SOURCE: “The Lais” in François Villon Revisited, Twayne Publishers, 1997, pp. 20-34.

[In this excerpt, Fein details the groups of people Villon addresses in his earlier mock-testament, many of which reappear in The Testament. Fein demonstrates the variety of tones—playful, ironic, cruel, sympathetic—Villon uses in portraying the various classes of society.]

Although it was long believed that Villon participated in the Navarre theft and wrote the Lais on the same night—Christmas Eve of 1456—most critics now doubt that these events occurred so close together. First, we must remember that Villon's dating of the poem is somewhat approximate:

En ce temps, que j'ay dit devant,
Sur le Noël, morte saison

(9-10)

[At the time I said before,
Toward Christmas, the dead time of the year]

The phrase “Sur le Noël” can be read as either “at Christmas” or (as Barbara Sargent-Baur translates it) “toward Christmas.” The latter reading would appear to be justified by the next few lines of the stanza, in which Villon describes the general conditions of the season (hungry wolves and people confined to their houses) rather than making any specific reference to the celebration of a religious holiday. It must also be noted that the dating of the Navarre escapade as Christmas Eve of 1456 is based on a rather imprecise reference in Guy Tabarie's deposition: “circa festum Nativitatis Domini” (my emphasis). Both Tabarie's statement and the Lais concur on Villon's immediate destination of Angers. According to Tabarie, Villon intended to use Angers as the base for another theft. Villon, on the other hand, claims in the Lais that he is leaving Paris to escape an unhappy love affair. These conflicting explanations have led some critics to conclude that Villon composed the Lais shortly before or shortly after the Navarre theft and included the references to Christmas and Angers as an alibi.¹

Using the popular literary device of a mock will, Villon frames the prologue to his poem within the conventional language of a legal will:²

Mil quatre cens cinquante et six—
Je François Villon, escollier
Considerant, de sens rassis

(1-3)

[Year fourteen hundred fifty-six—
I, a scholar, François Villon,
Considering, while of sound mind]

The series of fictitious bequests that follows may be divided into three basic categories—various personal acquaintances, police and officers of the law (many of whom the poet also knew personally), and an assortment of well-known Parisian citizens of the day. Many of the figures appearing in the Lais will resurface six years later in the Testament.

PERSONAL ACQUAINTANCES

Heading the procession of legatees is Guillaume de Villon, to whom Villon bequeaths his bruyt (renown). Next comes the unidentified woman whose rejection, according to Villon, is the cause of his imminent departure for Angers. Although we know nothing of the woman's identity, the circumstances of her relationship with the poet, or the veracity of Villon's claim (which some readers interpret as a complete fabrication), there is reason to believe that references to the mysterious woman are at least partially grounded in reality. Given that Villon places his bequest to her immediately after the bequest to Guillaume, and that all of the other legatees in the poem have been identified as Villon's contemporaries, it is quite plausible that Villon expects his audience of close acquaintances to readily recognize both the woman in question and the younger, richer rival for whom she apparently rejected François:

Autre que moy est en quelongne
Qui plus billon et plus or songne,
Plus jeune et mieulx garny d'umeur.

(52-54)

[Another man is on the scene
Whose money makes a louder clink,
Younger than I, more cheerful, too.]

Although the possibility of fabrication cannot be flatly rejected, it would be difficult to reconcile this explanation with the fact that the poem is so firmly anchored in every other respect within a biographical context. It would also be difficult to explain the obvious importance of the unidentified woman (she occupies five stanzas and is clearly assigned to a pre-eminent role over the other legatees of the poem) and specific details concerning Villon's successful rival.³

An old acquaintance prominently featured early in the poem is Robert Valée, whom Villon met during his student days. Possessing all the advantages offered by a wealthy and well-connected family, Valée (who received his master's degree three years earlier than Villon) had quickly advanced through the various stages of a successful law career and, by 1455, secured a prestigious appointment as a public prosecutor in the Châtelet. To this man—whom Villon facetiously identifies as a povre clergon (poor little clerk)—possessing an ample income from his profession, family sources, and various properties, the poet leaves, among other gifts, his underwear:

J'ordonne principalement
Qu'on luy baille legierement
Mes brayes, estans aux Trumillieres,
Pour coyffrer plus honnestement
S'amaye, Jehanne de Millieres.

(100-104)

I will, as principal bequest,
That he be given without delay
My underpants, now at the Cuisses,
To deck more suitably the head
Of his girl, Jeanne de Millieres.]

