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THR DAILY EXAMINER, CHARLOTTETOWN, JANUARY 3, 1398

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ROBERT L, S81 EVENSON. y) - YON. ADGA SS November, 1456. The

was late in It fel over Paris with rigorous, re-

raistence; sometimes the wind lly and scattered it in flying te sometimes there was a lull, and fake after flake descended cut of the peck night air, silent, circuitous, inter- . To poor people, looking up moist eyebrows, it seemed a won- where it all came from. Master Villon had propounded an alter- that afternoon, ata tavern win- dow: was it only Pagan Jupiter pluck- upon Olympus? or were the angels moulting?’ He was only 4 poor Master of Arts, he went on; and as the

ie

jon somewhat touched upon

sinty. he durst not venture to con-

A silly old priest from Montargis,

who Was Among the company, treated

the poung rascal to a bottle of wine in

jonor of the jest and grimares with

it was accompanied, and swore on

his own white beard that he had been

wet such another irreverent dog when he was Villon’s age.

The air was raw and pointed, but not far below freezing; and the flakes were jarge, damp, and adhesive. The whole city was sheeted up. An army might pave marched from end to end and not a footfall given the alarm. If there were

belated birds in heaven, they saw

the island like a large white patch, and the bridges like slim white spars, on the black grougd of the river. High up over- head the snow settled among the tracery of the cathedral towers. Many a niche was drifted full; many a statue wore a jong white bonnet on its grotesque or winted head. The gargoyles had been transformed into great false noses, droop- ing toward the point. The crockets were like upright pillows swollen on one side. In the intervals of the wind there was a dallsound of dripping about the pre- dines of the church.

The cemetery of St. John had taken iitsqwn share of the snow. A\{ll the greres were decently covered; tall white housetops stood around ip grave aray; worthy burghers were long ago in bedbe-nighteapped like their domiciles; them was no light in all the neighbor- hoot but a little peep from a lamp that hung swinging in the church choir, and wand the shadows to and fro in time te its ecillations. The clock was hard on ten when the patrol went by with hal- ‘tts and a lantern, beating their hands; aodthey saw nothng suspicious about thecemetery of St. John.

Yet there was a small house, backed Up sgainst the cemetery wall, which was still awake, and awake to evil purpose, in that snoring district. There was not muh to betray it from without; only a sram of warm vapor from the chimney- tp a patch where the snow melted on the roof, and a tew half-obliterated foot- prnts at the door. But within, behind th shuttered windows, Master Francis Villon, the poet, and some of the thiev- ist crew with whom he consorted were e@ing the night alive and passing round ith bottle.

A great pile of living embers diffused 4 trong and ruddy glow from the arched ehimney. Before this straddled Dom Neolas, the Picardy monk, with his ‘skirts picked up and his fat legs bared tothe comfortable warmth. His dilate ‘shadow cut the room in half; and the Mlight only escaped on either side of ih broad person, and in a little pool ib@ween his outspread feet. His face had ithe beery bruised appearance of the emtinual drinker’s; it was covered with #network of congested veins, purple ia atimary circumstances, but now pale wblet, for even with his back to the fire the cold pinched him on the other side. His.cowl had half fallen back, and made #atrange excrescence on either side of hk hull neck, So he straddled, grumbl- ing, and cut the room in half with the shadow of his portly frame.

On the right, Villom and Guy Tabary Were iuddied together ver a scrap of Pirchment; Villon making a _ ballade Which he was to cali the ‘‘ Ballade of Nast Fish,”’ and Tabary spluttering ad- iMiration at his shéulder. Whe poet was a me of a aman, dark, little, and lean, with hollow ehacks and thin black locks. He carried hie four-and-twenty years with féerish awimation. Greed had made fdds about his eyes, evil smiles had Packered his mouth. The welf and pig ffuggled together in his face. I¢ was an ebquent, sharp, ugly, earthly counter- *tee. His hands were small and prehen- fle, with fingers knotted like a cord; ed they were continually flickering in font of him in violent and expressive Pentomime. As for Tabary, a broad, “mplacent, admiring imbecility breathed

m his squash nose and slobbering tS; he had became a thief. just as he

Eight have become the most decent of

tgesses, by the imperious chance that TUlks the lives of human geese and hu Ban donkeys.

