_The Episode Called In Necessity's Mortar_
1. "Bon Bec de Paris"
There went about the Rue Saint Jacques a notable shaking of heads on the
day that Catherine de Vaucelles was betrothed to François de Montcorbier.
"Holy Virgin!" said the Rue Saint Jacques; "the girl is a fool. Why has
she not taken Noël d'Arnaye,--Noël the Handsome? I grant you Noël is an
ass, but, then, look you, he is of the nobility. He has the Dauphin's
favor. Noël will be a great man when our exiled Dauphin comes back from
Geneppe to be King of France. Then, too, she might have had Philippe
Sermaise. Sermaise is a priest, of course, and one may not marry a
priest, but Sermaise has money, and Sermaise is mad for love of her. She
might have done worse. But François! Ho, death of my life, what is
François? Perhaps--he, he!--perhaps Ysabeau de Montigny might inform us,
you say? Doubtless Ysabeau knows more of him than she would care to
confess, but I measure the lad by other standards. François is
inoffensive enough, I dare assert, but what does Catherine see in him? He
is a scholar?--well, the College of Navarre has furnished food for the
gallows before this. A poet?--rhyming will not fill the pot. Rhymes are a
thin diet for two lusty young folk like these. And who knows if Guillaume
de Villon, his foster-father, has one sou to rub against another? He is
canon at Saint Benôit-le-Bétourné yonder, but canons are not Midases. The
girl will have a hard life of it, neighbor, a hard life, I tell you,
if--but, yes!--if Ysabeau de Montigny does not knife her some day. Oh,
beyond doubt, Catherine has played the fool."
Thus far the Rue Saint Jacques.
This was on the day of the Fête-Dieu. It was on this day that Noël
d'Arnaye blasphemed for a matter of a half-hour and then went to the
Crowned Ox, where he drank himself into a contented insensibility; that
Ysabeau de Montigny, having wept a little, sent for Gilles Raguyer, a
priest and aforetime a rival of François de Montcorbier for her favors;
and that Philippe Sermaise grinned and said nothing. But afterward
Sermaise gnawed at his under lip like a madman as he went about seeking
for François de Montcorbier.
2. "_Deux estions, et n'avions qu'ung Cueur_"
It verged upon nine in the evening--a late hour in those days--when
François climbed the wall of Jehan de Vaucelles' garden.
A wall!--and what is a wall to your true lover? What bones, pray, did the
Sieur Pyramus, that ill-starred Babylonish knight, make of a wall? did
not his protestations slip through a chink, mocking at implacable granite
and more implacable fathers? Most assuredly they did; and Pyramus was a
pattern to all lovers. Thus ran the meditations of Master François as he
leapt down into the garden.
He had not, you must understand, seen Catherine for three hours. Three
hours! three eternities rather, and each one of them spent in Malebolge.
Coming to a patch of moonlight, François paused there and cut an agile
caper, as he thought of that approaching time when he might see Catherine
every day.
"Madame François de Montcorbier," he said, tasting each syllable with
gusto. "Catherine de Montcorbier. Was there ever a sweeter juxtaposition
of sounds? It is a name for an angel. And an angel shall bear it,--eh,
yes, an angel, no less. O saints in Paradise, envy me! Envy me," he
cried, with a heroical gesture toward the stars, "for François would
change places with none of you."
He crept through ordered rows of chestnuts and acacias to a window
wherein burned a dim light. He unslung a lute from his shoulder and
began to sing, secure in the knowledge that deaf old Jehan de Vaucelles
was not likely to be disturbed by sound of any nature till that time
when it should please high God that the last trump be noised about the
tumbling heavens.
It was good to breathe the mingled odor of roses and mignonette that was
thick about him. It was good to sing to her a wailing song of unrequited
love and know that she loved him. François dallied with his bliss,
parodied his bliss, and--as he complacently reflected,--lamented in the
moonlight with as tuneful a dolor as Messire Orpheus may have evinced
when he carolled in Hades.
Sang François:
_"O Beauty of her, whereby I am undone!
O Grace of her, that hath no grace for me!
O Love of her, the bit that guides me on
To sorrow and to grievous misery!
O felon Charms, my poor heart's enemy!
O furtive murderous Pride! O pitiless, great
Cold Eyes of her! have done with cruelty!
Have pity upon me ere it be too late!
"Happier for me if elsewhere I had gone
For pity--ah, far happier for me,
Since never of her may any grace be won,
And lest dishonor slay me, I must flee.
'Haro!' I cry, (and cry how uselessly!)
'Haro!' I cry to folk of all estate,
"For I must die unless it chance that she
Have pity upon me ere it be too late.
