Notre-Dame de Paris

by Victor Hugo

The archdeacon put his chin in his hand, and seemed to be reflecting for a moment. Suddenly he turned round towards Gringoire. ‘And you swear you have never touched her?’ ‘Who?’ said Gringoire. ‘The goat?’ ‘No, the woman.’ ‘My wife? I swear I haven’t.’ ‘And you are often alone with her?’ ‘Every evening, for a good hour.’ Dom Claude frowned. ‘Oh! oh! solus cum sola non cogitabuntur orare Pater noster [a man and a woman alone together will not be assumed to be saying the Our Father].’ ‘Upon my soul, I could say the Pater and the Ave Maria, and the Credo in Deum omnipotentem [I believe in God the Father almighty] without her taking any more notice of me than a hen of a church.’ ‘Swear on your mother’s womb,’ the archdeacon repeated violently, ‘that you haven’t laid so much as a finger on that creature.’ ‘I’d swear it on my father’s head too, for the two things are connected in more than one way. But, reverend master, allow me a question in my turn.’ ‘Speak on, sir.’ ‘What’s all this to you?’

Don't think I laughed harder anywhere in this novel. Incidentally, Hugo changes the phrase, "a man and a woman alone together will not be assumed to be saying the Our Father", into a description of two criminals in "Les Misérables": "It is not to be expected that two men alone together in a remote place will be saying the Lord’s Prayer."