CHAPTER IV. _ANANKE_.
It chanced that upon a fine morning in this same month of March, I thinkit was on Saturday the 29th, Saint Eustache's day, our young friend thestudent, Jehan Frollo du Moulin, perceived, as he was dressing himself,that his breeches, which contained his purse, gave out no metallic ring."Poor purse," he said, drawing it from his fob, "what! not the smallestparisis! how cruelly the dice, beer-pots, and Venus have depleted thee!How empty, wrinkled, limp, thou art! Thou resemblest the throat of afury! I ask you, Messer Cicero, and Messer Seneca, copies of whom, alldog's-eared, I behold scattered on the floor, what profits it me toknow, better than any governor of the mint, or any Jew on the Pont auxChangeurs, that a golden crown stamped with a crown is worth thirty-fiveunzains of twenty-five sous, and eight deniers parisis apiece, andthat a crown stamped with a crescent is worth thirty-six unzains oftwenty-six sous, six deniers tournois apiece, if I have not a singlewretched black liard to risk on the double-six! Oh! Consul Cicero! thisis no calamity from which one extricates one's self with periphrases,_quemadmodum_, and _verum enim vero_!"
He dressed himself sadly. An idea had occurred to him as he laced hisboots, but he rejected it at first; nevertheless, it returned, and heput on his waistcoat wrong side out, an evident sign of violent internalcombat. At last he dashed his cap roughly on the floor, and exclaimed:"So much the worse! Let come of it what may. I am going to my brother! Ishall catch a sermon, but I shall catch a crown."
Then he hastily donned his long jacket with furred half-sleeves, pickedup his cap, and went out like a man driven to desperation.
He descended the Rue de la Harpe toward the City. As he passed theRue de la Huchette, the odor of those admirable spits, which wereincessantly turning, tickled his olfactory apparatus, and he bestoweda loving glance toward the Cyclopean roast, which one day drew from theFranciscan friar, Calatagirone, this pathetic exclamation: _Veramente,queste rotisserie sono cosa stupenda_!* But Jehan had not thewherewithal to buy a breakfast, and he plunged, with a profound sigh,under the gateway of the Petit-Chatelet, that enormous double trefoil ofmassive towers which guarded the entrance to the City.
* Truly, these roastings are a stupendous thing!
He did not even take the trouble to cast a stone in passing, as was theusage, at the miserable statue of that Perinet Leclerc who had deliveredup the Paris of Charles VI. to the English, a crime which his effigy,its face battered with stones and soiled with mud, expiated for threecenturies at the corner of the Rue de la Harpe and the Rue de Buci, asin an eternal pillory.
The Petit-Pont traversed, the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve crossed, Jehande Molendino found himself in front of Notre-Dame. Then indecisionseized upon him once more, and he paced for several minutes round thestatue of M. Legris, repeating to himself with anguish: "The sermon issure, the crown is doubtful."
He stopped a beadle who emerged from the cloister,--"Where is monsieurthe archdeacon of Josas?"
"I believe that he is in his secret cell in the tower," said the beadle;"I should advise you not to disturb him there, unless you come from someone like the pope or monsieur the king."
Jehan clapped his hands.
"_Becliable_! here's a magnificent chance to see the famous sorcerycell!"
This reflection having brought him to a decision, he plunged resolutelyinto the small black doorway, and began the ascent of the spiral ofSaint-Gilles, which leads to the upper stories of the tower. "I amgoing to see," he said to himself on the way. "By the ravens of the HolyVirgin! it must needs be a curious thing, that cell which my reverendbrother hides so secretly! 'Tis said that he lights up the kitchens ofhell there, and that he cooks the philosopher's stone there over a hotfire. _Bedieu_! I care no more for the philosopher's stone than for apebble, and I would rather find over his furnace an omelette of Eastereggs and bacon, than the biggest philosopher's stone in the world."'
On arriving at the gallery of slender columns, he took breath for amoment, and swore against the interminable staircase by I know not howmany million cartloads of devils; then he resumed his ascent throughthe narrow door of the north tower, now closed to the public.Several moments after passing the bell chamber, he came upon a littlelanding-place, built in a lateral niche, and under the vault of a low,pointed door, whose enormous lock and strong iron bars he was enabledto see through a loophole pierced in the opposite circular wall of thestaircase. Persons desirous of visiting this door at the present daywill recognize it by this inscription engraved in white letters on theblack wall: "J'ADORE CORALIE, 1823. SIGNE UGENE." "Signe" stands in thetext.
