Chapter IV: ἈΝÁΓΚΗ

It chanced that upon a fine morning in this same month of March,
I think it was on Saturday the 29th, Saint Eustache’s day, our
young friend the student, Jehan Frollo du Moulin, perceived, as
he was dressing himself, that his breeches, which contained his
purse, gave out no metallic ring. “Poor purse,” he said, drawing
it from his fob, “what! not the smallest parisis! how cruelly the
dice, beer-pots, and Venus have depleted thee! How empty,
wrinkled, limp, thou art! Thou resemblest the throat of a fury! I
ask you, Messer Cicero, and Messer Seneca, copies of whom, all
dog’s-eared, I behold scattered on the floor, what profits it me
to know, better than any governor of the mint, or any Jew on the
Pont aux Changeurs, that a golden crown stamped with a crown is
worth thirty-five unzains of twenty-five sous, and eight deniers
parisis apiece, and that a crown stamped with a crescent is worth
thirty-six unzains of twenty-six sous, six deniers tournois
apiece, if I have not a single wretched black liard to risk on
the double-six! Oh! Consul Cicero! this is no calamity from which
one extricates one’s self with periphrases, _quemadmodum_, and
_verum enim vero!_”

He dressed himself sadly. An idea had occurred to him as he laced
his boots, but he rejected it at first; nevertheless, it
returned, and he put on his waistcoat wrong side out, an evident
sign of violent internal combat. At last he dashed his cap
roughly on the floor, and exclaimed: “So much the worse! Let come
of it what may. I am going to my brother! I shall catch a sermon,
but I shall catch a crown.”

Then he hastily donned his long jacket with furred half-sleeves,
picked up his cap, and went out like a man driven to desperation.

He descended the Rue de la Harpe toward the City. As he passed
the Rue de la Huchette, the odor of those admirable spits, which
were incessantly turning, tickled his olfactory apparatus, and he
bestowed a loving glance toward the Cyclopean roast, which one
day drew from the Franciscan friar, Calatagirone, this pathetic
exclamation: _Veramente, queste rotisserie sono cosa
stupenda!_[36] But Jehan had not the wherewithal to buy a
breakfast, and he plunged, with a profound sigh, under the
gateway of the Petit-Châtelet, that enormous double trefoil of
massive towers which guarded the entrance to the City.

He did not even take the trouble to cast a stone in passing, as
was the usage, at the miserable statue of that Périnet Leclerc
who had delivered up the Paris of Charles VI. to the English, a
crime which his effigy, its face battered with stones and soiled
with mud, expiated for three centuries at the corner of the Rue
de la Harpe and the Rue de Buci, as in an eternal pillory.

The Petit-Pont traversed, the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève crossed,
Jehan de Molendino found himself in front of Notre-Dame. Then
indecision seized upon him once more, and he paced for several
minutes round the statue of M. Legris, repeating to himself with
anguish: “The sermon is sure, the crown is doubtful.”

He stopped a beadle who emerged from the cloister,—“Where is
monsieur the archdeacon of Josas?”

“I believe that he is in his secret cell in the tower,” said the
beadle; “I should advise you not to disturb him there, unless you
come from some one like the pope or monsieur the king.”

Jehan clapped his hands.

“_Bédiable!_ here’s a magnificent chance to see the famous
sorcery cell!”

This reflection having brought him to a decision, he plunged
resolutely into the small black doorway, and began the ascent of
the spiral of Saint-Gilles, which leads to the upper stories of
the tower. “I am going to see,” he said to himself on the way.
“By the ravens of the Holy Virgin! it must needs be a curious
thing, that cell which my reverend brother hides so secretly!
’Tis said that he lights up the kitchens of hell there, and that
he cooks the philosopher’s stone there over a hot fire. _Bédieu!_
I care no more for the philosopher’s stone than for a pebble, and
I would rather find over his furnace an omelette of Easter eggs
and bacon, than the biggest philosopher’s stone in the world.”’

On arriving at the gallery of slender columns, he took breath for
a moment, and swore against the interminable staircase by I know
not how many million cartloads of devils; then he resumed his
ascent through the narrow door of the north tower, now closed to
the public. Several moments after passing the bell chamber, he
came upon a little landing-place, built in a lateral niche, and
under the vault of a low, pointed door, whose enormous lock and
strong iron bars he was enabled to see through a loophole pierced
in the opposite circular wall of the staircase. Persons desirous
of visiting this door at the present day will recognize it by
this inscription engraved in white letters on the black wall:
“J’ADORE CORALIE, 1823. SIGNÉ UGÈNE.” “Signé” stands in the text.

