good many ploughmen swinging on
trees about the country; ay, I have seen thirty on one elm, and a very
poor figure they made; and when I asked some one how all these came to
be hanged, I was told it was because they could not scrape together
enough crowns to satisfy the men-at-arms."

"These things are a necessity of war, which the low-born must endure
with constancy. It is true that some captains drive overhard; there
are spirits in every rank not easily moved by pity; and, indeed, many
follow arms who are no better than brigands."

"You see," said the poet, "you cannot separate the soldier from the
brigand; and what is a thief but an isolated brigand with circumspect
manners? I steal a couple of mutton chops, without so much as
disturbing the farmer's sheep; the farmer grumbles a bit, but sups
none the less wholesomely on what remains. You come up blowing
gloriously on a trumpet, take away the whole sheep, and beat the
farmer pitifully into the bargain. I have no trumpet; I am only Tom,
Dick, or Harry; I am a rogue and a dog, and hanging's too good for
me--with all my heart--but just you ask the farmer which of us he
prefers, just find out which of us he lies awake to curse on cold
nights."

"Look at us two," said his lordship. "I am old, strong, and honored.
If I were turned from my house to-morrow, hundreds would be proud to
shelter me. Poor people would go out and pass the night in the streets
with their children, if I merely hinted that I wished to be alone.
And I find you up, wandering homeless, and picking farthings off dead
women by the wayside! I fear no man and nothing; I have seen you
tremble and lose countenance at a word. I wait God's summons
contentedly in my own house, or, if it please the king to call me out
again, upon the field of battle. You look for the gallows; a rough,
swift death, without hope or honor. Is there no difference between
these two?"

"As far as to the moon," Villon acquiesced. "But if I had been born
lord of Brisetout, and you had been the poor scholar Francis, would
the difference have been any the less? Should not I have been warming
my knees at this charcoal pan, and would not you have been groping for
farthings in the snow? Should not I have been the soldier, and you the
thief?"

"A thief!" cried the old man. "I a thief! If you understood your
words, you would repent them."

Villon turned out his hands with a gesture of inimitable impudence.
"If your lordship had done m