Part 53

At the moment when he overtook them once more, they had changed their conversation. He heard them singing at the top of their lungs the ancient refrain,— Les enfants des Petits-Carreaux Se font pendre comme des veaux[42]. CHAPTER VII. THE MYSTERIOUS MONK. The illustrious wine shop of “Eve’s Apple” was situated in the University, at the corner of the Rue de la Rondelle and the Rue de la Bâtonnier. It was a very spacious and very low hall on the ground floor, with a vaulted ceiling whose central spring rested upon a huge pillar of wood painted yellow; tables everywhere, shining pewter jugs hanging on the walls, always a large number of drinkers, a plenty of wenches, a window on the street, a vine at the door, and over the door a flaring piece of sheet-iron, painted with an apple and a woman, rusted by the rain and turning with the wind on an iron pin. This species of weather-vane which looked upon the pavement was the signboard. Night was falling; the square was dark; the wine-shop, full of candles, flamed afar like a forge in the gloom; the noise of glasses and feasting, of oaths and quarrels, which escaped through the broken panes, was audible. Through the mist which the warmth of the room spread over the window in front, a hundred confused figures could be seen swarming, and from time to time a burst of noisy laughter broke forth from it. The passers-by who were going about their business, slipped past this tumultuous window without glancing at it. Only at intervals did some little ragged boy raise himself on tiptoe as far as the ledge, and hurl into the drinking-shop, that ancient, jeering hoot, with which drunken men were then pursued: “Aux Houls, saouls, saouls, saouls!” Nevertheless, one man paced imperturbably back and forth in front of the tavern, gazing at it incessantly, and going no further from it than a pikeman from his sentry-box. He was enveloped in a mantle to his very nose. This mantle he had just purchased of the old-clothes man, in the vicinity of the “Eve’s Apple,” no doubt to protect himself from the cold of the March evening, possibly also, to conceal his costume. From time to time he paused in front of the dim window with its leaden lattice, listened, looked, and stamped his foot. At length the door of the dram-shop opened. This was what he appeared to be waiting for. Two boon companions came forth. The ray of light which escaped from the door crimsoned for a moment their jovial faces. The man in the mantle went and stationed himself on the watch under a porch on the other side of the street. “_Corne et tonnerre!_” said one of the comrades. “Seven o’clock is on the point of striking. ’Tis the hour of my appointed meeting.” “I tell you,” repeated his companion, with a thick tongue, “that I don’t live in the Rue des Mauvaises Paroles, _indignus qui inter mala verba habitat_. I have a lodging in the Rue Jean-Pain-Mollet, _in vico Johannis Pain-Mollet_. You are more horned than a unicorn if you assert the contrary. Every one knows that he who once mounts astride a bear is never after afraid; but you have a nose turned to dainties like Saint-Jacques of the hospital.” “Jehan, my friend, you are drunk,” said the other. The other replied staggering, “It pleases you to say so, Phœbus; but it hath been proved that Plato had the profile of a hound.” The reader has, no doubt, already recognized our two brave friends, the captain and the scholar. It appears that the man who was lying in wait for them had also recognized them, for he slowly followed all the zigzags that the scholar caused the captain to make, who being a more hardened drinker had retained all his self-possession. By listening to them attentively, the man in the mantle could catch in its entirety the following interesting conversation,— “_Corbacque!_ Do try to walk straight, master bachelor; you know that I must leave you. Here it is seven o’clock. I have an appointment with a woman.” “Leave me then! I see stars and lances of fire. You are like the Château de Dampmartin, which is bursting with laughter.” “By the warts of my grandmother, Jehan, you are raving with too much rabidness. By the way, Jehan, have you any money left?” “Monsieur Rector, there is no mistake; the little butcher’s shop, _parva boucheria_.” “Jehan! my friend Jehan! You know that I made an appointment with that little girl at the end of the Pont Saint-Michel, and I can only take her to the Falourdel’s, the old crone of the bridge, and that I must pay for a chamber. The old witch with a white moustache would not trust me. Jehan! for pity’s sake! Have we drunk up the whole of the curé’s purse? Have you not a single parisis left?” “The consciousness of having spent the other hours well is a just and savory condiment for the table.” “Belly and guts! a truce to your whimsical nonsense! Tell me, Jehan of the devil! have you any money left? Give it to me, _bédieu!_ or I will search you, were you as leprous as Job, and as scabby as Cæsar!” “Monsieur, the Rue Galiache is a street which hath at one end the Rue de la Verrerie, and at the other the Rue de la Tixeranderie.” “Well, yes! my good friend Jehan, my poor comrade, the Rue Galiache is good, very good. But in the name of heaven collect your wits. I must have a sou parisis, and the appointment is for seven o’clock.” “Silence for the rondo, and attention to the refrain,— “Quand les rats mangeront les cas, Le roi sera seigneur d’Arras; Quand la mer, qui est grande et lée Sera à la Saint-Jean gelée, On verra, par-dessus la glace, Sortir ceux d’Arras de leur place.”