ry into Paris, to the great annoyance of M. le Cardinal
de Bourbon, who, for the sake of pleasing the king, had been obliged
to assume an amiable mien towards this whole rustic rabble of Flemish
burgomasters, and to regale them at his Hotel de Bourbon, with a very
"pretty morality, allegorical satire, and farce," while a driving rain
drenched the magnificent tapestries at his door.

What put the "whole population of Paris in commotion," as Jehan de
Troyes expresses it, on the sixth of January, was the double solemnity,
united from time immemorial, of the Epiphany and the Feast of Fools.

On that day, there was to be a bonfire on the Place de Greve, a maypole
at the Chapelle de Braque, and a mystery at the Palais de Justice. It
had been cried, to the sound of the trumpet, the preceding evening at
all the cross roads, by the provost's men, clad in handsome, short,
sleeveless coats of violet camelot, with large white crosses upon their
breasts.

So the crowd of citizens, male and female, having closed their houses
and shops, thronged from every direction, at early morn, towards some
one of the three spots designated.

Each had made his choice; one, the bonfire; another, the maypole;
another, the mystery play. It must be stated, in honor of the good sense
of the loungers of Paris, that the greater part of this crowd directed
their steps towards the bonfire, which was quite in season, or towards
the mystery play, which was to be presented in the grand hall of the
Palais de Justice (the courts of law), which was well roofed and walled;
and that the curious left the poor, scantily flowered maypole to shiver
all alone beneath the sky of January, in the cemetery of the Chapel of
Braque.

The populace thronged the avenues of the law courts in particular,
because they knew that the Flemish ambassadors, who had arrived two days
previously, intended to be present at the representation of the mystery,
and at the election of the Pope of the Fools, which was also to take
place in the grand hall.

It was no easy matter on that day, to force one's way into that grand
hall, although it was then reputed to be the largest covered enclosure
in the world (it is true that Sauval had not yet measured the grand hall
of the Chateau of Montargis). The palace place, encumbered with people,
offered to the curious gazers at the windows the aspect of a sea; into
which five or six streets, like so many mouths of rivers, discharged
every moment f