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"But 'tis the devil who rings the Angelus!" "Oh! the deaf man! the one-eyed creature! the hunch-back! the monster!" "A face to make a woman miscarry better than all the drugs and medicines!" And the two scholars, Jehan du Moulin, and Robin Poussepain, sang at the top of their lungs, the ancient refrain, "Une hart Pour le pendard! Un fagot Pour le magot!"* * A rope for the gallows bird!
This episode considerably distracted the attention of the audience; and a goodly number of spectators, among them Robin Poussepain, and all the clerks at their head, gayly applauded this eccentric duet, which the scholar, with his shrill voice, and the mendicant had just improvised in the middle of the prologue. Gringoire was highly displeased.
At the expiration of a few moments, Quasimodo cast a desperate glance upon the crowd, and repeated in a voice still more heartrending: "Drink!" And all began to laugh. "Drink this!" cried Robin Poussepain, throwing in his face a sponge which had been soaked in the gutter. "There, you deaf villain, I'm your debtor." A woman hurled a stone at his head,
"'Tis well done," said Robin Poussepain, who cherished a grudge against Quasimodo. "That will teach him to handle people roughly." The reader must permit us to take him back to the Place de Greve, which we quitted yesterday with Gringoire, in order to follow la Esmeralda. It is ten o'clock in the morning; everything is indicative of the day after a festival.
And above all the voices, that of Johannes de Molendino was audible, piercing the uproar like the fife's derisive serenade: "Commence instantly!" yelped the scholar. "Down with Jupiter and the Cardinal de Bourbon!" vociferated Robin Poussepain and the other clerks perched in the window.
"What a devil of a man!" said Robin Poussepain still all bruised with his fall. "He shows himself; he's a hunchback. He walks; he's bandy-legged. He looks at you; he's one-eyed. You speak to him; he's deaf. And what does this Polyphemus do with his tongue?" "He speaks when he chooses," said the old woman; "he became deaf through ringing the bells. He is not dumb." "That he lacks," remarks Jehan.
The clerk presented the sentence to the provost, who affixed his seal to it, and departed to pursue his round of the audience hall, in a frame of mind which seemed destined to fill all the jails in Paris that day. Jehan Frollo and Robin Poussepain laughed in their sleeves. Quasimodo gazed on the whole with an indifferent and astonished air.
"And he has one eye too many," added Robin Poussepain. "Not at all," said Jehan wisely. "A one-eyed man is far less complete than a blind man. He knows what he lacks."
"Stay," he said in a low tone to his companion, Robin Poussepain, who was grinning at his side, while he was making his comments on the scenes which were being unfolded before his eyes, "yonder is Jehanneton du Buisson. The beautiful daughter of the lazy dog at the Marche-Neuf! Upon my soul, he is condemning her, the old rascal! he has no more eyes than ears.
Teniers could have given but a very imperfect idea of it. Let the reader picture to himself in bacchanal form, Salvator Rosa's battle. There were no longer either scholars or ambassadors or bourgeois or men or women; there was no longer any Clopin Trouillefou, nor Gilles Lecornu, nor Marie Quatrelivres, nor Robin Poussepain. All was universal license.
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