His eyes were
"bandaged with thick walls." It might blow hurricanes
overhead; the lightning might leap in high heaven; but no
word of all this reached him in his noisome pit. "Il
n'entre, ou gist, n'escler ni tourbillon." Above all, he was
fevered with envy and anger at the freedom of others; and his
heart flowed over into curses as he thought of Thibault
d'Aussigny, walking the streets in God's sunlight, and
blessing people with extended fingers. So much we find
sharply lined in his own poems. Why he was cast again into
prison - how he had again managed to shave the gallows - this
we know not, nor, from the destruction of authorities, are we
ever likely to learn. But on October 2d, 1461, or some day
immediately preceding, the new King, Louis Eleventh, made his
joyous entry into Meun. Now it was a part of the formality
on such occasions for the new King to liberate certain
prisoners; and so the basket was let down into Villon's pit,
and hastily did Master Francis scramble in, and was most
joyfully hauled up, and shot out, blinking and tottering, but
once more a free man, into the blessed sun and wind. Now or
never is the time for verses! Such a happy revolution would
turn the head of a stocking-weaver, and set him jingling
rhymes. And so - after a voyage to Paris, where he finds
Montigny and De Cayeux clattering, their bones upon the
gibbet, and his three pupils roystering in Paris streets,
"with their thumbs under their girdles," - down sits Master
Francis to write his LARGE TESTAMENT, and perpetuate his name
in a sort of glorious ignominy.
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