The four officers still stood stiff and motionless as four coloured statues. Every eye turned towards the dais reserved for the Flemish ambassadors. The door was still shut and the dais empty. The throng has been waiting since dawn for three things: noon, the Flemish ambassadors, and the mystery. Noon alone arrived punctually.

Really it was too bad.

They waited one, two, three, five minutes, a quarter of an hour; nothing happened. The dais was still deserted, the theater mute. Rage followed in the footsteps of impatience. Angry words passed from mouth to mouth, though still in undertones, to be sure. “The mystery! the mystery!” was the low cry.

Every head was in a ferment. A tempest, as yet but threatening, hung over the multitude. Jehan du Moulin drew forth the first flash.

“The mystery! and to the devil with the Flemish!” he shouted at the top of his voice, writhing and twisting around his capital like a serpent.

The crowd applauded.

“The mystery!” repeated the mob; “and to the devil with all Flanders!”

“We insist on the mystery at once,” continued the student; “or else it’s my advice to hang the Palace bailiff by way of a comedy and morality.”

“Well said,” cried the people; “and let us begin the hanging with his men.”

Loud cheers followed. The four poor devils began to turn pale and to exchange glances. The mob surged towards them, and the frail wooden railing parting them from the multitude bent and swayed beneath the pressure.

It was a critical moment.

“Down with them! Down with them!” was the cry from every side.

At that instant the hangings of the dressing-room, which we have already described, were raised, giving passage to a personage the mere sight of whom suddenly arrested the mob, changing rage to curiosity as if by magic.

“Silence! Silence!”

This person, but little reassured, and trembling in every limb, advanced to the edge of the table, with many bows, which, in proportion as he approached, grew more and more like genuflections. However, peace was gradually restored. There remained only that slight murmur always arising from the silence of a vast multitude.

“Sir citizens,” said he, “and fair citizenesses, we shall have the honor to declaim and perform before his Eminence the Cardinal a very fine morality entitled, ‘The Wise Decision of Mistress Virgin Mary.’ I am to enact Jupiter. His Eminence is at this moment es corting the very honorable ambassadors of his Highness the Duke of Austria, which is just now detained to listen to the speech of the Rector of the University at the Donkeys’ Gate. As soon as the most eminent Cardinal arrives, we will begin.”

It is plain that it required nothing less than the intervention of Jupiter himself to save the poor unfortunate officers of the bailiff. If we had had the good luck to invent this very truthful history, and consequently to be responsible for it to our lady of Criticism, the classic rule, Nec deus intersit,l could not be brought up against us at this point. Moreover, Lord Jupiter’s costume was very handsome, and contributed not a little to calm the mob by attracting its entire attention. Jupiter was clad in a brigandine covered with black velvet, with gilt nails; on his head was a flat cap trimmed with silver-gilt buttons; and had it not been for the paint and the big beard which covered each a half of his face, had it not been for the roll of gilded cardboard, sprinkled with spangles and all bristling with shreds of tinsel, which he carried in his hand, and in which experienced eyes readily recognized the thunder, had it not been for his flesh-colored feet bound with ribbons in Greek fashion, he might have sustained a comparison for his severity of bearing with any Breton archer in the Duke of Berry’s regiment.

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.

“Noël! Noël!”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?”

“You mean the part of Jupiter?” replied the unknown.

“Oh, yes,” said Liénarde, “isn’t she silly? So you know Jupiter?”

“Michel Giborne?” replied the unknown. “Yes, madame.”

“He has a fine beard!” said Liénarde.

“Will it be very interesting—what they are going to recite up there?” asked Gisquette, shyly.

“Very interesting indeed,” replied the stranger, without the least hesitation.

“What is it to be?” said Liénarde.

“‘The Wise Decision of Madame Virgin Mary,’ a morality, if you please, madame.”

“Ah, that’s another thing,” replied Liénarde.

A short pause followed. The stranger first broke the silence:—

“It is quite a new morality, which has never yet been played.”

“Then it is not the same,” said Gisquette, “that was given two years ago, on the day of the legate’s arrival, and in which three beautiful girls took the part of—”

“Sirens,” said Liénarde.

“And all naked,” added the young man.