Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com

“Give it to me,” said the Archdeacon. “Magic pure and simple, Maître Jacques!” he cried, as he cast
his eyes over the scroll. “‘Emen-Hétan!’ that is the cry of the ghouls when they arrive at the witches’
Sabbath. ‘Per ipsum, et cum ipso, et in ipso!’ that is the conjuration which rebinds the devil in hell. ‘Hax,
pax, max!’ that refers to medicine—a spell against the bite of a mad dog. Maître Jacques, you are King’s
attorney in the Ecclesiastical Court; this parchment is an abomination.”
“We will put him again to the question. Then here is something else,” added Maître Jacques, fumbling
once more in his bag, “which we found at Marc Cenaine’s.”
It was a vessel of the same family as those which encumbered the furnace of Dom Claude. “Ah,” said
the Archdeacon, “an alchemist’s crucible.”
“I don’t mind confessing to you,” Maître Jacques went on, with his timid and constrained smile, “that I
have tried it over the furnace, but succeeded no better than with my own.”
The Archdeacon examined the vessel. “What has he inscribed on his crucible? ‘Och! och!’—the word
for driving away fleas? Your Marc Cenaine is an ignoramus! I can well believe that you could not make
gold with this! It will be useful to put in your sleeping alcove in the summer, but for nothing more.”
“Since we are on the subject of errors,” said the King’s attorney, “before coming up I was studying the
doorway down below; is your Reverence quite sure that the beginnings of Nature’s workings are
represented there on the side towards the Hôtel-Dieu, and that among the seven naked figures at the feet
of Our Lady, that with wings to his heels is Mercurius?”
“Yes,” answered the priest; “so Augustin Nypho writes—that Italian doctor who had a bearded
familiar which taught him everything. But we will go down, and I will explain it to you from the text.”
“Thank you, master,” said Charmolue, bending to the ground. “By-the-bye, I had forgotten! When do
you wish me to arrest the little witch?”
“What witch?”
“That gipsy girl, you know, who comes and dances every day in the Parvis, in defiance of the
prohibition. She has a familiar spirit in the shape of a goat with devil’s horns—it can read and write and
do arithmetic—enough to hang all Bohemia. The charge is quite ready and would soon be drawn up. A
pretty creature, on my soul, that dancing girl!—the finest black eyes in the world—two Egyptian
carbuncles. When shall we begin?”
The Archdeacon had grown deadly pale.
“I will let you know,” he stammered in almost inaudible tones, then added with an effort: “Attend you
to Marc Cenaine.”
“Never fear,” answered Charmolue smiling. “As soon as I get back he shall be strapped down again to
the leather bed. But it is a very devil of a man. He tires out Pierrat Torterue himself, who has larger
hands than I. As says our good Plautus—
‘Nudus vinctus, centum pondo, es quando pendes per pedes.’ 72 The screw—that is our modest effectual
instrument—we shall try that.”
Dom Claude seemed sunk in gloomy abstraction. He now turned to Charmolue. “Maître