“My lord, your Majesty, or comrade. Call me what you will; but make haste. What have you to say in your defense?”
“ ‘In your defense,’ ” thought Gringoire; “I don’t like the sound of that.” He resumed stammeringly, “I am he who this morning—”
“By the devil’s claws!” interrupted Clopin, “your name, rascal, and nothing more. Hark ye. You stand before three mighty sover eigns: me, Clopin Trouillefou, King of Tunis,ak successor to the Grand Co?re, the king of rogues, lord paramount of the kingdom of Slang; Mathias Hungadi Spicali, Duke of Egyptal and Bohemia, that yellow old boy you see yonder with a clout about his head, Guillaume Rousseau, Emperor of Galilee,am that fat fellow who pays no heed to us, but caresses that wench. We are your judges. You have entered the kingdom of Slang, the land of thieves, without being a member of the confraternity; you have violated the privileges of our city. You must be punished, unless you be either prig, mumper, or cadger; that is, in the vulgar tongue of honest folks, either thief, beggar, or tramp. Are you anything of the sort? Justify yourself; state your character.”
“Alas!” said Gringoire, “I have not that honor. I am the author—”
“Enough!” cried Trouillefou, not allowing him to finish his sentence. “You must be hanged. Quite a simple matter, my honest citizens! As you treat our people when they enter your domain, so we treat yours when they intrude among us. The law which you mete out to vagabonds, the vagabonds mete out to you. It is your own fault if it be evil. It is quite necessary that we should occasionally see an honest man grin ever through a hempen collar; it makes the thing honorable. Come, friend, divide your rags cheerfully among these young ladies. I will have you hanged to amuse the vagabonds, and you shall give them your purse to pay for a drink. If you have any mummeries to perform, over yonder in that mortar there’s a capital God the Father, in stone, which we stole from the Church of Saint-Pierre-aux-B?ufs. You have four minutes to fling your soul at his head.”
This was a terrible speech.
“Well said, upon my soul! Clopin Trouillefou preaches as well as any pope!” exclaimed the Emperor of Galilee, smashing his jug to prop up his table.
“Noble emperors and kings,” said Gringoire with great coolness （for his courage had mysteriously returned, and he spoke firmly）， “you do not consider what you’re doing. My name is Pierre Gringoire; I am the poet whose play was performed this morning in the Great Hall of the Palace.”
“Oh, is it you, sirrah?” said Clopin. “I was there, God’s wounds! Well, comrade, because you bored us this morning, is that any reason why we should not hang you tonight?”
“I shall have hard work to get off,” thought Gringoire. But yet he made one more effort. “I don’t see,” said he, “why poets should not be classed with vagabonds. ?sop was a vagrant; Homer was a beggar; Mercury was a thief—”
Clopin interrupted him: “I believe you mean to cozen us with your lingo. Good God! be hanged, and don’t make such a row about it!”
“Excuse me, my lord King of Tunis,” replied Gringoire, disputing every inch of the ground. “Is it worth while—An instant—Hear me—You will not condemn me unheard—”
His melancholy voice was indeed lost in the uproar around him. The little boy scraped his kettle more vigorously than ever; and, to cap the climax, an old woman had just placed a frying-pan full of fat upon the trivet, and it crackled over the flames with a noise like the shouts of an army of children in chase of some mas querader.
However, Clopin Trouillefou seemed to be conferring for a moment with the Duke of Egypt and the Emperor of Galilee, the latter being entirely drunk. Then he cried out sharply, “Silence, I say!” and as the kettle and the frying-pan paid no heed, but kept up their duet, he leaped from his cask, dealt a kick to the kettle, which rolled ten paces or more with the child, another kick to the frying-pan, which upset all the fat into the fire, and then gravely reascended his throne, utterly regardless of the little one’s stifled sobs and the grumbling of the old woman whose supper had vanished in brilliant flames.
Trouillefou made a sign, and the duke, the emperor, the arch thieves, and the dignitaries of the kingdom ranged themselves around him in the form of a horseshoe, Gringoire, still roughly grasped by the shoulders, occupying the center. It was a semicircle of rags, of tatters, of tinsel, of pitchforks, of axes, of staggering legs, of bare brawny arms, of sordid, dull, stupid faces. In the middle of this Round Table of beggary Clopin Trouillefou reigned pre-eminent, as the doge of this senate, the king of this assembly of peers, the pope of this conclave,—pre-eminent in the first place by the height of his cask, then by a peculiarly haughty, savage, and tremendous air, which made his eyes flash, and amended in his fierce profile the bestial type of the vagrant. He seemed a wild boar among swine.