Chapter I: The Grand Hall

Three hundred and forty-eight years, six months, and nineteen
days ago to-day, the Parisians awoke to the sound of all the
bells in the triple circuit of the city, the university, and the
town ringing a full peal.

The sixth of January, 1482, is not, however, a day of which
history has preserved the memory. There was nothing notable in
the event which thus set the bells and the _bourgeois_ of Paris
in a ferment from early morning. It was neither an assault by the
Picards nor the Burgundians, nor a hunt led along in procession,
nor a revolt of scholars in the town of Laas, nor an entry of
“our much dread lord, monsieur the king,” nor even a pretty
hanging of male and female thieves by the courts of Paris.
Neither was it the arrival, so frequent in the fifteenth century,
of some plumed and bedizened embassy. It was barely two days
since the last cavalcade of that nature, that of the Flemish
ambassadors charged with concluding the marriage between the
dauphin and Marguerite of Flanders, had made its entry into
Paris, to the great annoyance of M. le Cardinal de Bourbon, who,
for the sake of pleasing the king, had been obliged to assume an
amiable mien towards this whole rustic rabble of Flemish
burgomasters, and to regale them at his Hôtel de Bourbon, with a
very “pretty morality, allegorical satire, and farce,” while a
driving rain drenched the magnificent tapestries at his door.

What put the “whole population of Paris in commotion,” as Jehan
de Troyes expresses it, on the sixth of January, was the double
solemnity, united from time immemorial, of the Epiphany and the
Feast of Fools.

On that day, there was to be a bonfire on the Place de Grève, a
maypole at the Chapelle de Braque, and a mystery at the Palais de
Justice. It had been cried, to the sound of the trumpet, the
preceding evening at all the cross roads, by the provost’s men,
clad in handsome, short, sleeveless coats of violet camelot, with
large white crosses upon their breasts.

So the crowd of citizens, male and female, having closed their
houses and shops, thronged from every direction, at early morn,
towards some one of the three spots designated.

Each had made his choice; one, the bonfire; another, the maypole;
another, the mystery play. It must be stated, in honor of the
good sense of the loungers of Paris, that the greater part of
this crowd directed their steps towards the bonfire, which was
quite in season, or towards the mystery play, which was to be
presented in the grand hall of the Palais de Justice (the courts
of law), which was well roofed and walled; and that the curious
left the poor, scantily flowered maypole to shiver all alone
beneath the sky of January, in the cemetery of the Chapel of
Braque.

The populace thronged the avenues of the law courts in
particular, because they knew that the Flemish ambassadors, who
had arrived two days previously, intended to be present at the
representation of the mystery, and at the election of the Pope of
the Fools, which was also to take place in the grand hall.

It was no easy matter on that day, to force one’s way into that
grand hall, although it was then reputed to be the largest
covered enclosure in the world (it is true that Sauval had not
yet measured the grand hall of the Château of Montargis). The
palace place, encumbered with people, offered to the curious
gazers at the windows the aspect of a sea; into which five or six
streets, like so many mouths of rivers, discharged every moment
fresh floods of heads. The waves of this crowd, augmented
incessantly, dashed against the angles of the houses which
projected here and there, like so many promontories, into the
irregular basin of the place. In the centre of the lofty
Gothic[1] façade of the palace, the grand staircase, incessantly
ascended and descended by a double current, which, after parting
on the intermediate landing-place, flowed in broad waves along
its lateral slopes,—the grand staircase, I say, trickled
incessantly into the place, like a cascade into a lake. The
cries, the laughter, the trampling of those thousands of feet,
produced a great noise and a great clamor. From time to time,
this noise and clamor redoubled; the current which drove the
crowd towards the grand staircase flowed backwards, became
troubled, formed whirlpools. This was produced by the buffet of
an archer, or the horse of one of the provost’s sergeants, which
kicked to restore order; an admirable tradition which the
provostship has bequeathed to the constablery, the constablery to
the _maréchaussée_, the _maréchaussée_ to our _gendarmeri_ of
Paris.

Thousands of good, calm, _bourgeois_ faces thronged the windows,
the doors, the dormer windows, the roofs, gazing at the palace,
gazing at the populace, and asking nothing more; for many
Parisians content themselves with the spectacle of the
spectators, and a wall behind which something is going on becomes
at once, for us, a very curious thing indeed.

