The Hunchback of Notre Dame (7 page)

CHAPTER II

Pierre Gringoire

B
ut as he spoke, the satisfaction, the admiration excited by his dress, were destroyed by his words; and when he reached the fatal conclusion, “as soon as the most eminent Cardinal arrives, we will begin,” his voice was drowned in a storm of hoots.

“Begin at once! The mystery! the mystery at once!” screamed the people. And over all the other voices was heard that of Joannes de Molendino piercing the uproar, like the fife in a
charivari
at Nimes. “Begin at once!” shrieked the student.

“Down with Jupiter and Cardinal Bourbon!” shouted Robin Poussepain and the other learned youths perched in the window.

“The morality this instant!” repeated the mob; “instantly! immediately! The sack and the rope for the actors and the Cardinal!”

Poor Jupiter, haggard, terrified, pale beneath his paint, let his thunderbolt fall, and seized his cap in his hand. Then he bowed, trembled, and stammered out: “His Eminence—the ambassadors—Madame Margaret of Flanders—” He knew not what to say. In his secret heart he was mightily afraid of being hanged.

Hanged by the populace for waiting, hanged by the Cardinal for not waiting,—on either hand he saw a gulf; that is to say, the gallows.

Luckily, some one appeared to extricate him from his embarrassing position and assume the responsibility.

An individual, standing just within the railing, in the vacant space about the marble table, and whom nobody had as yet observed,—so completely was his long slim person hidden from sight by the thickness of the pillar against which he leaned,—this individual, we say, tall, thin, pale, fair-haired, still young, although already wrinkled in brow and cheeks, with bright eyes and a smiling mouth, clad in black serge, worn and shining with age, approached the table and made a sign to the poor victim. But the latter, in his terror and confusion, failed to see him.

The newcomer took another step forward.

“Jupiter!” said he, “my dear Jupiter!”

The other did not hear him.

At last the tall fair-haired fellow, growing impatient, shouted almost in his ear,—

“Michel Giborne!”

“Who calls me?” said Jupiter, as if suddenly wakened.

“I,” replied the person dressed in black.

“Ah!” said Jupiter.

“Begin directly,” continued the other. “Satisfy the public; I take it upon myself to pacify the Provost, who will pacify the Cardinal.”

Jupiter breathed again.

“Gentlemen and citizens,” he shouted at the top of his lungs to the crowd who continued to hoot him, “we will begin at once.”

“Evoe, Jupiter! Plaudite, cives!”
^m
cried the students.

“Noël! Noël!”
ⁿ
cried the people.

Deafening applause followed, and the hall still trembled with acclamations when Jupiter had retired behind the hangings.

But the unknown person who had so miraculously changed “the tempest to a calm,” as our dear old Corneille says, had modestly withdrawn into the shadow of his pillar, and would doubtless have remained there invisible, motionless, and mute as before, had he not been drawn forward by two young women, who, placed in the foremost rank of the spectators, had observed his colloquy with Michel Giborne-Jupiter.

“Master,” said one of them, beckoning him to come nearer.

“Be quiet, my dear Liénarde,” said her neighbor, pretty, fresh, and emboldened by all her Sunday finery. “That is no scholar, he is a layman; you must not call him
Master,
but
Sir.”

“Sir,” said Liénarde.

The stranger approached the railing.

“What do you wish of me, young ladies?” he asked eagerly.

“Oh, nothing!” said Liénarde, much confused; “it is my neighbor Gisquette la Gencienne who wants to speak to you.”

“Not at all,” replied Gisquette, blushing; “it was Liénarde who called you Master; I told her that she should say Sir.”

The two young girls cast down their eyes. The stranger, who desired nothing better than to enter into conversation with them, looked at them with a smile.

“Then you have nothing to say to me, young ladies?”

“Oh, nothing at all!” answered Gisquette.

The tall fair-haired youth drew back a pace; but the two curious creatures did not want to lose their prize.

“Sir,” said Gisquette hastily, and with the impetuosity of water rushing through a floodgate or a woman coming to a sudden resolve, “so you know that soldier who is to play the part of Madame Virgin in the mystery?”

