DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.63221#0255
CLEMENT MAROT
213
in prison for selling bread of insufficient weight, have to
march disgraced through the streets. And yet money thefts
are winked at in high places and Cardinals may sell what
they like.
The Basochiens were among the wildest spirits in Paris,
and Clement Marot was the wildest of the Basochiens. They
had convivial relations with other companies who vied with
them in adventure: the Enfants Sans Souci, the Clerks of
the Chatelet, and the Clerks of the Empire of Galilee.
Together with these boon-companions, Clement hobnobbed
with all the ragamuffins of the city, lived with the water-
men on the river-bank, fought the Watch, and scandalized
the Law-court and University by the strange friends he
brought there. The public Squares—the Halles, the Greve,
the Place Maubert, the Pierre-au-lait—were his favourite
haunts. He would loiter too by the Cloitre des Innocents,
near St. Thomas du Louvre, “where singers and players of
instruments made music; ’* he would stop, as he strolled, at
the church-doors, before which bands of alchemists in rags,
crucible in hand, sought the philosopher’s stone, or pursued
the more profitable business of writing love-letters for
chambermaids. The favourite taverns, crowded with royster-
ing students, each with his bumper of red wine, were the
Pomme de Pin au Castel, the Magdaleine a la Mule, or the
famous Trois Poissons in the Faubourg St. Marcel. By the
time he was fifteen, Marot was the Prince of Swashbucklers.
At about that age he became, like all young gentlemen,
the page of a Parisian nobleman—Monsieur de Villeroi.
The life of a page in the provinces was a discipline of pious
courtesy and soldierly exercise; but the same service in Paris
213
in prison for selling bread of insufficient weight, have to
march disgraced through the streets. And yet money thefts
are winked at in high places and Cardinals may sell what
they like.
The Basochiens were among the wildest spirits in Paris,
and Clement Marot was the wildest of the Basochiens. They
had convivial relations with other companies who vied with
them in adventure: the Enfants Sans Souci, the Clerks of
the Chatelet, and the Clerks of the Empire of Galilee.
Together with these boon-companions, Clement hobnobbed
with all the ragamuffins of the city, lived with the water-
men on the river-bank, fought the Watch, and scandalized
the Law-court and University by the strange friends he
brought there. The public Squares—the Halles, the Greve,
the Place Maubert, the Pierre-au-lait—were his favourite
haunts. He would loiter too by the Cloitre des Innocents,
near St. Thomas du Louvre, “where singers and players of
instruments made music; ’* he would stop, as he strolled, at
the church-doors, before which bands of alchemists in rags,
crucible in hand, sought the philosopher’s stone, or pursued
the more profitable business of writing love-letters for
chambermaids. The favourite taverns, crowded with royster-
ing students, each with his bumper of red wine, were the
Pomme de Pin au Castel, the Magdaleine a la Mule, or the
famous Trois Poissons in the Faubourg St. Marcel. By the
time he was fifteen, Marot was the Prince of Swashbucklers.
At about that age he became, like all young gentlemen,
the page of a Parisian nobleman—Monsieur de Villeroi.
The life of a page in the provinces was a discipline of pious
courtesy and soldierly exercise; but the same service in Paris