Part 24

--... Others have thought, the archdeacon went on dreamily, that it were better to operate upon a ray of Sirius. But it is very hard to have that ray pure, because of the simultaneous presence of the other stars that come to mingle with it. Flamel holds that it is simpler to operate upon earthly fire. Flamel! what a name of a predestined one, _Flamma_!--Yes, fire. That is all.--The diamond is in the coal, gold is in the fire.--But how to draw it out?--Magistri affirms that there are certain women's names of so sweet and mysterious a charm that it suffices to pronounce them during the operation...--Let us read what Manou says of it: '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 running water, it is a ray of sunlight.--The name of a woman should be pleasing, sweet, imaginary; end in long vowels, and resemble words of blessing.'--... Yes, the sage is right; indeed, the Maria, the Sophia, the Esmeral...--Damnation! always that thought!

And he closed the book violently.

He passed his hand over his brow, as if to chase away the idea that obsessed 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! The fixed idea possesses me, and withers my brain like a clover of fire. I could not even recover the secret of Cassiodore, whose lamp burned without wick and without oil. A simple thing, nevertheless!

--Plague!" said Jehan under his breath.

--... It suffices, then, the priest continued, a single wretched thought to render a man weak and mad! Oh! how Claude Pernelle would laugh at me, she who could not turn Nicolas Flamel aside from the pursuit of the great work for a moment! What! I hold in my hand the magic hammer of Zéchiélé! At each blow that the dread rabbi, from the depths of his cell, struck this nail with that hammer, whichever of his enemies he had condemned, though he were two thousand leagues away, sank a cubit into the earth that devoured him. The King of France himself, for having one evening knocked inconsiderately at the thaumaturge's door, sank into his pavement of Paris up to the knees.--This happened less than three centuries ago.--Well! I have the hammer and the nail, and they are no more formidable tools in my hands than a hatchet in the hands of a smith.--Yet it is only a matter of recovering the magic word that Zéchiélé pronounced, striking upon his nail.

--Trifle! thought Jehan.

--Let us see, let us try, the archdeacon resumed briskly. If I succeed, I shall see the blue spark leap from the head of the nail.--Emen-hétan! Emen-hétan!--That is not it.--Sigéani! Sigéani!--That this nail open the tomb to whoever bears the name of Phoebus!--Curse! always, again, eternally the same idea!"

And he threw the hammer down in anger. Then he sank so far into the armchair and over the table that Jehan lost sight of him behind the enormous back. For some minutes he saw nothing but his convulsive fist clenched upon a book. Suddenly dom Claude rose, took a pair of compasses, and silently graved upon the wall in capital letters this Greek word:

_ANANKÊ_

"My brother is mad," said Jehan to himself; "it would have been much simpler to write _Fatum_[92]. Not everybody is obliged to know Greek."

The archdeacon came back to sit in his armchair, and rested his head in his two hands, like a sick man whose brow is heavy and burning.

The scholar observed his brother with surprise. He did not know--he who laid his heart in the open air, he who observed no law in the world but the good law of nature, he who let his passions flow through their inclinations, and in whom the lake of great emotions was always dry, so largely did he each morning cut new channels there--he did not know with what fury this sea of human passions ferments and boils when all outlet is refused it, how it gathers, how it swells, how it overflows, how it hollows the heart, how it bursts in inward sobs and muffled convulsions, until it has torn 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 of what boiling, furious, and profound lava lies beneath the snowy brow of Etna.

We know not if he suddenly became aware of these thoughts, but, dissipated 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 attitudes, and that Claude must not perceive it. Seeing that the archdeacon had fallen back into his first immobility, he drew his head back very softly, and made some noise of footsteps behind the door, like one who arrives and announces his coming.

"Enter!" cried the archdeacon from within the cell; "I was expecting you. I left the key in the door on purpose. Enter, master Jacques."

The scholar entered boldly. The archdeacon, whom such a visit greatly embarrassed in such a place, started in his armchair.

"What! is it you, Jehan?

--It is always a J," said the scholar with his red, shameless, and joyful face.

Dom Claude's face had resumed its severe expression.

