k.

"Can't you hear it rattle in the gibbet?" said Villon. "They are
all dancing the devil's jig on nothing, up there. You may dance, my
gallants, you'll be none the warmer! Whew, what a gust! Down
went somebody just now! A medlar the fewer on the three-legged
medlar-tree!--I say, Dom Nicolas, it'll be cold to-night on the St.
Denis Road?" he asked.

Dom Nicolas winked both his big eyes, and seemed to choke upon his
Adam's apple. Montfaucon, the great grisly Paris gibbet, stood hard by
the St. Denis Road, and the pleasantry touched him on the raw. As for
Tabary, he laughed immoderately over the medlars; he had never heard
anything more light-hearted; and he held his sides and crowed. Villon
fetched him a fillip on the nose, which turned his mirth into an
attack of coughing.

"Oh, stop that row," said Villon, "and think of rhymes to 'fish.'"

"Doubles or quits," said Montigny doggedly.

"With all my heart," quoth Thevenin.

"Is there any more in that bottle?" asked the monk.

"Open another," said Villon. "How do you ever hope to fill that big
hogshead, your body, with little things like bottles? And how do you
expect to get to heaven? How many angels, do you fancy, can be spared
to carry up a single monk from Picardy? Or do you think yourself
another Elias--and they'll send the coach for you?"

"_Hominibus impossibile_" replied the monk, as he filled his glass.

Tabary was in ecstasies.

Villon filliped his nose again.

"Laugh at my jokes, if you like," he said.

"It was very good," objected Tabary.

Villon made a face at him. "Think of rhymes to 'fish,'" he said. "What
have you to do with Latin? You'll wish you knew none of it at the
great assizes, when the devil calls for Guido Tabary, clericus--the
devil with the humpback and red-hot finger-nails. Talking of the
devil," he added, in a whisper, "look at Montigny!"

All three peered covertly at the gamester. He did not seem to be
enjoying his luck. His mouth was a little to a side; one nostril
nearly shut, and the other much inflated. The black dog was on his
back, as people say, in terrifying nursery metaphor; and he breathed
hard under the gruesome burden.

"He looks as if he could knife him," whispered Tabary, with round
eyes.

The monk shuddered, and turned his face and spread his open hands to
the red embers. It was the cold that thus affected Dom Nicolas, and
not any excess of moral sensibility.

"Come now," said Villon--"about this ballade.