"M'amye, that day in whose disastrous sun
Your beauty's flower must fade and wane and be
No longer beautiful, draws near,--whereon
I will nor plead nor mock;--not I, for we
Shall both be old and vigorless! M'amye,
Drink deep of love, drink deep, nor hesitate
Until the spring run dry, but speedily
Have pity upon me--ere it be too late!
"Lord Love, that all love's lordship hast in fee,
Lighten, ah, lighten thy displeasure's weight,
For all true hearts should, of Christ's charity,
Have pity upon me ere it be too late."_
Then from above a delicate and cool voice was audible. "You have mistaken
the window, Monsieur de Montcorbier. Ysabeau de Montigny dwells in the
Rue du Fouarre."
"Ah, cruel!" sighed François. "Will you never let that kite hang upon
the wall?"
"It is all very well to groan like a bellows. Guillemette Moreau did not
sup here for nothing. I know of the verses you made her,--and the gloves
you gave her at Candlemas, too. Saint Anne!" observed the voice, somewhat
sharply; "she needed gloves. Her hands are so much raw beef. And the
head-dress at Easter,--she looks like the steeple of Saint Benoit in it.
But every man to his taste, Monsieur de Montcorbier. Good-night, Monsieur
de Montcorbier." But, for all that, the window did not close.
"Catherine--!" he pleaded; and under his breath he expressed uncharitable
aspirations as to the future of Guillemette Moreau.
"You have made me very unhappy," said the voice, with a little sniff.
"It was before I knew you, Catherine. The stars are beautiful, m'amye,
and a man may reasonably admire them; but the stars vanish and are
forgotten when the sun appears."
"Ysabeau is not a star," the voice pointed out; "she is simply a lank,
good-for-nothing, slovenly trollop."
"Ah, Catherine--!"
"You are still in love with her."
"Catherine--!"
"Otherwise, you will promise me for the future to avoid her as you would
the Black Death."
"Catherine, her brother is my friend--!"
"René de Montigny is, to the knowledge of the entire Rue Saint Jacques, a
gambler and a drunkard and, in all likelihood, a thief. But you prefer,
it appears, the Montignys to me. An ill cat seeks an ill rat. Very
heartily do I wish you joy of them. You will not promise? Good-night,
then, Monsieur de Montcorbier."
"Mother of God! I promise, Catherine."
From above Mademoiselle de Vaucelles gave a luxurious sigh. "Dear
François!" said she.
"You are a tyrant," he complained. "Madame Penthesilea was not more
cruel. Madame Herodias was less implacable, I think. And I think that
neither was so beautiful."
"I love you," said Mademoiselle de Vaucelles, promptly.
"But there was never any one so many fathoms deep in love as I. Love
bandies me from the postern to the frying-pan, from hot to cold. Ah,
Catherine, Catherine, have pity upon my folly! Bid me fetch you Prester
John's beard, and I will do it; bid me believe the sky is made of
calf-skin, that morning is evening, that a fat sow is a windmill, and I
will do it. Only love me a little, dear."
"My king, my king of lads!" she murmured.
"My queen, my tyrant of unreason! Ah, yes, you are all that is ruthless
and abominable, but then what eyes you have! Oh, very pitiless, large,
lovely eyes--huge sapphires that in the old days might have ransomed
every monarch in Tamerlane's stable! Even in the night I see them,
Catherine."
"Yet Ysabeau's eyes are brown."
"Then are her eyes the gutter's color. But Catherine's eyes are twin
firmaments."
And about them the acacias rustled lazily, and the air was sweet
with the odors of growing things, and the world, drenched in
moonlight, slumbered. Without was Paris, but old Jehan's garden-wall
cloistered Paradise.
"Has the world, think you, known lovers, long dead now, that were once as
happy as we?"
"Love was not known till we discovered it."
"I am so happy, François, that I fear death."
"We have our day. Let us drink deep of love, not waiting until the spring
run dry. Catherine, death comes to all, and yonder in the church-yard the
poor dead lie together, huggermugger, and a man may not tell an
archbishop from a rag-picker. Yet they have exulted in their youth, and
have laughed in the sun with some lass or another lass. We have our day,
Catherine."
"Our day wherein I love you!"
"And wherein I love you precisely seven times as much!"
So they prattled in the moonlight. Their discourse was no more
overburdened with wisdom than has been the ordinary communing of lovers
since Adam first awakened ribless. Yet they were content, who, were young
in the world's recaptured youth.
Fate grinned and went on with her weaving.
3. "Et Ysabeau, Qui Dit: Enné!"
Somewhat later François came down the deserted street, treading on air.
It was a bland summer night, windless, moon-washed, odorous with
garden-scents; the moon, nearing its full, was a silver egg set on
end--("Leda-hatched," he termed it; "one may look for the advent of Queen
Heleine ere dawn"); and the sky he likened to blue velvet studded with
the gilt nail-heads of a seraphic upholsterer. François was a poet, but a
civic poet; then, as always, he pilfered his similes from shop-windows.
