a precious tradition which has been carefully preserved
to our own day. Again, he had set in movement a band of scholars,
who had flung themselves upon a wine-shop in classic fashion, quasi
_classico excitati_, had then beaten the tavern-keeper "with offensive
cudgels," and joyously pillaged the tavern, even to smashing in the
hogsheads of wine in the cellar. And then it was a fine report in Latin,
which the sub-monitor of Torchi carried piteously to Dom Claude with
this dolorous marginal comment,--_Rixa; prima causa vinum optimum
potatum_. Finally, it was said, a thing quite horrible in a boy of
sixteen, that his debauchery often extended as far as the Rue de
Glatigny.

Claude, saddened and discouraged in his human affections, by all this,
had flung himself eagerly into the arms of learning, that sister which,
at least does not laugh in your face, and which always pays you, though
in money that is sometimes a little hollow, for the attention which you
have paid to her. Hence, he became more and more learned, and, at the
same time, as a natural consequence, more and more rigid as a
priest, more and more sad as a man. There are for each of us several
parallelisms between our intelligence, our habits, and our character,
which develop without a break, and break only in the great disturbances
of life.

As Claude Frollo had passed through nearly the entire circle of human
learning--positive, exterior, and permissible--since his youth, he
was obliged, unless he came to a halt, _ubi defuit orbis_, to proceed
further and seek other aliments for the insatiable activity of his
intelligence. The antique symbol of the serpent biting its tail is,
above all, applicable to science. It would appear that Claude Frollo had
experienced this. Many grave persons affirm that, after having exhausted
the _fas_ of human learning, he had dared to penetrate into the _nefas_.
He had, they said, tasted in succession all the apples of the tree of
knowledge, and, whether from hunger or disgust, had ended by tasting
the forbidden fruit. He had taken his place by turns, as the reader
has seen, in the conferences of the theologians in Sorbonne,--in the
assemblies of the doctors of art, after the manner of Saint-Hilaire,--in
the disputes of the decretalists, after the manner of Saint-Martin,--in
the congregations of physicians at the holy water font of Notre-Dame,
_ad cupam Nostroe-Dominoe_. All the dishes permitted and approved, which
those four grea