Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com

“By the warts of my grandmother! Jehan, that’s talking nonsense with a vengeance! Look you, Jehan,
have you no money left?”
“Monsieur the Rector, it is without a mistake: the little slaughter-house—parva boucheria!”
“Jehan! friend Jehan! you know I promised to meet that girl at the end of the Saint-Michel bridge; that
I can take her nowhere but to La Falourdel’s, and that I must pay for the room. The old white-whiskered
jade won’t give me credit. Jehan, I beseech you! Have we drunk the whole contents of the curé’s
pouch?”
“The consciousness of having employed the other hours well is a right and savoury condiment to our
table.”
“Liver and spleen! a truce to your gibberish! Tell me, little limb of the devil, have you any money left?
Give it me, or, by Heaven, I’ll search you though you were as leprous as Job and as scabby as Cæsar!”
“Sir, the Rue Galliache is a street which has the Rue de la Verrerie at one end and the Rue de la
Tixanderie at the other.”
“Yes, yes, my good friend Jehan—my poor boy—the Rue Galliache—yes, you’re right, quite right. But
for the love of Heaven collect yourself! I want but one sou parisis, and seven o’clock is the hour.”
“Silence all round and join in the chorus:
“‘When the rats have every cat devoured,
The king shall of Arras be the lord;
When the sea, so deep and wide,
Shall be frozen over at midsummertide,
Then out upon the ice you’ll see
How the men of Arras their town shall flee.’”
“Well, scholar of Antichrist, the foul fiend strangle thee!” cried Phœbus, roughly pushing the tipsy
scholar, who reeled against the wall and slid gently down upon the pavement of Philippe Augustus. Out
of that remnant of fraternal sympathy which never wholly deserts the heart of a bottle companion,
Phœbus with his foot rolled Jehan to one of those pillows of the poor which Heaven provides at every
street corner of Paris, and which the rich scornfully stigmatize with the name of rubbish-heap. The
captain propped Jehan’s head upon an inclined plane of cabbage-stumps, and forth-with the scholar
struck up a magnificent tenor snore. However, the captain still entertained some slight grudge against
him. “So much the worse for thee if the dust-cart come and shovel thee up in passing,” said he to the
poor, slumbering student; and he went on his way.
The man with the cloak, who still dogged his footsteps, halted a moment as if struggling with some
resolve; then, heaving a deep sigh, he went on after the soldier.
Like them, we will leave Jehan sleeping under the friendly eye of heaven, and, with the reader’s
permission, follow their steps.
On turning into the Rue Saint-André-des-Arcs, Captain Phœbus perceived that some one was following
him. Happening to glance behind him, he saw a sort of shade creeping after him along the wall. He
stopped, it stopped; he went on, the shade also moved forward. However, it caused him but little