by Hugo, Victor
Suddenly, in the middle of a quarrel between Mademoiselle Trade and Madame Nobility, just as Maître Husbandry was pronouncing the wonderful line:
‘You never saw a more triumphant beast in all the woods’
the door of the reserved tribune, which had so far remained inconveniently closed, was still more inconveniently opened, and the usher’s resounding voice abruptly announced: ‘His Eminence Monseigneur the Cardinal de Bourbon.’
III
MONSIEUR LE CARDINAL
POOR Gringoire! The crash of all the great double petards on St John’s day, a volley from a score of arquebuses, the detonation of that famous serpentine in the Billy tower, which killed seven Burgundians in one go on Sunday, 29 December 1465 during the siege of Paris, the explosion of all the gunpowder in the magazine at the Porte du Temple, none of that could have split his eardrums more brutally at that solemn and dramatic moment than those few words from an usher’s mouth: ‘His Eminence Monseigneur the Cardinal de Bourbon.’
Not that Pierre Gringoire felt any fear, or contempt, for the cardinal. He was neither so weak nor so arrogant. A genuine eclectic, as we should say today, Gringoire was one of those spirits, at once elevated, firm, moderate, and calm, who always manage to preserve a balance (stare in dimidio rerum) full of reason and liberal philosophy, while paying cardinals their due. Wisdom, like a second Ariadne, seems to have given this precious, unbroken line of philosophers a ball of thread which they have been unwinding since the world began through the labyrinth of human affairs. They are to be found in every age, always the same, that is always in tune with the age. Setting aside our Pierre Gringoire, who would be their representative in the fifteenth century if we succeeded in restoring to him the renown he deserves, it was certainly their spirit which inspired Father Du Breul in the sixteenth century when he wrote these sublimely simple words, worthy of any century: ‘I am a Parisian by nation and a parrhesian by speech, since parrhesia in Greek means liberty of speech; thus have I dealt even with my lords the cardinals, uncle and brother of my lord the Prince de Conti; albeit respecting their greatness and without offending anyone in their entourage, no mean feat.’*
There was thus no dislike of the cardinal, nor scorn for his presence, in the disagreeable impression it made on Pierre Gringoire. Quite the contrary; our poet had too much common sense and too threadbare a smock not to feel particularly keen that many of the allusions in his prologue, especially the glorification of the dolphin, son of the lion of France, should be picked up by so eminent an ear. But self-interest is not the ruling factor in the noble nature of poets. If we assume that the poet’s entity is represented by the number ten, it is certain that a chemist, analysing and, as Rabelais puts it, pharmacopolizing it, would find it composed of one part of self-interest to nine of self-esteem. Now, at the moment when the door opened for the cardinal, Gringoire’s nine parts of self-esteem, inflated and puffed up by the breath of popular admiration, were in a state of prodigious enlargement, causing that imperceptible molecule of self-interest which we identified a moment ago in the constitution of poets, to disappear as if smothered; a precious ingredient, moreover a ballast of reality and humanity without which poets’ feet would never touch the ground. Gringoire was enraptured at feeling, seeing, fingering, so to speak, a whole assembly (of the baser sort, true, but what does that matter?) being stunned, petrified, as though asphyxiated by the immeasurable tirades continually erupting from every part of his epithalamium. I can assert that he himself shared the general beatitude, and unlike La Fontaine, who asked during a performance of his comedy The Florentine:* ‘What bumpkin wrote that rhapsodic mess?’ Gringoire would gladly have asked his neighbour: ‘Who wrote this masterpiece?’ You can now judge the effect on him of the cardinal’s abrupt and untimely arrival.
All his worst fears were only too well realized. His Eminence’s entrance had a shattering effect on the audience. Every head turned towards the tribune. You could no longer hear yourself speak. ‘The cardinal! the cardinal!’ everyone repeated. The unfortunate prologue was cut short for the second time.
The cardinal paused for a moment at the entrance to the tribune. As he cast a somewhat indifferent eye round the audience, the uproar increased. Everyone wanted a better view of him. Each one strained to crane his head over his neighbour’s shoulder.
