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 "Now, friends, where is your idol's supplement? Who will be his lieutenant, who will be heir to his heritage of a cross bar and a rope? You are not so brisk as you were. Does your devotion falter? Were you mocking me and him?"

Villon looked at the king with a kind of disdainful admiration.

"King of foxes!" he applauded, and the king heard him and smiled again.

"Tristan," he said, "go into yonder church and bring me an inch of candle."

Tristan bowed and entered the church. The king went on:

"Our royal mercy is mild, our royal mercy is patient. As it is our hope and our belief to live in history as a good and gracious sovereign, we would not have it said of us that we denied even a felon all due and reasonable opportunity."

Even while he spoke, Tristan came out of the church carrying in his hand a great gold candlestick in whose socket a little piece of candle, scarce an inch high, still was burning. He gave it into the hands of one of the soldiers of the Scottish Guard, who held it in his strong grasp and stood as immovable as a statue, while the thin faint flame pointed spear-like towards heaven in the warm and windless air.