e fiery Rhone wines, he was little to
be pitied on the conditions of his exile. Villon, in a remarkably bad
ballad, written in a breath, heartily thanked and fulsomely belauded the
Parliament; the _envoi_, like the proverbial postscript of a lady's
letter, containing the pith of his performance in a request for three
days' delay to settle his affairs and bid his friends farewell. He was
probably not followed out of Paris, like Antoine Fradin, the popular
preacher, another exile of a few years later, by weeping multitudes;[13]
but I daresay one or two rogues of his acquaintance would keep him
company for a mile or so on the south road, and drink a bottle with him
before they turned. For banished people, in those days, seem to have set
out on their own responsibility, in their own guard, and at their own
expense. It was no joke to make one's way from Paris to Roussillon
alone and penniless in the fifteenth century. Villon says he left a rag
of his tails on every bush. Indeed, he must have had many a weary tramp,
many a slender meal, and many a to-do with blustering captains of the
Ordonnance. But with one of his light fingers, we may fancy that he took
as good as he gave; for every rag of his tail he would manage to
indemnify himself upon the population in the shape of food, or wine, or
ringing money; and his route would be traceable across France and
Burgundy by housewives and inn-keepers lamenting over petty thefts, like
the track of a single human locust. A strange figure he must have cut in
the eyes of the good country people: this ragged, blackguard city poet,
with a smack of the Paris student, and a smack of the Paris street arab,
posting along the highways, in rain or sun, among the green fields and
vineyards. For himself, he had no taste for rural loveliness; green
fields and vineyards would be mighty indifferent to Master Francis; but
he would often have his tongue in his cheek at the simplicity of rustic
dupes, and often, at city gates, he might stop to contemplate the gibbet
with its swinging bodies, and hug himself on his escape.

How long he stayed at Roussillon, how far he became the _protege_ of the
Bourbons, to whom that town belonged, or when it was that he took part,
under the auspices of Charles of Orleans, in a rhyming tournament to be
referred to once again in the pages of the present volume, are matters
that still remain in darkness, in spite of M. Longnon's diligent
rummaging among archives. When we