“As I live!” muttered Ph?bus, “targes! grands blancs! petits blancs! deniers parisis! and real eagle pieces! ’Tis enough to stagger one!”
Jehan preserved his dignified and impassive air. A few liards had rolled into the mud; the captain in his enthusiasm stooped to pick them up. But Jehan restrained him.
“Fie, Captain Ph?bus de Chateaupers!”
Ph?bus counted the money, and turning solemnly to Jehan: “Do you know, Jehan,” said he, “that there are twenty-three sous parisis here? Whom did you rob last night in the Rue Coupe-Gueule?”
Jehan tossed his curly head. “How if one has a brother,” he said, narrowing his eyes as if in scorn, “an archdeacon and a simpleton?”
“Corne de Dieu!” cried Ph?bus, “the worthy man!”
“Let’s go and drink,” said Jehan.
“Where shall we go?” said Ph?bus, “to the Pomme d’Eve?”
“No, captain, let’s go to the Vieille-Science.”
“A fig for your Vieille-Science, Jehan! the wine is better at the Pomme d’Eve; besides, there’s a vine at the door that cheers me while I drink.”
“Very well, then— here goes for Eve and her apple,” said the scholar, taking Ph?bus by the arm. “By-the-bye, my dear captain, you spoke just now of the Rue Coupe-Gueule.1 That is very grossly said; we are not so barbarous now— we call it Rue Coupe-Gorge.” 2
The two friends turned their steps towards the Pomme d’Eve. Needless to say they first gathered up the money, and the Archdeacon followed them.
Followed them with a haggard and gloomy countenance. Was this the Ph?bus whose accursed name, since his interview with Gringoire, had mingled with his every thought? He did not know, but at any rate it was a Ph?bus, and this magic name was a sufficient magnet to draw the Archdeacon after the two thoughtless companions with stealthy step listening to all they said, anxiously attentive to their slightest gesture. For the rest, there was no difficulty in hearing all they had to say, so loudly did they talk, so little did they hesitate to let the passer-by share their confidences. Their talk was of duels, women, wine, folly of all sorts.
As they turned a corner, the sound of a tambourine came to them from a neighbouring side street. Dom Claude heard the officer say to the scholar:
“Thunder! let’s quicken our pace!”
“Why, Ph?bus?”
“I’m afraid the gipsy will see me.”
“What gipsy?”
“The girl with the goat.”
“Esmeralda?”
“That’s it, Jehan. I always forget her deuce of a name. Let us hurry past or she will recognise me, and I don’t want the girl to accost me in the street.”
“Do you know her then, Ph?bus?”
At first, the Archdeacon saw Ph?bus lean over with a grin and whisper something in Jehan’s ear. Ph?bus then burst out laughing, and threw up his head with a triumphant air.
“In very truth?” said Jehan.
“Upon my soul!”
“To-night?”
“To-night.”
“Are you sure she’ll come?”
“But you must be mad, Jehan. Is there ever any doubt about these things?”
“Captain Ph?bus, you are a lucky warrior!”
The Archdeacon overheard all this conversation. His teeth chattered. A visible shudder ran through his whole frame. He stopped a moment to lean against a post like a drunken man; then he followed the track of the two boon companions.
When he came up with them again they had changed the subject. They were singing at the top of their voices the refrain of an old song:
“The lads, the dice who merrily throw,
Merrily to the gallows go.”
______________________
1 Cut-weasand.
2 Cut-throat.
3 By preserving it under a special form the soul is saved.
Chapter 7 - The Spectre-Monk
The far-famed cabaret of the Pomme d’Eve was situated in the University, at the corner of the Rue de la Rondelle and the Rue du Batonnier. It consisted of one spacious room on the ground floor, the central arch of its very low ceiling supported by a heavy wooden pillar painted yellow. There were tables all round, shining pewter pots hanging on the walls, a constant crowd of drinkers, and girls in abundance. A single window looked on to the street; there was a vine at the door, and over the door a creaking sheet of iron having a woman and an apple painted on it, rusted by the rain and swinging in the wind— this was the sign-board.
