Bab Bab 3 · MONSIEUR THE CARDINAL.

”

Jupiter breathed once more.

“Messeigneurs 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! Plaudite cives_! All hail, Jupiter! Applaud,

citizens!” shouted the scholars.

“Noël! Noël! good, good,” shouted the people.

The hand clapping 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withdrawn under his tapestry, while the hall still trembled with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 and dear Corneille 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 Giborne-Jupiter.

“Master,” said one of them, making him a sign to approach.

“Hold your tongue, my dear Liénarde,” 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 messire.”

“Messire,” said Liénarde.

The stranger approached the railing.

“What would you have of me, damsels?” he asked, with alacrity.

“Oh! nothing,” replied Liénarde, in great confusion; “it is my

neighbor, Gisquette la Gencienne, who wishes to speak with you.”

“Not so,” replied Gisquette, blushing; “it was Liénarde who

called you master; I only told her to say messire.”

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 Gisquette.

“Nothing,” said Liénarde.

The tall, light-haired young man retreated a step; but the two

curious maidens had no mind to let slip their prize.

“Messire,” said Gisquette, with the impetuosity of an open

sluice, or of a woman who has 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.

“Hé! yes,” said Liénarde, “isn’t she stupid? So you know

Jupiter?”

“Michel Giborne?” replied the unknown; “yes, madam.”

“He has a fine beard!” said Liénarde.

“Will what they are about to say here be fine?” inquired

Gisquette, timidly.

“Very fine, mademoiselle,” replied the unknown, without the

slightest hesitation.

“What is it to be?” said Liénarde.

“‘The Good Judgment of Madame the Virgin,’—a morality, if you

please, damsel.”

“Ah! that makes a difference,” responded Liénarde.

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 Gisquette, “that was given

two years ago, on the day of the entrance of monsieur the legate,

and where three handsome maids played the parts—”

“Of sirens,” said Liénarde.

“And all naked,” added the young man.

Liénarde lowered her eyes modestly. Gisquette glanced at her and

did the same. He continued, with a smile,—

“It was a very pleasant thing to see. To-day it is a morality

made expressly for Madame the Demoiselle of Flanders.”

“Will they sing shepherd songs?” inquired Gisquette.

“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 Gisquette. “That day, at the Ponceau

Fountain, there were wild men and women, who fought and assumed

many aspects, as they sang little motets 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 Liénarde, “played many brass

instruments, making great melodies.”

“And for the refreshment of the passers-by,” continued Gisquette,

“the fountain spouted through three mouths, wine, milk, and

hippocrass, of which every one drank who wished.”

“And a little below the Ponceau, at the Trinity,” pursued

Liénarde, “there was a passion performed, and without any

speaking.”

“How well I remember that!” exclaimed Gisquette; “God on the

cross, and the two thieves on the right and the left.” Here the

young gossips, growing warm at the memory of the entrance of

monsieur the legate, both began to talk at once.

“And, further on, at the Painters’ Gate, there were other

personages, very richly clad.”

“And at the fountain of Saint-Innocent, that huntsman, who was

chasing a hind with great clamor of dogs and hunting-horns.”

“And, at the Paris slaughter-houses, stages, representing the

fortress of Dieppe!”

“And when the legate passed, you remember, Gisquette? 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, Liénarde?”

“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

Gisquette.

“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 Marchand, 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 the “Cid” could not have said “Pierre Corneille”

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 Gisquette and Liénarde. 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 Johannes had not fallen asleep.

“Holà hé!” 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 piece!

the piece! commence or we will commence again!”

This 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 parti-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 not have 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 woolen robe, MY NAME IS

MERCHANDISE; on the hem of the linen robe, MY NAME IS LABOR. 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 Labor 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 Golconda,

the Princess of Trebizonde, the daughter of the Grand Khan of

Tartary, etc., Labor 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 Joannes 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!”

Any one 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 made Gringoire 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, and who began to whine in a doleful way, half

closing his eyes the while,—“Charity, please!”

“Well—upon my soul,” resumed Joannes, “it’s Clopin Trouillefou!

Holà hé, 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 mendicant 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 spectators, among them Robin

Poussepain, and all the clerks at their head, gayly 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 deigning to cast a glance of disdain upon the two

interrupters.

At that moment, he felt some one pluck at the hem of his surtout;

he turned round, and not without ill-humor, and found

considerable difficulty in smiling; but he was obliged to do so,

nevertheless. It was the pretty arm of Gisquette la Gencienne,

which, passed 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, messire,” she resumed, “would you have the

courtesy to explain to me—”

“What they are about to say?” interrupted Gringoire. “Well,

listen.”

“No,” said Gisquette, “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, Gisquette 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, tranquillity was gradually

restored, the scholar held his peace, 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 to-day, 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 allusions to the

young betrothed of Marguerite of Flanders, then sadly cloistered

in at Amboise, and without a suspicion that Labor and Clergy,

Nobility and Merchandise had just made the circuit of the world

in his behalf. The said dauphin 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 Pindaric 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

Labor was giving utterance to this wonderful line,—

In forest ne’er was seen a more triumphant beast;

the door of the reserved gallery which had hitherto remained so

inopportunely closed, opened still more inopportunely; and the

ringing voice of the usher announced abruptly, “His eminence,

Monseigneur the Cardinal de Bourbon.”

