hen, you have told me your story with so much confidence, that I
owe you a little of mine. You must know, then, that my name is Pierre
Gringoire, and that I am a son of the farmer of the notary's office
of Gonesse. My father was hung by the Burgundians, and my mother
disembowelled by the Picards, at the siege of Paris, twenty years ago.
At six years of age, therefore, I was an orphan, without a sole to
my foot except the pavements of Paris. I do not know how I passed the
interval from six to sixteen. A fruit dealer gave me a plum here, a
baker flung me a crust there; in the evening I got myself taken up
by the watch, who threw me into prison, and there I found a bundle of
straw. All this did not prevent my growing up and growing thin, as you
see. In the winter I warmed myself in the sun, under the porch of the
Hotel de Sens, and I thought it very ridiculous that the fire on Saint
John's Day was reserved for the dog days. At sixteen, I wished to choose
a calling. I tried all in succession. I became a soldier; but I was not
brave enough. I became a monk; but I was not sufficiently devout; and
then I'm a bad hand at drinking. In despair, I became an apprentice
of the woodcutters, but I was not strong enough; I had more of an
inclination to become a schoolmaster; 'tis true that I did not know how
to read, but that's no reason. I perceived at the end of a certain time,
that I lacked something in every direction; and seeing that I was good
for nothing, of my own free will I became a poet and rhymester. That
is a trade which one can always adopt when one is a vagabond, and it's
better than stealing, as some young brigands of my acquaintance advised
me to do. One day I met by luck, Dom Claude Frollo, the reverend
archdeacon of Notre-Dame. He took an interest in me, and it is to him
that I to-day owe it that I am a veritable man of letters, who knows
Latin from the _de Officiis_ of Cicero to the mortuology of the
Celestine Fathers, and a barbarian neither in scholastics, nor in
politics, nor in rhythmics, that sophism of sophisms. I am the author
of the Mystery which was presented to-day with great triumph and a great
concourse of populace, in the grand hall of the Palais de Justice.
I have also made a book which will contain six hundred pages, on the
wonderful comet of 1465, which sent one man mad. I have enjoyed still
other successes. Being somewhat of an artillery carpenter, I lent a hand
to Jean Mangue's great bombard, which b