THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME.

.'

¦

the horror-stricken actor, who was too much en-
grossed to notice him.
He advanced a step farther. " Jupiter ! " said
he ; " my dear Jupiter ! " Still the other heard
him not. At length, the tall pale man, losing his
patience, called out almost under his very nose,
"Michel Giborne!"
"Who calls me ?" said Jupiter, starting like one
suddenly awakened.
" I," replied the personage in black.
" Aha ! " said Jupiter.
" Begin immediately," rejoined the other.    Com-
ply with the wish of the audience.   I undertake
to pacify Monsieur the B-:,iff, who will pacify
Monsieur the Cardinal."
Jupiter breathed again.
"Gentlemen citizens," cried he with all the
force ef his lungs to the crowd who continued to
hoot him, " we shall begin forthwith."
" Evoe, Jupiter ! Pktudite cives ! " shouted the
scholars.
" Huzza ! huzza ! " cried the populace.
A clapping of hands that was absolutely deaf-
ening ensued ; and, after Jupiter had retired be-
hind his tapestry, the hall still, shook with accla-
mations.
Meanwhile, the unknown personage, who had
so magically laid the tempest, had modestly with-
drawn into the penumbra of his pillar, where he
would no doubt have remained invisible, motion-
less, and mute as before, but for two young
females, who, being in the front rank of the
spectators, had remarked his colloquy with Michel
Giboriie Jupiter.
" Master ! " said one of them, beckoning him to
come to her.
"Hold your tongue, my dear Lienarde," said
her neighbor, a buxom, fresh-colored damsel, gayly
tired in her Sunday bravery, " he is not a clerk,
but a layman ; you must not call him master, but
messire."
" Messire ! " said Lienarde.
The unknown advanced to the balustrade.
" What would you with me, my pretty damsels ? "
inquired he eagerly.
" Oh ! nothing," said Lienarde, quite confused :
" it is my neighbor, Gisquette la Gencienne, who
wants to speak to you."
"Notso," replied Gisquette, blushing; "itwas
Lienarde who called you Master, and I told her
she must say Messire."
The two young females cast down their eyes.
The other, who desired nothing better than to en-
gage them in conversation, surveyed them with a
smile.
" Then you have nothing to say to me ? "
"0 dear, no ?" answered Gisquette.
"Nothing," said Lienarde.
Lienarde, "at the Trinity, the Passion was repre-
sented by persons, without speaking."
"If I recollect right," cried Gisquette, "it was
Christ on the cross, and the two thieves on the
right and left."
Here the young gossins, warming at the recol-
lection of the entry of Monsieur the Legate, began
to speak both together.
"And further on, at the Porte aux Peintres,
there were other characters magnificently dressed.'
"And at tlie conduit of St.Innocent, a hunter
pursuing a doe with a great noise of dogs and
horns."
" And then, at the shambles, those scaffolds re-
presenting Dieppe ! "
"And when the Legate passed, you know, Gis-
quette, how our people attacked it, and all the
English had their throats cut."
"And then the superb personages at the Pont
au Change, which was covered all over with an
awning."                                                        ,
"And as the Legate passed, more than two
hundred dozen of all sorts of birds were let loose
upon tlie bridge.   What a fine Bight that was,
"This will be a finer to-day," remarked the
interlocutor, who seemed to listen to them with
impatience.                                .                  .„,
"You promise us, then,that this mystery will be
a very fine one ? " said Gisquette.
"Certainly," replied he, adding with a degree of
emphasis, " I made it myself."
"Indeed!" exclaimed the young females m
amazement.
"Indeed!"responded the poet, bridling up a
little; "that is to say, there are two of us; Jehan
Marchand, who sawed the planks and put together
the wood-work of the theater, and 1 who wrote
the piece.   My name is Pierre Gringoire."
The author of the Cid could not have said with
greater pride, Pierre Corneille.
Our readers may probably have perceived that
some time must have elapsed between the moment
when Jupiter disappeared behind the tapestry
and that in which the author of the new morality
revealed himself so abruptly to the simple admi-
ration of Gisquette and Lienarde. It was an
extraordinary circumstance that the crowd, a few
minutes before so tumultuous, now waited most
meekly on the faith of the comedian ; which
proves that everlasting truth, confirmed by daily
experience in our theaters, that the best way to
make the public wait with patience is to affirm
that you are just going to begin.
At any rate, the young scholar Joannes did not
fall asleep at his post.
" Soho, there ! " he shouted all at once, amid the
quiet expectation which had succeeded the dis
The tall fair young man was just retiring, but  turbance.   " Jupiter, Madame the Virgin, puppets
_   i___   :___;„:.:..,.   ~;».1„   I..A   „a min^ +a lof Wm    .f *\,a rtauil  ar» vo mnlrinor vrtnr crame of liar    The
the two inquisitive girls had no mind to let him
go so easily.