"What have you come here to do?

--My brother," answered the scholar, striving for a decent, pitiful, and modest look, and turning his cap in his hands with an air of innocence, "I came to ask you...

--For what?

--A little morality of which I stand in great need." Jehan did not dare add aloud: "And a little money of which I stand in still greater need." This last member of his sentence remained unpublished.

"Sir," said the archdeacon in a cold tone, "I am very displeased with you.

--Alas!" sighed the scholar.

Dom Claude made his armchair describe a quarter circle, and looked fixedly at Jehan.

"I am glad to see you."

It was a formidable exordium. Jehan prepared himself for a rude shock.

"Jehan, complaints of you are brought to me every day. What is this battery wherein you have bruised with bastinado a little vicomte, Albert de Ramonchamp?...

--Oh!" said Jehan, "a great matter! a wicked page who amused himself by splashing the scholars, making his horse run in the mud!

--What is it, the archdeacon resumed, that Mahiet Fargel, whose robe you have torn? _Tunicam dechiraverunt_, says the complaint.

--Ah bah! a bad cappette of Montaigu! is that not something!

--The complaint says _tunicam_ and not _cappettam_. Do you know Latin?"

Jehan answered not.

"Yes!" the priest went on, shaking his head; "that is where studies and letters now are. The Latin tongue is barely understood, Syriac unknown, Greek so hateful that it is not ignorance in the most learned to skip a Greek word without reading it, and they say: _Græcum est, non legitur_[93]."

The scholar resolutely lifted his eyes. "My brother sir, would it please you that I explain to you in good French speech this Greek word which is written there upon the wall?

--What word?

--_ANANKÊ_."

A slight redness came to bloom upon the yellow cheekbones of the archdeacon, like the puff of smoke which outside announces the secret convulsions of a volcano. The scholar scarcely noticed it.

"Eh, Jehan," stammered the elder brother with effort, "what does that word mean?

--FATALITY."

Dom Claude grew pale again, and the scholar pursued with carelessness:

"And this word which is below, graven by the same hand, _Anagneia_, signifies _impurity_. You see one knows one's Greek."

The archdeacon remained silent. This lesson in Greek had rendered him dreamy. Little Jehan, who had all the finesses of a spoiled child, judged the moment favorable to hazard his request. He took therefore an extremely soft voice, and began:

"My good brother, is it that you hate me to such a point as to make me a fierce face for some poor slaps and punches distributed in good war upon I know not what boys and brats, _quibusdam mormosetis?_--You see, good brother Claude, that one knows one's Latin."

But all this caressing hypocrisy had no effect upon the severe elder brother. Cerberus did not bite at the honey cake. The archdeacon's brow did not unbend by a wrinkle.

"Where would you come out?" said he in a dry tone.

"Well, to the point! here it is!" answered Jehan bravely. "I have need of money."

At this shameless declaration, the archdeacon's physiognomy took altogether the pedagogical and paternal expression.

"You know, monsieur Jehan, that our fief of Tirechappe yields, taking together the cens and rents of the twenty-one houses, but thirty-nine livres eleven sous six deniers parisis. That is half as much again as in the time of the Paclet brothers, but it is not much.

--I have need of money," said Jehan stoically.

"You know that the official has decided that our twenty-one houses hold in full fief of the bishopric, and that we could not redeem this homage save by paying the reverend bishop two marks of gilded silver at the price of six livres parisis. Now, these two marks, I have not yet been able to gather. You know it.

--I know that I have need of money," repeated Jehan for the third time.

"And what would you do with it?"

This question made a gleam of hope shine in Jehan's eyes. He resumed his catlike and sugary mien.

"See here, dear brother Claude, I would not address myself to you in evil intent. It is not a matter of cutting a fine figure in the taverns with your unzains and parading through the streets of Paris in brocade caparison, with my lackey, _cum meo laquasio_. No, my brother, it is for a good work.

--What good work?" asked Claude, somewhat surprised.

"There are two of my friends who would like to buy a layette for the child of a poor haudriette widow. It is a charity. It will cost three florins, and I would like to put in my share."

"How are your two friends called?

