Chapter IV: 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_[5] 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 Sainte-Geneviève,
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 _cortège_, 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.