He was indeed an exalted personage, the sight of whom was worth any stage spectacle. Charles, Cardinal de Bourbon, Archbishop Count of Lyons, primate of the Gauls, was related both to Louis XI, through his brother, Pierre, Lord of Beaujeu, who had married the King’s daughter, and to Charles the Bold, through his mother, Agnès of Burgundy. Now the ruling feature, the characteristic and distinctive aspect of the primate of the Gauls’ character was his courtier’s instinct and his devotion to those in power. One can imagine the countless problems which these double family connections had caused him, and all the temporal shoals through which his spiritual barque had had to tack, lest it be wrecked either on Louis or on Charles, that Scylla and Charybdis which had swallowed up the Duke of Nemours and the Constable of Saint-Pol.* Heaven be praised, he had survived the passage rather well, and arrived in Rome without mishap. But though he was in harbour, and precisely because he was in harbour, he never recalled without disquiet the diverse fortunes of his political life, so long filled with danger and toil. Thus he used to say that 1476 had been ‘a black and white’ year for him; meaning that in one year he had lost his mother, the Duchess of Bourbonnais, and his cousin, the Duke of Burgundy, one bereavement consoling him for the other.
For the rest he was a good fellow. He enjoyed a cardinal’s life, liked getting merry on the royal wine of Challuau [Chaillot], was not averse to Richarde la Garmoise and Thomasse la Saillarde, gave alms to pretty girls rather than to old women, and for all these reasons went down very well with the ordinary people of Paris. He went about always surrounded by a little court of bishops and abbots of noble lineage, gallant, bawdy, and good trenchermen if need be; and more than once the pious ladies of Saint-Germain d’Auxerre, passing in the evening beneath the brightly lit windows of the Bourbon residence, had been scandalized to hear the same voices which had sung them vespers in the daytime chanting to the clink of glasses the Bacchic motto of Benedict XII, the Pope who added a third crown to the tiara: ‘Bibamus papaliter’ [Let us drink papally].
It was no doubt this well-deserved popularity which saved him, as he entered, from any hostile reception from the throng, which had been so disgruntled only a moment before and not at all in the mood to show respect for a cardinal on the very day when they were going to elect a pope. But Parisians rarely harbour a grudge; and then, by having the performance begin on their own authority, the good citizens had scored over the cardinal, and that triumph was enough for them. Besides, Monsieur le Cardinal de Bourbon was a fine figure of a man, he had a fine red robe and wore it very well; in other words, he had all the women on his side, and consequently the better part of the audience. It would certainly be unfair and in poor taste to boo a cardinal for keeping everyone waiting at the show, when he is a fine-looking man and wears his red robe so well.
He came in then, greeted the audience with the hereditary smile which the great bestow on the people, and advanced with measured step towards his scarlet armchair, looking as though his thoughts were elsewhere. His train, what would today be called his staff of bishops and abbots, poured on to the tribune in his wake, exciting increased tumult and curiosity among the groundlings. Everyone was trying to point them out to his neighbour, put a name to them, be acquainted with at least one of them; for one it was the Lord Bishop of Marseilles, Alaudet, if memory serves aright; another the dean of Saint-Denis; another, Robert de Lespinasse, abbot of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, libertine brother of one of Louis XI’s mistresses: all this with numerous errors and cacophony. As for the students, they were swearing. It was their day, their Feast of Fools, their Saturnalia, annual orgy of law clerks and students. On that day their entitlement to the vilest behaviour was some
thing sacred. And then there were some wild gossips in the crowd, Simone Quatre-livres, Agnès la Gadine, Robine Piédebou. Couldn’t they at least be left to swear in peace and utter the odd profanity on such a fine day, in the excellent company of churchmen and harlots? So they went to it with a will; and amid the general clamour came a fearful chorus of blasphemies and obscenities from all these unbridled tongues of clerks and students, restrained for the rest of the year by fear of Saint Louis’s* branding irons on their tongues. Poor Saint Louis, how they derided him in his own Palais de Justice! Each of them had marked out a target among those who had just arrived on the tribune, a black, or grey, or white, or violet cassock. As for Joannes Frollo de Molendino, as an archdeacon’s brother it was on the red cassock that he launched his bold assault, and he sang at the top of his voice, staring shamelessly at the cardinal: ‘Cappa repleta mero’ [A cope filled with wine].
All these details, here exposed for the reader’s edification, were so submerged in the general tumult as to be lost before they reached the reserved tribune. Besides, the cardinal would not have been much upset, for the licence on that day was quite taken for granted. In any case, as his preoccupied expression showed, he had another cause for concern, which followed hard on his heels and came on to the tribune almost at the same time as he did. That was the embassy from Flanders.
