“Can’t you hear it rattle in the gibbet?” said Villon.  “They are all dancing the devil’s jig on nothing, up there.  You may dance, my gallants; you’ll be none the warmer.  Whew, what a gust!  Down went somebody just now!  A medlar the fewer on the three-legged medlar-tree!  I say, Dom Nicolas, it’ll be cold to-night on the St. Denis Road?” he asked.

Dom Nicholas winked both his big eyes, and seemed to choke upon his Adam’s apple.  Montfaucon, the great, grisly Paris gibbet, stood hard by the St. Denis Road, and the pleasantry touched him on the raw.  As for Tabary, he laughed immoderately over the medlars; he had never heard anything more light-hearted; and he held his sides and crowed.  Villon fetched him a fillip on the nose, which turned his mirth into an attack of coughing.

“Oh, stop that row,” said Villon, “and think of rhymes to ’fish’!”

“Doubles or quits?  Said Montigny, doggedly.

“With all my heart,” quoth Thevenin.

“Is there any more in that bottle?” asked the monk.

“Open another,” said Villon.  “How do you ever hope to fill that big hogshead, your body, with little things like bottles?  And how do you expect to get to heaven?  How many angels, do you fancy, can be spared to carry up a single monk from Picardy?  Or do you think yourself another Elias—­and they’ll send the coach for you?”

“Hominibus impossible,” replied the monk, as he filled his glass.

Tabary was in ecstasies.

Villon filliped his nose again.

“Laugh at my jokes, if you like,” he said.

Villon made a face at him.  “Think of rhymes to ‘fish,’ " he said.  “What have you to do with Latin?  You’ll wish you knew none of it at the great assizes, when the devil calls for Guido Tabary, clericus—­the devil with the humpback and red-hot fingernails.  Talking of the devil,” he added, in a whisper, “look at Montigny!”

All three peered covertly at the gamester.  He did not seem to be enjoying his luck.  His mouth was a little to a side; one nostril nearly shut, and the other much inflated.  The black dog was on his back, as people say, in terrifying nursery metaphor; and he breathed hard under the gruesome burden.

“He looks as if he could knife him,” whispered Tabary, with round eyes.

The monk shuddered, and turned his face and spread his open hands to the red embers.  It was the cold that thus affected Dom Nicolas, and not any excess of moral sensibility.

“Come now,” said Villon—­“about this ballade.  How does it run so far?” And beating time with his hand, he read it aloud to Tabary.

They were interrupted at the fourth rhyme by a brief and fatal movement among the gamesters.  The round was completed, and Thevenin was just opening his mouth to claim another victory, when Montigny leaped up, swift as an adder, and stabbed him to the heart.  The blow took effect before he had time to utter a cry, before he had time to move.  A tremor or two convulsed his frame; his hands opened and shut, his heels rattled on the floor; then his head rolled backward over one shoulder, with eyes wide open; and Thevenin Pensete’s spirit had returned to Him who made it.