"Long live the Grand Constable!"
"A most rare Constable."
Villon waved them away.
"Go your ways," he said, "and if you can, mend them."
Shouting and dancing for joy, the men took advantage of his permission and disappeared in their turn among the alleys of the rose garden, seeking and finding the wandering women and vanishing with them in due course into the labyrinths of Paris.
Villon turned to Noel.
"You may dismiss your soldiers," he said. "Attend me within call," and as Noel obeyed him, he advanced to where Huguette was standing, with a smile of scornful indifference still on her fair face.
Villon asked himself as he went:
"Why, in God's name, does the world appear so 'different to-day? Is it the thing they call the better self, or merely this purple and fine linen?"
What he said when he came to the girl was,