So he straddled, grumbling, and cut the room in half
with the shadow of his portly frame.
On the right, Villon and Guy Tabary were huddled together over a
scrap of parchment; Villon making a ballade which he was to call
the "Ballade of Roast Fish," and Tabary spluttering admiration at
his shoulder. The poet was a rag of a man, dark, little, and lean,
with hollow cheeks and thin black locks. He carried his four-and-
twenty years with feverish animation. Greed had made folds about
his eyes, evil smiles had puckered his mouth. The wolf and pig
struggled together in his face. It was an eloquent, sharp, ugly,
earthly countenance. His hands were small and prehensile, with
fingers knotted like a cord; and they were continually flickering
in front of him in violent and expressive pantomime. As for
Tabary, a broad, complacent, admiring imbecility breathed from his
squash nose and slobbering lips: he had become a thief, just as he
might have become the most decent of burgesses, by the imperious
chance that rules the lives of human geese and human donkeys.
At the monk's other hand, Montigny and Thevenin Pensete played a
game of chance. About the first there clung some flavour of good
birth and training, as about a fallen angel; something long, lithe,
and courtly in the person; something aquiline and darkling in the
face. Thevenin, poor soul, was in great feather: he had done a
good stroke of knavery that afternoon in the Faubourg St.
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