A Lodging For The Night

It was late in November, 1456. The snow fell over Paris with rigorous,
relentless persistence; sometimes the wind made a sally and scattered
it in flying vortices; sometimes there was a lull, and flake after flake
descended out of the black night air, silent, circuitous, interminable.
To poor people, looking up under moist eyebrows, it seemed a wonder
where it all came from. Master Francis Villon had propounded an
alternative that afternoon, at a tavern window: was it only pagan
Jupiter plucking geese upon Olympus? or were the holy angels moulting?
He was only a poor Master of Arts, he went on; and as the question
somewhat touched upon divinity, he durst not venture to conclude. A
silly old priest from Montargis, who was among the company, treated the
young rascal to a bottle of wine in honour of the jest and grimaces with
which it was accompanied, and swore on his own white beard that he had
been just such another irreverent dog when he was Villon's age.

The air was raw and pointed, but not far below freezing; and the flakes
were large, damp, and adhesive. The whole city was sheeted up. An army
might have marched from end to end and not a footfall given the alarm.
If there were any belated birds in heaven, they saw the island like a
large white patch, and the bridges like slim white spars on the black
ground of the river. High up overhead the snow settled among the tracery
of the cathedral towers. Many a niche was drifted full; many a statue
wore a long white bonnet on its grotesque or sainted head. The gargoyles
had been transformed into great false noses, drooping toward the point.
The crockets were like upright pillows swollen on one side. In the
intervals of the wind there was a dull sound dripping about the
precincts of the church.

The cemetery of St. John had taken its own share of the snow. All the
graves were decently covered; tall white housetops stood around in grave
array; worthy burghers were long ago in bed, be-nightcapped like their
domiciles; there was no light in all the neighbourhood but a little
peep from a lamp that hung swinging in the church choir, and tossed the
shadows to and fro in time to its oscillations. The clock was hard on
ten when the patrol went by with halberds and a lantern, beating their
hands; and they saw nothing suspicious about the cemetery of St. John.

Yet there was a small house, backed up against the cemetery wall, which
was still awake, and awake to evil purpose, in that snoring district.
There was not much to betray it from without; only a stream of warm
vapour from the chimney-top, a patch where the snow melted on the roof,
and a few half-obliterated footprints at the door. But within, behind
the shuttered windows, Master Francis Villon, the poet, and some