"You are, nevertheless, tolerably poor?"
"Poor, yes; unhappy, no."
At that moment, a trampling of horses was heard, and our two interlocutors beheld defiling at the end of the street, a company of the king"s unattached archers, their lances borne high, an officer at their head. The cavalcade was brilliant, and its march resounded on the pavement.
"How you gaze at that officer!" said Gringoire, to the archdeacon.
"Because I think I recognize him."
"What do you call him?"
"I think," said Claude, "that his name is Phoebus de Chateaupers."
"Phoebus! A curious name! There is also a Phoebus, Comte de Foix. I remember having known a wench who swore only by the name of Phoebus."
"Come away from here," said the priest. "I have something to say to you."
From the moment of that troop"s pa.s.sing, some agitation had pierced through the archdeacon"s glacial envelope. He walked on. Gringoire followed him, being accustomed to obey him, like all who had once approached that man so full of ascendency. They reached in silence the Rue des Bernardins, which was nearly deserted. Here Dom Claude paused.
"What have you to say to me, master?" Gringoire asked him.
"Do you not think that the dress of those cavaliers whom we have just seen is far handsomer than yours and mine?"
Gringoire tossed his head.
"I" faith! I love better my red and yellow jerkin, than those scales of iron and steel. A fine pleasure to produce, when you walk, the same noise as the Quay of Old Iron, in an earthquake!"
"So, Gringoire, you have never cherished envy for those handsome fellows in their military doublets?"
"Envy for what, monsieur the archdeacon? their strength, their armor, their discipline? Better philosophy and independence in rags. I prefer to be the head of a fly rather than the tail of a lion."
"That is singular," said the priest dreamily. "Yet a handsome uniform is a beautiful thing."
Gringoire, perceiving that he was in a pensive mood, quitted him to go and admire the porch of a neighboring house. He came back clapping his hands.
"If you were less engrossed with the fine clothes of men of war, monsieur the archdeacon, I would entreat you to come and see this door.
I have always said that the house of the Sieur Aubry had the most superb entrance in the world."
"Pierre Gringoire," said the archdeacon, "What have you done with that little gypsy dancer?"
"La Esmeralda? You change the conversation very abruptly."
"Was she not your wife?"
"Yes, by virtue of a broken crock. We were to have four years of it. By the way," added Gringoire, looking at the archdeacon in a half bantering way, "are you still thinking of her?"
"And you think of her no longer?"
"Very little. I have so many things. Good heavens, how pretty that little goat was!"
"Had she not saved your life?"
""Tis true, pardieu!"
"Well, what has become of her? What have you done with her?"
"I cannot tell you. I believe that they have hanged her."
"You believe so?"
"I am not sure. When I saw that they wanted to hang people, I retired from the game."
"That is all you know of it?"
"Wait a bit. I was told that she had taken refuge in Notre-Dame, and that she was safe there, and I am delighted to hear it, and I have not been able to discover whether the goat was saved with her, and that is all I know."
"I will tell you more," cried Dom Claude; and his voice, hitherto low, slow, and almost indistinct, turned to thunder. "She has in fact, taken refuge in Notre-Dame. But in three days justice will reclaim her, and she will be hanged on the Greve. There is a decree of parliament."
"That"s annoying," said Gringoire.
The priest, in an instant, became cold and calm again.
"And who the devil," resumed the poet, "has amused himself with soliciting a decree of reintegration? Why couldn"t they leave parliament in peace? What harm does it do if a poor girl takes shelter under the flying b.u.t.tresses of Notre-Dame, beside the swallows" nests?"
"There are satans in this world," remarked the archdeacon.
""Tis devilish badly done," observed Gringoire.
The archdeacon resumed after a silence,--
"So, she saved your life?"
"Among my good friends the outcasts. A little more or a little less and I should have been hanged. They would have been sorry for it to-day."
"Would not you like to do something for her?"
"I ask nothing better, Dom Claude; but what if I entangle myself in some villanous affair?"
"What matters it?"
"Bah! what matters it? You are good, master, that you are! I have two great works already begun."
The priest smote his brow. In spite of the calm which he affected, a violent gesture betrayed his internal convulsions from time to time.
"How is she to be saved?"
Gringoire said to him; "Master, I will reply to you; _Il padelt_, which means in Turkish, "G.o.d is our hope.""
"How is she to be saved?" repeated Claude dreamily.