by Victor Hugo
We know not if he was suddenly made aware of these things; but, feather-brain though he was, he understood that he had seen what he was never meant to see, that he had surprised his elder brother’s soul in one of its most secret moments, and that he must not let Claude discover it. Noting that the archdeacon had relapsed into his former immobility, he drew his head back very softly, and made a slight noise behind the door, as if he had just arrived, and wished to warn his brother of his approach.
“Come in!” cried the archdeacon from within the cell; “I expected you. I left the door on the latch purposely; come in, Master Jacques.”
The student entered boldly. The archdeacon, much annoyed by such a visit in such a place, started in his chair. “What! is it you, Jehan?”
“It is a J, at any rate,” said the student, with his merry, rosy, impudent face.
Dom Claude’s features resumed their usual severe expression.
“Why are you here?”
“Brother,” replied the student, trying to put on a modest, unassuming, melancholy look, and twisting his cap with an innocent air, “I came to ask you—”
“What?”
“For a little moral lecture, which I sorely need.” Jehan dared not add aloud, “And a little money, which I need still more sorely.” The last part of his sentence was left unspoken.
“Sir,” said the arcbdeacon in icy tones, “I am greatly displeased with you.”
“Alas!” sighed the student.
Dom Claude turned his chair slightly, and looked steadily at Jehan.
“I am very glad to see you.”
This was a terrible beginning. Jehan prepared for a severe attack.
“Jehan, I hear complaints of you every day. How about that beating with which you bruised a certain little Viscount Albert de Ra monchamp?”
“Oh!” said Jehan, “that was nothing,—a mischievous page, who amused himself with spattering the students by riding his horse through the mud at full speed!”
“How about that Mahiet Fargel,” continued the archdeacon, “whose gown you tore? ‘Tunicam dechiraverunt,’cn the complaint says.”
“Oh, pooh! a miserable Montaigu cape,—that’s all!”
“The complaint says ‘tunicam,’ and not ‘cappettam.’ Do you know Latin?”
Jehan made no answer.
“Yes,” resumed the priest, shaking his head, “this is what study and learning have come to now. The Latin language is hardly understood, Syriac is an unknown tongue, Greek is held in such odium that it is not considered ignorance for the wisest to skip a Greek word without reading it, and to say, ‘Grœecum est, non legitur.”’co
The student boldly raised his eyes: “Brother, would you like me to explain in good every-day French that Greek word written yonder on the wall?”
“Which word?”
“ ‘ANÁTKH.”
A slight flush overspread the archdeacon’s dappled cheeks, like the puff of smoke which proclaims to the world the secret commotion of a volcano. The student scarcely noticed it.
“Well, Jehan!” stammered the elder brother with an effort, “what does the word mean?”
“FATE .”
Dom Claude turned pale again, and the student went on carelessly, —
“And that word below it, written by the same hand, ‘Avayvεíα, means ‘impurity.’ You see I know my Greek.”
The archdeacon was still silent. This Greek lesson had given him food for thought.
Little Jehan, who had all the cunning of a spoiled child, thought this a favorable opportunity to prefer his request. He therefore assumed a very sweet tone, and began:—
“My good brother, have you taken such an aversion to me that you pull a long face for a few paltry cuffs and thumps distributed in fair fight to no one knows what boys and monkeys (quibusdam mar mosetis)? You see, dear brother Claude, that I know my Latin.”
But all this affectionate hypocrisy failed of its usual effect on the stern elder brother. Cerberus did not snap at the sop. The archdeacon’s brow did not lose a single wrinkle.
“What are you driving at?” said he, drily.
“Well, then, to the point! This is it,” bravely responded Jehan; “I want money.”
At this bold declaration the archdeacon’s face assumed quite a paternal and pedagogic expression.
