Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 5, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume II

FRANCOIS VILLON
A more confused or troublous time it would have
been difficult to select for a start in life. Not even
a man's nationality was certain ; for the people of
Paris there was no such thing as a Frenchman. The
English were the English indeed, but the French
were only the Armagnacs, whom, with Joan of Arc
at their head, they had beaten back from under their
ramparts not two years before. Such public senti-
ment as they had centred about their dear Duke of
Burgundy, and the dear Duke had no more urgent
business than to keep out of their neighbourhood.
. . . At least, and whether he liked it or not, our
disreputable troubadour was tubbed and swaddled
as a subject of the English crown.
We hear nothing of Villon's father, except that
he was poor and of mean extraction. His mother
was given piously, which does not imply very much
in an old Frenchwoman, and quite uneducated. He
had an uncle, a monk in an abbey at Angers, who
must have prospered beyond the family average, and
was reported to be worth live or six hundred crowns.
Of this uncle and his money-box the reader will hear
once more. In 1448 Francis became a student of
the University of Paris ; in 1450 he took the degree
of Bachelor, and in 1452 that of Master of Arts.
His bourse, or the sum paid weekly for his board,
was of the amount of two sous. Now two sous was
about the price of a pound of salt butter in the bad
times of 1417 ; it was the price of half a pound in
the worse times of 1419 ; and in 1444, just four years
before Villon joined the University, it seems to have
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