“You mean the part of Jupiter?” replied the unknown.

“Oh, yes,” said Liénarde, “isn’t she silly? So you know Jupiter?”

“Michel Giborne?” replied the unknown. “Yes, madame.”

“He has a fine beard!” said Liénarde.

“Will it be very interesting—what they are going to recite up there?” asked Gisquette, shyly.

“Very interesting indeed,” replied the stranger, without the least hesitation.

“What is it to be?” said Liénarde.

“‘The Wise Decision of Madame Virgin Mary,’ a morality, if you please, madame.”

“Ah, that’s another thing,” replied Liénarde.

A short pause followed. The stranger first broke the silence:—

“It is quite a new morality, which has never yet been played.”

“Then it is not the same,” said Gisquette, “that was given two years ago, on the day of the legate’s arrival, and in which three beautiful girls took the part of—”

“Sirens,” said Liénarde.

“And all naked,” added the young man. Liénarde modestly cast down her eyes; Gisquette looked at her, and did the same. He continued with a smile,—

“That was a very pretty sight. This, now, is a morality, written expressly for the young Flemish madame.”

“Will they sing pastorals?” asked Gisquette.

“Fie!” said the stranger, “in a morality! You must not mix up different styles. If it were a farce, that would be another thing.”

“What a pity!” replied Gisquette. “That day there were wild men and women at the Ponceau Fountain, who fought together and made all sorts of faces, singing little songs all the while.”

“What suits a legate,” said the stranger, somewhat drily, “will hardly suit a princess.”

“And close by them,” added Liénarde, “were several bass instruments which played grand melodies.”

“And to refresh the passers-by,” continued Gisquette, “the fountain streamed wine, milk, and hippocras,
^o
from three mouths, for all to drink who would.”

“And a little way beyond that fountain,” went on Liénarde, “at the Trinity, there was a passion-play, performed by mute characters.”

“How well I remember it!” exclaimed Gisquette,—“God on the cross, and the two thieves to right and left.”

Here the young gossips, growing excited at the recollection of the arrival of the legate, both began to talk at once.

“And farther on, at the Painters’ Gate, there were other persons richly dressed.”

“And at the Fountain of the Holy Innocents, that hunter chasing a doe, with a great noise of dogs and hunting-horns!”

“And at the Paris slaughter-house, those scaffolds representing the fortress at Dieppe!”

“And when the legate passed by, you know, Gisquette, there was an attack, and all the English had their throats cut.”

“And over against the Châtelet Gate there were very fine persons!”

“And on the Money-brokers’ Bridge, which was hung all over with tapestries!”

“And when the legate passed by, they let loose more than two hundred dozen birds of all sorts; it was very fine, Liénarde.”

“It will be finer today,” replied their listener at last, seeming to hear them with some impatience.

“Then you promise us that this play will be a fine one?” said Gisquette.

“To be sure,” he answered. Then he added with a certain emphasis: “Young ladies, I am the author of it!”

“Really?” said the young girls, much amazed.

“Really!” replied the poet, drawing himself up; “that is, there are two of us: Jehan Marchand, who sawed the planks and built the frame and did all the carpenter’s work, and I, who wrote the piece. My name is Pierre Gringoire.”
³

The author of the Cid could not have said “Pierre Corneille” with any greater degree of pride.

Our readers may have noticed that some time had already passed since Jupiter had gone behind the hangings, and before the author of the new morality revealed himself so abruptly to the simple admiration of Gisquette and Liénarde. Strange to say, all that multitude, which a few instants previous was so furiously uproarious, now waited calmly for the fulfillment of the actor’s promise, which proves that enduring truth, still verified in our own theatres, that the best way to make your audience wait patiently is to assure them that you will begin right away.

However, the young scholar Joannes was not asleep.

“Hello, ho!” he cried out suddenly, in the midst of the calm expectation which followed confusion. “Jupiter, Madame Virgin, devilish mountebanks! are you mocking us? The play! the play! Begin, or we will stir you up again!”

This was quite enough.

