nd his ears on the alert, he tried to find the
blessed pallet again, but in vain. There was nothing to be found but
intersections of houses, closed courts, and crossings of streets, in
the midst of which he hesitated and doubted incessantly, being more
perplexed and entangled in this medley of streets than he would have
been even in the labyrinth of the Hotel des Tournelles. At length he
lost patience, and exclaimed solemnly: "Cursed be cross roads! 'tis the
devil who has made them in the shape of his pitchfork!"

This exclamation afforded him a little solace, and a sort of reddish
reflection which he caught sight of at that moment, at the extremity of
a long and narrow lane, completed the elevation of his moral tone. "God
be praised!" said he, "There it is yonder! There is my pallet burning."
And comparing himself to the pilot who suffers shipwreck by night,
"_Salve_," he added piously, "_salve, maris stella_!"

Did he address this fragment of litany to the Holy Virgin, or to the
pallet? We are utterly unable to say.

He had taken but a few steps in the long street, which sloped downwards,
was unpaved, and more and more muddy and steep, when he noticed a very
singular thing. It was not deserted; here and there along its extent
crawled certain vague and formless masses, all directing their course
towards the light which flickered at the end of the street, like those
heavy insects which drag along by night, from blade to blade of grass,
towards the shepherd's fire.

Nothing renders one so adventurous as not being able to feel the place
where one's pocket is situated. Gringoire continued to advance, and had
soon joined that one of the forms which dragged along most indolently,
behind the others. On drawing near, he perceived that it was nothing
else than a wretched legless cripple in a bowl, who was hopping along on
his two hands like a wounded field-spider which has but two legs left.
At the moment when he passed close to this species of spider with a
human countenance, it raised towards him a lamentable voice: "_La buona
mancia, signor! la buona mancia_!"*

* Alms.

"Deuce take you," said Gringoire, "and me with you, if I know what you
mean!"

And he passed on.

He overtook another of these itinerant masses, and examined it. It was
an impotent man, both halt and crippled, and halt and crippled to such
a degree that the complicated system of crutches and wooden legs which
sustained him, gave him the a