"Ugh!" said the scholar; "'tis here, no doubt."
The key was in the lock, the door was very close to him; he gave it agentle push and thrust his head through the opening.
The reader cannot have failed to turn over the admirable works ofRembrandt, that Shakespeare of painting. Amid so many marvellousengravings, there is one etching in particular, which is supposedto represent Doctor Faust, and which it is impossible to contemplatewithout being dazzled. It represents a gloomy cell; in the centre is atable loaded with hideous objects; skulls, spheres, alembics, compasses,hieroglyphic parchments. The doctor is before this table clad in hislarge coat and covered to the very eyebrows with his furred cap. He isvisible only to his waist. He has half risen from his immense arm-chair,his clenched fists rest on the table, and he is gazing with curiosityand terror at a large luminous circle, formed of magic letters, whichgleams from the wall beyond, like the solar spectrum in a dark chamber.This cabalistic sun seems to tremble before the eye, and fills the wancell with its mysterious radiance. It is horrible and it is beautiful.
Something very similar to Faust's cell presented itself to Jehan's view,when he ventured his head through the half-open door. It also was agloomy and sparsely lighted retreat. There also stood a large arm-chairand a large table, compasses, alembics, skeletons of animals suspendedfrom the ceiling, a globe rolling on the floor, hippocephali mingledpromiscuously with drinking cups, in which quivered leaves of gold,skulls placed upon vellum checkered with figures and characters, hugemanuscripts piled up wide open, without mercy on the cracking corners ofthe parchment; in short, all the rubbish of science, and everywhereon this confusion dust and spiders' webs; but there was no circle ofluminous letters, no doctor in an ecstasy contemplating the flamingvision, as the eagle gazes upon the sun.
Nevertheless, the cell was not deserted. A man was seated in thearm-chair, and bending over the table. Jehan, to whom his back wasturned, could see only his shoulders and the back of his skull; buthe had no difficulty in recognizing that bald head, which nature hadprovided with an eternal tonsure, as though desirous of marking, by thisexternal symbol, the archdeacon's irresistible clerical vocation.
Jehan accordingly recognized his brother; but the door had beenopened so softly, that nothing warned Dom Claude of his presence. Theinquisitive scholar took advantage of this circumstance to examine thecell for a few moments at his leisure. A large furnace, which he hadnot at first observed, stood to the left of the arm-chair, beneath thewindow. The ray of light which penetrated through this aperture madeits way through a spider's circular web, which tastefully inscribed itsdelicate rose in the arch of the window, and in the centre of which theinsect architect hung motionless, like the hub of this wheel of lace.Upon the furnace were accumulated in disorder, all sorts of vases,earthenware bottles, glass retorts, and mattresses of charcoal. Jehanobserved, with a sigh, that there was no frying-pan. "How cold thekitchen utensils are!" he said to himself.
In fact, there was no fire in the furnace, and it seemed as though nonehad been lighted for a long time. A glass mask, which Jehan noticedamong the utensils of alchemy, and which served no doubt, to protect thearchdeacon's face when he was working over some substance to be dreaded,lay in one corner covered with dust and apparently forgotten. Beside itlay a pair of bellows no less dusty, the upper side of which bore thisinscription incrusted in copper letters: SPIRA SPERA.