If it could be granted to us, the men of 1830, to mingle in
thought with those Parisians of the fifteenth century, and to
enter with them, jostled, elbowed, pulled about, into that
immense hall of the palace, which was so cramped on that sixth of
January, 1482, the spectacle would not be devoid of either
interest or charm, and we should have about us only things that
were so old that they would seem new.

With the reader’s consent, we will endeavor to retrace in
thought, the impression which he would have experienced in
company with us on crossing the threshold of that grand hall, in
the midst of that tumultuous crowd in surcoats, short, sleeveless
jackets, and doublets.

And, first of all, there is a buzzing in the ears, a dazzlement
in the eyes. Above our heads is a double ogive vault, panelled
with wood carving, painted azure, and sown with golden
fleurs-de-lis; beneath our feet a pavement of black and white
marble, alternating. A few paces distant, an enormous pillar,
then another, then another; seven pillars in all, down the length
of the hall, sustaining the spring of the arches of the double
vault, in the centre of its width. Around four of the pillars,
stalls of merchants, all sparkling with glass and tinsel; around
the last three, benches of oak, worn and polished by the trunk
hose of the litigants, and the robes of the attorneys. Around the
hall, along the lofty wall, between the doors, between the
windows, between the pillars, the interminable row of all the
kings of France, from Pharamond down: the lazy kings, with
pendent arms and downcast eyes; the valiant and combative kings,
with heads and arms raised boldly heavenward. Then in the long,
pointed windows, glass of a thousand hues; at the wide entrances
to the hall, rich doors, finely sculptured; and all, the vaults,
pillars, walls, jambs, panelling, doors, statues, covered from
top to bottom with a splendid blue and gold illumination, which,
a trifle tarnished at the epoch when we behold it, had almost
entirely disappeared beneath dust and spiders in the year of
grace, 1549, when du Breul still admired it from tradition.

Let the reader picture to himself now, this immense, oblong hall,
illuminated by the pallid light of a January day, invaded by a
motley and noisy throng which drifts along the walls, and eddies
round the seven pillars, and he will have a confused idea of the
whole effect of the picture, whose curious details we shall make
an effort to indicate with more precision.

It is certain, that if Ravaillac had not assassinated Henri IV.,
there would have been no documents in the trial of Ravaillac
deposited in the clerk’s office of the Palais de Justice, no
accomplices interested in causing the said documents to
disappear; hence, no incendiaries obliged, for lack of better
means, to burn the clerk’s office in order to burn the documents,
and to burn the Palais de Justice in order to burn the clerk’s
office; consequently, in short, no conflagration in 1618. The old
Palais would be standing still, with its ancient grand hall; I
should be able to say to the reader, “Go and look at it,” and we
should thus both escape the necessity,—I of making, and he of
reading, a description of it, such as it is. Which demonstrates a
new truth: that great events have incalculable results.

It is true that it may be quite possible, in the first place,
that Ravaillac had no accomplices; and in the second, that if he
had any, they were in no way connected with the fire of 1618. Two
other very plausible explanations exist: First, the great flaming
star, a foot broad, and a cubit high, which fell from heaven, as
every one knows, upon the law courts, after midnight on the
seventh of March; second, Théophile’s quatrain,—

“Sure, ’twas but a sorry game
When at Paris, Dame Justice,
Through having eaten too much spice,
Set the palace all aflame.”

Whatever may be thought of this triple explanation, political,
physical, and poetical, of the burning of the law courts in 1618,
the unfortunate fact of the fire is certain. Very little to-day
remains, thanks to this catastrophe,—thanks, above all, to the
successive restorations which have completed what it spared,—very
little remains of that first dwelling of the kings of France,—of
that elder palace of the Louvre, already so old in the time of
Philip the Handsome, that they sought there for the traces of the
magnificent buildings erected by King Robert and described by
Helgaldus. Nearly everything has disappeared. What has become of
the chamber of the chancellery, where Saint Louis consummated his
marriage? the garden where he administered justice, “clad in a
coat of camelot, a surcoat of linsey-woolsey, without sleeves,
and a sur-mantle of black sandal, as he lay upon the carpet with
Joinville?” Where is the chamber of the Emperor Sigismond? and
that of Charles IV.? that of Jean the Landless? Where is the
staircase, from which Charles VI. promulgated his edict of
pardon? the slab where Marcel cut the throats of Robert de
Clermont and the Marshal of Champagne, in the presence of the
dauphin? the wicket where the bulls of Pope Benedict were torn,
and whence those who had brought them departed decked out, in
derision, in copes and mitres, and making an apology through all
Paris? and the grand hall, with its gilding, its azure, its
statues, its pointed arches, its pillars, its immense vault, all
fretted with carvings? and the gilded chamber? and the stone
lion, which stood at the door, with lowered head and tail between
his legs, like the lions on the throne of Solomon, in the
humiliated attitude which befits force in the presence of
justice? and the beautiful doors? and the stained glass? and the
chased ironwork, which drove Biscornette to despair? and the
delicate woodwork of Hancy? What has time, what have men done
with these marvels? What have they given us in return for all
this Gallic history, for all this Gothic art? The heavy flattened
arches of M. de Brosse, that awkward architect of the
Saint-Gervais portal. So much for art; and, as for history, we
have the gossiping reminiscences of the great pillar, still
ringing with the tattle of the Patru.

