Robin Turgis raised his hands in a comical despair
as he muttered: "Here is the devil out of hell again." All the men
and women were looking eagerly at the door.
"Who is this?" asked Louis of Tristan, "whose coming seems so to
flutter these night-birds?"
"The strangest knave in all Paris," Tristan answered. "One Fran?ois
Villon, scholar, poet, drinker, sworder, drabber, blabber, good at
pen, point, and pitcher. In the Court of Miracles they call him the
King of the Cockleshells. Judge him for yourself."
CHAPTER II
MASTER FRAN?OIS VILLON
As Tristan spoke the tavern latch rattled, the tavern door was flung
noisily open, and the king's gaze rested on a strange figure framed
in the entry. The man was of middle height, spare and slight and
lean; his thin, eager face was bronzed with the suns and winds of a
generation, and lined with the stern ciphers of malign experiences.
His dark, straight hair was long and unkempt; the finer lines of his
cheeks and chin were blurred with the uncropped growth of a week-old
beard; his eyes were bright and quick; his glance restless and
comprehensive. A cunning reader of features would have found a home
for high thoughts behind the fine forehead, the lines of infinite
tenderness upon the mobile lips, the light of some noble
conflagration in the wild eyes.
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