th a sigh. "Saint-Sophia at Constantinople, forty years
ago, hurled to the earth three times in succession, the crescent of
Mahom, by shaking her domes, which are her heads. Guillaume de Paris,
who built this one was a magician."

"Must we then retreat in pitiful fashion, like highwaymen?" said Clopin.
"Must we leave our sister here, whom those hooded wolves will hang
to-morrow."

"And the sacristy, where there are wagon-loads of gold!" added a
vagabond, whose name, we regret to say, we do not know.

"Beard of Mahom!" cried Trouillefou.

"Let us make another trial," resumed the vagabond.

Mathias Hungadi shook his head.

"We shall never get in by the door. We must find the defect in the armor
of the old fairy; a hole, a false postern, some joint or other."

"Who will go with me?" said Clopin. "I shall go at it again. By the way,
where is the little scholar Jehan, who is so encased in iron?"

"He is dead, no doubt," some one replied; "we no longer hear his laugh."

The King of Thunes frowned: "So much the worse. There was a brave heart
under that ironmongery. And Master Pierre Gringoire?"

"Captain Clopin," said Andry the Red, "he slipped away before we reached
the Pont-aux-Changeurs."

Clopin stamped his foot. "Gueule-Dieu! 'twas he who pushed us on
hither, and he has deserted us in the very middle of the job! Cowardly
chatterer, with a slipper for a helmet!"

"Captain Clopin," said Andry the Red, who was gazing down Rue du Parvis,
"yonder is the little scholar."

"Praised be Pluto!" said Clopin. "But what the devil is he dragging
after him?"

It was, in fact, Jehan, who was running as fast as his heavy outfit of a
Paladin, and a long ladder which trailed on the pavement, would permit,
more breathless than an ant harnessed to a blade of grass twenty times
longer than itself.

"Victory! _Te Deum_!" cried the scholar. "Here is the ladder of the
longshoremen of Port Saint-Landry."

Clopin approached him.

"Child, what do you mean to do, _corne-dieu_! with this ladder?"

"I have it," replied Jehan, panting. "I knew where it was under the shed
of the lieutenant's house. There's a wench there whom I know, who thinks
me as handsome as Cupido. I made use of her to get the ladder, and I
have the ladder, _Pasque-Mahom_! The poor girl came to open the door to
me in her shift."

"Yes," said Clopin, "but what are you going to do with that ladder?"

Jehan gazed at him with a malicious, knowing look, and crack