It is not much. Let us return to the veritable grand hall of the
veritable old palace. The two extremities of this gigantic
parallelogram were occupied, the one by the famous marble table,
so long, so broad, and so thick that, as the ancient land
rolls—in a style that would have given Gargantua an appetite—say,
“such a slice of marble as was never beheld in the world”; the
other by the chapel where Louis XI. had himself sculptured on his
knees before the Virgin, and whither he caused to be brought,
without heeding the two gaps thus made in the row of royal
statues, the statues of Charlemagne and of Saint Louis, two
saints whom he supposed to be great in favor in heaven, as kings
of France. This chapel, quite new, having been built only six
years, was entirely in that charming taste of delicate
architecture, of marvellous sculpture, of fine and deep chasing,
which marks with us the end of the Gothic era, and which is
perpetuated to about the middle of the sixteenth century in the
fairylike fancies of the Renaissance. The little open-work rose
window, pierced above the portal, was, in particular, a
masterpiece of lightness and grace; one would have pronounced it
a star of lace.

In the middle of the hall, opposite the great door, a platform of
gold brocade, placed against the wall, a special entrance to
which had been effected through a window in the corridor of the
gold chamber, had been erected for the Flemish emissaries and the
other great personages invited to the presentation of the mystery
play.

It was upon the marble table that the mystery was to be enacted,
as usual. It had been arranged for the purpose, early in the
morning; its rich slabs of marble, all scratched by the heels of
law clerks, supported a cage of carpenter’s work of considerable
height, the upper surface of which, within view of the whole
hall, was to serve as the theatre, and whose interior, masked by
tapestries, was to take the place of dressing-rooms for the
personages of the piece. A ladder, naively placed on the outside,
was to serve as means of communication between the dressing-room
and the stage, and lend its rude rungs to entrances as well as to
exits. There was no personage, however unexpected, no sudden
change, no theatrical effect, which was not obliged to mount that
ladder. Innocent and venerable infancy of art and contrivances!

Four of the bailiff of the palace’s sergeants, perfunctory
guardians of all the pleasures of the people, on days of festival
as well as on days of execution, stood at the four corners of the
marble table.

The piece was only to begin with the twelfth stroke of the great
palace clock sounding midday. It was very late, no doubt, for a
theatrical representation, but they had been obliged to fix the
hour to suit the convenience of the ambassadors.

Now, this whole multitude had been waiting since morning. A
goodly number of curious, good people had been shivering since
daybreak before the grand staircase of the palace; some even
affirmed that they had passed the night across the threshold of
the great door, in order to make sure that they should be the
first to pass in. The crowd grew more dense every moment, and,
like water, which rises above its normal level, began to mount
along the walls, to swell around the pillars, to spread out on
the entablatures, on the cornices, on the window-sills, on all
the salient points of the architecture, on all the reliefs of the
sculpture. Hence, discomfort, impatience, weariness, the liberty
of a day of cynicism and folly, the quarrels which break forth
for all sorts of causes—a pointed elbow, an iron-shod shoe, the
fatigue of long waiting—had already, long before the hour
appointed for the arrival of the ambassadors, imparted a harsh
and bitter accent to the clamor of these people who were shut in,
fitted into each other, pressed, trampled upon, stifled. Nothing
was to be heard but imprecations on the Flemish, the provost of
the merchants, the Cardinal de Bourbon, the bailiff of the
courts, Madame Marguerite of Austria, the sergeants with their
rods, the cold, the heat, the bad weather, the Bishop of Paris,
the Pope of the Fools, the pillars, the statues, that closed
door, that open window; all to the vast amusement of a band of
scholars and lackeys scattered through the mass, who mingled with
all this discontent their teasing remarks, and their malicious
suggestions, and pricked the general bad temper with a pin, so to
speak.

