“Hark ye,” he said to Gringoire, caressing his shapeless chin with his horny hand; “I see no reason why you should not be hanged. To be sure, you seem to dislike the idea, and it’s very plain that you worthy townsfolk are not used to it; you’ve got an exaggerated idea of the thing. After all, we wish you no harm. There is one way of getting you out of the difficulty for the time being. Will you join us?”
My reader may fancy the effect of this proposal upon Gringoire, who saw his life escaping him, and had already begun to lose his hold upon it. He clung to it once more with vigor.
“I will indeed, with all my heart,” said he.
“Do you agree,” resumed Clopin, “to enroll yourself among the gentry of the chive.”an
“Of the chive, exactly,” answered Gringoire.
“Do you acknowledge yourself a member of the rogues’ brigade?” continued the King of Tunis.
“Of the rogues’ brigade.”
“A subject of the kingdom of Slang?”
“Of the kingdom of Slang.”
“A vagrant?”
“A vagrant.”
“At heart?”
“At heart.”
“I would call your attention to the fact,” added the King, “that you will be hanged none the less.”
“The devil!” said the poet.
“Only,” continued Clopin, quite unmoved, “you will be hanged later, with more ceremony, at the cost of the good city of Paris, on a fine stone gallows, and by honest men. That is some consolation.”
“As you say,” responded Gringoire.
“There are other advantages. As a member of the rogues’ brigade you will have to pay no taxes for pavements, for the poor, or for lighting the streets, to all of which the citizens of Paris are subject.”
“So be it,” said the poet; “I consent. I am a vagrant, a man of Slang, a member of the rogues’ brigade, a man of the chive,—what you will; and I was all this long ago, Sir King of Tunis, for I am a philosopher; et omnia in philosophia, omnes in philosopho continentur,ao as you know.”
The King of Tunis frowned.
“What do you take me for, mate? What Hungarian Jew’s gibberish are you giving us? I don’t know Hebrew. I’m no Jew, if I am a thief. I don’t even steal now; I am above that; I kill. Cutthroat, yes; cutpurse, no.”
Gringoire tried to slip in some excuse between these brief phrases which anger made yet more abrupt.
“I beg your pardon, my lord. It is not Hebrew, it is Latin.”
“I tell you,” replied Clopin, furiously, “that I am no Jew, and that I will have you hanged,—by the synagogue, I will!-together with that paltry Judean cadger beside you, whom I mightily hope I may some day see nailed to a counter, like the counterfeit coin that he is!”
So saying, he pointed to the little Hungarian Jew with the beard, who had accosted Gringoire with his “Facitote caritatem,” and who, understanding no other language, was amazed at the wrath which the King of Tunis vented upon him.
At last my lord Clopin became calm.
“So, rascal,” said he to our poet, “you wish to become a vagrant?”
“Undoubtedly,” replied the poet.
“It is not enough merely to wish,” said the surly Clopin; “goodwill never added an onion to the soup, and is good for nothing but a passport to paradise; now, paradise and Slang are two distinct things. To be received into the kingdom of Slang, you must prove that you are good for something; and to prove this you must search the manikin.“ap
“I will search,” said Gringoire, “as much as ever you like.”
Clopin made a sign. A number of Slangers stepped from the circle and returned immediately, bringing a couple of posts finished at the lower end with broad wooden feet, which made them stand firmly upon the ground; at the upper end of the two posts they arranged a crossbeam, the whole forming a very pretty portable gallows, which Gringoire had the pleasure of seeing erected before him in the twinkling of an eye. Nothing was wanting, not even the rope, which swung gracefully from the crossbeam.
“What are they going to do?” wondered Gringoire with some alarm. A sound of bells which he heard at the same moment put an end to his anxiety; it was a manikin, or puppet, that the vagrants hung by the neck to the cord,—a sort of scarecrow, dressed in red, and so loaded with little bells and hollow brasses that thirty Castilian mules might have been tricked out with them. These countless tinklers jingled for some time with the swaying of the rope, then the sound died away by degrees, and finally ceased when the manikin had been restored to a state of complete immobility by that law of the pendulum which has superseded the clepsydra and the hour-glass.