s where! and I fear me the
devil knows too. Montigny was hung in '57, Tabary in '58, and Cayeux,
Cayeux of the light heart and lighter fingers, went by the same path
two years later: I only am left. They said I killed a man and would
have hung me--me! Francois Villon! Certainly a man died or there
would be no Villon now: it was either he or I, and they would have hung
me." The full lips parted in a comfortable laugh and the eyes
twinkled. "I appealed to Parliament in a ballad, and the humour of the
notion moved the good gentlemen to mercy. 'How can we choke the breath
from so sweet a singer?' said they. 'There are ten thousand hangable
rogues in Paris, but only one poet amongst them!' God be praised for
humour. I think it gave Francois Villon his life; but since then
friendship has walked the other side of the street."

"And yet," La Mothe laid his hand on the elder man's shoulder, letting
it lie there in kindliness, "you who so gibe at your best self are the
Francois Villon of the ballad to Mary the Mother. How is that?"

"Can I tell you?

'Je cognois tout fors que moy mesme.'

Man is Eden in little: there is the slime of the serpent under the tree
of knowledge, but the Lord God walks through the garden in the cool of
the day. What are we but contradictions, shadows of Montfaucon shot
through by glories from Notre Dame. Perhaps some day a clearer
knowledge than ours will straighten out the tangles," and with a laugh,
which had little joyousness in it, Villon plunged afresh into memories
which seemed to strike the whole gamut of a soul's experience from A to
G.

La Mothe allowed him to run on without interruption. The alternations
of mood, tender and callous by turns, but never remorseful, never
regretful, except with the regrets for a lost delight, both amused and
repelled him, but at last as Villon sat silent he turned to the window
and flung open the wooden sun-blinds.

"At last they are awake in the Chateau," he said. "Horses? hawks? Are
they going hunting, do you suppose?"

"Saxe will know. Hulloa! Saxe! Saxe! What is little Charles doing
to-day?"

"I was coming for you both," answered Saxe from the open door. "They
are riding to Chateau-Renaud, and your worships are so beloved by both
the Dauphin and mademoiselle that you must needs go with them.
Monsieur de Commines and Monsieur La Follette have gone hawking for the
day."

"Do not go," said Villon. "They know you at Chateau-Ren