“You know, Master Jehan, that our Tirechappe estate only brings us in, reckoning the taxes and the rents of the twenty-one houses, thirty-nine pounds eleven pence and six Paris farthings. It is half as much again as in the time of the Paclet brothers, but it is not much.”
“I want money,” stoically repeated Jehan.
“You know that it has been officially decided that our twenty-one houses were held in full fee of the bishopric, and that we can only buy ourselves off from this homage by paying two silver gilt marks of the value of six Paris pounds to the right reverend bishop. Now, I have not yet been able to save up those two marks. You know this.”
“I know that I want money,” repeated Jehan for the third time.
“And what would you do with it?”
This question made the light of hope shine in Jehan’s eyes. He resumed his demure, caressing manner.
“See here, dear brother Claude; I do not come to you with any evil intention. I don’t want to cut a dash at the tavern with your money, or to walk the streets of Paris in garments of gold brocade with my lackey, cum meo laquasio. No, brother; I want the money for a charity.”
“What charity?” asked Claude with some surprise.
“There are two of my friends who want to buy an outfit for the child of a poor widow in the Haudry almshouse. It is a real charity. It will cost three florins; I want to give my share.”
“Who are your two friends?”
“Pierre l‘Assommeur and Baptiste Croque-Oison.”cp
“Hum!” said the archdeacon; “those names are as fit for charity as a bombard for the high altar.”
Certainly Jehan had chosen very suspicious names for his two friends, as he felt when it was too late.
“And then,” added the sagacious Claude, “what kind of an outfit could you buy for three florins, and for the child of one of the women in the Haudry almshouse, too? How long have those widows had babies in swaddling-clothes?”
Jehan broke the ice once more:—
“Well, then, if I must tell you, I want the money to go to see Isabeau la Thierrye tonight, at the Val-d‘Amour.”
“Impure scamp!” cried the priest.
“‘Avaγvεíα,” said Jehan.
This quotation, borrowed, perhaps maliciously, by the student from the wall of the cell, produced a strange effect upon the priest. He bit his lip, and his rage was extinguished in a blush.
“Begone!” said he to Jehan. “I am expecting some one.”
The student made another effort,—
“Brother Claude, at least give me a few farthings for food.”
“How far have you got in Gratian’s decretals?” asked Dom Claude.
“I’ve lost my copy-books.”
“Where are you in the Latin humanities?”
“Somebody has stolen my copy of Horace.”
“Where are you in Aristotle?”
“My faith, brother! what Father of the Church says that the errors of heretics have in all ages taken refuge in the brambles of Aristotle’s metaphysics? Plague take Aristotle! I will not destroy my religion with his metaphysics.”
“Young man,” resumed the archdeacon, “at the king’s last entry there was a gentleman called Philippe de Comines, who had embroidered on his horse’s housings this motto, which I advise you to consider: ‘Qui non laborat non manducet.”’cq
The student was silent for a moment, his finger to his ear, his eye fixed upon the ground, and an angry air.
Suddenly he turned to Claude with the lively quickness of a water wagtail,—
“So, good brother, you refuse to give me a penny to buy a crust from a baker?”
“‘Qm non laborat non mand
ucet.’”
At this reply from the inflexible archdeacon, Jehan hid his face in his hands like a woman sobbing, and exclaimed in accents of despair,
“What do you mean by that, sir?” asked Claude, amazed at this outburst.
“Why,” said the student,—and he looked up at Claude with impudent eyes into which he had just rubbed his fists to make them look red with crying,—“it is Greek! It is an anapaest of Æschylus which expresses grief perfectly.”
And here he burst into laughter so absurd and so violent that it made the archdeacon smile. It was really Claude’s fault; why had he so spoiled the child?
“Oh, good brother Claude,” added Jehan, emboldened by this smile, “just see my broken buskins! Was there ever more tragic cothurnus on earth than boots with flapping soles?”
The archdeacon had promptly resumed his former severity.
“I will send you new boots, but no money.”
