The scholar entered boldly. The Archdeacon much embarrassed by such a visitor in this particular place started violently in his arm-chair.

“What! it is you, Jehan?”

“A J at any rate,” said the scholar, with his rosy, smiling, impudent face.

The countenance of Dom Claude had resumed its severe expression. “What are you doing here?”

“Brother,” answered the scholar, endeavouring to assume a sober, downcast, and modest demeanour, and twisting his cap in his hands with an appearance of artlessness, “I have come to beg of you.”

“What?”

“A moral lesson of which I have great need,” he had not the courage to add—“and a little money of which my need is still greater.” The last half of his sentence remained unspoken.

“Sir,” said the Archdeacon coldly, “I am greatly displeased with you.”

“Alas!” sighed the scholar.

Dom Claude described a quarter of a circle with his chair, and regarded Jehan sternly. “I am very glad to see you.”

This was a formidable exordium. Jehan prepared for a sharp encounter.

“Jehan, every day they bring me complaints of you. What is this about a scuffle in which you belaboured a certain little vicomte, Albert de Ramonchamp?”

“Oh,” said Jehan, “a mere trifle! An ill-conditioned page, who amused himself with splashing the scholars by galloping his horse through the mud.”

“And what is this about Mahiet Fargel, whose gown you have torn? ’Tunicam dechiraverunt,’ says the charge.”

“Pah! a shabby Montaigu cape. What’s there to make such a coil about?”

“The complaint says tunicam, not cappettam. Do you understand Latin?”

Jehan did not reply.

“Yes,” went on the priest shaking his head, “this is what study and letters have come to now! The Latin tongue is scarcely understood, Syriac unknown, the Greek so abhorred that it is not accounted ignorance in the most learned to miss over a Greek word when reading, and to say, Græcum est non legitur.”

The scholar raised his eyes boldly. “Brother, shall I tell you in good French the meaning of that Greek word over there upon the wall?”

“Which word?”

“’ANÁGKH.”

A faint flush crept into the parchment cheeks of the Archdeacon, like a puff of smoke giving warning of the unseen commotions of a volcano. The scholar hardly noted it.

“Well, Jehan,” faltered the elder brother with an effort, “what does the word mean?”