“Come in!” cried the archdeacon from within the cell; “I expected you. I left the door on the latch purposely; come in, Master Jacques.”
The student entered boldly. The archdeacon, much annoyed by such a visit in such a place, started in his chair. “What! is it you, Jehan?”
“It is a J, at any rate,” said the student, with his merry, rosy, impudent face.
Dom Claude’s features resumed their usual severe expression.
“Why are you here?”
“Brother,” replied the student, trying to put on a modest, unassuming, melancholy look, and twisting his cap with an innocent air, “I came to ask you—”
“What?”
“For a little moral lecture, which I sorely need.” Jehan dared not add aloud, “And a little money, which I need still more sorely.” The last part of his sentence was left unspoken.
“Sir,” said the arcbdeacon in icy tones, “I am greatly displeased with you.”
“Alas!” sighed the student.
Dom Claude turned his chair slightly, and looked steadily at Jehan.
“I am very glad to see you.”
This was a terrible beginning. Jehan prepared for a severe attack.
“Jehan, I hear complaints of you every day. How about that beating with which you bruised a certain little Viscount Albert de Ra monchamp?”
“Oh!” said Jehan, “that was nothing,—a mischievous page, who amused himself with spattering the students by riding his horse through the mud at full speed!”
“How about that Mahiet Fargel,” continued the archdeacon, “whose gown you tore? ‘Tunicam dechiraverunt,’cn the complaint says.”
“Oh, pooh! a miserable Montaigu cape,—that’s all!”
“The complaint says ‘tunicam,’ and not ‘cappettam.’ Do you know Latin?”
Jehan made no answer.
“Yes,” resumed the priest, shaking his head, “this is what study and learning have come to now. The Latin language is hardly understood, Syriac is an unknown tongue, Greek is held in such odium that it is not considered ignorance for the wisest to skip a Greek word without reading it, and to say, ‘Gr?ecum est, non legitur.”’co
The student boldly raised his eyes: “Brother, would you like me to explain in good every-day French that Greek word written yonder on the wall?”
“Which word?”
“ ‘ANáTKH.”
A slight flush overspread the archdeacon’s dappled cheeks, like the puff of smoke which proclaims to the world the secret commotion of a volcano. The student scarcely noticed it.
“Well, Jehan!” stammered the elder brother with an effort, “what does the word mean?”
“FATE .”
Dom Claude turned pale again, and the student went on carelessly, — “And that word below it, written by the same hand, ‘Avayvεíα, means ‘impurity.’ You see I know my Greek.”
The archdeacon was still silent. This Greek lesson had given him food for thought.
Little Jehan, who had all the cunning of a spoiled child, thought this a favorable opportunity to prefer his request. He therefore assumed a very sweet tone, and began:— “My good brother, have you taken such an aversion to me that you pull a long face for a few paltry cuffs and thumps distributed in fair fight to no one knows what boys and monkeys （quibusdam mar mosetis）？ You see, dear brother Claude, that I know my Latin.”
But all this affectionate hypocrisy failed of its usual effect on the stern elder brother. Cerberus did not snap at the sop. The archdeacon’s brow did not lose a single wrinkle.
“What are you driving at?” said he, drily.
“Well, then, to the point! This is it,” bravely responded Jehan; “I want money.”
At this bold declaration the archdeacon’s face assumed quite a paternal and pedagogic expression.
“You know, Master Jehan, that our Tirechappe estate only brings us in, reckoning the taxes and the rents of the twenty-one houses, thirty-nine pounds eleven pence and six Paris farthings. It is half as much again as in the time of the Paclet brothers, but it is not much.”
“I want money,” stoically repeated Jehan.
“You know that it has been officially decided that our twenty-one houses were held in full fee of the bishopric, and that we can only buy ourselves off from this homage by paying two silver gilt marks of the value of six Paris pounds to the right reverend bishop. Now, I have not yet been able to save up those two marks. You know this.”