nted, but not far below freezing; and the
flakes were large, damp, and adhesive. The whole city was sheeted up.
An army might have marched from end to end and not a footfall given
the alarm. If there were any belated birds in heaven, they saw the
island like a large white patch, and the bridges like slim white
spars, on the black ground of the river. High up overhead the snow
settled among the tracery of the cathedral towers. Many a niche was
drifted full; many a statue wore a long white bonnet on its grotesque
or sainted head. The gargoyles had been transformed into great false
noses, drooping toward the point. The crockets were like upright
pillows swollen on one side. In the intervals of the wind there was a
dull sound of dripping about the precincts of the church.

The cemetery of St. John had taken its own share of the snow. All the
graves were decently covered; tall, white housetops stood around in
grave array; worthy burghers were long ago in bed, benightcapped like
their domiciles; there was no light in all the neighborhood but a
little peep from a lamp that hung swinging in the church choir, and
tossed the shadows to and fro in time to its oscillations. The clock
was hard on ten when the patrol went by with halberds and a lantern,
beating their hands; and they saw nothing suspicious about the
cemetery of St. John.

Yet there was a small house, backed up against the cemetery wall,
which was still awake, and awake to evil purpose, in that snoring
district. There was not much to betray it from without; only a stream
of warm vapor from the chimney-top, a patch where the snow melted
on the roof, and a few half-obliterated footprints at the door. But
within, behind the shuttered windows, Master Francis Villon, the poet,
and some of the thievish crew with whom he consorted, were keeping the
night alive and passing round the bottle.

A great pile of living embers diffused a strong and ruddy glow from
the arched chimney. Before this straddled Dom Nicolas, the Picardy
monk, with his skirts picked up and his fat legs bared to the
comfortable warmth. His dilated shadow cut the room in half; and the
firelight only escaped on either side of his broad person, and in
a little pool between his outspread feet. His face had the beery,
bruised appearance of the continual drinker's; it was covered with a
network of congested veins, purple in ordinary circumstances, but now
pale violet, for even with his back to the fire the cold