The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo [146]
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