No More Learning

He carried his four-and-twenty years with feverish animation.
Greed had made folds about his eyes, evil smiles had puckered
his mouth. The wolf and pig struggled together in his face. It
was an eloquent, sharp, ugly, earthly countenance. His hands
were small and prehensile, with fingers knotted like a cord; and
they were continually flickering in front of him in violent and
expressive pantomine. As for Tabary, a broad, complacent, admir-
ing imbecility breathed from his squash nose and slobbering lips:
he had become a thief, just as he might have become the most
decent of burgesses, by the imperious chance that rules the lives
of human geese and human donkeys.


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139бо
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
((
>
»
At the monk's other hand, Montigny and Thevenin Pensete
played a game of chance. About the first there clung some flavor
of good birth and training, as about a fallen angel: something
long, lithe, and courtly in the person; something aquiline and
darkling in the face. Thevenin, poor soul, was in great feather:
he had done a good stroke of knavery that afternoon in the
Faubourg St. Jacques, and all night he had been gaining from
Montigny. A flat smile illuminated his face; his bald head shone
rosily in a garland of red curls; his little protuberant stomach
shook with silent chucklings as he swept in his gains.
"Doubles or quits ? ” said Thevenin.
Montigny nodded grimly.
"Some may prefer to dine in state,” wrote Villon, "On bread
and cheese on silver plate. Or, or — help me out, Guido! ”
Tabary giggled.
“ Or parsley on a golden dish,” scribbled the poet.
The wind was freshening without; it drove the snow before
it, and sometimes raised its voice in a victorious whoop, and made
sepulchral grumblings in the chimney. The cold was growing
sharper as the night went on. Villon, protruding his lips, imitated
the gust with something between a whistle and a groan.
It was
an eerie, uncomfortable talent of the poet's, much detested by the
Picardy monk.
“Can't you hear it rattle in the gibbet? ” said Villon. “They
are all dancing the Devil's jig on nothing, up there.
dance, my gallants, you'll be none the warmer! Whew! what a
gust! Down went somebody just now! A medlar the fewer on
the three-legged medlar-tree! --I say, Dom Nicolas, it'll be cold
,
to-night on the St. Denis Road? ” he asked.
Dom Nicolas winked both his big eyes, and seemed to choke
upon his Adam's apple. Montfaucon, the great grisly Paris
gibbet, stood hard by the St. Denis Road, and the pleasantry
touched him on the raw. As for Tabary, he laughed immoder-
ately 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 cough-
ing
«Oh, stop that row,” said Villon, “and think of rhymes to
«
You may
'fish. ) »
« Doubles or quits,” said Montigny doggedly.
1


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ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
13961
>
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 impossibile," 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.
" It was very good,” objected Tabary.
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 hump-back and red-hot
finger-nails. 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
on his back, as people say in terrifying nursery metaphor;
and he breathed hard under the grewsome burden.
“He looks as if he could knife him," whispered Tabary, with
C
was
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 vic-
tory, 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 con-
vulsed his frame; his hands opened and shut, his heels rattled on


## p. 13962 (#148) ##########################################

13962
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
the floor; then his head rolled backward over one shoulder with
the eyes wide open, and Thevenin Pensete's spirit had returned
to Him who made it.
Every one sprang to his feet; but the business was over in two
twos. The four living fellows looked at each other in rather a
ghastly fashion; the dead man contemplating a corner of the roof
with a singular and ugly leer.
My God! ” said Tabary; and he began to pray in Latin.
Villon broke out into hysterical laughter. He came a step
forward and ducked a ridiculous bow at Thevenin, and laughed
still louder. Then he sat down suddenly, all of a heap, upon a
stool, and continued laughing bitterly as though he would shake
himself to pieces.
Montigny recovered his composure first.
Let's see what he has about him,” he remarked; and he
picked the dead man's pockets with a practiced hand, and divided
the money into four equal portions on the table. « There's for
you,” he said.
The monk received his share with a deep sigh, and a single
stealthy glance at the dead Thevenin, who was beginning to sink
into himself and topple sideways off the chair.
“We're all in for it,” cried Villon, swallowing his mirth. “It's
a hanging job for every man jack of us that's here — not to
speak of those who aren't. ” He made a shocking gesture in the
air with his raised right hand, and put out his tongue and threw
his head on one side, so as to counterfeit the appearance of one
who has been hanged. Then he pocketed his share of the spoil,
and executed a shuffle with his feet as if to restore the circula-
tion.
Tabary was the last to help himself; he made a dash at the
money and retired to the other end of the apartment.
Montigny stuck Thevenin upright in the chair, and drew out
the dagger, which was followed by a jet of blood.
« You fellows had better be moving,” he said, as he wiped the
blade on his victim's doublet.
“I think we had,” returned Villon with a gulp. "Damn his
fat head! ” he broke out. «It sticks in my throat like phlegm.
What right has a man to have red hair when he is dead ? ) And
he fell all of a heap again upon the stool, and fairly covered his
face with his hands.
6
.


