“This is what I imagine, messire. These Bohemians are something of Guebers, and worship the sun: hence this Phœbus.”

“That does not seem so evident to me as it does to you, Maître Pierre.”

“After all, it’s no matter to me. Let her mumble her Phœbus to her heart’s content. What I know for certain is that Djali loves me already almost as much as her mistress.”

“Who is Djali?”

“That is the goat.”

The Archdeacon leant his chin on his hand and seemed to reflect for a moment. Suddenly he turned brusquely to Gringoire:

“And you swear to me that you have not touched her?”

“Whom?” asked Gringoire; “the goat?”

“No, this woman.”

“My wife? I swear I have not.”

“And yet you are often alone with her.”

“Every night for a full hour.”

Dom Claude frowned. “Oh! oh! Solus cum sola non cogitabuntur orare Pater Noster.”¹

“By my soul, I might say Paters and Ave Marias and the Credo without her paying any more attention to me than a hen to a church.”

“Swear to me, by thy mother’s body,” said the Archdeacon vehemently, “that thou hast not so much as touched that woman with the tip of thy finger.”

“I will swear it too by my father’s head, for the two things have more than one connection. But, reverend master, permit me one question in return.”

“Speak, sir.”

“What does that signify to you?”

The Archdeacon’s pale face flushed like the cheek of a young girl. He was silent for a moment, and then replied with visible embarrassment:

“Hark you, Maître Pierre Gringoire. You are not yet damned, as far as I know. I am interested in you, and wish you well. Now, the slightest contact with that demon of a gipsy girl will infallibly make you a servant of Satanas. You know ’tis always the body that ruins the soul. Woe betide you if you come nigh that woman! I have spoken.”

“I did try it once,” said Gringoire, scratching his ear. “That was on the first day, but I only got stung for my pains.”

“You had that temerity, Maître Gringoire?” and the priest’s brow darkened again.

“Another time,” continued the poet, with a grin, “before I went to bed, I looked through her key-hole, and beheld the most delicious damsel in her shift that ever made a bedstead creak under her naked foot.”