“Ugh!” said the scholar; “’tis here, no doubt.”

The key was in the lock, the door was very close to him; he gave
it a gentle push and thrust his head through the opening.

The reader cannot have failed to turn over the admirable works of
Rembrandt, that Shakespeare of painting. Amid so many marvellous
engravings, there is one etching in particular, which is supposed
to represent Doctor Faust, and which it is impossible to
contemplate without being dazzled. It represents a gloomy cell;
in the centre is a table loaded with hideous objects; skulls,
spheres, alembics, compasses, hieroglyphic parchments. The doctor
is before this table clad in his large coat and covered to the
very eyebrows with his furred cap. He is visible only to his
waist. He has half risen from his immense arm-chair, his clenched
fists rest on the table, and he is gazing with curiosity and
terror at a large luminous circle, formed of magic letters, which
gleams from the wall beyond, like the solar spectrum in a dark
chamber. This cabalistic sun seems to tremble before the eye, and
fills the wan cell with its mysterious radiance. It is horrible
and it is beautiful.

Something very similar to Faust’s cell presented itself to
Jehan’s view, when he ventured his head through the half-open
door. It also was a gloomy and sparsely lighted retreat. There
also stood a large arm-chair and a large table, compasses,
alembics, skeletons of animals suspended from the ceiling, a
globe rolling on the floor, hippocephali mingled promiscuously
with drinking cups, in which quivered leaves of gold, skulls
placed upon vellum checkered with figures and characters, huge
manuscripts piled up wide open, without mercy on the cracking
corners of the parchment; in short, all the rubbish of science,
and everywhere on this confusion dust and spiders’ webs; but
there was no circle of luminous letters, no doctor in an ecstasy
contemplating the flaming vision, as the eagle gazes upon the
sun.

Nevertheless, the cell was not deserted. A man was seated in the
arm-chair, and bending over the table. Jehan, to whom his back
was turned, could see only his shoulders and the back of his
skull; but he had no difficulty in recognizing that bald head,
which nature had provided with an eternal tonsure, as though
desirous of marking, by this external symbol, the archdeacon’s
irresistible clerical vocation.

Jehan accordingly recognized his brother; but the door had been
opened so softly, that nothing warned Dom Claude of his presence.
The inquisitive scholar took advantage of this circumstance to
examine the cell for a few moments at his leisure. A large
furnace, which he had not at first observed, stood to the left of
the arm-chair, beneath the window. The ray of light which
penetrated through this aperture made its way through a spider’s
circular web, which tastefully inscribed its delicate rose in the
arch of the window, and in the centre of which the insect
architect hung motionless, like the hub of this wheel of lace.
Upon the furnace were accumulated in disorder, all sorts of
vases, earthenware bottles, glass retorts, and mattresses of
charcoal. Jehan observed, with a sigh, that there was no
frying-pan. “How cold the kitchen utensils are!” he said to
himself.

In fact, there was no fire in the furnace, and it seemed as
though none had been lighted for a long time. A glass mask, which
Jehan noticed among the utensils of alchemy, and which served no
doubt, to protect the archdeacon’s face when he was working over
some substance to be dreaded, lay in one corner covered with dust
and apparently forgotten. Beside it lay a pair of bellows no less
dusty, the upper side of which bore this inscription incrusted in
copper letters: SPIRA SPERA.

Other inscriptions were written, in accordance with the fashion
of the hermetics, in great numbers on the walls; some traced with
ink, others engraved with a metal point. There were, moreover,
Gothic letters, Hebrew letters, Greek letters, and Roman letters,
pell-mell; the inscriptions overflowed at haphazard, on top of
each other, the more recent effacing the more ancient, and all
entangled with each other, like the branches in a thicket, like
pikes in an affray. It was, in fact, a strangely confused
mingling of all human philosophies, all reveries, all human
wisdom. Here and there one shone out from among the rest like a
banner among lance heads. Generally, it was a brief Greek or
Roman device, such as the Middle Ages knew so well how to
formulate.—_Unde? Inde?—Homo homini monstrum—Astra, castra,
nomen, numen._—Μέγα βιβλίον, μέγα κακόν.—_Sapere aude. Fiat ubi
vult_—etc.; sometimes a word devoid of all apparent sense,
Ἀναγκοφαγία, which possibly contained a bitter allusion to the
regime of the cloister; sometimes a simple maxim of clerical
discipline formulated in a regular hexameter _Cœlestem dominum
terrestrem dicite dominum_. There was also Hebrew jargon, of
which Jehan, who as yet knew but little Greek, understood
nothing; and all were traversed in every direction by stars, by
figures of men or animals, and by intersecting triangles; and
this contributed not a little to make the scrawled wall of the
cell resemble a sheet of paper over which a monkey had drawn back
and forth a pen filled with ink.

