1---
 2date: 2017-04-12T11:14:48-04:00
 3description: "Master Jacques Coppenole"
 4featured_image: ""
 5tags: ["scene"]
 6title: "Chapter IV: Master Jacques Coppenole"
 7---
 8While the pensioner of Ghent and his eminence were exchanging very low
 9bows and a few words in voices still lower, a man of lofty stature, with a
10large face and broad shoulders, presented himself, in order to enter
11abreast with Guillaume Rym; one would have pronounced him a bull-dog by
12the side of a fox. His felt doublet and leather jerkin made a spot on the
13velvet and silk which surrounded him. Presuming that he was some groom who
14had stolen in, the usher stopped him.
15
16“Hold, my friend, you cannot pass!”
17
18The man in the leather jerkin shouldered him aside.
19
20“What does this knave want with me?” said he, in stentorian tones, which
21rendered the entire hall attentive to this strange colloquy. “Don’t you
22see that I am one of them?”
23
24“Your name?” demanded the usher.
25
26“Jacques Coppenole.”
27
28“Your titles?”
29
30“Hosier at the sign of the ‘Three Little Chains,’ of Ghent.”
31
32The usher recoiled. One might bring one’s self to announce aldermen and
33burgomasters, but a hosier was too much. The cardinal was on thorns. All
34the people were staring and listening. For two days his eminence had been
35exerting his utmost efforts to lick these Flemish bears into shape, and to
36render them a little more presentable to the public, and this freak was
37startling. But Guillaume Rym, with his polished smile, approached the
38usher.
39
40“Announce Master Jacques Coppenole, clerk of the aldermen of the city of
41Ghent,” he whispered, very low.
42
43“Usher,” interposed the cardinal, aloud, “announce Master Jacques
44Coppenole, clerk of the aldermen of the illustrious city of Ghent.”
45
46This was a mistake. Guillaume Rym alone might have conjured away the
47difficulty, but Coppenole had heard the cardinal.
48
49“No, cross of God?” he exclaimed, in his voice of thunder, “Jacques
50Coppenole, hosier. Do you hear, usher? Nothing more, nothing less. Cross
51of God! hosier; that’s fine enough. Monsieur the Archduke has more than
52once sought his _gant_\* in my hose.”
53
54_*  Got the first idea of a timing._
55
56Laughter and applause burst forth. A jest is always understood in Paris,
57and, consequently, always applauded.
58
59Let us add that Coppenole was of the people, and that the auditors which
60surrounded him were also of the people. Thus the communication between him
61and them had been prompt, electric, and, so to speak, on a level. The
62haughty air of the Flemish hosier, by humiliating the courtiers, had
63touched in all these plebeian souls that latent sentiment of dignity still
64vague and indistinct in the fifteenth century.
65
66This hosier was an equal, who had just held his own before monsieur the
67cardinal. A very sweet reflection to poor fellows habituated to respect
68and obedience towards the underlings of the sergeants of the bailiff of
69Sainte-Geneviève, the cardinal’s train-bearer.
70
71Coppenole proudly saluted his eminence, who returned the salute of the
72all-powerful bourgeois feared by Louis XI. Then, while Guillaume Rym, a
73“sage and malicious man,” as Philippe de Comines puts it, watched them
74both with a smile of raillery and superiority, each sought his place, the
75cardinal quite abashed and troubled, Coppenole tranquil and haughty, and
76thinking, no doubt, that his title of hosier was as good as any other,
77after all, and that Marie of Burgundy, mother to that Marguerite whom
78Coppenole was to-day bestowing in marriage, would have been less afraid of
79the cardinal than of the hosier; for it is not a cardinal who would have
80stirred up a revolt among the men of Ghent against the favorites of the
81daughter of Charles the Bold; it is not a cardinal who could have
82fortified the populace with a word against her tears and prayers, when the
83Maid of Flanders came to supplicate her people in their behalf, even at
84the very foot of the scaffold; while the hosier had only to raise his
85leather elbow, in order to cause to fall your two heads, most illustrious
86seigneurs, Guy d’Hymbercourt and Chancellor Guillaume Hugonet.