Among the rest there was a group of those merry imps, who, after
smashing the glass in a window, had seated themselves hardily on
the entablature, and from that point despatched their gaze and
their railleries both within and without, upon the throng in the
hall, and the throng upon the Place. It was easy to see, from
their parodied gestures, their ringing laughter, the bantering
appeals which they exchanged with their comrades, from one end of
the hall to the other, that these young clerks did not share the
weariness and fatigue of the rest of the spectators, and that
they understood very well the art of extracting, for their own
private diversion from that which they had under their eyes, a
spectacle which made them await the other with patience.

“Upon my soul, so it’s you, ‘Joannes Frollo de Molendino!’” cried
one of them, to a sort of little, light-haired imp, with a
well-favored and malign countenance, clinging to the acanthus
leaves of a capital; “you are well named John of the Mill, for
your two arms and your two legs have the air of four wings
fluttering on the breeze. How long have you been here?”

“By the mercy of the devil,” retorted Joannes Frollo, “these four
hours and more; and I hope that they will be reckoned to my
credit in purgatory. I heard the eight singers of the King of
Sicily intone the first verse of seven o’clock mass in the
Sainte-Chapelle.”

“Fine singers!” replied the other, “with voices even more pointed
than their caps! Before founding a mass for Monsieur Saint John,
the king should have inquired whether Monsieur Saint John likes
Latin droned out in a Provençal accent.”

“He did it for the sake of employing those accursed singers of
the King of Sicily!” cried an old woman sharply from among the
crowd beneath the window. “I just put it to you! A thousand
_livres parisi_ for a mass! and out of the tax on sea fish in the
markets of Paris, to boot!”

“Peace, old crone,” said a tall, grave person, stopping up his
nose on the side towards the fishwife; “a mass had to be founded.
Would you wish the king to fall ill again?”

“Bravely spoken, Sire Gilles Lecornu, master furrier of king’s
robes!” cried the little student, clinging to the capital.

A shout of laughter from all the students greeted the unlucky
name of the poor furrier of the king’s robes.

“Lecornu! Gilles Lecornu!” said some.

“_Cornutus et hirsutus_, horned and hairy,” another went on.

“He! of course,” continued the small imp on the capital, “What
are they laughing at? An honorable man is Gilles Lecornu, brother
of Master Jehan Lecornu, provost of the king’s house, son of
Master Mahiet Lecornu, first porter of the Bois de Vincennes,—all
_bourgeois_ of Paris, all married, from father to son.”

The gayety redoubled. The big furrier, without uttering a word in
reply, tried to escape all the eyes riveted upon him from all
sides; but he perspired and panted in vain; like a wedge entering
the wood, his efforts served only to bury still more deeply in
the shoulders of his neighbors, his large, apoplectic face,
purple with spite and rage.

At length one of these, as fat, short, and venerable as himself,
came to his rescue.

“Abomination! scholars addressing a _bourgeois_ in that fashion
in my day would have been flogged with a fagot, which would have
afterwards been used to burn them.”

The whole band burst into laughter.

“Holà hé! who is scolding so? Who is that screech owl of evil
fortune?”

“Hold, I know him” said one of them; “’tis Master Andry Musnier.”

“Because he is one of the four sworn booksellers of the
university!” said the other.

“Everything goes by fours in that shop,” cried a third; “the four
nations, the four faculties, the four feasts, the four
procurators, the four electors, the four booksellers.”

“Well,” began Jean Frollo once more, “we must play the devil with
them.”[2]

“Musnier, we’ll burn your books.”

“Musnier, we’ll beat your lackeys.”

“Musnier, we’ll kiss your wife.”

“That fine, big Mademoiselle Oudarde.”

“Who is as fresh and as gay as though she were a widow.”

“Devil take you!” growled Master Andry Musnier.

“Master Andry,” pursued Jean Jehan, still clinging to his
capital, “hold your tongue, or I’ll drop on your head!”

Master Andry raised his eyes, seemed to measure in an instant the
height of the pillar, the weight of the scamp, mentally
multiplied that weight by the square of the velocity and remained
silent.

Jehan, master of the field of battle, pursued triumphantly:

“That’s what I’ll do, even if I am the brother of an archdeacon!”

