Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com
Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com
Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com
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“Well, well, Maitre Clau<strong>de</strong>, all this masons’ work costs me <strong>de</strong>arly. In the same measure as my house<br />
rises higher, my funds sink lower.”<br />
“Oho! Have you not your revenues from the jail, and the Provostship of the Palais <strong>de</strong> Justice, and the<br />
rents from all the houses, workshops, booths, and market-stalls within the circuit of <strong>Paris</strong>? That is surely<br />
an excellent milch cow.”<br />
“My castellany of Poissy has not brought me in a sou this year.”<br />
“But your toll dues at Triel, Saint-James, and Saint-Germain-en-Laye—they are always profitable?”<br />
“Six times twenty livres only, and not even <strong>Paris</strong> money at that.”<br />
“But you have your appointment as Councillor to the King—that means a fixed salary surely?”<br />
“Yes, Colleague Clau<strong>de</strong>, but that cursed Manor of Poligny, they make such a coil about, is not worth<br />
more to me than sixty gold crowns—taking one year with another.”<br />
The <strong>com</strong>pliments which Dom Clau<strong>de</strong> thus addressed to Jacques Coictier were uttered in that tone of<br />
veiled, bitter, sardonic raillery, with that grievous, yet cruel, smile of a superior and unfortunate man,<br />
who seeks a moment’s distraction in playing on the gross vanity of the vulgarly prosperous man. The<br />
other was quite unconscious of it.<br />
“By my soul!” said Clau<strong>de</strong> at last, pressing his hand, “I rejoice to see you in such excellent health.”<br />
“Thank you, Maitre Clau<strong>de</strong>.”<br />
“Speaking of health,” cried Dom Clau<strong>de</strong>, “how is your royal patient?”<br />
“He does not pay his doctor sufficiently well,” said the physician with a si<strong>de</strong> glance at his <strong>com</strong>panion.<br />
“Do you really think that, friend Coictier?” said the stranger.<br />
These words, uttered in a tone of surprise and reproach, recalled the Arch<strong>de</strong>acon’s attention to the<br />
stranger’s presence, though, to tell the truth, he had never, from the moment he crossed the threshold,<br />
quite turned away from this unknown guest. In<strong>de</strong>ed, it required the thousand reasons Clau<strong>de</strong> had for<br />
humouring the all-powerful physician of Louis XI to make him consent to receive him thus ac<strong>com</strong>panied.<br />
Therefore, his expression was none of the friendliest when Jacques Coictier said to him:<br />
“By-the-bye, Dom Clau<strong>de</strong>, I have brought a colleague, who was most <strong>de</strong>sirous of seeing one of whom<br />
he has heard so much.”<br />
“Monsieur is a scholar?” asked the Arch<strong>de</strong>acon, fixing Coictier’s <strong>com</strong>panion with a penetrating eye.<br />
But from un<strong>de</strong>r the brows of the stranger he met a glance not less keen or less suspicious than his own.<br />
He was, so far as one could judge by the feeble rays of the lamp, a man of about sixty, of middle height,<br />
and apparently ailing and broken. His face, although the features were sufficiently <strong>com</strong>monplace, had<br />
something <strong>com</strong>manding and severe; his eye glittered un<strong>de</strong>r the <strong>de</strong>ep arch of his brow like a beacon-light<br />
far down a cavern; and un<strong>de</strong>r the cap, pulled down almost to his nose, one divined instinctively the broad<br />
forehead of a genius.<br />
He took upon himself to answer the Arch<strong>de</strong>acon’s inquiry.