"It means, sire, that a man has come to court!" CHAPTER VIII A WORD WITH DOM GREGORY It is a thousand pities that the materials for building up a practical presentment of the real life-story of Master François Villon are so slight, that in the historical sense they might almost be said to be non-existent. We know, indeed, a little of Master François' early days, partly from some confessions which must at all times be interpreted with a liberal sense of humour and glossed with an infinite deal of good nature, and partly from stray records made by those who do not seem to have held the vagrant poet very warm in their hearts. But of his life in those days of which this chronicle deals, there is little to find where there is much to seek. The silence of Commines may be explained in a thousand ways, possibly professional jealousy of one minister for another, who in so short a space of time did so much and so well, possibly ignorance of the real facts of the case, for it is fairly certain that King Louis kept his jape and its sequel very much to himself, possibly because Commines felt that his cold spirit was scarcely equal to the proper recording of so whimsical and oriental an adventure. Good Master Clement Marot, when he took it upon himself, generations after our poet was dust and ashes, to edit our poet's writings, said much in praise of the singer but said little, no doubt because he knew little, of the poet's life. And the great creator of Pantagruel and Gargantua, the immeasurable Alcofribias Nasier, whom the world loves or hates as Rabelais, in what he contributed to our knowledge of François Villon has only--to use a weather-worn and moss-grown phrase--made confusion yet worse confounded.