To such an extent had these insolent youngsters carried their license of imitation that certain of their members, fresh from the fair of Saint-Germain, and not wholly unacquainted with the hippocras of the sutlers crowding its mart, wore around their throats enormous collars of paper, cut in rivalry of the legitimate plaits of muslin, and bore in their hands long hollow sticks from which they discharged peas and other missiles, in imitation of the sarbacanes or pea-shooters then in vogue with the monarch and his favorites.

Thus fantastically tricked out, on that same day—­nay, only a few hours before, and at the fair above mentioned—­had these facetious wights, with more merriment than discretion, ventured to exhibit themselves before the cortege of Henri, and to exclaim loud enough to reach the ears of royalty, “a la fraise on connoit le veau!” a piece of pleasantry for which they subsequently paid dear.

Notwithstanding its shabby appearance in detail, the general effect of this scholastic rabble was striking and picturesque.  The thick mustaches and pointed beards with which the lips and chins of most of them were decorated, gave to their physiognomies a manly and determined air, fully borne out by their unrestrained carriage and deportment.  To a man, almost all were armed with a tough vine-wood bludgeon, called in their language an estoc volant, tipped and shod with steel—­a weapon fully understood by them, and rendered, by their dexterity in the use of it, formidable to their adversaries.  Not a few carried at their girdles the short rapier, so celebrated in their duels and brawls, or concealed within their bosom a poniard or a two-edged knife.

The scholars of Paris have ever been a turbulent and ungovernable race; and at the period of which this history treats, and indeed long before, were little better than a licensed horde of robbers, consisting of a pack of idle and wayward youths drafted from all parts of Europe, as well as from the remoter provinces of their own nation.  There was little in common between the mass of students and their brethren, excepting the fellowship resulting from the universal license in which all indulged.  Hence their thousand combats among themselves—­combats almost invariably attended with fatal consequences—­and which the heads of the university found it impossible to check.

Their own scanty resources, eked out by what little they could derive from beggary or robbery, formed their chief subsistence; for many of them were positive mendicants, and were so denominated:  and being possessed of a sanctuary within their own quarters, to which they could at convenience retire, they submitted to the constraint of no laws except those enforced within the jurisdiction of the university, and hesitated at no means of enriching themselves at the expense of their neighbors.  Hence the frequent warfare waged between them and the brethren of Saint-Germain