It is, in the highest sense, a
piece of his biography:-
"La pluye nous a debuez et lavez,
Et le soleil dessechez et noirciz;
Pies, corbeaulx, nous ont les yeux cavez,
Et arrachez la barbe et les sourcilz.
Jamais, nul temps, nous ne sommes rassis;
Puis ca, puis la, comme le vent varie,
A son plaisir sans cesser nous charie,
Plus becquetez d'oiscaulx que dez a couldre.
Ne soyez donc de nostre confrairie,
Mais priez Dieu que tous nous vueille absouldre."
Here is some genuine thieves' literature after so much that
was spurious; sharp as an etching, written with a shuddering
soul. There is an intensity of consideration in the piece
that shows it to be the transcript of familiar thoughts. It
is the quintessence of many a doleful nightmare on the straw,
when he felt himself swing helpless in the wind, and saw the
birds turn about him, screaming and menacing his eyes.
And, after all, the Parliament changed his sentence into one
of banishment; and to Roussillon, in Dauphiny, our poet must
carry his woes without delay. Travellers between Lyons and
Marseilles may remember a station on the line, some way below
Vienne, where the Rhone fleets seaward between vine-clad
hills. This was Villon's Siberia. It would be a little warm
in summer perhaps, and a little cold in winter in that
draughty valley between two great mountain fields; but what
with the hills, and the racing river, and the fiery Rhone
wines, he was little to be pitied on the conditions of his
exile.
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