The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo [31]
“Hey, my friend! there’s no passing here.”
The man in the leather coat shouldered him aside.
“What does the fellow mean?” he said in a tone which made the entire hall aware of this strange colloquy. “Don’t you see that I belong to the party?”
“Your name?” asked the usher.
“Jacques Coppenole.”
“Your titles?”
“Hosier at the sign of the Three Little Chains, at Ghent.”
The usher started back. It was bad enough to have to announce aldermen and burgomasters; but a hosier, that was hard indeed! The Cardinal was on thorns. Every one was looking and listening. For two days his Eminence had been laboring to lick these Flemish bears into some presentable shape, and this outburst was hard upon him. However, Guillaume Rym, with his crafty smile, leaned towards the usher.
“Announce Master Jacques Coppenole, clerk to the aldermen of the town of Ghent,” he whispered softly.
“Usher,” added the Cardinal in a loud voice, “announce Master Jacques Coppenole, clerk to the aldermen of the illustrious town of Ghent.”
This was a mistake. Guillaume Rym, if left to himself, would have evaded the difficulty; but Coppenole had overheard the Cardinal.
“No, by God’s cross!” he cried in his voice of thunder. “Jacques Coppenole, hosier. Do you hear me, usher? Nothing more, nothing less. By God’s cross! a hosier is good enough for me. The arch duke himself has more than once sought his glovet in my hose.”
There was a burst of laughter and applause. A pun is always instantly appreciated in Paris, and consequently always applauded.
Let us add that Coppenole was a man of the people, and that the audience about him consisted of the people only; thus the sympathy between them was prompt, electric, and they were at once on an equal footing. The proud exclamation of the Flemish hosier, while it mortified the courtiers, stirred in every humble soul a certain sense of dignity still vague and indistinct, in the fifteenth century . This hosier, who had just held his own before the Cardinal himself, was their equal! A very pleasant thought for poor devils who were wont to respect and obey the servants of the officers of the bailiff of the Abbot of St. Geneviève, train-bearer to the Cardinal.
Coppenole bowed haughtily to his Eminence, who returned the salutation of the all-powerful citizen dreaded by Louis XI. Then, while Guillaume Rym, “a wise and wily man,” as Philippe de Comines has it, watched them both with a smile full of mocking and superiority, they took each his place,—the Cardinal troubled and disconcerted, Coppenole calm and erect, doubtless thinking that after all his title of hosier was quite as good as any other, and that Mary of Burgundy, mother of that Margaret whose marriage he was now negotiating, would have feared him less as cardinal than as hosier; for no cardinal would have led on the men of Ghent against the favorites of the daughter of Charles the Bold; no cardinal could have hardened the hearts of the masses against her tears and her prayers, by a single word, when the heiress of Flanders besought her people to grant their pardon, at the very foot of their scaffold; while the hosier had but to lift his leathern elbow to cause both your heads to fall, O ye illustrious lords, Guy d‘Hymbercourt and Chancellor Guillaume Hugonet!
But all was not over yet for the poor Cardinal, who was to drink the dregs of the bitter cup of association with such low company.
The reader may perhaps recall the impudent beggar who clung to the fringes of the Cardinal’s dais at the opening of the prologue. The arrival of the distinguished guests did not cause him to relax his hold; and while prelates and ambassadors were packed as close as Dutch herrings