The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo [138]
When they had gone a few paces, Dom Claude leaned his back against a pillar and looked steadily at Gringoire. It was not such a look as Gringoire had dreaded, in his shame at being caught by a grave and learned person in this merry-andrew attire. The priest’s glance had nothing mocking or ironical about it; it was serious, calm, and piercing. The archdeacon was first to break the silence.
“Come hither, Master Pierre. You have many matters to explain to me. And, first of all, how comes it that I have not seen you for these two months past, and that I now find you in the streets, in a pretty plight indeed,—half red and half yellow, like a Caudebec apple?”
“Sir,” said Gringoire, in piteous tones, “it is in sooth a monstrous garb, and I feel as much abashed as a cat with a calabash on her head. ‘Tis very ill done, I feel, to expose the gentlemen of the watch to the risk of cudgelling the shoulders of a Pythagorean philosopher under this loose coat. But what else could I do, my reverend master? The blame belongs entirely to my old doublet, which basely deserted me at the very beginning of winter, on the plea that it was falling to pieces, and must needs take a little rest in some rag-picker’s basket. What could I do? Civilization has not yet reached the point where a man may go naked, as Diogenes of old desired. Besides, the wind blew very cold, and the month of January is not a good time to introduce such a new measure to mankind with any hope of success. This coat offered itself; I accepted it, and left behind my old black frock, which, for a Hermetic like myself, was far from being hermetically closed. So here I am in the dress of a mountebank, like Saint Genest. How can I help it? It is an eclipse; but even Apollo kept the swine of Admetus.”
“A fine trade you have there,” replied the archdeacon.
“I confess, master, that it is far better to philosophize and poet ize, to blow the flame in the furnace, or to receive it from heaven, than to carry cats upon your shield; so, when you addressed me, I felt as silly as any donkey before a turnspit. But what was I to do, sir? A man must live; and the finest Alexandrine verses are not such good eating as a bit of Brie cheese. Now, I wrote that famous epithalamium for Margaret of Flanders, which you know all about, and the city has never paid me, under the pretext that it was not very good; as if one could furnish such tragedies as those of Sophocles for four crowns! I almost starved to death. Luckily, I discovered that I had rather a strong jaw. I said to this jaw of mine, ‘Perform some feats of strength and balancing; feed yourself,’—Ale te ipsam. A lot of tatterdemalions, with whom I have made friends, taught me some score of Herculean tricks, and now I give my teeth every night the bread which I have earned through the day by the sweat of my brow. After all (concedo), I confess that it is a sad waste of my intellectual faculties, and that man was never made to spend his life in drumming on the tambourine and biting into chairs. But, reverend master, it is not enough to spend one’s life; one must earn his living.”
Dom Claude listened in silence. All at once his sunken eyes assumed so sagacious and penetrating an expression that Gringoire felt that the look searched his inmost soul.
“Very good, Master Pierre; but how comes it that you are now keeping company with that gipsy dancing-girl?”
“I’ faith!” said Gringoire, “because she is my wife and I am her husband.”
The priest’s gloomy eyes blazed with wrath.
“Have you done this, miserable fellow?” cried he, furiously seizing Gringoire by the arm! “Can you have been so forsaken of God as to have laid your hands upon that girl?”
“By my hopes of paradise, my lord,” replied Gringoire, trembling in every limb, “I