Unheeded a man-at-arms pushed his way through the crowd to the king's dais and whispered some words in the ear of Noel le Jolys, who in turn whispered in the ear of Olivier and Olivier hearing, grew paler than before. Villon caught Katherine by the hand. "No, Kate, no! The world is wide, our hearts are light. For a star has fallen to me from heaven and it fills the earth with glory." His words fell on the king's ears like the voice of an oracle. Standing in his place with staring eyes and trembling fingers, he repeated falteringly the mystic words. "A star has fallen from heaven. My dream, my dream!" Olivier plucked at his mantle, whispering with twitching lips: "My liege, this story spreads like the plague in the city and every alley vomits mutiny." Louis pushed him aside. "Rub your pale cheeks," he said; "for all is well. Destiny has spoken." Then leaning over and stretching his thin hand towards the crowd, he cried: "People of Paris, that man shall have his life; this woman her lover. I have tried a man's heart and found it pure gold; a woman's soul and found it all angel. True man and true woman, to each other's arms!" And Katherine and Villon obeyed the king. EPILOGUE At about this point in his narrative, Dom Gregory, as those happy few who are familiar with his manuscript in the Abbey of Bonne Aventure are aware, diverges from the full current of his story to indulge in some philosophical reflections upon the character of Louis XI. What, Dom Gregory asks in cautious interrogation, were the real intentions of the monarch with regard to François Villon and the Lady Katherine de Vaucelles? His enemies no doubt assert that he played with their destinies for a purely malignant purpose and was only prevented from carrying his evil intentions into effect by the storm of popular indignation that threatened him. Others, again, who pretend to a more intimate acquaintance with the shifty character of the king, insist that he did indeed purpose to send Master Villon to the gallows, or at least and worse, into a beggar's exile, but that lie was stayed by Master Villon's happy use of the phrase concerning a star fallen from heaven, which words, harping upon the superstitious wits of his majesty, made him believe that the dream which had puzzled him was interpreted and fulfilled. In this regard Dom Gregory records with a sly gravity how many suggest that Master François used those words of set purpose with the very intention of playing upon the strained strings of the king's mind. But there be those, too, Dom Gregory adds, and we gather from his manner that he is inclined to include himself in their number, there be those partisans of the king who maintain that the king's cruelty was from the start a mere mask for clemency, that he only intended a little malicious sport with the too outspoken lover and the too disdainful lass, and that it had never been in the scope of his thoughts