الفصل الفصل 4 · MASTER JACQUES COPPENOLE.

. MASTER JACQUES COPPENOLE.

While the pensioner of Ghent 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 abreast with Guillaume Rym; one would

have pronounced him a bull-dog 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 Coppenole.”

“Your titles?”

“Hosier at the sign of the ‘Three Little Chains,’ of Ghent.”

The usher recoiled. One might bring one’s self to announce

aldermen and burgomasters, 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 Guillaume Rym, with his polished smile, approached

the usher.

“Announce Master Jacques Coppenole, clerk of the aldermen of the

city of Ghent,” he whispered, very low.

“Usher,” interposed the cardinal, aloud, “announce Master Jacques

Coppenole, clerk of the aldermen of the illustrious city of

Ghent.”

This was a mistake. Guillaume Rym alone might have conjured away

the difficulty, but Coppenole had heard the cardinal.

“No, cross of God?” he exclaimed, in his voice of thunder,

“Jacques Coppenole, hosier. Do you hear, usher? Nothing more,

nothing less. Cross of God! hosier; that’s fine enough. Monsieur

the Archduke has more than once sought his _gant_[5] in my hose.”

Laughter and applause burst forth. A jest is always understood in

Paris, and, consequently, always applauded.

Let us add that Coppenole was of the people, and that the

auditors 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 fifteenth 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 Sainte-Geneviève, the cardinal’s

train-bearer.

Coppenole proudly saluted his eminence, who returned the salute

of the all-powerful _bourgeois_ feared by Louis XI. Then, while

Guillaume Rym, a “sage and malicious man,” as Philippe de Comines

puts it, watched them both with a smile of raillery and

superiority, each sought his place, the cardinal quite abashed

and troubled, Coppenole tranquil and haughty, and thinking, no

doubt, that his title of hosier was as good as any other, after

all, and that Marie of Burgundy, mother to that Marguerite whom

Coppenole 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 favorites 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, most

illustrious seigneurs, Guy d’Hymbercourt and Chancellor Guillaume

Hugonet.

Nevertheless, all was over for the poor cardinal, and he was

obliged to quaff 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 clamor, 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 Coppenole 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 knave thus placed beneath his eyes, bestow a

friendly tap on that ragged shoulder. The beggar turned round;

there was surprise, recognition, a lighting up of the two

countenances, and so forth; then, without paying the slightest

heed in the world 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 Clopin Trouillefou,

spread out upon the cloth of gold of the dais, produced the

effect of a caterpillar on an orange.

The novelty of this singular scene excited such a murmur of mirth

and gayety 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

Trouillerfou’s ignominious doublet, he very naturally imagined

that the mendicant was asking alms, and, disgusted with his

audacity, he exclaimed: “Bailiff of the Courts, toss me that

knave into the river!”

“Cross of God! monseigneur the cardinal,” said Coppenole, without

quitting Clopin’s hand, “he’s a friend of mine.”

“Good! good!” shouted the populace. From that moment, Master

Coppenole enjoyed in Paris as in Ghent, “great favor with the

people; for men of that sort do enjoy it,” says Philippe de

Comines, “when they are thus disorderly.” The cardinal bit his

lips. He bent towards his neighbor, the Abbé of Sainte-Geneviève,

and said to him in a low tone,—“Fine ambassadors monsieur the

archduke sends here, to announce to us Madame Marguerite!”

“Your eminence,” replied the abbé, “wastes your politeness on

these Flemish swine. _Margaritas ante porcos_, pearls before

swine.”

“Say rather,” retorted the cardinal, with a smile, “_Porcos ante

Margaritam_, swine before the pearl.”

The whole little court in cassocks went into ecstacies over this

play upon words. The cardinal felt a little relieved; he was

quits with Coppenole, he also had had his jest applauded.

Now, will those of our readers who possess the power of

generalizing an image or an idea, as the expression runs in the

style of to-day, permit us to ask them if they have formed a very

clear conception of the spectacle presented at this moment, 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, arched 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 remains 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, the 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 Gringoire and his prologue.

We have all forgotten him completely.

This is precisely what he feared.

From the moment of the cardinal’s entrance, Gringoire 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 Liénarde, and to

urge his neighbors 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 Labor 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 Coppenole’s jerkin, than

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 reestablished to some

extent, he devised a stratagem which might have redeemed all.

“Monsieur,” he said, turning towards one of his neighbors, a

fine, big man, with a patient face, “suppose we begin again.”

“What?” said his neighbor.

“Hé! the Mystery,” said Gringoire.

“As you like,” returned his neighbor.

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 Joannes de Molendino, “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 clamors 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 Guillaume Rym?”

“Monseigneur,” replied Guillaume Rym, “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 estrade, and cried, after

having invoked silence by a wave of the hand,—

“_Bourgeois_, 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 Charmolue, procurator to the king in the

Ecclesiastical Courts!”

“Jehan de Harlay, equerry guardian of the office of chevalier of

the night watch of the city of Paris!”

“Messire Galiot de Genoilhac, chevalier, seigneur de Brussac,

master of the king’s artillery!”

“Master Dreux-Raguier, surveyor of the woods and forests of the

king our sovereign, in the land of France, Champagne and Brie!”

“Messire Louis de Graville, chevalier, councillor, and

chamberlain of the king, admiral of France, keeper of the Forest

of Vincennes!”

“Master Denis le Mercier, guardian of the house of the blind at

Paris!” etc., etc., etc.

This was becoming unbearable.

This strange accompaniment, which rendered it difficult to 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 incessa 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 monsieur 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 the ladder to the

stage.

But all was over; none of these beauties had been felt nor

understood. On the entrance of the cardinal, one would have said

that an 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 new-comers and

their accursed names, and their faces, and their costumes,

afforded a continual diversion. This was very distressing. With

the exception of Gisquette and Liénarde, 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 his whole erection of glory

and of poetry crumble 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’s 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; every one had

arrived, and Gringoire breathed freely once more; the actors

continued bravely. But Master Coppenole, the hosier, must needs

rise of a sudden, and Gringoire was forced to listen to him

deliver, amid universal attention, the following abominable

harangue.

“Messieurs the _bourgeois_ 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’re 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 in countenance

to hope for a fine grinning match.”

Gringoire would have liked to retort; stupefaction, rage,

indignation, deprived him of words. Moreover, the suggestion of

the popular 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 one’s self 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 Timantis.