87 lines
4.0 KiB
Markdown
87 lines
4.0 KiB
Markdown
---
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date: 2017-04-12T11:14:48-04:00
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description: "Master Jacques Coppenole"
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featured_image: ""
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tags: ["scene"]
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title: "Chapter IV: Master Jacques Coppenole"
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---
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While the pensioner of Ghent and his eminence were exchanging very low
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bows and a few words in voices still lower, a man of lofty stature, with a
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large face and broad shoulders, presented himself, in order to enter
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abreast with Guillaume Rym; one would have pronounced him a bull-dog by
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the side of a fox. His felt doublet and leather jerkin made a spot on the
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velvet and silk which surrounded him. Presuming that he was some groom who
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had stolen in, the usher stopped him.
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“Hold, my friend, you cannot pass!”
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The man in the leather jerkin shouldered him aside.
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“What does this knave want with me?” said he, in stentorian tones, which
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rendered the entire hall attentive to this strange colloquy. “Don’t you
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see that I am one of them?”
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“Your name?” demanded the usher.
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“Jacques Coppenole.”
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“Your titles?”
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“Hosier at the sign of the ‘Three Little Chains,’ of Ghent.”
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The usher recoiled. One might bring one’s self to announce aldermen and
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burgomasters, but a hosier was too much. The cardinal was on thorns. All
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the people were staring and listening. For two days his eminence had been
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exerting his utmost efforts to lick these Flemish bears into shape, and to
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render them a little more presentable to the public, and this freak was
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startling. But Guillaume Rym, with his polished smile, approached the
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usher.
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“Announce Master Jacques Coppenole, clerk of the aldermen of the city of
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Ghent,” he whispered, very low.
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“Usher,” interposed the cardinal, aloud, “announce Master Jacques
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Coppenole, clerk of the aldermen of the illustrious city of Ghent.”
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This was a mistake. Guillaume Rym alone might have conjured away the
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difficulty, but Coppenole had heard the cardinal.
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“No, cross of God?” he exclaimed, in his voice of thunder, “Jacques
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Coppenole, hosier. Do you hear, usher? Nothing more, nothing less. Cross
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of God! hosier; that’s fine enough. Monsieur the Archduke has more than
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once sought his _gant_\* in my hose.”
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_* Got the first idea of a timing._
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Laughter and applause burst forth. A jest is always understood in Paris,
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and, consequently, always applauded.
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Let us add that Coppenole was of the people, and that the auditors which
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surrounded him were also of the people. Thus the communication between him
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and them had been prompt, electric, and, so to speak, on a level. The
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haughty air of the Flemish hosier, by humiliating the courtiers, had
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touched in all these plebeian souls that latent sentiment of dignity still
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vague and indistinct in the fifteenth century.
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This hosier was an equal, who had just held his own before monsieur the
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cardinal. A very sweet reflection to poor fellows habituated to respect
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and obedience towards the underlings of the sergeants of the bailiff of
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Sainte-Geneviève, the cardinal’s train-bearer.
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Coppenole proudly saluted his eminence, who returned the salute of the
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all-powerful bourgeois feared by Louis XI. Then, while Guillaume Rym, a
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“sage and malicious man,” as Philippe de Comines puts it, watched them
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both with a smile of raillery and superiority, each sought his place, the
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cardinal quite abashed and troubled, Coppenole tranquil and haughty, and
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thinking, no doubt, that his title of hosier was as good as any other,
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after all, and that Marie of Burgundy, mother to that Marguerite whom
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Coppenole was to-day bestowing in marriage, would have been less afraid of
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the cardinal than of the hosier; for it is not a cardinal who would have
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stirred up a revolt among the men of Ghent against the favorites of the
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daughter of Charles the Bold; it is not a cardinal who could have
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fortified the populace with a word against her tears and prayers, when the
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Maid of Flanders came to supplicate her people in their behalf, even at
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the very foot of the scaffold; while the hosier had only to raise his
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leather elbow, in order to cause to fall your two heads, most illustrious
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seigneurs, Guy d’Hymbercourt and Chancellor Guillaume Hugonet.
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