you will most easily understand me. Are you not, while careful to fill
your belly, disregarding another appetite in your heart, which spoils
the pleasure of your life and keeps you continually wretched?"

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