Stories By English Authors: France (Selected by Scribners) | Page 6

at
least, and he would go and see.
On the way, two little accidents happened to him which coloured 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 remembered 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 neighbours; 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 himself 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 door-step. 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, entertaining 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 favourite dainties, roast fish presented 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 Villon 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 neighbours? 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 seemed a mighty simple and
innocent proceeding. The sound of his blows echoed through the house
with thin, phantasmal reverberations, as