Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com

Jew. Nay, indeed. I do not even thieve now—I am above that—I kill. Cutthroat, yes; cutpurse, no!”
Gringoire endeavoured to squeeze some extenuating plea between these brief ejaculations jerked at him
by the offended monarch. “I ask your pardon, monsieur, but it is not Hebrew; it is Latin.”
“I tell thee,” retorted the enraged Clopin, “that I’m not a Jew, and I’ll have thee hanged, ventre de
synagogue! as well as that little usurer of Judea standing beside thee, and whom I hope to see some day
nailed to a counter like the bad penny that he is.”
As he spoke, he pointed to the little bearded Hungarian Jew who had accosted Gringoire with “Facitote
caritatem,” and who, understanding no other language, was much astonished that the King of Tunis
should thus vent his wrath on him.
At length Monseigneur Clopin’s wrath abated.
“So, rascal,” said he to out poet, “you are willing to become a Vagabond?”
“Willingly,” replied the poet.
“Willing is not all,” said Clopin gruffly. “Good-will never put an extra onion into the soup, and is of no
value but for getting you into Paradise. Now, Paradise and Argot are two very different places. To be
received into Argot you must first prove that you are good for something, and to that end you must
search the manikin.”
“I will search,” said Gringoire, “anything you please.”
At a sign from Clopin, several Argotiers detached themselves from the group and returned a moment
afterward, bearing two posts ending in two broad wooden feet, which insured them standing firmly on
the ground. To the upper end of these posts they attached a cross-beam, the whole constituting a very
pretty portable gallows, which Gringoire had the satisfaction of seeing erected before him in the
twinkling of an eye. It was quite complete, even to the rope swinging gracefully from the transverse
beam.
“What are they after now?” Gringoire asked himself with some uneasiness. The jingling of little bells,
which at that moment sounded on his ear, banished his anxiety, for it proceeded from a stuffed figure
which the Vagabonds were hanging by the neck to the rope, a sort of scarecrow, dressed in red and
covered with little tinkling bells sufficient to equip thirty Castilian mules. The jingling of these thousand
bells continued for some time under the vibration of the rope, then died slowly away and sank into
complete silence as the figure hung motionless.
Then Clopin, pointing to a rickety old stool placed beneath the figure, said to Gringoire, “Mount that.”
“Death of the devil!” objected Gringoire, “I shall break my neck. Your stool halts like a distich of
Martial: one leg is hexameter and one pentameter.”
“Get up,” repeated Clopin.
Gringoire mounted upon the stool and succeeded, though not without some oscillations of head and
arms, in finding his centre of gravity.
“Now,” continued the King of Tunis, “twist your right foot round your left leg, and stand on tip-toe on