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Have you aught to offer that is good alike for purse and palate?" Robin Turgis nodded his round head and fondled his round stomach. "We have a white wine of Beaune," he said unctuously, as if he were tasting the wares he commended, "at two sols the flagon that is noble drinking." The king's sense of economy shivered at the sum; as if it had been a wound. "Pasques-Dieu!" he stammered.

The melodious Abbess, with eyes now glittering and tearless, swung her supple body from table to bench, thrust herself a place among the players, shouted to Robin Turgis to bring more wine, and spreading some silver on the dingy board surrendered to speculation.

"Why do you not salute gentry when they honour your pot-house? A mug of your best Beaune, Master Beggar-maker, to drink damnation to the Burgundians." Robin Turgis made no motion to obey, but his small eyes seemed to grow smaller as they stared. "What colour has money now-a-days, Master François?" he asked doggedly.

He had with him several Frenchmen, Fathers Badin, Deseille and Petit; the two latter left their venerable remains among the wastes. Others met death at the bedside of the plague-stricken, and were martyrs to their charity, like Fathers Turgis and Dablon.

Slender René de Montigny, in a jerkin of rubbed and faded purple velvet, with his malign, Italianate face and his delicate Italianate grace; rotund Guy Tabarie, bluff, red and bald; Casin Cholet, tall and bird-like, with the figure of a stork and the features of a bird of prey; Jehan le Loup, who looked as vulpine as his nickname; these Robin Turgis eyed and catalogued with a kind of pride.

"Or worse, how to for it," Tristan sneered. The king scowled at him. "Then, why do you keep my service?" he snapped. Tristan shrugged his shoulders. "Some dregs of devotion, I suppose. Here stands Master Innkeeper." For by this time Robin Turgis was at their elbow, scanning them narrowly with his small, pig like eyes that could make little, however, of the well-muffled faces.

"And if Solomon Eagle's foreboding come to pass, it will be a heap of ruins in our own time," rejoined Turgis. "But I see the prophet of ill has quitted his post, and retired to his hiding-place." Looking up as this was said, Leonard saw that the enthusiast had disappeared.

"It is strange, Ned Turgis," observed Gatford, "that, though Solomon Eagle may always be seen at daybreak at the top of the tower or on the roof of the cathedral sometimes at one point and sometimes at another no one can tell where he hides himself at other times.

Robin Turgis knew them all, admired them all, feared them all, and yet he held head against them because his Beaune wine was so adorable, and because he could keep his own counsel.

"So it should be at the price." Robin Turgis remained unmoved: Tristan clinched the business. "Bring it," he said decisively, and as the landlord shambled away towards his cellar, Tristan met the king's condemnatory frown squarely. "I wear out my hands and feet in your service," lie said, "I want to save my throat and stomach."