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Her swift glance flashed to the fireplace, then to the corner where Clopin still sat with his jabbering parakeets, then flashed back to Cleek, and she laughed in his face. "I think not, monsieur," she said, with a swaggering air. "Truly, I think not, my excellent friend." "What a pity you only think so, madame! As for me Ah, welcome, Count, welcome a thousand times.
"Oui, if you can!" she answered, with a mocking laugh. "Clopin, cher ami, your poor little parakeets are safe for the night, unless monsieur grows desperate and eats them for himself." "Even that, if it were necessary to get the pearl, madame," said Cleek, with the utmost sang-froid.
The prologue stopped short, and all heads turned tumultuously towards the beggar, who, far from being disconcerted by this, saw, in this incident, a good opportunity for reaping his harvest, and who began to whine in a doleful way, half closing his eyes the while, "Charity, please!" "Well upon my soul," resumed Joannes, "it's Clopin Trouillefou!
"Madame," replied Cleek, with a deeply deferential bow and with an accent that seemed born of Paris, "Madame, that is what I mean to do, I assure you." "Ah, do you?" she answered, with a scream of laughter. "You hear that, Clopin? You hear that, my good servitors? This silly French noodle is going to get the things in spite of us. Oho, but you have a fine opinion of yourself, monsieur.
A vagabond presented his banner to Clopin, who planted it solemnly between two paving-stones. It was a pitchfork from whose points hung a bleeding quarter of carrion meat. That done, the King of Thunes turned round and cast his eyes over his army, a fierce multitude whose glances flashed almost equally with their pikes. After a momentary pause, "Forward, my Sons!" he cried; "to work, locksmiths!"
The base of this triangle rested on the back of the Place in such a manner as to bar the entrance of the Rue du Parvis; one of its sides faced Hotel-Dieu, the other the Rue Saint-Pierre-aux-Boeufs. Clopin Trouillefou had placed himself at the apex with the Duke of Egypt, our friend Jehan, and the most daring of the scavengers.
"Beard and belly!" said Clopin, "here be men afraid of a beam." An old locksmith addressed him "Captain, 'tis not the beam which bothers us, 'tis the door, which is all covered with iron bars. Our pincers are powerless against it." "What more do you want to break it in?" demanded Clopin. "Ah! we ought to have a battering ram."
"Death of the devil!" objected Gringoire; "I shall break my neck. Your stool limps like one of Martial's distiches; it has one hexameter leg and one pentameter leg." "Climb!" repeated Clopin. Gringoire mounted the stool, and succeeded, not without some oscillations of head and arms, in regaining his centre of gravity.
"Saint-Sophia at Constantinople, forty years ago, hurled to the earth three times in succession, the crescent of Mahom, by shaking her domes, which are her heads. Guillaume de Paris, who built this one was a magician." "Must we then retreat in pitiful fashion, like highwaymen?" said Clopin. "Must we leave our sister here, whom those hooded wolves will hang to-morrow."
In the meanwhile, the principal vagabonds had retired beneath the porch of the Gondelaurier mansion, and were holding a council of war. The Duke of Egypt, seated on a stone post, contemplated the phantasmagorical bonfire, glowing at a height of two hundred feet in the air, with religious terror. Clopin Trouillefou bit his huge fists with rage.
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