--Pierre the Slayer and Baptiste Crunch-Sparrow."

"Hum," said the archdeacon, "those are names that go to a good work like a bombard upon a high altar."

It is certain that Jehan had very ill chosen his two friends' names. He felt it too late.

"And then," pursued the sagacious Claude, "what is a layette that should cost three florins? and that for the child of a haudriette? Since when have haudriette widows babes in swaddling clothes?"

Jehan broke the ice once more. "Well, yes! I have need of money to go see Isabeau the Thierrye this evening at the Val-d'Amour!

--Wretched impure one!" cried the priest.

--"_Anagneia_," said Jehan.

This citation, which the scholar borrowed, perhaps with malice, from the wall of the cell, had a singular effect upon the priest. He bit his lips, and his anger was extinguished in redness.

"Go away," he then said to Jehan; "I am expecting someone."

The scholar attempted another effort.

"Brother Claude, give me at least a little parisis to eat.

--Where are you with the decretals of Gratian?" asked dom Claude.

"I have lost my notebooks.

--Where are you with Latin humanities?

--Someone has stolen my copy of Horatius.

--Where are you with Aristoteles?

--My faith! brother, what is this father of the church who says that the errors of heretics have of all time had for their lair the thickets of Aristoteles's metaphysics? Fie on Aristoteles! I will not tear my religion at his metaphysics."

"Young man," resumed the archdeacon, "there was at the last entry of the king a gentleman called Philippe de Comines, who bore embroidered on the housings of his horse his device, which I counsel you to meditate: _Qui non laborat non manducet_[94]."

The scholar remained silent a moment, finger to ear, eye fixed on the ground, and a vexed look. Suddenly he turned back to Claude with the lively quickness of a wagtail.

"So, good brother, you refuse me a single parisis to buy a crust from a baker?"

--_Qui non laborat non manducet_.

At this response of the inflexible archdeacon, Jehan hid his head in his hands like a woman who sobs, and cried with an expression of despair: _Otototototoi_[95]!

"What does that mean, monsieur?" asked Claude, surprised at this fit.

"Why, what!" said the scholar, and he lifted toward Claude eyes made shameless by the fists he had just pressed into them to give them the redness of tears; "it is Greek! it is an anapest of Aeschylus which perfectly expresses grief."

And here he broke into a laugh so buffoonish and so violent that he made the archdeacon smile. It was Claude's fault indeed! why had he so spoiled this child?

"Oh! good brother Claude," resumed Jehan, emboldened by this smile; "see my pierced brodequins. Is there a cothurne more tragic in the world than boots whose sole thrusts out its tongue?"

The archdeacon had promptly returned to his first severity. "I will send you new boots. But no money.

--Not even a poor little parisis, brother," pursued the suppliant Jehan; "I will learn Gratian by heart, I will believe well in God, I will be a true Pythagoras of science and virtue. But a little parisis, I beg you! Would you have famine bite me with its maw which is there, gaping before me, blacker, more stinking, deeper than a tartarus or the nose of a monk?"

Dom Claude shook his wrinkled head. "_Qui non laborat..._"

Jehan let him not finish.

"Well!" he cried, "the devil take it! Long live mirth! I will tavern myself, I will fight, I will break the pots and I will go see the girls!"

And thereupon he threw his cap at the wall and made his fingers snap like castanets.

The archdeacon looked at him with a dark air.

"Jehan, you have no soul.

--In that case, according to Epicurius, I lack a certain something made of something that has no name.

--Jehan, you must seriously think of correcting yourself.

--Ah, now," cried the scholar, looking by turns at his brother and at the alembics of the furnace, "is everything then horned here, ideas and bottles!

--Jehan, you are on a very slippery slope. Do you know where you are going?

--To the cabaret," said Jehan.

--The cabaret leads to the pillory.

--It is a lantern like another, and it is perhaps with that one that 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 all the earth at the other. It is fine to be the man.

--The gallows leads to hell.

--It is a great fire.

--Jehan, Jehan, the end will be bad.

--The beginning will have been good."

At this moment the sound of a step was heard on the stairs.

