Notre-Dame de Paris | Page 7

effected through a window in the corridor of the gold chamber, had
been erected for the Flemish emissaries and the other great personages
invited to the presentation of the mystery play.
It was upon the marble table that the mystery was to be enacted, as
usual. It had been arranged for the purpose, early in the morning; its
rich slabs of marble, all scratched by the heels of law clerks, supported
a cage of carpenter's work of considerable height, the upper surface of
which, within view of the whole hall, was to serve as the theatre, and
whose interior, masked by tapestries, was to take the place of
dressing-rooms for the personages of the piece. A ladder, naively
placed on the outside, was to serve as means of communication
between the dressing-room and the stage, and lend its rude rungs to
entrances as well as to exits. There was no personage, however
unexpected, no sudden change, no theatrical effect, which was not
obliged to mount that ladder. Innocent and venerable infancy of art and

contrivances!
Four of the bailiff of the palace's sergeants, perfunctory guardians of all
the pleasures of the people, on days of festival as well as on days of
execution, stood at the four corners of the marble table.
The piece was only to begin with the twelfth stroke of the great palace
clock sounding midday. It was very late, no doubt, for a theatrical
representation, but they had been obliged to fix the hour to suit the
convenience of the ambassadors.
Now, this whole multitude had been waiting since morning. A goodly
number of curious, good people had been shivering since daybreak
before the grand staircase of the palace; some even affirmed that they
had passed the night across the threshold of the great door, in order to
make sure that they should be the first to pass in. The crowd grew more
dense every moment, and, like water, which rises above its normal
level, began to mount along the walls, to swell around the pillars, to
spread out on the entablatures, on the cornices, on the window-sills, on
all the salient points of the architecture, on all the reliefs of the
sculpture. Hence, discomfort, impatience, weariness, the liberty of a
day of cynicism and folly, the quarrels which break forth for all sorts of
causes--a pointed elbow, an iron-shod shoe, the fatigue of long
waiting--had already, long before the hour appointed for the arrival of
the ambassadors, imparted a harsh and bitter accent to the clamor of
these people who were shut in, fitted into each other, pressed, trampled
upon, stifled. Nothing was to be heard but imprecations on the Flemish,
the provost of the merchants, the Cardinal de Bourbon, the bailiff of the
courts, Madame Marguerite of Austria, the sergeants with their rods,
the cold, the heat, the bad weather, the Bishop of Paris, the Pope of the
Fools, the pillars, the statues, that closed door, that open window; all to
the vast amusement of a band of scholars and lackeys scattered through
the mass, who mingled with all this discontent their teasing remarks,
and their malicious suggestions, and pricked the general bad temper
with a pin, so to speak.
Among the rest there was a group of those merry imps, who, after
smashing the glass in a window, had seated themselves hardily on the
entablature, and from that point despatched their gaze and their
railleries both within and without, upon the throng in the hall, and the
throng upon the Place. It was easy to see, from their parodied gestures,

their ringing laughter, the bantering appeals which they exchanged with
their comrades, from one end of the hall to the other, that these young
clerks did not share the weariness and fatigue of the rest of the
spectators, and that they understood very well the art of extracting, for
their own private diversion from that which they had under their eyes, a
spectacle which made them await the other with patience.
"Upon my soul, so it's you, 'Joannes Frollo de Molendino!'" cried one
of them, to a sort of little, light-haired imp, with a well-favored and
malign countenance, clinging to the acanthus leaves of a capital; "you
are well named John of the Mill, for your two arms and your two legs
have the air of four wings fluttering on the breeze. How long have you
been here?"
"By the mercy of the devil," retorted Joannes Frollo, "these four hours
and more; and I hope that they will be reckoned to my credit in
purgatory. I heard the eight singers of the King of Sicily intone the first
verse of seven o'clock mass in the Sainte-Chapelle."
"Fine singers!" replied the other, "with voices even more pointed than
their caps! Before founding a mass for Monsieur