He bent to grant her prayer, when suddenly
she shook herself free from his arms and began to sing faintly the
words of the song he had made for her:
"Daughters of Pleasure, one and all,
Then she caught her breath with a sob and slipped to the last lines
of the verse:
"Use your red lips before too late, Love ere love flies beyond
recall."
She shook her head back in a wild peal of laughter: then she gave a
great cry and fell forward. Villon caught her, looked in her face
and knew that she was dead, and that the best of his old bad life
lay dead with her.
Olivier in obedience to an order of the king's, gave a signal and
the girl's body was swiftly wrapped in a soldier's cloak and laid
gently upon a pair of crossed halberds. As this was being done, Noel
le Jolys came panting back with a red sword in his hand.
"Thibaut d'Aussigny is dead, sire," he said; "my hand was the hand
that finished him."
Then as his eyes fell on the dead body, they shone with sudden
tears. Villon went up to him and touched him on the shoulder.
"I leave this dead woman in your hands," he said, "for I think you
had a kindness for her.
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