When the girls were close to him, Villon spoke:
"Well, young ladies, what is this trade of yours that has brought
you into trouble?"
Jehanneton dropped a curtsey.
"I make the caps that line helmets."
Isabeau followed quickly,
"I am a lace weaver. Enne, an honest trade."
Blanche came next,
"I am a slipper maker."
Denise ended the catalogue.
"And I a glover."
Mischief danced in Villon's eyes.
"No worse and no better. A word in your ear." He whispered something
into each girl's ear in turn, and as he did so, each girl started,
drew back, looked confused, laughed and blushed.
It is ever to be deplored that the worthy Dom Gregory, whose
ecclesiastical history of Poitou is the source of so much curious
information concerning Villon, should have omitted, from a mistaken
sense of delicacy, to chronicle precisely what it was that the poet
whispered in the ears of each of the girls. All he condescends to
record in his crabbed, canine Latin, is that Villon showed such
intimate acquaintance with certain physical peculiarities or
whimsical adventures private to each damsel that she believed the
speaker's knowledge to be little less than supernatural.
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