. She had found in all of it nothing but a pure
intellectual reason, beyond logic, where reason is one with intuition.

1905.

VILLON

Villon was the first modern poet; he remains the most modern of poets.
One requires a certain amount of old French, together with some
acquaintance with the argot of the time, to understand the words in
which he has written down his poems; many allusions to people and things
have only just begun to be cleared up, but, apart from these things, no
poet has ever brought himself closer to us, taken us into his confidence
more simply, than this _personnage peu recommandable, faineant, ivrogne,
joueur, debauche, ecornifleur, et, qui pis est, souteneur de filles,
escroc, voleur, crocheteur de portes et de coffres_. The most
disreputable of poets, he confesses himself to us with a frankness in
which shamelessness is difficult to distinguish from humility. M. Gaston
Paris, who for the most part is content to take him as he is, for better
for worse, finds it necessary to apologise for him when he comes to the
ballad of _La Grosse Margot_: this, he professes, we need not take as a
personal confession, but as a mere exercise in composition! But if we
are to understand Villon rightly, we must not reject even _la grosse
Margot_ from her place in his life. He was no dabbler in infamy, but one
who loved infamous things for their own sake. He loved everything for
its own sake: _la grosse Margot_ in the flesh, _les dames du temps
jadis_ in the spirit,

Sausses, brouets et gros poissons,
Tartes, flaons, oefs frits et pochez,
Perdus, et en toutes facons,

his mother, _le bon royaume de France_, and above all, Paris. _Il a
parcouru toute la France sans rapporter une seule impression de
campagne. C'est un poete de ville, plus encore: un poete de quartier. Il
n'est vraiment chez lui que sur la Montague Sainte-Genevieve, entre le
Palais, les colleges, le Chatelet, les tavernes, les rotisseries, les
tripots et les rues ou Marion l'Idole et la grande Jeanne de Bretagne
tiennent leur 'publique ecole'._ It is in this world that he lived, for
this world that he wrote. _Fils du peuple, entre par l'instruction dans
la classe lettree, puis declasse par ses vices, il dut a son humble
origine de rester en communication constante avec les sources eternelles
de toute vraie poesie._ And so he came into a literature of formalists,
like a child, a vigorous, unabashed, malicious child, into a c