Notre-Dame de Paris
“How far have you gone in the Decretals of Gratian?” demanded Dom
Claude.
“I have lost my copy books.
“Where are you in your Latin humanities?”
“My copy of Horace has been stolen.”
“Where are you in Aristotle?”
“I’ faith! brother what father of the church is it, who says that
the errors of heretics have always had for their lurking place
the thickets of Aristotle’s metaphysics? A plague on Aristotle! I
care not to tear my religion on his metaphysics.”
“Young man,” resumed the archdeacon, “at the king’s last entry,
there was a young gentleman, named Philippe de Comines, who wore
embroidered on the housings of his horse this device, upon which
I counsel you to meditate: _Qui non laborat, non manducet_.”
The scholar remained silent for a moment, with his finger in his
ear, his eyes on the ground, and a discomfited mien.
All at once he turned round to Claude with the agile quickness of
a wagtail.
“So, my good brother, you refuse me a sou parisis, wherewith to
buy a crust at a baker’s shop?”
“_Qui non laborat, non manducet_.”
At this response of the inflexible archdeacon, Jehan hid his head
in his hands, like a woman sobbing, and exclaimed with an
expression of despair: “Ὀτοτοτοτοτοῖ.”
“What is the meaning of this, sir?” demanded Claude, surprised at
this freak.
“What indeed!” said the scholar; and he lifted to Claude his
impudent eyes into which he had just thrust his fists in order to
communicate to them the redness of tears; “’tis Greek! ’tis an
anapæst of Æschylus which expresses grief perfectly.”
And here he burst into a laugh so droll and violent that it made
the archdeacon smile. It was Claude’s fault, in fact: why had he
so spoiled that child?
“Oh! good Brother Claude,” resumed Jehan, emboldened by this
smile, “look at my worn out boots. Is there a cothurnus in the
world more tragic than these boots, whose soles are hanging out
their tongues?”
The archdeacon promptly returned to his original severity.
“I will send you some new boots, but no money.”
“Only a poor little parisis, brother,” continued the suppliant
Jehan. “I will learn Gratian by heart, I will believe firmly in
God, I will be a regular Pythagoras of science and virtue. But
one little parisis, in mercy! Would you have famine bite me with
its jaws which are gaping in front of me, blacker, deeper, and
more noisome than a Tartarus or the nose of a monk?”
Dom Claude shook his wrinkled head: “_Qui non laborat_—”
Jehan did not allow him to finish.
“Well,” he exclaimed, “to the devil then! Long live joy! I will
live in the tavern, I will fight, I will break pots and I will go
and see the wenches.” And thereupon, he hurled his cap at the
wall, and snapped his fingers like castanets.
The archdeacon surveyed him with a gloomy air.
“Jehan, you have no soul.”
“In that case, according to Epicurius, I lack a something made of
another something which has no name.”
“Jehan, you must think seriously of amending your ways.”
“Oh, come now,” cried the student, gazing in turn at his brother
and the alembics on the furnace, “everything is preposterous
here, both ideas and bottles!”
“Jehan, you are on a very slippery downward road. Do you know
whither you are going?”
“To the wine-shop,” said Jehan.
“The wine-shop leads to the pillory.”
“’Tis as good a lantern as any other, and perchance with that
one, Diogenes would have found his man.”
“The pillory leads to the gallows.”
“The gallows is a balance which has a man at one end and the
whole earth at the other. ’Tis fine to be the man.”
“The gallows leads to hell.”
“’Tis a big fire.”
“Jehan, Jehan, the end will be bad.”
“The beginning will have been good.”
At that moment, the sound of a footstep was heard on the
staircase.
“Silence!” said the archdeacon, laying his finger on his mouth,
“here is Master Jacques. Listen, Jehan,” he added, in a low
voice; “have a care never to speak of what you shall have seen or
heard here. Hide yourself quickly under the furnace, and do not
breathe.”
The scholar concealed himself; just then a happy idea occurred to
him.
“By the way, Brother Claude, a form for not breathing.”
“Silence! I promise.”
“You must give it to me.”
“Take it, then!” said the archdeacon angrily, flinging his purse
at him.
Jehan darted under the furnace again, and the door opened.
CHAPTER V. THE TWO MEN CLOTHED IN BLACK.
The personage who entered wore a black gown and a gloomy mien.
The first point which struck the eye of our Jehan (who, as the
reader will readily surmise, had ensconced himself in his nook in
such a manner as to enable him to see and hear everything at his
good pleasure) was the perfect sadness of the garments and the
visage of this new-corner. There was, nevertheless, some
sweetness diffused over that face, but it was the sweetness of a
cat or a judge, an affected, treacherous sweetness. He was very
gray and wrinkled, and not far from his sixtieth year, his eyes
blinked, his eyebrows were white, his lip pendulous, and his
hands large. When Jehan saw that it was only this, that is to
say, no doubt a physician or a magistrate, and that this man had
a nose very far from his mouth, a sign of stupidity, he nestled
down in his hole, in despair at being obliged to pass an
indefinite time in such an uncomfortable attitude, and in such
bad company.
