BOOK SEVENTH.
CHAPTER 5. THE TWO MEN CLOTHED IN BLACK.
(continued)
The archdeacon shook his head, with a bitter smile. "Master
Jacques read Michel Psellus' 'Dialogus de Energia et
Operatione Daemonum.' What we are doing is not wholly innocent."
"Speak lower, master! I have my suspicions of it," said
Jacques Charmolue. "But one must practise a bit of hermetic
science when one is only procurator of the king in the
ecclesiastical court, at thirty crowns tournois a year. Only
speak low."
At that moment the sound of jaws in the act of mastication,
which proceeded from beneath the furnace, struck Charmolue's
uneasy ear.
"What's that?" he inquired.
It was the scholar, who, ill at ease, and greatly bored in his
hiding-place, had succeeded in discovering there a stale crust
and a triangle of mouldy cheese, and had set to devouring the
whole without ceremony, by way of consolation and breakfast.
As he was very hungry, he made a great deal of noise,
and he accented each mouthful strongly, which startled and
alarmed the procurator.
"'Tis a cat of mine," said the archdeacon, quickly, "who is
regaling herself under there with a mouse,"
This explanation satisfied Charmolue.
"In fact, master," he replied, with a respectful smile, "all
great philosophers have their familiar animal. You know
what Servius saith: 'Nullus enim locus sine genio est,--for
there is no place that hath not its spirit.'"
But Dom Claude, who stood in terror of some new freak on
the part of Jehan, reminded his worthy disciple that they had
some figures on the façade to study together, and the two
quitted the cell, to the accompaniment of a great "ouf!" from
the scholar, who began to seriously fear that his knee would
acquire the imprint of his chin.
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