“Fine gentry are our people of the university, not to have caused
our privileges to be respected on such a day as this! However,
there is a maypole and a bonfire in the town; a mystery, Pope of
the Fools, and Flemish ambassadors in the city; and, at the
university, nothing!”

“Nevertheless, the Place Maubert is sufficiently large!”
interposed one of the clerks established on the window-sill.

“Down with the rector, the electors, and the procurators!” cried
Joannes.

“We must have a bonfire this evening in the Champ-Gaillard,” went
on the other, “made of Master Andry’s books.”

“And the desks of the scribes!” added his neighbor.

“And the beadles’ wands!”

“And the spittoons of the deans!”

“And the cupboards of the procurators!”

“And the hutches of the electors!”

“And the stools of the rector!”

“Down with them!” put in little Jehan, as counterpoint; “down
with Master Andry, the beadles and the scribes; the theologians,
the doctors and the decretists; the procurators, the electors and
the rector!”

“The end of the world has come!” muttered Master Andry, stopping
up his ears.

“By the way, there’s the rector! see, he is passing through the
Place,” cried one of those in the window.

Each rivalled his neighbor in his haste to turn towards the
Place.

“Is it really our venerable rector, Master Thibaut?” demanded
Jehan Frollo du Moulin, who, as he was clinging to one of the
inner pillars, could not see what was going on outside.

“Yes, yes,” replied all the others, “it is really he, Master
Thibaut, the rector.”

It was, in fact, the rector and all the dignitaries of the
university, who were marching in procession in front of the
embassy, and at that moment traversing the Place. The students
crowded into the window, saluted them as they passed with
sarcasms and ironical applause. The rector, who was walking at
the head of his company, had to support the first broadside; it
was severe.

“Good day, monsieur le recteur! Holà hé! good day there!”

“How does he manage to be here, the old gambler? Has he abandoned
his dice?”

“How he trots along on his mule! her ears are not so long as
his!”

“Holà hé! good day, monsieur le recteur Thibaut! _Tybalde
aleator_! Old fool! old gambler!”

“God preserve you! Did you throw double six often last night?”

“Oh! what a decrepit face, livid and haggard and drawn with the
love of gambling and of dice!”

“Where are you bound for in that fashion, Thibaut, _Tybalde ad
dados_, with your back turned to the university, and trotting
towards the town?”

“He is on his way, no doubt, to seek a lodging in the Rue
Thibautodé?”[3] cried Jehan du M. Moulin.

The entire band repeated this quip in a voice of thunder,
clapping their hands furiously.

“You are going to seek a lodging in the Rue Thibautodé, are you
not, monsieur le recteur, gamester on the side of the devil?”

Then came the turns of the other dignitaries.

“Down with the beadles! down with the mace-bearers!”

“Tell me, Robin Pouissepain, who is that yonder?”

“He is Gilbert de Suilly, _Gilbertus de Soliaco_, the chancellor
of the College of Autun.”

“Hold on, here’s my shoe; you are better placed than I, fling it
in his face.”

“_Saturnalitias mittimus ecce nuces_.”

“Down with the six theologians, with their white surplices!”

“Are those the theologians? I thought they were the white geese
given by Sainte-Geneviève to the city, for the fief of Roogny.”

“Down with the doctors!”

“Down with the cardinal disputations, and quibblers!”

“My cap to you, Chancellor of Sainte-Geneviève! You have done me
a wrong. ’Tis true; he gave my place in the nation of Normandy to
little Ascanio Falzapada, who comes from the province of Bourges,
since he is an Italian.”

“That is an injustice,” said all the scholars. “Down with the
Chancellor of Sainte-Geneviève!”

“Ho hé! Master Joachim de Ladehors! Ho hé! Louis Dahuille! Ho hé
Lambert Hoctement!”

“May the devil stifle the procurator of the German nation!”

“And the chaplains of the Sainte-Chapelle, with their gray
_amices; cum tunices grisis_!”

“_Seu de pellibus grisis fourratis_!”

“Holà hé! Masters of Arts! All the beautiful black copes! all the
fine red copes!”

“They make a fine tail for the rector.”

“One would say that he was a Doge of Venice on his way to his
bridal with the sea.”

“Say, Jehan! here are the canons of Sainte-Geneviève!”

“To the deuce with the whole 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[4] _quatuor denarios_.”

“_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 sedet atra cura_—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.