hes with her. She will take your doublet; you will take her
petticoat."

"So far, it goes well," remarked the philosopher, "and then?"

"And then? she will go forth in your garments; you will remain with
hers. You will be hanged, perhaps, but she will be saved."

Gringoire scratched his ear, with a very serious air. "Stay!" said he,
"that is an idea which would never have occurred to me unaided."

At Dom Claude's proposition, the open and benign face of the poet had
abruptly clouded over, like a smiling Italian landscape, when an unlucky
squall comes up and dashes a cloud across the sun.

"Well! Gringoire, what say you to the means?"

"I say, master, that I shall not be hanged, perchance, but that I shall
be hanged indubitably.

"That concerns us not."

"The deuce!" said Gringoire.

"She has saved your life. 'Tis a debt that you are discharging."

"There are a great many others which I do not discharge."

"Master Pierre, it is absolutely necessary."

The archdeacon spoke imperiously.

"Listen, Dom Claude," replied the poet in utter consternation. "You cling
to that idea, and you are wrong. I do not see why I should get myself
hanged in some one else's place."

"What have you, then, which attaches you so strongly to life?"

"Oh! a thousand reasons!"

"What reasons, if you please?"

"What? The air, the sky, the morning, the evening, the moonlight, my
good friends the thieves, our jeers with the old hags of go-betweens,
the fine architecture of Paris to study, three great books to make, one
of them being against the bishops and his mills; and how can I tell all?
Anaxagoras said that he was in the world to admire the sun. And then,
from morning till night, I have the happiness of passing all my days
with a man of genius, who is myself, which is very agreeable."

"A head fit for a mule bell!" muttered the archdeacon. "Oh! tell me who
preserved for you that life which you render so charming to yourself? To
whom do you owe it that you breathe that air, behold that sky, and can
still amuse your lark's mind with your whimsical nonsense and madness?
Where would you be, had it not been for her? Do you then desire that
she through whom you are alive, should die? that she should die, that
beautiful, sweet, adorable creature, who is necessary to the light of
the world and more divine than God, while you, half wise, and half fool,
a vain sketch of something, a sort of vegetable, which thinks that it
walks, and th