La cave s’y trouve placée Où fut jadis le cabinet, On n’y porte plus sa pensée Qu’aux douceurs d’un vin frais et net.” The oldest poetical tradition of tavern signs we find, perhaps, in the songs of Villon, who sometimes has been called the Paul Verlaine of the fifteenth century, on account of his similar vicissitudes in life. A child of the people, he is not ashamed of his low origin:-- “Sur les tumbeaux de mes ancestres Les âmes desquels Dieu embrasse, On n’y voyt couronnes ne sceptres.” Living the life of the common people, he mingles freely with them, and in his wordly poems many a tavern adventure is told with zest. As a roaming scholar he wanders from place to place and, having rarely a penny in his purse, he acquires easily the art of dining without paying:-- “C’est bien trompé, qui rien ne paye, Et qui peut vivre d’advantaige, Sans débourser or ne monnoye En usant de joyeux langaige.” And although he arrives at the tavern door riding shank’s mare, poor devil that he is,-- “Il va à pied, par faulte d’asne,”-- he is rich in fascinating stories to win the landlord’s favors and to secure ample credit. Full of self-assurance, he demands always the best of everything, “boire ypocras à jour et à nuyctée” (day and night to sip Hypokras), one of Falstaff’s various favorite drinks. Curious sign-names Villon mentions; as, the tin plate,-- “le cas advint an Plat d’estain,”-- or, the golden mortar (“le mortier d’or”), and even “the pestle.” The mortar was really a chemist’s sign. To-day, even, we may see, in a little French provincial town over the door of a druggist, a bear diligently braying some wholesome herb, in a mortar, an “Ours qui pile.” “Or advint, environ midy, Qu’il estoit de faim estourdy; S’en vint à une hostellerie Rue de la Mortellerie, Où pend l’enseigne du Pestel À bon logis et bon hostel; Demandant s’en a que repaistre. Ouy vraiment, ce dist le maistre, Ne soyez de rien en soucy Car vous serez très bien servy, De pain, de vin et de viande.” The animal kingdom is represented by the mule, “la Mulle,” an inn frequented by Rabelais, too, the red donkey (“un asne rouge”), and the white horse that, like all the painted horses, had the bad habit of never moving (“le cheval blanc qui ne bouge”). We have seen above that the “White Horse” was popular in Italy, too, although an old Italian proverb pretends that it is just as capricious as a beautiful woman and a source of continual annoyances:-- “Chi hà cavallo bianco e belle moglie Non è mai senza doglie.” The most famous of all the cabarets immortalized by Villon is “le trou de la Pomme de Pin,” as he usually calls it. In the “Repues Franches,” from which we quoted the story of the Hotel du Pestel we read:-- “Et vint à la Pomme de Pin * * * * *