"Silence!" said the archdeacon, putting a finger to his mouth; "here is master Jacques. Listen, Jehan," he added in a low voice, "never speak of what you shall have seen and heard here. Hide quickly under this furnace, and breathe not a word."

The scholar crouched under the furnace. There, a fruitful idea came to him.

"By the way, brother Claude, a florin so that I breathe not a word.

--Silence! I promise you.

--You must give it me.

--Take then!" said the archdeacon, angrily throwing him his purse.

Jehan sank back under the furnace, and the door opened.

V

THE TWO MEN CLOTHED IN BLACK

The person who entered wore a black robe and a somber look. What struck at first glance our friend Jehan (who, as may well be guessed, had arranged himself in his corner so as to see and hear all at his good pleasure) was the perfect sadness of the garment and face of this newcomer. There was yet some softness spread over that countenance, but a softness of cat or of judge, a sugary softness. He was very gray, wrinkled, near sixty, blinked, had a white brow, a hanging lip, and big hands. When Jehan saw that this was only that, that is to say doubtless a physician or a magistrate, and that this man had the nose very far from the mouth, a sign of stupidity, he drew back into his hole, despairing to have to pass an indefinite time in so constrained a posture and in such bad company.

The archdeacon meanwhile had not even risen for this personage. He had signed to him to sit on a stool near the door, and, after some moments of a silence which seemed to continue a previous meditation, he had said to him with some protectiveness: "Good day, master Jacques."

--"Greeting, master!" had answered the man in black.

There was, in the two manners wherein was pronounced on one side this _master Jacques_, on the other this _master_ by excellence, the difference of mylord to mister, of _domine_ to _domne_. It was evidently the approach of doctor and disciple.

"Well," resumed the archdeacon after a new silence which master Jacques took good care not to disturb, "are you succeeding?"

--"Alas, my master," said the other with a sad smile, "I still blow. Ashes as much as I want. But not a spark of gold."

Dom Claude made a gesture of impatience. "I do not speak to you of that, master Jacques Charmolue, but of the trial of your magician. Is it not Marc Cenaine that you name him, the sommelier of the Court of Accounts? Does he confess his magic? Has the question succeeded with you?"

--"Alas no," answered master Jacques, still with his sad smile. "We have not that consolation. This man is a flint. We shall boil him at the Marché-aux-Pourceaux before he has said anything. Yet we spare nothing to arrive at the truth. He is already all dislocated. We put there all the herbs of Saint John, as says the old comic Plautus,

_Advorsum stimulos, laminas, crucesque, compedesque._ _Nervos, catenas, carceres, numellas, pedicas, boias_[96].

Nothing does any good. This man is terrible. I lose my Latin over it.

--Have you found nothing new in his house?"

--"Yes indeed," said master Jacques, rummaging in his purse; "this parchment. There are words upon it that we do not understand. Monsieur the criminal advocate Philippe Lheulier knows yet a little Hebrew which he learned in the affair of the Jews of rue Kantersten at Brussels."

As he spoke thus, master Jacques unrolled a parchment.

"Give," said the archdeacon. And casting his eyes upon this placard: "Pure magic, master Jacques!" he cried; "_Emen-hétan_! is the cry of the stryges when they arrive at the sabbath. _Per ipsum, et cum ipso, et in ipso!_ is the commandment which rechains the devil in hell. _Hax, pax, max_! this is medicine. A formula against the bite of mad dogs. Master Jacques! you are king's prosecutor in ecclesiastical court, this parchment is abominable.

--We shall put the man to the question again. Here is yet," added master Jacques, rummaging again in his pouch, "what we found at Marc Cenaine's."

It was a vessel of the family of those which covered dom Claude's furnace. "Ah!" said the archdeacon, "an alchemy crucible."

--"I will confess to you," resumed master Jacques with his timid and awkward smile, "that I tried it on the furnace, but I succeeded no better than with my own."

The archdeacon set about examining the vessel. "What has he graven on his crucible? _Och! och!_ the word that drives away fleas! This Marc Cenaine is ignorant! I well believe that you will make no gold with this! it is good to put in your alcove in summer, and that is all!

