Part 23

Villon was sensibly nettled under all this sermonizing. "You think I have no sense of honor!" he cried. "I'm poor enough, God knows! It's hard to see rich people with their gloves, and you blowing your hands. An empty belly is a bitter thing, although you speak so lightly of it. If you had had as many as I, perhaps you would change your tune. Anyway, I'm a thief--make the most of that--but I'm not a devil from hell, God strike me dead. I would have you to know I've an honor of my own, as good as yours, though I don't prate about it all day long, as if it were a God's miracle to have any. It seems quite natural to me; I keep it in its box till it's wanted. Why now, look you here, how long have I been in this room with you? Did you not tell me you were alone in the house? Look at your gold plate! You're strong, if you like, but you're old and unarmed, and I have my knife. What did I want but a jerk of the elbow, and here would have been you with the cold steel in your bowels, and there would have been me, linking in the streets, with an armful of gold cups! Did you suppose I hadn't wit enough to see that? And I scorned the action. There are your damned goblets, as safe as in a church; there are you, with your heart ticking as good as new; and here am I, ready to go out again as poor as I came in, with my one white that you threw in my teeth! And you think I have no sense of honor--God strike me dead!"

The old man stretched out his right arm. "I will tell you what you are," he said. "You are a rogue, my man, an impudent and a black-hearted rogue and vagabond. I have passed an hour with you. Oh! believe me, I feel myself disgraced! And you have eaten and drank at my table. But now I am sick at your presence; the day has come, and the night-bird should be off to his roost. Will you go before, or after?"

"Which you please," returned the poet, rising. "I believe you to be strictly honorable." He thoughtfully emptied his cup. "I wish I could add you were intelligent," he went on, knocking on his head with his knuckles. "Age, age! the brains stiff and rheumatic."

The old man preceded him from a point of self-respect; Villon followed, whistling, with his thumbs in his girdle.

"God pity you," said the lord of Brisetout at the door.

"Good-bye, papa," returned Villon, with a yawn. "Many thanks for the cold mutton."

The door closed behind him. The dawn was breaking over the white roofs. A chill, uncomfortable morning ushered in the day. Villon stood and heartily stretched himself in the middle of the road.

"A very dull old gentleman," he thought. "I wonder what his goblets may be worth."

INDEX

Aesop beast-fables Apuleius _The Golden Ass_ likeness to Kipling Aristotle _Secretum Secretorum_

Barrett, Charles Raymond _Short-Story Writings_ Beast-fables Boccaccio _Teseide_ _Decameron_ Brown, Dr. John (1810-1882) _Rab and His Friends_ Bunyan, John

Cable _Strange True Stories of Louisiana_ Cervantes _Don Quixote_ Chaucer Coleridge _Ancient Mariner_

_Deeds of the Romans, The_ Defoe, Daniel (1661-1731) _Short-Story Essay_ _The Apparition of Mrs. Veal_ Dickens, Charles (1812-1870) _The Boots at the Holly-Tree Inn_ Drelincourt _Book on Death_

Fenton, Geoffrey _Tragical Discourses_ Fuller, Thomas

Garnett, Richard _The Poison Maid_ _Gesta Romanorum, The_

Hardy, Thomas (1840) _The Three Strangers_ Harris, Chandler _Uncle Remus_ Harte, Bret (1839-1902) _The Outcasts of Poker Flat_ Hawthorne, Nathaniel (1807-1864) _Dr. Heidegger's Experiment_ Hogg, James (1770-1835) the Ettrick Shepherd early life _Shepherd's Calendar_ _The Brownie of Bodsbeck_ Professor Wilson on _The Mysterious Bride_ Holmes, Oliver Wendell _Elsie Venner_ Hood, Thomas _The Dream of Eugene Aram_

_Ingoldsby Legends, The_ Irving, Washington (1783-1859) _The Devil and Tom Walker_

James, Henry (1843) _Julia Bride_

Kipling, Rudyard _Just-so Stories_ _Jungle-Book_ _Finest Story in the World_ _The Man Who Would be King_

Laws of the short-story _Leech of Folkstone, The_

Malory, _Morte D'Arthur_ Matthews, Professor Brander Morris, William, _Defence of Guinevere_

Nathaniel Hawthorne, _Rappaccini's Daughter_ North, Sir Thomas, _Plutarch's Lives_

_Of Temporal Tribulation_ _Of the Transgressions and Wounds of the Soul_

Paynter, William, _The Palace of Pleasure_ _Peregrine Pickle_ Poe, Edgar Allan (1809-1849), laws of short-story; essay on Hawthorne; _Tale of the Ragged Mountains_; _The Purloined Letter_. Powell, Prof. J.W. _Practical Treatise on the Art of the Short-Story_

_Redgauntlet_ _Roderick Random_ Rossetti, _White Ship_

Shakespeare, _Pericles, Prince of Tyre_; borrower. Shelton, Thomas, _Don Quixote_ Short-Story, Evolution of the Smith, Herbert H. Sterne, Laurence Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850-1894), _A Lodging for the Night_ Stockton, Frank R. (1834-1902), _A Story of Seven Devils_

Tennyson, _The Idylls of the King_; _The Lady of Shalott_. _Tom Jones_ Trollope, Anthony Twain, Mark (1835), _A Dog's Tale_

Underdown, Thomas, _Heliodorus_

_Vicar of Wakefield_

Walton, Isaak Wilson, Professor, on James Hogg

END OF VOL. I