by Hugo, Victor
II
PIERRE GRINGOIRE
IN the course of his oration, however, the satisfaction and admiration unanimously aroused by his costume diminished as he spoke, and when he reached the unfortunate conclusion: ‘As soon as the most eminent cardinal arrives we shall begin’, his voice was drowned by thunderous booing.
‘Start right away! The mystery! The mystery right away!’ cried the people. And above all the other voices that of Joannes de Molendino could be heard, cutting through the hubbub like the fife in a charivari* at Nîmes: ‘Start right away!’ the student was yelping.
‘Down with Jupiter and the Cardinal de Bourbon!’ bawled Robin Poussepain and the other clerks perched on the window.
‘The morality now!’ repeated the crowd. ‘At once! Right now! String up the players and the cardinal!’
Poor Jupiter, gaunt, aghast, pale under his rouge, dropped his thunderbolt, took his helmet in his hand; then bowing and trembling he stammered: ‘His Eminence … the ambassadors … Madame Marguerite of Flanders …’. He did not know what to say. Truth to tell, he was afraid of being hanged. Hanged by the crowd for waiting, hanged by the cardinal for not waiting, all he could see on either side of him was an abyss that is a gallows.
Fortunately someone came to rescue him and assume responsibility.
An individual, who stood within the balustrade in the space left clear round the marble table, had so far gone unnoticed, so completely was his long, slender person protected from every line of sight by the diameter of the pillar on which he was leaning. This individual, we repeat, tall, lean, pallid, fair-haired, still young, though already showing wrinkles on his forehead and cheeks, with bright eyes and a smile on his lips, dressed in black serge, worn shiny with age, came up to the marble table and made a sign to the poor victim. But the other was too stunned to notice.
The newcomer took another step forward: ‘Jupiter!’ he said, ‘my dear Jupiter!’
The other did not hear.
Finally the tall, fair-haired man lost patience, and shouted almost directly into his face:
‘Michel Giborne!’
‘Who’s calling me?’ said Jupiter, as if waking up with a start.
‘I am,’ answered the man in black.
‘Ah!’ said Jupiter.
‘Start at once,’ the other went on. ‘Satisfy the crowd. I’ll take care of placating Monsieur the Bailiff, and he’ll placate the cardinal.’
Jupiter breathed again.
‘Worshipful citizens,’ he shouted with all the power in his lungs to the crowd which went on booing, ‘we are starting at once.’
‘Evoe, luppiter! Plaudite cives! [Bravo Jupiter! Applaud citizens!]’ cried the students.
‘Noël! Noël!’ cried the people.
They clapped their hands in deafening applause, and the hall was still rocking with cheers by the time Jupiter had retired behind his curtain.
Meanwhile, the unknown man who had so magically changed ‘the storm into calm’ as our dear old Corneille* puts it, had modestly returned to the obscurity of his pillar, where he could no doubt have remained invisible, motionless and silent as before, had he not been drawn away by two young women who, from their place in the front row of spectators, had observed his conversation with Michel Giborne/Jupiter.
‘Maître,’ said one of them, beckoning him closer …
‘Do be quiet, my dear Liénarde,’ said her neighbour, pretty, fresh-faced, and a brave sight in her best clothes. ‘He’s not a clerk, he’s a layman. You mustn’t call him “maître” but “messire”.’
‘Messire,’ said Liénarde.
The stranger approached the balustrade. ‘What can I do for you, mademoiselle?’ he asked, as if anxious to oblige.
‘Oh! nothing,’ said Liénarde in embarrassment, ‘it’s my neighbour, Gisquette-la-Gencienne, who wants a word with you.’
‘No, no,’ replied Gisquette, blushing, ‘it was Liénarde who said: maître; I told her she should say: messire.’
The two girls dropped their eyes. The man, who asked for nothing better than to engage them in conversation, looked at them with a smile.
‘So you have nothing to say to me, mesdemoiselles?’
‘Oh! nothing at all,’ replied Gisquette.
‘No, nothing,’ said Liénarde.
