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Seeing me, Mosaide's eyes vomited fire. Out of his dirty yellow greatcoat he drew a neat little stiletto and shook it through the window with an arm in no way weighed down by age. He roared bilingual curses on me. Yes, Tournebroche, my grammatical knowledge authorises me to say that his curses were bilingual, that Spanish, or rather Portuguese, was mixed in them with Hebrew.
"Tournebroche," he said, "I've made two verses only, and I am not quite sure that they are good. They run as follows: 'Ci-dessus git monsieur Coignard II faut bien mourir tot ou tard." I replied that the best of it was, that he had noi written a third one. And I passed the night composing the following epitaph in Latin: D. O. M. HIC JACET
In this way I was occupied for a little while, when M. Jerome Coignard came into my room with a new neckband and very respectable clerical garb. "Tournebroche," he exclaimed, "is it you, my boy? Never forget that you owe these fine clothes to the knowledge I have given you. They fit a humanist like yourself, as who says humanities says also elegance. But look on me and say if I have a good mien.
And I hold it likely that the severities they still maintain are no whit more useful than those they have abolished. But men are cruel. Come away, Tournebroche, my dear lad; it grieves me to think how unhappy prisoners are even now lying awake behind those walls in anguish and despair. I know they have done faultily, but this doth not hinder me from pitying them. Which of us is without offence?"
Not to disturb Mademoiselle's slumbers, he took a thousand pretty precautions, amongst others constraining himself to talk on uninterruptedly, not unreasonably apprehensive that a sudden silence might awake her. "Tournebroche, my son," he said, turning to me, "look, all her sorrows are vanished away with the consciousness she had of them.
A Gascon may make a contract with the devil and you may be sure that the devil will be done." The dinner bell interrupted our conversation. But while descending the stairs, my kind tutor said: "Tournebroche, my boy, remember, during the whole meal, to follow all my movements, to enable you to imitate them. Having dined at the third table of the Bishop of Seez, I know how to do it.
As a fact, my good master's nose, formerly big and red, was nothing now but a bent blade, livid like lead. "Tournebroche, my son," he said to me in a voice still full and strong but of a sound quite strange to me, "I feel that I have but a short time to live. Go and fetch that good priest, that he may listen to my confession." The vicar was in his vineyard. There I went.
Nor was my dear tutor less sensible of so much urbanity, and after having shaken himself he said to me: "Jacques Tournebroche, my son, we cannot say nay to such a gracious invitation." Already two lackeys had come down bearing torches. They led us to a room where a collation had been prepared on a table lit up by wax candles burning in two silver candelabra.
For the same price you paid for Friar Ange's lessons, I'll give him my own; I'll teach him Latin and Greek, and French also, that language which Voiture and Balzac have brought to perfection. And in such way, by a luck doubly singular and favourable, this Jacquot Tournebroche will become learned and I shall eat every day," "Agreed!" said my father. "Barbara, bring two goblets.
"Tournebroche, my son," he asked me, "have you not just heard from the mouth of yonder good Monk how, for having loved a recruiting sergeant, a clerk of M. Gaulot's mercer at the sign of the Truie-qui-file, and the younger son of M. le Lieutenant-Criminel Leblanc, Mam'zelle Fanchon was clapped in hospital? Would you wish to be any of these, sergeant or clerk or limb of the law?"
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