A shout of laughter from all the students greeted the unlucky name of the poor furrier of the king’s robes.
“Lecornu! Gilles Lecornu!” said some.
“Cornutus et hirsutus, horned and hairy,” another went on.
“Hé! of course,” continued the small imp on the capital, “What are they laughing at? An honorable man is Gilles Lecornu, brother of Master Jehan Lecornu, provost of the king’s house, son of Master Mahiet Lecornu, first porter of the Bois de Vincennes—all bourgeois of Paris, all married, from father to son.”
The gayety redoubled. The big furrier, without uttering a word in reply, tried to escape all the eyes riveted upon him from all sides; but he perspired and panted in vain; like a wedge entering the wood, his efforts served only to bury still more deeply in the shoulders of his neighbors, his large, apoplectic face, purple with spite and rage.
At length one of these, as fat, short, and venerable as himself, came to his rescue.
“Abomination! scholars addressing a bourgeois in that fashion in my day would have been flogged with a fagot, which would have afterwards been used to burn them.”
The whole band burst into laughter.
“Holà hé! who is scolding so? Who is that screech owl of evil fortune?”
“Hold, I know him” said one of them; “ ’tis Master Andry Musnier.”
“Because he is one of the four sworn booksellers of the university!” said the other.
“Everything goes by fours in that shop,” cried a third; “the four nations, the four faculties, the four feasts, the four procurators, the four electors, the four booksellers.”
“Well,” began Jean Frollo once more, “we must play the devil with them.”2
“Musnier, we’ll burn your books.”
“Musnier, we’ll beat your lackeys.”
“Musnier, we’ll kiss your wife.”
“That fine, big Mademoiselle Oudarde.”
“Who is as fresh and as gay as though she were a widow.”
“Devil take you!” growled Master Andry Musnier.
“Master Andry,” pursued Jean Jehan, still clinging to his capital, “hold your tongue, or I’ll drop on your head!”
Master Andry raised his eyes, seemed to measure in an instant the height of the pillar, the weight of the scamp, mentally multiplied that weight by the square of the velocity and remained silent.
Jehan, master of the field of battle, pursued triumphantly:
“That’s what I’ll do, even if I am the brother of an archdeacon!”
“Fine gentry are our people of the university, not to have caused our privileges to be respected on such a day as this! However, there is a maypole and a bonfire in the town; a mystery, Pope of the Fools, and Flemish ambassadors in the city; and, at the university, nothing!”
“Nevertheless, the Place Maubert is sufficiently large!” interposed one of the clerks established on the windowsill.
“Down with the rector, the electors, and the procurators!” cried Joannes.
“We must have a bonfire this evening in the Champ-Gaillard,” went on the other, “made of Master Andry’s books.”
“And the desks of the scribes!” added his neighbor.
“And the beadles’ wands!”
“And the spittoons of the deans!”
“And the cupboards of the procurators!”
“And the hutches of the electors!”
“And the stools of the rector!”
“Down with them!” put in little Jehan, as counterpoint; “down with Master Andry, the beadles and the scribes; the theologians, the doctors and the decretists; the procurators, the electors and the rector!”
“The end of the world has come!” muttered Master Andry, stopping up his ears.
“By the way, there’s the rector! see, he is passing through the Place,” cried one of those in the window.
Each rivalled his neighbor in his haste to turn towards the Place.
“Is it really our venerable rector, Master Thibaut?” demanded Jehan Frollo du Moulin, who, as he was clinging to one of the inner pillars, could not see what was going on outside.
“Yes, yes,” replied all the others, “it is really he, Master Thibaut, the rector.”
It was, in fact, the rector and all the dignitaries of the university, who were marching in procession in front of the embassy, and at that moment traversing the Place. The students crowded into the window, saluted them as they passed with sarcasms and ironical applause. The rector, who was walking at the head of his company, had to support the first broadside; it was severe.
“Good day, monsieur le recteur! Holà hé! good day there!”
“How does he manage to be here, the old gambler? Has he abandoned his dice?”
“How he trots along on his mule! her ears are not so long as his!”
“Holà hé! good day, monsieur le recteur Thibaut! Tybalde aleator! Old fool! old gambler!”
“God preserve you! Did you throw double six often last night?”
“Oh! what a decrepit face, livid and haggard and drawn with the love of gambling and of dice!”
“Where are you bound for in that fashion, Thibaut, Tybalde ad dados, with your back turned to the university, and trotting towards the town?”
“He is on his way, no doubt, to seek a lodging in the Rue Thibautodé?”3 cried Jehan du M. Moulin.
The entire band repeated this quip in a voice of thunder, clapping their hands furiously.
“You are going to seek a lodging in the Rue Thibautodé, are you not, monsieur le recteur, gamester on the side of the devil?”
Then came the turns of the other dignitaries.
“Down with the beadles! down with the mace-bearers!”
“Tell me, Robin Pouissepain, who is that yonder?”
“He is Gilbert de Suilly, Gilbertus de Soliaco, the chancellor of the College of Autun.”
“Hold on, here’s my shoe; you are better placed than I, fling it in his face.”
“Saturnalitias mittimus ecce nuces.”
“Down with the six theologians, with their white surplices!”
“Are those the theologians? I thought they were the white geese given by Sainte-Geneviève to the city, for the fief of Roogny.”
“Down with the doctors!”
“Down with the cardinal disputations, and quibblers!”
“My cap to you, Chancellor of Sainte-Geneviève! You have done me a wrong. ’Tis true; he gave my place in the nation of Normandy to little Ascanio Falzapada, who comes from the province of Bourges, since