Other inscriptions were written
, in accordance with the fashion of thehermetics, in great numbers on the walls; some traced with ink, othersengraved with a metal point. There were, moreover, Gothic letters,Hebrew letters, Greek letters, and Roman letters, pell-mell; theinscriptions overflowed at haphazard, on top of each other, the morerecent effacing the more ancient, and all entangled with each other,like the branches in a thicket, like pikes in an affray. It was, infact, a strangely confused mingling of all human philosophies, allreveries, all human wisdom. Here and there one shone out from among therest like a banner among lance heads. Generally, it was a brief Greekor Roman device, such as the Middle Ages knew so well how toformulate.--_Unde? Inde?--Homo homini monstrurn-Ast'ra, castra, nomen,numen.--Meya Bibklov, ueya xaxov.--Sapere aude. Fiat ubi vult_--etc.;sometimes a word devoid of all apparent sense, _Avayxoqpayia_, whichpossibly contained a bitter allusion to the regime of the cloister;sometimes a simple maxim of clerical discipline formulated in a regularhexameter _Coelestem dominum terrestrem dicite dominum_. There wasalso Hebrew jargon, of which Jehan, who as yet knew but little Greek,understood nothing; and all were traversed in every direction by stars,by figures of men or animals, and by intersecting triangles; and thiscontributed not a little to make the scrawled wall of the cell resemblea sheet of paper over which a monkey had drawn back and forth a penfilled with ink.
The whole chamber, moreover, presented a general aspect of abandonmentand dilapidation; and the bad state of the utensils induced thesupposition that their owner had long been distracted from his laborsby other preoccupations. Meanwhile, this master, bent over a vastmanuscript, ornamented with fantastical illustrations, appeared to betormented by an idea which incessantly mingled with his meditations.That at least was Jehan's idea, when he heard him exclaim, with thethoughtful breaks of a dreamer thinking aloud,--
"Yes, Manou said it, and Zoroaster taught it! the sun is born from fire,the moon from the sun; fire is the soul of the universe; its elementaryatoms pour forth and flow incessantly upon the world through infinitechannels! At the point where these currents intersect each other in theheavens, they produce light; at their points of intersection on earth,they produce gold. Light, gold; the same thing! From fire to theconcrete state. The difference between the visible and the palpable,between the fluid and the solid in the same substance, between water andice, nothing more. These are no dreams; it is the general law of nature.But what is one to do in order to extract from science the secret ofthis general law? What! this light which inundates my hand is gold!These same atoms dilated in accordance with a certain law need only becondensed in accordance with another law. How is it to be done?Some have fancied by burying a ray of sunlight, Averroes,--yes, 'tisAverroes,--Averroes buried one under the first pillar on the left of thesanctuary of the Koran, in the great Mahometan mosque of Cordova; butthe vault cannot be opened for the purpose of ascertaining whether theoperation has succeeded, until after the lapse of eight thousand years.
"The devil!" said Jehan, to himself, "'tis a long while to wait for acrown!"
"Others have thought," continued the dreamy archdeacon, "that itwould be better worth while to operate upon a ray of Sirius. But 'tisexceeding hard to obtain this ray pure, because of the simultaneouspresence of other stars whose rays mingle with it. Flamel esteemedit more simple to operate upon terrestrial fire. Flamel! there'spredestination in the name! _Flamma_! yes, fire. All lies there. Thediamond is contained in the carbon, gold is in the fire. But how toextract it? Magistri affirms that there are certain feminine names,which possess a charm so sweet and mysterious, that it suffices topronounce them during the operation. Let us read what Manon says on thematter: 'Where women are honored, the divinities are rejoiced; wherethey are despised, it is useless to pray to God. The mouth of a womanis constantly pure; it is a running water, it is a ray of sunlight. Thename of a woman should be agreeable, sweet, fanciful; it should end inlong vowels, and resemble words of benediction.' Yes, the sage is right;in truth, Maria, Sophia, la Esmeral--Damnation! always that thought!"
And he closed the book violently.
He passed his hand over his brow, as though to brush away the idea whichassailed him; then he took from the table a nail and a small hammer,whose handle was curiously painted with cabalistic letters.
"For some time," he said with a bitter smile, "I have failed in all myexperiments! one fixed idea possesses me, and sears my brain like fire.I have not even been able to discover the secret of Cassiodorus,whose lamp burned without wick and without oil. A simple matter,nevertheless--"
"The deuce!" muttered Jehan in his beard.