The undergarment, allegedly left as security for an unpaid bill in a local tavern, typifies the legacies of the Lais. A variety of personal belongings (frequently an object with obscene overtones)—some real, some imaginary—are bequeathed for purposes that, although undoubtedly apparent to Villon's immediate audience, we can only guess. In the case of the preceding passage, for example, some scholars speculate that Jeanne de Millieres (about whom we know virtually nothing) deserves the gift because she is the one who “wears the pants” (an expression that already existed, in a variant form, in fifteenth-century French) in the couple's relationship.

A second reading of the passage also reveals something about Villon's self-characterization. Whereas the designation of the legatee as a povre clergon, the choice of the brayes as a bequest, and the suggestion that the undergarment should be given to Robert's mistress all clearly belong to the realm of fantasy, the statement that an article of Villon's clothing lies in a tavern in lieu of payment is arguably the aspect of the stanza that comes closest to the truth. The protest of poverty will echo repeatedly in Villon's poetry, especially in the Testament. As M. J. Freeman points out, Villon's self-portrayal in the Testament is primarily based on his financial condition: “Villon defines himself, then, in terms of his poverty. He is, after all, a ‘povre petit escollier’ (Testament, v. 1886) both penniless and humble.”⁴ Even six years before the Testament, we can see that Villon is already beginning to define himself in the same fashion, depicting himself (in a detail that his contemporaries may have found amusingly accurate) as a man who must occasionally resort to desperate measures to indulge his often costly habits. Underlying the attack on Robert Valée and his mistress, then, we find a discernible note of self-mockery, one that will ring consistently throughout Villon's later poetic production.

A legatee whose financial and social condition more closely resembles Villon's own station is Jacques Raguier, the son of a royal cook:

Et a maistre Jacques Raguier
Laisse l'Abruvouër Popin,
Perches, poussins au blanc menger,
Tousjours le choiz d'un bon loppin,
Le trou de la Pomme de Pin
Cloz et couvert, au feu la plante.

(153-58)

[Also to Master Jacques Raguier,
I leave the Popin water-place,
Perch and pullets with almond sauce,
A tasty something every day,
The tavern called the Pine Cone, too,
Cozy and snug, feet to the fire.]

From a reference in the Testament (1038-45), it is clear that François and Jacques were longtime drinking partners and that the Pomme de Pin, a tavern located on the rue de la Juiverie in the Ile de la Cité, was apparently one of the pair's favorite meeting places. The stanza partially quoted above is particularly rich in sexual innuendos, the subject of numerous commentaries, but the most important feature of the passage may be not its content but its tone.⁵ The Abruvouër Popin, a watering place for horses on the Right Bank, clearly targets Raguier's apparently well-known thirst, for which the Popin would have provided a most unsatisfactory remedy. Unlike so many of Villon's legacies, however, there is nothing cruel or nefarious in the subsequent gifts the poet bestows upon Raguier—the culinary delicacies and the tavern with its warm fire—or the sexual innuendos implied by alternative readings of the stanza. The image of Jacques Raguier that emerges here is simply that of a man who enjoys the sensual pleasures of life, and Villon freely bequeaths Raguier these pleasures in abundance, without any perceptible trace of accusation or bitterness. The stanza is pervaded by a spirit of playful camaraderie, friendly banter, and the rough jokes of male companionship.

POLICE AND OFFICERS OF THE LAW

The second category of legatees includes various representatives of municipal authority charged with enforcing the law—police, officers and examiners attached to the Châtelet, and others. To the captain of the night police and his men, Villon makes the following bequest:

Item, au Chevalier du Guet,
Le Hëaulme luy establis;
Et aux pietons qui vont d'aguet
Tastonnans par ces establis,
Je leur laissë ung beau riblis:
La Lanterne a la Pierre au Let.

(145-50)

[Item, to the Knight of the Watch,
To him I allocate the Helm;
As for the foot patrol, with care
Groping among those merchants' stalls,
I leave some nice pickings to them:
The Lantern in Pierre-au-Lait Street.]

