Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com

unning stream, as a ray of sunshine. The name of a woman should be pleasing, melodious, and give food
to the imagination—should end in long vowels, and sound like a benediction.’ Yes, yes, the sage is right;
for example, Maria—Sophia—Esmeral—Damnation! Ever that thought!”
And he closed the book with a violent slam.
He passed his hand over his brow as if to chase away the thought that haunted him. Then taking from
the table a nail and a small hammer, the handle of which bore strange, painted, cabalistic figures—
“For some time,” said he with a bitter smile, “I have failed in all my experiments. A fixed idea
possesses me, and tortures my brain like the presence of a fiery stigma. I have not even succeeded in
discovering the secret of Cassiodorus, whose lamp burned without wick or oil. Surely a simple matter
enough!”
“The devil it is!” muttered Jehan between his teeth.
“One miserable thought, then,” continued the priest, “suffices to sap a man’s will and render him
feeble-minded. Oh, how Claude Pernelle would mock at me—she who could not for one moment divert
Nicholas Flamel from the pursuit of his great work! What! I hold in my hand the magic hammer of
Zechieles! At every blow which, from the depths of his cell, the redoubtable rabbi struck with this
hammer upon this nail that one among his enemies whom he had condemned would, even were he two
thousand leagues away, sink an arm’s length into the earth which swallowed him up. The King of France
himself, for having one night inadvertently struck against the door of the magician, sank up to his knees
in his own pavement of Paris. This happened not three centuries ago. Well, I have the hammer and the
nail, and yet these implements are no more formidable in my hands than a hammer in the hand of a
smith. And yet all that is wanting is the magic word which Zechieles pronounced as he struck upon the
nail.”
“A mere trifle!” thought Jehan.
“Come, let us try,” resumed the Archdeacon eagerly. “If I succeed, I shall see the blue spark fly from
the head of the nail. Emen-Héten! Emen-Héten! That is not it—Sigeani! Sigeani! May this nail open the
grave for whomsoever bears the name of Phœbus! A curse upon it again! Forever that same thought!”
He threw away the hammer angrily. He then sank so low in his arm-chair and over the table that Jehan
lost sight of him. For some minutes he could see nothing but a hand clenched convulsively on a book.
Suddenly Dom Claude arose, took a pair of compasses, and in silence engraved upon the wall in capitals
the Greek word:
[Greek].
“My brother’s a fool,” said Jehan to himself; “it would have been much simpler to write Fatum.
Everybody is not obliged to know Greek.”
The Archdeacon reseated himself in his chair and clasped his forehead between his two hands, like a
sick person whose head is heavy and burning.
The scholar watched his brother with surprise. He had no conception—he who always wore his heart
upon his sleeve, who observed no laws but the good old laws of nature, who allowed his passions to flow
according to their natural tendencies, and in whom the lake of strong emotions was always dry, so many