ng against the starry sky
the black silhouette of its two towers, its stone flanks, its monstrous
haunches, seemed an enormous two-headed sphinx, seated in the middle of
the city.

The archdeacon gazed at the gigantic edifice for some time in silence,
then extending his right hand, with a sigh, towards the printed book
which lay open on the table, and his left towards Notre-Dame, and
turning a sad glance from the book to the church,--"Alas," he said,
"this will kill that."

Coictier, who had eagerly approached the book, could not repress an
exclamation. "He, but now, what is there so formidable in this: 'GLOSSA
IN EPISTOLAS D. PAULI, _Norimbergoe, Antonius Koburger_, 1474.' This is
not new. 'Tis a book of Pierre Lombard, the Master of Sentences. Is it
because it is printed?"

"You have said it," replied Claude, who seemed absorbed in a profound
meditation, and stood resting, his forefinger bent backward on the folio
which had come from the famous press of Nuremberg. Then he added these
mysterious words: "Alas! alas! small things come at the end of great
things; a tooth triumphs over a mass. The Nile rat kills the crocodile,
the swordfish kills the whale, the book will kill the edifice."

The curfew of the cloister sounded at the moment when Master Jacques
was repeating to his companion in low tones, his eternal refrain, "He is
mad!" To which his companion this time replied, "I believe that he is."

It was the hour when no stranger could remain in the cloister. The two
visitors withdrew. "Master," said Gossip Tourangeau, as he took leave
of the archdeacon, "I love wise men and great minds, and I hold you
in singular esteem. Come to-morrow to the Palace des Tournelles, and
inquire for the Abbe de Sainte-Martin, of Tours."

The archdeacon returned to his chamber dumbfounded, comprehending
at last who Gossip Tourangeau was, and recalling that passage of the
register of Sainte-Martin, of Tours:--_Abbas beati Martini, SCILICET REX
FRANCIAE, est canonicus de consuetudine et habet parvam proebendam quam
habet sanctus Venantius, et debet sedere in sede thesaurarii_.

It is asserted that after that epoch the archdeacon had frequent
conferences with Louis XI., when his majesty came to Paris, and that
Dom Claude's influence quite overshadowed that of Olivier le Daim and
Jacques Coictier, who, as was his habit, rudely took the king to task on
that account.

CHAPTER II. THIS WILL KILL THAT.

Our lady readers will