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

FRAN(;:OIS VILLON
sword and cloak, and accompanied by one Master
Jehan le Mardi. Sermaise, according to Villon's
account, which is all we have to go upon, came up
blustering and denying God ; as Villon rose to make
room for him upon the bench, thrust him rudely
back into his place ; and finally drew his sword and
cut open his lower lip, by what 1 should imagine
was a very clumsy stroke. Up to this point Villon
professes to have been a model of courtesy, even of
feebleness : and the brawl, in his version, reads like
the fable of the wolf and the lamb. But now the
lamb was roused ; he drew his sword, stabbed Ser-
maise in the groin, knocked him on the head with a
big stone, and then, leaving him to his fate, went
away to have his own lip doctored by a barber of the
name of Fouquet. In one version he says that
Gilles, Isabeau, and Le Mardi ran away at the first
high words, and that he and Sermaise had it out
alone ; in another, Le Mardi is represented as return-
ing and wresting Villon's sword from him : the
reader may please himself Sermaise was picked up,
lay all that night in the prison of Saint Benoit,
where he was examined by an official of the Chatelet
and expressly pardoned Villon, and died on the fol-
lowing Saturday in the Hotel Dieu.
This, as I have said, was in June. Not before
January of the next year could Villon extract a
pardon from the King ; but while his hand was in,
he got two. One is for ' Fran9ois des Loges, alias
{autrement dit) de Villon ' ; and the other runs in
the name of Fran9ois de Montcorbier. Nay, it
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