The whole chamber, moreover, presented a general aspect of
abandonment and dilapidation; and the bad state of the utensils
induced the supposition that their owner had long been distracted
from his labors by other preoccupations. Meanwhile, this master,
bent over a vast manuscript, ornamented with fantastical
illustrations, appeared to be tormented by an idea which
incessantly mingled with his meditations. That at least was
Jehan’s idea, when he heard him exclaim, with the thoughtful
breaks of a dreamer thinking aloud,—

“Yes, Manou said it, and Zoroaster taught it! the sun is born
from fire, the moon from the sun; fire is the soul of the
universe; its elementary atoms pour forth and flow incessantly
upon the world through infinite channels! At the point where
these currents intersect each other in the heavens, they produce
light; at their points of intersection on earth, they produce
gold. Light, gold; the same thing! From fire to the concrete
state. The difference between the visible and the palpable,
between the fluid and the solid in the same substance, between
water and ice, nothing more. These are no dreams; it is the
general law of nature. But what is one to do in order to extract
from science the secret of this general law? What! this light
which inundates my hand is gold! These same atoms dilated in
accordance with a certain law need only be condensed in
accordance with another law. How is it to be done? Some have
fancied by burying a ray of sunlight, Averroës,—yes, ’tis
Averroës,—Averroës buried one under the first pillar on the left
of the sanctuary of the Koran, in the great Mahometan mosque of
Cordova; but the vault cannot be opened for the purpose of
ascertaining whether the operation has succeeded, until after the
lapse of eight thousand years.

“The devil!” said Jehan, to himself, “’tis a long while to wait
for a crown!”

“Others have thought,” continued the dreamy archdeacon, “that it
would be better worth while to operate upon a ray of Sirius. But
’tis exceeding hard to obtain this ray pure, because of the
simultaneous presence of other stars whose rays mingle with it.
Flamel esteemed it more simple to operate upon terrestrial fire.
Flamel! there’s predestination in the name! _Flamma!_ yes, fire.
All lies there. The diamond is contained in the carbon, gold is
in the fire. But how to extract it? Magistri affirms that there
are certain feminine names, which possess a charm so sweet and
mysterious, that it suffices to pronounce them during the
operation. Let us read what Manon says on the matter: ‘Where
women are honored, the divinities are rejoiced; where they are
despised, it is useless to pray to God. The mouth of a woman is
constantly pure; it is a running water, it is a ray of sunlight.
The name of a woman should be agreeable, sweet, fanciful; it
should end in long vowels, and resemble words of benediction.’
Yes, the sage is right; in truth, Maria, Sophia, la
Esmeral—Damnation! always that thought!”

And he closed the book violently.

He passed his hand over his brow, as though to brush away the
idea which assailed him; then he took from the table a nail and a
small hammer, whose handle was curiously painted with cabalistic
letters.

“For some time,” he said with a bitter smile, “I have failed in
all my experiments! one fixed idea possesses me, and sears my
brain like fire. I have not even been able to discover the secret
of Cassiodorus, whose lamp burned without wick and without oil. A
simple matter, nevertheless—”

“The deuce!” muttered Jehan in his beard.

“Hence,” continued the priest, “one wretched thought is
sufficient to render a man weak and beside himself! Oh! how
Claude Pernelle would laugh at me. She who could not turn
Nicholas Flamel aside, for one moment, from his pursuit of the
great work! What! I hold in my hand the magic hammer of Zéchiélé!
at every blow dealt by the formidable rabbi, from the depths of
his cell, upon this nail, that one of his enemies whom he had
condemned, were he a thousand leagues away, was buried a cubit
deep in the earth which swallowed him. The King of France
himself, in consequence of once having inconsiderately knocked at
the door of the thermaturgist, sank to the knees through the
pavement of his own Paris. This took place three centuries ago.
Well! I possess the hammer and the nail, and in my hands they are
utensils no more formidable than a club in the hands of a maker
of edge tools. And yet all that is required is to find the magic
word which Zéchiélé pronounced when he struck his nail.”

“What nonsense!” thought Jehan.