But the heart of François was pure magnanimity, the heels of François
were mercury, as he tripped past the church of Saint Benoit-le-Bétourné,
stark snow and ink in the moonlight. Then with a jerk François paused.
On a stone bench before the church sat Ysabeau de Montigny and Gilles
Raguyer. The priest was fuddled, hiccuping in his amorous dithyrambics as
he paddled with the girl's hand. "You tempt me to murder," he was saying.
"It is a deadly sin, my soul, and I have no mind to fry in Hell while my
body swings on the Saint Denis road, a crow's dinner. Let François live,
my soul! My soul, he would stick little Gilles like a pig."
Raguyer began to blubber at the thought.
"Holy Macaire!" said François; "here is a pretty plot a-brewing." Yet
because his heart was filled just now with loving-kindness, he forgave
the girl. _"Tantaene irae?"_ said François; and aloud, "Ysabeau, it is
time you were abed."
She wheeled upon him in apprehension; then, with recognition, her rage
flamed. "Now, Gilles!" cried Ysabeau de Montigny; "now, coward! He is
unarmed, Gilles. Look, Gilles! Kill for me this betrayer of women!"
Under his mantle Francois loosened the short sword he carried. But the
priest plainly had no mind to the business. He rose, tipsily fumbling a
knife, and snarling like a cur at sight of a strange mastiff. "Vile
rascal!" said Gilles Raguyer, as he strove to lash himself into a rage.
"O coward! O parricide! O Tarquin!"
François began to laugh. "Let us have done with this farce," said he.
"Your man has no stomach for battle, Ysabeau. And you do me wrong, my
lass, to call me a betrayer of women. Doubtless, that tale seemed the
most apt to kindle in poor Gilles some homicidal virtue: but you and I
and God know that naught has passed between us save a few kisses and a
trinket or so. It is no knifing matter. Yet for the sake of old time,
come home, Ysabeau; your brother is my friend, and the hour is somewhat
late for honest women to be abroad."
"Enné?" shrilled Ysabeau; "and yet, if I cannot strike a spark of courage
from this clod here, there come those who may help me, François de
Montcorbier. 'Ware Sermaise, Master François!"
François wheeled. Down the Rue Saint Jacques came Philippe Sermaise, like
a questing hound, with drunken Jehan le Merdi at his heels. "Holy
Virgin!" thought François; "this is likely to be a nasty affair. I would
give a deal for a glimpse of the patrol lanterns just now."
He edged his way toward the cloister, to get a wall at his back. But
Gilles Raguyer followed him, knife in hand. "O hideous Tarquin! O
Absalom!" growled Gilles; "have you, then, no respect for churchmen?"
With an oath, Sermaise ran up. "Now, may God die twice," he panted, "if I
have not found the skulker at last! There is a crow needs picking between
us two, Montcorbier."
Hemmed in by his enemies, François temporized. "Why do you accost me thus
angrily, Master Philippe?" he babbled. "What harm have I done you? What
is your will of me?"
But his fingers tore feverishly at the strap by which the lute was swung
over his shoulder, and now the lute fell at their feet, leaving François
unhampered and his sword-arm free.
This was fuel to the priest's wrath. "Sacred bones of Benoit!" he
snarled; "I could make a near guess as to what window you have been
caterwauling under."
From beneath his gown he suddenly hauled out a rapier and struck at the
boy while Francois was yet tugging at his sword.
Full in the mouth Sermaise struck him, splitting the lower lip through.
Francois felt the piercing cold of the steel, the tingling of it against
his teeth, then the warm grateful spurt of blood; through a red mist, he
saw Gilles and Ysabeau run screaming down the Rue Saint Jacques.
He drew and made at Sermaise, forgetful of le Merdi. It was shrewd work.
Presently they were fighting in the moonlight, hammer-and-tongs, as the
saying is, and presently Sermaise was cursing like a madman, for François
had wounded him in the groin. Window after window rattled open as the Rue
Saint Jacques ran nightcapped to peer at the brawl. Then as Francois
hurled back his sword to slash at the priest's shaven head--Frenchmen had
not yet learned to thrust with the point in the Italian manner--Jehan le
Merdi leapt from behind, nimble as a snake, and wrested away the boy's
weapon. Sermaise closed with a glad shout.
"Heart of God!" cried Sermaise. "Pray, bridegroom, pray!"
But François jumped backward, tumbling over le Merdi, and with apish
celerity caught up a great stone and flung it full in the priest's
countenance.
The rest was hideous. For a breathing space Sermaise kept his feet, his
outspread arms making a tottering cross. It was curious to see him peer
about irresolutely now that he had no face. François, staring at the
black featureless horror before him, began to choke. Standing thus, with
outstretched arms, the priest first let fall his hands, so that they hung
limp from the wrists; his finger-nails gleamed in the moonlight. His
rapier tinkled on the flagstones with the sound of shattering glass, and
Philippe Sermaise slid down, all a-jumble, crumpling like a broken toy.
