we may suppose, had not found sufficient indemnity in the pockets of his neighbors, had bethought himself of finding some conspicuous perch from which to attract the attention and the alms of the good people. Accordingly, while the first lines of the prologue were delivering, he had hoisted himself up by means of the pillars that supported the reserve estrade, to the cornice which ran along the bottom of its balustrade; and there he had seated himself, soliciting the attention and the pity of the multitude, by the display of his rags, and of a hideous sore that covered his right arm. However, he did not utter a word. The silence which he kept allowed the prologue to proceed without any distraction; and no sensible disorder would have occurred, but that, as ill luck would have it, the scholar Joannes espied from his own perch upon one of the great pillars the beggar and his grimaces. The young wag was seized with an immoderate fit of laughter, and, regardless of the interruption to the performance, and the disturbance to the general attention, he cried out in a tone of gayety, "Look at that sham leper, there, asking alms!" Any one that has ever thrown a stone into a pond full of frogs, or fired a gun among a flock of birds, may form an idea of the effect produced by these unseasonable words dropped in the midst of the universal attention fixed upon the heroes of the mystery. Gringoire started as if he had felt an electric shock. The prologue was cut short, and all heads were turned tumultuously VOL. I. - 3 towards the mendicant, who, far from being disconcerted, found in this incident a good opportunity of making a harvest, and began to cry out with a doleful look, half shutting his eyes, "Charity! if you please." "Why, on my soul," cried Joannes, "it's Clopin Troillefou. Hollo! friend; so thy sore wasn't comfortable on thy leg, that thou 'st put it on thy arm." So saying, he threw, with the dexterity of a monkey, a small white coin into the old greasy hat which the beggar held out with his diseased limb. The beggar received without flinching both the alms and the sarcasm, and continued in a piteous tone, "Charity! if you please." This episode had considerably distracted the auditory; and a good many of the spectators, with Robin Poussepain and all the clerks at their head, merrily applauded this whimsical duet which had been struck up thus unexpectedly in the middle of the prologue, between the scholar with his shrill clamorous voice, and the beggar with his imperturbable drone. Gringoire was grievously dissatisfied. Having recovered from his first stupefaction, he was tearing his lungs with crying out to the four characters on the stage, "Go on! - what the devil! - go on!" without even deigning to cast a look of disdain upon the two interrupters. At that moment he felt some one pulling at the skirt of his coat; he turned round, not without some little ill-humor, and had much ado to smile. Nevertheless he found it necessary to do so, for it was the pretty arm of Gisquette-la-Gencienne, which, extended through the balustrade, thus solicited his attention. "Monsieur," said the girl, " will they go on?" "To be sure," answered Gringoire, much shocked at the question. "Oh, then, messire," she resumed, "would you just have the courtesy to explain to me -” "What they are going to say?" interrupted Gringoire. "Well - listen." "No," said Gisquette, "but what they have said already." Gringoire started as if touched to the quick. "A plague on the little stupid witless wench!" muttered he; and from that moment Gisquette was utterly ruined in his estimation. Meanwhile the actors had obeyed his injunction; and the audience, observing that they were once more trying to make themselves heard, had again set themselves to listen, not, however, without the loss of many a poetic beauty, in the sort of soldering that had been made of the two parts of the piece which had been so abruptly cut short. Gringoire whispered to himself this bitter reflection. However, tranquillity had been gradually restored; the scholar held his tongue, the beggar was counting some coin in his hat, and the piece had resumed its ascendency. It was really a very fine composition, and we really think it might be turned to some account, even now, by means of a few modifications, The exposition, rather long indeed, and rather dry, was simple; and Gringoire, in the candid sanctuary of his own judgment, admired its clearness. As may well be supposed, the four allegorical personages were a little fatigued with travelling over the three known quarters of the world without finding an opportunity of suitably disposing of their golden dolphin. Hence a long eulogy upon the marvellous fish, with numberless delicate allusions to the young prince betrothed to Margaret of Flanders, which young prince was at that time in very dismal seclusion at Amboise, without the slightest suspicion that Tillage and Clergy, Nobility and Trade, had just been making the tour of the world on his account. The dolphin aforesaid, then, was young, was handsome, was vigorous, and above all (magnificent origin of all the royal virtues!) was son of the lion of France. "Now, I declare," says our author, "that this bold metaphor is admirable, and that dramatic natural history, on a day of allegory and of a royal epithalamium, finds nothing at all shocking in a dolphin the son of a lion. On the contrary, it is precisely those rare and pindaric mixtures that prove the poet's enthusiasm. However, to have disarmed criticism altogether, the poet might have developed this fine idea in less than two hundred lines. It is true that the mystery was to last according, to the order of monsieur the provost, from noon till four o'clock, and that it was necessary to say something. Besides, it was very patiently listened to." |