Peter Abelard [antikvár]

CHAPTER I "Temps s'en va, Et rien n'ai fait" BELARD raised his head. It was a pleasant voice, though a little drunken, and the words came clearly enough, a trifle blurred about the consonants, to the high window of the Maison du Poirier. The window was open, for the June night was hot, and there were few noises after ten o'clock in the Place du Parvis Notre Dame. "Time goes by. And naught do I. Time comes again, . . . Et ne fais rien!" Abelard's smile broadened. "I am very sure, my friend," said he, "that you do not." But at any rate he had found a good tune. The listener's ear was quick. He began noting it on the margin of his manuscript, while his brain busied itself fitting Latin words to the original: a pity to waste so good a tune and so profound a sentiment on a language that was the breath of a day. "Fugit hora. Absque mora, Nihil facio" . . . Not to that tune. The insinuating, if doomed, vernacular lilted again. Abelard realized that he was spoiling the [3]