I can well understand the reluctance of worthy
persons in this matter; for of course it is unpleasant to
think of a man of genius as one who held, in the words of
Marina to Boult-
"A place, for which the pained'st fiend
Of hell would not in reputation change."
But beyond this natural unwillingness, the whole difficulty
of the case springs from a highly virtuous ignorance of life.
Paris now is not so different from the Paris of then; and the
whole of the doings of Bohemia are not written in the sugar-
candy pastorals of Murger. It is really not at all
surprising that a young man of the fifteenth century, with a
knack of making verses, should accept his bread upon
disgraceful terms. The race of those who do is not extinct;
and some of them to this day write the prettiest verses
imaginable. . . . After this, it were impossible for Master
Francis to fall lower: to go and steal for himself would be
an admirable advance from every point of view, divine or
human.
(1) CHRONIQUE SCANDALEUSE, ed. Pantheon, p. 237.
And yet it is not as a thief, but as a homicide, that he
makes his first appearance before angry justice. On June 5,
1455, when he was about twenty-four, and had been Master of
Arts for a matter of three years, we behold him for the first
time quite definitely. Angry justice had, as it were,
photographed him in the act of his homicide; and M.
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