In order to understand the implications of Villon's bequest, a little background information on the Parisian night police is essential. The security of the city was ensured by two groups, the guet des bourgeois and the guet royal. The former was comprised of artisans and shopkeepers who formed a kind of citizens' militia. Established merchants, except those granted special exemptions, were required to serve once every three weeks. Each night, a group of 60 of these men was scattered throughout Paris, stationed at certain strategic locations. The permanent guard, the guet royal (known simply as the guet), consisted of 20 mounted officers and 40 on foot, led by the Chevalier du Guet. This group was charged with the dangerous job of policing the dark streets of Paris at night. Although Parisian citizens were theoretically required to be off the streets after the curfew and were forbidden to carry weapons, the guet kept busy breaking up street brawls, pursuing thieves, answering complaints about vandalism and student pranks, arresting prostitutes, and generally attempting to ensure the peace and security of the citizens of Paris under adverse conditions. The darkness of the narrow Parisian streets (in an era long before the advent of public lighting), the wide area the guet had to police, and the relatively modest size of their force (only one-third of which was mounted on horseback) all contributed to the difficulty of the task.

The man serving as Chevalier du Guet at the time Villon wrote the Lais was Jean de Harlay, appointed to the position a year earlier, in 1455. The holder of the position, however, had to possess a title of nobility, and Jean's social standing, and hence his right to the title, were presently a matter of public dispute. Philippe de la Tour, a military leader who had distinguished himself in the Hundred Years' War, had formerly held the position of Chevalier du Guet and insisted that the appointment rightfully belonged to him because he, unlike his rival, could claim to be a bona fide knight. The lawsuit dragged on for 13 years before it was finally resolved in favor of Philippe.

Thus, by offering Jean the Hëaulme, actually a street sign designating the Porte-Baudoyer tavern, Villon not only acknowledges the disputed nature of Jean's claim to nobility but also undercuts his authority by calling into question the legitimacy of his appointment. The attack on Jean de Harlay tells us something about the intended audience of the Lais. The Parisian police were no more in favor with the students of the fifteenth century than they are with Villon's counterparts today. Thus, any verbal assault on such a visible figure of authority as the Chevalier du Guet is likely to have been received with great amusement and appreciation. The stanza in question, which could be interpreted (leniently) as a cruel joke at Jean's expense or (harshly) as a flagrant act of provocation, could not fail to draw the ire of its victim if he ever became aware of its existence. Moreover, since Villon immediately identifies himself in the second verse of the Lais, the attack hardly could be kept anonymous. In fact, had the original manuscript of the poem fallen into the hands of the police captain (or any of several other powerful figures targeted with similar mockery), Villon would likely have sooner or later, directly or indirectly, felt the unpleasant consequences of his indiscreet and indiscriminate attacks. His audacious bouts of verbal aggression may be partly explained by the fact that he wrote the poem just before leaving Paris for the safety of the provinces, where he intended to remain for an undetermined period of time. It is also quite possible, however, given the sensitive and potentially dangerous nature of some of the bequests, that Villon confided the manuscript, and hence the safety of his own person, into the trusted hands of a few close personal acquaintances.

To the piétons (those who patrol on foot), Villon leaves another house sign, a lantern, representing a private house on the street Pierre-au-Lait. Although nothing is known of this particular house, we know that the street in question ran through one of the less reputable neighborhoods in fifteenth-century Paris. Thus the house, or at least the street, with which the lantern is associated could well represent exactly the kind of illicit activity that the guet royal was responsible for suppressing.⁶

In an age when houses were identified by decorative signs displaying a particular emblem in the form of an animal or object (a horse, a lion, a donkey, a basket, or a lantern), a favorite student prank was to steal these signs and display them in front of different houses or “marry” two signs (a horse and a mule, for example). The nocturnal patrols attempted to prevent this activity whenever possible, of course, but given the guet's insufficient resources, the enormous area that it was forced to cover, and the relative ease with which a sign could be removed, the guet proved ineffective in protecting these property markers, which disappeared and reappeared with irritating frequency. Villon, who enjoys playing his own game with signs (more than 30 appear in the Lais and Testament), is taunting Jean de Harlay and his men with their inability to protect the property of the honest Parisian citizens who employ them.

The theft of signs, it may be argued, represents more than just the antics of mischievous students. Symbolizing the property, wealth, respectability, and authority of the bourgeois and aristocratic residents of Paris, the house signs represented a level of material comfort and social standing—the couche molle (Testament, 204)—unattainable by many of the students and unemployed clerics with whom Villon associated. By removing the signs, relocating them, and combining them with other signs, the young men were, in a symbolic sense, restructuring the society that the signs represented. There was even, it may be further argued, a poetic dimension to the criminal act. By situating a sign in a new context, often in conjunction with another sign, the authors of the act endowed the object with an original and unexpected meaning. In fact, Villon as a poet proves quite adept at displacing signs (both material and semantic), “stealing” a word from a “proper” linguistic register (perhaps a semantic field associated with the legal profession, financial transactions, or religious life) and inserting the word into a context where it takes on a comically obscene connotation. Thus the activity of sign stealing becomes an especially apt metaphor for much of Villon's mischievous poetic pranks.

