Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 8, 2025
So he straddled, grumbling, and cut the room in half with the shadow of his portly frame. On the right, Villon and Guy Tabary were huddled together over a scrap of parchment; Villon making a ballade which he was to call the Ballade of Roast Fish, and Tabary spluttering admiration at his shoulder. The poet was a rag of a man, dark, little, and lean, with hollow cheeks and thin black locks.
We have no sure knowledge, but we may have a shrewd guess of the conclusion. Tabary, the admirer, would go the same way as those whom he admired. The last we hear of is Colin de Gayeux. He was caught in autumn 1460, in the great Church of St. Leu d'Esserens, which makes so fine a figure in the pleasant Oise valley between Creil and Beaumont.
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.
"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.
"It sticks in my throat like phlegm. What right has a man to have red hair when he is 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.
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 his gown. In many ways an artistic nature unfits a man for practical existence. No sooner had the theft been accomplished than Villon shook himself, jumped to his feet, and began helping to scatter and extinguish the embers.
"Hominibus impossibile," 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. "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?
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.
At Christmas-time in 1456, readers of Villon will remember that he was engaged on the "Small Testament." About the same period, circa festum nativitatis Domini, he took part in a memorable supper at the Mule Tavern, in front of the Church of St. Mathurin. Tabary, who seems to have been very much Villon's creature, had ordered the supper in the course of the afternoon.
You'll wish you knew none of it at the great assizes, when the devil calls for Guido Tabary, clericus the devil with the hump-back and red-hot finger-nails. 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.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking