by Hugo, Victor
But all this wheedling hypocrisy did not produce its usual effect on the stern big brother. Cerberus would not nibble at the honey cake. Not a wrinkle on the archdeacon’s brow was smoothed away.
‘What are you trying to say?’ he asked drily.
‘Very well! I’ll come to the point now!’ Jehan boldly replied. ‘I need money.’
At this shameless declaration the archdeacon’s features took on an entirely pedagogic and paternal expression.
‘You know, Monsieur Jehan, that our fief of Tirechappe brings in only, taking altogether the quit-rents and income from the twenty-one houses, 39 livres 11 sols 6 deniers parisis. That’s half as much again as in the time of the Paclet brothers, but it is not a lot.’
‘I need money,’ said Jehan stoically.
‘You know that the official has decided that our twentyone houses depended on the bishopric in full fief, and that we could only redeem that homage by paying the reverend bishop 2 marcs of silver-gilt to the value of 6 livres parisis. Now, as regards the 2 marcs, I haven’t yet been able to get them together. You know that.’
‘I know that I need money,’ Jehan repeated for the third time.
‘But what do you intend to do with it?’
This question brought a gleam of hope into Jehan’s eyes. He resumed his tone of cajoling, honeyed persuasion.
‘Look, dear brother Claude, I would not come to you with any dishonourable intentions. It’s not a question of showing off in the taverns with your unzains and strutting around the streets of Paris all tricked out in gold brocade, with my lackey—cum meo laquasio. No, brother, it’s for a good work.’
‘What good work?’ asked Claude in some surprise.
‘Two of my friends would like to buy baby clothes for the child of a poor haudriette* widow. It’s a charity. It will cost 3 florins, and I’d like to contribute my share.’
‘What are the names of your two friends?’
‘Pierre l’Assommeur [Slaughterman] and Baptiste Croque-Oison [Chaw-Gosling].’
‘Hm!’ said the archdeacon, ‘those names are as fitting for a good work as a bombard on a high altar.’
Jehan had certainly made a very bad choice of names for his two friends. He realized it too late.
‘And then,’ Claude went on shrewdly, ‘what sort of children’s clothes are going to cost 3 florins? And for a haudriette’s child? Since when have haudriette widows had infants in swaddling clothes?’
Jehan broke the ice once more: ‘All right, then. I need money to go and see Isabeau la Thierrye this evening at the Val d’Amour.’
‘Filthy wretch!’ cried the priest.
‘’Aναγνεία,’ said Jehan.
This quotation which the student borrowed, perhaps to make mischief, from the cell’s wall, had a singular effect on the priest. He bit his lip, and his anger died down as he flushed.
‘Be off with you,’ he then said to Jehan. ‘I am expecting someone.’
The student made one more attempt: ‘Brother Claude, at least give me one little parisis for some food.’
‘Where have you got to in Gratian’s Decretals? asked Dom Claude.
‘I’ve lost my notebooks.’
‘Where have you got to in Latin humanities?’
‘Someone stole my copy of Horace.’
‘Where have you got to in Aristotle?’
‘My word, brother, which Church Father was it, then, who said that the errors of heretics through the ages have always had their lair in the tangled undergrowth of Aristotle’s metaphysics? A fig for Aristotle! I don’t want to wreck my religion on his metaphysics!’
‘Young man,’ went on the archdeacon, ‘the last time the king made a solemn entry there was a gentleman called Philippe de Commines, who bore embroidered on his horse’s housing his motto, which I advise you to meditate upon: Qui non laborat non manducet [He who does not work, let him not eat].’
The student remained silent for a moment, his finger in his ear, his eyes fixed on the ground, his expression cross. Suddenly he turned towards Claude as swiftly and nimbly as a wagtail:
‘So, good brother, you refuse me a sol parisis to buy a crust from a hedge-baker?’
‘Qui non laborat non manducet.’
At this answer from the inflexible archdeacon, Jehan buried his head in his hands, like a woman sobbing, and cried out with an expression of despair:’ ‘’Oτοτοτοτοτοί!’
‘What’s the meaning of this, sir?’ asked Claude, surprised at the outburst.
‘Well, what?’ said the student, looking up at Claude with impudent eyes, which he had been pressing with his fists to make them look red, as though from weeping. ‘It’s Greek! It’s an anapaest from Aeschylus which is the perfect expression of grief.’