[43] “Well, scholar of Antichrist, may you be strangled with the entrails of your mother!” exclaimed Phœbus, and he gave the drunken scholar a rough push; the latter slipped against the wall, and slid flabbily to the pavement of Philip Augustus. A remnant of fraternal pity, which never abandons the heart of a drinker, prompted Phœbus to roll Jehan with his foot upon one of those pillows of the poor, which Providence keeps in readiness at the corner of all the street posts of Paris, and which the rich blight with the name of “a rubbish-heap.” The captain adjusted Jehan’s head upon an inclined plane of cabbage-stumps, and on the very instant, the scholar fell to snoring in a magnificent bass. Meanwhile, all malice was not extinguished in the captain’s heart. “So much the worse if the devil’s cart picks you up on its passage!” he said to the poor, sleeping clerk; and he strode off. The man in the mantle, who had not ceased to follow him, halted for a moment before the prostrate scholar, as though agitated by indecision; then, uttering a profound sigh, he also strode off in pursuit of the captain. We, like them, will leave Jehan to slumber beneath the open sky, and will follow them also, if it pleases the reader. On emerging into the Rue Saint-André-des-Arcs, Captain Phœbus perceived that some one was following him. On glancing sideways by chance, he perceived a sort of shadow crawling after him along the walls. He halted, it halted; he resumed his march, it resumed its march. This disturbed him not overmuch. “Ah, bah!” he said to himself, “I have not a sou.” He paused in front of the College d’Autun. It was at this college that he had sketched out what he called his studies, and, through a scholar’s teasing habit which still lingered in him, he never passed the façade without inflicting on the statue of Cardinal Pierre Bertrand, sculptured to the right of the portal, the affront of which Priapus complains so bitterly in the satire of Horace, _Olim truncus eram ficulnus_. He had done this with so much unrelenting animosity that the inscription, _Eduensis episcopus_, had become almost effaced. Therefore, he halted before the statue according to his wont. The street was utterly deserted. At the moment when he was coolly retying his shoulder knots, with his nose in the air, he saw the shadow approaching him with slow steps, so slow that he had ample time to observe that this shadow wore a cloak and a hat. On arriving near him, it halted and remained more motionless than the statue of Cardinal Bertrand. Meanwhile, it riveted upon Phœbus two intent eyes, full of that vague light which issues in the night time from the pupils of a cat. The captain was brave, and would have cared very little for a highwayman, with a rapier in his hand. But this walking statue, this petrified man, froze his blood. There were then in circulation, strange stories of a surly monk, a nocturnal prowler about the streets of Paris, and they recurred confusedly to his memory. He remained for several minutes in stupefaction, and finally broke the silence with a forced laugh. “Monsieur, if you are a robber, as I hope you are, you produce upon me the effect of a heron attacking a nutshell. I am the son of a ruined family, my dear fellow. Try your hand near by here. In the chapel of this college there is some wood of the true cross set in silver.” The hand of the shadow emerged from beneath its mantle and descended upon the arm of Phœbus with the grip of an eagle’s talon; at the same time the shadow spoke,— “Captain Phœbus de Châteaupers!” “What, the devil!” said Phœbus, “you know my name!” “I know not your name alone,” continued the man in the mantle, with his sepulchral voice. “You have a _rendezvous_ this evening.” “Yes,” replied Phœbus in amazement. “At seven o’clock.” “In a quarter of an hour.” “At la Falourdel’s.” “Precisely.” “The lewd hag of the Pont Saint-Michel.” “Of Saint Michel the archangel, as the Pater Noster saith.” “Impious wretch!” muttered the spectre. “With a woman?” “_Confiteor_,—I confess—.” “Who is called—?” “La Smeralda,” said Phœbus, gayly. All his heedlessness had gradually returned. At this name, the shadow’s grasp shook the arm of Phœbus in a fury. “Captain Phœbus de Châteaupers, thou liest!” Any one who could have beheld at that moment the captain’s inflamed countenance, his leap backwards, so violent that he disengaged himself from the grip which held him, the proud air with which he clapped his hand on his swordhilt, and, in the presence of this wrath the gloomy immobility of the man in the cloak,—any one who could have beheld this would have been frightened. There was in it a touch of the combat of Don Juan and the statue. “Christ and Satan!” exclaimed the captain. “That is a word which rarely strikes the ear of a Châteaupers! Thou wilt not dare repeat it.” “Thou liest!” said the shadow coldly. The captain gnashed his teeth. Surly monk, phantom, superstitions,—he had forgotten all at that moment. He no longer beheld anything but a man, and an insult. “Ah! this is well!” he stammered, in a voice stifled with rage. He drew his sword, then stammering, for anger as well as fear makes a man tremble: “Here! On the spot! Come on! Swords! Swords! Blood on the pavement!”