s, or even priests and
monks.

To a knot of such learned pilferers our poet certainly belonged; and by
turning over a few more of M. Longnon's negatives, we shall get a clear
idea of their character and doings. Montigny and De Cayeux are names
already known; Guy Tabary, Petit-Jehan, Dom Nicolas, little Thibault,
who was both clerk and goldsmith, and who made picklocks and melted
plate for himself and his companions--with these the reader has still to
become acquainted. Petit-Jehan and De Cayeux were handy fellows and
enjoyed a useful pre-eminence in honour of their doings with the
picklock. "_Dictus des Cahyeus est fortis operator crochetorum_," says
Tabary's interrogation, "_sed dictus Petit-Jehan, ejus socius, est
forcius operator_." But the flower of the flock was little Thibault; it
was reported that no lock could stand before him; he had a persuasive
hand; let us salute capacity wherever we may find it. Perhaps the term
_gang_ is not quite properly applied to the persons whose fortunes we
are now about to follow; rather they were independent malefactors,
socially intimate, and occasionally joining together for some serious
operation, just as modern stockjobbers form a syndicate for an important
loan. Nor were they at all particular to any branch of misdoing. They
did not scrupulously confine themselves to a single sort of theft, as I
hear is common among modern thieves. They were ready for anything, from
pitch-and-toss to manslaughter. Montigny, for instance, had neglected
neither of these extremes, and we find him accused of cheating at games
of hazard on the one hand, and on the other of the murder of one
Thevenin Pensete in a house by the Cemetery of St. John. If time had
only spared us some particulars, might not this last have furnished us
with the matter of a grisly winter's tale?

At Christmas-time in 1456, readers of Villon will remember that he was
engaged on the "Small Testament." About the same period, _circa festum
nativitatis Domini_, he took part in a memorable supper at the Mule
Tavern, in front of the Church of St. Mathurin. Tabary, who seems to
have been very much Villon's creature, had ordered the supper in the
course of the afternoon. He was a man who had had troubles in his time,
and languished in the Bishop of Paris's prisons on a suspicion of
picking locks; confiding, convivial, not very astute--who had copied out
a whole improper romance with his own right hand. This supper-party was
to be