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 of the thievish crew with whom he
consorted, were keeping the night alive and passing round the
bottle.
A great pile of living embers diffused a strong and ruddy glow from
the arched chimney. Before this straddled Dom Nicolas, the Picardy
monk, with his skirts picked up and his fat legs bared to the
comfortable warmth. His dilated shadow cut the room in half; and
the firelight only escaped on either side of his broad person, and
in a little pool between his outspread feet. His face had the
beery, bruised appearance of the continual drinker's; it was
covered with a network of congested veins, purple in ordinary
circumstances, but now pale violet, for even with his back to the
fire the cold pinched him on the other side. His cowl had half
fallen back, and made a strange excrescence on either side of his
bull neck.
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