see. A light pocket is a plague, but a light heart and a light love
make amends for much." And as he spoke he slapped his pocket whose
emptiness gave back no jingle, drummed lightly on his bosom and
nodded gallantly to the admiring womenkind. "You are a philosopher,"
said the king. "You are a little angel," cried the Abbess, flinging
her arms round the poet in an enthusiastic hug. The girl's homage
seemed little to Villon's taste, for he disengaged himself swiftly
from the embrace, saying as he did so: "Gently, Abbess, gently! My
shoulders tingle and my sides ache too sorely for claspings."

Villon's manner was so decisive and his meaning so obvious that the
curiosity of the gang burned keenly and found voice in René de
Montigny, who asked what ailed him with commendable solicitude.
Villon shook his head, applied himself again to the cannakin, and
emerged from it with a most melancholy expression of countenance.
"You behold in me, friends," he sighed, "a victim of love," and his
visage showed so lugubrious that it sorely tempted Louis to laugh,
and hotly moved Huguette to anger, for she raged up to Villon,
challenging the meaning of his speech. Villon gently cooled her
impatience. "Hush, hush, my girl! There are many kinds of love, as
you ought to know well enough. I am a rogue and a vagabond, no less,
and so sometimes I love you and other such Athanasian wenches;
Isabeau there and Jehanneton."

At this mention of her novices' names the Abbess turned on the two
girls fiercely. "You minxes," she cried. "Do you make eyes at my
man?" The pair shrank back from her fury, but Master Villon, who
seemed suddenly to have fallen into a meditative mood, rambled on in
a, kind of reverie, as indifferent to the Fircone and all his
surroundings as if he were a lonely shepherd tending his sheep on a