On the way, two little accidents happened to him which coloured his musings in a very different manner.  For, first, he fell in with the track of a patrol, and walked in it for some hundred yards, although it lay out of his direction.  And this spirited him up; at least he had confused his trail; for he was still possessed with the idea of people tracking him all about Paris over the snow, and collaring him next morning before he was awake.  The other matter affected him quite differently.  He passed a street-corner where, not so long before, a woman and her child had been devoured by wolves.  This was just the kind of weather, he reflected, when wolves might take it into their heads to enter Paris again; and a lone man in these deserted streets would run the chance of something worse than a mere scare.  He stopped and looked upon the place with an unpleasant interest—­it was a centre where several lanes intersected each other; and he looked down them all, one after another, and held his breath to listen, lest he should detect some galloping black things on the snow or hear the sound of howling between him and the river.  He remembered his mother telling him the story and pointing out the spot, while he was yet a child.  His mother!  If he only knew where she lived, he might make sure at least of shelter.  He determined he would inquire upon the morrow; nay, he would go and see her, too, poor old girl!  So thinking, he arrived at his destination—­his last hope for the night.

The house was quite dark, like its neighbours; and yet after a few taps he heard a movement overhead, a door opening, and a cautious voice asking who was there.  The poet named himself in a loud whisper, and waited, not without some trepidation, the result.  Nor had he to wait long.  A window was suddenly opened, and a pailful of slops splashed down upon the door-step.  Villon had not been unprepared for something of the sort, and had put himself as much in shelter as the nature of the porch admitted; but for all that he was deplorably drenched below the waist.  His hose began to freeze almost at once.  Death from cold and exposure stared him in the face; he remembered he was of phthisical tendency, and began coughing tentatively.  But the gravity of the danger steadied his nerves.  He stopped a few hundred yards from the door where he had been so rudely used, and reflected with his finger to his nose.  He could only see one way of getting a lodging, and that was to take it.  He had noticed a house not far away, which looked as if it might be easily broken into; and thither he betook himself promptly, entertaining himself on the way with the idea of a room still hot, with a table still loaded with the remains of supper, where he might pass the rest of the black hours, and whence he should issue, on the morrow, with an armful of valuable plate.  He even considered on what viands and what wines he should prefer; and as he was calling the roll of his favourite dainties, roast fish presented itself to his mind with an odd mixture of amusement and horror.