life. I come to you full of contrition, I am penitent. I make my
confession. I beat my breast violently. You are quite right in wishing
that I should some day become a licentiate and sub-monitor in the
college of Torchi. At the present moment I feel a magnificent vocation
for that profession. But I have no more ink and I must buy some; I
have no more paper, I have no more books, and I must buy some. For this
purpose, I am greatly in need of a little money, and I come to you,
brother, with my heart full of contrition."

"Is that all?"

"Yes," said the scholar. "A little money."

"I have none."

Then the scholar said, with an air which was both grave and resolute:
"Well, brother, I am sorry to be obliged to tell you that very fine
offers and propositions are being made to me in another quarter.
You will not give me any money? No. In that case I shall become a
professional vagabond."

As he uttered these monstrous words, he assumed the mien of Ajax,
expecting to see the lightnings descend upon his head.

The archdeacon said coldly to him,--"Become a vagabond."

Jehan made him a deep bow, and descended the cloister stairs, whistling.

At the moment when he was passing through the courtyard of the cloister,
beneath his brother's window, he heard that window open, raised his eyes
and beheld the archdeacon's severe head emerge.

"Go to the devil!" said Dom Claude; "here is the last money which you
will get from me?"

At the same time, the priest flung Jehan a purse, which gave the scholar
a big bump on the forehead, and with which Jehan retreated, both vexed
and content, like a dog who had been stoned with marrow bones.

CHAPTER III. LONG LIVE MIRTH.

The reader has probably not forgotten that a part of the Cour de
Miracles was enclosed by the ancient wall which surrounded the city, a
goodly number of whose towers had begun, even at that epoch, to fall to
ruin. One of these towers had been converted into a pleasure resort by
the vagabonds. There was a drain-shop in the underground story, and the
rest in the upper stories. This was the most lively, and consequently
the most hideous, point of the whole outcast den. It was a sort of
monstrous hive, which buzzed there night and day. At night, when the
remainder of the beggar horde slept, when there was no longer a window
lighted in the dingy facades of the Place, when not a cry was any longer
to be heard proceeding from those innumerable families, those ant