CHAPTER III. MONSIEUR THE CARDINAL.

Poor Gringoire! the din of all the great double petards of the

Saint-Jean, the discharge of twenty arquebuses on supports, the

detonation of that famous serpentine of the Tower of Billy,

which, during the siege of Paris, on Sunday, the twenty-sixth of

September, 1465, killed seven Burgundians at one blow, the

explosion of all the powder stored at the gate of the Temple,

would have rent his ears less rudely at that solemn and dramatic

moment, than these few words, which fell from the lips of the

usher, “His eminence, Monseigneur the Cardinal de Bourbon.”

It is not that Pierre Gringoire either feared or disdained

monsieur the cardinal. He had neither the weakness nor the

audacity for that. A true eclectic, as it would be expressed

nowadays, Gringoire was one of those firm and lofty, moderate and

calm spirits, which always know how to bear themselves amid all

circumstances (_stare in dimidio rerum_), and who are full of

reason and of liberal philosophy, while still setting store by

cardinals. A rare, precious, and never interrupted race of

philosophers to whom wisdom, like another Ariadne, seems to have

given a clew of thread which they have been walking along

unwinding since the beginning of the world, through the labyrinth

of human affairs. One finds them in all ages, ever the same; that

is to say, always according to all times. And, without reckoning

our Pierre Gringoire, who may represent them in the fifteenth

century if we succeed in bestowing upon him the distinction which

he deserves, it certainly was their spirit which animated Father

du Breul, when he wrote, in the sixteenth, these naively sublime

words, worthy of all centuries: “I am a Parisian by nation, and a

Parrhisian in language, for _parrhisia_ in Greek signifies

liberty of speech; of which I have made use even towards

messeigneurs the cardinals, uncle and brother to Monsieur the

Prince de Conty, always with respect to their greatness, and

without offending any one of their suite, which is much to say.”

There was then neither hatred for the cardinal, nor disdain for

his presence, in the disagreeable impression produced upon Pierre

Gringoire. Quite the contrary; our poet had too much good sense

and too threadbare a coat, not to attach particular importance to

having the numerous allusions in his prologue, and, in

particular, the glorification of the dauphin, son of the Lion of

France, fall upon the most eminent ear. But it is not interest

which predominates in the noble nature of poets. I suppose that

the entity of the poet may be represented by the number ten; it

is certain that a chemist on analyzing and pharmacopolizing it,

as Rabelais says, would find it composed of one part interest to

nine parts of self-esteem.

Now, at the moment when the door had opened to admit the

cardinal, the nine parts of self-esteem in Gringoire, swollen and

expanded by the breath of popular admiration, were in a state of

prodigious augmentation, beneath which disappeared, as though

stifled, that imperceptible molecule of which we have just

remarked upon in the constitution of poets; a precious

ingredient, by the way, a ballast of reality and humanity,

without which they would not touch the earth. Gringoire enjoyed

seeing, feeling, fingering, so to speak an entire assembly (of

knaves, it is true, but what matters that?) stupefied, petrified,

and as though asphyxiated in the presence of the incommensurable

tirades which welled up every instant from all parts of his

bridal song. I affirm that he shared the general beatitude, and

that, quite the reverse of La Fontaine, who, at the presentation

of his comedy of the “Florentine,” asked, “Who is the ill-bred

lout who made that rhapsody?” Gringoire would gladly have

inquired of his neighbor, “Whose masterpiece is this?”

The reader can now judge of the effect produced upon him by the

abrupt and unseasonable arrival of the cardinal.

That which he had to fear was only too fully realized. The

entrance of his eminence upset the audience. All heads turned

towards the gallery. It was no longer possible to hear one’s

self. “The cardinal! The cardinal!” repeated all mouths. The

unhappy prologue stopped short for the second time.

The cardinal halted for a moment on the threshold of the estrade.

While he was sending a rather indifferent glance around the

audience, the tumult redoubled. Each person wished to get a

better view of him. Each man vied with the other in thrusting his

head over his neighbor’s shoulder.

