The man with the lantern walked straight to the end of the Terrain. There, on the very edge of the water, were the worm-eaten remains of a picket-fence with laths nailed across, to which a few withered branches of a low vine clung like the fingers of an open hand. Behind, in the shadow of this trellis, a small boat was hidden. The man signed to Gringoire and his companion to enter it. The goat followed them. The man stepped in last; then he cut the hawser, shoved off from the shore with a long boat-hook, and seizing a pair of oars, seated himself in the bow, rowing with all his strength towards the middle of the stream. The Seine runs very swiftly at this point, and he had some difficulty in clearing the end of the island.
Gringoire’s first care on entering the boat, was to take the goat upon his knees. He sat down in the stern; and the young girl, whom the stranger inspired with indescribable fears, took her place close beside the poet.
When our philosopher felt the boat moving, he clapped his hands, and kissed Djali between her horns.
“Oh,” said he, “here we are all four saved!”
He added, with the look of a deep thinker, “One is sometimes indebted to fortune, sometimes to cunning, for the happy issue of a great undertaking.”
The boat proceeded slowly towards the right bank. The young girl watched the stranger with secret dread. He had carefully covered the light of his dark-lantern, and was but dimly visible, in the gloom, like a ghost in the bow of the boat His cowl, still drawn down, formed a sort of mask over his face; and every time that he opened his arms, with their wide hanging black sleeves, in rowing, they looked like the broad wings of a bat. Moreover, he had not yet breathed a word. The only sound in the boat was that of the oars, mingled with the ripple of the water against the side of the boat.
“By my soul!” suddenly exclaimed Gringoire, “we are as gay and lively as so many owls! We’re as silent as Pythagoreans or fishes! By the Rood! my friends, I wish one of you would speak to me. The human voice is music to the human ear. I am not the author of that remark, but Didymus of Alexandria is, and famous words they are. Certes, Didymus of Alexandria is no mean philosopher. One word, my pretty child,—say one word to me, I implore. By the way, you used to make a queer, funny little face; do you still make it? Do you know, my darling, that Parliament holds jurisdiction over all sanctuaries, and that you ran great risks in your cell in Notre-Dame? Alas! the little bird trochylus builds its nest in the jaws of the crocodile. Master, there’s the moon peeping out again. How I hope they won’t see us! We are doing a laudable deed in saving the damsel, and yet we should be hanged in the king’s name if we were caught. Alas! human actions may be taken two ways. I am condemned for the same thing for which you are rewarded. Some admire C?sar and blame Catiline. Isn’t that so, master mine? What do you say to that philosophy? For my part, I possess the philosophy of instinct, of Nature （ut apes geometriam）。dz— What! nobody answers me! What disagreeable tempers you both have! I must needs talk to myself. That’s what we call in tragedy a monologue. By the Rood!—I must tell you that I’ve just seen King Louis XI, and that I caught that oath from him,—by the Rood, then, they’re still keeping up a fine howling in the City! He’s a wicked old villain of a king. He’s all muffled up in furs. He still owes me the money for my epithalamium, and he came precious near hanging me tonight, which would have bothered me mightily. He is very stingy to men of merit. He really ought to read the four books by Salvien of Cologne, ‘Adversus avaritiam.’ea In good sooth, he is a very narrow-minded king in his dealings with men of letters, and one who commits most barbarous cruelties. He’s a sponge to soak up money squeezed from the people . His economy is like the spleen, which grows fat upon the leanness of all the other members. Thus, complaints of the hardness of the times become murmurs against the sovereign. Under the reign of this mild and pious lord, the gallows crack with their weight of victims, the headsman’s blocks grow rotten with blood, the prisons are filled to bursting. This king takes in money with one hand and hangs men with the other. He is pander to my lady Taxes and my lord Gibbet. The great are stripped of their dignities, and the small are ceaselessly loaded with new burdens. ‘Tis an extravagant prince. I do not love this monarch. And how say you, my master?”
The man in black suffered the babbling poet to prate his fill. He continued to struggle against the strong and angry current which divides the prow of the City from the stern of the Ile Notre-Dame, which we now know as the Ile Saint-Louis.