onths,
and that now one finds you in the public squares, in a fine equipment in
truth! Motley red and yellow, like a Caudebec apple?"

"Messire," said Gringoire, piteously, "it is, in fact, an amazing
accoutrement. You see me no more comfortable in it than a cat coiffed
with a calabash. 'Tis very ill done, I am conscious, to expose messieurs
the sergeants of the watch to the liability of cudgelling beneath this
cassock the humerus of a Pythagorean philosopher. But what would you
have, my reverend master? 'tis the fault of my ancient jerkin, which
abandoned me in cowardly wise, at the beginning of the winter, under the
pretext that it was falling into tatters, and that it required repose in
the basket of a rag-picker. What is one to do? Civilization has not yet
arrived at the point where one can go stark naked, as ancient Diogenes
wished. Add that a very cold wind was blowing, and 'tis not in the month
of January that one can successfully attempt to make humanity take
this new step. This garment presented itself, I took it, and I left my
ancient black smock, which, for a hermetic like myself, was far
from being hermetically closed. Behold me then, in the garments of a
stage-player, like Saint Genest. What would you have? 'tis an eclipse.
Apollo himself tended the flocks of Admetus."

"'Tis a fine profession that you are engaged in!" replied the
archdeacon.

"I agree, my master, that 'tis better to philosophize and poetize, to
blow the flame in the furnace, or to receive it from carry cats on a
shield. So, when you addressed me, I was as foolish as an ass before a
turnspit. But what would you have, messire? One must eat every day, and
the finest Alexandrine verses are not worth a bit of Brie cheese. Now, I
made for Madame Marguerite of Flanders, that famous epithalamium, as you
know, and the city will not pay me, under the pretext that it was not
excellent; as though one could give a tragedy of Sophocles for four
crowns! Hence, I was on the point of dying with hunger. Happily, I found
that I was rather strong in the jaw; so I said to this jaw,--perform
some feats of strength and of equilibrium: nourish thyself. _Ale te
ipsam_. A pack of beggars who have become my good friends, have taught
me twenty sorts of herculean feats, and now I give to my teeth every
evening the bread which they have earned during the day by the sweat of
my brow. After all, concede, I grant that it is a sad employment for
my intellectual facultie