He was, in fact, an exalted personage, the sight of whom was well

worth any other comedy. Charles, Cardinal de Bourbon, Archbishop

and Comte of Lyon, Primate of the Gauls, was allied both to Louis

XI., through his brother, Pierre, Seigneur de Beaujeu, who had

married the king’s eldest daughter, and to Charles the Bold

through his mother, Agnes of Burgundy. Now, the dominating trait,

the peculiar and distinctive trait of the character of the

Primate of the Gauls, was the spirit of the courtier, and

devotion to the powers that be. The reader can form an idea of

the numberless embarrassments which this double relationship had

caused him, and of all the temporal reefs among which his

spiritual bark had been forced to tack, in order not to suffer

shipwreck on either Louis or Charles, that Scylla and that

Charybdis which had devoured the Duc de Nemours and the Constable

de Saint-Pol. Thanks to Heaven’s mercy, he had made the voyage

successfully, and had reached home without hindrance. But

although he was in port, and precisely because he was in port, he

never recalled without disquiet the varied haps of his political

career, so long uneasy and laborious. Thus, he was in the habit

of saying that the year 1476 had been “white and black” for

him—meaning thereby, that in the course of that year he had lost

his mother, the Duchesse de la Bourbonnais, and his cousin, the

Duke of Burgundy, and that one grief had consoled him for the

other.

Nevertheless, he was a fine man; he led a joyous cardinal’s life,

liked to enliven himself with the royal vintage of Challuau, did

not hate Richarde la Garmoise and Thomasse la Saillarde, bestowed

alms on pretty girls rather than on old women,—and for all these

reasons was very agreeable to the _populace_ of Paris. He never

went about otherwise than surrounded by a small court of bishops

and abbés of high lineage, gallant, jovial, and given to

carousing on occasion; and more than once the good and devout

women of Saint Germain d’ Auxerre, when passing at night beneath

the brightly illuminated windows of Bourbon, had been scandalized

to hear the same voices which had intoned vespers for them during

the day carolling, to the clinking of glasses, the bacchic

proverb of Benedict XII., that pope who had added a third crown

to the Tiara—_Bibamus papaliter_.

It was this justly acquired popularity, no doubt, which preserved

him on his entrance from any bad reception at the hands of the

mob, which had been so displeased but a moment before, and very

little disposed to respect a cardinal on the very day when it was

to elect a pope. But the Parisians cherish little rancor; and

then, having forced the beginning of the play by their authority,

the good _bourgeois_ had got the upper hand of the cardinal, and

this triumph was sufficient for them. Moreover, the Cardinal de

Bourbon was a handsome man,—he wore a fine scarlet robe, which he

carried off very well,—that is to say, he had all the women on

his side, and, consequently, the best half of the audience.

Assuredly, it would be injustice and bad taste to hoot a cardinal

for having come late to the spectacle, when he is a handsome man,

and when he wears his scarlet robe well.

He entered, then, bowed to those present with the hereditary

smile of the great for the people, and directed his course slowly

towards his scarlet velvet arm-chair, with the air of thinking of

something quite different. His cortege—what we should nowadays

call his staff—of bishops and abbés invaded the estrade in his

train, not without causing redoubled tumult and curiosity among

the audience. Each man vied with his neighbor in pointing them

out and naming them, in seeing who should recognize at least one

of them: this one, the Bishop of Marseilles (Alaudet, if my

memory serves me right);—this one, the primicier of

Saint-Denis;—this one, Robert de Lespinasse, Abbé of

Saint-Germain des Prés, that libertine brother of a mistress of

Louis XI.; all with many errors and absurdities. As for the

scholars, they swore. This was their day, their feast of fools,

their saturnalia, the annual orgy of the corporation of law

clerks and of the school. There was no turpitude which was not

sacred on that day. And then there were gay gossips in the

crowd—Simone Quatrelivres, Agnès la Gadine, and Rabine Piédebou.

Was it not the least that one could do to swear at one’s ease and

revile the name of God a little, on so fine a day, in such good

company as dignitaries of the church and loose women? So they did

not abstain; and, in the midst of the uproar, there was a

frightful concert of blasphemies and enormities of all the

unbridled tongues, the tongues of clerks and students restrained

during the rest of the year, by the fear of the hot iron of Saint

Louis. Poor Saint Louis! how they set him at defiance in his own

court of law! Each one of them selected from the new-comers on

the platform, a black, gray, white, or violet cassock as his

target. Joannes Frollo de Molendin, in his quality of brother to

an archdeacon, boldly attacked the scarlet; he sang in deafening

tones, with his impudent eyes fastened on the cardinal, “_Cappa

repleta mero_!”

