No--the young
master was already treading crooked paths; already, he would start and
blench at a hand upon his shoulder, with the look we know so well in the
face of Hogarth's Idle Apprentice; already, in the blue devils, he would
see Henry Cousin, the executor of high justice, going in dolorous
procession towards Montfaucon, and hear the wind and the birds crying
around Paris gibbet. A GANG OF THIEVES

In spite of the prodigious number of people who managed to get hanged,
the fifteenth century was by no means a bad time for criminals. A great
confusion of parties and great dust of fighting favoured the escape of
private housebreakers and quiet fellows who stole ducks in Paris Moat. Prisons were leaky; and as we shall see, a man with a few crowns in his
pocket, and perhaps some acquaintance among the officials, could easily
slip out and become once more a free marauder. There was no want of a
sanctuary where he might harbour until troubles blew by; and accomplices
helped each other with more or less good faith. Clerks, above all, had
remarkable facilities for a criminal way of life; for they were
privileged, except in cases of notorious incorrigibility, to be plucked
from the hands of rude secular justice and tried by a tribunal of their
own. In 1402, a couple of thieves, both clerks of the University, were
condemned to death by the Provost of Paris. As they were taken to
Montfaucon, they kept crying "high and clearly" for their benefit of
clergy, but were none the less pitilessly hanged and gibbeted. Indignant
Alma Mater interfered before the King; and the Provost was deprived of
all royal offices, and condemned to return the bodies and erect a great
stone cross, on the road from Paris to the gibbet, graven with the
effigies of these two holy martyrs. [10] We shall hear more of the
benefit of clergy; for after this the reader will not be surprised to
meet with thieves in the shape of tonsured clerks, or even priests and
monks. To a knot of such learned pilferers our poet certainly belonged; and by
turning over a few more of M. Longnon's negatives, we shall get a clear
idea of their character and doings. Montigny and De Cayeux are names
already known; Guy Tabary, Petit-Jehan, Dom Nicolas, little Thibault,
who was both clerk and goldsmith, and who made picklocks and melted
plate for himself and his companions--with these the reader has still to
become acquainted. Petit-Jehan and De Cayeux were handy fellows and
enjoyed a useful pre-eminence in honour of their doings with the
picklock. "_Dictus des Cahyeus est fortis operator crochetorum_," says
Tabary's interrogation, "_sed dictus Petit-Jehan, ejus socius, est
forcius operator_." But the flower of the flock was little Thibault; it
was reported that no lock could stand before him; he had a persuasive
hand; let us salute capacity wherever we may find it. Perhaps the term
_gang_ is not quite properly applied to the persons whose fortunes we
are now about to follow; rather they were independent malefactors,
socially intimate, and occasionally joining together for some serious
operation, just as modern stockjobbers form a syndicate for an important
loan. Nor were they at all particular to any branch of misdoing. They
did not scrupulously confine themselves to a single sort of theft, as I
hear is common among modern thieves. They were ready for anything, from
pitch-and-toss to manslaughter. Montigny, for instance, had neglected
neither of these extremes, and we find him accused of cheating at games
of hazard on the one hand, and on the other of the murder of one
Thevenin Pensete in a house by the Cemetery of St. John. If time had
only spared us some particulars, might not this last have furnished us
with the matter of a grisly winter's tale? At Christmas-time in 1456, readers of Villon will remember that he was
engaged on the "Small Testament." About the same period, _circa festum
nativitatis Domini_, he took part in a memorable supper at the Mule
Tavern, in front of the Church of St. Mathurin. Tabary, who seems to
have been very much Villon's creature, had ordered the supper in the
course of the afternoon. He was a man who had had troubles in his time,
and languished in the Bishop of Paris's prisons on a suspicion of
picking locks; confiding, convivial, not very astute--who had copied out
a whole improper romance with his own right hand. This supper-party was
to be his first introduction to De Cayeux and Petit-Jehan, which was
probably a matter of some concern to the poor man's muddy wits; in the
sequel, at least, he speaks of both with an undisguised respect, based
on professional inferiority in the matter of picklocks. Dom Nicolas, a
Picardy monk, was the fifth and last at table. When supper had been
despatched and fairly washed down, we may suppose, with white Baigneux
or red Beaune, which were favourite wines among the fellowship, Tabary
was solemnly sworn over to secrecy on the night's performances; and the
party left the Mule and proceeded to an unoccupied house belonging to
Robert de Saint-Simon. This, over a low wall, they entered without
difficulty. All but Tabary took off their upper garments; a ladder was
found and applied to the high wall which separated Saint-Simon's house
from the court of the College of Navarre; the four fellows in their
shirt-sleeves (as we might say) clambered over in a twinkling; and
Master Guy Tabary remained alone beside the overcoats. From the court
the burglars made their way into the vestry of the chapel, where they
found a large chest, strengthened with iron bands and closed with four
locks. One of these locks they picked, and then, by levering up the
corner, forced the other three. Inside was a small coffer, of walnut
wood, also barred with iron, but fastened with only three locks, which
were all comfortably picked by way of the keyhole. In the walnut
coffer--a joyous sight by our thieves' lantern--were five hundred crowns
of gold. There was some talk of opening the aumries, where, if they had
only known, a booty eight or nine times greater lay ready to their hand;
but one of the party (I have a humorous suspicion it was Dom Nicolas,
the Picardy monk) hurried them away. It was ten o'clock when they
mounted the ladder; it was about midnight before Tabary beheld them
coming back. To him they gave ten crowns, and promised a share of a
two-crown dinner on the morrow; whereat we may suppose his mouth
watered. In course of time, he got wind of the real amount of their
booty and understood how scurvily he had been used; but he seems to have
borne no malice. How could he, against such superb operators as
Petit-Jehan and De Cayeux; or a person like Villon, who could have made
a new improper romance out of his own head, instead of merely copying an
old one with mechanical right hand? The rest of the winter was not uneventful for the gang. First they made
a demonstration against the Church of St. Mathurin after chalices, and
were ignominiously chased away by barking dogs.