Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com

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 cortège, 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
ingeniously and dramatically constructed. The four characters of the Prologue were still engaged in
bewailing their hopeless dilemma when Venus herself, vera incessu patuit dea, appeared before them,
wearing a splendid robe emblazoned with the ship of the city of Paris 21. She had come to claim for
herself the dolphin promised to the Most Fair. She had the support of Jupiter, whose thunder was heard
rumbling in the dressing-room, and the goddess was about to bear away her prize-in other words, to
espouse Monsieur the Dauphin—when a little girl, clad in white damask, and holding a daisy in her hand
(transparent personification of Marguerite of Flanders), arrived on the scene to contest it with Venus.
Coup de théâtre and quick change. After a brisk dispute, Marguerite, Venus, and the side characters
agreed to refer the matter to the good judgment of the Blessed Virgin. There was another fine part, that of
Don Pedro, King of Mesopotamia; but it was difficult amid so many interruptions to make out exactly
what was his share in the transaction. And all this had scrambled up the ladder.
But the play was done for; not one of these many beauties was heard or understood. It seemed as if,