ike a person who has just arrived and is
giving warning of his approach.

"Enter!" cried the archdeacon, from the interior of his cell; "I
was expecting you. I left the door unlocked expressly; enter Master
Jacques!"

The scholar entered boldly. The archdeacon, who was very much
embarrassed by such a visit in such a place, trembled in his arm-chair.
"What! 'tis you, Jehan?"

"'Tis a J, all the same," said the scholar, with his ruddy, merry, and
audacious face.

Dom Claude's visage had resumed its severe expression.

"What are you come for?"

"Brother," replied the scholar, making an effort to assume a decent,
pitiful, and modest mien, and twirling his cap in his hands with an
innocent air; "I am come to ask of you--"

"What?"

"A little lecture on morality, of which I stand greatly in need," Jehan
did not dare to add aloud,--"and a little money of which I am in still
greater need." This last member of his phrase remained unuttered.

"Monsieur," said the archdeacon, in a cold tone, "I am greatly
displeased with you."

"Alas!" sighed the scholar.

Dom Claude made his arm-chair describe a quarter circle, and gazed
intently at Jehan.

"I am very glad to see you."

This was a formidable exordium. Jehan braced himself for a rough
encounter.

"Jehan, complaints are brought me about you every day. What affray was
that in which you bruised with a cudgel a little vicomte, Albert de
Ramonchamp?"

"Oh!" said Jehan, "a vast thing that! A malicious page amused himself by
splashing the scholars, by making his horse gallop through the mire!"

"Who," pursued the archdeacon, "is that Mahiet Fargel, whose gown you
have torn? _Tunicam dechiraverunt_, saith the complaint."

"Ah bah! a wretched cap of a Montaigu! Isn't that it?"

"The complaint says _tunicam_ and not _cappettam_. Do you know Latin?"

Jehan did not reply.

"Yes," pursued the priest shaking his head, "that is the state of
learning and letters at the present day. The Latin tongue is hardly
understood, Syriac is unknown, Greek so odious that 'tis accounted no
ignorance in the most learned to skip a Greek word without reading it,
and to say, '_Groecum est non legitur_.'"

The scholar raised his eyes boldly. "Monsieur my brother, doth it please
you that I shall explain in good French vernacular that Greek word which
is written yonder on the wall?"

"What word?"

"'_ANArKH_."

A slight flush spread over the cheeks of the priest with their high
bon