"They told me at the Unicorn," the old woman said, "that I might find you here." Villon made a gesture of contempt. "Oh, the Unicorn is no longer fashionable. They want payment on the nail there, confound them! Besides, this is nearer the walls and we can hear the Burgundians shouting. It is as good as a relish with our wine." Mother Villon shook her grey head sadly. "Come away," she entreated. "You have had wine enough." Villon contradicted her instantly. "Never in my life, mammy. I have a fool's head and always get into my altitudes too soon." Then, seeing the look of disappointment that made her grey old face look greyer still,--he added, "I cannot come home just now, mammy, but there is something I can do for you. Do you remember when I was a little child--" Something in the words made him stop suddenly. The hideous contrast between the phrase and the place wherein he was, between the mother who fondled him and the wild men-savages and women-savages who were his daily friends and who were drinking and dicing behind him at the other side of the settle, came upon him like a great wave of pain and knocked the mirth out of him. He turned away from his mother and repeated to himself dismally, "God! when I was a little child!" The mother's pity, the mother's protection immediately asserted themselves. "You were the prettiest child woman ever bore," she said, softly. Villon turned towards her again, while he tried to wink the tears out of his eyes. "You used to sing me to sleep," he said, and as he spoke he rocked her slowly backward and forward in his arms, while he crooned the words of that old nurse's song which has soothed so many generations of French children to sleep, "Do, do, l'enfant do, l'enfant dormira tantot." "Well, mammy, your dutiful son has made a song for you to sing yourself to sleep with. I went to church the other day. Oh, on my honour, I did"--this was in reply to a startled look of surprise that flooded the old woman's face--"and a prayer came into my head--a prayer for you to say to our Lady." The old woman kissed him fondly on the forehead. "My love bird," she said, and as she spoke a boyish look that had long been absent from Villon's face came back to it for a moment. "Here it is," he said. "Listen." And he whispered to her the verses he had made, while the old woman crossed herself reverentially. "Lady of Heaven, Queen of Earth, Empress of Hell, I kneel and plead You pity, by the holy birth, The humblest Christian of the Creed; I cannot write; I cannot read; I am a woman poor and old, But in the Church, where I behold The gates of Paradise, I cry Woman to woman, make me bold In thy belief to live and die." "There, mammy, there is a pretty prayer for you." Mother Villon was dissolved in tears and sobbed on his shoulder. "You should have been a good man," she said. Villon stroked her hair very gently.