was striking and picturesque. The thick mustaches
and pointed beards with which the lips and chins of most of them were
decorated, gave to their physiognomies a manly and determined air, fully
borne out by their unrestrained carriage and deportment. To a man,
almost all were armed with a tough vine-wood bludgeon, called in their
language an _estoc volant_, tipped and shod with steel--a weapon fully
understood by them, and rendered, by their dexterity in the use of it,
formidable to their adversaries. Not a few carried at their girdles the
short rapier, so celebrated in their duels and brawls, or concealed
within their bosom a poniard or a two-edged knife.

The scholars of Paris have ever been a turbulent and ungovernable race;
and at the period of which this history treats, and indeed long before,
were little better than a licensed horde of robbers, consisting of a
pack of idle and wayward youths drafted from all parts of Europe, as
well as from the remoter provinces of their own nation. There was little
in common between the mass of students and their brethren, excepting the
fellowship resulting from the universal license in which all indulged.
Hence their thousand combats among themselves--combats almost invariably
attended with fatal consequences--and which the heads of the university
found it impossible to check.

Their own scanty resources, eked out by what little they could derive
from beggary or robbery, formed their chief subsistence; for many of
them were positive mendicants, and were so denominated: and being
possessed of a sanctuary within their own quarters, to which they could
at convenience retire, they submitted to the constraint of no laws
except those enforced within the jurisdiction of the university, and
hesitated at no means of enriching themselves at the expense of their
neighbors. Hence the frequent warfare waged between them and the
brethren of Saint-Germain des Pres, whose monastic domains adjoined
their territories, and whose meadows were the constant battleground of
their skirmishes; according to Dulaure--"_presque toujours un theatre de
tumulte, de galanterie, de combats, de duels, de debauches et de
sedition_." Hence their sanguinary conflicts with the good citizens of
Paris, to whom they were wholly obnoxious, and who occasionally repaid
their aggressions with interest. In 1407 two of their number, convicted
of assassination and robbery, were condemned to the gibbet, and the
sentence was ca