Dom Claude interrupted him,—
“So you are happy?”
Gringoire eagerly replied,—
“Yes, on my honor! At first I loved women, then animals; now I love stones. They are quite as amusing as animals or women, and they are less treacherous.”
The priest pressed his hand to his head. It was his habitual gesture.
“Indeed?”
“Stay!” said Gringoire; “you shall see my pleasures!” He took the arm of the unresisting priest, and led him into the staircase turret of For-l‘Evêque. “There’s a staircase for you! Every time I see it I am happy. It is the simplest and yet the rarest in Paris. Every step is beveled underneath. Its beauty and simplicity consist in the treads, which, for a foot or more in width, are interlaced, mortised, dovetailed, jointed, linked together, and set into one another in a genuinely solid and goodly way.”
“And you desire nothing more?”
“No.”
“And you have no regrets?”
“Neither regret nor desire. I have arranged my mode of life.”
“What man arranges,” said Claude, “circumstances disarrange.”
“I am a Pyrrhonian philosopher,” replied Gringoire, “and I keep everything equally balanced.”
“And how do you earn your living?”
“I still write occasional epics and tragedies; but what brings me in the most, is that trade which you have seen me follow, master,—namely, upholding pyramids of chairs in my teeth.”
“That is a sorry trade for a philosopher.”
“‘Tis keeping up an equilibrium all the same,” said Gringoire. “When one has but a single idea he finds it in everything.”
“I know that!” responded the archdeacon.
After a pause he added,—
“And yet you are poor enough?”
“Poor! Yes; but not unhappy.”
At this instant the sound of horses’ hoofs was heard, and our two friends saw a company of archers belonging to the king’s ordnance file by at the end of the street, with raised lances, and an officer at their head. The cavalcade was a brilliant one, and clattered noisily over the pavement.
“How you stare at that officer!” said Gringoire to the arch deacon.
“Because I think I have seen him before.”
“What is his name?”
“I believe,” said Claude, “that his name is Ph?bus de Chateau pers.”
“Phoebus! a queer name! There is also a Phoebus, Count de Foix. I once knew a girl who never swore save by Ph?bus.”
“Come with me,” said the priest. “I have something to say to you.”
Ever since the troops passed by, some agitation was apparent beneath the icy exterior of the archdeacon. He walked on; Gringoire followed, accustomed to obey him, like all who ever approached that man full of such ascendency. They reached the Rue des Bernardins in silence, and found it quite deserted. Here Dom Claude paused.
“What have you to tell me, master?” asked Gringoire.
“Don’t you think,” replied the archdeacon, with a most reflective air, “that the dress of those horsemen whom we just saw is far handsomer than yours and mine?”
Gringoire shook his head.
“I’ faith! I like my red and yellow jacket better than those scales of steel and iron. What pleasure can there be in making as much noise when you walk as the Quai de la Ferraille in an earthquake?”
“Then, Gringoire, you never envied those fine fellows in their warlike array?”
“Envied them what, Sir Archdeacon,—their strength, their armor, or their discipline? Philosophy and independence in rags are far preferable. I would rather be the head of a fly than the tail of a lion.”
“That’s strange,” said the priest, meditatively. “And yet a handsome uniform is a fine thing.”
Gringoire, seeing that he was absorbed in thought, left him in order to admire the porch of a neighboring house. He came back clapping his hands.
“If you were not so absorbed in the fine uniforms of those soldiers, Sir Archdeacon, I would beg you to take a look at that door. I always said that my lord Aubry’s house had the most superb entrance in the world.”
“Pierre Gringoire,” said the archdeacon, “what have you done with that little gipsy dancer?”
“Esmeralda? What a sudden change of subject!”
“Was she not your wife?”
“Yes, by means of a broken pitcher. We are married for four years. By the way,” added Gringoire, regarding the archdeacon with a half-bantering air, “are you still thinking of her?”