The Provost of the Palais was a sort of amphibious magistrate; the bat, as it were, of the judicial order, partaking at once of the nature of the rat and the bird, the judge and the soldier.

He approached his Eminence, and with no slight fear of his displeasure, explained in faltering accents the unseemly behaviour of the populace: how, the hour of noon having arrived before his Eminence, the players had been forced into commencing without waiting for his Eminence.

The Cardinal burst out laughing.

“By my faith, Monsieur the Rector of the University might well have done likewise. What say you Maître Guillaume Rym?”

“Monseigneur,” replied Rym, “let us be content with having missed half the play. That is so much gained at any rate.”

“Have the fellows permission to proceed with their mummeries?” inquired the Provost.

“Oh, proceed, proceed,” returned the Cardinal; “ ’tis all one to me. Meanwhile I can be reading my breviary.”

The Provost advanced to the front of the platform, and after obtaining silence by a motion of the hand, called out:

“Burghers, country and townsfolk, to satisfy those who desire the play should begin again and those who desire it should finish, his Eminence orders that it should continue.”

Thus both parties had to be content. Nevertheless, both author and audience long bore the Cardinal a grudge in consequence.

The persons on the stage accordingly resumed the thread of their discourse, and Gringoire hoped that at least the remainder of his great work would get a hearing. But this hope was doomed to speedy destruction like his other illusions. Silence had indeed been established to a certain extent, but Gringoire had not observed that when the Cardinal gave the order for the Mystery to proceed, the platform was far from being filled, and that the Flemish ambassadors were followed by other persons belonging to the rest of the cortég, whose names and titles, hurled intermittently by the usher into the midst of his dialogue, caused considerable havoc therein. Imagine the effect in a drama of to-day of the doorkeeper bawling between the lines, or even between the first two halves of an alexandrine, such parentheses as these:

“Maître Jacques Charmolue, Procurator of the King in the Ecclesiastical Court!”

“Jehan de Harlay, Esquire, Officer of the Mounted Night Watch of the City of Paris!”

“Messire Galiot de Genoilhac, Knight, Lord of Brussac, Chief of the King’s Artillery!”

“Maître Dreux-Raguier, Inspector of Waters and Forests of our Lord the King, throughout the lands of France, Champagne, and Brie!”

“Messire Louis de Graville, Knight, Councillor and Chamberlain to the King, Admiral of France, Ranger of the Forest of Vincennes!”

“Maître Denis le Mercier, Custodian to the House for the Blind in Paris!” etc., etc., etc.

It was insufferable.

This peculiar accompaniment, which made it so difficult to follow the piece, was the more exasperating to Gringoire as he was well aware that the interest increased rapidly as the work advanced, and that it only wanted hearing to be a complete success. It would indeed be difficult to imagine a plot more