTER 1.THE GRAND HALL. Page 2

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. A1l 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.