career, in spite of the menace of doom, the hint of the wheel and the gallows, his fund of joy remained undiminished, and this we see in his verse, which reflects with equal vividness his alternate moods of infinite enjoyment and unmitigated despair.  For instance, the only two triolets which have survived from his “Trente deux Triolets joyeux and tristes” are an example of his twofold temperament.  They run thus in the literal and exact translations of them made by an eminent official:—­

     I wish I was dead,
     And lay deep in the grave. 
     I’ve a pain in my head,
     I wish I was dead. 
     In a coffin of lead—­
     With the Wise and the Brave—­
     I wish I was dead,
     And lay deep in the grave.

This passionate utterance immediately preceded, in the original text, the following verses in which his buoyant spirits rise once more to the surface:—­

     Thank God I’m alive
     In the light of the Sun! 
     It’s a quarter to five;
     Thank God I’m alive! 
     Now the hum of the hive
     Of the world has begun,
     Thank God I’m alive
     In the light of the Sun!

A more plaintive, in fact a positively wistful note, which is almost incongruous amongst the definite and sharply defined moods of Jean Francois, is struck in the sonnet of which only the first line has reached us:  “I wish I had a hundred thousand pounds.” ("Voulentiers serais pauvre avec dix mille escus.”) But in nearly all his verse, whether joyous as in the “Chant de vin et vie,” or gloomy as in the “Ballade des Treize Pendus,” there is a curious recurrent aspiration towards a warm fire, a sure and plentiful supper, a clean bed, and a long, long sleep.  Whether Jean Francois moped or made merry, and in spite of the fact that he enjoyed his roving career and would not have exchanged it for the throne of an Emperor or the money-bags of Croesus, there is no doubt that he experienced the burden of an immense fatigue.  He was never quite warm enough; always a little hungry; and never got as much sleep as he desired.  A place where he could sleep his fill represented the highest joys of Heaven to him; and he looked forward to Death as a traveller looks forward to a warm inn where (its terrible threshold once passed), a man can sleep the clock round.  Witness the sonnet which ends (the translation is mine):—­

     For thou has never turned
     A stranger from thy gates or hast denied,
     O hospitable Death, a place to rest.

And it is of his death and not of his life or works which I wish to tell, for it was singular.  He died on Christmas Eve, 1432.  The winter that year in the north of France was, as is well known, terrible for its severe cold.  The rich stayed at home, the poor died, and the unfortunate third estate of gipsies, balladmongers, tinkers, tumblers, and thieves had no chance of displaying their dexterity.  In fact, they starved.  Ever since the 1st of