Not that he was a profound politician, fussing about the possible consequences of the marriage of Madame his cousin, Marguerite of Burgundy, to Monsieur his cousin, Charles, Dauphin of Vienne; how long the understanding patched up between the Duke of Austria and the King of France would last,* how the King of England would take this slight to his daughter, that worried him very little, and every evening he paid tribute to wine from the royal vineyard at Chaillot without ever suspecting that a few flasks of that same wine (slightly revised and amended, it is true, by the physician Coictier) cordially presented to Edward IV by Louis XI would one fine morning rid Louis XI of Edward IV.* ‘The most honoured embassy of the Duke of Austria’ brought the cardinal no such worries, but bothered him in another way. It was indeed a bit hard, as we have already mentioned on the second page of this book, that he, Charles de Bourbon, should be obliged to entertain and welcome mere burghers: he, a cardinal, they échevins [sheriffs]; he, a Frenchman, fond of the table, they Flemish beer-swillers; and in public at that. This was, to be sure, one of the most irksome smiles he had ever had to assume for the sake of the King’s good pleasure.
He turned towards the door, then, with the utmost graciousness (so well did he apply himself), when the usher resoundingly announced: ‘Messieurs the envoys of Monsieur the Duke of Austria.’ Needless to say the entire audience followed suit.
At that there filed in, two by two, with a gravity strongly contrasting with the exuberant ecclesiastical suite of Charles de Bourbon, Maximilian of Austria’s ambassadors, led by the reverend Father in God Jehan, abbot of Saint-Bertin, chancellor of the Golden Fleece, and Jacques de Goy, sieur Dauby, high bailiff of Ghent. A profound silence fell on the assembly, with some laughter, though muffled so that they could listen to all the ludicrous names and civic titles that each individual transmitted imperturbably to the usher, who then tossed names and titles in any order and much mangled down to the crowd. There was Maître Loys Roelof, échevin of the town of Louvain; Messire Clays d’Étuelde, échevin of Brussels; Messire Paul de Baeust, sieur de Voirmizelle, presiding magistrate of Flanders; Maître Jehan Coleghens, burgomaster of Antwerp; Maître George de la Moere, first échevin of the kuere [court] of Ghent; Maître Gheldof van der Hage, first échevin of the parchons* of the aforesaid town; and the sieur de Bier-becque, and Jehan Pinnock, and Jehan Dymaerzelle, etc., etc., etc.: bailiffs, échevins, burgomasters; burgomasters, échevins, bailiffs; all stiff, formal, starchy in their best velvet and damask, wearing cramignole caps of black velvet with huge tassels of Cyprus gold thread; good Flemish heads after all, dignified, severe features belonging to the same family as that which Rembrandt brings out so powerfully and gravely against the black background of the ‘Night Watch’; personages every one of whom bore graven on his brow that Maximilian of Austria had been right, as his manifesto ran: ‘to have full confidence in their prudence, valour, experience, loyalty, and integrity’.
With one exception, however. This was a shrewd, intelligent, cunning face, a sort of cross between a monkey and a diplomat, towards which the cardinal advanced three paces and bowed low, and yet whose name was just Guillaume Rym, counsellor and pensionary of the town of Ghent.
Few then knew what manner of man was Guillaume Rym. A rare genius, who in time of revolution would have made a dazzling appearance on the surface of events, but who in the fifteenth century was reduced to subterranean intrigue and ‘living in the saps’, as the due de Saint-Simon puts it. For the rest, he was appreciated by the chief ‘sapper’ of Europe, he was familiarly involved in Louis XI’s machinations, and often lent a hand with the King’s secret operations. All of which was quite unknown to this crowd, which marvelled at the courtesies paid by the cardinal to this weedy-looking Flemish bailiff.
IV
MAÎTRE JACQUES COPPENOLE
WHILE the pensionary of Ghent and His Eminence were exchanging low bows and a few words in an even lower voice, a tall man with a broad face and powerful shoulders came up so that he entered abreast with Guillaume Rym, looking like a mastiff beside a fox. His felt bycocket and leather jerkin stood out conspicuously amid the silk and velvet around him. Assuming that he was some groom who had lost his way, the usher stopped him.
‘Hey, my friend! You can’t go through there.’
