In the midst of this Round Table of beggary, Clopin Trouillefou,—as the doge of this senate, as the king of this peerage, as the pope of this conclave,—dominated; first by virtue of the height of his hogshead, and next by virtue of an indescribable, haughty, fierce, and formidable air, which caused his eyes to flash, and corrected in his savage profile the bestial type of the race of vagabonds.
One would have pronounced him a boar amid a herd of swine.
“Listen,” said he to Gringoire, fondling his misshapen chin with his horny hand; “I don’t see why you should not be hung.
It is true that it appears to be repugnant to you; and it is very natural, for you bourgeois are not accustomed to it. You form for yourselves a great idea of the thing.
After all, we don’t wish you any harm.
Here is a means of extricating yourself from your predicament for the moment.
Will you become one of us?”
The reader can judge of the effect which this proposition produced upon Gringoire, who beheld life slipping away from him, and who was beginning to lose his hold upon it.
He clutched at it again with energy.
“Certainly I will, and right heartily,” said he.
“Do you consent,” resumed Clopin, “to enroll yourself among the people of the knife?”
“Of the knife, precisely,” responded Gringoire.
“You recognize yourself as a member of the free bourgeoisie?” added the King of Thunes.
“Of the free bourgeoisie.”
“Subject of the Kingdom of Argot?”
“Of the Kingdom of Argot.”
“A vagabond?”
“A vagabond.”
“In your soul?” “In my soul.”
“I must call your attention to the fact,” continued the king, “that you will be hung all the same.”
“The devil!” said the poet.
“Only,” continued Clopin imperturbably, “you will be hung later on, with more ceremony, at the expense of the good city of Paris, on a handsome stone gibbet, and by honest men.
That is a consolation.”
“Just so,” responded Gringoire.
“There are other advantages.
In your quality of a high-toned sharper, you will not have to pay the taxes on mud, or the poor, or lanterns, to which the bourgeois of Paris are subject.”
“So be it,” said the poet. “I agree.
I am a vagabond, a thief, a sharper, a man of the knife, anything you please; and I am all that already, monsieur, King of Thunes, for I am a philosopher; et omnia in philosophia, omnes in philosopho continentur,—all things are contained in philosophy, all men in the philosopher, as you know.”
The King of Thunes scowled.
“What do you take me for, my friend?
What Hungarian Jew patter are you jabbering at us?
I don’t know Hebrew.
One isn’t a Jew because one is a bandit. I don’t even steal any longer. I’m above that; I kill.
Cut-throat, yes; cutpurse, no.”
Gringoire tried to slip in some excuse between these curt words, which wrath rendered more and more jerky.
“I ask your pardon, monseigneur. It is not Hebrew; ‘tis Latin.”
“I tell you,” resumed Clopin angrily, “that I’m not a Jew, and that I’ll have you hung, belly of the synagogue, like that little shopkeeper of Judea, who is by your side, and whom I entertain strong hopes of seeing nailed to a counter one of these days, like the counterfeit coin that he is!”
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.
“Willing is not all,” said the surly Clopin; “good will doesn’t put one onion the more into the soup, and ‘tis good for nothing except to go to Paradise with; now, Paradise and the thieves’ band are two different things.
In order to be received among the thieves, you must prove that you are good for something, and for that purpose, you must search the manikin.”
“I’ll search anything you like,” said Gringoire.
Clopin made a sign.
Several thieves detached themselves from the circle, and returned a moment later.
They brought two thick posts, terminated at their lower extremities in spreading timber supports, which made them stand readily upon the ground; to the upper extremity of the two posts they fitted a cross-beam, and the whole constituted a very pretty portable gibbet, which Gringoire had the satisfaction of beholding rise before him, in a twinkling.
Nothing was lacking, not even the rope, which swung gracefully over the cross-beam.
“What are they going to do?” Gringoire asked himself with some uneasiness.
A sound of bells, which he heard at that moment, put an end to his anxiety; it was a stuffed manikin, which the vagabonds were suspending by the neck from the rope, a sort of scarecrow dressed in red, and so hung with mule-bells and larger bells, that one might have tricked out thirty Castilian mules with them.