The pair were exchanging salutations, in a speech that the
speakers might well assume to be unknown to any person in the royal
garden. The speech, however, jingled very familiarly on Villon's
ear, for the man was talking in the amazing jargon which the
worshipful company of cockleshells had devised for the better
furtherance of their thievish purposes, and it appealed to Villon as
intimately as a song that is learned in childhood.
The first pilgrim questioned the other,
"What do you carry in your scrip?"
And the second answered:
"I carry a cockleshell."
The first pilgrim questioned again:
"What do you carry in your hand?"
And the second responded:
"A foot of steel."
Yet again the first speaker queried:
"Will you drink the king's health?"
And the answer came decisively:
"In a flagon of Burgundy."
Whereat the two pilgrims saluted and parted and went their several
ways and were swallowed up in the motley masquerade.
Villon's curiosity was piqued to the quick.
"How in heaven's name," he asked himself, "does it come to pass that
people speaking the thieves' lingo of the Court of Miracles find
themselves at a feast in the rose garden of King Louis?"
He set himself to try and track down one or the other of the
mysterious pilgrims, but neither of them was to be found.
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