"Hence," continued the priest, "one wretched thought is sufficient torender a man weak and beside himself! Oh! how Claude Pernelle wouldlaugh at me. She who could not turn Nicholas Flamel aside, for onemoment, from his pursuit of the great work! What! I hold in my hand themagic hammer of Zechiele! at every blow dealt by the formidable rabbi,from the depths of his cell, upon this nail, that one of his enemieswhom he had condemned, were he a thousand leagues away, was buried acubit deep in the earth which swallowed him. The King of France himself,in consequence of once having inconsiderately knocked at the door of thethermaturgist, sank to the knees through the pavement of his own Paris.This took place three centuries ago. Well! I possess the hammer and thenail, and in my hands they are utensils no more formidable than a clubin the hands of a maker of edge tools. And yet all that is requiredis to find the magic word which Zechiele pronounced when he struck hisnail."
"What nonsense!" thought Jehan.
"Let us see, let us try!" resumed the archdeacon briskly. "Were I tosucceed, I should behold the blue spark flash from the head of the nail.Emen-Hetan! Emen-Hetan! That's not it. Sigeani! Sigeani! May this nailopen the tomb to any one who bears the name of Phoebus! A curse upon it!Always and eternally the same idea!"
And he flung away the hammer in a rage. Then he sank down so deeply onthe arm-chair and the table, that Jehan lost him from view behind thegreat pile of manuscripts. For the space of several minutes, all that hesaw was his fist convulsively clenched on a book. Suddenly, Dom Claudesprang up, seized a compass and engraved in silence upon the wall incapital letters, this Greek word
_ANANKE_.
"My brother is mad," said Jehan to himself; "it would have been far moresimple to write _Fatum_, every one is not obliged to know Greek."
The archdeacon returned and seated himself in his armchair, and placedhis head on both his hands, as a sick man does, whose head is heavy andburning.
The student watched his brother with surprise. He did not know, he whowore his heart on his sleeve, he who observed only the good old lawof Nature in the world, he who allowed his passions to follow theirinclinations, and in whom the lake of great emotions was always dry, sofreely did he let it off each day by fresh drains,--he did not know withwhat fury the sea of human passions ferments and boils when all egressis denied to it, how it accumulates, how it swells, how it overflows,how it hollows out the heart; how it breaks in inward sobs, and dullconvulsions, until it has rent its dikes and burst its bed. The austereand glacial envelope of Claude Frollo, that cold surface of steep andinaccessible virtue, had always deceived Jehan. The merry scholar hadnever dreamed that there was boiling lava, furious and profound, beneaththe snowy brow of AEtna.
We do not know whether he suddenly became conscious of these things;but, giddy as he was, he understood that he had seen what he ought notto have seen, that he had just surprised the soul of his elder brotherin one of its most secret altitudes, and that Claude must not be allowedto know it. Seeing that the archdeacon had fallen back into his formerimmobility, he withdrew his head very softly, and made some noise withhis feet outside the door, like a person who has just arrived and isgiving warning of his approach.
"Enter!" cried the archdeacon, from the interior of his cell; "Iwas expecting you. I left the door unlocked expressly; enter MasterJacques!"
The scholar entered boldly. The archdeacon, who was very muchembarrassed by such a visit in such a place, trembled in his
arm-chair."What! 'tis you, Jehan?"
"'Tis a J, all the same," said the scholar, with his ruddy, merry, andaudacious face.
Dom Claude's visage had resumed its severe expression.
"What are you come for?"
"Brother," replied the scholar, making an effort to assume a decent,pitiful, and modest mien, and twirling his cap in his hands with aninnocent air; "I am come to ask of you--"
"What?"
"A little lecture on morality, of which I stand greatly in need," Jehandid not dare to add aloud,--"and a little money of which I am in stillgreater need." This last member of his phrase remained unuttered.
"Monsieur," said the archdeacon, in a cold tone, "I am greatlydispleased with you."
"Alas!" sighed the scholar.
Dom Claude made his arm-chair describe a quarter circle, and gazedintently at Jehan.
"I am very glad to see you."
This was a formidable exordium. Jehan braced himself for a roughencounter.
"Jehan, complaints are brought me about you every day. What affray wasthat in which you bruised with a cudgel a little vicomte, Albert deRamonchamp?"
"Oh!" said Jehan, "a vast thing that! A malicious page amused himself bysplashing the scholars, by making his horse gallop through the mire!"
"Who," pursued the archdeacon, "is that Mahiet Fargel, whose gown youhave torn? _Tunicam dechiraverunt_, saith the complaint."
"Ah bah! a wretched cap of a Montaigu! Isn't that it?"
