Notre-Dame de Paris
“Master Coppenole, you are speaking to a puissant king.”
“I know it,” replied the hosier, gravely.
“Let him speak, Monsieur Rym, my friend,” said the king; “I love
this frankness of speech. My father, Charles the Seventh, was
accustomed to say that the truth was ailing; I thought her dead,
and that she had found no confessor. Master Coppenole undeceiveth
me.”
Then, laying his hand familiarly on Coppenole’s shoulder,—
“You were saying, Master Jacques?”
“I say, sire, that you may possibly be in the right, that the
hour of the people may not yet have come with you.”
Louis XI. gazed at him with his penetrating eye,—
“And when will that hour come, master?”
“You will hear it strike.”
“On what clock, if you please?”
Coppenole, with his tranquil and rustic countenance, made the
king approach the window.
“Listen, sire! There is here a donjon keep, a belfry, cannons,
_bourgeois_, soldiers; when the belfry shall hum, when the
cannons shall roar, when the donjon shall fall in ruins amid
great noise, when _bourgeois_ and soldiers shall howl and slay
each other, the hour will strike.”
Louis’s face grew sombre and dreamy. He remained silent for a
moment, then he gently patted with his hand the thick wall of the
donjon, as one strokes the haunches of a steed.
“Oh! no!” said he. “You will not crumble so easily, will you, my
good Bastille?”
And turning with an abrupt gesture towards the sturdy Fleming,—
“Have you never seen a revolt, Master Jacques?”
“I have made them,” said the hosier.
“How do you set to work to make a revolt?” said the king.
“Ah!” replied Coppenole, “’tis not very difficult. There are a
hundred ways. In the first place, there must be discontent in the
city. The thing is not uncommon. And then, the character of the
inhabitants. Those of Ghent are easy to stir into revolt. They
always love the prince’s son; the prince, never. Well! One
morning, I will suppose, some one enters my shop, and says to me:
‘Father Coppenole, there is this and there is that, the
Demoiselle of Flanders wishes to save her ministers, the grand
bailiff is doubling the impost on shagreen, or something
else,’—what you will. I leave my work as it stands, I come out of
my hosier’s stall, and I shout: ‘To the sack?’ There is always
some smashed cask at hand. I mount it, and I say aloud, in the
first words that occur to me, what I have on my heart; and when
one is of the people, sire, one always has something on the
heart. Then people troop up, they shout, they ring the alarm
bell, they arm the louts with what they take from the soldiers,
the market people join in, and they set out. And it will always
be thus, so long as there are lords in the seignories,
_bourgeois_ in the bourgs, and peasants in the country.”
“And against whom do you thus rebel?” inquired the king; “against
your bailiffs? against your lords?”
“Sometimes; that depends. Against the duke, also, sometimes.”
Louis XI. returned and seated himself, saying, with a smile,—
“Ah! here they have only got as far as the bailiffs.”
At that instant Olivier le Daim returned. He was followed by two
pages, who bore the king’s toilet articles; but what struck Louis
XI. was that he was also accompanied by the provost of Paris and
the chevalier of the watch, who appeared to be in consternation.
The spiteful barber also wore an air of consternation, which was
one of contentment beneath, however. It was he who spoke first.
“Sire, I ask your majesty’s pardon for the calamitous news which
I bring.”
The king turned quickly and grazed the mat on the floor with the
feet of his chair,—
“What does this mean?”
“Sire,” resumed Olivier le Daim, with the malicious air of a man
who rejoices that he is about to deal a violent blow, “’tis not
against the bailiff of the courts that this popular sedition is
directed.”
“Against whom, then?”
“Against you, sire?’
The aged king rose erect and straight as a young man,—
“Explain yourself, Olivier! And guard your head well, gossip; for
I swear to you by the cross of Saint-Lô that, if you lie to us at
this hour, the sword which severed the head of Monsieur de
Luxembourg is not so notched that it cannot yet sever yours!”
The oath was formidable; Louis XI. had only sworn twice in the
course of his life by the cross of Saint-Lô.
Olivier opened his mouth to reply.
“Sire—”
“On your knees!” interrupted the king violently. “Tristan, have
an eye to this man.”
Olivier knelt down and said coldly,—
“Sire, a sorceress was condemned to death by your court of
parliament. She took refuge in Notre-Dame. The people are trying
to take her from thence by main force. Monsieur the provost and
monsieur the chevalier of the watch, who have just come from the
riot, are here to give me the lie if this is not the truth. The
populace is besieging Notre-Dame.”
“Yes, indeed!” said the king in a low voice, all pale and
trembling with wrath. “Notre-Dame! They lay siege to our Lady, my
good mistress in her cathedral!—Rise, Olivier. You are right. I
give you Simon Radin’s charge. You are right. ’Tis I whom they
are attacking. The witch is under the protection of this church,
the church is under my protection. And I thought that they were
acting against the bailiff! ’Tis against myself!”
