posterity. Many pieces of parchment are missing from the roll of his record, and, unhappily, the greatest gap in the story is precisely at that point where our hero found himself so suddenly and so strangely taken into favour by his king, and so suddenly and so strangely smiled upon by his mistress. We have indeed some admirable homiletics of the worthy friar's in praise of the conduct and carriage of Master François Villon at the time of his unexpected exaltation. After a gracious invocation of many saints and angels, the very elect of the company of heaven, Dom Gregory, in a fine spirit of rectitude, proceeds to applaud the Count of Montcorbier for the high example he set to his fellow-men. Here, in effect says the worthy churchman, was a man who, having passed the flower of his life in squalor and all manner of ignobilities, still kept in a sense the whiteness of his soul and allowed the brightness of the celestial flame to burn, faintly indeed but unextinguished, on the altar of his heart. How many men, asks Dom Gregory, glowing with a pious gratification, how many men who in humility have dreamed that they might under serener stars and happier auspices do great deeds and win honourable honours, would, if put to the proof, show themselves as splendid in prosperity as they dreamed
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