"An intelligent anticipation," said Villon, nodding thoughtfully. "I did not think he had so much good sense or good feeling. He always struck me as a man of a coarse, material mind; but one can never tell."
"Villon, it is horrible! How can you talk so callously? But you know you do not mean what you say."
"Every word of it. Hanged he would have been in any case, that was inevitable. I warned him last night that he knew too much, and that more went into Amboise than came out again. And was it not better he should go to his end quietly, decently, just God and himself alone together—the Good God who understands us so much better than we do ourselves and so makes allowances? You don't agree with me?"
"I can only say again, it is horrible."
"Then what of the justice of the King which makes a man a spectacle in the market-place, with all the world agape at the terror of it, the world that licks its lips over lovers in rose arches or the gibbeting of wretches no worse than itself? Think of the terror of it! Think of the shame of it! The men he had drunk with, the women he had laughed with, the children he had played with, all ringed round him to see him die. And there he would hang till his bones dropped, a shame and a blot on the clean face of the earth, blackened by the heat, drenched white by the rain, twirled and swung by every breath of wind, while the pies and the crows made thimble-pits of his face, a waste rag of humanity. Come now, which is the decenter?"
"Poor Saxe!"
"If Saxe had had his way, there would have been no dew on the roses this morning. He would have lied Mademoiselle de Vesc to death without a scruple."
"She wished him no harm, of that I am certain."
"It is of the quality of roses to be sweet. But, La Mothe, say nothing to her; it would spoil her happiness, and we seldom get pure gold to spend through a whole day of life," a cynical truth La Mothe was to remember before a new morning dawned.
"Villon, how can you sit there drinking his wine?"