Yet again the first speaker queried: "Will you drink the king's health?" And the answer came decisively: "In a flagon of Burgundy." Whereat the two pilgrims saluted and parted and went their several ways and were swallowed up in the motley masquerade. Villon's curiosity was piqued to the quick. "How in heaven's name," he asked himself, "does it come to pass that people speaking the thieves' lingo of the Court of Miracles find themselves at a feast in the rose garden of King Louis?" He set himself to try and track down one or the other of the mysterious pilgrims, but neither of them was to be found. His wanderings brought him back to the fair space at the foot of the terrace protected by the image of the god Pan. The place was deserted; the revellers had drifted elsewhere. A lute lay on the marble seat. Villon seated himself and taking up the instrument was touching it carelessly, when a light step on the grass arrested him, the sweetest voice in the world sounded in his ears, and he found himself addressed by the Lady Katherine de Vaucelles, who was attended by a number of fair court ladies. "I am the voice of these ladies to pray for a favour." Villon bowed low. "My ear is all obedience," he said, "and my heart all homage." "You are a poet, my lord," said Katherine, "and this is an eve which should please a poet. Rhyme us a rhyme which shall match this night of summer." Villon sighed a little. "No rhyme ever rhymed was worth a beam of summer sun or summer moon; but I have lingered in Provence where every man is a nightingale, and I caught there the fever of improvisation. What shall I rhyme about?" Katherine laughed as she pointed to her attendant ladies. "Your suitors are women; therefore, nothing better nor worse than love." "The burden of the world," Villon said. "Sigh, my lute, sigh." He let his fingers ripple over the strings, waking the faint wail of a plaintive minor. In a moment or two he began to recite, touching every now and then a chord on his lute to emphasize the words he spoke: "I wonder in what Isle of Bliss Apollo's music fills the air; In what green valley Artemis For young Endymion spreads the snare: Where Venus lingers debonair: The Wind has blown them all away-- And Pan lies piping in his lair-- Where are the Gods of Yesterday? "Say where the great Semiramis Sleeps in a rose-red tomb; and where The precious dust of Caesar is, Or Cleopatra's yellow hair: Where Alexander Do-and-Dare; The Wind has blown them all away-- And Redbeard of the Iron Chair; Where are the Dreams of Yesterday? "Where is the Queen of Herod's kiss, And Phryne in her beauty bare; By what strange sea does Tomyris With Dido and Cassandra share Divine Proserpina's despair; The Wind has blown them all away-- For what poor ghost does Helen care? Where are the Girls of Yesterday?