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ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
13963
1
1
1
1
1
Montigny and Dom Nicolas laughed aloud, even Tabary feebly
chiming in.
"Cry-baby,” said the monk.
“I always said he was a woman,” added Montigny with a
sneer. “Sit up, can't you ? ” he went on, giving another shake to
the murdered body. «Tread out that fire, Nick! ”
But Nick was better employed: he was quietly taking Villon's
purse, as the poet sat, limp and trembling, on the stool where he
had been making a ballade not three minutes before. Montigny
and Tabary dumbly demanded a share of the booty, which the
monk silently promised as he passed the little bag into the bosom
of his gown.
In many ways an artistic nature unfits a man for
practical existence.
No sooner had the theft been accomplished than Villon shook
himself, jumped to his feet, and began helping to scatter and
extinguish the embers. Meanwhile Montigny opened the door and
cautiously peered into the street. The coast was clear; there was
no meddlesome patrol in sight. Still it was judged wiser to slip
out severally; and as Villon was himself in a hurry to escape
from the neighborhood of the dead Thevenin, and the rest were in
a still greater hurry to get rid of him before he should discover
the loss of his money, he was the first by general consent to
issue forth into the street.
The wind had triumphed and swept all the clouds from
heaven. Only a few vapors, as thin as moonlight, fleeted rapidly
across the stars. It was bitter cold; and by a common optical
effect, things seemed almost more definite than in the broadest
daylight. The sleeping city was absolutely still; a company of
white hoods, a field full of little alps, below the twinkling stars.
Villon cursed his fortune. Would it were still snowing! Now,
wherever he went, he left an indelible trail behind him on the
glittering streets; wherever he went, he was still tethered to the
house by the cemetery of St. John; wherever he went, he must
weave, with his own plodding feet, the rope that bound him to
the crime and would bind him to the gallows. The leer of the
dead man came back to him with a new significance. He snapped
his fingers as if to pluck up his own spirits; and choosing a street
at random, stepped boldly forward in the snow.
Two things preoccupied him as he went: the aspect of the
gallows at Montfaucon in this bright, windy phase of the night's
existence, for one; and for another, the look of the dead man


## p. 13964 (#150) ##########################################

13964
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
with his bald head and garland of red curls. Both struck cold
upon his heart; and he kept quickening his pace as if he could
escape from unpleasant thoughts by mere fleetness of foot.
Sometimes he looked back over his shoulder with a sudden nerv-
ous jerk; but he was the only moving thing in the white streets,
except when the wind swooped round a corner and threw up the
snow, which was beginning to freeze, in spots of glittering dust.
Suddenly he saw, a long way before him, a black clump and
a couple of lanterns. The clump was in motion, and the lanterns
,
swung as though carried by men walking. It was a patrol. And
though it was merely crossing his line of march, he judged it
wiser to get out of eyeshot as speedily as he could. He was not
in the humor to be challenged, and he was conscious of making
a very conspicuous mark upon the snow. Just on his left hand
there stood a great hotel, with some turrets and a large porch
before the door: it was half ruinous, he remembered, and had
long stood empty; and so he made three steps of it, and jumped
into the shelter of the porch. It was pretty dark inside, after
the glimmer of the snowy streets; and he was groping forward
with outspread hands, when he stumbled over some substance
which offered an indescribable mixture of resistances, hard and
soft, firm and loose, His heart gave a leap, and he sprang two
steps back and stared dreadfully at the obstacle. Then he gave a
little laugh of relief. It was only a woman, and she dead.
He
knelt beside her to make sure upon this latter point. She was
freezing cold, and rigid like a stick. A little ragged finery flut-
tered in the wind about her hair, and her cheeks had been heav-
ily rouged that same afternoon. Her pockets were quite empty;
but in her stocking, underneath the garter, Villon found two of
the small coins that went by the name of whites. It was little
enough, but it was always something; and the poet was moved
with a deep sense of pathos that she should have died before she
had spent her money. That seemed to him a dark and pitiable
mystery; and he looked from the coins in his hand to the dead
woman, and back again to the coins, shaking his head over the
riddle of man's life. Henry V. of England, dying at Vincennes
just after he had conquered France, and this poor jade cut off by
a cold draught in a great man's doorway before she had time to
spend her couple of whites,- it seemed a cruel way to carry on
the world. Two whites would have taken such a little while to
squander; and yet it would have been one more good taste in the