The man in the leather jerkin shouldered him aside. ‘What does this fellow think he’s doing?’ he roared in a voice which drew the attention of the entire hall to this strange altercation. ‘Can’t you see that I am one of them?’
‘Your name?’ asked the usher.
‘Jacques Coppenole.’
‘Your titles?’
‘Hosier, at the sign of the Three Little Chains at Ghent.’
The usher recoiled. Announcing échevins and burgomasters was one thing, but a hosier … that was hard. The cardinal was in torment. All the people were looking and listening. For two days now His Eminence had been striving to lick these Flemish bears into rather better shape for public appearances, and this piece of bad manners went too far. Meanwhile Guillaume Rym, with his crafty smile, went up to the usher:
‘Announce Maître Jacques Coppenole, clerk to the échevins of the town of Ghent,’ he said in a very low whisper.
‘Usher,’ the cardinal said aloud,’ announce Maître Jacques Coppenole, clerk to the échevins of the illustrious town of Ghent.’
That was a mistake. Guillaume Rym left to himself could have evaded the difficulty, but Coppenole had heard the cardinal. ‘No, by the Holy Rood!’ he thundered. ‘Jacques Coppenole, hosier. Do you hear, usher? No more, and no less. By the Rood! hosier is fine enough! My lord archduke has gone looking more than once for his gauntlet [Ghent-let] in my hose.’
Applause and laughter broke out. In Paris a pun is picked up at once, and thus always applauded.
It should be added that Coppenole was a man of the people, and the audience around him was of the people. So communication between him and them had been rapid, electric, and, so to speak, on an equal footing. The Flemish hosier’s proud outburst, by humiliating the courtiers, had stirred up in all those plebeian souls a certain sense of dignity, in the fifteenth century as yet vague and undefined. This hosier, who had just stood up to Monsieur le Cardinal, was their equal—a comforting thought indeed for poor devils accustomed to show respect and obedience to the servants of the bailiff of the abbot of Sainte-Geneviève, the cardinal’s train-bearer.
Coppenole bowed proudly to His Eminence, who bowed back to this all-powerful burgher so feared by Louis XI. Then, while Guillaume Rym, ‘a wise and crafty man’ as Philippe de Commines puts it, followed both of them with a mocking and superior smile, they each went to their place, the card
inal quite put out and pensive, Coppenole calm and haughty, reflecting no doubt that after all his title of hosier was as good as any other, and Mary of Burgundy, mother of the Marguerite whom Coppenole was marrying off that day, would have feared him less as a cardinal than as a hosier: for no cardinal would have stirred up the people of Ghent against the favourites of Charles the Bold’s daughter; no cardinal would have steeled the crowd with a word against her tears and entreaties when the lady of Flanders came to the very foot of the scaffold to beg her people for mercy on their behalf; while the hosier had only to lift his leather elbow to make both your heads roll, my most illustrious lords Guy d’Hymbercourt and chancellor Guillaume Hugonet!*
However, that was not yet the end of it for the poor cardinal and he had to drain to the dregs the cup of finding himself in such bad company.
The reader has perhaps not forgotten the shameless beggar who had come to cling to the fringes of the cardinal’s tribune once the prologue began. The arrival of the illustrious guests had by no means made him let go, and while prelates and ambassadors packed into the stalls of the tribune, as tightly as real Flemish herrings in a barrel, he had made himself comfortable, boldly crossing his legs on the architrave. This exceptional piece of insolence had at first gone quite unnoticed, since the attention of all was directed elsewhere. He, for his part, noticed nothing in the hall; he kept nodding his head, as unconcerned as any Neapolitan, repeating from time to time, amid the general noise, as if from mechanical habit: ‘Charity, please!’ And indeed he was probably the only person out of all those present who had not deigned to turn his head towards the altercation between Coppenole and the usher. Now, as luck would have it, the master hosier from Ghent, with whom the people already felt such sympathy and on whom all eyes were fixed, came to sit down in the front row of the tribune, precisely above the beggar; they were not a little amazed to see the Flemish ambassador inspect the rascal perched beneath him and then give him a friendly tap on his ragged shoulder. The beggar turned round; surprise, recognition, broad smiles on the two faces, etc.; then, totally heedless of the spectators, the hosier and the supposed victim of sickness began chatting in low voices, clasping each other by the hand, while Clopin Trouillefou’s rags spread over the cloth of gold on the tribune looked like a caterpillar on an orange.
