ime,
his name was to be seen inscribed in this quality, between the Hotel
de Tancarville, belonging to Master Francois Le Rez, and the college of
Tours, in the records deposited at Saint Martin des Champs.

Claude Frollo had been destined from infancy, by his parents, to the
ecclesiastical profession. He had been taught to read in Latin; he had
been trained to keep his eyes on the ground and to speak low. While
still a child, his father had cloistered him in the college of Torchi in
the University. There it was that he had grown up, on the missal and the
lexicon.

Moreover, he was a sad, grave, serious child, who studied ardently, and
learned quickly; he never uttered a loud cry in recreation hour, mixed
but little in the bacchanals of the Rue du Fouarre, did not know what it
was to _dare alapas et capillos laniare_, and had cut no figure in that
revolt of 1463, which the annalists register gravely, under the title
of "The sixth trouble of the University." He seldom rallied the poor
students of Montaigu on the _cappettes_ from which they derived their
name, or the bursars of the college of Dormans on their shaved tonsure,
and their surtout parti-colored of bluish-green, blue, and violet cloth,
_azurini coloris et bruni_, as says the charter of the Cardinal des
Quatre-Couronnes.

On the other hand, he was assiduous at the great and the small schools
of the Rue Saint Jean de Beauvais. The first pupil whom the Abbe de
Saint Pierre de Val, at the moment of beginning his reading on
canon law, always perceived, glued to a pillar of the school
Saint-Vendregesile, opposite his rostrum, was Claude Frollo, armed with
his horn ink-bottle, biting his pen, scribbling on his threadbare knee,
and, in winter, blowing on his fingers. The first auditor whom Messire
Miles d'Isliers, doctor in decretals, saw arrive every Monday morning,
all breathless, at the opening of the gates of the school of the
Chef-Saint-Denis, was Claude Frollo. Thus, at sixteen years of age, the
young clerk might have held his own, in mystical theology, against a
father of the church; in canonical theology, against a father of the
councils; in scholastic theology, against a doctor of Sorbonne.

Theology conquered, he had plunged into decretals. From the "Master of
Sentences," he had passed to the "Capitularies of Charlemagne;" and he
had devoured in succession, in his appetite for science, decretals upon
decretals, those of Theodore, Bishop of Hispalus; those