“Let us see, let us try!” resumed the archdeacon briskly. “Were I
to succeed, I should behold the blue spark flash from the head of
the nail. Emen-Hétan! Emen-Hétan! That’s not it. Sigéani!
Sigéani! May this nail open the tomb to any one who bears the
name of Phœbus! A curse upon it! Always and eternally the same
idea!”

And he flung away the hammer in a rage. Then he sank down so
deeply on the arm-chair and the table, that Jehan lost him from
view behind the great pile of manuscripts. For the space of
several minutes, all that he saw was his fist convulsively
clenched on a book. Suddenly, Dom Claude sprang up, seized a
compass and engraved in silence upon the wall in capital letters,
this Greek word

ἈΝÁΓΚΗ.

“My brother is mad,” said Jehan to himself; “it would have been
far more simple to write _Fatum_, every one is not obliged to
know Greek.”

The archdeacon returned and seated himself in his armchair, and
placed his head on both his hands, as a sick man does, whose head
is heavy and burning.

The student watched his brother with surprise. He did not know,
he who wore his heart on his sleeve, he who observed only the
good old law of Nature in the world, he who allowed his passions
to follow their inclinations, and in whom the lake of great
emotions was always dry, so freely did he let it off each day by
fresh drains,—he did not know with what fury the sea of human
passions ferments and boils when all egress is denied to it, how
it accumulates, how it swells, how it overflows, how it hollows
out the heart; how it breaks in inward sobs, and dull
convulsions, until it has rent its dikes and burst its bed. The
austere and glacial envelope of Claude Frollo, that cold surface
of steep and inaccessible virtue, had always deceived Jehan. The
merry scholar had never dreamed that there was boiling lava,
furious and profound, beneath the snowy brow of Ætna.

We do not know whether he suddenly became conscious of these
things; but, giddy as he was, he understood that he had seen what
he ought not to have seen, that he had just surprised the soul of
his elder brother in one of its most secret altitudes, and that
Claude must not be allowed to know it. Seeing that the archdeacon
had fallen back into his former immobility, he withdrew his head
very softly, and made some noise with his feet outside the door,
like 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, ‘_Græcum 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?”

“ἈΝÁΓΚΗ.”

A slight flush spread over the cheeks of the priest with their
high bones, like the puff of smoke which announces on the outside
the secret commotions of a volcano. The student hardly noticed
it.

“Well, Jehan,” stammered the elder brother with an effort, “What
is the meaning of yonder word?”

“FATE.”

Dom Claude turned pale again, and the scholar pursued carelessly.

“And that word below it, graved by the same hand, _Ἀνάγνεία_,
signifies ‘impurity.’ You see that people do know their Greek.”

And the archdeacon remained silent. This Greek lesson had
rendered him thoughtful.

Master Jehan, who possessed all the artful ways of a spoiled
child, judged that the moment was a favorable one in which to
risk his request. Accordingly, he assumed an extremely soft tone
and began,—

“My good brother, do you hate me to such a degree as to look
savagely upon me because of a few mischievous cuffs and blows
distributed in a fair war to a pack of lads and brats, _quibusdam
marmosetis_? You see, good Brother Claude, that people know their
Latin.”

But all this caressing hypocrisy did not have its usual effect on
the severe elder brother. Cerberus did not bite at the honey
cake. The archdeacon’s brow did not lose a single wrinkle.

“What are you driving at?” he said dryly.

“Well, in point of fact, this!” replied Jehan bravely, “I stand
in need of money.”

At this audacious declaration, the archdeacon’s visage assumed a
thoroughly pedagogical and paternal expression.

“You know, Monsieur Jehan, that our fief of Tirechappe, putting
the direct taxes and the rents of the nine and twenty houses in a
block, yields only nine and thirty livres, eleven sous, six
deniers, Parisian. It is one half more than in the time of the
brothers Paclet, but it is not much.”

“I need money,” said Jehan stoically.

“You know that the official has decided that our twenty-one
houses should be moved full into the fief of the Bishopric, and
that we could redeem this homage only by paying the reverend
bishop two marks of silver gilt of the price of six livres
parisis. Now, these two marks I have not yet been able to get
together. You know it.”

“I know that I stand in need of money,” repeated Jehan for the
third time.

“And what are you going to do with it?”

This question caused a flash of hope to gleam before Jehan’s
eyes. He resumed his dainty, caressing air.

“Stay, dear Brother Claude, I should not come to you, with any
evil motive. There is no intention of cutting a dash in the
taverns with your unzains, and of strutting about the streets of
Paris in a caparison of gold brocade, with a lackey, _cum meo
laquasio_. No, brother, ’tis for a good work.”

