It was, in fact, Jehan, who was running as fast as his heavy outfit of a Paladin, and a long ladder which trailed on the pavement, would permit, more breathless than an ant harnessed to a blade of grass twenty times longer than itself.
“Victory! Te Deum!” cried the scholar. “Here is the ladder of the longshoremen of Port Saint-Landry.”
Clopin approached him.
“Child, what do you mean to do, corne-dieu! with this ladder?”
“I have it,” replied Jehan, panting. “I knew where it was under the shed of the lieutenant’s house. There’s a wench there whom I know, who thinks me as handsome as Cupido. I made use of her to get the ladder, and I have the ladder, Pasque-Mahom! The poor girl came to open the door to me in her shift.”
“Yes,” said Clopin, “but what are you going to do with that ladder?”
Jehan gazed at him with a malicious, knowing look, and cracked his fingers like castanets. At that moment he was sublime. On his head he wore one of those overloaded helmets of the fifteenth century, which frightened the enemy with their fanciful crests. His bristled with ten iron beaks, so that Jehan could have disputed with Nestor’s Homeric vessel the redoubtable title of δεκέμβολος.
“What do I mean to do with it, august king of Thunes? Do you see that row of statues which have such idiotic expressions, yonder, above the three portals?”
“Yes. Well?”
“’Tis the gallery of the kings of France.”