SHE.         Fetch me a little boy out of the street!
HE.           Is that in the bond? I cannot see't.
SHE.         Come, come, your hand, my own my
                       sweet;
                 I haven't strength to lift myself out.
MOTHER. Hola! ho!
HE.           Who knocks without?
MOTHER.  Only a friend. There's nothing to fear.
                  I just drop in to inquire, my dear,
                  How all goes, and how's your poor head?
HE.            Very well, since my wife's dead.

That is pretty exactly Pierre Gringoire's
mind upon matrimony. Of his own wife, he
says that he bought her for thirteen-pence, and
wishes the fellow hanged who overcharged him.
Gringoire wrote also a poem against "the abuses
of the world." At first an inventor of the
dumb show of the pantomimic street-play, he
became also an author of political street dramas,
having been affiliated to the "Children without
Care"—les Enfans Sans Souci—and attained to
the second rank among them, that of Mère Folle,
or Foolish Mother. Most probably also he
reached the first rank, and became supreme
over these playful souls as Prince of Fools.
There were three sort of dramatists in the France
of that day—the priests, who produced Scripture
mysteries; the Bazochians, who produced
worldly wisdom in moralities, and its lower
follies in their farces; and those "Children without
Care," who, founding their system on the
doctrine that, since Adam, most men have been
fools, gave to poor humanity the name of folly,
and under that name satirised it in their pieces.
Louis the Twelfth was a popular king, against
whom the chief indictment by his people was
parsimony. The Sans Souci children sometimes
aimed their shafts even at that, and he
took no offence. He would rather, he said, that
his economies should excite laughter, than that
his wastefulness should be a cause of tears.
Gringoire, in his robes as Foolish Mother—a
monk's robe and hood garnished with a pair
of ass's ears—appears in effigy before his books
of this time, surrounded by a motto, claiming
reason under all his jest—"Tout par Raison;
Raison par tout; Partout Raison." He set
himself forth as a laughing cynical philosopher.
The dog, said Rabelais, is the most philosophical
animal in the world. The only use he makes
of a dry bone, is to apply all his power to the
extraction of its marrow.

But to Gringoire, the marrow of his political
street-plays was not the principle they advocated
so much as the substantial reward he got
for them. He had an eye rather to the king's
favour than to the cause at stake, when he
attacked Pope Julius in the Paris market-places
with his "Play of the Prince of Fools and of
the Foolish Mother." It was produced on Mardi
Gras of the year fifteen hundred and eleven, when
the contest between France and the Pope was at
its height. Then the piece begins with the
awakening of the Seigneur Jean de Pontalais—
he of the tambourine and the great antic sword—
to make ready for the assembling of the States-
General of Folly. The deputies come and take
their places, nobles first, then clergy, and then
foolish commonalty. All being in their seats,
the Prince of Fools ascends his throne, attended
by his faithful companion, the Lord of Gaiety.
Compliments, containing political allusions, are
then sung to him, after which, as Father of the
People, he inquires as to the condition of his
subjects. Accusations against the prelates rain
at once from every side; after which, the Foolish
Commonalty raises its doleful complaint,
and through it—some years before Luther—
Gringoire predicts, as most shrewd men foresaw, the
coming schism in the Church. But when, after
a chorus in his praise, the Prince of Fools asks
the Commons what they want, seeing that they
have a wise prince and this and that excellent
privilege, they answer, that for want of money
their grief's very sore. A new personage now
mounts the stage, before whom all—without
exception of the Prince himself—make their
obeisance. But the new comer explains apart to
the audience that—

      Holy Mother Church, I say I am,
      I anathematise and curse and cram;
      But underneath this robe I wear another,
      Being, in truth, only the Foolish Mother.

The pretended Mother Church confides to
Foolish Occasion and Foolish Confidence her
project for uniting the temporal and spiritual
power. Having won the beneficed clergy by
promises of canonries and red hats, she attempts
to seduce the French landed proprietors; but
they all oppose her, and swear fealty to the king,
except the Seigneur de la Moon—emblem of
versatility. The General of Childhood is hot
against the popes, but False Mother Church
herself is first to give the signal of war:

     Prelates forward! what ho! what ho!
     To the assault, prelates! to the assault!

Julius the Second, at Ravenna, acted such a
part as well as Pierre Gringoire did in his
person. The Prince of Fools is less hot than the
General of Childhood. He hesitates to attack
Mother Church. The seigneurs and the Foolish
Commons assure him in vain that he may defend
himself justly and canonically. His scruple can
only be silenced by a sufficient answer to his
question, "Is it really the Church?" His friend,
the Lord of Gaiety, to put an end to his doubt,
suddenly plucks away the outer robe of the
hypocrite, and reveals under it the Foolish
Mother, with her ass's ears. So the political play
ended.

A trilogy, or succession of three pieces, was
the fashion. On the same day, therefore, and
immediately after this new "Folly," Gringoire
presented a new Morality that dealt still more
irreverently with the temporal pretensions of the
Pope. It was a dialogue between the Peoples
of France and Italy on the subject of the
Obstinate Man. Both complain; for the lot of
the peoples was then always to have matter of
complaint. The People of Italy tells the People
of France that complaint is unreasonable under
a humane and honest king. How much worse
is it for Italy, that is plagued with the pigheadedness
of the Obstinate Man. The Obstinate