Chapter 4. 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 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 a little amazed to see the
Flemish ambassador, on concluding his inspection of the knave thus placed beneath his eyes, bestow a
friendly tap on that ragged shoulder. The beggar turned round; there was surprise, recognition, a
lighting up of the two countenances, and so forth; then, without paying the slightest heed in the world
to the spectators, the hosier and the wretched being began to converse in a low tone, holding each
other's hands, in the meantime, while the rags of Clopin Trouillefou, spread out upon the cloth of gold
of the dais, produced the effect of a caterpillar on an orange.
The novelty of this singular scene excited such a murmur of mirth and gayety in the hall, that the
cardinal was not slow to perceive it; he half bent forward, and, as from the point where he was placed he
could catch only an imperfect view of Trouillerfou's ignominious doublet, he very naturally imagined that
the mendicant was asking alms, and, disgusted with his audacity, he exclaimed: "Bailiff of the Courts,
toss me that knave into the river!"
"Cross of God! monseigneur the cardinal," said Coppenole, without quitting Clopin's hand, "he's a friend
of mine."
"Good! good!" shouted the populace. From that moment, Master Coppenole enjoyed in Paris as in Ghent,
"great favor with the people; for men of that sort do enjoy it," says Philippe de Comines, "when they
are thus disorderly." The cardinal bit his lips. He bent towards his neighbor, the Abbé of Saint
Geneviéve, and said to him in a low tone,--"Fine ambassadors monsieur the archduke sends here, to
announce to us Madame Marguerite!"
"Your eminence," replied the abbé, "wastes your politeness on these Flemish swine. Margaritas ante
porcos, pearls before swine."
"Say rather," retorted the cardinal, with a smile, "Porcos ante Margaritam, swine before the pearl."
The whole little court in cassocks went into ecstacies over this play upon words. The cardinal felt a
little relieved; he was quits with Coppenole, he also had had his jest applauded.
Now, will those of our readers who possess the power of generalizing an image or an idea, as the
expression runs in the style of to-day, permit us to ask them if they have formed a very clear conception
of the spectacle presented at this moment, upon which we have arrested their attention, by the vast
parallelogram of the grand hall of the palace.
In the middle of the hall, backed against the western wall, a large and magnificent gallery draped with
cloth of gold, into which enter in procession, through a small, arched door, grave personages, announced
successively by the shrill voice of an usher. On the front benches were already a number of venerable
figures, muffled in ermine, velvet, and scarlet. Around the dais--which remains silent and
dignified--below, opposite, everywhere, a great crowd and a great murmur. Thousands of glances directed
by the people on each face upon the dais, a thousand whispers over each name. Certainly, the spectacle is
curious, and well deserves the attention of the spectators. But yonder, quite at the end, what is that
sort of trestle work with four motley puppets upon it, and more below? Who is that man beside the
trestle, with a black doublet and a pale face? Alas! my dear reader, it is Pierre Gringoire and his
prologue.
We have all forgotten him completely.
This is precisely what he feared.
From the moment of the cardinal's entrance, Gringoire had never ceased to tremble for the safety of his
prologue. At first he had enjoined the actors, who had stopped in suspense, to continue, and to raise
their voices; then, perceiving that no one was listening, he had stopped them; and, during the entire
quarter of an hour that the interruption lasted, he had not ceased to stamp, to flounce about, to appeal
to Gisquette and Liénarde, and to urge his neighbors to the continuance of the prologue; all in vain. No
one quitted the cardinal, the embassy, and the gallery--sole centre of this vast circle of visual rays.
We must also believe, and we say it with regret, that the prologue had begun slightly to weary the
audience at the moment when his eminence had arrived, and created a diversion in so terrible a fashion.
After all, on the gallery as well as on the marble table, the spectacle was the same: the conflict of
Labor and Clergy, of Nobility and Merchandise. And many people preferred to see them alive, breathing,
moving, elbowing each other in flesh and blood, in this Flemish embassy, in this Episcopal court, under
the cardinal's robe, under Coppenole's jerkin, than painted, decked out, talking in verse, and, so to
speak, stuffed beneath the yellow amid white tunics in which Gringoire had so ridiculously clothed them.
