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 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 nervous 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 spouts 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