Perrenet Marchant (an officer attached to the Châtelet and a member of the bodyguard assigned to protect the prévôt, Robert d'Estouteville) is another officer of the law honored by a bequest:

Item, a Perrenet Merchant,
Qu'on dit le Bastard de la Barre,
Pour ce qu'il est ung bon merchant
Luy laisse troys gluyons de feurre
Pour estendre dessus la terre
A faire l'amoureux mestier,
Ou il luy fauldra sa vie quere,
Car il ne scet autre mestier.

(177-84)

[Item, to Perrenet Merchant
Who's called the Bastard de la Barre,
Because he's a good businessman
I leave to him three bales of straw
To be spread out upon the ground
And carry on love's traffic with,
Wherein he'll seek his livelihood,
For it's the only trade he knows.]

The implication of this gift, according to Jean Dufournet, is that Perrenet supplements his modest income as an officer of the law with prostitution, as either a pimp or a gigolo.⁷ Another possibility, one not mentioned by Dufournet but one that cannot be excluded entirely, is that Villon is using the word mestier in a figurative sense to designate not so much a source of revenue as a way of life.⁸ Perrenet Marchant, a favorite target of Villon cited three times in the Testament, was apparently a less-than-honorable character who had acquired a reputation as either a womanizer or a pimp and (according to a later reference in the Testament) as a cheating gambler. One can easily imagine the advantages to which such a man could exploit his power as an officer in the Châtelet, connected with a variety of well-placed (and possibly corrupt) officials.

As in many bequests, Villon makes no effort to identify the legatee in terms of his actual profession (although he does add an alias under which Perrenet may also have been known). The activity by which Marchant is identified has nothing to do with his official function as an officer of the Châtelet, but rather with a more intimate aspect of his life. In a pattern repeated throughout the Lais and the Testament, Villon defines many of his legatees in terms of their well-known weaknesses, obsessions, shameful incidents, private failures and humiliations, and illicit activities, all of which are masked by their honorable mestier.

Immediately following his bequest to Marchant, Villon turns his attention to two other individuals, one of whom, Casin Cholet, was also employed as a member of the Châtelet police:

Item, au Loup et a Cholet
Je laisse a la foys ung canart
Prins sur les murs, comme on souloit,
Envers les fossés, sur le tart

(185-88)

[Item, to Loup and to Cholet,
To both at once, I leave a duck
Caught at the walls, as custom was,
Around the moats, when the hour is late.]

One of the favorite activities of this pair (who also resurface in the Testament) was stealing poultry from the outskirts of Paris, but their thefts apparently included firewood, coal, crops, and swine. Le Loup and Cholet preferred, of course, to operate under the cover of night, and the Lais, like the Testament, is in many respects a poem of darkness. The Lais is, after all, written during the season of the winter solstice, the darkest period of the year. There are references to various nocturnal activities (the lantern bequeathed to the foot patrol of the night watch, the sexual escapades of Perrenet Marchant, and the thefts committed by Le Loup and Cholet under cover of night) and to taverns, which were perpetually dark by day or night. Finally, Villon finishes (or at least claims to finish) the poem at night:

J'ouys la cloche de Serbonne,
Qui tousjours a neuf heures sonne
Le salut que l'ange predit.

(275-77)

[I heard the bell of the Sorbonne
Which always sounds at nine o'clock
The greeting that the angel spoke.]

The world of the Lais, with all its colorful inhabitants, truly comes alive during the night.

THE RICH AND POWERFUL

The majority of bequests go to men with whom Villon had very little—if any—contact, wealthy financiers and merchants, members of parliament, and high-ranking members of the clergy. Generally belonging to an older generation, these well-established men enjoyed power and privileges to which Villon and his acquaintances, humble and largely unemployed clerics, could never aspire. Before the rich and powerful are allowed to enter into the world of the Lais, however, they are forced to undergo radical transformation. Rich men become paupers, old men become children, the powerful become helpless, the corrupt become innocent, the arrogant become humble. Thus, three elderly usurers, Colin Laurens, Girard Gossuin, and Jehan Marceau, who have amassed considerable fortune at the expense of others, are transformed into ragged orphans:

Item, et je lesse, en pitié
A troys petis enffans tous nudz
Nonmés en ce present traictié—
Povres orphelins inpourveuz,
Tous deschaussez, tous despourveuz
Et desnuez comme le ver …
J'ordonne qu'ilz seront pourveuz,
Au moins pour passer cest yver—