The sound of musical instruments pitched in various keys was heard from the interior of the scaffolding. The tapestry was raised; four characters painted and clad in motley garb came out, climbed the rude stage ladder, and, gaining the upper platform, ranged themselves in line before the public, bowing low; then the symphony ceased. The mystery was about to begin.

These four personages, having been abundantly repaid for their bows by applause, began, amid devout silence, a prologue which we gladly spare the reader. Moreover, as happens even nowadays, the audience was far more interested in the costumes of the actors than in the speeches which they recited; and, to tell the truth, they were quite right. They were all four dressed in gowns partly yellow and partly white, which only differed from each other in material; the first was of gold and silver brocade, the second of silk, the third of wool, the fourth of linen. The first of these characters had a sword in his right hand, the second two golden keys, the third a pair of scales, the fourth a spade; and to aid those indolent understandings which might not have penetrated the evident meaning of these attributes, might be read embroidered in big black letters—on the hem of the brocade gown, “I AM NOBILITY,” on the hem of the silk gown, “I AM RELIGION,” on the hem of the woollen gown, “I AM COMMERCE,” and on the hem of the linen gown, “I AM LABOR.” The sex of the two male allegories was clearly shown to every sensible beholder by their shorter gowns and by their peculiar headdress, —a flat cap called a
cramignole;
while the two feminine allegories, clad in longer garments, wore hoods.

One must also have been wilfully dull not to gather from the poetical prologue that Labor was wedded to Commerce, and Religion to Nobility, and that the two happy pairs owned in common a superb golden dolphin,
^p
which they desired to bestow only on the fairest of the fair: They were therefore journeying through the world in search of this beauty; and having in turn rejected the Queen of Golconda, the Princess of Trebizond, the daughter of the Chain of Tartary, etc., Labor and Religion, Nobility and Trade, were now resting on the marble table in the Palace of Justice, spouting to their simple audience as many long sentences and maxims as would suffice the Faculty of Arts for all the examinations, sophisms, determi nances, figures, and acts required at the examinations at which the masters took their degrees.

All this was indeed very fine.

But in the crowd upon whom the four allegorical personages poured such floods of metaphor, each trying to outdo the other, there was no more attentive ear, no more anxious heart, no more eager eye, no neck more outstretched, than the eye, the ear, the neck, and the heart of the author, the poet, the worthy Pierre Gringoire, who could not resist, a moment previous, the delight of telling his name to two pretty girls. He had withdrawn a few paces from them, behind his pillar; and there he listened, looked, and enjoyed. The kindly plaudits which greeted the opening lines of his prologue still rang in his innermost soul, and he was completely absorbed in that kind of ecstatic contemplation with which an author watches his ideas falling one by one from the actor’s lips amid the silence of a vast assembly. Happy Pierre Gringoire!

We regret to say that this first ecstasy was very soon disturbed. Gringoire had scarcely placed his lips to this intoxicating draught of joy and triumph, when a drop of bitterness was blended with it.

A ragged beggar, who could reap no harvest, lost as he was in the midst of the crowd, and who doubtless failed to find sufficient to atone for his loss in the pockets of his neighbors, hit upon the plan of perching himself upon some conspicuous point, in order to attract eyes and alms. He therefore hoisted himself, during the first lines of the prologue, by the aid of the columns of the dais, up to the top of the high railing running around it; and there he sat, soliciting the attention and the pity of the multitude, by the sight of his rags, and a hideous sore which covered his right arm. Moreover, he uttered not a word.

His silence permitted the prologue to go on without interruption, and no apparent disorder would have occurred if ill luck had not led the student Joannes to note the beggar and his grimaces, from his own lofty post. A fit of mad laughter seized upon the young rogue, who, regardless of the fact that he was interrupting the performance and disturbing the general concentration of thought, cried merrily,—

“Just look at that impostor asking alms!”

Any one who has thrown a stone into a frog-pond or fired a gun into a flock of birds, can form some idea of the effect which these incongruous words produced in the midst of the universal attention. Gringoire shuddered as at an electric shock. The prologue was cut short, and every head was turned, in confusion, towards the beggar, who, far from being put out of countenance, regarded this incident as a good occasion for a harvest, and began to whine, with an air of great distress, his eyes half closed, “Charity, kind people!”