At length one of these, as fat, short, and venerable as himself, came to his rescue.
"Abomination! scholars addressing a bourgeois in that fashion in my day would have been flogged with a fagot, which would have afterwards been used to burn them."
The whole band burst into laughter.
"Holà hé! who is scolding so? Who is that screech owl of evil fortune?"
"Hold, I know him" said one of them; "'tis Master Andry Musnier."
"Because he is one of the four sworn booksellers of the university!" said the other.
"Everything goes by fours in that shop," cried a third; "the four nations, the four faculties, the four feasts, the four procurators, the four electors, the four booksellers."
"Well," began Jean Frollo once more," we must play the devil with them."* * ~Faire le diable a quatre~.
"Musnier, we'll burn your books."
"Musnier, we'll beat your lackeys."
"Musnier, we'll kiss your wife."
"That fine, big Mademoiselle Oudarde."
"Who is as fresh and as gay as though she were a widow."
"Devil take you!" growled Master Andry Musnier.
"Master Andry," pursued Jean Jehan, still clinging to his capital, "hold your tongue, or I'll drop on your head!"
Master Andry raised his eyes, seemed to measure in an instant the height of the pillar, the weight of the scamp, mentally multiplied that weight by the square of the velocity and remained silent.
Jehan, master of the field of battle, pursued triumphantly: "That's what I'll do, even if I am the brother of an archdeacon!"
"Fine gentry are our people of the university, not to have caused our privileges to be respected on such a day as this! However, there is a maypole and a bonfire in the town; a mystery, Pope of the Fools, and Flemish ambassadors in the city; and, at the university, nothing!"
"Nevertheless, the Place Maubert is sufficiently large!" interposed one of the clerks established on the window-sill.
"Down with the rector, the electors, and the procurators!" cried Joannes.
"We must have a bonfire this evening in the Champ-Gaillard," went on the other, "made of Master Andry's books."
"And the desks of the scribes!" added his neighbor.
"And the beadles' wands!"
"And the spittoons of the deans!"
"And the cupboards of the procurators!"
"And the hutches of the electors!"
"And the stools of the rector!"