Afterward you might have heard a long, awed sibilance go about the
windows overhead as the watching Rue Saint Jacques breathed again.
Francois de Montcorbier ran. He tore at his breast as he ran, stifling.
He wept as he ran through the moon-washed Rue Saint Jacques, making
animal-like and whistling noises. His split lip was a clammy dead thing
that napped against his chin as he ran.
"François!" a man cried, meeting him; "ah, name of a name, François!"
It was René de Montigny, lurching from the Crowned Ox, half-tipsy. He
caught the boy by the shoulder and hurried François, still sobbing, to
Fouquet the barber-surgeon's, where they sewed up his wound. In
accordance with the police regulations, they first demanded an account of
how he had received it. René lied up-hill and down-dale, while in a
corner of the room François monotonously wept.
Fate grinned and went on with her weaving.
4. "_Necessité Faict Gens Mesprende_"
The Rue Saint Jacques had toothsome sauce for its breakfast. The quarter
smacked stiff lips over the news, as it pictured François de Montcorbier
dangling from Montfaucon. "Horrible!" said the Rue Saint Jacques, and
drew a moral of suitably pious flavor.
Guillemette Moreau had told Catherine of the affair before the day was
aired. The girl's hurt vanity broke tether.
"Sermaise!" said she. "Bah, what do I care for Sermaise! He killed him in
fair fight. But within an hour, Guillemette,--within a half-hour after
leaving me, he is junketing on church-porches with that trollop. They
were not there for holy-water. Midnight, look you! And he swore to
me--chaff, chaff! His honor is chaff, Guillemette, and his heart a
bran-bag. Oh, swine, filthy swine! Eh, well, let the swine stick to his
sty. Send Noël d'Arnaye to me."
The Sieur d'Arnaye came, his head tied in a napkin.
"Foh!" said she; "another swine fresh from the gutter? No, this is a
bottle, a tun, a walking wine-barrel! Noël, I despise you. I will marry
you if you like."
He fell to mumbling her hand. An hour later Catherine told Jehan de
Vaucelles she intended to marry Noël the Handsome when he should come
back from Geneppe with the exiled Dauphin. The old man, having wisdom,
lifted his brows, and returned to his reading in _Le Pet au Diable_.
The patrol had transported Sermaise to the prison of Saint Benoit, where
he lay all night. That day he was carried to the hospital of the Hôtel
Dieu. He died the following Saturday.
Death exalted the man to some nobility. Before one of the apparitors of
the Châtelet he exonerated Montcorbier, under oath, and asked that no
steps be taken against him. "I forgive him my death," said Sermaise,
manly enough at the last, "by reason of certain causes moving him
thereunto." Presently he demanded the peach-colored silk glove they would
find in the pocket of his gown. It was Catherine's glove. The priest
kissed it, and then began to laugh. Shortly afterward he died, still
gnawing at the glove.
François and René had vanished. "Good riddance," said the Rue Saint
Jacques. But Montcorbier was summoned to answer before the court of the
Châtelet for the death of Philippe Sermaise, and in default of his
appearance, was subsequently condemned to banishment from the kingdom.
The two young men were at Saint Pourçain-en-Bourbonnais, where René had
kinsmen. Under the name of des Loges, François had there secured a place
as tutor, but when he heard that Sermaise in the article of death had
cleared him of all blame, François set about procuring a pardon.
[Footnote: There is humor in his deposition that Gilles and Ysabeau and
he were loitering before Saint Benoît's in friendly discourse,--"pour soy
esbatre." Perhaps René prompted this; but in itself, it is characteristic
of Montcorbier that he trenched on perjury, blithely, in order to screen
Ysabeau.] It was January before he succeeded in obtaining it.
Meanwhile he had learned a deal of René's way of living. "You are a
thief," François observed to Montigny the day the pardon came, "but you
have played a kindly part by me. I think you are Dysmas, René, not
Gestas. Heh, I throw no stones. You have stolen, but I have killed. Let
us go to Paris, lad, and start afresh."
Montigny grinned. "I shall certainly go to Paris," he said. "Friends wait
for me there,--Guy Tabary, Petit Jehan and Colin de Cayeux. We are
planning to visit Guillaume Coiffier, a fat priest with some six hundred
crowns in the cupboard. You will make one of the party, François."
"René, René," said the other, "my heart bleeds for you."
Again Montigny grinned. "You think a great deal about blood nowadays," he
commented. "People will be mistaking you for such a poet as was crowned
Nero, who, likewise, gave his time to ballad-making and to murdering
fathers of the Church. Eh, dear Ahenabarbus, let us first see what the
Rue Saint Jacques has to say about your recent gambols. After that, I
think you will make one of our party."
