Gringoire was seriously put out. Recovering from his first stupefaction, he pulled himself together hurriedly and shouted to the four actors on the stage: “Go on! que diable! go on!” without deigning even a glance of reprobation at the two brawlers.

At that moment he felt a pluck at the edge of his surcoat, and turning round, not in the best of humours, he forced an unwilling smile to his lips, for it was the pretty hand of Gisquette la Gencienne thrust through the balustrade and thus soliciting his attention.

“Monsieur,” said the girl, “are they going on?”

“To be sure,” Gringoire replied, half offended by the question.

“In that case, messire,” she continued, ’will you of your courtesy explain to me—”

“What they are going to say?” broke in Gringoire. “Well, listen.”

“No,” said Gisquette; “but what they have already said.”

Gringoire started violently like a man touched in an open wound. “A pestilence on the witless little dunce!” he muttered between his teeth; and from that moment Gisquette was utterly lost in his estimation.

Meanwhile the actors had obeyed his injunction, and the public, seeing that they were beginning to speak, resettled itself to listen; not, however, without having lost many a beautiful phrase in the soldering of the two parts of the piece which had so abruptly been cut asunder. Gringoire reflected bitterly on this fact. However, tranquility had gradually been restored, Jehan was silent, the beggar was counting the small change in his hat, and the play had once more got the upper hand.

Sooth to say, it was a very fine work which, it seems to us, might well be turned to account even now with a few modifications. The exposition, perhaps somewhat lengthy and dry, but strictly according to prescribed rules, was simple, and Gringoire, in the inner sanctuary of his judgment, frankly admired its perspicuity.

As one might very well suppose, the four allegorical personages were somewhat fatigued after having travelled over three parts of the globe without finding an opportunity of disposing suitably of their golden dolphin. Thereupon, a long eulogy on the marvellous fish, with a thousand delicate allusions to the young betrothed of Marguerite of Flanders— who at that moment was languishing in dismal seclusion at Amboise, entirely unaware that Labour and Clergy, Nobility and Commerce, had just made the tour of the world on his behalf. The said dolphin, then, was handsome, was young, was brave; above all (splendid origin of all the royal virtues) he was the son of the Lion of France. Now I maintain that this bold metaphor is admirable, and the natural history of the stage has no occasion on a day of allegory and royal epithalamium to take exception at a dolphin who is son to a lion. These rare and Pindaric combinations merely prove the poet’s enthusiasm. Nevertheless, in justice to fair criticism be it said, the poet might have developed this beautiful idea in less than two hundred lines. On the other hand, by the arrangements of Monsieur the Provost, the Mystery was to last from noon till four o’clock, and they were obliged to say something. Besides, the people listened very patiently.

Suddenly, in the very middle of a quarrel between Dame Commerce and my Lady Nobility, and just as Labour was pronouncing this wonderful line:

“Beast more triumphant ne’er in woods I’ve seen,”

the door of the reserved platform which up till then had remained inopportunely closed, now opened still more inopportunely, and the stentorian voice of the usher announced “His Eminence Monseigneur the Cardinal de Bourbon!”