, which he carried off very well,--that is to say, he had
all the women on his side, and, consequently, the best half of the
audience. Assuredly, it would be injustice and bad taste to hoot a
cardinal for having come late to the spectacle, when he is a handsome
man, and when he wears his scarlet robe well.

He entered, then, bowed to those present with the hereditary smile of
the great for the people, and directed his course slowly towards his
scarlet velvet arm-chair, with the air of thinking of something quite
different. His cortege--what we should nowadays call his staff--of
bishops and abbes invaded the estrade in his train, not without causing
redoubled tumult and curiosity among the audience. Each man vied with
his neighbor in pointing them out and naming them, in seeing who should
recognize at least one of them: this one, the Bishop of Marseilles
(Alaudet, if my memory serves me right);--this one, the primicier of
Saint-Denis;--this one, Robert de Lespinasse, Abbe of Saint-Germain des
Pres, that libertine brother of a mistress of Louis XI.; all with many
errors and absurdities. As for the scholars, they swore. This was their
day, their feast of fools, their saturnalia, the annual orgy of the
corporation of Law clerks and of the school. There was no turpitude
which was not sacred on that day. And then there were gay gossips in the
crowd--Simone Quatrelivres, Agnes la Gadine, and Rabine Piedebou. Was
it not the least that one could do to swear at one's ease and revile
the name of God a little, on so fine a day, in such good company as
dignitaries of the church and loose women? So they did not abstain; and,
in the midst of the uproar, there was a frightful concert of blasphemies
and enormities of all the unbridled tongues, the tongues of clerks and
students restrained during the rest of the year, by the fear of the hot
iron of Saint Louis. Poor Saint Louis! how they set him at defiance in
his own court of law! Each one of them selected from the new-comers on
the platform, a black, gray, white, or violet cassock as his target.
Joannes Frollo de Molendin, in his quality of brother to an archdeacon,
boldly attacked the scarlet; he sang in deafening tones, with his
impudent eyes fastened on the cardinal, "_Cappa repleta mero_!"

All these details which we here lay bare for the edification of the
reader, were so covered by the general uproar, that they were lost in it
before reaching the reserved platforms; moreover, the