All these details which we here lay bare for the edification of

the reader, were so covered by the general uproar, that they were

lost in it before reaching the reserved platforms; moreover, they

would have moved the cardinal but little, so much a part of the

customs were the liberties of that day. Moreover, he had another

cause for solicitude, and his mien as wholly preoccupied with it,

which entered the estrade the same time as himself; this was the

embassy from Flanders.

Not that he was a profound politician, nor was he borrowing

trouble about the possible consequences of the marriage of his

cousin Marguerite de Bourgoyne to his cousin Charles, Dauphin de

Vienne; nor as to how long the good understanding which had been

patched up between the Duke of Austria and the King of France

would last; nor how the King of England would take this disdain

of his daughter. All that troubled him but little; and he gave a

warm reception every evening to the wine of the royal vintage of

Chaillot, without a suspicion that several flasks of that same

wine (somewhat revised and corrected, it is true, by Doctor

Coictier), cordially offered to Edward IV. by Louis XI., would,

some fine morning, rid Louis XI. of Edward IV. “The much honored

embassy of Monsieur the Duke of Austria,” brought the cardinal

none of these cares, but it troubled him in another direction. It

was, in fact, somewhat hard, and we have already hinted at it on

the second page of this book,—for him, Charles de Bourbon, to be

obliged to feast and receive cordially no one knows what

_bourgeois_;—for him, a cardinal, to receive aldermen;—for him, a

Frenchman, and a jolly companion, to receive Flemish

beer-drinkers,—and that in public! This was, certainly, one of

the most irksome grimaces that he had ever executed for the good

pleasure of the king.

So he turned toward the door, and with the best grace in the

world (so well had he trained himself to it), when the usher

announced, in a sonorous voice, “Messieurs the Envoys of Monsieur

the Duke of Austria.” It is useless to add that the whole hall

did the same.

Then arrived, two by two, with a gravity which made a contrast in

the midst of the frisky ecclesiastical escort of Charles de

Bourbon, the eight and forty ambassadors of Maximilian of

Austria, having at their head the reverend Father in God, Jehan,

Abbot of Saint-Bertin, Chancellor of the Golden Fleece, and

Jacques de Goy, Sieur Dauby, Grand Bailiff of Ghent. A deep

silence settled over the assembly, accompanied by stifled

laughter at the preposterous names and all the _bourgeois_

designations which each of these personages transmitted with

imperturbable gravity to the usher, who then tossed names and

titles pell-mell and mutilated to the crowd below. There were

Master Loys Roelof, alderman of the city of Louvain; Messire

Clays d’Etuelde, alderman of Brussels; Messire Paul de Baeust,

Sieur de Voirmizelle, President of Flanders; Master Jehan

Coleghens, burgomaster of the city of Antwerp; Master George de

la Moere, first alderman of the kuere of the city of Ghent;

Master Gheldolf van der Hage, first alderman of the _parchons_ of

the said town; and the Sieur de Bierbecque, and Jehan Pinnock,

and Jehan Dymaerzelle, etc., etc., etc.; bailiffs, aldermen,

burgomasters; burgomasters, aldermen, bailiffs—all stiff,

affectedly grave, formal, dressed out in velvet and damask,

hooded with caps of black velvet, with great tufts of Cyprus gold

thread; good Flemish heads, after all, severe and worthy faces,

of the family which Rembrandt makes to stand out so strong and

grave from the black background of his “Night Patrol”; personages

all of whom bore, written on their brows, that Maximilian of

Austria had done well in “trusting implicitly,” as the manifest

ran, “in their sense, valor, experience, loyalty, and good

wisdom.”

There was one exception, however. It was a subtle, intelligent,

crafty-looking face, a sort of combined monkey and diplomat phiz,

before whom the cardinal made three steps and a profound bow, and

whose name, nevertheless, was only, “Guillaume Rym, counsellor

and pensioner of the City of Ghent.”

Few persons were then aware who Guillaume Rym was. A rare genius

who in a time of revolution would have made a brilliant

appearance on the surface of events, but who in the fifteenth

century was reduced to cavernous intrigues, and to “living in

mines,” as the Duc de Saint-Simon expresses it. Nevertheless, he

was appreciated by the “miner” of Europe; he plotted familiarly

with Louis XI., and often lent a hand to the king’s secret jobs.

All which things were quite unknown to that throng, who were

amazed at the cardinal’s politeness to that frail figure of a

Flemish bailiff.