bawdry and larceny. The ferret-faced knave who is tickling the girl's knee is Jehan le Loup. Bullies and bawds, pandars and parasites: to enumerate their offenses would be to say the Decalogue backward."
"You have a pithy humour, gossip," and Louis grinned. "Our gallows shall be busy anon."
Tristan was abcut to open his mouth in approval of a sentiment so pleasing to his ears when his words and his purpose were alike arrested by a sound of a voice singing outside the tavern door.
The voice was a man's voice, something rough and strained for fine music, and yet with a kind of full and florid sweetness that carried the words clearly through the red-curtained windows. They seemed to make a complaint of Fortune:
Where I came near to say good-bye
To this poor life that needs must fly
From the malignity of Fate,
Perchance she now will pass me by
Since I have left the prison gate."
If the king pricked his ear to listen, and even Tristan moved a little in his lethargy, the effect of the