us should be mine!--
"Go, fetch my pen, sweet Margot, and a jorum of your wine!

. . . . . . .

So would one vainly plod, and one win immortality--
If I were Francois Villon and Francois Villon I!

My acquaintance with Master Villon was made in Paris during my second
visit to that fascinating capital, and for a while I was under his
spell to that extent that I would read no book but his, and I made
journeys to Rouen, Tours, Bordeaux, and Poitiers for the purpose of
familiarizing myself with the spots where he had lived, and always
under the surveillance of the police. In fact, I became so infatuated
of Villonism that at one time I seriously thought of abandoning myself
to a life of crime in order to emulate in certain particulars at least
the example of my hero.

There were, however, hindrances to this scheme, first of which was my
inability to find associates whom I wished to attach to my cause in the
capacity in which Colin de Cayeulx and the Baron de Grigny served
Master Francois. I sought the companionship of several low-browed,
ill-favored fellows whom I believed suited to my purposes, but almost
immediately I wearied of them, for they had never looked into a book
and were so profoundly ignorant as to be unable to distinguish between
a folio and a thirty-twomo.

Then again it befell that, while the Villon fever was raging within
and I was contemplating a career of vice, I had a letter from my uncle
Cephas, apprising me that Captivity Waite (she was now Mrs. Eliphalet
Parker) had named her first-born after me! This intelligence had the
effect of cooling and sobering me; I began to realize that, with the
responsibility the coming and the christening of Captivity's first-born
had imposed upon me, it behooved me to guard with exceeding jealousy
the honor of the name which my namesake bore.

While I was thus tempest-tossed, Fanchonette came across my pathway,
and with the appearance of Fanchonette every ambition to figure in the
annals of bravado left me. Fanchonette was the niece of my landlady;
her father was a perfumer; she lived with the old people in the Rue des
Capucins. She was of middling stature and had blue eyes and black
hair. Had she not been French, she would have been Irish, or, perhaps,
a Grecian. Her manner had an indefinable charm.

It was she who acquainted me with Beranger; that is why I never take up
that precious volume that I do not think, sweetly