LITMIR.BIZ

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set of canons!”

      “Abbé Claude Choart! Doctor Claude Choart! Are you in search of Marie la Giffarde?”

      “She is in the Rue de Glatigny.”

      “She is making the bed of the king of the debauchees. She is paying her four deniers* quatuor denarios.”

      * An old French coin, equal to the two hundred and

      fortieth part of a pound.

      “Aut unum bombum.”

      “Would you like to have her pay you in the face?”

      “Comrades! Master Simon Sanguin, the Elector of Picardy, with his wife on the crupper!”

      “Post equitem seclet atra eura—behind the horseman sits black care.”

      “Courage, Master Simon!”

      “Good day, Mister Elector!”

      “Good night, Madame Electress!”

      “How happy they are to see all that!” sighed Joannes de Molendino, still perched in the foliage of his capital.

      Meanwhile, the sworn bookseller of the university, Master Andry Musnier, was inclining his ear to the furrier of the king’s robes, Master Gilles Lecornu.

      “I tell you, sir, that the end of the world has come. No one has ever beheld such outbreaks among the students! It is the accursed inventions of this century that are ruining everything,—artilleries, bombards, and, above all, printing, that other German pest. No more manuscripts, no more books! printing will kill bookselling. It is the end of the world that is drawing nigh.”

      “I see that plainly, from the progress of velvet stuffs,” said the fur-merchant.

      At this moment, midday sounded.

      “Ha!” exclaimed the entire crowd, in one voice.

      The scholars held their peace. Then a great hurly-burly ensued; a vast movement of feet, hands, and heads; a general outbreak of coughs and handkerchiefs; each one arranged himself, assumed his post, raised himself up, and grouped himself. Then came a great silence; all necks remained outstretched, all mouths remained open, all glances were directed towards the marble table. Nothing made its appearance there. The bailiff’s four sergeants were still there, stiff, motionless, as painted statues. All eyes turned to the estrade reserved for the Flemish envoys. The door remained closed, the platform empty. This crowd had been waiting since daybreak for three things: noonday, the embassy from Flanders, the mystery play. Noonday alone had arrived on time.

      On this occasion, it was too much.

      They waited one, two, three, five minutes, a quarter of an hour; nothing came. The dais remained empty, the theatre dumb. In the meantime, wrath had succeeded to impatience. Irritated words circulated in a low tone, still, it is true. “The mystery! the mystery!” they murmured, in hollow voices. Heads began to ferment. A tempest, which was only rumbling in the distance as yet, was floating on the surface of this crowd. It was Jehan du Moulin who struck the first spark from it.

      “The mystery, and to the devil with the Flemings!” he exclaimed at the full force of his lungs, twining like a serpent around his pillar.

      The crowd clapped their hands.

      “The mystery!” it repeated, “and may all the devils take Flanders!”

      “We must have the mystery instantly,” resumed the student; “or else, my advice is that we should hang the bailiff of the courts, by way of a morality and a comedy.”

      “Well said,” cried the people, “and let us begin the hanging with his sergeants.”

      A grand acclamation followed. The four poor fellows began to turn pale, and to exchange glances. The crowd hurled itself towards them, and they already beheld the frail wooden railing, which separated them from it, giving way and bending before the pressure of the throng.

      It was a critical moment.

      “To the sack, to the sack!” rose the cry on all sides.

      At that moment, the tapestry of the dressing-room, which we have described above, was raised, and afforded passage to a personage, the mere sight of whom suddenly stopped the crowd, and changed its wrath into curiosity as by enchantment.

      “Silence! silence!”

      The personage, but little reassured, and trembling in every limb, advanced to the edge of the marble table with a vast amount of bows, which, in proportion as he drew nearer, more and more resembled genuflections.

      In the meanwhile, tranquillity had gradually been restored. All that remained was that slight murmur which always rises above the silence of a crowd.

      “Messieurs the bourgeois,” said he, “and mesdemoiselles the bourgeoises, we shall have the honor of declaiming and representing, before his eminence, monsieur the cardinal, a very beautiful morality which has for its title, ‘The Good Judgment of Madame the Virgin Mary.’ I am to play Jupiter. His eminence is, at this moment, escorting the very honorable embassy of the Duke of Austria; which is detained, at present, listening to the harangue of monsieur the rector of the university, at the gate Baudets. As soon as his illustrious eminence, the cardinal, arrives, we will begin.”

      It is certain, that nothing less than the intervention of Jupiter was required to save the four unfortunate sergeants of the bailiff of the courts. If we had the happiness of having invented this very veracious tale, and of being, in consequence, responsible for it before our Lady Criticism, it is not against us that the classic precept, Nec deus intersit, could be invoked. Moreover, the costume of Seigneur Jupiter, was very handsome, and contributed not a little towards calming the crowd, by attracting all its attention. Jupiter was clad in a coat of mail, covered with black velvet, with gilt nails; and had it not been for the rouge, and the huge red beard, each of which covered one-half of his face,—had it not been for the roll of gilded cardboard, spangled, and all bristling with strips of tinsel, which he held in his hand, and in which the eyes of the initiated easily recognized thunderbolts,—had not his feet been flesh-colored, and banded with ribbons in Greek fashion, he might have borne comparison, so far as the severity of his mien was concerned, with a Breton archer from the guard of Monsieur de Berry.

      CHAPTER II. PIERRE GRINGOIRE.

      ––––––––

      NEVERTHELESS, AS BE harangued them, the satisfaction and admiration unanimously excited by his costume were dissipated by his words; and when he reached that untoward conclusion: “As soon as his illustrious eminence, the cardinal, arrives, we will begin,” his voice was drowned in a thunder of hooting.

      “Begin instantly! The mystery! the mystery immediately!” shrieked the people. And above all the voices, that of Johannes de Molendino was audible, piercing the uproar like the fife’s derisive serenade: “Commence instantly!” yelped the scholar.

      “Down with Jupiter and the Cardinal de Bourbon!” vociferated Robin Poussepain and the other clerks perched in the window.

      “The morality this very instant!” repeated the crowd; “this very instant! the sack and the rope for the comedians, and the cardinal!”

      Poor Jupiter, haggard, frightened, pale beneath his rouge, dropped his thunderbolt, took his cap in his hand; then he bowed and trembled and stammered: “His eminence—the ambassadors—Madame Marguerite of Flanders—.” He did not know what to say. In truth, he was afraid of being hung.

      Hung by the populace for waiting, hung by the cardinal for not having waited, he saw between the two dilemmas only an abyss; that is to say, a gallows.

      Luckily, some one came to rescue him from his embarrassment, and assume the responsibility.

      An individual who was standing beyond the

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