Victor Hugo: The Hunchback of Notre Dame

BOOK SEVENTH. CHAPTER 6. THE EFFECT WHICH SEVEN OATHS IN THE OPEN AIR CAN PRODUCE. (continued)

"The little girl with the goat."

"La Smeralda?"

"That's it, Jehan. I always forget her devil of a name. Let us make haste, she will recognize me. I don't want to have that girl accost me in the street."

"Do you know her, Phoebus?"

Here the archdeacon saw Phoebus sneer, bend down to Jehan's ear, and say a few words to him in a low voice; then Phoebus burst into a laugh, and shook his head with a triumphant air.

"Truly?" said Jehan.

"Upon my soul!" said Phoebus.

"This evening?"

"This evening."

"Are you sure that she will come?"

"Are you a fool, Jehan? Does one doubt such things?"

"Captain Phoebus, you are a happy gendarme!"

The archdeacon heard the whole of this conversation. His teeth chattered; a visible shiver ran through his whole body. He halted for a moment, leaned against a post like a drunken man, then followed the two merry knaves.

At the moment when he overtook them once more, they had changed their conversation. He heard them singing at the top of their lungs the ancient refrain,--

          Les enfants des Petits-Carreaux
          Se font pendre cornme des veaux*.

* The children of the Petits Carreaux let themselves be hung like calves.