But, on the other hand, he was faithful to the great and little schools in the Rue Saint-Jean de Beauvais. The first scholar to be seen by the Abbot of Saint-Pierre de Val, as he began his lecture on canon law, was always Claude Frollo, glued to a column in the Saint-Vendregesile School, directly opposite the speaker’s chair, armed with his inkhorn, chewing his pen, scribbling on his threadbare knee, and in winter blowing on his fingers to keep them warm. The first auditor whom Master Miles d‘Isliers, doctor of decretals, saw hurrying up all out of breath every Monday morning at the opening of the doors of the Chef-Saint-Denis School, was Claude Frollo. Accordingly, at the age of sixteen the young scholar was quite able to argue matters of mystical theology with a father of the Church, of canonical theology with a father of the Councils, and of scholastic theology with a doctor of the Sorbonne.
Theology mastered, he plunged into decretals. After the “Master of Sentences,” he fell upon the “Capitularies of Charlemagne;” and devoured in turn, in his appetite for knowledge, decretal after decretal,—those of Theodore, Bishop of Hispala; those of Bouchard, Bishop of Worms; those of Yves, Bishop of Chartres; then the decree of Gratian, which followed the “Capitularies of Charlemagne;” then the collection of Gregory IX; then the epistle “Super Specula,” of Honorius III. He gained a clear idea of, he became familiar with, that vast and bewildering period when civil law and canon law were struggling and laboring amid the chaos of the Middle Ages,—a period beginning with Bishop Theodore in 618, and ending with Pope Gregory in 1227.
Decretals digested, he turned to medicine and the liberal arts. He studied the science of herbs, the science of salves; he became skilled in fevers and bruises, in wounds and sores. Jacques d‘Espars would have given him the degree of doctor of medicine; Richard Hellain, that of surgeon. He also took all the degrees in all the other arts. He studied languages, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew,—a triple shrine then but little worshipped. His was a genuine thirst for acquiring and treasuring the facts of science. At eighteen, he had done with the four faculties; life seemed to the youth to have but one purpose,—to gain knowledge.
It was about this time that the excessive heat of the summer of 1466 caused an epidemic of the plague, which carried off more than forty thousand souls in the viscounty of Paris, and among others, says Jehan de Troyes, “Master Arnoul, astrologian to the king, who was a very virtuous, wise, and pleasant man.” A rumor spread through the University that the Rue Tirechappe was especially subject to the disease. There Claude’s parents lived, in the heart of their estate. The young scholar hastened in alarm to the paternal mansion. On entering, he found that his father and mother had died the night before. A baby brother was still living, and lay crying in his cradle. He was all that was left to Claude of his family. The youth took the child in his arms and walked thoughtfully away. Hitherto, he had lived for science only; he now began to live in the present.
This catastrophe marked a turning point in his existence. An orphan, the eldest, the head of a family at the age of nineteen, he was rudely recalled from scholastic dreams to actual realities. Then, moved by pity, he was filled with love and devotion for this child, his brother; and human affection was a strange sweet thing to him who had loved nothing but books before.
This affection grew to a singular degree; in so virgin a soul it was like a first love. Parted in infancy from his parents, whom he scarcely knew, cloistered and as it were immured among his books, eager to study and to learn everything, hitherto paying exclusive attention to his intellect, which delighted in literature, the poor student had had no time to learn that he had a heart. This little fatherless, motherless brother, this baby dropped unawares from heaven into his arms, made a new man of him. He saw that there were other things in the world than the speculations of the Sorbonne and the verses of Homer; that man required affection; that life without tenderness and without love was only a noisy, miserable, unfeeling machine. Only he fancied—for he was at the age when illusions are still replaced by illusions only—that the ties of family and kindred were all that was necessary, and that a little brother to love was enough to fill up a whole life.
He therefore yielded to his love for little Jehan with the passion of a character which was already energetic, ardent, and concentrated. The poor frail creature, a pretty, fair-haired, rosy, curly-locked child, an orphan with none to look to for support but another orphan, stirred him to the very soul; and like the serious thinker that he was, he began to meditate about Jehan with infinite compassion. He thought and cared for him as for something very fragile and very precious. He was more than a brother to the boy; he became a mother to him.