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"Thunder, if I understand you!" said the outcast. "Do you know what o'clock it is?" "I do not know," replied Gringoire. Clopin approached the Duke of Egypt. "Comrade Mathias, the time we have chosen is not a good one. King Louis XI. is said to be in Paris." "Another reason for snatching our sister from his claws," replied the old Bohemian. "You speak like a man, Mathias," said the King of Thunes.
His bristled with ten iron beaks, so that Jehan could have disputed with Nestor's Homeric vessel the redoubtable title of dexeubolos. "What do I mean to do with it, august king of Thunes? Do you see that row of statues which have such idiotic expressions, yonder, above the three portals?" "Yes. Well?" "'Tis the gallery of the kings of France." "What is that to me?" said Clopin. "Wait!
You had done the same yourself you, Lantier; you, Clopin; you, Cadarousse; any of you had you been in my boots," he made answer. "I stole a leaf from your own book, earlier in the evening. Garotted a fellow with jewels on him in the Rue Noir, near the Market Place and nearly got into 'the stone bottle' for doing it.
The poor girl came to open the door to me in her shift." "Yes," said Clopin, "but what are you going to do with that ladder?" Jehan gazed at him with a malicious, knowing look, and cracked his fingers like castanets. At that moment he was sublime. On his head he wore one of those overloaded helmets of the fifteenth century, which frightened the enemy with their fanciful crests.
"Who will go with me?" said Clopin. "I shall go at it again. By the way, where is the little scholar Jehan, who is so encased in iron?" "He is dead, no doubt," some one replied; "we no longer hear his laugh." The King of Thunes frowned: "So much the worse. There was a brave heart under that ironmongery. And Master Pierre Gringoire?"
So saying, he pointed his finger at the little, bearded Hungarian Jew who had accosted Gringoire with his facitote caritatem, and who, understanding no other language beheld with surprise the King of Thunes's ill-humor overflow upon him. At length Monsieur Clopin calmed down. "So you will be a vagabond, you knave?" he said to our poet. "Of course," replied the poet.
"Call the moon the friend of the Virgin, after that!" went on Francois Chanteprune. "A thousand popes!" exclaimed Clopin, "you are all fools!" But he did not know how to explain the fall of the beam. Meanwhile, nothing could be distinguished on the facade, to whose summit the light of the torches did not reach.
The beggar turned round; there was surprise, recognition, a lighting up of the two countenances, and so forth; then, without paying the slightest heed in the world to the spectators, the hosier and the wretched being began to converse in a low tone, holding each other's hands, in the meantime, while the rags of Clopin Trouillefou, spread out upon the cloth of gold of the dais, produced the effect of a caterpillar on an orange.
They could be heard buzzing, and a gleam of all sorts of weapons was visible in the darkness. Clopin mounted a large stone. "To your ranks, Argot!"* he cried. "Fall into line, Egypt! Form ranks, Galilee!" * Men of the brotherhood of slang: thieves. A movement began in the darkness. The immense multitude appeared to form in a column.
"Quite enough, madame," replied Cleek, with a courtly bow, "I promise to have them in two!" She threw back her head and fairly shook with laughter. "Of a truth, monsieur, you are a candid boaster!" she cried. "Look you, my good fellows, and you too, my poor dumb Clopin, pretty monsieur here will have the letter and the pearl in two days' time.
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