Then came the vision of an angel's
visit and a prayer that had more of devil than angel in it, and then
came a quarrel, and a fight in darkness shattered by the flaming
torches of the watch and Thibaut's huge body lying on the ground a
huddled heap of shining armour. He remembered the ribbon that had
been flung to him from the gallery and thrust his hand into the
bosom of his vest of cloth of gold and found the token there, its
glossiness of white and gold soiled by its touch of the floor. Then
came his capture, his contumelious march through the gloomy streets,
his taste of an unknown prison, his taste of poppied wine, and then
sleep.
His next consciousness was that he was lying on a soft bed instead
of on a truss of straw, and that the darkness about him was not the
darkness of the cell. Suddenly someone drew a curtain and in a
second the place where he lay filled with a soft light and showed
that to Villon which astonished him as much as if the gates of
Paradise had parted before him and shown him the shining lines of
the hosts of Heaven. He remembered that he was lying in a stately
bed, nestled in snowy linen beneath a coverlet of crimson silk.
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