A WORD WITH DOM GREGORY
It is a thousand pities that the materials for building up a
practical presentment of the real life-story of Master François
Villon are so slight, that in the historical sense they might almost
be said to be non-existent. We know, indeed, a little of Master
François' early days, partly from some confessions which must at all
times be interpreted with a liberal sense of humour and glossed with
an infinite deal of good nature, and partly from stray records made
by those who do not seem to have held the vagrant poet very warm in
their hearts. But of his life in those days of which this chronicle
deals, there is little to find where there is much to seek.
The silence of Commines may be explained in a thousand ways,
possibly professional jealousy of one minister for another, who in
so short a space of time did so much and so well, possibly ignorance
of the real facts of the case, for it is fairly certain that King
Louis kept his jape and its sequel very much to himself, possibly
because Commines felt that his cold spirit was scarcely equal to the
proper recording of so whimsical and oriental an adventure.
Good Master Clement Marot, when he took it upon himself, generations
after our poet was dust and ashes, to edit our poet's writings, said
much in praise of the singer but said little, no doubt because he
knew little, of the poet's life.
And the great creator of Pantagruel and Gargantua, the immeasurable
Alcofribias Nasier, whom the world loves or hates as Rabelais, in
what he contributed to our knowledge of François Villon has only--to
use a weather-worn and moss-grown phrase--made confusion yet worse
confounded.
We should be at a deadlock, indeed, if it were not for Poitou and
its Abbey of Bonne Aventure, whose library is luckily rich in
historical manuscripts of the period, and richest of all in that
priceless manuscript of Dom Gregory, which, treating in general of
the ecclesiastical history of Poitou in the fifteenth century, dealt
so particularly and so liberally with the life of Master François
Villon, because Master François Villon in his old age was so
excellent a patron of the church. We say dealt advisedly, for time
has treated somewhat scurvily the fair skins of parchment upon which
the good Dom Gregory recorded his thoughts and his opinions at
considerable length as the rich setting of the facts, too few in
number, with which he condescended to enlighten 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 themselves in adversity? Master François Villon, he
goes on to say, is the loveliest example known to him of a man, who,
having always believed in himself with a great belief, did, on being
put to the test, prove that his belief was founded, not on the
shifting sands of vanity and vain glory, but on the solid granite of
good faith and the inestimable doctrines of the church.
From all this we gather dimly, as one discerns objects in a mist,
that Master François Villon, as Count of Montcorbier, proved nimself
to be little less than equal to the high opinion of himself which he
had confided all unwittingly into the ear of his masquerading
sovereign. But the pages in which Dom Gregory sets forth at length
exactly all that Master François Villon did and said and thought
during the period of his astonishing probation, are unfortunately
lost to the Abbey of Bonne Aventure, and, in consequence, to the
world. No less than six folios consecrated by the careful pen of Dom
Gregory to this memorable epoch have vanished from the priceless
manuscript. The custodian of the Abbey library will tell you with
tears in his eyes that these pages disappeared during the storm and
stress of the French Revolution, but travellers in France are too
well aware of the readiness of ecclesiastical custodians to
attribute all things evil to the time of the great upheaval, to pay
any serious attention to this particular allegation. However it
happened, the pages are lost, and there, as far as we are concerned,
is an end of them.
But in a way we are able to piece together from Dorn Gregory's later
statements, and from certain traditions which still linger here and
there in the highways and byways of Poitou, enough material to
enable us to ascertain with something like sufficient accuracy, what
it was that Master François Villon did accomplish as Count of
Montcorbier in those seven days of splendour which his mocking king
accorded to him. We know for certain that the king found him an
admirable counsellor, cool, wary and judicious, and that during the
period of his ministry, Louis followed his advice with a faith
which, if it were founded indeed upon a superstitious adherence to
the edicts of the stars, proved itself to be thoroughly justified by
his Lord Constable's common sense, foresight and astonishing
knowledge of human nature. We know, too, that he proved himself no
less skilled as a soldier than as a statesman, as capable of
pre-eminence in the arts of war as in the arts of peace. His
knowledge of Caesar's Commentaries and his natural inclination to
strategy, interpreted by an eloquent tongue fired by a ready mother
wit, earned him the ear and won him the heart of the king's great
captains and wrung from them at first a reluctant but finally such a
delighted adherence as their sires had been compelled to surrender
to the Maid of Orleans.
Yet while our poet was playing these two parts, he managed his
affairs so dexterously that he seemed to the general eye to be
playing but one part, and that the part of the dazzlingly
magnificent courtier. If his mornings were given to consultation
with the king and the king's chief soldiers, if his forenoons were
devoted to the confirming of edicts and the promulgations of laws
all tending to alleviate the condition and lighten the load of the
people of Paris, his afternoons and evenings and shining summer
nights were entirely surrendered to the glittering pleasures and
pastimes of a man of ease. We hear of entertainment after
entertainment, banquet and ball and masquerade, pageant and play and
pastime, each one of which seemed to be the last word of wealthy
ingenuity until it was eclipsed by its still more splendid
successor. And it was this part of which the Count of Montcorbier
chose to make the most with a very special purpose. He caused, it
seems, many emissaries of his to quit Paris and find shelter within
the Duke of Burgundy's lines, pretending to be deserters from the
waning cause of the king, each of whom had the same tale to tell to
the credulous ears of the enemy; namely, that the king's new
favourite was a wastrel and a fool, who had no better purpose in
life than the rhyming of madrigals, the tuning of lutes, the
draining of flagons, and the pressing of ladies' fingers in the
dance. All of which produced, we are assured, upon the mind of the
Duke of Burgundy the very effect desired by Villon and led to
results which luckily we are enabled to know more of, as Dom
Gregory's manuscript happily resumes continuity on the seventh day
of Master François' week of wonder.
We further learn--for Dom Gregory, though a churchman, seems to have
a kindly spot in his heart for the ways of lovers--that during those
seven days, the friendship of Villon and Katherine grew apace and
that the whole court watched with interest, and Monsieur Noel le
Jolys with an ever-increasing fury, the growth of a great and
beautiful passion. But it seems that Master Villon, whether from
fear to risk too soon or from a desire to leave the loveliest moment
of his reign to the last, made no attempt directly to declare
himself or directly to learn how high he stood in the Lady
Katherine's heart until the very day which was the last day upon
which it was possible for him to assure his own salvation.
IF I WERE TO DIE TO-MORROW