to. This hope was
speedily dispelled like his other illusions; silence had indeed,
been restored in the audience, after a fashion; but Gringoire had
not observed that at the moment when the cardinal gave the order to
continue, the gallery was far from full, and that after the Flemish
envoys there had arrived new personages forming part of the cortege,
whose names and ranks, shouted out in the midst of his dialogue by the
intermittent cry of the usher, produced considerable ravages in it. Let
the reader imagine the effect in the midst of a theatrical piece, of the
yelping of an usher, flinging in between two rhymes, and often in the
middle of a line, parentheses like the following,--

"Master Jacques Charmolue, procurator to the king in the Ecclesiastical
Courts!"

"Jehan de Harlay, equerry guardian of the office of chevalier of the
night watch of the city of Paris!"

"Messire Galiot de Genoilhac, chevalier, seigneur de Brussac, master of
the king's artillery!"

"Master Dreux-Raguier, surveyor of the woods and forests of the king our
sovereign, in the land of France, Champagne and Brie!"

"Messire Louis de Graville, chevalier, councillor, and chamberlain of
the king, admiral of France, keeper of the Forest of Vincennes!"

"Master Denis le Mercier, guardian of the house of the blind at Paris!"
etc., etc., etc.

This was becoming unbearable.

This strange accompaniment, which rendered it difficult to follow
the piece, made Gringoire all the more indignant because he could
not conceal from himself the fact that the interest was continually
increasing, and that all his work required was a chance of being heard.

It was, in fact, difficult to imagine a more ingenious and more
dramatic composition. The four personages of the prologue were bewailing
themselves in their mortal embarrassment, when Venus in person, (_vera
incessa patuit dea_) presented herself to them, clad in a fine robe
bearing the heraldic device of the ship of the city of Paris. She
had come herself to claim the dolphin promised to the most beautiful.
Jupiter, whose thunder could be heard rumbling in the dressing-room,
supported her claim, and Venus was on the point of carrying it
off,--that is to say, without allegory, of marrying monsieur the
dauphin, when a young child clad in white damask, and holding in her
hand a daisy (a transparent personification of Mademoiselle Marguerite
of Flanders) came to contest it with Venus.

Theatrical effect and