(193-200)

[Item, I leave in charity
To three small youngsters, naked all,
Named in this present document—
Poor orphan boys without support,
All of them barefoot, all deprived
And mother-naked, every one …
I will they be provided for,
To live this winter through, at least—]

By the repeated use of antiphrasis, Villon teaches the reader to substitute the opposite meaning of certain relevant signifiers (when alerted by appropriate clues). Thus, the initiated reader, once having made the connection between the three elderly financiers and the troys petis enffans tous nudz, would be well equipped to appreciate the humorous portrayal of the povres orphelins. By insisting on the vulnerability of the “orphans”—tous nudz, inpourveuz, deschaussez, despourveuz, desnuez—Villon comments implicitly on the material comfort of the three men in question. By the end of the sixth verse, having emphatically and repeatedly drawn the reader's attention to the wealth and material possessions of his legatees, Villon now concludes the stanza with an unexpected twist. In a gracious act of charity, he wills that the orphans be provided for long enough to survive the coming winter. A note of truth pierces the carefully constructed fiction at this point, for with each passing year, Laurens, Gossuin, Marceau, despite all the comfort and protection afforded by their excessive wealth, are indeed, at their advanced age, at greater and greater risk of not surviving the winter. The danger, then, to which Villon alludes in the last verse is very real. In effect, the stanza redefines the traditional concepts of poverty and wealth. Villon seems to suggest that a true sense of wealth derives not from affluence and material comfort, but rather from youth, health, and physical well-being. Lacking these attributes, the three men targeted by Villon are truly povres, that is, worthy of pity although they are not financially destitute. The poet himself, on the other hand, although lacking the financial advantages of his legatees, boasts one possession that all of them are wanting, the vigor of a 25-year-old man.

The transformation of the elderly financiers into defenseless orphans, like the displacement of the house signs, restructures the existing world of Paris in 1456 according to the inner logic of the Lais, which is a poetic world of its own, a world whose intelligibility resides in the minds of the poet and his intimate acquaintances. The same process transforms two elderly canons in the cathedral of Notre-Dame, Guillaume Cotin and Thibaut de Vitry (both wealthy members of parliament), into the following:

Deux povres clercs, parlans latin,
Humbles, bien chantans au lectry,
Paisibles enfans, sans estry.

(219-21)

[Two poor clerks, Latin-speaking both,
Humble, good singers in the choir,
Peaceable youngsters, free of strife.]

As canons of the cathedral of Notre-Dame, both men were involved in a long and bitter lawsuit between their church and Saint-Benoît-le-Bétourné, the church with which Guillaume de Villon was affiliated, and which was subject to the control of Notre-Dame. Deciphering the antiphrasis of Villon's description, we may conclude that he is drawing attention to the advanced age of the canons, their poor knowledge of Latin, their broken voices, their arrogance, and their contentious nature. As a cleric himself, Villon is taking on two very powerful and potentially dangerous adversaries, men capable of doing him even more harm than a civil authority such as Jean de Harlay, the Chevalier du Guet. In the world of the Lais, however, all power is concentrated in the pen of the poet, who playfully reduces his enemies to ludicrous figures, deprived of all authority and dignity. Elderly financiers are forced to masquerade as naked orphans; pompous prelates are forced into the robes of choirboys.

CRUEL GIFTS

Not all of the recipients of Villon's “charity” are politically and financially empowered. As one would expect in an actual will, the testator turns his attention to the poor and disenfranchised:

Item, je lesse aux hospitaux
Mes chassis tissus d'arignee;
Et aux gisans soubz les estaulz
Chacun sur l'eul une grongniee.

(233-36)

[Item, to the poorhouses I leave
My window frames of spider webs;
To the sleepers under the merchants' stalls
A good punch in the eye for each.]

The poor and helpless—including the blind, the lame, and the mentally handicapped—are frequent targets of derision in medieval literature, appearing as stock characters in the fabliaux of the thirteenth century and later in the farces of the fifteenth century. Thus, although the sensibilities of the modern reader may be offended by the apparently sadistic humor of which these characters are often the victims, it is important to recognize that Villon is working within a well-established comic tradition. Yet even taking into account the literary precedent, we should note that Villon's bequest to the gisans soubz les estaulz (those whom we would call the homeless today, and who still populate the streets of Paris five centuries later) does not end with a quick blow to the face. The second half of the stanza, written in some of the most vehement language to be found in the Lais, is nothing short of a violent curse, as the poet details the suffering that he wishes on these unfortunate creatures:

Trambler a chiere renfrongee,
Megres, velus et morfondus,
Chausses courtes, robe rongnee,
Gelez, murdriz et enfondus.

