which predominates in the noble nature of poets. I
suppose that the entity of the poet may be represented by the number
ten; it is certain that a chemist on analyzing and pharmacopolizing it,
as Rabelais says, would find it composed of one part interest to nine
parts of self-esteem.

Now, at the moment when the door had opened to admit the cardinal, the
nine parts of self-esteem in Gringoire, swollen and expanded by
the breath of popular admiration, were in a state of prodigious
augmentation, beneath which disappeared, as though stifled, that
imperceptible molecule of which we have just remarked upon in the
constitution of poets; a precious ingredient, by the way, a ballast
of reality and humanity, without which they would not touch the earth.
Gringoire enjoyed seeing, feeling, fingering, so to speak an entire
assembly (of knaves, it is true, but what matters that?) stupefied,
petrified, and as though asphyxiated in the presence of the
incommensurable tirades which welled up every instant from all parts
of his bridal song. I affirm that he shared the general beatitude, and
that, quite the reverse of La Fontaine, who, at the presentation of his
comedy of the "Florentine," asked, "Who is the ill-bred lout who made
that rhapsody?" Gringoire would gladly have inquired of his neighbor,
"Whose masterpiece is this?"

The reader can now judge of the effect produced upon him by the abrupt
and unseasonable arrival of the cardinal.

That which he had to fear was only too fully realized. The entrance of
his eminence upset the audience. All heads turned towards the gallery.
It was no longer possible to hear one's self. "The cardinal! The
cardinal!" repeated all mouths. The unhappy prologue stopped short for
the second time.

The cardinal halted for a moment on the threshold of the estrade. While
he was sending a rather indifferent glance around the audience, the
tumult redoubled. Each person wished to get a better view of him.
Each man vied with the other in thrusting his head over his neighbor's
shoulder.

He was, in fact, an exalted personage, the sight of whom was well worth
any other comedy. Charles, Cardinal de Bourbon, Archbishop and Comte of
Lyon, Primate of the Gauls, was allied both to Louis XI., through his
brother, Pierre, Seigneur de Beaujeu, who had married the king's eldest
daughter, and to Charles the Bold through his mother, Agnes of Burgundy.
Now, the dominating trait, the peculiar and distinctive trait of the