it? Do you know, my darling, that Parliament holds jurisdiction over all sanctuaries, and that you ran great risks in your cell in Notre-Dame? Alas! the little bird trochylus builds its nest in the jaws of the crocodile. Master, there’s the moon peeping out again. How I hope they won’t see us! We are doing a laudable deed in saving the damsel, and yet we should be hanged in the king’s name if we were caught. Alas! human actions may be taken two ways. I am condemned for the same thing for which you are rewarded. Some admire Cæsar and blame Catiline. Isn’t that so, master mine? What do you say to that philosophy? For my part, I possess the philosophy of instinct, of Nature (ut apes geometriam).dz— What! nobody answers me! What disagreeable tempers you both have! I must needs talk to myself. That’s what we call in tragedy a monologue. By the Rood!—I must tell you that I’ve just seen King Louis XI, and that I caught that oath from him,—by the Rood, then, they’re still keeping up a fine howling in the City! He’s a wicked old villain of a king. He’s all muffled up in furs. He still owes me the money for my epithalamium, and he came precious near hanging me tonight, which would have bothered me mightily. He is very stingy to men of merit. He really ought to read the four books by Salvien of Cologne, ‘Adversus avaritiam.’ea In good sooth, he is a very narrow-minded king in his dealings with men of letters, and one who commits most barbarous cruelties. He’s a sponge to soak up money squeezed from the people . His economy is like the spleen, which grows fat upon the leanness of all the other members. Thus, complaints of the hardness of the times become murmurs against the sovereign. Under the reign of this mild and pious lord, the gallows crack with their weight of victims, the headsman’s blocks grow rotten with blood, the prisons are filled to bursting. This king takes in money with one hand and hangs men with the other. He is pander to my lady Taxes and my lord Gibbet. The great are stripped of their dignities, and the small are ceaselessly loaded with new burdens. ‘Tis an extravagant prince. I do not love this monarch. And how say you, my master?”
The man in black suffered the babbling poet to prate his fill. He continued to struggle against the strong and angry current which divides the prow of the City from the stern of the Ile Notre-Dame, which we now know as the Ile Saint-Louis.
“By the way, master,” suddenly observed Gringoire, “just as we made our way into the square through the angry Vagabonds, did your reverence note that poor little devil whose brains your deaf friend was about dashing out against the railing of the gallery of kings? I am near-sighted, and did not recognize him. Do you know who it could be?”20
The stranger made no answer, but he ceased rowing; his arms fell powerless; his head drooped upon his breast, and Esmeralda heard him heave a convulsive sigh. She shuddered; she had heard similar sighs before.
The boat, left to itself, drifted with the current for some moments. But finally the man in black drew himself up, again seized the oars, and began again to pull against the stream. He rounded the end of the Ile Notre-Dame, and bent his course towards the landing-place of the Hay-Market.
“Ah!” said Gringoire, “there’s the Logis Barbeau. There, master, look: that collection of black roofs which form such strange angles; there, beneath that mass of low, stringy, streaked, and dirty clouds, where the moon looks like the yolk of a broken egg. ‘Tis a handsome house. It contains a chapel capped by a tiny dome full of daintily wrought decorations. Above it you may see the bell-tower with its delicate tracery. There is also a pleasant garden, consisting of a fish-pond, an aviary, an echo, a mall, a labyrinth, a house for wild beasts, and a quantity of shady alleys most agreeable to Venus. There is also a rascally tree, which goes by the name of the Lovers’ Retreat, because it once hid the meetings of a famous French princess and a gallant and witty constable of France. Alas! we poor philosophers are to a constable