“Only a paltry penny, brother,” continued the suppliant Jehan. “I will learn Gratian by heart. I will believe heartily in God. I will be a regular Pythagoras of learning and virtue. But give me a penny, for pity’s sake! Would you have me devoured by famine, which gapes before me with its jaws blacker, more noisome, deeper than Tartarus or a monk’s nose?”
Dom Claude shook his wrinkled brow: “‘Qm non laborat,-”’
Jehan did not let him finish.
“Well, then,” he cried, “to the devil! Hurrah for fun! I’ll go to the tavern, I’ll fight, I’ll drink, and I’ll go to see the girls!”
And upon this, he flung up his cap and cracked his fingers like castanets.
The archdeacon looked at him with a gloomy air.
“Jehan, you have no soul!”
“In that case, according to Epicurus, I lack an unknown quantity composed of unknown qualities.”
“Jehan, you must think seriously of reform.”
“Oh, come!” cried the student, gazing alternately at his brother and at the alembics on the stove; “is everything crooked here,—ideas as well as bottles?”
“Jehan, you are on a very slippery road. Do you know where you are going?”
“To the tavern,” said Jehan.
“The tavern leads to the pillory.”
“It’s as good a lantern as any other, and perhaps it was the one with which Diogenes found his man.”
“The pillory leads to the gallows.”
“The gallows is a balance, with a man in one scale and the whole world in the other. It is a fine thing to be the man.”
“The gallows leads to hell.”
“That’s a glorious fire.”
“Jehan, Jehan, you will come to a bad end!”
“I shall have had a good beginning.”
At this moment the sound of footsteps was heard on the stairs.
“Silence!” said the archdeacon, putting his finger to his lip: “Here comes Master Jacques. Listen, Jehan,” he added in a low voice; “take care you never mention what you may see and hear here. Hide yourself quickly under that stove, and don’t dare to breathe.”
The student crawled under the stove; there, a capital idea occurred to him.
“By the way, brother Claude, I want a florin for holding my breath.”
“Silence! you shall have it.”
“Then give it to me.”
“Take it!” said the archdeacon, angrily, flinging him his purse.
Jehan crept farther under the stove, and the door opened.
CHAPTER V
The Two Men Dressed in Black
The person who entered wore a black gown and a gloomy air. Our friend Jehan (who, as may readily be supposed, had so disposed himself in his corner that he could see and hear everything at his good pleasure) was struck, at the first glance, by the extreme melancholy of the newcomer’s face and attire. Yet a certain amiability pervaded the countenance, albeit it was the amiability of a cat or a judge,—a sickly amiability. The man was very grey, wrinkled, bordering on sixty years; had white eyebrows, hanging lip, and big hands. When Jehan saw that he was a mere nobody,—that is, probably a doctor or a magistrate, and that his nose was very far away from his mouth, a sure sign of stupidity,—he curled himself up in his hiding-place, in despair at having to pass an indefinite length of time in so uncomfortable a position and in such poor company.
Meantime, the archdeacon did not even rise from his chair to greet this person. He signed to him to be seated on a stool near the door, and after a few moments’ silence, which seemed the continuation of a previous meditation, he said in a somewhat patronizing tone, “Good-morning, Master Jacques.”
“Your servant, master,” replied the man in black.
In the two ways of pronouncing,—on the one hand that “Master Jacques,” and on the other that distinctive “master,”—there was the difference that there is between domine and domne. It bespoke the greeting of teacher and pupil.
“Well,” resumed the archdeacon after a fresh pause, which Master Jacques took care not to break, “have you succeeded?”
“Alas! master,” said the other, with a sad smile, “I am still blowing away. As many ashes as I choose; but not a particle of gold.”
Dom Claude made an impatient gesture. “I’m not talking about that, Master Jacques Charmolue, but about the trial of your sorcerer, Marc Cenaine,—wasn’t that what you called him?—the butler to the Court of Accounts. Does he confess his magic? Was the rack successful?”