The archdeacon, in the meantime, had not even risen to receive
this personage. He had made the latter a sign to seat himself on
a stool near the door, and, after several moments of a silence
which appeared to be a continuation of a preceding meditation, he
said to him in a rather patronizing way, “Good day, Master
Jacques.”
“Greeting, master,” replied the man in black.
There was in the two ways in which “Master Jacques” was
pronounced on the one hand, and the “master” by preeminence on
the other, the difference between monseigneur and monsieur,
between _domine_ and _domne_. It was evidently the meeting of a
teacher and a disciple.
“Well!” resumed the archdeacon, after a fresh silence which
Master Jacques took good care not to disturb, “how are you
succeeding?”
“Alas! master,” said the other, with a sad smile, “I am still
seeking the stone. Plenty of ashes. But not a spark of gold.”
Dom Claude made a gesture of impatience. “I am not talking to you
of that, Master Jacques Charmolue, but of the trial of your
magician. Is it not Marc Cenaine that you call him? the butler of
the Court of Accounts? Does he confess his witchcraft? Have you
been successful with the torture?”
“Alas! no,” replied Master Jacques, still with his sad smile; “we
have not that consolation. That man is a stone. We might have him
boiled in the Marché aux Pourceaux, before he would say anything.
Nevertheless, we are sparing nothing for the sake of getting at
the truth; he is already thoroughly dislocated, we are applying
all the herbs of Saint John’s day; as saith the old comedian
Plautus,—
‘Advorsum stimulos, laminas, crucesque, compedesque,
Nervos, catenas, carceres, numellas, pedicas, boias.’
Nothing answers; that man is terrible. I am at my wit’s end over
him.”
“You have found nothing new in his house?”
“I’ faith, yes,” said Master Jacques, fumbling in his pouch;
“this parchment. There are words in it which we cannot
comprehend. The criminal advocate, Monsieur Philippe Lheulier,
nevertheless, knows a little Hebrew, which he learned in that
matter of the Jews of the Rue Kantersten, at Brussels.”
So saying, Master Jacques unrolled a parchment. “Give it here,”
said the archdeacon. And casting his eyes upon this writing:
“Pure magic, Master Jacques!” he exclaimed. “‘Emen-Hétan!’ ’Tis
the cry of the vampires when they arrive at the witches’ sabbath.
_Per ipsum, et cum ipso, et in ipso!_ ’Tis the command which
chains the devil in hell. _Hax, pax, max!_ that refers to
medicine. A formula against the bite of mad dogs. Master Jacques!
you are procurator to the king in the Ecclesiastical Courts: this
parchment is abominable.”
“We will put the man to the torture once more. Here again,” added
Master Jacques, fumbling afresh in his pouch, “is something that
we have found at Marc Cenaine’s house.”
It was a vessel belonging to the same family as those which
covered Dom Claude’s furnace.
“Ah!” said the archdeacon, “a crucible for alchemy.”
“I will confess to you,” continued Master Jacques, with his timid
and awkward smile, “that I have tried it over the furnace, but I
have succeeded no better than with my own.”
The archdeacon began an examination of the vessel. “What has he
engraved on his crucible? _Och! och!_ the word which expels
fleas! That Marc Cenaine is an ignoramus! I verily believe that
you will never make gold with this! ’Tis good to set in your
bedroom in summer and that is all!”
“Since we are talking about errors,” said the king’s procurator,
“I have just been studying the figures on the portal below before
ascending hither; is your reverence quite sure that the opening
of the work of physics is there portrayed on the side towards the
Hôtel-Dieu, and that among the seven nude figures which stand at
the feet of Notre-Dame, that which has wings on his heels is
Mercurius?”
“Yes,” replied the priest; “’tis Augustin Nypho who writes it,
that Italian doctor who had a bearded demon who acquainted him
with all things. However, we will descend, and I will explain it
to you with the text before us.”
“Thanks, master,” said Charmolue, bowing to the earth. “By the
way, I was on the point of forgetting. When doth it please you
that I shall apprehend the little sorceress?”
“What sorceress?”
“That gypsy girl you know, who comes every day to dance on the
church square, in spite of the official’s prohibition! She hath a
demoniac goat with horns of the devil, which reads, which writes,
which knows mathematics like Picatrix, and which would suffice to
hang all Bohemia. The prosecution is all ready; ’twill soon be
finished, I assure you! A pretty creature, on my soul, that
dancer! The handsomest black eyes! Two Egyptian carbuncles! When
shall we begin?”
The archdeacon was excessively pale.
“I will tell you that hereafter,” he stammered, in a voice that
was barely articulate; then he resumed with an effort, “Busy
yourself with Marc Cenaine.”
“Be at ease,” said Charmolue with a smile; “I’ll buckle him down
again for you on the leather bed when I get home. But ’tis a
devil of a man; he wearies even Pierrat Torterue himself, who
hath hands larger than my own. As that good Plautus saith,—
‘Nudus vinctus, centum pondo, es quando pendes per pedes.’