ment later with the two
prisoners, surrounded by archers of the guard. The first had a coarse,
idiotic, drunken and astonished face. He was clothed in rags, and walked
with one knee bent and dragging his leg. The second had a pallid and
smiling countenance, with which the reader is already acquainted.

The king surveyed them for a moment without uttering a word, then
addressing the first one abruptly,--

"What's your name?"

"Gieffroy Pincebourde."

"Your trade."

"Outcast."

"What were you going to do in this damnable sedition?" The outcast
stared at the king, and swung his arms with a stupid air.

He had one of those awkwardly shaped heads where intelligence is about
as much at its ease as a light beneath an extinguisher.

"I know not," said he. "They went, I went."

"Were you not going to outrageously attack and pillage your lord, the
bailiff of the palace?"

"I know that they were going to take something from some one. That is
all."

A soldier pointed out to the king a billhook which he had seized on the
person of the vagabond.

"Do you recognize this weapon?" demanded the king.

"Yes; 'tis my billhook; I am a vine-dresser."

"And do you recognize this man as your companion?" added Louis XI.,
pointing to the other prisoner.

"No, I do not know him."

"That will do," said the king, making a sign with his finger to the
silent personage who stood motionless beside the door, to whom we have
already called the reader's attention.

"Gossip Tristan, here is a man for you."

Tristan l'Hermite bowed. He gave an order in a low voice to two archers,
who led away the poor vagabond.

In the meantime, the king had approached the second prisoner, who was
perspiring in great drops: "Your name?"

"Sire, Pierre Gringoire."

"Your trade?"

"Philosopher, sire."

"How do you permit yourself, knave, to go and besiege our friend,
monsieur the bailiff of the palace, and what have you to say concerning
this popular agitation?"

"Sire, I had nothing to do with it."

"Come, now! you wanton wretch, were not you apprehended by the watch in
that bad company?"

"No, sire, there is a mistake. 'Tis a fatality. I make tragedies. Sire,
I entreat your majesty to listen to me. I am a poet. 'Tis the melancholy
way of men of my profession to roam the streets by night. I was passing
there. It was mere chance. I was unjustly arrested; I am innocent
of this civil tempest. Your majesty sees that the vagabond did not
reco