or was sometimes under the same roof
with establishments of a very different and peculiarly unedifying order.
The students had extraordinary privileges, which by all accounts they
abused extraordinarily. And while some condemned themselves to an almost
sepulchral regularity and seclusion, others fled the schools, swaggered
in the street "with their thumbs in their girdle," passed the night in
riot, and behaved themselves as the worthy forerunners of Jehan Frollo
in the romance of "Notre Dame de Paris." Villon tells us himself that he
was among the truants, but we hardly needed his avowal. The burlesque
erudition in which he sometimes indulged implies no more than the merest
smattering of knowledge; whereas his acquaintance with blackguard haunts
and industries could only have been acquired by early and consistent
impiety and idleness. He passed his degrees, it is true; but some of us
who have been to modern Universities will make their own reflections on
the value of the test. As for his three pupils, Colin Laurent, Girard
Gossouyn, and Jehan Marceau--if they were really his pupils in any
serious sense--what can we say but God help them! And sure enough, by
his own description, they turned out as ragged, rowdy, and ignorant as
was to be looked for from the views and manners of their rare preceptor.

At some time or other, before or during his University career, the poet
was adopted by Master Guillaume de Villon, chaplain of Saint
Benoit-le-Betourne, near the Sorbonne. From him he borrowed the surname
by which he is known to posterity. It was most likely from his house,
called the "Porte Rouge," and situated in a garden in the cloister of
St. Benoit, that Master Francis heard the bell of the Sorbonne ring out
the Angelus while he was finishing his "Small Testament" at
Christmastide in 1456. Towards this benefactor he usually gets credit
for a respectable display of gratitude. But with his trap and pitfall
style of writing, it is easy to make too sure. His sentiments are about
as much to be relied on as those of a professional beggar; and in this,
as in so many other matters, he comes towards us whining and piping the
eye, and goes off again with a whoop and his finger to his nose. Thus,
he calls Guillaume de Villon his "more than father," thanks him with a
great show of sincerity for having helped him out of many scrapes, and
bequeaths him his portion of renown. But the portion of renown which
belonged to a young thief, d