MASTER FRANÇOIS VILLON





As Tristan spoke the tavern latch rattled, the tavern door was flung
noisily open, and the king's gaze rested on a strange figure framed
in the entry. The man was of middle height, spare and slight and
lean; his thin, eager face was bronzed with the suns and winds of a
generation, and lined with the stern ciphers of malign experiences.
His dark, straight hair was long and unkempt; the finer lines of his
cheeks and chin were blurred with the uncropped growth of a week-old
beard; his eyes were bright and quick; his glance restless and
comprehensive. A cunning reader of features would have found a home
for high thoughts behind the fine forehead, the lines of infinite
tenderness upon the mobile lips, the light of some noble
conflagration in the wild eyes. He was dressed in faded finery of
many colours, so ragged and patched and hostile that he had very
much the air of a gaudy scarecrow. His ruined cloak was tilted by a
long sword; his disordered thatch was crowned by a battered cap
grotesquely adorned with a cock's feather. In his leathern belt a
small vellum bound book of verses kept company with a dagger. For
all his whimsical appearance the king's keen eyes could note a
something gallant in the carriage of the scamp, could spy out
qualities of manhood beneath the battered bravery. He poised for a
moment on the threshold in a fantastic attitude of salutation ere he
slammed the door behind him and strode forward to meet his friends.