CHAPTER 4.XIII.
How, like Master Francis Villon, the Lord of Basche commended his servants.
The catchpole being packed off on blind Sorrel--so he called his one-eyed mare--Basche sent for his lady, her women, and all his servants, into the arbour of his garden; had wine brought, attended with good store of pasties, hams, fruit, and other table-ammunition, for a nunchion; drank with them joyfully, and then told them this story: Master Francis Villon in his old age retired to St.Maxent in Poitou, under the patronage of a good honest abbot of the place.

There to make sport for the mob, he undertook to get the Passion acted, after the way, and in the dialect of the country.

The parts being distributed, the play having been rehearsed, and the stage prepared, he told the mayor and aldermen that the mystery might be ready after Niort fair, and that there only wanted properties and necessaries, but chiefly clothes fit for the parts; so the mayor and his brethren took care to get them.
Villon, to dress an old clownish father greybeard, who was to represent God the father, begged of Friar Stephen Tickletoby, sacristan to the Franciscan friars of the place, to lend him a cope and a stole.

Tickletoby refused him, alleging that by their provincial statutes it was rigorously forbidden to give or lend anything to players.

Villon replied that the statute reached no farther than farces, drolls, antics, loose and dissolute games, and that he asked no more than what he had seen allowed at Brussels and other places.