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ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
13965
mouth, one more smack of the lips, before the Devil got the soul
and the body was left to birds and vermin. He would like to
use all his tallow before the light was blown out and the lantern
broken.
While these thoughts were passing through his mind, he was
feeling, half mechanically, for his purse. Suddenly his heart
stopped beating; a feeling of cold scales passed up the back of
his legs, and a cold blow seemed to fall upon his scalp. He stood
petrified for a moment; then he felt again with one feverish
movement; and then his loss burst upon him, and he was cov-
ered at once with perspiration. To spendthrifts money is so liv-
ing and actual — it is such a thin veil between them and their
pleasures! There is only one limit to their fortune,- that of
time; and a spendthrift with only a few crowns is the Emperor of
Rome until they are spent. For such a person to lose his money
is to suffer the most shocking reverse, and fall from heaven to
hell, from all to nothing, in a breath. And all the more if
he has put his head in the halter for it; if he may be hanged
to-morrow for that same purse so dearly earned, so foolishly
departed! Villon stood and cursed; he threw the two whites
into the street; he shook his fist at heaven; he stamped, and was
not horrified to find himself trampling the poor corpse. Then
he began rapidly to retrace his steps towards the house beside
the cemetery. He had forgotten all fear of the patrol, which was
long gone by at any rate, and had no idea but that of his lost
purse. It was in vain that he looked right and left upon the
snow: nothing was to be seen. He had not dropped it in the
streets. Had it fallen in the house? He would have liked dearly
to go in and see; but the idea of the grisly occupant unmanned
him. And he saw besides, as he drew near, that their efforts
to put out the fire had been unsuccessful; on the contrary, it had
broken into a blaze, and a changeful light played in the chinks
of door and window, and revived his terror for the authorities and
Paris gibbet.
He returned to the hotel with the porch, and groped about
upon the snow for the money he had thrown away in his childish
passion. But he could only find one white: the other had prob-
ably struck sideways and sunk deeply in. With a single white
in his pocket, all his projects for a rousing night in some wild
tavern vanished utterly away. And it was not only pleasure that
fled laughing from his grasp: positive discomfort, positive pain,


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13966
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
1
7
2
31
no
answer.
A
C
attacked him as he stood ruefully before the porch. His per-
spiration had dried upon him; and although the wind had now
fallen, a binding frost was setting in stronger with every hour,
and he felt benumbed and sick at heart. What was to be done?
Late as was the hour, improbable as was success, he would try
the house of his adopted father, the chaplain of St. Benoît.
He ran there all the way, and knocked timidly.
There was
He knocked again and again, taking heart with
every stroke; and at last steps were heard approaching from
within. A barred wicket fell open in the iron-studded door, and
emitted a gush of yellow light.
«Hold up your face to the wicket,” said the chaplain from
within.
"It's only me,” whimpered Villon.
«Oh, it's only you, is it ? ” returned the chaplain; and he cursed
him with foul unpriestly oaths for disturbing him at such an
hour, and bade him be off to hell, where he came from.
"My hands are blue to the wrist,” pleaded Villon; "my feet
are dead and full of twinges; my nose aches with the sharp air;
the cold lies at my heart. I may be dead before morning. Only
this once, father, and before God, I will never ask again ! »
«You should have come earlier,” said the ecclesiastic coolly.
«Young men require a lesson now and then. ” He shut the
wicket and retired deliberately into the interior of the house.
Villon was beside himself; he beat upon the door with his
hands and feet, and shouted hoarsely after the chaplain.
“Wormy old fox! ” he cried. « If I had my hand under your
twist, I would send you flying headlong into the bottomless
pit. ”
A door shut in the interior, faintly audible to the poet down
long passages. He passed his hand over his mouth with an oath.
And then the humor of the situation struck him, and he laughed
and looked lightly up to heaven, where the stars seemed to be
winking over his discomfiture.
What was to be done ? It looked very like a night in the
frosty streets. The idea of the dead woman popped into his
imagination, and gave him a hearty fright: what had happened
to her in the early night might very well happen to him before
morning. And he so young! and with such immense possibilities
of disorderly amusement before him! He felt quite pathetic over
the notion of his own fate, as if it had been some one else's, and