Nevertheless, when our poet beheld quiet reestablished to some extent, he devised a stratagem which might
have redeemed all.
"Monsieur," he said, turning towards one of his neighbors, a fine, big man, with a patient face, "suppose
we begin again."
"What?" said his neighbor.
"Hé! the Mystery," said Gringoire.
"As you like," returned his neighbor.
This semi-approbation sufficed for Gringoire, and, conducting his own affairs, he began to shout,
confounding himself with the crowd as much as possible: "Begin the mystery again! begin again!"
"The devil!" said Joannes de Molendino, "what are they jabbering down yonder, at the end of the hall?"
(for Gringoire was making noise enough for four.) "Say, comrades, isn't that mystery
finished? They want to begin it all over again. That's not fair!"
"No, no!" shouted all the scholars. "Down with the mystery! Down with it!"
But Gringoire had multiplied himself, and only shouted the more vigorously: "Begin again! begin again!"
These clamors attracted the attention of the cardinal.
"Monsieur Bailiff of the Courts," said he to a tall, black man, placed a few paces from him, "are those
knaves in a holy-water vessel, that they make such a hellish noise?"
The bailiff of the courts was a sort of amphibious magistrate, a sort of bat of the judicial order,
related to both the rat and the bird, the judge and the soldier.
He approached his eminence, and not without a good deal of fear of the latter's displeasure, he awkwardly
explained to him the seeming disrespect of the audience: that noonday had arrived before his eminence,
and that the comedians had been forced to begin without waiting for his eminence.
The cardinal burst into a laugh.
"On my faith, the rector of the university ought to have done the same. What say you, Master Guillaume
Rym?"
"Monseigneur," replied Guillaume Rym, "let us be content with having escaped half of the comedy. There is
at least that much gained."
"Can these rascals continue their farce?" asked the bailiff.
"Continue, continue," said the cardinal, "it's all the same to me. I'll read my breviary in the
meantime."
The bailiff advanced to the edge of the estrade, and cried, after having invoked silence by a wave of
the hand, --
"Bourgeois, rustics, and citizens, in order to satisfy those who wish the play to begin again, and
those who wish it to end, his eminence orders that it be continued."
Both parties were forced to resign themselves. But the public and the author long cherished a grudge
against the cardinal.
So the personages on the stage took up their parts, and Gringoire hoped that the rest of his work, at
least, would be listened to. This hope was speedily dispelled like his other illusions; silence had
indeed, been restored in the audience, after a fashion; but Gringoire had not observed that at the moment
when the cardinal gave the order to continue, the gallery was far from full, and that after the Flemish
envoys there had arrived new personages forming part of the cortege, whose names and ranks, shouted out
in the midst of his dialogue by the intermittent cry of the usher, produced considerable ravages in it.
Let the reader imagine the effect in the midst of a theatrical piece, of the yelping of an usher,
flinging in between two rhymes, and often in the middle of a line, parentheses like the following,--
"Master Jacques Charmolue, procurator to the king in the Ecclesiastical Courts!"
"Jehan de Harlay, equerry guardian of the office of chevalier of the night watch of the city of Paris!"
"Messire Galiot de Genoilhac, chevalier, seigneur de Brussac, master of the king's artillery!"
"Master Dreux-Raguier, surveyor of the woods and forests of the king our sovereign, in the land of
France, Champagne and Brie!"
"Messire Louis de Graville, chevalier, councillor, and chamberlain of the king, admiral of France,
keeper of the Forest of Vincennes!"
"Master Denis le Mercier, guardian of the house of the blind at Paris!" etc., etc., etc.
This was becoming unbearable.
This strange accompaniment, which rendered it difficult to follow the piece, made Gringoire all the more
indignant because he could not conceal from himself the fact that the interest was continually
increasing, and that all his work required was a chance of being heard.
