Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com

“There are certain matters about which I think in a certain way,” the Archdeacon replied unmoved.
Coictier flushed an angry red.
“Come, come, my good Coictier, do not let us get angry,” said Compère Tourangeau, “the reverend
Archdeacon is our host.”
Coictier calmed down, but growled to himself: “He’s a madman, for all that.”
“Pasque Dieu!” resumed Tourangeau, after a short silence; “you put me in a very embarrassing
position, Maître Claude. I looked to obtaining two opinions from you, one as to my health, the other as to
my star.”
“Monsieur,” returned the Archdeacon, “if that is your idea, you would have done better not to waste
your health in mounting my stairs. I do not believe in medicine, and I do not believe in astrology.”
“Is that so?” exclaimed the good man in surprise.
Coictier burst into a forced laugh.
“You must admit now that he’s mad,” he said in low tones to Tourangeau; “he does not believe in
astrology.”
“How can any one possibly believe,” continued Dom Claude, “that every ray of a star is a thread
attached to a man’s head?”
“And what do you believe in then?” cried Tourangeau.
The Archdeacon hesitated for a moment, then, with a sombre smile which seemed to give the lie to his
words, he answered, “Credo in Deum.”
“Dominum nostrum,” added Tourangeau, making the sign of the cross.
“Amen,” said Coictier.
“Reverend sir,” resumed Tourangeau, “I am charmed to my soul to find you so firm in the faith. But,
erudite scholar that you are, have you reached the point of no longer believing in science?”
“No!” cried the Archdeacon, grasping Tourangeau’s arm, while a gleam of enthusiasm flashed in his
sunken eye; “no, I do not deny science. I have not crawled so long on my belly with my nails dug in the
earth through all the innumerable windings of that dark mine, without perceiving in the far distance—at
the end of the dim passage—a light, a flame, a something; the reflection, no doubt, from that dazzling
central laboratory in which the patient and the wise have come upon God.”
“And finally,” interrupted Tourangeau, “what do you hold for true and certain?”
“Alchemy!”
Coictier exclaimed aloud, “Pardieu, Dom Claude, there is doubtless much truth in alchemy, but why
blaspheme against medicine and astrology?”
“Null is your science of man, your science of the heavens null,” said the Archdeacon imperiously.