5. "_Yeulx sans Pitié!_"
There was a light crackling frost under foot the day that François came
back to the Rue Saint Jacques. Upon this brisk, clear January day it was
good to be home again, an excellent thing to be alive.
"Eh, Guillemette, Guillemette," he laughed. "Why, lass--!"
"Faugh!" said Guillemette Moreau, as she passed him, nose in air. "A
murderer, a priest-killer."
Then the sun went black for François. Such welcoming was a bucket of
cold water, full in the face. He gasped, staring after her; and pursy
Thomas Tricot, on his way from mass, nudged Martin Blaru in the ribs.
"Martin," said he, "fruit must be cheap this year. Yonder in the gutter
is an apple from the gallows-tree, and no one will pick it up."
Blaru turned and spat out, "Cain! Judas!"
This was only a sample. Everywhere François found rigid faces, sniffs,
and skirts drawn aside. A little girl in a red cap, Robin Troussecaille's
daughter, flung a stone at François as he slunk into the cloister of
Saint Benoit-le-Bétourné. In those days a slain priest was God's servant
slain, no less; and the Rue Saint Jacques was a respectable God-fearing
quarter of Paris.
"My father!" the boy cried, rapping upon the door of the Hôtel de la
Porte-Rouge; "O my father, open to me, for I think that my heart is
breaking."
Shortly his foster-father, Guillaume de Villon, came to the window.
"Murderer!" said he. "Betrayer of women! Now, by the caldron of John! how
dare you show your face here? I gave you my name and you soiled it. Back
to your husks, rascal!"
"O God, O God!" François cried, one or two times, as he looked up into
the old man's implacable countenance. "You, too, my father!"
He burst into a fit of sobbing.
"Go!" the priest stormed; "go, murderer!"
It was not good to hear François' laughter. "What a world we live in!"
he giggled. "You gave me your name and I soiled it? Eh, Master Priest,
Master Pharisee, beware! _Villon_ is good French for _vagabond_, an
excellent name for an outcast. And as God lives, I will presently drag
that name through every muckheap in France."
Yet he went to Jehan de Vaucelles' home. "I will afford God one more
chance at my soul," said François.
In the garden he met Catherine and Noël d'Arnaye coming out of the house.
They stopped short. Her face, half-muffled in the brown fur of her cloak,
flushed to a wonderful rose of happiness, the great eyes glowed, and
Catherine reached out her hands toward François with a glad cry.
His heart was hot wax as he fell before her upon his knees. "O heart's
dearest, heart's dearest!" he sobbed; "forgive me that I doubted you!"
And then for an instant, the balance hung level. But after a while,
"Ysabeau de Montigny dwells in the Rue du Fouarre," said Catherine, in a
crisp voice,--"having served your purpose, however, I perceive that
Ysabeau, too, is to be cast aside as though she were an old glove.
Monsieur d'Arnaye, thrash for me this betrayer of women."
Noël was a big, handsome man, like an obtuse demi-god, a foot taller
than François. Noel lifted the boy by his collar, caught up a stick and
set to work. Catherine watched them, her eyes gemlike and cruel.
François did not move a muscle. God had chosen.
After a little, though, the Sieur d'Arnaye flung François upon the
ground, where he lay quite still for a moment. Then slowly he rose
to his feet. He never looked at Noël. For a long time Francois
stared at Catherine de Vaucelles, frost-flushed, defiant, incredibly
beautiful. Afterward the boy went out of the garden, staggering like
a drunken person.
He found Montigny at the Crowned Ox. "René," said François, "there is no
charity on earth, there is no God in Heaven. But in Hell there is most
assuredly a devil, and I think that he must laugh a great deal. What was
that you were telling me about the priest with six hundred crowns in his
cupboard?"
René slapped him on the shoulder. "Now," said he, "you talk like a man."
He opened the door at the back and cried: "Colin, you and Petit Jehan and
that pig Tabary may come out. I have the honor, messieurs, to offer you a
new Companion of the Cockleshell--Master François de Montcorbier."
But the recruit raised a protesting hand. "No," said he,--"François
Villon. The name is triply indisputable, since it has been put upon me
not by one priest but by three."
6. _"Volia l'Estat Divers d'entre Eulx"_
When the Dauphin came from Geneppe to be crowned King of France, there
rode with him Noël d'Arnaye and Noël's brother Raymond. And the
longawaited news that Charles the Well-Served was at last servitor to
Death, brought the exiled Louis post-haste to Paris, where the Rue Saint
Jacques turned out full force to witness his triumphal entry. They
expected, in those days, Saturnian doings of Louis XI, a recrudescence of
the Golden Age; and when the new king began his reign by granting Noël a
snug fief in Picardy, the Rue Saint Jacques applauded.
