_ It chanced that upon a fine morning in this same month of
March, I think it was on Saturday the 29th, Saint Eustache's
day, our young friend the student, Jehan Frollo du Moulin,
perceived, as he was dressing himself, that his breeches, which
contained his purse, gave out no metallic ring. "Poor purse,"
he said, drawing it from his fob, "what! not the smallest
parisis! how cruelly the dice, beer-pots, and Venus have
depleted thee! How empty, wrinkled, limp, thou art! Thou
resemblest the throat of a fury! I ask you, Messer Cicero,
and Messer Seneca, copies of whom, all dog's-eared, I behold
scattered on the floor, what profits it me to know, better
than any governor of the mint, or any Jew on the Pont aux
Changeurs, that a golden crown stamped with a crown is worth
thirty-five unzains of twenty-five sous, and eight deniers
parisis apiece, and that a crown stamped with a crescent is
worth thirty-six unzains of twenty-six sous, six deniers
tournois apiece, if I have not a single wretched black liard
to risk on the double-six! Oh! Consul Cicero! this is no
calamity from which one extricates one's self with periphrases,
~quemadmodum~, and ~verum enim vero~!"
He dressed himself sadly. An idea had occurred to him as
he laced his boots, but he rejected it at first; nevertheless,
it returned, and he put on his waistcoat wrong side out, an
evident sign of violent internal combat. At last he dashed his
cap roughly on the floor, and exclaimed: "So much the worse!
Let come of it what may. I am going to my brother! I
shall catch a sermon, but I shall catch a crown."
Then be hastily donned his long jacket with furred half-
sleeves, picked up his cap, and went out like a man driven
to desperation.
He descended the Rue de la Harpe toward the City. As he
passed the Rue de la Huchette, the odor of those admirable
spits, which were incessantly turning, tickled his olfactory
apparatus, and he bestowed a loving glance toward the
Cyclopean roast, which one day drew from the Franciscan friar,
Calatagirone, this pathetic exclamation: ~Veramente, queste
rotisserie sono cosa stupenda~!* But Jehan had not the
wherewithal to buy a breakfast, and he plunged, with a
profound sigh, under the gateway of the Petit-Châtelet, that
enormous double trefoil of massive towers which guarded the
entrance to the City.
* Truly, these roastings are a stupendous thing!
He did not even take the trouble to cast a stone in passing,
as was the usage, at the miserable statue of that Périnet
Leclerc who had delivered up the Paris of Charles VI. to the
English, a crime which his effigy, its face battered with
stones and soiled with mud, expiated for three centuries at
the corner of the Rue de la Harpe and the Rue de Buci, as in
an eternal pillory.
The Petit-Pont traversed, the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève
crossed, Jehan de Molendino found himself in front of Notre-
Dame. Then indecision seized upon him once more, and he
paced for several minutes round the statue of M. Legris,
repeating to himself with anguish: "The sermon is sure, the
crown is doubtful."
He stopped a beadle who emerged from the cloister,--"Where
is monsieur the archdeacon of Josas?"
"I believe that he is in his secret cell in the tower," said
the beadle; "I should advise you not to disturb him there,
unless you come from some one like the pope or monsieur the king."
Jehan clapped his hands.
"~Bécliable~! here's a magnificent chance to see the famous
sorcery cell!"
This reflection having brought him to a decision, he plunged
resolutely into the small black doorway, and began the
ascent of the spiral of Saint-Gilles, which leads to the upper
stories of the tower. "I am going to see," he said to himself
on the way. "By the ravens of the Holy Virgin! it must
needs be a curious thing, that cell which my reverend brother
hides so secretly! 'Tis said that he lights up the kitchens
of hell there, and that he cooks the philosopher's stone there
over a hot fire. ~Bédieu~! I care no more for the philosopher's
stone than for a pebble, and I would rather find over his furnace
an omelette of Easter eggs and bacon, than the biggest
philosopher's stone in the world."'
On arriving at the gallery of slender columns, he took
breath for a moment, and swore against the interminable
staircase by I know not how many million cartloads of devils;
then he resumed his ascent through the narrow door of the
north tower, now closed to the public. Several moments
after passing the bell chamber, he came upon a little
landing-place, built in a lateral niche, and under the vault
of a low, pointed door, whose enormous lock and strong iron
bars he was enabled to see through a loophole pierced in the
opposite circular wall of the staircase. Persons desirous of
visiting this door at the present day will recognize it by this
inscription engraved in white letters on the black wall: "J'ADORE
CORALIE, 1823. SIGNE UGENE." "Signé" stands in the text.
