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. You may 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 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.