You are more horned than a unicorn if you assert the contrary.
Every one knows that he who once mounts astride a bear is never after afraid; but you have a nose turned to dainties like Saint-Jacques of the hospital.”
“Jehan, my friend, you are drunk,” said the other.
The other replied staggering,
“It pleases you to say so, Phoebus; but it hath been proved that Plato had the profile of a hound.”
The reader has, no doubt, already recognized our two brave friends, the captain and the scholar.
It appears that the man who was lying in wait for them had also recognized them, for he slowly followed all the zigzags that the scholar caused the captain to make, who being a more hardened drinker had retained all his self-possession.
By listening to them attentively, the man in the mantle could catch in its entirety the following interesting conversation,—
“Corbacque!
Do try to walk straight, master bachelor; you know that I must leave you.
Here it is seven o’clock.
I have an appointment with a woman.”
“Leave me then!
I see stars and lances of fire.
You are like the Chateau de Dampmartin, which is bursting with laughter.”
“By the warts of my grandmother, Jehan, you are raving with too much rabidness.
By the way, Jehan, have you any money left?”
“Monsieur Rector, there is no mistake; the little butcher’s shop, parva boucheria.”
“Jehau! my friend Jehan!
You know that I made an appointment with that little girl at the end of the Pont Saint-Michel, and I can only take her to the Falourdel’s, the old crone of the bridge, and that I must pay for a chamber.
The old witch with a white moustache would not trust me.
Jehan! for pity’s sake! Have we drunk up the whole of the cure’s purse?
Have you not a single parisis left?”
“The consciousness of having spent the other hours well is a just and savory condiment for the table.”
“Belly and guts! a truce to your whimsical nonsense!
Tell me, Jehan of the devil! have you any money left?
Give it to me, bedieu! or I will search you, were you as leprous as Job, and as scabby as Caesar!”
“Monsieur, the Rue Galiache is a street which hath at one end the Rue de la Verrerie, and at the other the Rue de la Tixeranderie.”
“Well, yes! my good friend Jehan, my poor comrade, the Rue Galiache is good, very good.
But in the name of heaven collect your wits.
I must have a sou parisis, and the appointment is for seven o’clock.”
“Silence for the rondo, and attention to the refrain,— “Quand les rats mangeront les cas, Le roi sera seigneur d’Arras; Quand la mer, qui est grande et le(e Sera a la Saint-Jean gele(e, On verra, par-dessus la glace, Sortir ceux d’Arras de leur place.”
“Well, scholar of Antichrist, may you be strangled with the entrails of your mother!” exclaimed Phoebus, and he gave the drunken scholar a rough push; the latter slipped against the wall, and slid flabbily to the pavement of Philip Augustus.
A remnant of fraternal pity, which never abandons the heart of a drinker, prompted Phoebus to roll Jehan with his foot upon one of those pillows of the poor, which Providence keeps in readiness at the corner of all the street posts of Paris, and which the rich blight with the name of “a rubbish-heap.”
The captain adjusted Jehan’s head upon an inclined plane of cabbage-stumps, and on the very instant, the scholar fell to snoring in a magnificent bass.
Meanwhile, all malice was not extinguished in the captain’s heart.
“So much the worse if the devil’s cart picks you up on its passage!” he said to the poor, sleeping clerk; and he strode off.
The man in the mantle, who had not ceased to follow him, halted for a moment before the prostrate scholar, as though agitated by indecision; then, uttering a profound sigh, he also strode off in pursuit of the captain.
We, like them, will leave Jehan to slumber beneath the open sky, and will follow them also, if it pleases the reader.
On emerging into the Rue Saint-Andre-des-Arcs, Captain Phoebus perceived that some one was following him.
On glancing sideways by chance, he perceived a sort of shadow crawling after him along the walls.
He halted, it halted; he resumed his march, it resumed its march.
This disturbed him not overmuch.
“Ah, bah!” he said to himself, “I have not a sou.”
He paused in front of the College d’Autun.
It was at this college that he had sketched out what he called his studies, and, through a scholar’s teasing habit which still lingered in him, he never passed the facade without inflicting on the statue of Cardinal Pierre Bertrand, sculptured to the right of the portal, the affront of which Priapus complains so bitterly in the satire of Horace, Olim truncus eram ficulnus.
He had done this with so much unrelenting animosity that the inscription, Eduensis episcopus, had become almost effaced.
Therefore, he halted before the statue according to his wont.
The street was utterly deserted.
At the moment when he was coolly retying his shoulder knots, with his nose in the air, he saw the shadow approaching him with slow steps, so slow that he had ample time to observe that this shadow wore a cloak and a hat.