Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com

and visit her there. He sometimes thought of the little goat, but that was the utmost. For the rest, he
performed feats of strength during the daytime to earn a living, and at night he was engaged in
elaborating a memorial against the Bishop of Paris, for he had not forgotten how the wheels of his mills
had drenched him, and owed the bishop a grudge in consequence. He was also busy writing a
commentary on the great work of Baudry le Rouge, Bishop of Noyon and Tournay, De Cupa Petrarum,
which had inspired him with a violent taste for architecture, a love which had supplanted his passion for
hermetics, of which, too, it was but a natural consequence, seeing that there is an intimate connection
between hermetics and freemasonry. Gringoire had passed from the love of an idea to the love for its
outward form.
He happened one day to stop near the Church of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, at a corner of a building
called the Forl’Èvêque, which was opposite another called the For-le-Roi. To the former was attached a
charming fourteenth century chapel, the chancel of which was towards the street. Gringoire was
absorbed in studying its external sculpture. It was one of those moments of selfish, exclusive, and
supreme enjoyment in which the artist sees nothing in all the world but art, and sees the whole world in
art. Suddenly a hand was laid heavily on his shoulder. He turned round—it was his former friend and
master, the Archdeacon.
He stood gaping stupidly. It was long since he had seen the Archdeacon, and Dom Claude was one of
those grave and intense men who invariably upset a sceptical philosopher’s equilibrium.
The Archdeacon kept silence for some moments, during which Gringoire found leisure to observe him
more closely. He thought Dom Claude greatly altered, pallid as a winter’s morning, hollow-eyed, his
hair nearly white. The priest was the first to break this silence:
“How fares it with you, Maître Pierre?” he asked in a cold and even tone.
“My health?” returned Gringoire. “Well, as to that, it has its ups and downs: but on the whole, I may
say it is good. I am moderate in all things. You know, master, the secret, according to Hippocrates; ‘id
est: cibi, potus, somni, venus, omnia moderata sunt.”’ 82
“You have no care then, Maître Gringoire?” resumed the priest, fixing Gringoire with a penetrating
eye.
“Faith, not I.”
“And what are you doing now?”
“You see for yourself, master; I am examining the cutting of these stones, and the style of this
bas-relief.”
The priest smiled faintly, but with that scornful smile which only curls one corner of the mouth. “And
that amuses you?”
“It is paradise!” exclaimed Gringoire. And bending over the stone carvings with the fascinated air of a
demonstrator of living phenomena—“For example,” he said, “look at this bas-relief: do you not
consider its execution a marvel of skill, delicacy, and patience? Look at this small column: where would
you find a capital whose leaves were more daintily entwined or more tenderly treated by the chisel? Here
are three round alto-relievos by Jean Maillevin. They are not the finest examples of that great genius;
nevertheless, the childlike simplicity, the sweetness of the faces, the sportive grace of the attitudes and