"Ugh!" said the scholar; "'tis here, no doubt."
The key was in the lock, the door was very close to him;
he gave it a gentle push and thrust his head through the opening.
The reader cannot have failed to turn over the admirable
works of Rembrandt, that Shakespeare of painting. Amid so
many marvellous engravings, there is one etching in particular,
which is supposed to represent Doctor Faust, and which
it is impossible to contemplate without being dazzled. It
represents a gloomy cell; in the centre is a table loaded
with hideous objects; skulls, spheres, alembics, compasses,
hieroglyphic parchments. The doctor is before this table clad
in his large coat and covered to the very eyebrows with his
furred cap. He is visible only to his waist. He has half
risen from his immense arm-chair, his clenched fists rest on
the table, and he is gazing with curiosity and terror at a large
luminous circle, formed of magic letters, which gleams from
the wall beyond, like the solar spectrum in a dark chamber.
This cabalistic sun seems to tremble before the eye, and fills
the wan cell with its mysterious radiance. It is horrible and
it is beautiful.
Something very similar to Faust's cell presented itself to
Jehan's view, when he ventured his head through the half-
open door. It also was a gloomy and sparsely lighted retreat.
There also stood a large arm-chair and a large table, compasses,
alembics, skeletons of animals suspended from the ceiling,
a globe rolling on the floor, hippocephali mingled
promiscuously with drinking cups, in which quivered leaves
of gold, skulls placed upon vellum checkered with figures and
characters, huge manuscripts piled up wide open, without
mercy on the cracking corners of the parchment; in short, all
the rubbish of science, and everywhere on this confusion dust
and spiders' webs; but there was no circle of luminous letters,
no doctor in an ecstasy contemplating the flaming vision,
as the eagle gazes upon the sun.
Nevertheless, the cell was not deserted. A man was seated
in the arm-chair, and bending over the table. Jehan, to whom
his back was turned, could see only his shoulders and the
back of his skull; but he had no difficulty in recognizing that
bald head, which nature had provided with an eternal tonsure,
as though desirous of marking, by this external symbol, the
archdeacon's irresistible clerical vocation.
Jehan accordingly recognized his brother; but the door
had been opened so softly, that nothing warned Dom Claude of
his presence. The inquisitive scholar took advantage of this
circumstance to examine the cell for a few moments at his
leisure. A large furnace, which he had not at first observed,
stood to the left of the arm-chair, beneath the window. The
ray of light which penetrated through this aperture made its
way through a spider's circular web, which tastefully inscribed
its delicate rose in the arch of the window, and in the centre
of which the insect architect hung motionless, like the hub
of this wheel of lace. Upon the furnace were accumulated
in disorder, all sorts of vases, earthenware bottles, glass
retorts, and mattresses of charcoal. Jehan observed, with a
sigh, that there was no frying-pan. "How cold the kitchen
utensils are!" he said to himself.
In fact, there was no fire in the furnace, and it seemed as
though none had been lighted for a long time. A glass mask,
which Jehan noticed among the utensils of alchemy, and
which served no doubt, to protect the archdeacon's face when
he was working over some substance to be dreaded, lay in one
corner covered with dust and apparently forgotten. Beside it
lay a pair of bellows no less dusty, the upper side of which
bore this inscription incrusted in copper letters: SPIRA SPERA.
Other inscriptions were written, in accordance with the
fashion of the hermetics, in great numbers on the walls; some
traced with ink, others engraved with a metal point. There
were, moreover, Gothic letters, Hebrew letters, Greek letters,
and Roman letters, pell-mell; the inscriptions overflowed at
haphazard, on top of each other, the more recent effacing the
more ancient, and all entangled with each other, like the
branches in a thicket, like pikes in an affray. It was, in
fact, a strangely confused mingling of all human philosophies,
all reveries, all human wisdom. Here and there one shone
out from among the rest like a banner among lance heads.
