Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com

eathed, elbowing each other in actual flesh and blood on the platform, in the Flemish Embassy, under
the Cardinal’s robe or Coppenole’s leathern jerkin, than painted, tricked out, speaking in stilted verse,
mere dummies stuffed into yellow and white tunics, as Gringoire represented them.
Nevertheless, seeing tranquillity somewhat restored, our poet bethought him of a stratagem which might
have been the saving of the whole thing.
“Monsieur,” said he, addressing a man near him, a stout, worthy person with a long-suffering
countenance, “now, how would it be if they were to begin it again?”
“What?” asked the man.
“Why, the Mystery,” said Gringoire.
“Just as you please,” returned the other.
This half consent was enough for Gringoire, and taking the business into his own hands, he began
calling out, making himself as much one of the crowd as possible: “Begin the Mystery again! Begin
again!”
“What the devil’s all the hubbub about down there?” said Joannes de Molendino (for Gringoire was
making noise enough for half a dozen). “What, comrades, is the Mystery not finished and done with?
They are going to begin again; that’s not fair!”
“No! no!” shouted the scholars in chorus. “Down with the Mystery—down with it!”
But Gringoire only multiplied himself and shouted the louder, “Begin again! begin again!”
These conflicting shouts at last attracted the attention of the Cardinal.
“Monsieur the Provost of the Palais,” said he to a tall man in black standing a few paces from him,
“have these folk gone demented that they are making such an infernal noise?”
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.”