r, and perchance with that one,
Diogenes would have found his man."

"The pillory leads to the gallows."

"The gallows is a balance which has a man at one end and the whole earth
at the other. 'Tis fine to be the man."

"The gallows leads to hell."

"'Tis a big fire.".

"Jehan, Jehan, the end will be bad."

"The beginning will have been good."

At that moment, the sound of a footstep was heard on the staircase.

"Silence!" said the archdeacon, laying his finger on his mouth, "here is
Master Jacques. Listen, Jehan," he added, in a low voice; "have a care
never to speak of what you shall have seen or heard here. Hide yourself
quickly under the furnace, and do not breathe."

The scholar concealed himself; just then a happy idea occurred to him.

"By the way, Brother Claude, a form for not breathing."

"Silence! I promise."

"You must give it to me."

"Take it, then!" said the archdeacon angrily, flinging his purse at him.

Jehan darted under the furnace again, and the door opened.

CHAPTER V. THE TWO MEN CLOTHED IN BLACK.

The personage who entered wore a black gown and a gloomy mien. The first
point which struck the eye of our Jehan (who, as the reader will readily
surmise, had ensconced himself in his nook in such a manner as to enable
him to see and hear everything at his good pleasure) was the perfect
sadness of the garments and the visage of this new-corner. There was,
nevertheless, some sweetness diffused over that face, but it was the
sweetness of a cat or a judge, an affected, treacherous sweetness. He
was very gray and wrinkled, and not far from his sixtieth year, his
eyes blinked, his eyebrows were white, his lip pendulous, and his hands
large. When Jehan saw that it was only this, that is to say, no doubt
a physician or a magistrate, and that this man had a nose very far from
his mouth, a sign of stupidity, he nestled down in his hole, in despair
at being obliged to pass an indefinite time in such an uncomfortable
attitude, and in such bad company.

The archdeacon, in the meantime, had not even risen to receive this
personage. He had made the latter a sign to seat himself on a stool near
the door, and, after several moments of a silence which appeared to be
a continuation of a preceding meditation, he said to him in a rather
patronizing way, "Good day, Master Jacques."

"Greeting, master," replied the man in black.

There was in the two ways in which "Master Jacques" was pronounc