“What good work?” demanded Claude, somewhat surprised.

“Two of my friends wish to purchase an outfit for the infant of a
poor Haudriette widow. It is a charity. It will cost three
florins, and I should like to contribute to it.”

“What are names of your two friends?”

“Pierre l’Assommeur and Baptiste Croque-Oison.”[37]

“Hum,” said the archdeacon; “those are names as fit for a good
work as a catapult for the chief altar.”

It is certain that Jehan had made a very bad choice of names for
his two friends. He realized it too late.

“And then,” pursued the sagacious Claude, “what sort of an
infant’s outfit is it that is to cost three florins, and that for
the child of a Haudriette? Since when have the Haudriette widows
taken to having babes in swaddling-clothes?”

Jehan broke the ice once more.

“Eh, well! yes! I need money in order to go and see Isabeau la
Thierrye to-night; in the Val-d’ Amour!”

“Impure wretch!” exclaimed the priest.

“Ἀναγνεία!” said Jehan.

This quotation, which the scholar borrowed with malice,
perchance, from the wall of the cell, produced a singular effect
on the archdeacon. He bit his lips and his wrath was drowned in a
crimson flush.

“Begone,” he said to Jehan. “I am expecting some one.”

The scholar made one more effort.

“Brother Claude, give me at least one little parisis to buy
something to eat.”

“How far have you gone in the Decretals of Gratian?” demanded Dom
Claude.

“I have lost my copy books.

“Where are you in your Latin humanities?”

“My copy of Horace has been stolen.”

“Where are you in Aristotle?”

“I’ faith! brother what father of the church is it, who says that
the errors of heretics have always had for their lurking place
the thickets of Aristotle’s metaphysics? A plague on Aristotle! I
care not to tear my religion on his metaphysics.”

“Young man,” resumed the archdeacon, “at the king’s last entry,
there was a young gentleman, named Philippe de Comines, who wore
embroidered on the housings of his horse this device, upon which
I counsel you to meditate: _Qui non laborat, non manducet_.”

The scholar remained silent for a moment, with his finger in his
ear, his eyes on the ground, and a discomfited mien.

All at once he turned round to Claude with the agile quickness of
a wagtail.

“So, my good brother, you refuse me a sou parisis, wherewith to
buy a crust at a baker’s shop?”

“_Qui non laborat, non manducet_.”

At this response of the inflexible archdeacon, Jehan hid his head
in his hands, like a woman sobbing, and exclaimed with an
expression of despair: “Ὀτοτοτοτοτοῖ.”

“What is the meaning of this, sir?” demanded Claude, surprised at
this freak.

“What indeed!” said the scholar; and he lifted to Claude his
impudent eyes into which he had just thrust his fists in order to
communicate to them the redness of tears; “’tis Greek! ’tis an
anapæst of Æschylus which expresses grief perfectly.”

And here he burst into a laugh so droll and violent that it made
the archdeacon smile. It was Claude’s fault, in fact: why had he
so spoiled that child?

“Oh! good Brother Claude,” resumed Jehan, emboldened by this
smile, “look at my worn out boots. Is there a cothurnus in the
world more tragic than these boots, whose soles are hanging out
their tongues?”

The archdeacon promptly returned to his original severity.

“I will send you some new boots, but no money.”

“Only a poor little parisis, brother,” continued the suppliant
Jehan. “I will learn Gratian by heart, I will believe firmly in
God, I will be a regular Pythagoras of science and virtue. But
one little parisis, in mercy! Would you have famine bite me with
its jaws which are gaping in front of me, blacker, deeper, and
more noisome than a Tartarus or the nose of a monk?”

Dom Claude shook his wrinkled head: “_Qui non laborat_—”

Jehan did not allow him to finish.

“Well,” he exclaimed, “to the devil then! Long live joy! I will
live in the tavern, I will fight, I will break pots and I will go
and see the wenches.” And thereupon, he hurled his cap at the
wall, and snapped his fingers like castanets.

The archdeacon surveyed him with a gloomy air.

“Jehan, you have no soul.”

“In that case, according to Epicurius, I lack a something made of
another something which has no name.”

“Jehan, you must think seriously of amending your ways.”

“Oh, come now,” cried the student, gazing in turn at his brother
and the alembics on the furnace, “everything is preposterous
here, both ideas and bottles!”

“Jehan, you are on a very slippery downward road. Do you know
whither you are going?”

“To the wine-shop,” said Jehan.

“The wine-shop leads to the pillory.”

“’Tis as good a lantern as any other, 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.