The tall, fair young man took a step back, but the two girls were curious and did not want to let him go.
‘Messire,’ burst out Gisquette eagerly, with a rush, like a lock-gate opening or a woman making up her mind, ‘so you know that soldier who is to play the part of Our Lady the Virgin in the mystery?’
‘You mean Jupiter’s part?’ the nameless man replied.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Liénarde, ‘isn’t she stupid! So you know Jupiter?’
‘Michel Giborne?’ answered the nameless one. ‘Yes, I do, madame.’
‘He has a fine beard!’ said Liénarde.
‘Is it going to be lovely, what they are going to say up there?’ Gisquette asked timidly.
‘Very lovely, mademoiselle,’ the nameless one replied without the slightest hesitation.
‘What will it be?’ said Liénarde.
‘The Good Judgement of Our Lady the Virgin, a morality, if you please, mademoiselle.’
‘Ah, that’s different,’ answered Liénarde.
A brief silence ensued. The stranger broke it. ‘It’s a brand new morality, never been used before.’
‘So it’s not the same,’ said Gisquette, ‘as the one they put on two years ago, the day Monsieur the Legate* made his entry, when they had three lovely girls representing …’
‘Sirens,’ said Liénarde.
‘And stark naked,’ added the young man.
Liénarde modestly dropped her eyes. Gisquette looked at her and did the same. He went on with a smile: ‘It was a most agreeable sight. Today it’s a morality specially composed for Madame the Princess of Flanders.’
‘Will they sing bergerettes?’* asked Gisquette.
‘Come now!’ said the stranger, ‘in a morality? You must not confuse different kinds of play. If it was a farce, that would be fine.’
‘That’s a pity,’ Gisquette replied. ‘That day, at the Ponceau fountain, there were wild men and women* fighting and striking different attitudes while they sang little motets and bergerettes.’
‘What is suitable for a legate,’ the stranger said rather dryly, ‘is not suitable for a princess.’
‘And by them,’ Liénarde went on, ‘several bass instruments were playing most tunefully.’
‘And for the refreshment of passers-by,’ continued Gisquette, ‘the fountain had three spouts pouring out wine, milk, and hippocras,* for anyone to help themselves.’
‘And a bit down from the Ponceau,’ Liénarde went on, ‘at the Trinité, there was a Passion play without words.’
‘Don’t I remember!’ cried Gisquette: ‘God on the Cross, and the two thieves to left and right!’
At this the young gossips, becoming excited at the memory of the legate’s entry, both began talking at once.
‘And further on, at the Porte-aux-Peintres, there were some other people in sumptuous clothes.’
‘And at the Holy Innocents’ fountain that huntsman chasing a deer with a great noise of hounds and hunting horns!’
‘And at the Paris Boucherie those scaffolds representing the fortress of Dieppe!’*
‘And when the legate went by, you know, Gisquette, they launched their assault and all the English had their throats cut!’
‘And at the Châtelet, against the gate, there were some other lovely-looking actors!’
‘And on the Pont-au-Change, which was all covered in hangings!’
‘And when the legate went past they released more than two hundred dozen birds of every kind; it was really lovely, Liénarde.’
‘It will be lovelier still today,’ their interlocutor finally put in, his patience apparently tried as he listened to them.
‘Do you promise it will be a fine
mystery today?’ said Gisquette.
‘Absolutely,’ he answered; then he added with some emphasis, ‘Mesdemoiselles, I am the author.’
‘Really?’ said the girls, quite astounded.
‘Really!’ the poet answered, rather preening himself: ‘That is there are two of us: Jehan Marchand who sawed the boards and put up the framework for the theatre and all the woodwork, and I, who wrote the play. My name is Pierre Gringoire.’*
The author of The Cid could not have said ‘Pierre Corneille’ more proudly.