"Messire," said Gisquette, with the impetuosity
of a sluice that is opened, or of a woman who has
taken her resolution, "youmust know that soldier
who is to play the part of the Virgin Mary in the
mystery? "
"You mean the part of Jupiter ?," rejoined the
unknown.
"Ah yes!" said Lienarde; "she is stupid, I
think.   You know Jupiter, then ? "
"Michel Giborne?" answered the pale man.
"What a goodly beard he has!" said Lie-
n fir tip
"Will it be fine—what they are going to say up
there ?" timidly inquired Gisquette.
"Mighty fine, I assure you," replied the un-
known, without the least hesitation.
"What will it be ? " said Lienarde.
"Tfie good Judgment of Madame the Virgin, a
morality an't please you madame."
"Ah! that's a different thing," rejoined Lie-
narde.
A short silence ensued ; it was broken by the
unknown informant. "This morality is quite a
new piece; it has never been performed."
"Then," said Gisquette, "it is not the same that
was given two years ago, at the entry of Monsieur
the Legate, in which three '[handsome young girls
enacted the parts of-----"
" Of syrens," continued Leinarde, modestly cast-
ing down her eyes. Gisquette looked at her and
did the same. The tall slim man then proceeded,
with a smile: "The morality which will be repre-
sented to-day was composed expressly for the
Princess of Flanders."
" Will there be any love-songs in it ? " asked
Gisquette.
"0 fie! in a morality I" said the unknown;
" they would be inconsistent with the character
of the piece. If it were a mummery, well and
good."
" What a pity ! " exclaimed Gisquette. " On that
day there were at the conduit of Ponceau wild
men and women who fought together, and put
themselves into a great many attitudes, singing
little songs all the while."
"What is fit for a legate," dryly replied the" un-
known, "may not be fat for a princess."
"And near them," resumed Lienarde, " was a
hand of musicians playing delightful tunes."
"And, for the refreshment of passengers," con-
tinued Gisquette, "the conduit threw out wine,
milk and hypocras, at three mouths, for every one
to drink that listed."
" And a Uttle below the Ponceau," proceeded
of the devil, are ye making your game of us? The
mystery ! The mystery ! Begin at once, or look
to yourselves."
This was quite enough to produce the desired
effect. A band of instruments, high and low, in
the interior of the theater, commenced playing;
the tapestry was raised, and forth came four per-
sons bepainted and bedecked with various colors,
who climbed the rude stage-ladder, and, on reach-
ing the upper platform, drew up in a row before
the audience, to whom they paid the usual tribute
of low obeisance. The symphony ceased, and the
mystery commenced.
The performers; having been liberally repaid
for their obeisances with applause, began, amid
solemn silence on the part of the audience, a pro-
logue, which we gladly spare the reader. On this
occasion, as it often happens at the present day,
the public bestowed much more attention on the
dresses of the performers than on the speeches
which they had to deliver; and, to confess the
truth, the public were in the right. All four were
habited in robes half white and half yellow, which
differed in nothing but the nature of the stuff;
the first being of gold and silver brocade, the
second of silk, the third of woolen, and the fourth
of linen. The first of these personages carried a
sword in the right hand, the second two gold
keys, the third a pair of scales, and the fourth a
spade: and, to assist those dull perceptions which
might not have seen clearly through the trans-
parency of these attributes, there were embroidered
in large black letters at the bottom of the robe of
brocade, "My name is Nobility;" at the bottom
of the silken robe, " My name is Clergy; " at the
bottom of the woolen robe, " My name is Trade; "
and at the bottom of the linen robe, " My name is
Labor." The sex of the two male characters,
Clergy and Labor, was sufficiently indicated to
every intelligent spectator by the shortness of
their robes and the fashion of their caps, while
the two females had longer garments, and hoods
upon their heads.
Any person, too, must have been exceedingly
perverse or impenetrably obtuse not to collect
from the prologue that Labor was wedded to
Trade, and Clergy to Nobility; and that the two
happy couples were the joint possessors of a mag-
nificent golden dolphin, which they intended to
adjudge to the most beautiful of women. Ac-
cordingly, they were traveling through the world
in quest of this beauty; and, after successively re-
jecting the Queen of Golconda, the Princess of
Trebisond, the daughter of the great Khan of
Tartary and many others, Labor and Clergy,
Nobility and Trade had come to rest themselves
upon the marble table of the Palace of Justice; at
the same time bestowing on the honest auditorv
as many maxims and apophthegms as could in
those days have been picked up at the Faculty of
Arts, at the examinations, disputations and acta
at which masters take their caps and their de
grees.
