Villon's Testament is composed in huitains of octosyllabes following the rhyme scheme ABABBCBC, and the famous huitain "Je congnois bien mouches en lait" demonstrates how the form's eight lines accommodate a complete ironic catalogue of social types within a perfectly controlled formal structure; Marot's "Huitain de Frère Lubin" uses the eight-line stanza for satirical portraiture, each line adding a new detail to the comic hypocritical monk until the chute in the final couplet delivers the definitive judgment; A student constructing a huitain should plan it in two quatrains: the first four lines establishing a situation or observation, the second four developing it toward a conclusion, using the midpoint as a structural hinge between opening and close; The huitain's numerical symbolism may have been significant to medieval poets: eight, the number of resurrection and renewal in Christian numerology, gave the form a sacred resonance that enhanced its use in poems dealing with death, legacy, and spiritual accounting; Scève's Délie uses dizains rather than huitains, but the comparison between these closely related multi-line strophes reveals how differences of just one or two lines change the formal dynamics and expressive range available to the poet; Christine de Pizan's huitains show how the form accommodated both didactic instruction and personal reflection, its eight lines offering sufficient space for the development of a complete ethical argument or meditation without the risk of diffuseness that longer stanzas might invite.