And at that point he broke into so comical and boisterous a roar of laughter that he made the archdeacon smile. It was indeed Claude’s fault; why had he spoiled the boy so much?
‘Oh! good brother Claude,’ Jehan went on, encouraged by that smile, ‘look at the holes in my boots. What buskin in the world could be more tragic than a boot with its sole hanging off?’
The archdeacon had promptly resumed his original severity: ‘I’ll send you some new boots. But no money.’
‘Just one little parisis, brother,’ Jehan persisted with his entreaty. ‘I’ll learn Gratian off by heart, I’ll really believe in God, I’ll be a proper Pythagoras of science and virtue. But one little parisis for pity’s sake! Do you want starvation to seize me in its jaws, gaping there in front of me, blacker, deeper, more noisome than Tartarus or a monk’s nose?’
Dom Claude shook his wrinkled head: ‘Qui non laborat …’
Jehan did not let him finish.
‘All right,’ he cried, ‘to the devil! Three cheers for fun! I’ll go round the taverns, I’ll fight, I’ll break pots, and I’ll visit the girls!’
Whereupon he hurled his cap at the wall and clicked his fingers like castanets.
The archdeacon looked at him gloomily.
‘Jehan, you have no soul.’
‘In that case, according to Epicurius [sic], I lack some-thing or other made of something else that has no name.’
‘Jehan, you must think seriously of mending your ways.’
‘So,’ cried the student, looking alternately at his brother and the alembics on the furnace, ‘so everything here is askew, the ideas as well as the bottles.’
‘Jehan, you are on a very slippery slope. Do you know where you are going?’
‘To the wineshop,’ said Jehan.
‘The wineshop leads to the pillory.’
‘That’s as good a lantern as any, and with that one Diogenes might have found his man.’
‘The pillory leads to the gallows.’
‘The gallows is a pair of scales with man at one end and the whole earth at the other. It’s a fine thing to be the man.’
‘The gallows leads to hell.’
‘That’s a pretty big fire.’
‘Jehan, Jehan, this will have a bad end.’
‘The beginning will have been good.’
At that moment the sound of footsteps came from the stairs.
‘Silence!’ said the archdeacon, putting a finger to his lips, ‘here comes Maître Jacques. Listen, Jehan,’ he added in a low voice, ‘be sure you never speak of what you see and hear here. Quickly, hide under this furnace and don’t breathe.’
The student huddled under the furnace. Then a fruitful idea occurred to him.
‘By the way, brother Claude, a florin for not breathing.’
‘Silence! I promise you one.’
‘You must give it to me.’
‘Take it then!’ said the archdeacon, angrily throwing his purse to him. Jehan burrowed back under the furnace, and the door opened.
V
THE TWO MEN IN BLACK
THE person who entered wore a black robe and a gloomy expression. What instantly struck our friend Jehan (who, as one might expect, had so disposed himself in his corner
that he could see and hear everything just as he wished) was the absolute dreariness of the newcomer’s dress and features. There was, however, a certain air of gentleness about that face, but the gentleness of a cat or a judge, an affected gentleness. He was very grey, wrinkled, not far off 60, with blinking eyes, white eyebrows, drooping lip and large hands. When Jehan saw that that was all there was to it, that this man was no doubt a physician or a magistrate, and that his nose was a long way from his mouth, a sign of stupidity, he curled up again in his hole, in despair at having to spend an indefinite time in such an uncomfortable position and in such poor company.
The archdeacon, however, had not even stood up for this person. He had bidden him with a sign to sit down on a stool by the door, and after a few moments’ silence, which seemed to be the continuation of some previous meditation, he said somewhat patronizingly: ‘Good-day, Maître Jacques.’
‘Greetings, maître!’ the man in black answered.
In the two ways of pronouncing respectively ‘Maître Jacques’ and the deferential ‘maître’ there was the same difference as that between monseigneur and monsieur, domine and domne. This was clearly a meeting between master and disciple.
‘Well,’ the archdeacon went on after a fresh silence, which Maître Jacques took care not to disturb, ‘are you having any success?’
‘Alas, master,’ the other said with a sad smile, ‘I keep on at my bellows. All the ash I could wish. But not a sparkle of gold.’
