Notre-Dame de Paris
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 III. 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