FRANCOIS VILLON, POET AND GALLOWS-CHEAT
La Mothe stared up at him incredulously. "You Francois Villon?" he
began; "Francois Villon the--the----"
The gallows-cheat, the human pitch whose very touch is defilement was
what was in his mind, but with those clear luminous eyes looking down
unashamed into his own he could not put the brutal thought into the
naked brutality of words. But Villon read something of his meaning in
his eyes and rounded off the sentence for him.
"The King's Jackal!" he said, not without a sour resentment.
"Nécessité faict gens mesprendre:
Et fain sallir le loup des boys!
You don't believe it? But you have been dandled on the knees of
respectability all your little life: what do you know of necessity or
hunger? I know both, and I tell you necessity and hunger are two gods
before whom all who meet them bow down. Better a live jackal than a
dead poet. Besides, is he not the greatest of kings? Bishop Thibault
had me in gaol for a mere slip of the fingers and talked of a judicial
noose--the third I've looked through--but the King fetched me out--God
save the King!"
"God save the King!" echoed La Mothe, for want of something better to
say. His mind was still confused by this sudden upheaval of his
ideals. All that was best in Villon's poetry had stirred his
enthusiasm, while all the much which was worst had left his sane
wholesomeness untainted. To the half-dreamer, half-downright,
practical lad in Poitou, Villon, with his jovial, bitter humour and
even flow of human verse, had been something of an idol, and when our
idols crash into ruin the thunder of the catastrophe bewilders
judgment. But there was more than bewilderment, there was an
inevitable disgust. The frankness of this disgust Villon discovered.
"Besides, again, my very young friend," he went on, "what are you in
Amboise at all for, you and your lute? Is Villon the only King's
Jackal here in the Chien Noir? Do we not hunt in a couple, and have
you as good an excuse for your hunting as poor Francois Villon, who
looked through a halter, and found the eternity beyond unpoetical to a
man of imagination? What brought you to Amboise, I say?"
"The King's orders: the peace of France," began La Mothe, but though
the words were fine swelling words in the mouth they somehow failed to
fill the stomach of his sense. Nor did Villon let him finish.
"And I say the same. What is more, I say them openly, and do not drown
the words with the twanging of a lute. Not that I blame you--not I,
'Toute beste garde sa pel,'
or, as a greater poet than Francois Villon has said, Skin for skin, all
that a man hath will he give for his life. Whose hide you guard, your
own or another's, I don't know and don't care. Mine was that of bare
life, and there you sit and look disgust at me as if to cling fast to
this good gift of God which comes to a man but once were a sin. And
what are you doing in Amboise? No!" he interrupted himself hastily,
emphasizing the negative with a rapid gesture of both hands, "don't
tell me. If there is one thing more dangerous than knowing too little
it is knowing too much. Tell me, rather, what you want me to do for
you and tell me nothing more."
"Gain me a footing in the Château."
"I can open the doors, but the footing you must gain and hold for
yourself. I warn you Amboise is well guarded. Oh! not with pikes,
cross-bows, and such-like useless things in which our beloved King puts
his faith, but by eyes that see and hearts that love, and so Amboise is
a hard nut to crack. But your teeth are strong, and if the good God
had made no peach stones there would be no peaches, and, my faith!
peaches are worth the eating."
He drew a long breath and sat silent, the horn mug, which he had again
filled and emptied, tilted against his thigh. A smile flickered his
loose mouth, and the full bright eyes, turned toward the vacancy of the
empty fireplace, were sparkling with reminiscences.
And who should have reminiscences if not Francois Villon? There was
not such another judge of peaches in all France, no such authority upon
their eating, and few who had broken more teeth over their stones. The
smile broadened into a soft chuckle, laughter deepened into puckers the
many wrinkles of his crow-footed temples, and he wagged his grey head
in the warm appreciation of a happy memory. Dipping a finger-tip into
a pool of spilt wine he wrote on the table reflectively, and as La
Mothe watched his leering face he understood Commines' outspoken
contempt of this old man unashamed of his shamefulness.
"Peaches," he said, scratching his chin with a wet forefinger; "my
faith! yes! I have climbed walls for them, robbed gardens of them,
found them in market baskets--the gutter even. What matters where they
come from so long as the cheek is warm, the bloom fresh, the skin
smooth, and the sweetness full in the mouth. And where are they now?