Dom Claude gestured impatiently. ‘I’m not talking about that, Maître Jacques Charmolue, but about the case of your magician. Didn’t you say his name was Marc Cenaine, the butler from the audit office? Has he confessed to his magic? Did you succeed with putting the question under torture?’
‘Alas, no,’ Maître Jacques replied, still smiling sadly. ‘We have not had that consolation. The man’s like a stone. We could boil him alive at the Marché-aux-Pourceaux before he said anything. However, we shall spare no pains to get at the truth. His body is already all broken. We have tried everything we’ve got, as the old comedian Plautus has it:
Advorsum stimulos, laminas, crucesque, compedesque,
Nervos, catenas, carceres, numellas, pedicas, boias.
[Against goads, red-hot irons, crosses and shackles, fetters, chains, prisons, hobbles, foot-chains, iron collars.]
‘All to no effect. I’m completely nonplussed.’
‘You haven’t found anything new in his house?’
‘Yes, we have,’ said Maître Jacques, rummaging in his wallet. ‘This parchment. There are some words on it that we can’t understand. Monsieur Philippe Lheulier, the criminal advocate, knows a bit of Hebrew though, which he learned in that business with the Jews in the rue Kantersteen in Brussels.’
As he spoke Maître Jacques unrolled a parchment. ‘Give it to me,’ said the archdeacon. And running his eyes over the document: ‘Pure magic, Maître Jacques!’ he cried. ‘Emen-hetan! is what the vampires cry when they arrive at the witches’ sabbath. Per ipsum, et cum ipso, et in ipso* [through him, with him and in him] is the command which locks the devil up in hell again. Hax, pax, max! that’s medicine—a formula against the bite of rabid dogs. Maître Jacques, you are the King’s attorney in the ecclesiastical court, this parchment is an abomination!’
‘We’ll put the man to the question again. Here’s some-thing else,’ added Maître Jacques, rummaging again in his satchel, ‘we found in Marc Cenaine’s house.’
It was a vessel of the same kind as those lying on top of Dom Claude’s furnace. ‘Ah!’ said the archdeacon, ‘an alchemist’s crucible.’
‘I must confess,’ Maître Jacques went on with his shy, awkward smile, ‘that I have tried it on the furnace, but I had no better result than with my own.’
The archdeacon began examining the vessel. ‘What has he engraved there on his crucible? Och! och! The word for getting rid of fleas! This Marc Cenaine is an ignoramus! I can quite believe that you won’t make gold with this. It would do for putting by your bed in the summer, and that’s all!’
‘Talking about mistakes,’ said the King’s attorney, ‘I was just studying the doorway down below before I came up; is your reverence quite sure that it is the opening of the book of physics that is represented on the side facing the Hôtel-Dieu, and that among those seven naked figures at the feet of Our Lady the one with wings on his heels is Mercury?’
‘Yes,’ the priest answered. ‘So Augustin Nypho writes, that Italian doctor whose bearded demon taught him everything. In any case, we’ll go down, and I’ll explain it to you from the text.’
‘Thank you, master,’ said Charmolue, bowing down to the ground. ‘By the way, I was forgetting! When would you like me to have that little enchantress picked up?’
‘What enchantress?’
‘That gypsy, as you know, who comes to the Parvis every day to dance, despite the official’s prohibition. She has a goat which is possessed, with devil’s horns; it can read and write, and knows as much mathematics as Picatrix, and would be enough to hang the whole of Bohemia. The case is all ready. It will soon be done, I can tell you! A pretty creature, upon my soul, that dancer is! The loveliest black eyes! Two carbuncles from Egypt. When do we start?’
The archdeacon had gone extremely pale.
‘I’ll let you know,’ he stammered in a barely articulate voice. Then went on with an effort: ‘You take care of Marc Cenaine.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Charmolue said with a smile. ‘I’ll have him buckled back on the leather bed when I get back. But he’s a devil of a man. He tires out Pierrat Torterue himself, and his hands are bigger than mine. As our good Plautus says:
Nudus vinctus, centum pondo, es quando pendes per pedes.
[Trussed up naked, you weigh a hundred pounds when you are hanging by your feet.]
The question with the pulley! that’s the best we’ve got. He’ll have a taste of that.’
