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In the statutes of our Order there is one rule which is rigidly enforced; namely, to allow all candidates for the privilege of Basoche to limit the magnificence of their feast of welcome to the length of their purse; for it is publicly notorious that no one delivers himself up to Themis if he has a fortune, and every clerk is, alas, sternly curtailed by his parents.
This was the hall where the clercs of the Basoche performed their farces, sottises and moralités, and where Victor Hugo has placed the scene of the famous performance of the moralité, composed by Pierre Gringoire, so vividly described in the opening chapters of Notre Dame.
Here Pantagruel loved to stand and cut the stirrup-straps of the fat councillors' mules, and see the gros suflé de conseiller fall flat when he tried to mount; and here the clercs of the Basoche planted the annual May-tree, brought from the forest of Bondy, with much playing of drums and trumpets and elaborate ceremony.
Just as it represented Thespis, smeared with wine-lees, leaping in her tomb it dances with the Basoche on the famous marble table which served at the same time as a stage for the popular farces and for the royal banquets. Finally, having made its way into the arts, the manners, and the laws, it enters even the Church.
And our head-clerk Godeschal has been and is hereby proclaimed a flower of Basoche, and, more especially, a good fellow. May a man who treats so well be soon in treaty for a Practice of his own! On this record were stains of wine, pates, and candle-grease.
His professional début was made in London, in 1891, with the Royal English Opera Company, as the Duc De Longueville, in the beautiful Opera Comique, The Basoche, by Messager. The following year he appeared in Wagnerian Music Drama at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, performing the part of Kurwenal, in Tristan and Isolde, without rehearsal.
Early in the morning the populace flocked to the Hotel de Ville; the tocsin was sounded there and in all the churches; and drums were beat in the streets to call the citizens together. The public places soon became thronged. Troops were formed under the titles of volunteers of the Palais Royal, volunteers of the Tuileries, of the Basoche, and of the Arquebuse.
We have here, near to the town of Villomere, a man that is both old and a poet, to wit, Raminagrobis, who to his second wife espoused my Lady Broadsow, on whom he begot the fair Basoche. It hath been told me he is a-dying, and so near unto his latter end that he is almost upon the very last moment, point, and article thereof.
Then came a blank of fourteen years; after which the register began again, in 1806, with the appointment of Bordin as attorney before the first Court of the Seine. And here follows the deed which proclaimed the reconstitution of the kingdom of Basoche:
André Messager's name is chiefly associated in England with work of a lighter character, but it must not be forgotten that he is the composer of two of the most charming opéras comiques of modern times, 'La Basoche' and 'Madame Chrysanthème' .
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