"I will indeed, with all my heart," said he.

"Do you agree," resumed Clopin, " to enroll yourself among the gentry of the chive?"1

"Of the chive, exactly," answered Gringoire.

"Do you acknowledge yourself a member of the rogues' brigade?" continued the King of Tunis.

"Of the rogues' brigade."

"A subject of the kingdom of Cant?" "Of the kingdom of Cant."

"A vagrant?"

"A vagrant." "At heart?"

"At heart."

"I would call your attention to the fact," added the king, "that you will be hanged none the less."

"The devil!" said the poet.

"Only," continued Clopin, quite unmoved, "you will be hanged later, with more ceremony, at the cost of the good city of Paris, on a fine stone gallows, and by honest men. That is some consolation."

"As you say," responded Gringoire.

"There are other advantages. As a member of the rogues' brigade you will have to pay no taxes for pavements, for the poor, or for lighting the streets, to all of which the citizens of Paris are subject."

"So be it," said the poet; "I consent. I am a vagrant, a Canter, a member of the rogues' brigade, a man of the chive, — what you will; and I was all this long ago, Sir King of Tunis, for I am a philosopher; et omnia in philosophia, omnes in philo- . sopho continentur, as you know."

The King of Tunis frowned.

"What do you take me for, mate? What Hungarian Jew's gibberish are you giving us? I don't know Hebrew. I'm no Jew, if I am a thief. I don't even steal now: I am above that; I kill. Cut-throat, yes; cutpurse, no."

Gringoire tried to slip in some excuse between these brief phrases which anger made yet more abrupt.

"I beg your pardon, my lord. It is not Hebrew, it is Latin." "I tell you," replied Clopin, furiously, "that I am no Jew, and that I will have you hanged, by the synagogue, I will! together with that paltry Judean cadger beside you, whom I

1 Dagger, -old English cant.

mightily hope I may some day see nailed to a counter, like the counterfeit coin that he is!"

So saying, he pointed to the little Hungarian Jew with the beard, who had accosted Gringoire with his " Facitote caritatem," and who, understanding no other language, was amazed at the wrath which the King of Tunis vented upon him.

At last my lord Clopin became calm.

"So, varlet," said he to our poet, "you wish to become a vagrant?"

"Undoubtedly," replied the poet.

"It is not enough merely to wish," said the surly Clopin; "good-will never added an onion to the soup, and is good for nothing but a passport to paradise; now, paradise and Cant are two distinct things. To be received into the kingdom of Cant, you must prove that you are good for something; and to prove this you must fumble the snot." 1

"I will fumble," said Gringoire, "as much as ever you like.” Clopin made a sign. A number of Canters stepped from the circle and returned immediately, bringing a couple of posts finished at the lower end with broad wooden feet, which made them stand firmly upon the ground; at the upper end of the two posts they arranged a crossbeam, the whole forming a very pretty portable gallows, which Gringoire had the pleasure of seeing erected before him in the twinkling of an eye. Nothing was wanting, not even the rope, which swung gracefully from the crossbeam.

"What are they going to do?" wondered Gringoire with some alarm. A sound of bells which he heard at the same moment put an end to his anxiety; it was a manikin or puppet, that the vagrants hung by the neck to the cord,- a sort of scarecrow, dressed in red, and so loaded with little bells and hollow brasses that thirty Castilian mules might have been tricked out with them. These countless tinklers jingled for some time with the swaying of the rope, then the sound died away by degrees, and finally ceased when the manikin had been restored to a state of complete immobility by that law of the pendulum which has superseded the clepsydra and the hour-glass.

Then Clopin, showing Gringoire a rickety old footstool, placed under the manikin, said, —

"Climb up there!"

"The devil!" objected Gringoire; "I shall break my neck. Your stool halts like one of Martial's couplets; one foot has six syllables and one foot has but five."

1 Search the manikin.

"Climb up!" repeated Clopin.

Gringoire mounted the stool, and succeeded, though not without considerable waving of head and arms, in recovering his centre of gravity.

"Now," resumed the King of Tunis, "twist your right foot round your left leg, and stand on tiptoe with your left foot." "My lord," said Gringoire, "are you absolutely determined to make me break a limb?"

Clopin tossed his head.

"Hark ye, mate; you talk too much. I will tell you in a couple of words what I expect you to do: you are to stand on tiptoe, as I say; in that fashion you can reach the manikin's pockets; you are to search them; you are to take out a purse which you will find there; and if you do all this without ringing. a single bell, it is well: you shall become a vagrant. We shall have nothing more to do but to baste you with blows for a week."

"Zounds! I shall take good care," said Gringoire. "And if I ring the bells?"

"Then you shall be hanged. Do you understand?"

"I don't understand at all," answered Gringoire.

"Listen to me once more. You are to search the manikin and steal his purse; if but a single bell stir in the act, you shall be hanged. Do you understand that?”