"Noël has followed the King's fortunes these ten years," said the Rue
Saint Jacques; "it is only just. And now, neighbor, we may look to see
Noel the Handsome and Catherine de Vaucelles make a match of it. The
girl has a tidy dowry, they say; old Jehan proved wealthier than the
quarter suspected. But death of my life, yes! You may see his tomb in
the Innocents' yonder, with weeping seraphim and a yard of Latin on it.
I warrant you that rascal Montcorbier has lain awake in half the prisons
in France thinking of what he flung away. Seven years, no less, since he
and Montigny showed their thieves' faces here. La, the world wags,
neighbor, and they say there will be a new tax on salt if we go to war
with the English."
Not quite thus, perhaps, ran the meditations of Catherine de Vaucelles
one still August night as she sat at her window, overlooking the acacias
and chestnuts of her garden. Noël, conspicuously prosperous in blue and
silver, had but now gone down the Rue Saint Jacques, singing, clinking
the fat purse whose plumpness was still a novelty. That evening she had
given her promise to marry him at Michaelmas.
This was a black night, moonless, windless. There were a scant half-dozen
stars overhead, and the thick scent of roses and mignonette came up to
her in languid waves. Below, the tree-tops conferred, stealthily, and the
fountain plashed its eternal remonstrance against the conspiracy they
lisped of.
After a while Catherine rose and stood contemplative before a long mirror
that was in her room. Catherine de Vaucelles was now, at twenty-three, in
the full flower of her comeliness. Blue eyes the mirror showed
her,--luminous and tranquil eyes, set very far apart; honey-colored hair
massed heavily about her face, a mouth all curves, the hue of a
strawberry, tender but rather fretful, and beneath it a firm chin; only
her nose left something to be desired,--for that feature, though
well-formed, was diminutive and bent toward the left, by perhaps the
thickness of a cobweb. She might reasonably have smiled at what the
mirror showed her, but, for all that, she sighed.
"O Beauty of her, whereby I am undone," said Catherine, wistfully. "Ah,
God in Heaven, forgive me for my folly! Sweet Christ, intercede for me
who have paid dearly for my folly!"
Fate grinned in her weaving. Through the open window came the sound of a
voice singing.
Sang the voice:
_"O Beauty of her, whereby I am undone!
O Grace of her, that hath no grace for me!
O Love of her, the bit that guides me on
To sorrow and to grievous misery!
O felon Charms, my poor heart's enemy--"_
and the singing broke off in a fit of coughing.
Catherine had remained motionless for a matter of two minutes, her head
poised alertly. She went to the gong and struck it seven or eight times.
"Macée, there is a man in the garden. Bring him to me, Macée,--ah, love
of God, Macée, make haste!"
Blinking, he stood upon the threshold. Then, without words, their lips
met.
"My king!" said Catherine; "heart's emperor!"
"O rose of all the world!" he cried.
There was at first no need of speech.
But after a moment she drew away and stared at him. François, though he
was but thirty, seemed an old man. His bald head shone in the
candle-light. His face was a mesh of tiny wrinkles, wax-white, and his
lower lip, puckered by the scar of his wound, protruded in an eternal
grimace. As Catherine steadfastly regarded him, the faded eyes,
half-covered with a bluish film, shifted, and with a jerk he glanced over
his shoulder. The movement started a cough tearing at his throat.
"Holy Macaire!" said he. "I thought that somebody, if not Henri Cousin,
the executioner, was at my heels. Why do you stare so, lass? Have you
anything to eat? I am famished."
In silence she brought him meat and wine, and he fell upon it. He ate
hastily, chewing with his front teeth, like a sheep.
When he had ended, Catherine came to him and took both his hands in hers
and lifted them to her lips. "The years have changed you, François," she
said, curiously meek.
François put her away. Then he strode to the mirror and regarded it
intently. With a snarl, he turned about. "The years!" said he. "You are
modest. It was you who killed François de Montcorbier, as surely as
Montcorbier killed Sermaise. Eh, Sovereign Virgin! that is scant cause
for grief. You made François Villon. What do you think of him, lass?"
She echoed the name. It was in many ways a seasoned name, but
unaccustomed to mean nothing. Accordingly François sneered.
"Now, by all the fourteen joys and sorrows of Our Lady! I believe that
you have never heard of François Villon! The Rue Saint Jacques has not
heard of François Villon! The pigs, the gross pigs, that dare not peep
out of their sty! Why, I have capped verses with the Duke of Orleans. The
very street-boys know my Ballad of the Women of Paris. Not a drunkard in
the realm but has ranted my jolly Orison for Master Cotard's Soul when
the bottle passed. The King himself hauled me out of Meung gaol last
September, swearing that in all France there was not my equal at a
ballad. And you have never heard of me!"