Night was falling; the street was pitch-dark, and the cabaret, blazing with candles, flared from afar like a forge in the gloom, while through the broken window-panes came a continuous uproar of clinking glasses, feasting, oaths, and quarrels. Through the mist which the heat of the room diffused over the glass of the door a confused swarm of figures could be seen, and now and then came a roar of laughter. The people going to and fro upon their business hastened past this noisy casement with averted eyes. Only now and then some little ragamuffin would stand on tip-toe until he just reached the window-ledge, and shout into the cabaret the old jeering cry with which in those days they used to follow drunkards: “Aux Houls, saouls, saouls, saouls!”
One man, however, was pacing imperturbably backward and forward in forward in front of the noisy tavern, never taking his eye off it, nor going farther away from it than a sentry from his box. He was cloaked to the eyes, which cloak he had just purchased at a clothier’s shop near the Pomme d’Eve, perhaps to shield himself from the keen wind of a March night, perhaps also to conceal his dress. From time to time he stopped before the dim latticed casement, listening, peering in, stamping his feet.
At length the door of the cabaret opened— this was evidently what he had been waiting for— and a pair of boon companions came out. The gleam of light that streamed out of the doorway glowed for a moment on their flushed and jovial faces. The man in the cloak went and put himself on the watch again under a porch on the opposite side of the street.
“Corne et tonnerre!” said one of the two carousers. “It’s on the stroke of seven— the hour of my rendezvous.”
“I tell you,” said his companion, speaking thickly, “I don’t live in the Rue des Mauvaises-Paroles— indignus qui inter mala verba habitat. My lodging is in the Rue Jean-Pain-Mollet— in vico Johannis-Pain-Mollet, and you’re more horny than a unicorn if you say the contrary. Everybody knows that he who once rides on a bear’s back never knows fear again; but you’ve a nose for smelling out a dainty piece like Saint-Jacques de l’H?pital!”
“Jehan, my friend, you’re drunk,” said the other.
His friend replied with a lurch. “It pleases you to say so, Ph?bus; but it is proved that Plato had the profile of a hound.”
Doubtless the reader has already recognised our two worthy friends, the captain and the scholar. It seems that the man who was watching them in the dark had recognised them too, for he followed slowly all the zigzags which the scholar obliged the captain to make, who, being a more seasoned toper, had retained his self-possession. Listening intently to them, the man in the cloak overheard the whole of the following interesting conversation :
“Corbacque! Try to walk straight, sir bachelor. You know that I must leave you anon. It is seven o’clock, and I have an appointment with a woman.”
“Leave me then! I see stars and spears of fire. You’re like the Chateau of Dampmartin that burst with laughter.”
“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 curè’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 C?sar!”
“Sir, the Rule Galiache 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 Galiache— 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 Ph?bus, 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, Ph?bus 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 forthwith 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-Andrè-des-Arcs, Captain Ph?bus 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; he went on, the shade also moved forward. However, it caused him but little uneasiness. “Ah, bah!” he said to himself, “I haven’t a sou on me.”
In front of the College d’Autun he made a halt. It was here that he had shuffled through what he was pleased to call his studies, and from a naughty school-boy habit which still clung to him he never passed the College without offering to the statue of Cardinal Pierre Bertram, which stood to the right of the entrance, that kind of affront of which Priapus complains so bitterly in Horace’s satire: “Olim truncus eram ficulnus.” He therefore paused as usual at the effigy of the cardinal. The street was perfectly empty. As he was preparing to proceed on his way, he saw the shadow approaching him slowly; so slowly that he had the leisure to observe that it wore a cloak and a hat. Arrived at his side, it stopped and stood as motionless as the statue of the cardinal; but it fixed on Ph?bus a pair of piercing eyes which gleamed with the strange light that the pupils of a cat give forth at night.