(237-40)

[To shiver with their faces drawn,
All thin and hairy, with heavy colds,
Trousers too short and gowns all frayed,
Chilled through, in pain, and soaking wet.]

Here Villon goes far beyond the cursory slap in the face, the casually offered blow he has delivered, in keeping with medieval tradition, in the first half of the stanza. The passage illustrates an undercurrent of violence that runs throughout the Lais and will become even more prominent in the Testament. The motivation for these passionate outbreaks is usually transparent, as in the case of the bequest reserved for an anonymous “benefactor”:

Et pour celluy qui fist l'avangarde
Pour faire sur moy griefz exploiz,
De par moy, Saint Anthoine l'arde!

(261-63)

[And that man who began it all
To bring down trouble on my head,
Saint Anthony burn him, in my name!]

With convincing logic, Jean Dufournet identifies the legatee as Jean le Mardi, the companion of Philippe Sermoise who disarmed Villon during his struggle with the priest and in a subsequent deposition presumably implicated Villon to some extent in the incident.⁹ If Dufournet is right, then the vehemence of the bequest, which brings down the curse of Saint Anthony's fire (probably erysipelas, an acute infectious disease causing particularly painful inflammation of the skin), can be readily understood. On the other hand, the curse delivered to the gisans, who could hardly have posed any threat to Villon, is more difficult to explain, except as an expression of gratuitous cruelty. It is worth noting, however, that despite the sadism that apparently underlies the bequest, the passage reveals a remarkable sensitivity to the plight of the homeless victims. Villon describes their physical condition with an exceptional attention to detail—the trembling of their limbs, their facial expression, their thin bodies and unkempt appearance, symptoms of respiratory infection caused by prolonged exposure to inclement weather, the worn condition of their ill-fitting clothes, and the misery of their condition as they lie huddled, thoroughly soaked, shivering with cold and pain under the merchants' stalls. These men whose gaunt and trembling bodies are depicted with graphic detail are not the familiar puppets that one sees slapped about in the fabliaux and the farces. Whatever else the bequest to the gisans may represent, it acknowledges at least the reality of their suffering. Abandoning his favorite technique of antiphrasis, Villon observes with painful and compelling realism the pitiful state to which these clochards have been reduced. Unlike so many of the caricatures we find throughout the Lais, the gisans are real men whose condition is straightforwardly portrayed without even a hint of verbal deceit. There are, then, rare and almost startling moments of authenticity in which the Paris of 1456 and the world of the Lais are allowed to briefly coincide. The stanza dedicated to the street people of Paris represents, at one level, a testimonial to the poet's sensitivity and power of observation, as well as his capacity for cruelty. These are qualities that will all be developed in the Testament.

Notes

1. In a lengthy commentary on the dating of the Lais, Jean Rychner concludes: “De toute façon il faut abandonner l'image romantique d'une ‘nuit de Noël’ partagée entre la composition solitaire du Lais et le vol du Collège de Navarre …” (Jean Rychner, Les Lais Villons et les poèmes variés, vol. 2 [Geneva: Droz, 1977], 7-9).

2. See Winthrop H. Rice, The European Ancestry of Villon's Satirical Testaments (New York: Corporate Press, 1941). For examples of actual fifteenth-century wills, see Alexandre Tuetey, Testaments enregistrés au Parlement de Paris sous le règne de Charles VI (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1880).

3. Jean Dufournet has advanced the hypothesis that Villon's rival may be Ythier Marchant, which would explain the appearance of Marchant immediately after the reference to Villon's mistress. Dufournet, Recherches, 259-74.

4. M. J. Freeman, “‘Faulte d'argent m'a si fort enchanté: Money and François Villon,” in Romance Studies 24 (1994): 64.

5. For example, Jean Dufournet, Nouvelles recherches sur Villon (Paris: Champion, 1980), 89-96.

6. Champion, vol. 1, 128.

7. Dufournet, Recherches, vol. 1, 281.

8. It is in this sense that he later uses the word in lines 1501-2 of the Testament: “Mais, quoy que ce soit du laborieux mestier, / Il n'est tresor que de vivre a son aise” [But, however it may be with rustic chores, / No treasure matches living at one's ease].

9. Dufournet, Nouvelles recherches, 179.