TOO SLOW AND TOO FAST
"I told you at the first you were not going the right way about it."
"And you were wrong," answered La Mothe. "I am only ten days in
Amboise, ten days which seem like so many hours, and already Charles
trusts me as he trusts Mademoiselle de Vesc."
Pushing out his loose-hung under lip Villon eyed his companion
quizzically, but with a little pity through the banter. They were
alone in the common room of the Chien Noir, and on the table by which
they sat were two bottles of the famous '63 wine, one empty, the other
with its tide at a low ebb, but La Mothe's horn mug was still unemptied
after its first filling. With some men this would have been an
offence, but not with Francois Villon. "Good-fellowship is not in wine
but in words, or surer still, in silence," he would say, "and another
man's drinking neither warms my heart nor cools my thirst. Besides,
there is the more left for the wiser man."
"Ten days of opportunity, and you are content that a boy trusts you!
Lovers were not so coldly contented in the good old days of the Paris
pavements. Soul of the world! but there is no talk like Paris talk.
La Mothe, you will never be a man till you hear it. Cling-clang go the
feet, and cling-clang sing the flags under them, cling-clang,
cling-clang, and I'll never hear it again--never. Content, d'you say?
I'll not believe it. I'll not think so little of you. The Good God
never meant man to be content. How would the world move?"
"I'm winning what I came to Amboise to win."
"A snap of the finger," and Villon filliped his own noisily, "for what
you came to Amboise to win. The garden grows more flowers than
fleurs-de-lis, and better worth the plucking. Eh, my young friend? I
think there is a certain tall, slim Madonna lily----"
"No Paris jests, Villon."
"Trust Francois Villon! Jest?" His eyes twinkled humorously over the
edge of his tilted horn cup as he finished the second bottle. "In all
divine creation there is nothing so solemn as the heart of youth in its
first love. It is the first, is it not, La Mothe? Gods of Olympus!
was I ever as young as you? I think Paris aged me before I was
breeched. But to go back to my garden. Do you dislike the simile--a
Madonna lily?"
"The subject is distasteful."
"Mademoiselle de Vesc distasteful? Monsieur La Mothe, I apologize. In
all my Paris days I was never such a hypocrite as to make love to a
woman who was distasteful. But then, is any woman distasteful if a man
be only in the right mood?"
"Villon, that is untrue------"
"My friend, I know my past better than you do. Distasteful? Pah! it
is an ugly word."
"What you say of me is untrue. I honour Madedoiselle de Vesc----"
"Much she cares for that! 'No, thank you!' said the cat, when they
gave her frozen milk. Honouring is cold love-making. And now you have
proved that you don't go the right way about it. 'Mademoiselle,'"; and
Villon minced a melancholy falsetto, "'I respect you deeply;
mademoiselle, I honour you humbly from a distance; you are the highest
star in the heavens, and I a worm of the earth! Permit me to kiss your
venerated finger-tips.' Honour! Bah! get nearer to them, man; nearer
to them; the closer the better; honour is too far off. Listen, now,
while I teach you a better way."
"Thank you for nothing," said La Mothe drily, but unoffended. In these
ten days he had learned which of Villon's jests were innocent of
intention to hurt, and which carried a poisoned barb. "Love may be
bought in Paris, but not in Amboise."
"But it costs more," retorted Villon. "In Amboise it costs a man's
whole life, whereas in Paris," he paused, shrugged his shoulders,
turned the drinking mug upside down and shook it whimsically,
"emptiness ended all: emptiness of pocket, emptiness of--but there are
seven separate emptinesses and any one was enough. Now listen and do
not interrupt again. There be many ways of gathering peaches, but your
way of kneeling at the foot of the tree with your hands folded like a
saint in stained glass is the worst of all. It is only in theory that
women, even lily Madonnas, love men to be saints; when it comes to
practice----"
He broke off, chuckling the soft complacent chuckle La Mothe so greatly
disliked, and putting the empty mug to his nose drew in the perfume of
the wine with a deep breath. The lids drooped slowly over his shining
eyes, and in the backward groping along the crooked byways which had
led from Paris pavements to the mercy of Louis by way of an escaped
gallows he forgot both La Mothe and Amboise. The voice of Paris the
beloved, Paris the ever mourned for, was in his ears; the jargon of the
Rue Maubert, the tinkle of the glasses through the doubtful but merry
songs of the Pet du Deable, whispers of gay voices which had long
passed beyond these voices, and the leering face, part satyr and part
poet, grew wholly poet in its remembrance. It is the blessing of
nature, and one of its most divine gifts, that memory brings back the
best from the past and leaves the worst covered. Even our snows of
yester year are roseate with the glow of imagination.
