he clergy of the quarter, and borne to the treasury
of the church of Saint Opportune, where the sacristan, even as late as
1789, earned a tolerably handsome revenue out of the great miracle of
the Statue of the Virgin at the corner of the Rue Mauconseil, which
had, by its mere presence, on the memorable night between the sixth and
seventh of January, 1482, exorcised the defunct Eustache Moubon, who,
in order to play a trick on the devil, had at his death maliciously
concealed his soul in his straw pallet.

CHAPTER VI. THE BROKEN JUG.

After having run for some time at the top of his speed, without knowing
whither, knocking his head against many a street corner, leaping many a
gutter, traversing many an alley, many a court, many a square, seeking
flight and passage through all the meanderings of the ancient passages
of the Halles, exploring in his panic terror what the fine Latin of the
maps calls _tota via, cheminum et viaria_, our poet suddenly halted for
lack of breath in the first place, and in the second, because he had
been collared, after a fashion, by a dilemma which had just occurred to
his mind. "It strikes me, Master Pierre Gringoire," he said to himself,
placing his finger to his brow, "that you are running like a madman. The
little scamps are no less afraid of you than you are of them. It strikes
me, I say, that you heard the clatter of their wooden shoes fleeing
southward, while you were fleeing northward. Now, one of two things,
either they have taken flight, and the pallet, which they must have
forgotten in their terror, is precisely that hospitable bed in search
of which you have been running ever since morning, and which madame the
Virgin miraculously sends you, in order to recompense you for having
made a morality in her honor, accompanied by triumphs and mummeries; or
the children have not taken flight, and in that case they have put the
brand to the pallet, and that is precisely the good fire which you need
to cheer, dry, and warm you. In either case, good fire or good bed, that
straw pallet is a gift from heaven. The blessed Virgin Marie who stands
at the corner of the Rue Mauconseil, could only have made Eustache
Moubon die for that express purpose; and it is folly on your part to
flee thus zigzag, like a Picard before a Frenchman, leaving behind you
what you seek before you; and you are a fool!"

Then he retraced his steps, and feeling his way and searching, with his
nose to the wind a