"My health?" replied Gringoire. "Eh! eh! one can say both one thing and another on that score. Still, it is good, on the whole. I take not too much of anything. You know, master, that the secret of keeping well, according to Hippocrates; ~id est: cibi, potus, somni, venus, omnia moderata sint~."
"So you have no care, Master Pierre?" resumed the archdeacon, gazing intently at Gringoire.
"None, i' faith!"
"And what are you doing now?"
"You see, master. I am examining the chiselling of these stones, and the manner in which yonder bas-relief is thrown out."
The priest began to smile with that bitter smile which raises only one corner of the mouth.
"And that amuses you?"
"'Tis paradise!" exclaimed Gringoire. And leaning over the sculptures with the fascinated air of a demonstrator of living phenomena: "Do you not think, for instance, that yon metamorphosis in bas-relief is executed with much adroitness, delicacy and patience? Observe that slender column. Around what capital have you seen foliage more tender and better caressed by the chisel. Here are three raised bosses of Jean Maillevin. They are not the finest works of this great master. Nevertheless, the naivete, the sweetness of the faces, the gayety of the attitudes and draperies, and that inexplicable charm which is mingled with all the defects, render the little figures very diverting and delicate, perchance, even too much so. You think that it is not diverting?"
"Yes, certainly!" said the priest.
"And if you were to see the interior of the chapel!" resumed the poet, with his garrulous enthusiasm. "Carvings everywhere. 'Tis as thickly clustered as the head of a cabbage! The apse is of a very devout, and so peculiar a fashion that I have never beheld anything like it elsewhere!"
Dom Claude interrupted him,-"You are happy, then?"
Gringoire replied warmly;-"On my honor, yes! First I loved women, then animals. Now I love stones. They are quite as amusing as women and animals, and less treacherous."
The priest laid his hand on his brow. It was his habitual gesture.
"Really?"
"Stay!" said Gringoire, "one has one's pleasures!" He took the arm of the priest, who let him have his way, and made him enter the staircase turret of For-l'Evêque. "Here is a staircase! every time that I see it I am happy. It is of the simplest and rarest manner of steps in Paris. All the steps are bevelled underneath. Its beauty and simplicity consist in the interspacing of both, being a foot or more wide, which are interlaced, interlocked, fitted together, enchained enchased, interlined one upon another, and bite into each other in a manner that is truly firm and graceful."