"And near them," continued Liénarde, " was playing a number of bass instruments that gave out wonderful melodies."

"And to refresh the passengers," resumed Gisquette, "the fountain threw out by three mouths wine, milk, and hippocras, and everybody drank that liked."

"And a little below the Ponceau fountain," continued Liénarde, "at the Trinity fountain, there was a Passion performed without any speaking."

"Oh, yes, don't I remember it!" exclaimed Gisquette : "God on the cross, and the two thieves, one on each side of him!"

Here the young gossips, getting warm in the recollection of the legate's entry, began to talk both at

once.

"And further on, at the Porte-aux-Peintres, there were other characters very richly dressed."

"And do you remember, at St. Innocent's fountain, that huntsman following a hind, with a great noise of dogs and hunting-trumpets?"

"And then at the Boucherie de Paris, those scaffolds that presented the Bastile of Dieppe."

"And when the legate was going by, you know, Gisquette, they gave the assault, and the English all had their throats cut."

"And what fine characters there were against the Châtelet gate!"

"And on the Pont-au-Change, which was all covered over with carpeting from one end to the other."

"And when the legate went over it, they let fly from the bridge above two hundred dozen of all kinds of birds. Wasn't that a fine sight, Liénarde?"

"There will be a finer to-day," at length interrupted their interlocutor, who seemed to listen to them with impatience.

"You promise us that this mystery shall be a fine one," said Gisquette.

"Assuredly," returned he; and then he added, with peculiar emphasis, "Mesdemoiselles, 'tis I who am the author of it."

"Really!" said the young women, all amazed. "Yes, really," answered the poet, bridling up a little; "that is to say, there are two of us, Jehan Marchand, who has sawn the planks and put together the woodwork of the theatre; and myself, who have written the piece. My name is Pierre Gringoire."

The author of the Cid himself could not have said with a loftier air, "My name is Pierre Corneille."

Our readers may have observed that some time must already have elapsed since the moment at which Jupiter retired behind the drapery and that at which the author of the new morality revealed himself thus abruptly to the simple admiration of Gisquette and Liénarde. It is worthy of remark that all that multitude, who a few minutes before had been so tumultuous, now waited quietly on the faith of the player's promise, - an evidence of this everlasting truth, still daily experienced in our theatres: that the best means of making the audience wait patiently is to assure them that the performance will commence immediately.

However, the scholar Joannes was not asleep. "Hollo!" shouted he suddenly, amid the peaceful expectation which had succeeded the disturbance. "Jupiter! madame the Virgin! you rowers of the devil's boat! are you joking to one another? The piece! the piece! Begin! or we'll begin again!"

This was enough. A music of high and low keyed instruments now struck up in the apartment underneath the stage; the hangings were lifted up, and four characters in motley attire, with painted faces, came out, clambered up the steep ladder already mentioned, arrived safe upon the upper platform, and drew up in line before the audience, whom they saluted with a profound obeisance; whereupon the symphony was silent, for the mystery was now really commencing.

The four characters, after receiving abundant payment for their obeisances in the plaudits of the multitude, commenced amid a profound silence the delivery of a prologue, which we willingly spare the reader. However, as still happens in our own time, the audience paid more attention to the dresses they wore than to the parts they were enacting; and in truth they did right. They were all four dressed in gowns half yellow and half white, differing from each other only in the nature of the material, - the first being of gold and silver brocade, the second of silk, and the third of wool, and the fourth of linen. The årst character carried in the right hand a sword, the second two golden keys, the third a pair of scales, and the fourth, a spade, and in order to assist such indolent understandings as might not have seen clearly through the transparency of these attributes, there might be read in large black letters worked at the bottom of the brocade dress, Je m'appelle Noblesse ("my name is Nobility"); at the bottom of the silk dress, Je m'appelle Clergé (“my name is Clergy"); at the bottom of the woollen dress, Je m'appelle Marchandise ("my name is Trade"); and at the bottom of the linen garment, Je m'appelle Labour ("my name is Tillage"). The sex of the two male characters - Clergy and Tillage - was clearly indicated to every judicious spectator by the comparative shortness of their garments and the cramignole which they wore upon their heads; while the two female ones, besides that their robes were of ampler length, were distinguishable by their hoods.

It would also have argued great perverseness not to have discovered through the poetic drapery of the prologue that Tillage was married to Trade, and Clergy to Nobility, and that these two happy couples possessed in common a magnificent golden dolphin, which they intended to adjudge only to the most beautiful damsel. Accordingly, they were going all over the world in search of this beauty; and after successively rejecting the Queen of Golconda, the Princess of Trebizond, the daughter of the Cham of Tartary, etc., Tillage and Clergy, Nobility and Trade, were come to rest themselves upon the marble table of the Palais de Justice, and deliver at the same time to the worthy auditory as many moral sentences and maxims as might in that day be expended upon the members of the faculty of arts, at the examinations, sophisms, determinances, figures, and acts, at which the masters took their degrees. All this was in truth very fine.

Meanwhile, in all that assemblage upon which the four allegorical personages seemed to be striving, which could pour out the most copious floods of metaphor, no ear was so attentive, no heart so palpitating, no eye so eager, no neck so outstretched, as were the eye, ear, neck, and heart of the author, the poet, the brave Pierre Gringoire, who a moment before had been unable to forego the delight of telling his name to two pretty girls.

He had returned to the distance of a few paces from them, behind his pillar; and there it was that he listened, looked, and enjoyed. The benevolent plaudits which had greeted the opening of his prologue were still resounding in his breast; and he was completely absorbed in that species of ecstatic contemplation with which a dramatic author marks his ideas dropping one by one from the lips of the actor, amid the silence of a crowded auditory. Worthy Pierre Gringoire !

It pains us to relate it, but this first ecstasy was very soon disturbed. Scarcely had the lips of Gringoire approached this intoxicating cup of joy and triumph, before a drop of bitterness was cruelly mingled in it.

A tattered mendicant, who, lost as he was among the crowd, could receive no contributions, and who,