Aye! aye! 'Where are the snows of Yester Year?' My young friend, my
very young friend, you have but one life, and when you drop it behind
you see that only the husks of its possibilities are left: crush the
grapes while you may and drink the wine."
"I thought," said La Mothe, "that the rascality of Francois Villon was
dead? Leave it in its grave, if you please. It is decenter buried out
of sight and does not interest me. How am I to gain entrance to
Amboise?"
Villon turned to him with an elaborate appearance of carelessness, but
the unctuous complacency was wiped from his face, and the narrow eyes
and mouth showed how deep was his anger at La Mothe's disgusted
contempt.
"How, but as my friend, pupil, and protégé," he replied, with evident
enjoyment of the other's discomfiture at the unwelcome association.
Then with incredible swiftness his mood changed. The raillery passed
from his voice and he went on bitterly, "Do you think I love my life?
Perhaps I do--at times. But not always, no, not always. You see that
fly there on the table? Watch it now. It tastes the spilt wine, the
ragout with its spices, the salad with its oil and its vinegar,
everything within reach which tickles its palate: then it rubs its
stupid head with its forelegs and trots back to the wine again.
Presently"--and Villon suited the action to the word--"a great hand
turns an empty tumbler over it and there it is: all the delights of the
world it has lost clear within sight, but out of reach--always out of
reach. That, my young friend, is what is called Hell. Do you blame
the fly because it remembers the wine and spice of life? Perhaps if
the great hand is merciful it draws the glass to one side, thus, and
still to one side, thus and thus and thus, until, phit! there is a
little red patch and no fly; yes, perhaps. Aye, aye, I have seen life.
But it is better for the fly to laugh as it runs round and round under
the glass than to sulk and cry its heart out for the snows of Yester
Year. God save the King!"
The abrupt change of thought and the sudden end seemed to La Mothe so
irrelevant that he sat in silent bewilderment, but in an instant
comprehension came and a sense of compassion, almost of respect, shot
through the disgust.
"Perhaps the hand will lift the glass," he said, "and let the fly back
to its spilt wine and spices?"
Villon eyed La Mothe sourly. "Will that give me back my twenty years?
Bah! the palate is as stale as the spilt wine, and when the good of
life is gone life itself may go. There is Saxe knocking at the door.
My faith! but you have indeed scared him into discretion; he never
knocks for me. Perhaps he has brought that second bottle."
But Saxe was empty-handed, and by the light of the candle La Mothe
could see a quizzical grin upon his face.
"Monsieur," he began, but which of the two he addressed was uncertain,
"they are dull at the Château."
"And have sent for Francois Villon to make sport! I have dropped the
'de,' Monsieur La Mothe, there are so many rascals amongst the nobility
nowadays that I find it more distinguished to be the simple commoner.
Dull at the Château! Good Lord! don't I know it!" He paused, lifting
his head with a quick, bird-like motion: a cunning smile wrinkled his
face and he smote the table with his open hand. "Dull, are they?
There, my hedge-minstrel from Valmy, is your welcome ready made. Bring
your lute and make pretty Ursula's grey eyes dance to a love song,
prude that she is."
"To-night?" said La Mothe doubtfully. "Surely not to-night: the
Dauphin might resent a stranger's coming so late."
"The Dauphin? Phit! Little Charles is pretty Ursula's echo and
nothing more. Come, let us go."
"Then Mademoiselle de Vesc may object."
"Mademoiselle de Vesc? So you know her name, do you? And what girl
objects to a love song? I never yet knew one who did, and Francois
Villon has lived his life. If they pout and turn aside don't believe
them: it's just that you may not see how the heart beats. Black eyes,
blue, grey, hazel, brown; Fat Meg and Lean Joan, wrinkled fifty and
smooth sixteen, their eyes have all the same sparkle, the same dear
light in them when the heart melts. I should know, for I have made
love to every colour under the sun. Except Albino," he added
reflectively and with the conscientious air of one who desires to tell
the whole truth. "I wonder what it would be like to make love to an
Albino. But now I shall never know, the fly must run round and round
its glass until the day of the red blotch. It is a mercy I tasted the
oil and vinegar in time. That disgusts you, does it? My young friend,
you must learn not to say more with your face than you do with your
tongue if you are to keep your secrets and the King's. Come, I talk
too much and they are waiting for us."
