Notre-Dame de Paris
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.”[2]
“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?”[3] cried Jehan du M. Moulin.
The entire band repeated this quip in a voice of thunder,
clapping their hands furiously.
“You are going to seek a lodging in the Rue 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 hé
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[4] _quatuor denarios_.”
“_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 sedet atra cura_—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