CHAPTER II
Pierre Gringoire
But as he spoke, the satisfaction, the admiration excited by his dress, were destroyed by his words; and when he reached the fatal conclusion, “as soon as the most eminent Cardinal arrives, we will begin,” his voice was drowned in a storm of hoots.
“Begin at once! The mystery! the mystery at once!” screamed the people. And over all the other voices was heard that of Joannes de Molendino piercing the uproar, like the fife in a charivari at Nimes. “Begin at once!” shrieked the student.
“Down with Jupiter and Cardinal Bourbon!” shouted Robin Poussepain and the other learned youths perched in the window.
“The morality this instant!” repeated the mob; “instantly! immediately! The sack and the rope for the actors and the Cardinal!”
Poor Jupiter, haggard, terrified, pale beneath his paint, let his thunderbolt fall, and seized his cap in his hand. Then he bowed, trembled, and stammered out: “His Eminence—the ambassadors—Madame Margaret of Flanders—” He knew not what to say. In his secret heart he was mightily afraid of being hanged.
Hanged by the populace for waiting, hanged by the Cardinal for not waiting,—on either hand he saw a gulf; that is to say, the gallows.
Luckily, some one appeared to extricate him from his embarrassing position and assume the responsibility.
An individual, standing just within the railing, in the vacant space about the marble table, and whom nobody had as yet observed,—so completely was his long slim person hidden from sight by the thickness of the pillar against which he leaned,—this individual, we say, tall, thin, pale, fair-haired, still young, although already wrinkled in brow and cheeks, with bright eyes and a smiling mouth, clad in black serge, worn and shining with age, approached the table and made a sign to the poor victim. But the latter, in his terror and confusion, failed to see him.
The newcomer took another step forward.
“Jupiter!” said he, “my dear Jupiter!”
The other did not hear him.
At last the tall fair-haired fellow, growing impatient, shouted almost in his ear,— “Michel Giborne!”
“Who calls me?” said Jupiter, as if suddenly wakened.
“I,” replied the person dressed in black.
“Ah!” said Jupiter.
“Begin directly,” continued the other. “Satisfy the public; I take it upon myself to pacify the Provost, who will pacify the Cardinal.”
Jupiter breathed again.
“Gentlemen and citizens,” he shouted at the top of his lungs to the crowd who continued to hoot him, “we will begin at once.”
“Evoe, Jupiter! Plaudite, cives!”m cried the students.
“No?l! No?l!”n cried the people.
Deafening applause followed, and the hall still trembled with acclamations when Jupiter had retired behind the hangings.
But the unknown person who had so miraculously changed “the tempest to a calm,” as our dear old Corneille says, had modestly withdrawn into the shadow of his pillar, and would doubtless have remained there invisible, motionless, and mute as before, had he not been drawn forward by two young women, who, placed in the foremost rank of the spectators, had observed his colloquy with Michel Giborne-Jupiter.
“Master,” said one of them, beckoning him to come nearer.
“Be quiet, my dear Liénarde,” said her neighbor, pretty, fresh, and emboldened by all her Sunday finery. “That is no scholar, he is a layman; you must not call him Master, but Sir.”
“Sir,” said Liénarde.
The stranger approached the railing.
“What do you wish of me, young ladies?” he asked eagerly.
“Oh, nothing!” said Liénarde, much confused; “it is my neighbor Gisquette la Gencienne who wants to speak to you.”
“Not at all,” replied Gisquette, blushing; “it was Liénarde who called you Master; I told her that she should say Sir.”
The two young girls cast down their eyes. The stranger, who desired nothing better than to enter into conversation with them, looked at them with a smile.
“Then you have nothing to say to me, young ladies?”
“Oh, nothing at all!” answered Gisquette.
The tall fair-haired youth drew back a pace; but the two curious creatures did not want to lose their prize.
“Sir,” said Gisquette hastily, and with the impetuosity of water rushing through a floodgate or a woman coming to a sudden resolve, “so you know that soldier who is to play the part of Madame Virgin in the mystery?”