"The Madonna lily! Blessed is the man who gathers one and finds warm
blood in its pure veins. The gift of a good woman who loves and is
loved. Aye, aye, God send us all heaven while we're young. The
Madonna lily! Once there was such a one in the garden of life, pure,
sweet, and beloved. But the perfume was not for Francois Villon, and
the swine in him turned to the husks of the trough. Catherine de
Vaucelles; Catherine, dead these many years, dead but never forgotten,
a saint with the saints of God, and the rest--damned." He spoke to
himself rather than to La Mothe, but after a little spell of silence he
looked up, gravely in earnest. "You go too slowly. Any day the King
may crook his finger. What if he calls you to Valmy, then sends you
God knows where, God knows for how long, and you return to Amboise to
find some one else has gathered your lily while you lagged? That would
be a chilly winter in the garden of life where you left young spring."
La Mothe sat silent. What reply was possible? That the advice was
well meant he knew, but he had never before realized that a peremptory
recall might come any moment from Valmy. And it was not impossible.
Louis, aged and ailing, spurred, too, by the desire for the comfort of
his son's love while life was still good to the taste, would be
impatient of delay. These ten days which had passed with the swiftness
of a summer's morning would be long as a wintry month to the lonely
father. But to the devout lover, in him haste savoured of presumption.
Ursula de Vesc was his good friend and comrade; could he hope for more
than that in so short a time? In making haste might he not lose all he
had gained? Besides, in the service and worship of the one dear woman
in the world, a man is his own High Priest, and none save himself may
enter into the Holy of Holies. And what could this peach-picker of
Paris pavements know of such a Holy of Holies? Nothing, absolutely
nothing. So he sat silent, doubly tongue-tied by doubt and reverence.
But for these, Villon, who read his face with disconcerting ease, had
no great respect.
"Eh!" he said briskly, "is the advice good?"
"Is good advice easy to follow?"
"Yes, when it is palatable, which is not often: commonly it has a
bitter taste in the swallowing. Or do you think it will be all the
same fifty years hence? By all the Muses, there's an idea! I must
write the 'Ballad of Fifty Years to Come.' Let me see--let me see--'m
yes, the first verse might run like this:
"Where is La Mothe, that lover gay,
Or Francois Villon, poet splendid!
Madonna of the eyes of grey,
Or Charles whom Bertrand nearly ended?
D'Argenton, are his manners mended?
Or wisest Louis, swift to pardon
Though so grievously offended?
Ask of the Scents of Amboise garden!
"There!" and he drummed the empty mug on the flat of the table in mock
applause which was not all unreal, "what do you think of that for the
first draft? It does justice to me and to you, chronicles little
Charles' escape, kicks your Monsieur d'Argenton in passing, and takes
off its hat to the King all in a breath."
"Tear it up," answered La Mothe. "Will the King thank you for hinting
he will be dead and forgotten fifty years hence? When you speak of
Louis, you should always say, 'O King, live for ever!'"
The drumming ceased, the gay laugh died out of Villon's eyes, and he
sat ruefully silent. To hint at death to Louis, even remotely, was an
unpardonable sin.
"You are right," he said at last, and said it with a sigh. "All the
same, the idea is a good one, and ideas are scarcer than poetry and
always will be. I have heard your verses, my young friend. Here is
Saxe. Saxe, have you brought that third bottle? To drink less than
his average is a crime against a man's thirst."
But Saxe was empty-handed.
"Monsieur de Commines desires speech with Monsieur La Mothe in the
Château garden."
"Monsieur de Commines? Bah! Go and be birched," said Villon
peevishly. The failure of his ballad had vexed him, and he was ready
to vent his spleen on what lay nearest. "You deserve it for your
milk-and-water love-me-a-little-to-morrow. Had it been the old Paris
days the Madonna lily would have said 'Come!' to Francois Villon in
less than a week."
"Paris flowers do not grow in Amboise garden," answered La Mothe, and
added "Thank God!" in his heart.
Commines was standing at the entrance to an arch of roses which,
pergola fashion, covered a sunny walk. On three sides rose the
Château, grey and sullen, on the fourth was an enclosing wall. In
shaded corners a few belated gillyflowers, straggling and overgrown,
filled the air with perfume, but La Mothe's gaze was caught by a group
of Madonna lilies, slim and graceful, rising from a bed of purple
fleurs-de-lis, their ivory buds new opened, and the recollection of
Villon's comparison thrilled his imagination with its aptness. Grace
for grace, beauty for beauty, in fulfilment and promise, they were
Ursula de Vesc herself.
But almost with his first sentence Commines proved that Villon had
shrewd forethought as well as a poet's eye for a fitting simile.