"The complaint says _tunicam_ and not _cappettam_. Do you know Latin?"
Jehan did not reply.
"Yes," pursued the priest shaking his head, "that is the state oflearning and letters at the present day. The Latin tongue is hardlyunderstood, Syriac is unknown, Greek so odious that 'tis accounted noignorance in the most learned to skip a Greek word without reading it,and to say, '_Groecum est non legitur_.'"
The scholar raised his eyes boldly. "Monsieur my brother, doth it pleaseyou that I shall explain in good French vernacular that Greek word whichis written yonder on the wall?"
"What word?"
"'_ANANKE_."
A slight flush spread over the cheeks of the priest with their highbones, like the puff of smoke which announces on the outside the secretcommotions of a volcano. The student hardly noticed it.
"Well, Jehan," stammered the elder brother with an effort, "What is themeaning of yonder word?"
"FATE."
Dom Claude turned pale again, and the scholar pursued carelessly.
"And that word below it, graved by the same hand, '_Ayayvela_, signifies'impurity.' You see that people do know their Greek."
And the archdeacon remained silent. This Greek lesson had rendered himthoughtful.
Master Jehan, who possessed all the artful ways of a spoiled child,judged that the moment was a favorable one in which to risk his request.Accordingly, he assumed an extremely soft tone and began,--
"My good brother, do you hate me to such a degree as to look savagelyupon me because of a few mischievous cuffs and blows distributed in afair war to a pack of lads and brats, _quibusdam marmosetis_? You see,good Brother Claude, that people know their Latin."
But all this caressing hypocrisy did not have its usual effect on thesevere elder brother. Cerberus did not bite at the honey cake. Thearchdeacon's brow did not lose a single wrinkle.
"What are you driving at?" he said dryly.
"Well, in point of fact, this!" replied Jehan bravely, "I stand in needof money."
At this audacious declaration, the archdeacon's visage assumed athoroughly pedagogical and paternal expression.
"You know, Monsieur Jehan, that our fief of Tirechappe, putting thedirect taxes and the rents of the nine and twenty houses in a block,yields only nine and thirty livres, eleven sous, six deniers, Parisian.It is one half more than in the time of the brothers Paclet, but it isnot much."
"I need money," said Jehan stoically.
"You know that the official has decided that our twenty-one housesshould he moved full into the fief of the Bishopric, and that we couldredeem this homage only by paying the reverend bishop two marks ofsilver gilt of the price of six livres parisis. Now, these two marks Ihave not yet been able to get together. You know it."
"I know that I stand in need of money," repeated Jehan for the thirdtime.
"And what are you going to do with it?"
This question caused a flash of hope to gleam before Jehan's eyes. Heresumed his dainty, caressing air.
"Stay, dear Brother Claude, I should not come to you, with any evilmotive. There is no intention of cutting a dash in the taverns with yourunzains, and of strutting about the streets of Paris in a caparison ofgold brocade, with a lackey, _cum meo laquasio_. No, brother, 'tis for agood work."
"What good work?" demanded Claude, somewhat surprised.
"Two of my friends wish to purchase an outfit for the infant of a poorHaudriette widow. It is a charity. It will cost three forms, and Ishould like to contribute to it."
"What are names of your two friends?"
"Pierre l'Assommeur and Baptiste Croque-Oison*."
* Peter the Slaughterer; and Baptist Crack-Gosling.
"Hum," said the archdeacon; "those are names as fit for a good work as acatapult for the chief altar."
It is certain that Jehan had made a very bad choice of names for his twofriends. He realized it too late.
"And then," pursued the sagacious Claude, "what sort of an infant'soutfit is it that is to cost three forms, and that for the child of aHaudriette? Since when have the Haudriette widows taken to having babesin swaddling-clothes?"
Jehan broke the ice once more.
"Eh, well! yes! I need money in order to go and see Isabeau la Thierryeto-night; in the Val-d' Amour!"
"Impure wretch!" exclaimed the priest.
"_Avayveia_!" said Jehan.
This quotation, which the scholar borrowed with malice, perchance, fromthe wall of the cell, produced a singular effect on the archdeacon. Hebit his lips and his wrath was drowned in a crimson flush.