Once more a fit of coughing choked him mid-course in his indignant
chattering.
She gave him a woman's answer: "I do not care if you are the greatest
lord in the kingdom or the most sunken knave that steals ducks from Paris
Moat. I only know that I love you, François."
For a long time he kept silence, blinking, peering quizzically at her
lifted face. She did love him; no questioning that. But presently he
again put her aside, and went toward the open window. This was a matter
for consideration.
The night was black as a pocket. Staring into it, François threw back his
head and drew a deep, tremulous breath. The rising odor of roses and
mignonette, keen and intolerably sweet, had roused unforgotten pulses in
his blood, had set shame and joy adrum in his breast.
The woman loved him! Through these years, with a woman's unreasoning
fidelity, she had loved him. He knew well enough how matters stood
between her and Noel d'Arnaye; the host of the Crowned Ox had been
garrulous that evening. But it was François whom she loved. She was
well-to-do. Here for the asking was a competence, love, an ingleside of
his own. The deuce of it was that Francois feared to ask.
"--Because I am still past reason in all that touches this ignorant,
hot-headed, Pharisaical, rather stupid wench! That is droll. But love is
a resistless tyrant, and, Mother of God! has there been in my life a day,
an hour, a moment when I have not loved her! To see her once was all that
I had craved,--as a lost soul might covet, ere the Pit take him, one
splendid glimpse of Heaven and the Nine Blessed Orders at their fiddling.
And I find that she loves me--me! Fate must have her jest, I perceive,
though the firmament crack for it. She would have been content enough
with Noel, thinking me dead. And with me?" Contemplatively he spat out of
the window. "Eh, if I dared hope that this last flicker of life left in
my crazy carcass might burn clear! I have but a little while to live; if
I dared hope to live that little cleanly! But the next cup of wine, the
next light woman?--I have answered more difficult riddles. Choose, then,
François Villon,--choose between the squalid, foul life yonder and her
well-being. It is true that starvation is unpleasant and that hanging is
reported to be even less agreeable. But just now these considerations are
irrelevant."
Staring into the darkness he fought the battle out. Squarely he faced the
issue; for that instant he saw François Villon as the last seven years
had made him, saw the wine-sodden soul of François Villon, rotten and
weak and honeycombed with vice. Moments of nobility it had; momentarily,
as now, it might be roused to finer issues; but François knew that no
power existent could hearten it daily to curb the brutish passions. It
was no longer possible for François Villon to live cleanly. "For what am
I?--a hog with a voice. And shall I hazard her life's happiness to get me
a more comfortable sty? Ah, but the deuce of it is that I so badly need
that sty!"
He turned with a quick gesture.
"Listen," François said. "Yonder is Paris,--laughing, tragic Paris, who
once had need of a singer to proclaim her splendor and all her misery.
Fate made the man; in necessity's mortar she pounded his soul into the
shape Fate needed. To king's courts she lifted him; to thieves' hovels
she thrust him down; and past Lutetia's palaces and abbeys and taverns
and lupanars and gutters and prisons and its very gallows--past each in
turn the man was dragged, that he might make the Song of Paris. He could
not have made it here in the smug Rue Saint Jacques. Well! the song is
made, Catherine. So long as Paris endures, François Villon will be
remembered. Villon the singer Fate fashioned as was needful: and, in this
fashioning, Villon the man was damned in body and soul. And by God! the
song was worth it!"
She gave a startled cry and came to him, her hands fluttering toward his
breast. "François!" she breathed.
It would not be good to kill the love in her face.
"You loved François de Montcorbier. François de Montcorbier is dead. The
Pharisees of the Rue Saint Jacques killed him seven years ago, and that
day François Villon was born. That was the name I swore to drag through
every muckheap in France. And I have done it, Catherine. The Companions
of the Cockleshell--eh, well, the world knows us. We robbed Guillamme
Coiffier, we robbed the College of Navarre, we robbed the Church of Saint
Maturin,--I abridge the list of our gambols. Now we harvest. René de
Montigny's bones swing in the wind yonder at Montfaucon. Colin de Cayeux
they broke on the wheel. The rest--in effect, I am the only one that
justice spared,--because I had diverting gifts at rhyming, they said.
Pah! if they only knew! I am immortal, lass. _Exegi monumentum_. Villon's
glory and Villon's shame will never die."
He flung back his bald head and laughed now, tittering over that
calamitous, shabby secret between all-seeing God and François Villon. She
had drawn a little away from him. This well-reared girl saw him exultant
in infamy, steeped to the eyes in infamy. But still the nearness of her,
the faint perfume of her, shook in his veins, and still he must play the
miserable comedy to the end, since the prize he played for was to him
peculiarly desirable.
