Hunchback of Notre Dame (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) by Victor Hugo

which might have saved all.
    “Sir,” said he, turning towards one of his neighbors, a good fat fellow with a patient face, “suppose they begin again?”
    “Begin what?” said the neighbor.
    “Why, the mystery!” said Gringoire.
    “If you like,” responded his neighbor.
    This lukewarm approval was enough for Gringoire, and acting for himself he began to shout, mixing with the crowd as much as he could, “Go on with the miracle-play! Go on!”
    “The devil!” said Joannes de Molendino, “what are they bawling about over there?” (For Gringoire made noise enough for four.) “Say, boys, isn’t the play done? They want to have it all over again; it’s not fair.”
    “No, no!” cried the students. “Down with the mystery! down with it!”
    But Gringoire seemed ubiquitous, and shouted louder than before, “Go on! go on!”
    These outcries attracted the attention of the Cardinal.
    “Bailiff,” he said to a tall dark man seated near him, “are those devils caught in a font of holy water, that they make such an infernal noise?”
    The Bailiff of the Palace was a species of amphibious magistrate, a sort of bat of the judicial order, partaking at once of the nature of the rat and the bird, the judge and the soldier.
    He approached his Eminence, and, not without serious fears of his displeasure, stammered out an explanation of the popular misconduct, —that noon had come before his Eminence, and that the actors were obliged to begin without awaiting his Eminence.
    The Cardinal burst out laughing.
    “Upon my word, the Rector of the University had better have done as much. What say you, Master Guillaume Rym?”
    “My lord,” replied Guillaume Rym, “let us be content that we have escaped half the play. It is just so much gained.”
    “May those rascals go on with their performance?” asked the bailiff.
    “Go on, go on,” said the Cardinal; “it’s all the same to me. I will read my breviary in the meantime.”
    The Provost advanced to the edge of the platform and cried aloud, after imposing silence by a wave of his hand: “Citizens, commoners, and residents: to satisfy those who wish the play to begin again and those who wish it to end, his Eminence orders that it be continued.”
    Both parties were forced to submit. However, the author and the audience long cherished a grudge against the Cardinal.
    The characters on the stage accordingly resumed their recital, and Gringoire hoped that the rest of his work at least would be heard. This hope soon proved as illusory as all the rest. Silence was indeed restored to a certain extent among the audience; but Gringoire had not remarked that, at the moment when the Cardinal gave the order to go on, the dais was far from being filled, and that in the train of the Flemish embassy came other personages forming part of the procession, whose names and titles, shouted out in the midst of his prologue by the intermittent cry of the usher, made many ravages in it. Imagine the effect, in the midst of a play, of the shrill voice of an usher uttering between two rhymes, and often between two hemistichs, such parentheses as these:—
    “Master Jacques Charmolue, king’s attorney in the Ecclesiastical Court!”
    “Jehan de Harlay, esquire, keeper of the office of captain of the watch of the city of Paris!”
    “Master Galiot de Genoilhac, knight, Lord of Brussac, chief of the king’s ordnance!”
    “Master Dreux-Raguier, inspector of the woods and waters of our lord the king, in the lands of France, Champagne, and Brie!”
    “Master Louis de Graville, knight, councillor, and chamberlain to the king, admiral of France, keeper of the forest of Vincennes!”
    “Master Denis le Mercier, guardian of the Home for the Blind of Paris!” etc.
    This at last became insufferable.
    This strange accompaniment, which made it very hard to follow the play, enraged Gringoire all the more because he could not blind himself to the fact that the interest was constantly increasing, and