"You are very inflammable."
Villon caught at her words.
"My fire burns to the ashes. You can no more stay me from loving you
than you can stay the flowers from loving the soft air, or true men
from loving honour, or heroes from loving glory. I would rake the
moon from heaven for you."
The girl swayed her head daintily, as a queen rose might in a realm
of roses. There was something like pity in her eyes, but laughter
lingered on her lips.
"That promise has grown rusty since Adam first made it to Eve." She
eyed him in silence for a second time, deriding his sighs with a
smile: then "There is a rhyme in my mind," she cried, "about moons
and lovers," and she began to declaim, half muse, half minx, some
lines that had pleased her, to tease the importunate stranger.
"Life is unstable,
Love may uphold;
Fear goes in sable,
Courage in gold.
Mystery covers
Midnight and noon,
Heroes and lovers
Cry for the moon."
As the first words of the verse fell from her lips, Villon's heart
leaped and his eyes brightened for he knew the sound. They were part
of the rhymes himself had sent her on that very parchment which had
cost him first a dinner and then a drubbing.
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