Generally, it was a brief Greek or Roman device, such as the
Middle Ages knew so well how to formulate.--~Unde? Inde?--Homo
homini monstrurn-Ast'ra, castra, nomen, numen.--Meya Bibklov,
ueya xaxov.--Sapere aude. Fiat ubi vult~--etc.; sometimes
a word devoid of all apparent sense, ~Avayxoqpayia~, which
possibly contained a bitter allusion to the regime of the
cloister; sometimes a simple maxim of clerical discipline
formulated in a regular hexameter ~Coelestem dominum terrestrem
dicite dominum~. There was also Hebrew jargon, of which
Jehan, who as yet knew but little Greek, understood nothing;
and all were traversed in every direction by stars, by
figures of men or animals, and by intersecting triangles; and
this contributed not a little to make the scrawled wall of the
cell resemble a sheet of paper over which a monkey had
drawn back and forth a pen filled with ink.
The whole chamber, moreover, presented a general aspect
of abandonment and dilapidation; and the bad state of the
utensils induced the supposition that their owner had long
been distracted from his labors by other preoccupations.
Meanwhile, this master, bent over a vast manuscript,
ornamented with fantastical illustrations, appeared to be
tormented by an idea which incessantly mingled with his
meditations. That at least was Jehan's idea, when he heard him
exclaim, with the thoughtful breaks of a dreamer thinking
aloud,--
"Yes, Manou said it, and Zoroaster taught it! the sun is
born from fire, the moon from the sun; fire is the soul
of the universe; its elementary atoms pour forth and flow
incessantly upon the world through infinite channels! At
the point where these currents intersect each other in the
heavens, they produce light; at their points of intersection
on earth, they produce gold. Light, gold; the same thing!
From fire to the concrete state. The difference between the
visible and the palpable, between the fluid and the solid in
the same substance, between water and ice, nothing more.
These are no dreams; it is the general law of nature. But
what is one to do in order to extract from science the secret
of this general law? What! this light which inundates my
hand is gold! These same atoms dilated in accordance with
a certain law need only be condensed in accordance with
another law. How is it to be done? Some have fancied by
burying a ray of sunlight, Averroës,--yes, 'tis Averroës,--
Averroës buried one under the first pillar on the left of the
sanctuary of the Koran, in the great Mahometan mosque of
Cordova; but the vault cannot he opened for the purpose of
ascertaining whether the operation has succeeded, until after
the lapse of eight thousand years.
"The devil!" said Jehan, to himself, "'tis a long while to
wait for a crown!"
"Others have thought," continued the dreamy archdeacon,
"that it would be better worth while to operate upon a
ray of Sirius. But 'tis exceeding hard to obtain this
ray pure, because of the simultaneous presence of other
stars whose rays mingle with it. Flamel esteemed it more
simple to operate upon terrestrial fire. Flamel! there's
predestination in the name! ~Flamma~! yes, fire. All lies
there. The diamond is contained in the carbon, gold is in the
fire. But how to extract it? Magistri affirms that there are
certain feminine names, which possess a charm so sweet and
mysterious, that it suffices to pronounce them during the
operation. Let us read what Manon says on the matter: 'Where
women are honored, the divinities are rejoiced; where they are
despised, it is useless to pray to God. The mouth of a woman
is constantly pure; it is a running water, it is a ray of
sunlight. The name of a woman should be agreeable, sweet,
fanciful; it should end in long vowels, and resemble words
of benediction.' Yes, the sage is right; in truth, Maria,
Sophia, la Esmeral--Damnation! always that thought!"
And he closed the book violently.
He passed his hand over his brow, as though to brush away
the idea which assailed him; then he took from the table a
nail and a small hammer, whose handle was curiously painted
with cabalistic letters.
"For some time," he said with a bitter smile, "I have failed
in all my experiments! one fixed idea possesses me, and sears
my brain like fire. I have not even been able to discover the
secret of Cassiodorus, whose lamp burned without wick and
without oil. A simple matter, nevertheless--"
"The deuce!" muttered Jehan in his beard.
"Hence," continued the priest, "one wretched thought is
sufficient to render a man weak and beside himself! Oh!
how Claude Pernelle would laugh at me. She who could not
turn Nicholas Flamel aside, for one moment, from his pursuit
of the great work! What! I hold in my hand the magic
hammer of Zéchiélé! at every blow dealt by the formidable
rabbi, from the depths of his cell, upon this nail, that
one of his enemies whom he had condemned, were he a thousand
leagues away, was buried a cubit deep in the earth which
swallowed him. The King of France himself, in consequence
of once having inconsiderately knocked at the door of the
thermaturgist, sank to the knees through the pavement of
his own Paris. This took place three centuries ago. Well!
