The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo [154]
The reader has undoubtedly recognized our two worthy friends, the captain and the student. It seems that the man lurking in the shadow had also recognized them; for he followed with slow steps all the zig-zags which the student forced the captain to describe, the latter, a more hardened drinker, having preserved entire self-possession. By listening carefully, the man with the cloak was able to catch the whole of the following interesting conversation:—
“Body of Bacchus! do try to walk straight, Master Bachelor. You know that I shall have to leave you. Here it is seven o‘clock. I have an appointment with a woman.”
“Leave me then, do. I see fiery stars and spears. You are like the Château-de-Dampmartin, which burst with laughter.”
“By my grandmother’s warts, Jehan! your nonsense is rather too desperate. By-the-bye, Jehan, haven’t you any money left?”
“Mr. Rector, there’s no mistake: the little butcher’s shop, parva boucheria.”
“Jehan, friend Jehan! you know that I made an appointment to meet that little girl at the end of the Pont Saint-Michel; that I can’t take her anywhere but to La Falourdel.—the old hag on the bridge; and that I must pay for the room; the white-whiskered old jade gives no credit. Jehan, for pity’s sake, have we drunk up the priest’s whole purse? Haven’t you a penny left?”
“The consciousness that you have spent the rest of your time well is a good and savoury table-sauce.”
“Thunder and blazes! A truce to your nonsense! Tell me, Jehan, you devil! have you any money left? Give it to me, by Heaven! or I will rob you, were you as leprous as Job and as mangy as Caesar!”
“Sir, the Rue Galiache is a street which runs from the Rue de la Verrerie to the Rue da la Tixeranderie.”
“Yes, yes, good friend Jehan, my poor comrade, the Rue Galiache, —that’s all right, quite right, but in Heaven’s name, come to your senses! I want only a few pence, and my appointment is for seven o‘clock.”
“Silence all around, and pay attention to my song:
‘When the rats have eaten every case,
The king shall be lord of Arras’ race.
When the sea, so deep and wide,
Is frozen o’er at Saint John’s tide,
Across the ice we then shall see
The Arras men their city flee.‘”
“There, then, scholar of Antichrist, the foul fiend fly away with you!” cried Phoebus; and he gave the tipsy student a violent push, which sent him reeling against the wall, whence he fell gently to the pavement of Philip Augustus. With a remnant of that brotherly compassion which never quite forsakes the heart of a toper, Phoebus rolled Jehan with his foot over upon one of those pillows of the poor which Providence keeps in readiness at every street corner in Paris, and which the rich scornfully stigmatize as dunghills. The captain arranged Jehan’s head on an inclined plane of cabbage-stalks, and the student instantly began to snore in a magnificent bass. However, all rancor was not yet dead in the captain’s heart. “So much the worse for you if the devil’s cart picks you up as it passes!” said he to the poor sleeping scholar; and he went his way.
The man in the cloak, who had not ceased following him, paused for a moment beside the prostrate student, as if uncertain; then, heaving a deep sigh, he also departed in the captain’s wake.
Like them, we will leave Jehan to sleep under the friendly watch of the bright stars, and we too will follow them, if it so please the reader.
As he emerged into the Rue Saint-André-des-Arcs, Captain Phoebus discovered that some one was following him. As he accidentally glanced behind him, he saw a kind of shadow creeping behind him along the walls. He stopped, it stopped; he walked on again, the shadow also walked on. This troubled him but very little. “Pooh!” said he to himself, “I have not a penny about me.”
In front of the College d‘Autun, he came to a halt. It was at this college that he had passed through what he was pleased to call his studies, and from a habit learned in his student days he never passed the