"Begone," he said to Jehan. "I am expecting some one."
The scholar made one more effort.
"Brother Claude, give me at least one little parisis to buy something toeat."
"How far have you gone in the Decretals of Gratian?" demanded DomClaude.
"I have lost my copy books.
"Where are you in your Latin humanities?"
"My copy of Horace has been stolen."
"Where are you in Aristotle?"
"I' faith! brother what father of the church is it, who says that theerrors of heretics have always had for their lurking place the thicketsof Aristotle's metaphysics? A plague on Aristotle! I care not to tear myreligion on his metaphysics."
"Young man," resumed the archdeacon, "at the king's last entry, therewas a young gentleman, named Philippe de Comines, who wore embroideredon the housings of his horse this device, upon which I counsel you tomeditate: _Qui non laborat, non manducet_."
The scholar remained silent for a moment, with his finger in his ear,his eyes on the ground, and a discomfited mien.
All at once he turned round to Claude with the agile quickness of awagtail.
"So, my good brother, you refuse me a sou parisis, wherewith to buy acrust at a baker's shop?"
"_Qui non laborat, non manducet_."
At this response of the inflexible archdeacon, Jehan hid his head inhis hands, like a woman sobbing, and exclaimed with an expression ofdespair: "_Orororororoi_."
"What is the meaning of this, sir?" demanded Claude, surprised at thisfreak.
"What indeed!" said the scholar; and he lifted to Claude his impudenteyes into which he had just thrust his fists in order to communicate tothem the redness of tears; "'tis Greek! 'tis an anapaest of AEschyluswhich expresses grief perfectly."
And here he burst into a laugh so droll and violent that it made thearchdeacon smile. It was Claude's fault, in fact: why had he so spoiledthat child?
"Oh! go
od Brother Claude," resumed Jehan, emboldened by this smile,"look at my worn out boots. Is there a cothurnus in the world moretragic than these boots, whose soles are hanging out their tongues?"
The archdeacon promptly returned to his original severity.
"I will send you some new boots, but no money."
"Only a poor little parisis, brother," continued the suppliant Jehan. "Iwill learn Gratian by heart, I will believe firmly in God, I will bea regular Pythagoras of science and virtue. But one little parisis, inmercy! Would you have famine bite me with its jaws which are gaping infront of me, blacker, deeper, and more noisome than a Tartarus or thenose of a monk?"
Dom Claude shook his wrinkled head: "_Qui non laborat_--"
Jehan did not allow him to finish.
"Well," he exclaimed, "to the devil then! Long live joy! I will live inthe tavern, I will fight, I will break pots and I will go and see thewenches." And thereupon, he hurled his cap at the wall, and snapped hisfingers like castanets.
The archdeacon surveyed him with a gloomy air.
"Jehan, you have no soul."
"In that case, according to Epicurius, I lack a something made ofanother something which has no name."
"Jehan, you must think seriously of amending your ways."
"Oh, come now," cried the student, gazing in turn at his brother and thealembics on the furnace, "everything is preposterous here, both ideasand bottles!"
"Jehan, you are on a very slippery downward road. Do you know whitheryou are going?"
"To the wine-shop," said Jehan.
"The wine-shop leads to the pillory."
"'Tis as good a lantern as any other, and perchance with that one,Diogenes would have found his man."
"The pillory leads to the gallows."
"The gallows is a balance which has a man at one end and the whole earthat the other. 'Tis fine to be the man."
"The gallows leads to hell."
"'Tis a big fire.".
"Jehan, Jehan, the end will be bad."
"The beginning will have been good."
At that moment, the sound of a footstep was heard on the staircase.
"Silence!" said the archdeacon, laying his finger on his mouth, "here isMaster Jacques. Listen, Jehan," he added, in a low voice; "have a carenever to speak of what you shall have seen or heard here. Hide yourselfquickly under the furnace, and do not breathe."
The scholar concealed himself; just then a happy idea occurred to him.
"By the way, Brother Claude, a form for not breathing."
"Silence! I promise."
"You must give it to me."
"Take it, then!" said the archdeacon angrily, flinging his purse at him.
Jehan darted under the furnace again, and the door opened.
CHAPTER V. THE TWO MEN CLOTHED IN BLACK.