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ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
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1
1
1
made a little imaginative vignette of the scene in the morning
when they should find his body.
He passed all his chances under review, turning the white
between his thumb and forefinger.
Unfortunately he was on bad
terms with some old friends, who would once have taken pity
on him in such a plight. He had lampooned them in verses;
he had beaten and cheated them: and yet now, when he was in
so close a pinch, he thought there was at least one who might
perhaps relent. It was a chance. It was worth trying at least,
and he would go and see.
On the way, two little accidents happened to him which col-
ored his musings in a very different manner. For, first, he fell in
with the track of a patrol, and walked in it for some hundred yards,
although it lay out of his direction. And this spirited him up: at
least he had confused his trail; for he was still possessed with
the idea of people tracking him all about Paris over the snow,
and collaring him next morning before he was awake. The other
matter affected him quite differently. He passed a street corner
where, not so long before, a woman and her child had been
devoured by wolves. This was just the kind of weather, he
reflected, when wolves might take it into their heads to enter
Paris again; and a lone man in these deserted streets would run
the chance of something worse than a mere scare. He stopped
and looked upon the place with an unpleasant interest. It was a
centre where several lanes intersected each other; and he looked
down them all, one after another, and held his breath to listen,
lest he should detect some galloping black things on the snow or
hear the sound of howling between him and the river.
He re-
membered his mother telling him the story and pointing out the
spot, while he was yet a child. His mother! If he only knew
where she lived, he might make sure at least of shelter. He
determined he would inquire upon the morrow; nay, he would go
and see her too, poor old girl! So thinking, he arrived at his
destination - his last hope for the night.
The house was quite dark, like its neighbors; and yet after a
few taps he heard a movement overhead, a door opening, and
a cautious voice asking who was there. The poet named him-
self in a loud whisper, and waited, not without some trepidation,
the result. Nor had he to wait long. A window was suddenly
opened, and a pailful of slops splashed down upon the doorstep.


## p. 13968 (#154) ##########################################

13968
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
ini! !
1
Villon had not been unprepared for something of the sort, and
had put himself as much in shelter as the nature of the porch
admitted; but for all that, he was deplorably drenched below the
waist. His hose began to freeze almost at once. Death from
cold and exposure stared him in the face; he remembered he
was of phthisical tendency, and began coughing tentatively. But
the gravity of the danger steadied his nerves. He stopped a
few hundred yards from the door where he had been so rudely
used, and reflected with his finger to his nose. He could only
see one way of getting a lodging, and that was to take it. He
had noticed a house not far away, which looked as if it might be
easily broken into; and thither he betook himself promptly, enter-
taining himself on the way with the idea of a room still hot,
with a table still loaded with the remains of supper, where he
might pass the rest of the black hours, and whence he should
issue on the morrow with an armful of valuable plate. He even
considered on what viands and what wines he should prefer; and
as he was calling the roll of his favorite dainties, roast fish pre-
sented itself to his mind with an odd mixture of amusement and
horror.
“I shall never finish that ballade,” he thought to himself; and
then, with another shudder at the recollection, “Oh, damn his fat
head! ” he repeated fervently, and spat upon the snow.
The house in question looked dark at first sight; but as Vil.
lon made a preliminary inspection in search of the handiest point
of attack, a little twinkle of light caught his eye from behind a
curtained window.
« The Devil! ” he thought. “People awake! Some student or
some saint, confound the crew! Can't they get drunk and lie in
bed snoring like their neighbors! What's the good of curfew,
and poor devils of bell-ringers jumping at a rope's end in bell-
towers ? What's the use of day, if people sit up all night? The
gripes to them ! He grinned as he saw where his logic was
leading him. "Every man to his business, after all,” added he:
(and if they're awake, by the Lord, I may come by a supper
honestly for once, and cheat the Devil. ”
He went boldly to the door and knocked with an assured
hand. On both previous occasions, he had knocked timidly and
with some dread of attracting notice; but now when he had just
discarded the thought of a burglarious entry, knocking at a door
C


