more than is good for your health, sir." Villon rounded on him
angrily, with flushed face and shining eyes.

"Mind your own business!" he shouted, and the rest shouted with him
applaudingly. "What can a man do but drink when France is going to
the devil, with the Burgundians camped in the free fields where I
played in childhood, and a nincompoop sits on the throne and lets
them besiege his city?" The rascals laughed. Tristan whispered to
himself, "You'll be sorry you spoke, Master Villon." The king
propounded a problem. "No doubt you could do better than the king if
you wore the king's shoes?"

Villon rolled about on his barrel in an ecstasy of entertainment.
"If I could not do better than Louis Do-Nothing, Louis Dare-Nothing,
having his occasions and advantages, may Huguette there never kiss
me again."

His boon companions laughed. Huguette whispered sulkily, "Perhaps she
never will."

Isabeau came sidling and bridling up to Louis, wheedling like a cat
as she said: "Our François has made a rhyme of it, sir, how he would
carry himself if he wore the king's shoes."

Louis was always ready for any kind of gallantry. He put his arms
around the girl's slim body and drew her on to his knee. "Has he,
indeed, pretty minion?" he said. "May we not hear it, Master Poet?"

Villon, with mock modesty, had tried to restrain Isabeau from
speaking of the work, but now he changed his tune. "You may; you