I possess the hammer and the nail, and in my hands they are
utensils no more formidable than a club in the hands of a
maker of edge tools. And yet all that is required is to find
the magic word which Zéchiélé pronounced when he struck
his nail."
"What nonsense!" thought Jehan.
"Let us see, let us try!" resumed the archdeacon briskly.
"Were I to succeed, I should behold the blue spark flash
from the head of the nail. Emen-Hétan! Emen-Hétan!
That's not it. Sigéani! Sigéani! May this nail open the
tomb to any one who bears the name of Phoebus! A curse
upon it! Always and eternally the same idea!"
And he flung away the hammer in a rage. Then he sank
down so deeply on the arm-chair and the table, that Jehan
lost him from view behind the great pile of manuscripts. For
the space of several minutes, all that he saw was his fist
convulsively clenched on a book. Suddenly, Dom Claude sprang
up, seized a compass and engraved in silence upon the wall in
capital letters, this Greek word
~ANArKH~.
"My brother is mad," said Jehan to himself; "it would
have been far more simple to write ~Fatum~, every one is not
obliged to know Greek."
The archdeacon returned and seated himself in his armchair,
and placed his head on both his hands, as a sick man does,
whose head is heavy and burning.
The student watched his brother with surprise. He did not
know, he who wore his heart on his sleeve, he who observed
only the good old law of Nature in the world, he who allowed
his passions to follow their inclinations, and in whom the lake
of great emotions was always dry, so freely did he let it off
each day by fresh drains,--he did not know with what fury
the sea of human passions ferments and boils when all egress
is denied to it, how it accumulates, how it swells, how it
overflows, how it hollows out the heart; how it breaks in inward
sobs, and dull convulsions, until it has rent its dikes and
burst its bed. The austere and glacial envelope of Claude
Frollo, that cold surface of steep and inaccessible virtue,
had always deceived Jehan. The merry scholar had never
dreamed that there was boiling lava, furious and profound,
beneath the snowy brow of AEtna.
We do not know whether he suddenly became conscious of
these things; but, giddy as he was, he understood that he had
seen what he ought not to have seen, that he had just surprised
the soul of his elder brother in one of its most secret
altitudes, and that Claude must not be allowed to know it.
Seeing that the archdeacon had fallen back into his former
immobility, he withdrew his head very softly, and made some
noise with his feet outside the door, like a person who has
just arrived and is giving warning of his approach.
"Enter!" cried the archdeacon, from the interior of his
cell; "I was expecting you. I left the door unlocked
expressly; enter Master Jacques!"
The scholar entered boldly. The archdeacon, who was very
much embarrassed by such a visit in such a place, trembled
in his arm-chair. "What! 'tis you, Jehan?"
"'Tis a J, all the same," said the scholar, with his ruddy,
merry, and audacious face.
Dom Claude's visage had resumed its severe expression.
"What are you come for?"
"Brother," replied the scholar, making an effort to assume
a decent, pitiful, and modest mien, and twirling his cap in his
hands with an innocent air; "I am come to ask of you--"
"What?"
"A little lecture on morality, of which I stand greatly in
need," Jehan did not dare to add aloud,--"and a little money
of which I am in still greater need." This last member of
his phrase remained unuttered.
"Monsieur," said the archdeacon, in a cold tone, "I am greatly
displeased with you."
"Alas!" sighed the scholar.
Dom Claude made his arm-chair describe a quarter circle,
and gazed intently at Jehan.
"I am very glad to see you."
This was a formidable exordium. Jehan braced himself
for a rough encounter.
"Jehan, complaints are brought me about you every day.
What affray was that in which you bruised with a cudgel a
little vicomte, Albert de Ramonchamp?"
"Oh!" said Jehan, "a vast thing that! A malicious page
amused himself by splashing the scholars, by making his
horse gallop through the mire!"
"Who," pursued the archdeacon, "is that Mahiet Fargel,
whose gown you have torn? ~Tunicam dechiraverunt~, saith
the complaint."
"Ah bah! a wretched cap of a Montaigu! Isn't that it?"
"The complaint says ~tunicam~ and not ~cappettam~. Do you
know Latin?"
Jehan did not reply.