Dom Claude seemed to be plunged in gloomy abstraction. He turned towards Charmolue.
‘Maître Pierrat… I mean Maître Jacques, you take care of Marc Cenaine.’
‘Yes, yes, Dom Claude. Poor fellow! He will have suffered like Mummol. But what an idea to go to the sabbath! A butler of the audit office, who ought to know Charlemagne’s text Stryga vel masca [vampire or wanton]. As for the little one—Smelarda as they call her—I shall await your orders. Ah! as we go under the portal you can also explain to me the meaning of that painted gardener that you see as you go into the church. It’s the Sower, isn’t it?—eh, master, what’s on your mind?’
Dom Claude, sunk deep in his own thoughts, was no longer listening. Charmolue, following the direction of his eyes, saw that they had fixed mechanically on the big spider’s web hanging over the window. At that moment a silly fly, looking for the March sun, blundered into the net and became stuck there. The movement of its web made the huge spider suddenly shoot out of its central cell, then with one bound it pounced on the fly, bending it in two with its front antennae, while its hideous trunk scooped out the head. ‘Poor fly!’ said the King’s attorney in ecclesiastical courts, and lifted a hand to rescue it. The archdeacon, as though waking up with a start, held back his arm with convulsive violence.
‘Maître Jacques,’ he cried, ‘let fate do its work!’
The attorney turned round aghast. He felt as though iron pincers had gripped his arm. The priest’s eyes were fixed, haggard, blazing, and remained riveted to the horrible little group of the fly and the spider.
‘Oh! yes,’ the priest continued, in a voice which seemed to come from his innermost heart, ‘there is a symbol of it all. She flies, she’s happy, she’s just been born; she seeks the spring, the open air, freedom; oh! yes, but then she hits the fatal rosace. The spider emerges, hideous spider! Poor dancer! poor foredoomed fly! Maître Jacques! let it be! it’s fatality!—Alas! Claude, you are the spider. Claude, you are the fly too!—you were flying towards knowledge, the light, the sun, your only concern was to reach the open air, the broad dayli
ght of eternal truth; but in your rush towards the dazzling window that opens on to that other world, the world of clarity, intelligence, and knowledge, blind fly, demented doctor, you did not see the subtle spider’s web stretched by destiny between the light and you, you rushed into it headlong, wretched fool, and now you struggle, with your head smashed in and your wings ripped off, in the iron grip of fate’s antennae!—Maître Jacques! Maître Jacques! let the spider get on with it!’
‘I assure you,’ said Charmolue, looking at him but not understanding, ‘that I won’t touch it. But, master, I beg you, let go of my arm, you have a grip of iron.’
The archdeacon did not hear him. ‘Oh! what madness!’ he went on, never taking his eyes off the window. ‘If only you could break that dreadful web with your gnat’s wings, you think you could reach the light! Alas! that pane of glass beyond, that transparent obstacle, that wall of crystal harder than bronze separating all philosophical systems from the truth, how would you get past that? Oh! the vanity of science! How many sages come fluttering from afar only to dash their heads against it! How many systems clash in confusion as they buzz against that eternal window pane!’
He fell silent. These last ideas, which had imperceptibly led him away from himself to science, seemed to have calmed him. Jacques Charmolue brought him fully back to reality by asking him: ‘Well then, master, when are you coming to help me make gold? I long to succeed.’
The archdeacon nodded his head with a bitter smile. ‘Maître Jacques, read Michael Psellos,* Dialogus de energia et operatione daemonum. What we are doing is not wholly innocent.’
‘Not so loud, master! I suspect as much,’ said Charmolue. ‘But you’ve got to practise a bit of hermetics when you are only King’s attorney in ecclesiastical courts, at 30 écus tournois a year. Just let’s keep our voices down.’
At that moment a sound of jaws engaged in mastication coming from under the furnace caught Charmolue’s anxious ear.
‘What’s that?’ he asked.
It was the student who, very bored and uncomfortable in his hiding place, had managed to discover an old crust of bread and a wedge of mouldy cheese, and had begun eating the lot without more ado, by way of consolation and breakfast. Ravenous as he was, he was making a lot of noise, and loudly stressed each mouthful, and this it was that had alerted and alarmed the attorney.