At the monk's other hand, Montigny 8M Thevenin Pensete played a game of

“Mee. About the first there clung some Yor of good birth and training. as Pt & fallen angel; something long, 4 and courtly in the person; some-

8 aquiline and darkling in the face. ee, poor soul, was in great feather; t) had done a good stroke of knavery

at afternoon in the Faubourg St. Kye and all night he had been gain- wey Montigny. A flat smile illu- cat ted his face; his bald head shone

Y in & garland of red curls; his little

eee Stomach shook with silent

“Do Ns as he swept in his gains.

Moo nbles or quits?" said ‘Thevenin. ontigny nodded grimly.

Wrot, v may prefer to dine in state,’’ silver. illon, ‘en bread and cheess on ou Or, or — help me out,

Tabary giggle,

“Or paraiey on & golden aisn,’’ eorib- bled the poet,

The wind was freshening without: it dreve the snow before it, and sometimes raised its voice in a victorious whoop, and made sepulchral grumblings in the chimney. The cold was growing sharper as the night went on. Villon, protruding his lips, imitated the gust with something between a whistle and a groan. It was an eerie, uncomfortable talent of the poet's, much detested by the Picardy monk.

**Can’t you hear it rattle in the gib bet?’’ said Villon. ** They are all dancing the devil's jie 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-tres !-—1 say, Dom Nicolas, it'll be cold to-night om the St. Denis Road?’’ he asked.

Dom Nicolas 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 tomched him on the raw. As for Tabary, he laughed im- moderately 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 anattack of cough- ing.

‘Oh, stop that row.” said Villon, “and think of rhymes to ‘iish.’ ”’

‘Doubles or quits,” said Montigny doggedly.

**With all my heart,” quote Theveni.

“‘Is there any mere in that bottle?’ asked the maynk.

*“Open another,’’ said Villon. ‘‘How do yOu ever hope to fii that big hogs- head, your body, witn little things lixe bottles? And how de 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,’’ monk as he filled his glass.

Tabary was in ectasies.

Villon filliped his nose again.

**Laugh at my jekes, if you like,’’ he said.

‘*It was very good,’’ objected Tabary.

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, elericus—the devil with the hump-hack and red-hot fingernails. Talking of the devil,’’ he added in.a whisper, ‘‘look at Montigny!"’

‘*He looks as & 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 Nimalas, 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 interrnpted at the fourth rhyme by a brief and fatal movement among the gamesters. The round was completed, and Thevenin was just open- ing his mouth te 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 acry, hefere he had time to move. A tremor or itwo convulsed his frame; his hande opened and shut, his heels rattled on the floor; then his head rolled backward over one shoulder with eres wide open; and Thevenin Pensete’s spirit had returned to Him who made it.

“My God!’’ said ‘Tabary; and he began te pray in Latin.

Villon broke out into hysterical laugh- ter. He came a step forward and ducked a ridiculous bow at ‘Thevenin, and laughed still louder. Then he sat down suddenly, all of a heap, pen a stool, and continued Janghing bitterly as thongh he would shake :himself to pieces.

Mantigny recovered his:composure first.

““Let's see what he has about him,’’ he remarked, and the piced the dead man’s pockets with a practiced hand, and divided the money imto four equal por- tions em the table. “There's for you,’’ he said.

The monk received his share with a deep sigh, and a singe stealthy glance at the dead Thevenin, who was begin- ning to «ink into himself and topple sideways off the chair.

“We're ali in for i,”’ cried Villon, swallowing his mirth.

Tabary was the last t@ help himself; he made a dash at the money, and re- tired to the ether end of the apartment.

Montigny stuck Thevernim upright im the chair, and drew out thse dagger, which was followed by a jet of blood.

