The Hunchback of Notre Dame (36 page)

“The Devil!” said Jehan aside, “this is a long time to wait for a crown.”

“Others have thought,” continued the musing archdeacon, “that it was better to work with a ray from Sirius. But it is not easy to get such a ray pure, on account of the simultaneous presence of other stars which blend with it. Flamel! What a name for one of the elect,
Flamma!—
Yes
,
fire. That is all: the diamond lurks in the coal; gold is to be found in fire. But how to extract it? Magistri declares that there are certain feminine names possessing so sweet and mysterious a spell that it is enough to pronounce them during the operation. Let us read what Manu says under this head: ‘Where women are reverenced, the divinities rejoice; where they are scorned, it is vain to pray to God. A woman’s mouth is ever pure; it is like running water, it is like a sunbeam. A woman’s name should be agreeable, soft, fantastic; it should end with long vowels, and sound like words of blessing.’ Yes, the sage is right,—indeed, Maria, Sophia, Esmeral—Damnation! again that thought!”

And he closed the book violently.

He passed his hand across his brow, as if to drive away the idea which possessed him; then he took from the table a nail and a small hammer, the handle of which was curiously painted with cabalistic letters.

“For some time,” said he with a bitter smile, “I have failed in all my experiments; a fixed idea possesses me, and is burned into my brain as with a red-hot iron. I have not even succeeded in discovering the lost secret of Cassiodorus, whose lamp burned without wick or oil. And yet it is a simple matter!”

“A plague upon him!” muttered Jehan.

“A single wretched thought, then,” continued the priest, “is enough to make a man weak and mad! Oh, how Claude Pernelle would laugh me to scorn,—she who could not for an instant turn Nicolas Flamel from his pursuit of the great work! Why, I hold in my hand the magic hammer of Ezekiel! At every blow which the terrible rabbi, in the seclusion of his cell, struck on this nail with this hammer, that one of his foes whom he had condemned, were he two thousand leagues away, sank an arm‘s-length into the earth, which swallowed him up. The King of France himself, having one night knocked heedlessly at the magician’s door, sank knee-deep into the pavement of his own city of Paris. Well, I have the hammer and the nail, and they are no more powerful tools in my hand than a cooper’s tiny mallet would be to a smith; and yet I only need to recover the magic word uttered by Ezekiel as he struck his nail.”

“Nonsense!” thought Jehan.

“Let me see, let me try,” resumed the archdeacon, eagerly. “If I succeed, I shall see a blue spark flash from the head of the nail.
‘Emen-Hétan! Emen-Hétan!’
That’s not it.
‘Sigéani! Sigéani!’
May this nail open the gates of the tomb for every one who bears the name of Phoebus! A curse upon it! Always, always and forever the same idea!”

And he threw the hammer from him angrily. Then he sank so far forward over the table that Jehan lost sight of him behind the huge back of the chair. For some moments he saw nothing but his fist convulsively clinched upon a book. All at once Dom Claude rose, took up a pair of compasses, and silently engraved upon the wall, in capital letters, this Greek word:

‘ANÁTKH.

“My brother is mad,” said Jehan to himself; “it would have been much simpler to write
Fatum;
every one is not obliged to understand Greek.”

The archdeacon resumed his seat in his arm-chair, and bowed his head on his hands, like a sick man whose brow is heavy and burning.

The student watched his brother in surprise. He, who wore his heart on his sleeve, who followed no law in the world but the good law of Nature, who gave free rein to his passions, and in whom the fountain of strong feeling was always dry, so clever was he at draining it daily,—he could not guess the fury with which the sea of human passions bubbles and boils when it is denied all outlet; how it gathers and grows, how it swells, how it overflows, how it wears away the heart, how it breaks forth in repressed sobs and stifled convulsions, until it has rent its dikes and burst its bed. Claude Frollo’s stern and icy exterior, that cold surface of rugged and inaccessible virtue, had always misled Jehan. The jovial student had never dreamed of the boiling lava which lies deep and fiery beneath the snowy front of Ætna.

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 manducet.’”

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.