1---
  2date: 2017-04-11T11:13:32-04:00
  3description: "Monsieur the Cardinal"
  4featured_image: ""
  5tags: []
  6title: "Chapter III: Monsieur the Cardinal"
  7---
  8
  9Poor Gringoire! the din of all the great double petards of the Saint-Jean,
 10the discharge of twenty arquebuses on supports, the detonation of that
 11famous serpentine of the Tower of Billy, which, during the siege of Paris,
 12on Sunday, the twenty-sixth of September, 1465, killed seven Burgundians
 13at one blow, the explosion of all the powder stored at the gate of the
 14Temple, would have rent his ears less rudely at that solemn and dramatic
 15moment, than these few words, which fell from the lips of the usher, “His
 16eminence, Monseigneur the Cardinal de Bourbon.”
 17
 18It is not that Pierre Gringoire either feared or disdained monsieur the
 19cardinal. He had neither the weakness nor the audacity for that. A true
 20eclectic, as it would be expressed nowadays, Gringoire was one of those
 21firm and lofty, moderate and calm spirits, which always know how to bear
 22themselves amid all circumstances (_stare in dimidio rerum_), and who
 23are full of reason and of liberal philosophy, while still setting store by
 24cardinals. A rare, precious, and never interrupted race of philosophers to
 25whom wisdom, like another Ariadne, seems to have given a clew of thread
 26which they have been walking along unwinding since the beginning of the
 27world, through the labyrinth of human affairs. One finds them in all ages,
 28ever the same; that is to say, always according to all times. And, without
 29reckoning our Pierre Gringoire, who may represent them in the fifteenth
 30century if we succeed in bestowing upon him the distinction which he
 31deserves, it certainly was their spirit which animated Father du Breul,
 32when he wrote, in the sixteenth, these naively sublime words, worthy of
 33all centuries: “I am a Parisian by nation, and a Parrhisian in language,
 34for _parrhisia_ in Greek signifies liberty of speech; of which I have
 35made use even towards messeigneurs the cardinals, uncle and brother to
 36Monsieur the Prince de Conty, always with respect to their greatness, and
 37without offending any one of their suite, which is much to say.”
 38
 39There was then neither hatred for the cardinal, nor disdain for his
 40presence, in the disagreeable impression produced upon Pierre Gringoire.
 41Quite the contrary; our poet had too much good sense and too threadbare a
 42coat, not to attach particular importance to having the numerous allusions
 43in his prologue, and, in particular, the glorification of the dauphin, son
 44of the Lion of France, fall upon the most eminent ear. But it is not
 45interest which predominates in the noble nature of poets. I suppose that
 46the entity of the poet may be represented by the number ten; it is certain
 47that a chemist on analyzing and pharmacopolizing it, as Rabelais says,
 48would find it composed of one part interest to nine parts of self-esteem.
 49
 50Now, at the moment when the door had opened to admit the cardinal, the
 51nine parts of self-esteem in Gringoire, swollen and expanded by the breath
 52of popular admiration, were in a state of prodigious augmentation, beneath
 53which disappeared, as though stifled, that imperceptible molecule of which
 54we have just remarked upon in the constitution of poets; a precious
 55ingredient, by the way, a ballast of reality and humanity, without which
 56they would not touch the earth. Gringoire enjoyed seeing, feeling,
 57fingering, so to speak an entire assembly (of knaves, it is true, but what
 58matters that?) stupefied, petrified, and as though asphyxiated in the
 59presence of the incommensurable tirades which welled up every instant from
 60all parts of his bridal song. I affirm that he shared the general
 61beatitude, and that, quite the reverse of La Fontaine, who, at the
 62presentation of his comedy of the “Florentine,” asked, “Who is the
 63ill-bred lout who made that rhapsody?” Gringoire would gladly have
 64inquired of his neighbor, “Whose masterpiece is this?”
 65
 66The reader can now judge of the effect produced upon him by the abrupt and
 67unseasonable arrival of the cardinal.
 68
 69That which he had to fear was only too fully realized. The entrance of his
 70eminence upset the audience. All heads turned towards the gallery. It was
 71no longer possible to hear one’s self. “The cardinal! The cardinal!”
 72repeated all mouths. The unhappy prologue stopped short for the second
 73time.
 74
 75The cardinal halted for a moment on the threshold of the estrade. While he
 76was sending a rather indifferent glance around the audience, the tumult
 77redoubled. Each person wished to get a better view of him. Each man vied
 78with the other in thrusting his head over his neighbor’s shoulder.
 79
 80He was, in fact, an exalted personage, the sight of whom was well worth
 81any other comedy. Charles, Cardinal de Bourbon, Archbishop and Comte of
 82Lyon, Primate of the Gauls, was allied both to Louis XI., through his
 83brother, Pierre, Seigneur de Beaujeu, who had married the king’s eldest
 84daughter, and to Charles the Bold through his mother, Agnes of Burgundy.
 85Now, the dominating trait, the peculiar and distinctive trait of the
 86character of the Primate of the Gauls, was the spirit of the courtier, and
 87devotion to the powers that be. The reader can form an idea of the
 88numberless embarrassments which this double relationship had caused him,
 89and of all the temporal reefs among which his spiritual bark had been
 90forced to tack, in order not to suffer shipwreck on either Louis or
 91Charles, that Scylla and that Charybdis which had devoured the Duc de
 92Nemours and the Constable de Saint-Pol. Thanks to Heaven’s mercy, he had
 93made the voyage successfully, and had reached home without hindrance. But
 94although he was in port, and precisely because he was in port, he never
 95recalled without disquiet the varied haps of his political career, so long
 96uneasy and laborious. Thus, he was in the habit of saying that the year
 971476 had been “white and black” for him—meaning thereby, that in the
 98course of that year he had lost his mother, the Duchesse de la
 99Bourbonnais, and his cousin, the Duke of Burgundy, and that one grief had
100consoled him for the other.