**You fellowes had better he moving.” he said, as he wiped the ihilade on his victim’s doublet.

“Tl think we had,’’ returmed Villon, with a gulp. ‘“‘Damn his fat head!’’ he broke out. ‘‘It sticks in my throat like ~hicsm. What right has a.man to have

replied the

a

—_———-

rea hair when he 18 dead?’’ And he fell

all of a heap again upon the stool, and fairly covered his face with his hands.

Montigny and Dom Nicolas laughed aloud, even Tabary feebly chiming in.

*“*Cry baby,’’ said the monk.

**I] always said he was a woman,’’ added Montigny, with a sneer ‘‘Sit up, can't you?’ he went on, giving another shake to the murdered body. ‘‘‘Tread out thgt fire, Nick!’’

But Nick was better employed; he was quietly taking Villon’s purse, as the poet sat, limp and trembling, on the stool where he had been making a ballade not three minutes before. Montigny and Tabary dumbly demanded a share of the booty, which the monk silently promised as he passed the little bag into the bosom of hisown. In many ways an artistic nature unfits a man for practical exist- ence.

No sooner had the theft been accom- plished than Villon shook himself, jumped to his feet, and began helping to scatter and extinguish the embers. Mean- while Montigny opened the door and cautiously peered into the street. The coast was clear; there was no med@dle- some patrol in sight. Still it was judged wiser to slip out severally; and as Villon was himself in a hurry to escape from the neighborhood of the dead Thevenin, and the rest were in a still greater hurrv to get rid of him before he should dis- cover the loss of his money, he was the first by general consent to issue forth into the street.

The wind had trinmphed and swept all the clouds from heaven. Only a few vapors, as thin as moonlight, fleeted rapidiy across the stars. It was bitter cold; and by a common optical effect, things seemed almost more definite than in the broadest daylight. The sleeping ‘city was absolutely still; a company of white hoods, a field full of little alps, below the twinkling stars. Villon cursed his fortune. Would it were still snow- ing! Now, wherever he went, he left an indelible trail behind him on the gitter- ing streets; wherever he went he was still tethered to the house by the ceme- tery of St. John; wherever he went he must weave, with his own plodding feet, the rope that bound him to the crime and would bind him to the gallows. ‘The leer of the dead man came back to him with a new significance. He snapped his fingers as if to pluck up his own spirits, and choosing a street at random, stepped boldly forward in the snow.

Suddenly he saw, a long way before him, a black clump and a couple of lanterns. The clump was in motion, and the lanterns swumg as though carried

by men walking. It was a patrol. And though it was merely crossing his line of march he judged it wiser to get ont of eyeshot as speedily as he could. He was not in the humor to be challenged, and he was conscious of making 4 very con- spicuous mark upon the snow. Just on his left hand there stood a great hotel, with some turrets and a large porch before the door; it was half ruinous, he remembered, and had long stood empty; and so he made three steps of it, and jumped into the shelter of the porch. It was pretty dark inside, after the glim- mer of the snowy streets, and he was groping forward with outspread hands when he stumbled over some substanor which offered am indescribable mixture of resistance, hard and soft, firm and loose. His heart gave a leap, and be sprung two steps back and stared dread- fully at the obstacle. Then he gavea laugh of relief. It was only a woman, and she dead. He knelt beside her to make sure upon this latter point. She was freezing cold, and rigid like a stick. A little ragged finery fluttered in the wind about her hair, and her cheeks had been heavily roughed that same after- noon. Ler pockets were quite empty; but in her stocking, underneath the gar- ter, Villon found two of the small coins that went by the nume of whites. I¢ was little enongh, but it was always sonae- thing; and the poet was moved with a deep sense of pathos that she shonld have died before she had spent her money. ‘that seemed to him a dark amd pitiable mystery; and he looked from the coins in his hand to the dead we- man, and back again to the coins, shak- ing his head over the riddle of man’s life. Henry V. of England, dying at Vineea- nes just after he had conquered Franer. While these thoughts were passing through his mind he was feeling, half mechanically, for his purse. Suddenly his heart stopped heating: a feeling of cold scales passed wp the back of his legs, and a coli blow seemed to fall upon his scalp. . He stood petrified for a moment: then he felt again with one feverish movement; then his loss burst upon him, and he was covered at once with perspir- ation. To spendthrifts money is so living and actual—it is such a thin vei] between them and their pleasures! There is only one Jimit to their fortune—that of time; and a spendthrift with only a few crowns | is the Emperor of Reme until they are apent. For such # person to lose his meney is to suffer the most. shockine