“Alas! no,” replied Master Jacques, still with the same sad smile, “we have not that consolation. The man is as hard as flint; we might boil him at the Pig-market before he would say a word. And yet, we have spared nothing to get at the truth; all his bones are out of joint already; we have left no stone unturned. As the old comic author, Plautus says:—
‘Advorsum stimulos, laminas, crucesque, compedesque,
Nervos, catenas, carceres, numellas, pedicas, boias.‘cr
All in vain; the man is terrible indeed. I can’t make him out!”
“You’ve not found anything new at his house?”
“Yes, indeed,” said Master Jacques, fumbling in his purse; “this parchment. There are words written on it which we cannot comprehend. And yet the criminal lawyer, Philippe Lheulier, knows a little Hebrew, which he picked up in that affair of the Jews in the Rue Kantersten at Brussels.”
So saying, Master Jacques unrolled a parchment.
“Give it to me,” said the archdeacon. And casting his eyes over the writing, he exclaimed, “Clear magic, Master Jacques! ‘Emen-Hétan!’ that is the cry of the vampires as they appear at their Sabbath. ‘Per ipsum, et cum ipso, et in ipso!’—that is the word of command which rechains the devil in hell. ‘Hax, pax, max!’ this belongs to medicine: a prescription against the bite of mad dogs. Master Jacques, you are the king’s attorney to the Ecclesiastical Court. This parchment is an abomination.”
“We will return the man to the rack. Here again,” added Master Jacques, rummaging in his wallet once more, “is something else which we found in Marc Cenaine’s house.”
It was a vessel similar to those which covered Dom Claude’s stove.
“Ah!” said the archdeacon, “an alchemist’s crucible.”
“I must confess,” replied Master Jacques, with his shy, awkward smile, “that I tried it on my furnace, but I succeeded no better than with my own.”
The archdeacon began to examine the vessel.
“What has he inscribed upon his crucible? ‘Och! Och’—the word which drives away fleas! This Marc Cenaine is a dolt! I can easily believe that you will never make gold with this. Put it in your alcove in summer, for that’s all it’s fit for.”
“Talking of mistakes,” said the king’s proxy, “I have just been studying the porch below before I came upstairs; is your reverence very sure that it is the opening of the book of physics which is represented there on the side towards the Hospital; and that, of the seven nude figures at the feet of the Virgin, the one with wings at his heels is meant for Mercury?�
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“Yes,” replied the priest; “it is so written by Augustin Nypho, that Italian doctor who had a bearded familiar spirit, which taught him everything. However, we will go down, and I will explain all this to you on the spot.”
“Thanks, master,” said Charmolue, bowing to the ground. “By the way, I forgot! When will it please you to have the little witch arrested?”
“What witch?”
“That gipsy girl whom you know well, who comes every day and dances in the square before the cathedral, despite the official prohibition. She has a goat which is possessed, and which has the devil’s own horns; which reads and writes, and is as good a mathematician as Picatrix, and would be quite enough to hang an entire tribe of gipsies. The papers are ready; the case will be a short one, I warrant! A pretty creature, by my soul,—that dancing-girl! The finest black eyes! Two carbuncles! When shall we begin?”
The archdeacon was extremely pale.
“I will let you know,” he stammered in a voice which was scarcely articulate; then he added, with an effort, “Devote yourself to Marc Cenaine.”
“Never fear,” said Charmolue, smiling; “I’ll have him restrapped to the leather bed when I go back. But he’s a devil of a fellow; he would tire out Pierrat Torterue himself, and his hands are bigger than mine. As the worthy Plautus says:—
‘Nudus vinctus, centum pondo, es quando pendes per pedes.’cs
The torture of the wheel! That’s the best thing we have. He shall take a turn at that.”
Dom Claude seemed absorbed in gloomy reverie. He turned to Charmolue with the words,—