“By the foul fiend!” replied Joannes Frollo, “more than four hours, and I certainly hope that they may be deducted from my time in purgatory. I heard the King of Sicily’s eight choristers intone the first verse of high mass at seven o‘clock in the Holy Chapel.”
“Fine choristers they are!” returned the other; “their voices are sharper than the points of their caps. Before he endowed a Mass in honor of Saint John, the king might well have inquired whether Saint John liked his Latin sung with a southern twang.”
“He only did it to give work to these confounded choristers of the King of Sicily!” bitterly exclaimed an old woman in the crowd beneath the window. “Just fancy! a thousand pounds Paris for a Mass! and charged to the taxes on all salt-water fish sold in the Paris markets too!”
“Silence, old woman!” said a grave and reverend personage who was holding his nose beside the fishwoman; “he had to endow a Mass. You don’t want the king to fall ill again, do you?”
“Bravely spoken, Master Gilles Lecornu, master furrier of the king’s robes!” cried the little scholar clinging to the capital.
“Lecornu! Gilles Lecornu!” said some.
“Cornutus et hirsutus,”e replied another.
“Oh, no doubt!” continued the little demon of the capital. “What is there to laugh at? An honorable man is Gilles Lecornu, brother of Master Jehan Lecornu, provost of the king’s palace, son of Master Mahiet Lecornu, head porter of the Forest of Vincennes,—all good citizens of Paris, every one of them married, from father to son!”
The mirth increased. The fat furrier, not answering a word, strove to escape the eyes fixed on him from every side, but he puffed and perspired in vain; like a wedge driven into wood, all his efforts only buried his broad apoplectic face, purple with rage and spite, the more firmly in the shoulders of his neighbors.
At last one of those neighbors, fat, short, and venerable as himself, came to his rescue.
“Abominable! Shall students talk thus to a citizen! In my day they would have been well whipped with the sticks which served to burn them afterwards.”
The entire band burst out:—
“Oh ! who sings that song? Who is this bird of ill omen?”
“Stay, I know him,” said one; “it’s Master Andry Musnier.”
“He is one of the four copyists licensed by the University!” said another.
“Everything goes by fours in that shop,” cried a third,—“four nations, four faculties, four great holidays, four proctors, four electors, four copyists.”
“Very well, then,” answered Jehan Frollo; “we must play the devil with them by fours.”
“Musnier, we’ll burn your books.”
“Musnier, we’ll beat your servant.”
“Musnier, we’ll hustle your wife.”
“That good fat Mademoiselle Oudarde.”
“Who is as fresh and as fair as if she were a widow.”
“Devil take you!” growled Master Andry Musnier.
“Master Andry,” added Jehan, still hanging on his capital, “shut up, or I’ll fall on your head!”
Master Andry raised his eyes, seemed for a moment to be measuring the height of the column, the weight of the rascal, mentally multiplied that weight by the square of the velocity, and was silent.
Jehan, master of the field of battle, went on triumphantly:— “I’d do it, though I am the brother of an arch-deacon!”
“Fine fellows, our University men are, not even to have insisted upon our rights on such a day as this! For, only think of it, there is a Maypole and a bonfire in the Town; a miracle play, the Pope of Fools, and Flemish ambassadors in the City; and at the University—nothing!”
“And yet Maubert Square is big enough!” answered one of the scholars established on the window-seat.
“Down with the rector, the electors, and the proctors!” shouted Joannes.
“We must build a bonfire tonight in the Gaillard Field,” went on the other, “with Master Andry’s books.”
“And the desks of the scribes,” said his neighbor.
“And the beadles’ wands!”
“And the deans’ spittoons!”
“And the proctors’ cupboards!”
“And the electors’ bread-bins!”
“And the rector’s footstools!”
“Down with them!” went on little Jehan, mimicking a droning psalm-tune; “down with Master Andry, the beadles, and the scribes; down with theologians, doctors, and decretists; proctors, electors, and rector!”