the St. Denis Road, and the pleasantry touched him on the raw. As for
Tabary, he laughed immoderately over the medlars; he had never heard
anything more light-hearted; and he held his sides and crowed. Villon
fetched him a fillip on the nose, which turned his mirth into an attack
of coughing.

"Oh, stop that row," said Villon, "and think of rhymes to 'fish'!"

"Doubles or quits? Said Montigny, doggedly.

"With all my heart," quoth Thevenin.

"Is there any more in that bottle?" asked the monk.

"Open another," said Villon. "How do you ever hope to fill that big
hogshead, your body, with little things like bottles? And how do you
expect to get to heaven? How many angels, do you fancy, can be spared
to carry up a single monk from Picardy? Or do you think yourself another
Elias--and they'll send the coach for you?"

"_Hominibus_ impossible," replied the monk, as he filled his glass.

Tabary was in ecstasies.

Villon filliped his nose again.

"Laugh at my jokes, if you like," he said.

Villon made a face at him. "Think of rhymes to 'fish,' " he said. "What
have you to do with Latin? You'll wish you knew none of it at the great
assizes, when the devil calls for Guido Tabary, _clericus_--the devil
with the humpback and red-hot fingernails. Talking of the devil," he
added, in a whisper, "look at Montigny!"

All three peered covertly at the gamester. He did not seem to be
enjoying his luck. His mouth was a little to a side; one nostril nearly
shut, and the other much inflated. The black dog was on his back, as
people say, in terrifying nursery metaphor; and he breathed hard under
the gruesome burden.

"He looks as if he could knife him," whispered Tabary, with round eyes.

The monk shuddered, and turned his face and spread his open hands to the
red embers. It was the cold that thus affected Dom Nicolas, and not any
excess of moral sensibility.

"Come now," said Villon--"about this ballade. How does it run so far?"
And beating time with his hand, he read it aloud to Tabary.

They were interrupted at the fourth rhyme by a brief and fatal movement
among the gamesters. The round was completed, and Thevenin was just
opening his mouth to claim another victory, when Montigny leaped up,
swift as an adder, and stabbed him to the heart. The blow took effect
before he had time to utter a cry, before he had time to move. A tremor
or two convulsed his frame; his hands opened and shut, his heels rattled
on the floor; then h