the sole spectator of his piece. It was far worse
than it had been a little while before. He no longer beheld anything but
backs.

I am mistaken. The big, patient man, whom he had already consulted in a
critical moment, had remained with his face turned towards the stage. As
for Gisquette and Lienarde, they had deserted him long ago.

Gringoire was touched to the heart by the fidelity of his only
spectator. He approached him and addressed him, shaking his arm
slightly; for the good man was leaning on the balustrade and dozing a
little.

"Monsieur," said Gringoire, "I thank you!"

"Monsieur," replied the big man with a yawn, "for what?"

"I see what wearies you," resumed the poet; "'tis all this noise which
prevents your hearing comfortably. But be at ease! your name shall
descend to posterity! Your name, if you please?"

"Renauld Chateau, guardian of the seals of the Chatelet of Paris, at
your service."

"Monsieur, you are the only representative of the muses here," said
Gringoire.

"You are too kind, sir," said the guardian of the seals at the Chatelet.

"You are the only one," resumed Gringoire, "who has listened to the
piece decorously. What do you think of it?"

"He! he!" replied the fat magistrate, half aroused, "it's tolerably
jolly, that's a fact."

Gringoire was forced to content himself with this eulogy; for a
thunder of applause, mingled with a prodigious acclamation, cut their
conversation short. The Pope of the Fools had been elected.

"Noel! Noel! Noel!"* shouted the people on all sides. That was, in
fact, a marvellous grimace which was beaming at that moment through the
aperture in the rose window. After all the pentagonal, hexagonal, and
whimsical faces, which had succeeded each other at that hole without
realizing the ideal of the grotesque which their imaginations, excited
by the orgy, had constructed, nothing less was needed to win their
suffrages than the sublime grimace which had just dazzled the assembly.
Master Coppenole himself applauded, and Clopin Trouillefou, who had
been among the competitors (and God knows what intensity of ugliness his
visage could attain), confessed himself conquered: We will do the same.
We shall not try to give the reader an idea of that tetrahedral nose,
that horseshoe mouth; that little left eye obstructed with a red, bushy,
bristling eyebrow, while the right eye disappeared entirely beneath an
enormous wart; of those teeth in disarray, broken here and t