--Since we are upon errors," said the king's prosecutor, "I have just studied the lower portal before coming up; is your reverence quite sure that the opening of the work of physics is figured there on the side of the Hôtel-Dieu, and that, among the seven naked figures at the feet of Notre-Dame, the one who has wings at the heels is Mercurius?"

--"Yes," answered the priest. "It is Augustin Nypho who writes it, that Italian doctor who had a bearded demon which taught him all things. At rest, we shall go down, and I will explain that to you upon the text."

--"Thanks, my master," said Charmolue, bowing to the ground. "By the way, I forgot! when does it please you that I have the little witch apprehended?"

--"What witch?"

--"That Bohemian you know well, who comes every day to dance on the parvis despite the official's prohibition! She has a possessed goat which has the devil's horns, which reads, which writes, which knows mathematics like Picatrix, and which would suffice to hang all Bohemia. The trial is all ready. It will soon be done, go to! A pretty creature, upon my soul, that dancer! the finest black eyes! two carbuncles of Egypt. When do we begin?"

The archdeacon was excessively pale.

"I will tell you that," he stammered in a scarcely articulate voice. Then he resumed with effort: "Occupy yourself with Marc Cenaine."

--"Be tranquil," said Charmolue smiling; "I will have him rebound upon the leather bed on my return. But he is a devil of a man. He tires Pierrat Torterue himself, who has hands bigger than mine. As says that good Plautus,

_Nudus vinctus, centum pondo, es quando pendes per pedes_[97].

The question by the windlass! it is the best we have. He shall go through it."

Dom Claude seemed plunged in a somber distraction. He turned toward Charmolue.

"Master Pierrat... master Jacques, I mean, occupy yourself with Marc Cenaine!"

--"Yes, yes, dom Claude. Poor man! he will have suffered like Mummol. What an idea too, to go to the sabbath! a sommelier of the Court of Accounts, who should know the text of Charlemagne, _Stryga vel masca_[98]!--As for the little one,--Smelarda, as they call her,--I await your orders.--Ah! passing under the portal, you will also explain to me what the gardener of flat painting means that one sees on entering the church. Is it not the Sower?--Eh! master, what are you thinking of?"

Dom Claude, lost in himself, no longer listened. Charmolue, following the direction of his gaze, saw that he had mechanically fixed upon the great spider's web which hung the dormer window. At that moment, a dizzy fly seeking the March sun came and threw itself across that net and stuck there. At the shaking of its web, the enormous spider made a abrupt movement out of its central cell, then with a bound precipitated itself upon the fly, which it folded in two with its front antennae, while its hideous proboscis dug into its head. "Poor fly!" said the king's prosecutor in ecclesiastical court, and he raised his hand to save it. The archdeacon, as if awakened with a start, held his arm with convulsive violence.

"Master Jacques," he cried, "let fate do its work!"

The prosecutor turned back affrighted. It seemed to him that a pincer of iron had seized his arm. The priest's eye was fixed, haggard, flaming, and remained attached to the little horrible group of the fly and the spider.

"Oh! yes," the priest continued with a voice one would have said came from his entrails, "there is a symbol of all. She flies, she is joyful, she is newly born; she seeks the spring, the open air, liberty; oh! yes, but let her dash against the fatal rose-window, the spider comes out, the hideous spider! Poor dancer! poor predestined fly! Master Jacques, let be! it is fate!--Alas! Claude, you are the spider. Claude, you are the fly also! You flew toward science, toward light, toward the sun, you cared only to arrive at the open air, at the broad day of eternal truth; but, in hurling yourself toward the dazzling dormer that gives upon the other world, the world of clarity, of intelligence and of science, blind fly, senseless doctor, you saw not this subtle spider's web stretched by destiny between the light and you, you threw yourself into it headlong, miserable fool, and now you struggle, head broken and wings torn, between the iron antennae of fate!--Master Jacques! master Jacques! let the spider do its work."

--"I assure you," said Charmolue, who looked at him without understanding, "that I will not touch it. But release my arm, master, I beg you! you have a hand of pincers."

“Stories of the world, in your language.”