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

FRANQOIS VILLON
ledge; whereas his acquaintance with blackguard
haunts and industries could only have been acquired
by early and consistent impiety and idleness. He
passed his degrees, it is true ; but some of us who
have been to modern Universities will make their
own reflections on the value of the test. As for his
three pupils, Colin Laurent, Girard Gossouyn, and
Jehan Marceau — if they were really his pupils in any
serious sense — what can we say but God help them !
And sure enough, by his own description, they
turned out as ragged, rowdy, and ignorant as was to
be looked for from the views and manners of their
rare preceptor.
At some time or other, before or during his Uni-
versity career, the poet was adopted by Master
Guillaume de Villon, chaplain of Saint Benoit-le-
Betourne, near the Sorbonne. From him he bor-
rowed the surname by which he is known to posterity.
It was most likely from his house, called the Porte
Rouge, and situated in a garden in the cloister of
St. Benoit, that Master Francis heard the bell of the
Sorbonne ring out the Angelus while he was finishing
his Small Testament at Christmastide in 1456. To-
wards this benefactor he usually gets credit for a
respectable display of gratitude. But with his trap
and pitfall style of writing, it is easy to make too
sure. His sentiments are about as much to be relied
on as those of a professional beggar ; and in this, as
in so many other matters, he comes towards us
whining and piping the eye, and goes off again with
a whoop and his finger to his nose. Thus, he calls
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