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-BOOK FIRST. 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
abbes 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 abbes 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, Abbe of Saint-Germain des
Pres, 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 *** 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, Agnes la
Gadine, and Rabine Piedebou.
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 parchous 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.