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ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
13969
1
:
11
TO
seemed a mighty simple and innocent proceeding. The sound of
his blows echoed through the house with thin, phantasmal rever-
berations, as though it were quite empty; but these had scarcely
died away before a measured tread drew near, a couple of bolts
were withdrawn, and one wing was opened broadly, as though no
guile or fear of guile were known to those within. A tall figure
of a man, muscular and spare, but a little bent, confronted Villon.
The head was massive in bulk, but finely sculptured; the nose
blunt at the bottom, but refining upward to where it joined a
pair of strong and honest eyebrows; the mouth and eyes sur-
rounded with delicate markings, and the whole face based upon a
thick white beard, boldly and squarely trimmed. Seen as it was
by the light of a flickering hand-lamp, it looked perhaps nobler
than it had a right to do; but it was a fine face, honorable rather
than intelligent, strong, simple, and righteous.
“You knock late, sir,” said the old man in resonant, courteous
tones.
Villon cringed, and brought up many servile words of apology:
at a crisis of this sort, the beggar was uppermost in him, and the
man of genius hid his head with confusion.
“You are cold,” repeated the old man, “and hungry? Well,
And he ordered him into the house with a noble
enough gesture.
"Some great seigneur,” thought Villon, as his host, setting
down the lamp on the flagged pavement of the entry, shot the
bolts once more into their places.
«You will pardon me if I go in front,” he said, when this
was done; and he preceded the poet up-stairs into a large apart-
ment, warmed with a pan of charcoal and lit by a great lamp
hanging from the roof. It was very bare of furniture: only some
gold plate on a sideboard; some folios; and a stand of armor be-
tween the windows. Some smart tapestry hung upon the walls,
representing the crucifixion of our Lord in one piece, and in
another a scene of shepherds and shepherdesses by a running
stream. Over the chimney was a shield of arms.
“Will you seat yourself,” said the old man, “and forgive me
if I leave you? I am alone in my house to-night, and if you are
to eat I must forage for you myself. ”
No sooner was his host gone than Villon leaped from the
chair on which he had just seated himself, and began examining
the room with the stealth and passion of a cat. He weighed the
XXIV–874
step in. ”
(
(
(


## p. 13970 (#156) ##########################################

13970
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
gold flagons in his hand, opened all the folios, and investigated the
arms upon the shield, and the stuff with which the seats were
lined. He raised the window curtains, and saw that the windows
were set with rich stained glass, in figures, so far as he could see,
of martial import. Then he stood in the middle of the room,
drew a long breath, and retaining it with puffed cheeks, looked
round and round him, turning on his heels, as if to impress every
feature of the apartment on his memory.
“Seven pieces of plate," he said. “If there had been ten, I
would have risked it. A fine house, and a fine old master, so
help me all the saints! »
And just then hearing the old man's tread returning along
the corridor, he stole back to his chair, and began humbly toast-
ing his wet legs before the charcoal pan.
His entertainer had a plate of meat in one hand and a jug
of wine in the other. He set down the plate upon the table,
motioning Villon to draw in his chair; and going to the side-
board, brought back two goblets, which he filled.
“I drink your better fortune,” he said, gravely touching Vil-
lon's cup with his own.
« To our better acquaintance,” said the poet, growing bold. A
mere man of the people would have been awed by the courtesy
of the old seigneur, but Villon was hardened in that matter:
he had made mirth for great lords before now, and found them
as black rascals as himself. And so he devoted himself to the
viands with a ravenous gusto, while the old man, leaning back-
ward, watched him with steady, curious eyes.
“You have blood on your shoulder, my man,” he said.
Montigny must have laid his wet right hand upon him as he
left the house. He cursed Montigny in his heart.
“It was none of my shedding,” he stammered.
“I had not supposed so," returned his host quietly.
"
"A
brawl ? »
“Well, something of that sort,” Villon admitted with a qua-
ver.
"Perhaps a fellow murdered ? »
“Oh no, not murdered,” said the poet, more and more con-
fused. "It was all fair play — murdered by accident.
I had no
hand in it, God strike me dead! ” he added fervently.
“One rogue the fewer, I daresay,” observed the master of
the house.
>
>>