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reverse, and fall "rom heavén to hell, from all to nothing, in a breath. And all the more if he has put his head in the halter for it; if he may be hanged to-mcrrow for that same purse, so dearly earned, so foolishly departed! Villon stood and cursed; he threw the two whites into the street; he shook his fist at heaven; he stamped, and was not har- rified to find himself trampling the poor corpse, Then he began rapidly to retrace his steps toward the house beside the cemetery. He had forgotten all fear of the patrol, which was long gone by at any rate, and had no idea but that of his lost purse. It was in vain that he looked right and left upon the snow; nothing was to be seen. He had not dropped it in the streets. Had it fallen in the house? He would have liked dear- ly to go in and see; but the idea of the grisly occupant unmanned him. And he saw besides, as he drew near, that their efforts to put out the fire had been un- successful; on the contrary, it had broken into a blaze, and a changefu! light played in tha chinks of door and window, and revived the terror for the authorities and Paris gibbet.

He returned to the hotel with the porch, and groped about upon the snow for the money he had thrown away in his childish passion. But he could only find one white: the other had probabiy struck sideways and sunk deeply in. With a single white in his pocket all his projects for a rousing night in some wild tavern —vanished utterly away. And it was not only pleasure that fled laughing from his grasp; positive discomfort, posi- tive pain, attacked him as he stood rue- fully before the porch. His perspiration had dried upon him; and although the wind had now fallen, a biading frost was setting in stronger with every hour, and he felt benumbed and sick at heart. What was to be done? Late as was the hour, improbable as was success, he would try the house of his adopted father, the chaplain of St. Benoit.

He ran there all the way and knocked timidly. There was no answer. He knocked again, taking heart with every stroke; and at last steps were heard ap- proaching from within. A barred wicket fell open in the iron-studded door, and emitted a gush of yellow light...

‘*Hold up your face to the wicket,’’ said the chaplain from within.

“It’s only me,’’ whimpered Villon.

“Oh, it’s only you, is it?’’ returned the chaplain; and he cursed him with foul, unpriestiy oaths for disturbing him at such an hour, and bade him be off to hell, where he came from.

(To be Continued.)

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Will be seen some beautiful vases, and fancy chinaware, suitable for christmas presents,

We have also a couple of splendid China Dinner Sets left, wnich we wiil seli regardless of cost. Fancy goods sold at

reductions for two wecks at

T J. MORRIS

Corner of Queen and Kent Sts.

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No 1 Natural Otter Caps, No 1 Mink Caps

No | Beaver Caps

No | Persian Lamb Caps South Sea Seal Caps

Cloth and Knitted Caps

COLLARS

Persian Lamb Collar. Baaver Collar, Astrakan Collar, Nutria Collar

We have also an attractive line of Neckwear and woolen Underwear

Our all vool $8.00 Frieze Ulster,our own make,is a beauty

We don’t sell the aboue goods for less than they cost us, but you would b2 surprized were you to know how near thay

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MERCHANT ‘TAILORS,

a ———

|

189'7--Onoe weelz--1898

For theJast week of 97, we will sell Boots and Shoes. at lower prices than you have been accustomed to pay during the year.

In tois way we show our appreciation f r the Jibera: trade accorded us during the year.

Low prices on Clotbing—Overcoats, Ulsters, Suits, a great sacrifize in bov’sclothing, Under- clothing, Shirts, Collars, Ties, Handkerchiefs, Caps, Braces, and everything cheaper than the cheapest, in the last week of the old year,

J. B. Macdonald &Co

For Greatest Bargiins in Boots and Clothing.

Pee ee hay ea ican ie Nese AH Ia sting

seine seashh sel ty Mittin. lati, St 5