The captain was no coward, and would have cared very little for a robber rapier in hand; but this walking statue, this petrified man, froze his blood. Queer stories were going about at that time of a spectre-monk who nightly roamed the streets of Paris, and these stories now returned confusedly to his mind. He stood for a moment bewildered and stupefied, and then broke the silence.
“Sir,” said he, forcing a laugh, “if you are a thief, which I trust is the case, you look to me for all the world like a heron attacking a nutshell. My good fellow, I am a ruined youth of family. But try your luck here— in the chapel of this College you will find a piece of the true cross set in silver.”
The hand of the shade came forth from under its cloak and fell upon Ph?bus’s arm with the grip of an eagle’s talons, while at the same time it spoke. “Captain Ph?bus de Chateaupers!” it said.
“The devil!” exclaimed Ph?bus; “you know my name?”
“I know more than your name,” returned the cloaked man in sepulchral tones. “I know that you have a rendezvous to-night.”
“Yes, I have,” answered Ph?bus in amazement.
“At seven o’clock.”
“In a quarter of an hour.”
“At La Falourdel’s.”
“Precisely.”
“The old procuress of the Pont Saint-Michel.”
“Of Saint-Michael the Archangel, as says the paternoster.”
“Impious one!” growled the spectre. “With a woman?”
“Confiteor— I confess it.”
“Whose name is— ”
“La Smeralda,” said Ph?bus lightly; all his carelessness returned to him.
At this name the spectre’s grip tightened, and he shook the captain’s arm furiously.
“Captain Ph?bus de Chateaupers, thou liest!”
Any one beholding at that moment the flame of anger that rushed to the soldier’s face, his recoil— so violent that it relieved him from the other’s clutch, the haughty air with which he laid his hand upon the hilt of his sword, and, in face of that passionate resentment, the sullen immobility of the man in the cloak— any one beholding this would have been startled. It was like the combat between Don Juan and the statue.
“Christ and Satan!” cried the captain, “that’s a word that seldom attacks the ear of a Chateaupers! Thou darest not repeat it!”
“Thou liest!” said the shade coldly.
The captain ground his teeth. Spectre-monk, phantom, superstitions— all were forgotten at this moment. He saw only a man and an insult.
“Ha— very good!” he stammered, his voice choking with rage, and he drew his sword, still stammering— for passion makes a man tremble as well as fear. “Draw,” he cried, “here— on the spot— draw and defend yourself! There shall be blood upon these stones!”
The other never stirred. Then, as he saw his adversary on guard and ready to run him through— “Captain Ph?bus,” said he, and his voice shook with bitterness, “you are forgetting your assignation.”
The angry fits of such men as Ph?bus are like boiling milk of which a drop of cold water will stay the ebullition. These few words brought down the point of the sword which glittered in the captain’s hand.
“Captain,” continued the man, “to-morrow— the day after— a month— ten years hence— you will find me ready to cut your throat; but now go to your rendezvous.”
“Why, in truth,” said Ph?bus, as if parleying with himself, “a sword and a girl are two charming things with which to have a rendezvous; but I see no reason why I should miss the one for the sake of the other, when I can have them both.” And with that he put up his sword.
“Go to your rendezvous,” repeated the unknown.
“Sir,” said Ph?bus with some embarrassment, “thanks for your courtesy. You are right, there will be plenty of time to-morrow for us to mutually make slashes and buttonholes in father Adam’s doublet. I am obliged to you for thus permitting me to pass another agreeable quarter of an hour. I was indeed in hopes of laying you in the gutter, and yet arriving in time for the lady, all the more that it is not amiss to make women wait for you a little on such occasions. But you seem to be a fellow of mettle, so it will be safer to put it off till to-morrow. So now I will be off to my rendezvous; it is for seven o’clock, you know.” Here Ph?bus scratched his ear. “Ah, corne Dieu! I’d forgotten— I have not a sou to pay the hire of the garret, and the old hag will want to be paid in advance— she will not trust me.”
