Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com

clear. I cannot read—I am but conning the alphabet.”
“And when you have learned to read, will you be able to make gold?”
“Who doubts it?” answered the Archdeacon.
“In that case—Our Lady knows I am in dire need of money—I would gladly learn to read in your
books. Tell me, reverend master, is not your science inimical and displeasing to Our Lady, thing you?”
To this question of Tourangeau’s Dom Claude contented himself by making answer with quiet dignity,
“Whose priest am I?”
“True, true, master. Well, then, will it please you to initiate me? Let me learn to spell with you?”
Claude assumed the majestic and sacerdotal attitude of a Samuel.
“Old man, it would require more years than yet remain to you to undertake this journey across the world
of mystery. Your head is very gray! One emerges from the cave with white hair, but one must enter it
with black. Science knows very well how to furrow and wither up the face of man without assistance; she
has no need that age should bring to her faces that are already wrinkled. Nevertheless, if you are
possessed by the desire to put yourself under tutelage at your age, and to decipher the awful alphabet of
Wisdom, well and good, come to me, I will do what I can. I will not bid you, poor graybeard, go visit the
sepulchral chambers of the Pyramids, of which the ancient Herodotus speaks, nor the brick tower of
Babylon, nor the vast marble sanctuary of the Indian Temple of Eklinga. I have not seen, any more than
you have, the Chaldean walls built in accordance with the sacred formula of Sikra, nor the Temple of
Solomon which was destroyed, nor the stone doors of the sepulchres of the Kings, of Israel which are
broken in pieces. Such fragments of the Book of Hermes as we have here will suffice us. I will explain to
you the statue of Saint-Christopher, the symbol of the Sower, and that of the two angels in the door of the
Sainte-Chapelle, of whom one has his hand in a stone vessel, and the other in a cloud.”
Here Jacques Coictier, who had been quite confounded by the Archdeacon’s tempestuous flow of
eloquence, recovered his composure and struck in with the triumphant tone of one scholar setting another
right:
“Erras, amice Claudi—there you are in error. The symbol is not the numeral. You mistake Orpheus for
Hermes.”
“It is you who are in error,” returned the Archdeacon with dignity; “Dædalus is the foundation; Orpheus
is the wall; Hermes is the edifice—the whole structure. Come whenever it please you,” he continued,
turning to Tourangeau. “I will show you the particles of gold left in the bottom of Nicolas Flamel’s
crucible which you can compare with the gold of Guillaume de Paris. I will instruct you in the secret
virtues of the Greek word peristera. But before all things, you shall read, one after another, the letters of
the marble alphabet, the pages of the granite book. We will go from the doorway of Bishop Guillaume
and of Saint-Jean le Rond to the Sainte-Chapelle, then to the house of Nicolas Flamel in the Rue
Marivault, to his tomb in the cemetery of the Holy Innocents, to his two hospices in the Rue de
Montmorency. You shall read the hieroglyphics with which the four great iron bars in the porch of the
Hospice of Saint-Gervais are covered. Together we will spell out the façades of Saint-Côme, of
Sainte-Geneviève-des-Ardents, Saint-Martin, Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie——”
For some time past, Tourangeau, with all his intelligence, appeared unable to follow Dom Claude. He