He never went about otherwise than surrounded by a small court of bishops and abbes of high lineage, gallant, jovial, and given to carousing on occasion; and more than once the good and devout women of Saint Germain d' Auxerre, when passing at night beneath the brightly illuminated windows of Bourbon, had been scandalized to hear the same voices which had intoned vespers for them during the day carolling, to the clinking of glasses, the bacchic proverb of Benedict XII., that pope who had added a third crown to the Tiara--_Bibamus papaliter_.
It was this justly acquired popularity, no doubt, which preserved him on his entrance from any bad reception at the hands of the mob, which had been so displeased but a moment before, and very little disposed to respect a cardinal on the very day when it was to elect a pope.

But the Parisians cherish little rancor; and then, having forced the beginning of the play by their authority, the good bourgeois had got the upper hand of the cardinal, and this triumph was sufficient for them.
Moreover, the Cardinal de Bourbon was a handsome man,--he wore a fine scarlet robe, which he carried off very well,--that is to say, he had all the women on his side, and, consequently, the best half of the audience.

Assuredly, it would be injustice and bad taste to hoot a cardinal for having come late to the spectacle, when he is a handsome man, and when he wears his scarlet robe well.
He entered, then, bowed to those present with the hereditary smile of the great for the people, and directed his course slowly towards his scarlet velvet arm-chair, with the air of thinking of something quite different.

His cortege--what we should nowadays call his staff--of bishops and abbes invaded the estrade in his train, not without causing redoubled tumult and curiosity among the audience.

Each man vied with his neighbor in pointing them out and naming them, in seeing who should recognize at least one of them: this one, the Bishop of Marseilles (Alaudet, if my memory serves me right);--this one, the primicier of Saint-Denis;--this one, Robert de Lespinasse, Abbe of Saint-Germain des Pres, that libertine brother of a mistress of Louis XI.; all with many errors and absurdities.