“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 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 foeminam tradit.  Make me king’s pantler, make me Abbot of St. Denis, make me bailie of the Patatrac, and then I shall be changed indeed.  But as long as you leave me the poor scholar Francis Villon, without a farthing, why, of course, I remain the same.”

“The grace of God is all powerful.”

“I should be a heretic to question it,” said Francis.  “It has made you lord of Brisetout and bailie of the Patatrac; it has given me nothing but the quick wits under my hat and these ten toes upon my hands.  May I help myself to wine?  I thank you respectfully.  By God’s grace, you have a very superior vintage.”

The lord of Brisetout walked to and fro with his hands behind his back.  Perhaps he was not yet quite settled in his mind about the parallel between thieves and soldiers; perhaps Villon had interested him by some cross-thread of sympathy; perhaps his wits were simply muddled by so much unfamiliar reasoning; but whatever the cause, he somehow yearned to convert the young man to a better way of thinking, and could not make up his mind to drive him forth again into the street.

“There is something more than I can understand in this,” he said at length.  “Your mouth is full of subtleties, and the devil has led you very far astray; but the devil is only a very weak spirit before God’s truth, and all his subtleties vanish at a word of true honour, like darkness at morning.  Listen to me once more.  I learned long ago that a gentleman should live chivalrously and lovingly to God and the king and his lady; and though I have seen many strange things done, I have still striven to command my ways upon that rule.  It is not only written in all noble histories, but in every man’s heart, if he will take care to read.  You speak of food and wine, and I know very well that hunger is a difficult trial to endure; but