"If it is not Mademoiselle de Vesc it is Francois Villon; if it is not
philandering it is wine-bibbing," he said harshly. "Stephen, the King
thinks you are wasting your time in Amboise and I think so too. What
have you discovered in your ten days?"
"All that there is to learn, Uncle."
"I see. That Ursula de Vesc has a pretty face? Stephen, Stephen, you
are not in Amboise to play the fool."
La Mothe flushed and was about to answer angrily, but remembering that
Commines spoke for the King rather than for himself he restrained his
impatience.
"Uncle, is that just?"
"Well, what have you discovered?"
"That there is no such vile scheme as the King imagines."
"Can you prove that?"
"To me there is proof. Ten days ago, when the boy thanked me for
pulling him off Bertrand's back, he as much as said he had nothing to
pay me with. Now if this lie of a plot against the King were the
truth, would not a self-willed boy like the Dauphin, boastful as boys
are, proud and galled by the debt he thought he owed me, have hinted
that the day would come when he could pay in full, and sooner than some
expected? He surely would. His pride would have run away with his
discretion. Besides, Uncle, what have you discovered in your ten days?"
But Commines returned no answer, and to La Mothe his gloomy face was
inscrutable. He knew his master; knew, without being told in so many
words, that it was the King's purpose to set Charles aside; knew that
the King believed justification for such a course was to be found at
Amboise; knew above all, knew with the knowledge of other men's bitter
experience, that there were no thanks for the man who failed, even
though that failure proved a son innocent of crime against a father.
It was not innocence the King desired but guilt.
And yet, now that La Mothe had brought him face to face with the
question, what had he discovered? Little or nothing. Using all the
arts and artifices which ten years' service under such a master of
subtle craftiness as the eleventh Louis had taught him, he had cajoled
and bribed, probed and sifted, even covertly threatened at times. But
all to no purpose. An indignant sarcasm from Ursula de Vesc, a
politic--and wise--regret for the estrangement from La Follette, a
petulant outburst from Charles, childish and pathetically cynical by
turns, the vague whispers inseparable from such a household as was
gathered together in Amboise were all his reward. But the King
demanded proof; the King demanded articles of conviction which would,
if necessary, satisfy an incredulous world that the terrible tragedy
which followed proof was the justice of the highest law.
"Disaffection is everywhere," he said at last; "disloyalty which only
lacks the spur of opportunity to drive desire into action. If these
things are on the surface, worse lies hidden. You know the proverb of
Smoke and Fire? I see the fire laid, I smell the smoke: it was for you
to find the spark, you who have had a free hand in Amboise. But you
play nonsense games with Charles, hanging upon the skirts of the
unscrupulous woman who tutors him to revolt, or drink in taverns with a
scurrilous thief turned spy to save his neck from a deserved hanging.
Do you think you serve the King by philandering in a rose garden, or
playing at French and English in the Burnt Mill? Francois Villon!
Ursula de Vesc! Stephen, you make yourself too much one with them--an
unhung footpad who prostitutes the powers of mind God gave him to the
devil's use, and a woman----"
"Uncle, if even your father had spoken evil of Suzanne would you have
listened to him?"
"Suzanne? What has Suzanne in common with Ursula de Vesc?"
"Only that I love her as you loved Suzanne," answered La Mothe.
"Ursula de Vesc? Stephen, at the least she is the King's enemy."
"Yes, he told me so himself."
"And at the worst----"
"There is no worst," said La Mothe doggedly. "There is no plot against
the King, no plot at all."
"And your proof is that when a clever woman bade a boy control his
tongue he obeyed her! Will that convince Louis? Would it convince
yourself but for this calf-love of yours? Stephen, Stephen, you do not
know the gulf on which you stand. What answer am I to return to the
King?"
"Uncle, is it my fault that I am living a lie in Amboise?"
"Grey Roland changed all that for you ten days ago. There was the game
in your hands, and you threw it away! A touch of the heel, a single
twitch of the bridle--there, there, say nothing: perhaps at your age I
would have had the same scruples. But what answer am I to return to
the King?"
"That I will do all he bade me; do it with all my heart to the very
letter," answered La Mothe. And with that Commines had to be content.
"You go too slow," said Villon. "You go too fast," said Commines.
Between such cross fires what was a poor lover to do? There was once,
La Mothe remembered, a man who had an only son and an ass. But the
problem is older than the imagination of any fabulist, and as new as
the newest day in the world. "Thou shalt die," said the Lord God.
"Thou shalt not surely die," said the devil.
"I will take my own way," he said. "It is my life I have to live, not
theirs." And that afternoon came his opportunity to prove that a man
knows best how his own life should be shaped.