"Good," said Gringoire, "I undertand that. What next?" "If you manage to get the purse without moving the bells, you are a vagrant, and you shall be basted with blows for seven days in succession. You understand now, I suppose?"

"No, my lord; I no longer understand. Where is the advantage? I shall be hanged in the one case, beaten in the other?" "And as a vagrant," added Clopin, "and as a vagrant; does that count for nothing? It is for your own good that we shall beat you, to harden you against blows."

"Come, make haste," said the king, stamping on his cask, which re-echoed like a vast drum.

"Fumble the snot, and be done with it! I warn you, once for all, that if I hear but one tinkle you shall take the manikin's place."

The company of Canters applauded Clopin's words, and ranged themselves in a ring around the gallows, with such pitiless laughter that Gringoire saw that he amused them too much

not to have everything to fear from them. His only hope lay in the slight chance of succeeding in the terrible task imposed upon him; he decided to risk it, but not without first addressing a fervent prayer to the manikin whom he was to plunder, and who seemed more easily moved than the vagrants. The myriad little bells with their tiny brazen tongues seemed to him like so many vipers with gaping jaws, ready to hiss and sting.

"Oh," he murmured, "is it possible that my life depends upon the slightest quiver of the least of these bells? Oh," he added, with clasped hands, "do not ring, ye bells! Tinkle not, ye tinklers! Jingle not, ye jinglers!"

He made one more attempt to melt Trouillefou. "And if a brecze spring up?" he asked.

"You will be hanged," answered the other, without hesitating.

Seeing that neither respite, delay, nor subterfuge was possible, he made a desperate effort; he twisted his right foot round his left leg, stood tiptoe on his left foot, and stretched out his arm, but just as he touched the manikin, his body, now resting on one foot, tottered upon the stool, which had but three; he strove mechanically to cling to the figure, lost his balance, and fell heavily to the ground, deafened and stunned by the fatal. sound of the myriad bells of the manikin, which, yielding to the pressure of his hand, first revolved upon its own axis, then swung majestically to and fro between the posts.

"A curse upon it!" he cried as he fell; and he lay as if dead, face downwards.

Still he heard the fearful peal above his head, and the devilish laugh of the vagrants, and the voice of Trouillefou, as it said, "Lift up the knave, and hang him with a will."

He rose.

The manikin had already been taken down to make room for him.

The Canters made him mount the stool. Clopin stepped up to him, passed the rope round his neck, and clapping him on the shoulder, exclaimed,

"Farewell, mate. You can't escape now, though you have the digestion of the Pope himself."

The word "mercy" died on Gringoire's lips. He gazed around him, but without hope: every man was laughing.

"Bellevigne de l'Étoile," said the king of Tunis to a huge vagrant who started from the ranks, "climb upon the crossbeam."

Bellevigne de l'Étoile nimbly climbed the crossbeam, and in an instant Gringoire, raising his eyes, with terror beheld him. squatting upon it, above his head.

"Now," continued Clopin Trouillefou, "when I clap my hands, do you, Andry le Rouge, knock away the footstool from under him; you, François Chante- Prune, hang on to the knave's feet; and you, Bellevigne, jump down upon his shoulders; and all three at once, do you hear?"

Gringoire shuddered.

"Are you ready?" said Clopin Trouillefou to the three Canters prepared to fall upon Gringoire. The poor sufferer endured a moment of horrible suspense, while Clopin calmly pushed into the fire with his foot a few vine-branches which the flame had not yet kindled. "Are you ready?" he repeated; and he opened his hands to clap. A second more, and all would have been over.

But he paused, as if struck by a sudden thought.

"One moment," said he; "I forgot! It is our custom never to hang a man without asking if there be any woman who'll have him. Comrade, it's your last chance. You must marry a tramp or the rope."

This gypsy law, strange as it may seem to the reader, is still written out in full in the ancient English code. (See "Burington's Observations.")

Gringoire breathed again. This was the second time that he had been restored to life within the half-hour; so he dared. not feel too confident.

"Hollo!" cried Clopin, remounting his cask; "hollo there, women, females! is there among you, from the old witch to her cat, a wench who'll take this scurvy knave? Hollo, Colette la Charonne! Élisabeth Trouvain! Simone Jodouyne! Marie Piédebou! Thonne la Longue! Bérarde Fanouel! Michelle Genaille! Claude Ronge-Oreille! Mathurine Girorou! Hello! Isabeau la Thierrye! Come and look! a man for nothing! who'll take him?"

Gringoire, in his wretched plight, was doubtless far from tempting. The vagabond women seemed but little moved by the offer. The luckless fellow heard them answer: "No! no! hang him; that will make sport for us all."

Three, however, stepped from the crowd to look him over. The first was a stout, square-faced girl. She examined the philosopher's pitiable doublet most attentively. The stuff was