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By Root 608 0

the actors, who remained in suspense, to go on, and to raise their voices; then, seeing that no one was listening, he stopped them; and then, after the interruption had lasted nearly fifteen minutes, he began to stamp, to struggle, to question Gisquette and Lie narde, and to encourage his neighbors to call for the prologue. All in vain; not an eye would move from the Cardinal, the ambassadors, and the dais,—the sole center of that vast circle of visual rays. We must therefore believe, and we say it with regret, that the prologue was beginning to be somewhat tedious to the audience at the moment that his Eminence caused so terrible a diversion. After all, the spectacle was the same upon the dais as upon the marble table,—the conflict between Labor and Religion, Nobility and Commerce; and many people preferred to see them simply, in living, breathing reality, elbowing and pushing, in flesh and blood, in this Flemish embassy, in this Episcopal court, beneath the Cardinal’s robe, beneath the jacket of Coppenole, rather than painted and decked out, speaking in artificial verse, and as it were stuffed with straw beneath the white and yellow tunics in which Gringoire had arrayed them.

However, when our poet saw that peace was beginning to reign once more, he hit upon a stratagem which might have saved all.

“Sir,” said he, turning towards one of his neighbors, a good fat fellow with a patient face, “suppose they begin again?”

“Begin what?” said the neighbor.

“Why, the mystery!” said Gringoire.

“If you like,” responded his neighbor.

This lukewarm approval was enough for Gringoire, and acting for himself he began to shout, mixing with the crowd as much as he could, “Go on with the miracle-play! Go on!”

“The devil!” said Joannes de Molendino, “what are they bawling about over there?” (For Gringoire made noise enough for four.) “Say, boys, isn’t the play done? They want to have it all over again; it’s not fair.”

“No, no!” cried the students. “Down with the mystery! down with it!”

But Gringoire seemed ubiquitous, and shouted louder than before, “Go on! go on!”

These outcries attracted the attention of the Cardinal.

“Bailiff,” he said to a tall dark man seated near him, “are those devils caught in a font of holy water, that they make such an infernal noise?”

The Bailiff of the Palace was a species of amphibious magistrate, a sort of bat of the judicial order, partaking at once of the nature of the rat and the bird, the judge and the soldier.

He approached his Eminence, and, not without serious fears of his displeasure, stammered out an explanation of the popular misconduct, —that noon had come before his Eminence, and that the actors were obliged to begin without awaiting his Eminence.

The Cardinal burst out laughing.

“Upon my word, the Rector of the University had better have done as much. What say you, Master Guillaume Rym?”

“My lord,” replied Guillaume Rym, “let us be content that we have escaped half the play. It is just so much gained.”

“May those rascals go on with their performance?” asked the bailiff.

“Go on, go on,” said the Cardinal; “it’s all the same to me. I will read my breviary in the meantime.”

The Provost advanced to the edge of the platform and cried aloud, after imposing silence by a wave of his hand: “Citizens, commoners, and residents: to satisfy those who wish the play to begin again and those who wish it to end, his Eminence orders that it be continued.”

Both parties were forced to submit. However, the author and the audience long cherished a grudge against the Cardinal.

The characters on the stage accordingly resumed their recital, and Gringoire hoped that the rest of his work at least would be heard. This hope soon proved as illusory as all the rest. Silence was indeed restored to a certain extent among the audience; but Gringoire had not remarked that, at the moment when the Cardinal gave the order to go on, the dais was far from being filled, and that in the train of the Flemish embassy came other personages forming part of the procession, whose names and titles, shouted out in the midst