Our readers may have observed that some time must have elapsed between the moment when Jupiter went behind the curtain and that when the author of the new morality play so abruptly revealed himself to the simple admiration of Gisquette and Liénarde. Remarkably enough, all the crowd, which had been in such an uproar a few minutes before, was now quite docile as it waited, trusting in the actor’s word, which goes to prove the eternal truth, still a matter of daily experience in our modern theatres, that the best way to get the public to wait patiently is to assure them that the play is about to begin at once.
However, the student Joannes was not asleep.
‘Hey there!’ he suddenly cried amid the expectant calm which had followed the commotion, ‘Jupiter, Our Lady the Virgin, you devil’s tumblers! Are you having us on? The play! the play! Start now, or we’ll start up again!’
That was all it needed.
From inside the scaffolding came the sound of music from instruments both treble and bass; the curtain was raised; four characters in motley and make-up emerged, climbed the steep ladder up to the stage, and once on the upper platform lined up before the public, to whom they bowed low; at that the music stopped. The mystery was about to begin.
The four characters, their bows amply rewarded by applause, embarked, amid a religious silence, on a prologue, which we gladly spare our readers. Besides, as still happens today, the public was much more interested in the costumes worn by the actors than in the part they were reciting; and indeed this was only right. All four wore robes half yellow and half white, differing only in the kind of material of which they were made; the first was of gold and silver brocade, the second silk, the third wool, the fourth coarse linen. The first character held a sword in his right hand, the second two golden keys, the third a pair of scales, the fourth a spade; and to help those of sluggish intelligence who had failed to see clearly through such transparent attributes, one could read embroidered in big black letters: at the bottom of the brocade robe MY NAME IS NOBILITY; at the bottom of the silk robe MY NAME IS CLERGY; at the bottom of the woollen robe MY NAME IS TRADE; and at the bottom of the linen robe MY NAME IS HUSBANDRY. The sex of the two male allegories was clearly indicated to every discerning spectator by their shorter robes and the ‘cramignole’* caps they wore, while the two female allegories, whose dresses were not so short, wore hoods.
It would have needed a lot of ill will not to grasp, through the poetry of the prologue, that Husbandry was married to Trade and Clergy to Nobility, and that the two happy couples were the joint owners of a magnificent golden dolphin (dauphin) which they intended to award only to the most beautiful of women. So they were going round the world in a search and quest for this beauty, and having rejected successively the Queen of Golconda, the Princess of Trebizond, the Grand Khan of Tartary’s daughter etc., etc., Husbandry and Trade, Nobility and Clergy had come to rest themselves on the marble table of the Palais de Justice, while they uttered before the worthy audience all the sentences and maxims which could at that time be dispensed in the Faculty of Arts in the examinations, sophisms, determinations, figures, and acts at which masters were capped for their degrees.
This was indeed all very fine.
However, in this crowd over which the four allegories competed in pouring out streams of metaphor, no ear was more attentive, no heart palpitated with more emotion, no eye was more distraught, no neck more intently craned than the eye, ear, heart, and neck of the author, the poet, the good Pierre Gringoire, who a moment before had not been able to resist the pleasure of telling two pretty girls his name. He had returned to a position a few yards from them, behind his pillar, where he listened, watched, relished. The warm applause which had greeted the beginning of his prologue still resounded in his inmost heart, and he was completely absorbed in the kind of ecstatic contemplation with which an author sees his ideas drop one by one from the actor’s lips into the silence of a vast audience. Worthy Pierre Gringoire!
It pains us to say so, but this initial ecstasy was very soon disturbed. Gringoire had scarcely raised to his lips this heady cup of joy and triumph when a dash of bitterness was mixed into it.
A ragged beggar, unable to ply his trade, lost as he was amidst the crowd, and who had no doubt failed to find sufficient compensation in his neighbours’ pockets, had conceived the idea of perching in some conspicuous spot so as to attract attention and alms. He had therefore, during the opening lines of the prologue, hoisted himself up by means of the pillars of the reserved tribune as far as the cornice running along the lower edge of its balustrade, and had sat down there, soliciting the attention and pity of the multitude with his rags and a hideous sore covering his right arm. For the rest, he uttered not a word.