## p. 13971 (#157) ##########################################

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
13971
»
(
»
»
.
»
(
“You may dare to say that,” agreed Villon, infinitely relieved.
"As big a rogue as there is between here and Jerusalem. He
turned up his toes like a lamb. But it was a nasty thing to look
at.
I daresay you've seen dead men in your time, my lord ? ”
he added, glancing at the armor.
Many,” said the old man. “I have followed the wars, as
you imagine. ”
Villon laid down his knife and fork, which he had just taken
up again.
“Were any of them bald ? ” he asked.
“Oh yes, and with hair as white as mine. ”
“I don't think I should mind the white so much," said Villon.
« His was red. ” And he had a return of his shuddering and
tendency to laughter, which he drowned with a great draught
of wine. «I'm a little put out when I think of it,” he went on.
“I knew him — damn him! And then the cold gives a man fan-
cies - or the fancies give a man cold, I don't know which. ”
"Have you any money ? ” asked the old man.
"I have one white,” returned the poet, laughing. “I got it
out of a dead jade's stocking in a porch. She was as dead as
Cæsar, poor wench, and as cold as a church, with bits of ribbon
sticking in her hair. This is a hard world in winter for wolves
and wenches and poor rogues like me. ”
"I," said the old man, am Enguerrand de la Feuillée, sei-
gneur de Brisetout, bailly du Patatrac. Who and what may you
be ? "
Villon rose and made a suitable reverence. “I am called
Francis Villon,” he said, “a poor Master of Arts of this univer-
sity. I know some Latin, and a deal of vice. I can make chan-
sons, ballades, lais, virelais, and roundels, and I am very fond of
wine. I was born in a garret, and I shall not improbably die
upon the gallows. I may add, my lord, that from this night for-
ward I am your Lordship's very obsequious servant to command. ”
“No servant of mine,” said the knight: “my guest for this
evening, and no more. ”
"A very grateful guest,” said Villon politely; and he drank
in dumb show to his entertainer.
“You are shrewd,” began the old man, tapping his forehead,
very shrewd; you have learning; you are a clerk: and yet you
take a small piece of money off a dead woman in the street. Is
it not a kind of theft ? »
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ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
The poor
“It is a kind of theft much practiced in the wars, my lord. ”
« The wars
are the field of honor,” returned the old man
proudly. “There a man plays his life upon the cast; he fights
in the name of his lord the king, his Lord God, and all their
Lordships the holy saints and angels. ”
“Put it,” said Villon, “that I were really a thief: should I not
play my life also, and against heavier odds ? »
“For gain but not for honor. ”
“Gain ? ) repeated Villon with a shrug. “Gain!
fellow wants supper, and takes it. So does the soldier in a
campaign. Why, what are all these requisitions we hear so much
about? If they are not gain to those who take them, they are
loss enough to the others. The men-at-arms drink by a good
fire, while the burgher bites his nails to buy them wine and
wood. I have seen a good many plowmen 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
over-hard: there are spirits in every rank not easily moved by
pity; and indeed many follow arms who are no better than brig-
ands. ”
“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 people's sleep; the farmer grum-
bles a bit, but sups none the less wholesomely on what remains.
You come up blowing gloriously on a trumpet, take away the
a
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 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!
(
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ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
13973
-
some
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 im-
pudence. “If your Lordship had done me the honor to follow
my argument! ” he said.
"I do you too much honor in submitting to your presence,”
said the knight. « Learn to curb your tongue when you speak
with old and honorable men, or one hastier than I may
reprove you in a sharper fashion. ” And he rose and paced the
lower end of the apartment, struggling with anger and antipathy.
Villon surreptitiously refilled his cup, and settled himself more
comfortably in the chair, crossing his knees and leaning his head
upon one hand and the elbow against the back of the chair. He
was now replete and warm; and he was in no wise frightened for
his host, having gauged him as justly as was possible between
two such different characters. The night was far spent, and in a
very comfortable fashion after all; and he felt morally certain of
a safe departure on the morrow.
“Tell me one thing,” said the old man, pausing in his walk.
"Are you really a thief ? "
"I claim the sacred rights of hospitality," returned the poet.
“My lord, I am. ”
"You are very young,” the knight continued.
"I should never have been so old,” replied Villon, showing
his fingers, “if I had not helped myself with these ten talents.
They have been my nursing mothers and my nursing fathers. ”
« You may still repent and change. ”
"I repent daily,” said the poet. « There are few people
more given to repentance than poor Francis. As for change, let


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13974
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
somebody change my circumstances. A man must continue to
eat, if it were only that he may continue to repent. ”
«The change must begin in the heart,” returned the old man
solemnly.
“My dear lord,” answered Villon, “do you really fancy that I
steal for pleasure ? I hate stealing, like any other piece of work
or of danger. My teeth chatter when I see a gallows. But I
must eat, I must drink, I must mix in society of some sort.
What the Devil! Man is not a solitary animal - Cui Deus fæmi-
—
nam tradit. Make me king's pantler — make me abbot of St.
Denis- make me bailly of the Patatrac; and then I shall be
changed indeed.