"Yes," pursued the priest shaking his head, "that is the
state of learning and letters at the present day. The Latin
tongue is hardly understood, Syriac is unknown, Greek so
odious that 'tis accounted no ignorance in the most learned to
skip a Greek word without reading it, and to say, '~Groecum
est non legitur~.'"
The scholar raised his eyes boldly. "Monsieur my brother,
doth it please you that I shall explain in good French
vernacular that Greek word which is written yonder on the wall?"
"What word?"
"'~ANArKH~."
A slight flush spread over the cheeks of the priest with
their high bones, like the puff of smoke which announces on
the outside the secret commotions of a volcano. The student
hardly noticed it.
"Well, Jehan," stammered the elder brother with an effort,
"What is the meaning of yonder word?"
"FATE."
Dom Claude turned pale again, and the scholar pursued carelessly.
"And that word below it, graved by the same hand,
'~Ayáyvela~, signifies 'impurity.' You see that people do know
their Greek."
And the archdeacon remained silent. This Greek lesson
had rendered him thoughtful.
Master Jehan, who possessed all the artful ways of a spoiled
child, judged that the moment was a favorable one in which
to risk his request. Accordingly, he assumed an extremely
soft tone and began,--
"My good brother, do you hate me to such a degree as to
look savagely upon me because of a few mischievous cuffs and
blows distributed in a fair war to a pack of lads and brats,
~quibusdam marmosetis~? You see, good Brother Claude, that
people know their Latin."
But all this caressing hypocrisy did not have its usual effect
on the severe elder brother. Cerberus did not bite at the
honey cake. The archdeacon's brow did not lose a single wrinkle.
"What are you driving at?" he said dryly.
"Well, in point of fact, this!" replied Jehan bravely, "I stand
in need of money."
At this audacious declaration, the archdeacon's visage
assumed a thoroughly pedagogical and paternal expression.
"You know, Monsieur Jehan, that our fief of Tirecbappe,
putting the direct taxes and the rents of the nine and twenty
houses in a block, yields only nine and thirty livres, eleven
sous, six deniers, Parisian. It is one half more than in the
time of the brothers Paclet, but it is not much."
"I need money," said Jehan stoically.
"You know that the official has decided that our twenty-one
houses should he moved full into the fief of the Bishopric,
and that we could redeem this homage only by paying the
reverend bishop two marks of silver gilt of the price of six
livres parisis. Now, these two marks I have not yet been
able to get together. You know it."
"I know that I stand in need of money," repeated Jehan
for the third time.
"And what are you going to do with it?"
This question caused a flash of hope to gleam before Jehan's
eyes. He resumed his dainty, caressing air.
"Stay, dear Brother Claude, I should not come to you, with
any evil motive. There is no intention of cutting a dash in
the taverns with your unzains, and of strutting about the
streets of Paris in a caparison of gold brocade, with a lackey,
~cum meo laquasio~. No, brother, 'tis for a good work."
"What good work?" demanded Claude, somewhat surprised.
"Two of my friends wish to purchase an outfit for the
infant of a poor Haudriette widow. It is a charity. It will
cost three forms, and I should like to contribute to it."
"What are names of your two friends?"
"Pierre l'Assommeur and Baptiste Croque-Oison*."
* Peter the Slaughterer; and Baptist Crack-Gosling.
"Hum," said the archdeacon; "those are names as fit for
a good work as a catapult for the chief altar."
It is certain that Jehan had made a very bad choice of
names for his two friends. He realized it too late.
"And then," pursued the sagacious Claude, "what sort of
an infant's outfit is it that is to cost three forms, and
that for the child of a Haudriette? Since when have the
Haudriette widows taken to having babes in swaddling-clothes?"
Jehan broke the ice once more.
"Eh, well! yes! I need money in order to go and see
Isabeau la Thierrye to-night; in the Val-d' Amour!"
"Impure wretch!" exclaimed the priest.
"~Avayveia~!" said Jehan.
This quotation, which the scholar borrowed with malice,
perchance, from the wall of the cell, produced a singular
effect on the archdeacon. He bit his lips and his wrath was
drowned in a crimson flush.
"Begone," he said to Jehan. "I am expecting some one."
The scholar made one more effort.
"Brother Claude, give me at least one little parisis to buy
something to eat."
"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: "~Orororororoi~."
"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 anapaest of AEschylus 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. _