Then, rendered young by fury, he began to walk up and down with
long strides. He no longer laughed, he was terrible, he went and
came; the fox was changed into a hyæna. He seemed suffocated to
such a degree that he could not speak; his lips moved, and his
fleshless fists were clenched. All at once he raised his head,
his hollow eye appeared full of light, and his voice burst forth
like a clarion: “Down with them, Tristan! A heavy hand for these
rascals! Go, Tristan, my friend! slay! slay!”
This eruption having passed, he returned to his seat, and said
with cold and concentrated wrath,—
“Here, Tristan! There are here with us in the Bastille the fifty
lances of the Vicomte de Gif, which makes three hundred horse:
you will take them. There is also the company of our unattached
archers of Monsieur de Châteaupers: you will take it. You are
provost of the marshals; you have the men of your provostship:
you will take them. At the Hôtel Saint-Pol you will find forty
archers of monsieur the dauphin’s new guard: you will take them.
And, with all these, you will hasten to Notre-Dame. Ah!
messieurs, louts of Paris, do you fling yourselves thus against
the crown of France, the sanctity of Notre-Dame, and the peace of
this commonwealth! Exterminate, Tristan! exterminate! and let not
a single one escape, except it be for Montfaucon.”
Tristan bowed. “’Tis well, sire.”
He added, after a silence, “And what shall I do with the
sorceress?”
This question caused the king to meditate.
“Ah!” said he, “the sorceress! Monsieur d’Estouteville, what did
the people wish to do with her?”
“Sire,” replied the provost of Paris, “I imagine that since the
populace has come to tear her from her asylum in Notre-Dame, ’tis
because that impunity wounds them, and they desire to hang her.”
The king appeared to reflect deeply: then, addressing Tristan
l’Hermite, “Well! gossip, exterminate the people and hang the
sorceress.”
“That’s it,” said Rym in a low tone to Coppenole, “punish the
people for willing a thing, and then do what they wish.”
“Enough, sire,” replied Tristan. “If the sorceress is still in
Notre-Dame, must she be seized in spite of the sanctuary?”
“_Pasque-Dieu!_ the sanctuary!” said the king, scratching his
ear. “But the woman must be hung, nevertheless.”
Here, as though seized with a sudden idea, he flung himself on
his knees before his chair, took off his hat, placed it on the
seat, and gazing devoutly at one of the leaden amulets which
loaded it down, “Oh!” said he, with clasped hands, “our Lady of
Paris, my gracious patroness, pardon me. I will only do it this
once. This criminal must be punished. I assure you, madame the
virgin, my good mistress, that she is a sorceress who is not
worthy of your amiable protection. You know, madame, that many
very pious princes have overstepped the privileges of the
churches for the glory of God and the necessities of the State.
Saint Hugues, bishop of England, permitted King Edward to hang a
witch in his church. Saint-Louis of France, my master,
transgressed, with the same object, the church of Monsieur
Saint-Paul; and Monsieur Alphonse, son of the king of Jerusalem,
the very church of the Holy Sepulchre. Pardon me, then, for this
once. Our Lady of Paris, I will never do so again, and I will
give you a fine statue of silver, like the one which I gave last
year to Our Lady of Écouys. So be it.”
He made the sign of the cross, rose, donned his hat once more,
and said to Tristan,—
“Be diligent, gossip. Take Monsieur Châteaupers with you. You
will cause the tocsin to be sounded. You will crush the populace.
You will seize the witch. ’Tis said. And I mean the business of
the execution to be done by you. You will render me an account of
it. Come, Olivier, I shall not go to bed this night. Shave me.”
Tristan l’Hermite bowed and departed. Then the king, dismissing
Rym and Coppenole with a gesture,—
“God guard you, messieurs, my good friends the Flemings. Go, take
a little repose. The night advances, and we are nearer the
morning than the evening.”
Both retired and gained their apartments under the guidance of
the captain of the Bastille. Coppenole said to Guillaume Rym,—
“Hum! I have had enough of that coughing king! I have seen
Charles of Burgundy drunk, and he was less malignant than Louis
XI. when ailing.”
“Master Jacques,” replied Rym, “’tis because wine renders kings
less cruel than does barley water.”
CHAPTER VI. LITTLE SWORD IN POCKET.
On emerging from the Bastille, Gringoire descended the Rue
Saint-Antoine with the swiftness of a runaway horse. On arriving
at the Baudoyer gate, he walked straight to the stone cross which
rose in the middle of that place, as though he were able to
distinguish in the darkness the figure of a man clad and cloaked
in black, who was seated on the steps of the cross.
“Is it you, master?” said Gringoire.
The personage in black rose.
“Death and passion! You make me boil, Gringoire. The man on the
tower of Saint-Gervais has just cried half-past one o’clock in
the morning.”
“Oh,” retorted Gringoire, “’tis no fault of mine, but of the
watch and the king. I have just had a narrow escape. I always
just miss being hung. ’Tis my predestination.”
“You lack everything,” said the other. “But come quickly. Have
you the password?”
“Fancy, master, I have seen the king. I come from him. He wears