The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo [147]
“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