Part Five

[Illustration]

"_Grouille, greve, greve, grouille,
File, file, ma quenouille!
File sa corde au bourreau
Qui siffle dans le preau..._"


So sang the old hag in _Notre Dame de Paris!_

So sang to me night and day, for many nights and days, the thin small
voice that always went piping inside me, now to one tune, now to
another, but always the same words--that terrible refrain that used to
haunt me so when I was a school-boy at Bluefriars!

Oh, to be a school-boy again in a long gray coat and ridiculous pink
stockings--innocent and free--with Esmeralda for my only love, and Athos
and Porthos and D'Artagnan for my bosom friends, and no worse
tribulation than to be told on a Saturday afternoon that the third
volume was in hand--_volume trois en lecture_'.

* * * * *

Sometimes, I remember, I could hardly sleep on a Sunday night, for pity
of the poor wretch who was to be hanged close by on Monday morning, and