retorted Joannes Frollo, “these four hours and more; and I hope that they will be reckoned to my credit in purgatory. I heard the eight singers of the King of Sicily intone the first verse of seven o’clock mass in the Sainte-Chapelle.”

“Fine singers!” replied the other, “with voices even more pointed than their caps! Before founding a mass for Monsieur Saint John, the king should have inquired whether Monsieur Saint John likes Latin droned out in a Proven�al accent.”

“He did it for the sake of employing those accursed singers of the King of Sicily!” cried an old woman sharply from among the crowd beneath the window. “I just put it to you!

A thousand livres parisi for a mass! and out of the tax on sea fish in the markets of Paris, to boot!”