All this was really exceedingly fine ; but yet
among the whole concourse upon whom the four
allegorical personages were pouring, as if in emu-
laticn of each other, torrents of metaphors, there
was not a more attentive ear, a more vehemently
throbbing heart, a wilder looking eye, a more out
stretched neck, than the eye, the ear, the neck and
the heart of the author, of the poet, of the worthy
Pierre Gringoire, who a few moments before could
not deny himself the pleasure of telling his name
to two handsome girls. He had retired a few
paces from them, behind his pillar, and there he
listened, he watched, he relished. The hearty ap.
plause which had greeted the opening of his pro-
logue still rang in his ears; and he was completely
absorbed in that kind of ecstatic contemplation
with which an author sees his ideas drop one by
one from the lips of the actor, amid the silence of
a vast assembly.
With pain we record it, this first ecstasy was soon
disturbed. Scarcely had Gringoire raised to his
lips the intoxicating cup of joy and triumph,
when it was dashed with bitterness.
A ragged medicant, who could make nothing by
his vocation, lost as he was among the crowd, and
who had, probably, not found a sufficient indem.
nity in the pockets of his neighbors, conceived the
idea of perching himself upon some conspicuous
point, for the purpose of attracting notice and
alms. During the delivery of the prologue, he
had accordingly scrambled, by the aid of the pil-
lars of the reserved platform, up to the cornice
which ran round it below the balustrade, and
there he seated himself silently, soliciting the
notice and the pity of the multitude by his rags
and a hideous sore which covered his right arm.
The prologue was proceeding without molesta-
tation, when, as ill luck would have it, Joannes
Frollo, from the top of his pillar, espied the mend-
icant and his grimaces. An outrageous fit of
laughter seized the young wag, who, caring little
about interrupting the performance and disturb^
ing the profound attention of the audience, mer-
rily cried, " Only look at that rapscallion begging
yonder !"
Header, if you have ever thrown a stone into a
pond swarming with frogs, or fired a gun at a
covey of birds, you may form some conception of
the effect produced by this incongruous exclama,
tion, amid the general silence and attention.
Gringoire started as at an electric shock; the
prologue stopped short, and every head turned
tumuTtuously toward flie mendicant, who, so far
from being disconcerted, regarded this incident
as a favorable opportunity for making a harvest
and began to drawl out, in a doleful tone, and
with half closed eyes, "Charity, if you please!"
" Why, upon my soul ! " resumed Joannes " 't is
Clopin Trouillefou ! Hoho ! my fine fellow, you
found the wound on your leg in the way, and so
you've clapped it on your arm, have you? "
As he thus spoke, he threw, with the dexterity
of a monkey, a piece of small coin into the greasy
hat which the beggar held with his ailing arm.
The latter pocketed, without wincing, both the
money and the sarcasm, and continued, in a
lamentable tone, " Charity, if you please ! "
This episode considerably distracted the atten-
tion of the audience; and a number of the spec-
tators, with Bobin Poussepain and all the clerks
at their head, loudly applauded this extempore
duet, performed, in the middle of the prologue,
by the scholar with his squeaking voice and the
mendicant with his monotonous descant.
Gringoire was sorely displeaed. On recovering
from his first stupefaction, he bawled out lustily
to the four actors on the stage, " Why the devil
do ye stop? Go on ! go on ! " without even con-
descending to cast a look of disdain at the two
interrupters.                                ,    . .,    ,. .   .
At this moment he felt a twitch at the skirt oi
his surtout; he turned round in an ill humor, ana
had some difficulty to raise a smile, which, now-
ever, he could not suppress. It was_ the plump,
handsome arm of Gisquette la Gencienne, thrust
through the balustrade, which thus solicited nis
attention.                                    „            .„ -j.t,
"Sir," said the damsel, "will they go on witn
the mystery?"                                .        , „ ,mrfl
"Most certainly," replied Gringoire, not aiitue
shocked at the question.                          .  „ „;,.,
"In that case, Messire,"  she resumed^   wui
you have the courtesy to explain to pe-7rL„nirB
" What they are going to say? " asked Gringoire,
interrupting her.   "Well, listen."
"No," rejdined Gisquette, "but what they have
been saying so far."                             ...  ¦ -.mmA
Gringoire started like a person with awounu
which you have touched in the qui™.              .
" A plague on the stupid wench ! " muttered no
between his teeth.                   .              ,. •„ v-is
Gisquette had completely ruined herself in ^
g°TheTctê^
tion ; and the public, seeing that they had resumed
the performance, began again to listen, ou
without losing a great many beauties, b™"   d
auiuyt  uivioiuu. ui  mo   *""T".™.C „ v»ort to undet-
the species of soldering which they h^ ™ unu
go. Such, atleast, was the painful reflection me"