Villon was beside himself; he beat upon the door with his hands and
feet, and shouted hoarsely after the chaplain.

"Wormy old fox," he cried. "If I had my hand under your twist, I would
send you flying headlong into the bottomless pit."

A door shut in the interior, faintly audible to the poet down long
passages. He passed his hand over his mouth with an oath. And then the
humor of the situation struck him, and he laughed and looked
lightly up to heaven, where the stars seemed to be winking over his
discomfiture.

What was to be done? It looked very like a night in the frosty
streets. The idea of the dead woman popped into his imagination, and
gave him a hearty fright; what had happened to her in the early night
might very well happen to him before morning. And he so young! and
with such immense possibilities of disorderly amusement before him! He
felt quite pathetic over the notion of his own fate, as if it had been
some one else's, and made a little imaginative vignette of the scene
in the morning when they should find his body.

He passed all his chances under review, turning the white between his
thumb and forefinger. Unfortunately he was on bad terms with some old
friends who would once have taken pity on him in such a plight. He had
lampooned them in verses, he had beaten and cheated them; and yet now,
when he was in so close a pinch, he thought there was at least one who
might perhaps relent. It was a chance. It was worth trying at least,
and he would go and see.

On the way, two little accidents happened to him which colored his