Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com

“I have lost my note-books.”
“Where are you in Latin classics?”
“Somebody stole my copy of Horatius.”
“And where in Aristotle?”
“Faith, brother! what Father of the Church is it who says that the errors of heretics have ever found
shelter among the thickets of Aristotle’s metaphysics? A straw for Aristotle! I will never mangle my
religion on his metaphysics.”
“Young man,” replied the Archdeacon, “at the last entry of the King into Paris, there was a gentleman
named Philippe de Comines, who displayed embroidered on his saddle-cloth this motto—which I counsel
you to ponder well: ‘Qui non laborat non manducet.’” 71
The scholar stood a moment silent, his eyes bent on the ground, his countenance chagrined. Suddenly
he turned towards Claude with the quick motion of a wagtail.
“So, good brother, you refuse me even a sou to buy a crust of bread?”
“Qui non laborat non manducet.”
At this inflexible answer Jehan buried his face in his hands, like a woman sobbing, and cried in a voice
of despair:
“[Greek]!”
“What do you mean by this, sir?” demanded Claude, taken aback at this freak.
“Well, what?” said the scholar, raising a pair of impudent eyes into which he had been thrusting his
fists to make them appear red with tears; “it’s Greek! it is an anapæst of Æschylus admirably expressive
of grief.” And he burst into a fit of laughter so infections and uncontrolled that the Archdeacon could not
refrain from smiling. After all, it was Claude’s own fault: why had he so spoiled the lad?
“Oh, dear brother Claude,” Jehan went on, emboldened by this smile, “look at my broken shoes. Is
there a more tragic buskin in the world than a boot that gapes thus and puts out its tongue?”
The Archdeacon had promptly resumed his former severity.
“I will send you new shoes, but no money.”
“Only one little parisis, brother,” persisted the suppliant Jehan. “I will learn Gratian by heart, I am
perfectly ready to believe in God, I will be a very Pythagoras of science and virtue. But one little parisis,
for pity’s sake! Would you have me devoured by famine, which stands staring me in the face with open
maw, blacker, deeper, more noisome than Tartarus or a monk’s nose——?”
Dom Claude shook his head—“Qui non laborat——”
Jehan did not let him finish. “Well!” he cried, “to the devil, then! Huzza! I’ll live in the taverns, I’ll
fight, I’ll break heads and wine cups, I’ll visit the lasses and go to the devil!”
And so saying, he flung his cap against the wall and snapped his fingers like castanets.