" He was a good genius
to all hungry and unscrupulous persons; and became the hero
of a whole legendary cycle of tavern tricks and cheateries.
At best, these were doubtful levities, rather too thievish
for a schoolboy, rather too gamesome for a thief. But he
would not linger long in this equivocal border land. He must
soon have complied with his surroundings. He was one who
would go where the cannikin clinked, not caring who should
pay; and from supping in the wolves' den, there is but a step
to hunting with the pack. And here, as I am on the chapter
of his degradation, I shall say all I mean to say about its
darkest expression, and be done with it for good. Some
charitable critics see no more than a JEU D'ESPRIT, a
graceful and trifling exercise of the imagination, in the
grimy ballad of Fat Peg (GROSSE MARGOT). I am not able to
follow these gentlemen to this polite extreme. Out of all
Villon's works that ballad stands forth in flaring reality,
gross and ghastly, as a thing written in a contraction of
disgust. M. Longnon shows us more and more clearly at every
page that we are to read our poet literally, that his names
are the names of real persons, and the events he chronicles
were actual events. But even if the tendency of criticism
had run the other way, this ballad would have gone far to
prove itself.
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