Notre-Dame de Paris
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.
CHAPTER IV. 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