This is not the
simple bearing of innocence. No - the young master was
already treading crooked paths; already, he would start and
blench at a hand upon his shoulder, with the look we know so
well in the face of Hogarth's Idle Apprentice; already, in
the blue devils, he would see Henry Cousin, the executor of
high justice, going in dolorous procession towards
Montfaucon, and hear the wind and the birds crying around
Paris gibbet.
A GANG OF THIEVES.
In spite of the prodigious number of people who managed to
get hanged, the fifteenth century was by no means a bad time
for criminals. A great confusion of parties and great dust
of fighting favoured the escape of private housebreakers and
quiet fellows who stole ducks in Paris Moat. Prisons were
leaky; and as we shall see, a man with a few crowns in his
pocket and perhaps some acquaintance among the officials,
could easily slip out and become once more a free marauder.
There was no want of a sanctuary where he might harbour until
troubles blew by; and accomplices helped each other with more
or less good faith. Clerks, above all, had remarkable
facilities for a criminal way of life; for they were
privileged, except in cases of notorious incorrigibility, to
be plucked from the hands of rude secular justice and tried
by a tribunal of their own. In 1402, a couple of thieves,
both clerks of the University, were condemned to death by the
Provost of Paris.
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