and in an affectionate way.

The Professor looked disconsolate enough as he suffered his fine cloak
to be stripped from his back.

"Ne'er mind," quoth Jean-aux-Choux, "we will soon right that. I know
these King's men, and 'tis the Pope's own purgatory of a warm day. There
are inns by the wayside, and wherever one is held by a well-made
hostess, who lets poor puss come to the cream without so much
'Hist-a-cat-ing,' I'll wager they will leave their cloaks in the hall.
So we will come by a coat of the King's colours, all scallops and Breton
ermines in memory of poor Queen Anne."

"I will not have you steal a cloak, sirrah," said the Professor;
"indeed, I am nowise satisfied in my mind concerning these horses we are
riding."

"Steal--not I," cried the Fool; "not likely, and the Montfacon gibbet at
one's elbow yonder, with the crows a-swirling and pecking about it as in
the time of naughty Clerk Francis. Nay, I thank you. I have money here
to pay for a gross of cloaks!"

And Cabbage Jock slapped his pocket as he spoke--which indeed, thus
interrogated, gave back a most satisfactory jingle of coin.

The Professor had first of all meant to point out to Jean-aux-Choux that
to have the money in his pocket, and to pay it out, were two things
entirely different, when it came to borrowing other men's cloaks, but
something else leaped up in his mind, sudden as a trout in a pool. He
turned upon Jean-aux-Choux.

"How do you know about Clerk Francis and the gallows at Montfacon?" he
demanded. For at first, with the ear of a man accustomed to talk only to
men who pick up allusions as pigeons do scattered grain, he had accepted
the words without question.

"How am I to know?" retorted Jean-aux-Choux. "One hears so many things.
I do not know."

"But," said the Professor of Eloquence, pursuing his idea, "there are
not many even at the Sorbonne, which is the grave of wisdom whence is no
resurrection (I am of the Sadducean faction), who have heard tell of one
Clerk Francois Villon, Master of Arts, and once an ornament of our
University. How came you to know of him? Come now, out with it! You are
hiding something!"

"Sir," said the Fool, "I have made sport for Kings of the Louvre and
Kings of Bedlam; for Henry of yesterday, who is Henry of Valois; for
Henry of to-day, who is Henry of Guise; and for Henry of to-morrow, who
is----"

But the Professor of the Sorbonne was a man of sense, and he knew that
the place for discussing suc