But Stephen La Mothe left his lute behind him. He had accepted the
part allotted to him half as a jest and half for the sake of the
adventure it promised, but Villon had put a less pleasant gloss on this
open-faced masquerade, nor had the blunt question, Why are you in
Amboise? been easy of answer. Or rather, the answer was easy, but one
he did not relish in its naked truth. If to be the secret almoner of
the King's love for the Dauphin had been the sole reply to the
question, his scruples would have been as light as his love song. But
that answer was insufficient: there was a second answer, an answer
which Commines knew and these two men, Villon and Saxe, suspected, one
which would leave a soiling on clean hands, yet which must be faced.
He found himself in the position of a circus-rider who, with one foot
on the white horse--which was Honour--and the other on the
piebald--which was duty and a King's instructions,--has lost control of
their heads and feels his unhappy legs drawn wider and wider apart with
every stride. And in the emergency La Mothe did exactly what the
circus-rider would have done--he clung to both with every desperate
sinew on the strain. To keep his piebald still under him he went with
Villon to the Château, and that he might not part utterly from his
white he left his lying lute behind him. But he was not happy: mental
and spiritual unhappiness is the peculiar gift of compromise.
Nor did Villon make any protest at his decision. "As you will, it is
between you and the King," he said, with all the indifference of the
beast whose one thought is for his own skin, and then immediately
proved that he was less indifferent than he seemed. "But if I knew
which of the two you wish to win over, the boy or the woman, I might
help you."
"The boy," answered La Mothe, remembering the gifts of a father's love
which lay in the saddle-bags Commines had brought for him to the
Château. Ursula de Vesc was but a means to an end, the Dauphin was the
end itself.
"The boy?" Villon paused as they crossed the road in the sweet
coolness of the young night, and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "That's
not so easy. Women, of course, I know like my ten fingers, but
children are too subtle for me. And little lathy Charles with his
long, narrow white face and obstinate chin, is no A B C of a boy. You
must know something more than your horn-book before you understand him.
To-day he received Monsieur de Commines with all the gravity of the
Pope: 'Where is Monsieur Tristan, Tristan of the House of Great Nails?'
he asked, peering about him with those dull, tired eyes of his which
see so much more than most men imagine. 'Tristan?' says Monsieur de
Commines, very sourly for so great a man, 'Tristan does not travel with
me, Monseigneur.' 'He must be somewhere near,' says little Charles,
'since you come from my father, do you not? and you are both friends of
his.' It was a sharp thrust and it was not the Dauphin who looked the
fool. Now, was that more or less than the impishness that's in all
boys, prince or gutter rat? More, I say. No, children are too subtle
for me: give me women for simplicity! But I may help you with him all
the same."
Though a king dwelt in Valmy and a king's son in Amboise, never was
there a greater contrast than between the watchfulness exercised for
their safety. At Valmy guards had thronged at every turn, more
vigilant than pickets who hold the lives of a sleeping army in their
keeping, but at Amboise the doors swung open to the touch of almost the
first comer, though it was not easy to be certain how much of this
laxity was due to the guarantee of Villon's presence. A careless
porter kept the outer gate, a single sentinel, lounging in the
guard-room, let them pass into the central court unchallenged, and the
servant or two they met upon the stairs gave them no more than a
heedless glance. That, at least, was La Mothe's first impressions.
But when he saw the same face in the lower hall, again at the
stair-head, yet again in the ante-room, and recognized that the plainly
dressed serving-man had kept them under observation at every turn,
unobtrusively but of evident purpose, he decided that a casual stranger
could not have penetrated to the heart of Amboise without first giving
a good account of himself. The watcher was Hugues, the Dauphin's
valet. And yet when Villon gently drew aside a curtain masking a
doorway which opened upon the stair-head, there was no one in
attendance to announce them. It was as if the King said, more
significantly, more emphatically than in any words, "My son may be the
Dauphin, but I alone am France."
"There are the boy and the woman," said Villon softly, "Charles and
Ursula de Vesc. Now, had I been your age I would rather have won the
woman."