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

MEN AND BOOKS
keep him company for a mile or so on the south
road, and drink a bottle with him before they
turned. For banished people, in those days, seem
to have set out on their own responsibility, in their
own guard, and at their own expense. It was no
joke to make one's way from Paris to Roussillon
alone and penniless in the fifteenth century. Villon
says he left a rag of his tails on every bush. Indeed,
he must have had many a weary tramp, many a
slender meal, and many a to-do with blustering
captains of the Ordonnance. But with one of his
light fingers, we may fancy that he took as good as
he gave ; for every rag of his tail he would manage
to indemnify himself upon the population in the
shape of food, or wine, or ringing money ; and his
route would be traceable across France and Bur-
gundy by housewives and innkeepers lamenting
over petty thefts, like the track of a single human
locust. A strange figure he must have cut in the
eyes of the good country people : this ragged, black-
guard city poet, with a smack of the Paris student,
and a smack of the Paris street arab, posting along
the highways, in rain or sun, among the green fields
and vineyards. For himself, he had no taste for
rural loveHness ; green fields and vineyards would
be mighty indifferent to Master Francis ; but he
would often have his tongue in his cheek at the
simplicity of rustic dupes, and often, at city gates,
he might stop to contemplate the gibbet with its
swinging bodies, and hug himself on his escape.
How long he stayed at Roussillon, how far he
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