"
"Look at us two," said his lordship. "I am old, strong, and
honoured. If I were turned from my house to-morrow, hundreds would
be proud to shelter me. Poor people would go out and pass the
night in the streets with their children, if I merely hinted that I
wished to be alone. And I find you up, wandering homeless, and
picking farthings off dead women by the wayside! I fear no man and
nothing; I have seen you tremble and lose countenance at a word. I
wait God's summons contentedly in my own house, or, if it please
the king to call me out again, upon the field of battle. You look
for the gallows; a rough, swift death, without hope or honour. Is
there no difference between these two?"
"As far as to the moon," Villon acquiesced. "But if I had been
born lord of Brisetout, and you had been the poor scholar Francis,
would the difference have been any the less? Should not I have
been warming my knees at this charcoal pan, and would not you have
been groping for farthings in the snow? Should not I have been the
soldier, and you the thief?"
"A thief!" cried the old man. "I a thief! If you understood your
words, you would repent them."
Villon turned out his hands with a gesture of inimitable impudence.
"If your lordship had done me the honour to follow my argument!" he
said.
"I do you too much honour in submitting to your presence," said the
knight. "Learn to curb your tongue when you speak with old and
honourable men, or some one hastier than I may reprove you in a
sharper fashion.
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