It was, in fact, difficult to imagine a more ingenious and more dramatic composition. The four personages
of the prologue were bewailing themselves in their mortal embarrassment, when Venus in person, (vera
incessa patuit dea) presented herself to them, clad in a fine robe bearing the heraldic device of the
ship of the city of Paris. She had come herself to claim the dolphin promised to the most beautiful.
Jupiter, whose thunder could be heard rumbling in the dressing-room, supported her claim, and Venus was
on the point of carrying it off, -- that is to say, without allegory, of marrying monsieur the dauphin,
when a young child clad in white damask, and holding in her hand a daisy (a transparent personification
of Mademoiselle Marguerite of Flanders) came to contest it with Venus.
Theatrical effect and change.
After a dispute, Venus, Marguerite, and the assistants agreed to submit to the good judgment of time holy
Virgin. There was another good part, that of the king of Mesopotamia; but through so many
interruptions, it was difficult to make out what end he served. All these persons had ascended by the
ladder to the stage.
But all was over; none of these beauties had been felt nor understood. On the entrance of the cardinal,
one would have said that an invisible magic thread had suddenly drawn all glances from the marble table
to the gallery, from the southern to the western extremity of the hall. Nothing could disenchant the
audience; all eyes remained fixed there, and the new-comers and their accursed names, and their faces,
and their costumes, afforded a continual diversion. This was very distressing. With the exception of
Gisquette and Liénarde, who turned round from time to time when Gringoire plucked them by the sleeve;
with the exception of the big, patient neighbor, no one listened, no one looked at the poor, deserted
morality full face. Gringoire saw only profiles.
With what bitterness did he behold his whole erection of glory and of poetry crumble away bit by bit! And
to think that these people had been upon the point of instituting a revolt against the bailiff through
impatience to hear his work! now that they had it they did not care for it. This same representation
which had been begun amid so unanimous an acclamation! Eternal flood and ebb of popular favor! To think
that they had been on the point of hanging the bailiff's sergeant! What would he not have given to be
still at that hour of honey!
But the usher's brutal monologue came to an end; every one had arrived, and Gringoire breathed freely
once more; the actors continued bravely. But Master Coppenole, the hosier, must needs rise of a sudden,
and Gringoire was forced to listen to him deliver, amid universal attention, the following abominable
harangue.
"Messieurs the bourgeois and squires of Paris, I don't know, cross of God! what we are doing here. I
certainly do see yonder in the corner on that stage, some people who appear to be fighting. I don't know
whether that is what you call a "mystery," but it is not amusing; they quarrel with their tongues and
nothing more. I have been waiting for the first blow this quarter of an hour; nothing comes; they are
cowards who only scratch each other with insults. You ought to send for the fighters of London or
Rotterdam; and, I can tell you! you would have had blows of the fist that could be heard in the Place;
but these men excite our pity. They ought at least, to give us a moorish dance, or some other mummer!
That is not what was told me; I was promised a feast of fools, with the election of a pope. We have our
pope of fools at Ghent also; we're not behindhand in that, cross of God! But this is the way we manage
it; we collect a crowd like this one here, then each person in turn passes his head through a hole, and
makes a grimace at the rest; time one who makes the ugliest, is elected pope by general acclamation;
that's the way it is. It is very diverting. Would you like to make your pope after the fashion of my
country? At all events, it will be less wearisome than to listen to chatterers. If they wish to come and
make their grimaces through the hole, they can join the game. What say you, Messieurs les bourgeois? You
have here enough grotesque specimens of both sexes, to allow of laughing in Flemish fashion, and there
are enough of us ugly in countenance to hope for a fine grinning match."
Gringoire would have liked to retort; stupefaction, rage, indignation, deprived him of words. Moreover,
the suggestion of the popular hosier was received with such enthusiasm by these bourgeois who were
flattered at being called "squires," that all resistance was useless. There was nothing to be done but to
allow one's self to drift with the torrent. Gringoire hid his face between his two hands, not being so
fortunate as to have a mantle with which to veil his head, like Agamemnon of Timantis.
Monsieur The Cardinal || Quasimodo