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. lé 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 lé 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 lé 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 lé 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 he
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 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. A1l
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.