une in the person of the greatest poet of his age, from
the Guest of the Three-legged Maid of Montfaucon to 'Francois Villon,
my friend' of the Dauphin of France! At last they are beginning to
appreciate me at the Chateau."

"But what of Saxe?"

"Ah, Saxe?" Filling his horn mug he emptied it with such slow
satisfaction that the flavour of no single drop of the wine missed his
palate. "Saxe's best friend had been before me this morning."

"But Monsieur de Commines' orders were strict, only you and I were to
see him."

"Not even your Monsieur de Commines can shut out a man from himself,
and who is a better friend or a worse enemy? Saxe, the wise man, has
hanged himself."

"Hanged himself? Saxe?"

"An intelligent anticipation," said Villon, nodding thoughtfully. "I
did not think he had so much good sense or good feeling. He always
struck me as a man of a coarse, material mind; but one can never tell."

"Villon, it is horrible! How can you talk so callously? But you know
you do not mean what you say."

"Every word of it. Hanged he would have been in any case, that was
inevitable. I warned him last night that he knew too much, and that
more went into Amboise than came out again. And was it not better he
should go to his end quietly, decently, just God and himself alone
together--the Good God who understands us so much better than we do
ourselves and so makes allowances? You don't agree with me?"

"I can only say again, it is horrible."

"Then what of the justice of the King which makes a man a spectacle in
the market-place, with all the world agape at the terror of it, the
world that licks its lips over lovers in rose arches or the gibbeting
of wretches no worse than itself? Think of the terror of it! Think of
the shame of it! The men he had drunk with, the women he had laughed
with, the children he had played with, all ringed round him to see him
die. And there he would hang till his bones dropped, a shame and a
blot on the clean face of the earth, blackened by the heat, drenched
white by the rain, twirled and swung by every breath of wind, while the
pies and the crows made thimble-pits of his face, a waste rag of
humanity. Come now, which is the decenter?"

"Poor Saxe!"

"If Saxe had had his way, there would have been no dew on the roses
this morning. He would have lied Mademoiselle de Vesc to death without
a scruple."

"She wished him no harm, of that I am certain."

"It is of the qua