Villon's voice sank reverently and Huguette took advantage of the pause. "I wish it had burned you to the bone," she interrupted spitefully. Master Villon shook his head. "It burned deeper than that, believe me. Outside, on God's steps, stood a yellow-haired, pink-faced puppet who greeted her and they ambled away together, I on their heels. Presently they came to a gateway and in slips my quarry, and as she did so she turned to her squire and I saw her face again and lost it, for the tears came into my eyes." With a heavy sigh he turned to Louis. "I suppose you wonder why I talk like this, but when my heart's in my mouth I must spit it out or it chokes me." "I have learned to wonder at nothing," Louis answered sagely. Villon picked up the dropped thread of his tale. "I saluted the gallant and begged to know the lady's name. He took me for a madman, but he told me." In a second Huguette was on her legs again and nestling her eager face close to that of Villon as she whispered coaxingly: "What was the lady's name, dear François?" Master François looked into her watchful eyes with a wise smile. "Be secret, sweet," he murmured. "It was Her Majesty, the Queen." A wild roar of laughter from Villon's friends greeted this sally, and the fury it brought to Huguette's face. Louis, royally angered, made as if to rise in protest, but the heavy hand of Tristan fell on his shoulder and restrained him, and Villon, noticing his irritation, waved him down with a pacifying gesture. "Now, now, my rum duke," he cried, "your loyalty need not take fire. It was not her majesty, but her name I shall keep to myself, though it is written on my shoulders in fair large blue and black bruises." This statement stirred a murmur of surprise in the gathering. "Did the pink and gold popinjay beat you?" Montigny asked, interpreting the general curiosity. "No, no," Villon answered. "It came about thus. We tinkers of verses set a price on our wares that few find them worth, yet with the love-fever in my veins I wrote rhymes to this lady and sent them to her fairly writ on a piece of parchment that cost me a dinner." "Did you think she would come to your whistle like a bird to a lure?" Louis enquired playfully. Villon sighed again. "In this kind of madness a minstrel thinks himself a new Orpheus who could win a woman out of hell with his music. But I got my answer--oh, I got my answer." He dropped suddenly into a moody silence, which was not to the taste of the fellowship who were interested in the adventure. Montigny, leaning forward, gave Villon a clap on the back which made him shrink, and shouted "What was the answer?" Villon began to laugh, a loud, mirthless laugh that had no human warmth in it.