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"If it is my age that you wish to know," said Quasimodo, "I think that I shall be twenty at Saint Martin's day." This was too much; the provost could no longer restrain himself. "Ah! you are scoffing at the provostship, wretch! Messieurs the sergeants of the mace, you will take me this knave to the pillory of the Greve, you will flog him, and turn him for an hour.
Some of his friends had almost succeeded in securing his nomination to the Provostship of King's College, Cambridge; the appointment, however, fell through, inasmuch as the statute could not be evaded, which required that the Provost of King's College should be in holy orders.
It was a squad of the king's police, which was making the rounds, by order of Messire Robert d'Estouteville, guard of the provostship of Paris. Quasimodo was surrounded, seized, garroted; he roared, he foamed at the mouth, he bit; and had it been broad daylight, there is no doubt that his face alone, rendered more hideous by wrath, would have put the entire squad to flight.
He had become in his old age a priest and churchman, in order to snatch the provostship of Saint Bavon, although his infirmities did not allow him to say mass, or even to stand erect at the altar.
Have I well performed my promise to thee? 'Nay, sir' answered Il Zima; 'for you promised to let me speak with your lady and you have caused me speak with a marble statue. These words were mighty pleasing to the husband, who, for all he had a good opinion of the lady, conceived of her a yet better and said, 'Now is thy palfrey fairly mine. 'Ay is it, sir, replied Il Zima, 'but, had I thought to reap of this favour received of you such fruit as I have gotten, I had given you the palfrey, without asking it of you; and would God I had done it, for that now you have bought the palfrey and I have not sold it. The other laughed at this and being now provided with a palfrey, set out upon his way a few days after and betook himself to Milan, to enter upon the Provostship.
In the first place, very good wages, to which were attached, and from which hung, like extra bunches of grapes on his vine, the revenues of the civil and criminal registries of the provostship, plus the civil and criminal revenues of the tribunals of Embas of the Chatelet, without reckoning some little toll from the bridges of Mantes and of Corbeil, and the profits on the craft of Shagreen-makers of Paris, on the corders of firewood and the measurers of salt.
Henry lavished gifts on him, so that according to one of his chroniclers, "when he might have had all the churches and castles of the kingdom if he chose since there was none to deny him, yet the greatness of his soul conquered his ambition; he magnanimously disdained to take the poorer benefices, and required only the great things the provostship of Beverley, the deanery at Hastings, the Tower of London with the service of the soldiers belonging to it, the castle of Eye with 140 soldiers, and that of Berkhampstead." or was the king's favour misplaced, for Thomas was an excellent servant.
After the time of Philip Augustus there was malfeasance in the police of Paris. The provostship of Paris, which comprehended functions analogous to those of prefect, mayor, and receiver-general, became a purchasable office, filled sometimes by two provosts at a time. The burghers no longer found justice or security in the city where the king resided.
Do you know that I am called Florian Barbedienne, actual lieutenant to monsieur the provost, and, moreover, commissioner, inquisitor, controller, and examiner, with equal power in provostship, bailiwick, preservation, and inferior court of judicature? There is no reason why a deaf man talking to a deaf man should stop.
And it is also decreed that this sentence be printed and published by the deputy of the Attorney-General at the Chatelet, and affixed to the walls in the usual places and cross roads of the town, provostship and viscounty of Paris, and wherever else requisite.
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