CHAPTER 3. MONSIEUR THE CARDINAL.

Poor Gringoire! the din of all the great double petards of the

Saint-Jean, the discharge of twenty arquebuses on supports, the

detonation of that famous serpentine of the Tower of Billy,

which, during the siege of Paris, on Sunday, the twenty-sixth 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, “His eminence, Monseigneur the Cardinal de Bourbon.”

It is not that Pierre Gringoire either feared or disdained

monsieur 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 clew 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 Father

du Breul, when he wrote, in the sixteenth, these naively sublime

words, worthy of all centuries: “I am a Parisian by nation, and a

Parrhisian in language, for _parrhisia_ in Greek signifies

liberty of speech; of which I have made use even towards

messeigneurs the cardinals, uncle and brother to Monsieur the

Prince de Conty, always with respect to their greatness, and

without offending any one of their suite, 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 coat, not to attach particular importance to

having the numerous allusions 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 breath 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 the 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 welled 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 neighbor, “Whose masterpiece is this?”

The reader can now judge of the effect produced upon him by the

abrupt and unseasonable arrival of the cardinal.

That which he had to fear was only too fully realized. The

entrance of his eminence upset the audience. All heads turned

towards the gallery. It was no longer possible to hear one’s

self. “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 estrade.

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 neighbor’s shoulder.

He was, in fact, an exalted personage, the sight of whom was well

worth any other comedy. Charles, Cardinal de Bourbon, Archbishop

and Comte of Lyon, Primate of the Gauls, was allied both to Louis

XI., through his brother, Pierre, Seigneur de Beaujeu, 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 can form 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 Duc de Nemours and the Constable

de Saint-Pol. 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 Duchesse de la Bourbonnais, and his cousin, the

Duke of Burgundy, and that one grief had consoled him for the

other.

Nevertheless, he was a fine man; he led a joyous cardinal’s life,

liked to enliven himself with the royal vintage of Challuau, did

not hate Richarde la Garmoise and Thomasse la Saillarde, 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 abbés of high lineage, gallant, jovial, and given to

carousing on occasion; and more than once the good and devout

women of Saint Germain d’ Auxerre, when passing at night beneath

the brightly illuminated windows of Bourbon, had been scandalized

to hear the same voices which had intoned vespers for them during

the day carolling, to the clinking of glasses, the bacchic

proverb of Benedict XII., that pope who had added a third crown

to the Tiara—_Bibamus 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 cherish 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

Bourbon 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 hoot 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 arm-chair, with the air of thinking of

something quite different. His cortege—what we should nowadays

call his staff—of bishops and abbés invaded the estrade in his

train, not without causing redoubled tumult 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 Marseilles (Alaudet, if my

memory serves me right);—this one, the primicier of

Saint-Denis;—this one, Robert de Lespinasse, Abbé of

Saint-Germain des Prés, 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—Simone Quatrelivres, Agnès la Gadine, and Rabine Piédebou.

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 new-comers on

the platform, a black, gray, white, or violet cassock as his

target. Joannes Frollo de Molendin, in his quality of brother to

an archdeacon, boldly attacked the scarlet; he sang in deafening

tones, with his impudent eyes fastened on the cardinal, “_Cappa

repleta mero_!”

All these details which we here 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 mien 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 Bourgoyne to his cousin Charles, Dauphin 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 Doctor

Coictier), cordially offered to Edward IV. by Louis XI., would,

some fine morning, rid Louis XI. of Edward IV. “The much honored

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 Bourbon, to be

obliged to feast and receive cordially no one knows what

_bourgeois_;—for him, a cardinal, to receive aldermen;—for him, a

Frenchman, and 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, “Messieurs the Envoys of Monsieur

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

Bourbon, the eight and forty ambassadors of Maximilian of

Austria, having at their head the reverend Father in God, Jehan,

Abbot of Saint-Bertin, Chancellor of the Golden Fleece, and

Jacques de Goy, Sieur Dauby, Grand Bailiff of Ghent. 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 Loys Roelof, alderman of the city of Louvain; Messire

Clays d’Etuelde, alderman of Brussels; Messire Paul de Baeust,

Sieur de Voirmizelle, President of Flanders; Master Jehan

Coleghens, burgomaster of the city of Antwerp; Master George de

la Moere, first alderman of the kuere of the city of Ghent;

Master Gheldolf van der Hage, first alderman of the _parchons_ of

the said town; and the Sieur de Bierbecque, and Jehan Pinnock,

and Jehan Dymaerzelle, etc., etc., etc.; bailiffs, aldermen,

burgomasters; burgomasters, aldermen, bailiffs—all stiff,

affectedly 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

grave 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 phiz,

before whom the cardinal made three steps and a profound bow, and

whose name, nevertheless, was only, “Guillaume Rym, counsellor

and pensioner of the City of Ghent.”

Few persons were then aware who Guillaume Rym 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

mines,” as the Duc 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.