His silence allowed the prologue to proceed without hindrance, and no noticeable disorder would have occurred had not mischance caused the student Joannes, high up on his pillar, to catch sight of the beggar and his grimaces. Helpless laughter overcame the young rascal, and unconcerned at interrupting the play and disturbing everyone’s concentration he cheerfully bawled: ‘Look at that fellow, faking sickness and asking for alms!’
Anyone who has ever tossed a stone into a pond full of frogs or fired a gun at a flock of birds can imagine the effect of such unseemly words when the attention of all was fixed elsewhere. Gringoire started as if from an electric shock. The prologue was stopped short, and amid uproar all heads turned towards the beggar, who, far from being disconcerted, saw in this incident a good opportunity to reap a profit, and began with doleful look and half-closed eyes to call: ‘Charity, please!’
‘Well now, upon my soul,’ Joannes went on, ‘it’s Clopin Trouillefou. Hey there, my friend, was that sore on your leg so uncomfortable that you moved it to your arm?’
So saying, he threw, deft as a monkey, a small coin into the greasy hat that the beggar held out with his affected arm. The beggar accepted the alms and the gibe without flinching, and went on crying mournfully: ‘Charity, please!’
This episode had seriously distracted the audience, and a good number of spectators, with Robin Poussepain and all the clerks in the lead, merrily applauded the weird duet improvised in the middle of the prologue by the student with his strident voice and the beggar with his imperturbable chant.
Gringoire was extremely put out. Recovering from his initial stupefaction, he cried with all his might to the four characters on stage: ‘Go on! Damn it all, go on!’ without even deigning to spare a scornful glance at the two interrupters.
At that moment he felt someone tug at the hem of his surcoat; he turned round in some annoyance, and had some difficulty in smiling. He had to, however. It was Gisquette-la-Gencienne’s comely arm pushed through the balustrade which thus invited his attention.
‘Monsieur,’ the girl said, ‘will they be going on?’
‘Certainly,’ Gringoire answered, rather taken aback by the question.
‘In that case, messire,’ she went on, ‘would you be kind enough to explain …’
‘What they are going to say?’ Gringoire broke in. ‘Well, just listen.’
‘No,’ said Gisquette, ‘what they’ve said so far.
‘Gringoire jumped like someone touched on an open wound. ‘A plague on the stupid, dim-witted girl!’ he said between clenched teeth.
From that moment on he dismissed Gisquette from his mind.
Meanwhile the actors had obeyed his injunction, and the public, seeing them speaking again, had begun again to listen, not w
ithout the loss of much beautiful poetry in the sort of soldered patch effected to join the two parts of the piece so abruptly cut off. Gringoire reflected on this bitterly in an undertone. However, calm had gradually been restored, the student was quiet, the beggar was counting coins in his hat, and the play once more had the upper hand.
It was in fact a very fine piece of work, and in our view might well be turned to good account even today, subject to a few alterations. The exposition, rather long and rather hollow, that is to say within the rules, was simple, and Gringoire, in the candid sanctuary of his inmost heart, admired its clarity. As may well be supposed, the four allegorical characters were rather weary after travelling three parts around the world without managing to dispose acceptably of their golden dolphin. Whereupon came a eulogy of the marvellous fish, with numerous delicate allusions to Marguerite of Flanders’ young fiancè, then in dreary seclusion at Amboise, scarcely suspecting that Husbandry and Clergy, Nobility and Trade had just gone round the world for his sake. The aforesaid dolphin, then, was young, handsome, strong, and above all (magnificent origin of all the royal virtues!) he was the son of the lion of France. I declare this bold metaphor to be admirable, and maintain that natural history in the theatre, on a day of allegory and royal epithalamium, has no cause for offence in a dolphin being son of a lion. It is precisely such rare, Pindaric hybrids which prove real enthusiasm. None the less, to give criticism its due as well, the poet could have developed this fine idea in something less than two hundred lines. It is true that the mystery was meant to last from noon until four in the afternoon, according to Monsieur the Provost’s decree, and the actors had to say something. Besides, the audience were listening patiently.
