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author | Dimitri Staessens <dimitri@ouroboros.rocks> | 2019-06-19 21:18:55 +0200 |
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committer | Dimitri Staessens <dimitri@ouroboros.rocks> | 2019-06-19 21:18:55 +0200 |
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diff --git a/themes/ananke/exampleSite/content/post/chapter-3.md b/themes/ananke/exampleSite/content/post/chapter-3.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cd29cee --- /dev/null +++ b/themes/ananke/exampleSite/content/post/chapter-3.md @@ -0,0 +1,100 @@ +--- +date: 2017-04-11T11:13:32-04:00 +description: "Monsieur the Cardinal" +featured_image: "" +tags: [] +title: "Chapter III: Monsieur the Cardinal" +--- + +Poor Gringoire! the din of all the great double petards of the Saint-Jean, +the discharge of twenty arquebuses on supports, the detonation of that +famous serpentine of the Tower of Billy, which, during the siege of Paris, +on Sunday, the twenty-sixth of September, 1465, killed seven Burgundians +at one blow, the explosion of all the powder stored at the gate of the +Temple, would have rent his ears less rudely at that solemn and dramatic +moment, than these few words, which fell from the lips of the usher, “His +eminence, Monseigneur the Cardinal de Bourbon.” + +It is not that Pierre Gringoire either feared or disdained monsieur the +cardinal. He had neither the weakness nor the audacity for that. A true +eclectic, as it would be expressed nowadays, Gringoire was one of those +firm and lofty, moderate and calm spirits, which always know how to bear +themselves amid all circumstances (_stare in dimidio rerum_), and who +are full of reason and of liberal philosophy, while still setting store by +cardinals. A rare, precious, and never interrupted race of philosophers to +whom wisdom, like another Ariadne, seems to have given a clew of thread +which they have been walking along unwinding since the beginning of the +world, through the labyrinth of human affairs. One finds them in all ages, +ever the same; that is to say, always according to all times. And, without +reckoning our Pierre Gringoire, who may represent them in the fifteenth +century if we succeed in bestowing upon him the distinction which he +deserves, it certainly was their spirit which animated Father du Breul, +when he wrote, in the sixteenth, these naively sublime words, worthy of +all centuries: “I am a Parisian by nation, and a Parrhisian in language, +for _parrhisia_ in Greek signifies liberty of speech; of which I have +made use even towards messeigneurs the cardinals, uncle and brother to +Monsieur the Prince de Conty, always with respect to their greatness, and +without offending any one of their suite, which is much to say.” + +There was then neither hatred for the cardinal, nor disdain for his +presence, in the disagreeable impression produced upon Pierre Gringoire. +Quite the contrary; our poet had too much good sense and too threadbare a +coat, not to attach particular importance to having the numerous allusions +in his prologue, and, in particular, the glorification of the dauphin, son +of the Lion of France, fall upon the most eminent ear. But it is not +interest 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 +character of the Primate of the Gauls, was the spirit of the courtier, and +devotion to the powers that be. The reader can form an idea of the +numberless embarrassments which this double relationship had caused him, +and of all the temporal reefs among which his spiritual bark had been +forced to tack, in order not to suffer shipwreck on either Louis or +Charles, that Scylla and that Charybdis which had devoured the Duc de +Nemours and the Constable de Saint-Pol. Thanks to Heaven’s mercy, he had +made the voyage successfully, and had reached home without hindrance. But +although he was in port, and precisely because he was in port, he never +recalled without disquiet the varied haps of his political career, so long +uneasy and laborious. Thus, he was in the habit of saying that the year +1476 had been “white and black” for him—meaning thereby, that in the +course of that year he had lost his mother, the Duchesse de la +Bourbonnais, and his cousin, the Duke of Burgundy, and that one grief had +consoled him for the other. |