“You are off to seek a lodging in the Rue Thibautodè, aren’t you, Monsieur the Rector, own partner to the devil!”

Now came the turn of the other dignitaries.

“Down with the beadles! Down with the mace-bearers!”

“Tell me, Robin Poussepain, who is that one over there?”

“It is Gilbert de Suilly, Gilbertus de Soliaco, the Chancellor of the College of Autun.”

“Here, take my shoe—you have a better place than I have—throw it in his face!”

“Saturnalitias mittimus ecce nuces!”¹⁰

“Down with the six theologians in their white surplices!”

“Are those the theologians? I took them for the six white geese Sainte-Geneviéve pays to the Town as tribute for the fief of Roogny.”

“Down with the physicians!”

“Down with all the pompous and squabbling disputations!”

“Here goes my cap at thy head, Chancellor of Sainte-Geneviéve; I owe thee a grudge. He gave my place in the Nation of Normandy to little Ascaino Falzaspada, who as an Italian, belongs of right to the Province of Bourges.”

“ ’Tis an injustice!” cried the scholars in chorus. “Down with the Chancellor of Sainte-Geneviéve!”

“Ho, there, Maître Joachim de Ladehors! Ho, Louis Dahuille! Ho, Lambert Hoctement!”

“The devil choke the Procurator of the Nation of Germany!”

“And the chaplains of the Sainte-Chapelle in their gray amices; cum tunicis grisis!”

“Seu de pellibus grisis fourratis!”

“There go the Masters of Art! Oh, the fine red copes! and oh, the fine black ones!”

“That makes a fine tail for the Rector!”

“He might be the Doge of Venice going to espouse the sea.”

“Look, Jehan, the canons of Sainte-Geneviéve!”

“The foul fiend take the whole lot of them!”

“Abbè Claude Choart! Doctor Claude Choart, do you seek Marie la Giffarde?”

“You’ll find her in the Rue Glatigny.”

“Bed-making for the King of the Bawdies!”

“She pays her fourpence—quatuor denarios.”

“Aut unum bombum.”