tle shopkeeper of
Judea, who is by your side, and whom I entertain strong hopes of seeing
nailed to a counter one of these days, like the counterfeit coin that he
is!"

So saying, he pointed his finger at the little, bearded Hungarian Jew
who had accosted Gringoire with his _facitote caritatem_, and who,
understanding no other language beheld with surprise the King of
Thunes's ill-humor overflow upon him.

At length Monsieur Clopin calmed down.

"So you will be a vagabond, you knave?" he said to our poet.

"Of course," replied the poet.

"Willing is not all," said the surly Clopin; "good will doesn't put one
onion the more into the soup, and 'tis good for nothing except to go
to Paradise with; now, Paradise and the thieves' band are two different
things. In order to be received among the thieves,* you must prove that
you are good for something, and for that purpose, you must search the
manikin."

* L'argot.

"I'll search anything you like," said Gringoire.

Clopin made a sign. Several thieves detached themselves from the circle,
and returned a moment later. They brought two thick posts, terminated
at their lower extremities in spreading timber supports, which made them
stand readily upon the ground; to the upper extremity of the two posts
they fitted a cross-beam, and the whole constituted a very pretty
portable gibbet, which Gringoire had the satisfaction of beholding rise
before him, in a twinkling. Nothing was lacking, not even the rope,
which swung gracefully over the cross-beam.

"What are they going to do?" Gringoire asked himself with some
uneasiness. A sound of bells, which he heard at that moment, put an
end to his anxiety; it was a stuffed manikin, which the vagabonds were
suspending by the neck from the rope, a sort of scarecrow dressed in
red, and so hung with mule-bells and larger bells, that one might have
tricked out thirty Castilian mules with them. These thousand tiny bells
quivered for some time with the vibration of the rope, then gradually
died away, and finally became silent when the manikin had been brought
into a state of immobility by that law of the pendulum which has
dethroned the water clock and the hour-glass. Then Clopin, pointing out
to Gringoire a rickety old stool placed beneath the manikin,--"Climb up
there."

"Death of the devil!" objected Gringoire; "I shall break my neck. Your
stool limps like one of Martial's distiches; it has one hexameter leg
and one pentamet