"A thief--a common thief!" But again her hands fluttered back. "I drove
you to it. Mine is the shame."
"Holy Macaire! what is a theft or two? Hunger that causes the wolf to
sally from the wood, may well make a man do worse than steal. I could
tell you--For example, you might ask in Hell of one Thevenin Pensete, who
knifed him in the cemetery of Saint John."
He hinted a lie, for it was Montigny who killed Thevenin Pensete. Villon
played without scruple now.
Catherine's face was white. "Stop," she pleaded; "no more, François,--ah,
Holy Virgin! do not tell me any more."
But after a little she came to him, touching him almost as if with
unwillingness. "Mine is the shame. It was my jealousy, my vanity,
François, that thrust you back into temptation. And we are told by those
in holy orders that the compassion of God is infinite. If you still care
for me, I will be your wife."
Yet she shuddered.
He saw it. His face, too, was paper, and François laughed horribly.
"If I still love you! Go, ask of Denise, of Jacqueline, or of Pierrette,
of Marion the Statue, of Jehanne of Brittany, of Blanche Slippermaker, of
Fat Peg,--ask of any trollop in all Paris how François Villon loves. You
thought me faithful! You thought that I especially preferred you to any
other bed-fellow! Eh, I perceive that the credo of the Rue Saint Jacques
is somewhat narrow-minded. For my part I find one woman much the same as
another." And his voice shook, for he saw how pretty she was, saw how she
suffered. But he managed a laugh.
"I do not believe you," Catherine said, in muffled tones. "François! You
loved me, François. Ah, boy, boy!" she cried, with a pitiable wail; "come
back to me, boy that I loved!"
It was a difficult business. But he grinned in her face.
"He is dead. Let François de Montcorbier rest in his grave. Your voice is
very sweet, Catherine, and--and he could refuse you nothing, could he,
lass? Ah, God, God, God!" he cried, in his agony; "why can you not
believe me? I tell you Necessity pounds us in her mortar to what shape
she will. I tell you that Montcorbier loved you, but François Villon
prefers Fat Peg. An ill cat seeks an ill rat." And with this,
tranquillity fell upon his soul, for he knew that he had won.
Her face told him that. Loathing was what he saw there.
"I am sorry," Catherine said, dully. "I am sorry. Oh, for high God's
sake! go, go! Do you want money? I will give you anything if you will
only go. Oh, beast! Oh, swine, swine, swine!"
He turned and went, staggering like a drunken person.
Once in the garden he fell prone upon his face in the wet grass. About
him the mingled odor of roses and mignonette was sweet and heavy; the
fountain plashed interminably in the night, and above him the chestnuts
and acacias rustled and lisped as they had done seven years ago. Only he
was changed.
"O Mother of God," the thief prayed, "grant that Noël may be kind to
her! Mother of God, grant that she may be happy! Mother of God, grant
that I may not live long!"
And straightway he perceived that triple invocation could be, rather
neatly, worked out in ballade form. Yes, with a separate prayer to each
verse. So, dismissing for the while his misery, he fell to considering,
with undried cheeks, what rhymes he needed.
* * * * *
JULY 17, 1484
"_Et puis il se rencontre icy une avanture merveilleuse, c'est que le
fils de Grand Turc ressemble à Cléonte, à peu de chose prés_."
_Noël d'Arnaye and Catherine de Vaucelles were married in the September
of 1462, and afterward withdrew to Noël's fief in Picardy. There Noël
built him a new Chateau d'Arnaye, and through the influence of Nicole
Beaupertuys, the King's mistress, (who was rumored in court by-ways to
have a tenderness for the handsome Noël), obtained large grants for its
maintenance. Madame d'Arnaye, also, it is gratifying to record, appears
to have lived in tolerable amity with Sieur Noël, and neither of them
pried too closely into the other's friendships.
Catherine died in 1470, and Noël outlived her but by three years. Of the
six acknowledged children surviving him, only one was legitimate--a
daughter called Matthiette. The estate and title thus reverted to Raymond
d'Arnaye, Noël's younger brother, from whom the present family of Arnaye
is descended.
Raymond was a far shrewder man than his predecessor. For ten years'
space, while Louis XI, that royal fox of France, was destroying feudalism
piecemeal,--trimming its power day by day as you might pare an
onion,--the new Sieur d'Arnaye steered his shifty course between France
and Burgundy, always to the betterment of his chances in this world
however he may have modified them in the next. At Arras he fought beneath
the orifiamme; at Guinegate you could not have found a more staunch
Burgundian: though he was no warrior, victory followed him like a
lap-dog. So that presently the Sieur d'Arnaye and the Vicomte de
Puysange--with which family we have previously concerned ourselves--were
the great lords of Northern France.
But after the old King's death came gusty times for Sieur Raymond. It is
with them we have here to do_.