carried a poisoned barb. "Love may be
bought in Paris, but not in Amboise."

"But it costs more," retorted Villon. "In Amboise it costs a man's
whole life, whereas in Paris," he paused, shrugged his shoulders,
turned the drinking mug upside down and shook it whimsically,
"emptiness ended all: emptiness of pocket, emptiness of--but there are
seven separate emptinesses and any one was enough. Now listen and do
not interrupt again. There be many ways of gathering peaches, but your
way of kneeling at the foot of the tree with your hands folded like a
saint in stained glass is the worst of all. It is only in theory that
women, even lily Madonnas, love men to be saints; when it comes to
practice----"

He broke off, chuckling the soft complacent chuckle La Mothe so greatly
disliked, and putting the empty mug to his nose drew in the perfume of
the wine with a deep breath. The lids drooped slowly over his shining
eyes, and in the backward groping along the crooked byways which had
led from Paris pavements to the mercy of Louis by way of an escaped
gallows he forgot both La Mothe and Amboise. The voice of Paris the
beloved, Paris the ever mourned for, was in his ears; the jargon of the
Rue Maubert, the tinkle of the glasses through the doubtful but merry
songs of the Pet du Deable, whispers of gay voices which had long
passed beyond these voices, and the leering face, part satyr and part
poet, grew wholly poet in its remembrance. It is the blessing of
nature, and one of its most divine gifts, that memory brings back the
best from the past and leaves the worst covered. Even our snows of
yester year are roseate with the glow of imagination.

"The Madonna lily! Blessed is the man who gathers one and finds warm
blood in its pure veins. The gift of a good woman who loves and is
loved. Aye, aye, God send us all heaven while we're young. The
Madonna lily! Once there was such a one in the garden of life, pure,
sweet, and beloved. But the perfume was not for Francois Villon, and
the swine in him turned to the husks of the trough. Catherine de
Vaucelles; Catherine, dead these many years, dead but never forgotten,
a saint with the saints of God, and the rest--damned." He spoke to
himself rather than to La Mothe, but after a little spell of silence he
looked up, gravely in earnest. "You go too slowly. Any day the King
may crook his finger. What if he calls you to Valmy, then sends you
God knows where, God knows for how