he ordered him into the house with a noble enough gesture.
"Some great seigneur," thought Villon, as his host, setting down the
lamp on the flagged pavement of the entry, shot the bolts once more
into their places.
"You will pardon me if I go in front," he said, when this was done;
and he preceded the poet up-stairs into a large apartment, warmed with
a pan of charcoal and lit by a great lamp hanging from the roof. It
was very bare of furniture; only some gold plate on a sideboard; some
folios; and a stand of armor between the windows. Some smart tapestry
hung upon the walls, representing the crucifixion of our Lord in one
piece, and in another a scene of shepherds and shepherdesses by a
running stream. Over the chimney was a shield of arms.
"Will you seat yourself," said the old man, "and forgive me if I leave
you? I am alone in my house to-night, and if you are to eat I must
forage for you myself."
No sooner was his host gone than Villon leaped from the chair on which
he just seated himself, and began examining the room, with the stealth
and passion of a cat. He weighed the gold flagons in his hand, opened
all the folios, and investigated the arms upon the shield, and the
stuff with which the seats were lined. He raised the window-curtains,
and saw that the windows were set with rich stained glass in figures,
so far as he could see, of martial import. Then he stood in the middle
of the room, drew a long breath, and retaining it with puffed cheeks,
looked round and round him, turning on his heels, as if to impress
every feature of the apartment on his memory.
"Seven pieces of plate," he said. "If there had been ten I would have
risked it. A fine house, and a fine old master, so help me all the
saints."
And just then, hearing the old man's tread returning along the
corridor, he stole back to his chair, and began toasting his wet legs
before the charcoal pan.
His entertainer had a plate of meat in one hand and a jug of wine in
the other. He set down the plate upon the table, motioning Villon
to draw in his chair, and going to the sideboard, brought back two
goblets, which he filled.
"I drink to your better fortune," he said, gravely touching Villon's
cup with his own.
"To our better acquaintance," said the poet, growing bold. A mere
man of the people would have been awed by the courtesy of the old
seigneur, but Villon was hardened in that matter; he had made mirth
for great lords before now, and found them as black rascals as
himself. And so he devoted himself to the viands with a ravenous
gusto, while the old man, leaning backward, watched him with steady,
curious eyes.
"You have blood on your shoulder, my man," he said.
Montigny must have laid his wet right hand upon him as he left the
house. He cursed Montigny in his heart.
"It was none of my shedding," he stammered.
"I had not supposed so," returned his host quietly. "A brawl?"
"Well, something of that sort," Villon admitted with a quaver.
"Perhaps a fellow murdered?"
"Oh, no, not murdered," said the poet, more and more confused. "It was
all fair play--murdered by accident. I had no hand in it, God strike
me dead!" he added fervently.
"One rogue the fewer, I dare say," observed the master of the house.
"You may dare to say that," agreed Villon, infinitely relieved. "As
big a rogue as there is between here and Jerusalem. He turned up his
toes like a lamb. But it was a nasty thing to look at. I dare say
you've seen dead men in your time, my lord?" he added, glancing at the
armor.
"Many," said the old man. "I have followed the wars, as you imagine."
Villon laid down his knife and fork, which he had just taken up again.
"Were any of them bald?" he asked.
"Oh, yes, and with hair as white as mine."
"I don't think I would mind the white so much," said Villon. "His was
red." And he had a return of his shuddering and tendency to laughter,
which he drowned with a great draught of wine. "I'm a little put out
when I think of it," he went on. "I knew him--damn him! And the cold
gives a man fancies--or the fancies give a man cold, I don't know
which."
"Have you any money?" asked the old man.
"I have one white," returned the poet, laughing. "I got it out of
a dead jade's stocking in a porch. She was as dead as Caesar, poor
wench, and as cold as a church, with bits of ribbon sticking in her
hair. This is a hard world in winter for wolves and wenches and poor
rogues like me."
"I," said the old man, "am Enguerrand de la Feuillee, seigneur
de Brisetout, bailly du Patatrac. Who and what may you be?"
Villon rose and made a suitable reverence. "I am called Francis
Villon," he said, "a poor Master of Arts of this university. I know
some Latin, and a deal of vice. I can make chansons, ballades, lais,
virelais, and roundels, and I am very fond of wine. I was born in a
garret, and I shall not improbably die upon the gallows. I may add,
my lord, that from this night forward I am your lordship's very
obsequious servant to command."
"No servant of mine," said the knight; "my guest for this evening, and
no more."
"A very grateful guest," said Villon, politely; and he drank in dumb
show to his entertainer.
"You are shrewd," began the old man, tapping his forehead, "very
shrewd; you have learning; you are a clerk; and yet you take a small
piece of money off a dead woman in the street. Is it not a kind of
theft?"
"It is a kind of theft much practised in the wars, my lord."
"The wars are the field of honor," returned the old man proudly.
"There a man plays his life upon the cast; he fights in the name of
his lord the king, his Lord God, and all their lordships the holy
saints and angels."
"Put it," said Villon, "that I were really a thief, should I not play
my life also, and against heavier odds?"
"For gain, and not for honor."
"Gain?" repeated Villon with a shrug. "Gain! The poor fellow wants
supper, and takes it. So does the soldier in a campaign. Why, what are
all these requisitions we hear so much about? If they are not gain
to those who take them, they are loss enough to the others. The
men-at-arms drink by a good fire, while the burgher bites his nails to
buy them wine and wood. I have seen a good many ploughmen swinging on
trees about the country; ay, I have seen thirty on one elm, and a very
poor figure they made; and when I asked some one how all these came to
be hanged, I was told it was because they could not scrape together
enough crowns to satisfy the men-at-arms."
"These things are a necessity of war, which the low-born must endure
with constancy. It is true that some captains drive overhard; there
are spirits in every rank not easily moved by pity; and, indeed, many
follow arms who are no better than brigands."
"You see," said the poet, "you cannot separate the soldier from the
brigand; and what is a thief but an isolated brigand with circumspect
manners? I steal a couple of mutton chops, without so much as
disturbing the farmer's sheep; the farmer grumbles a bit, but sups
none the less wholesomely on what remains. You come up blowing
gloriously on a trumpet, take away the whole sheep, and beat the
farmer pitifully into the bargain. I have no trumpet; I am only Tom,
Dick, or Harry; I am a rogue and a dog, and hanging's too good for
me--with all my heart--but just you ask the farmer which of us he
prefers, just find out which of us he lies awake to curse on cold
nights."
"Look at us two," said his lordship. "I am old, strong, and honored.
If I were turned from my house to-morrow, hundreds would be proud to
shelter me. Poor people would go out and pass the night in the streets
with their children, if I merely hinted that I wished to be alone.
And I find you up, wandering homeless, and picking farthings off dead
women by the wayside! I fear no man and nothing; I have seen you
tremble and lose countenance at a word. I wait God's summons
contentedly in my own house, or, if it please the king to call me out
again, upon the field of battle. You look for the gallows; a rough,
swift death, without hope or honor. Is there no difference between
these two?"
"As far as to the moon," Villon acquiesced. "But if I had been born
lord of Brisetout, and you had been the poor scholar Francis, would
the difference have been any the less? Should not I have been warming
my knees at this charcoal pan, and would not you have been groping for
farthings in the snow? Should not I have been the soldier, and you the
thief?"
"A thief!" cried the old man. "I a thief! If you understood your
words, you would repent them."
Villon turned out his hands with a gesture of inimitable impudence.
"If your lordship had done me the honor to follow my argument!" he
said.
"I do you too much honor in submitting to your presence," said the
knight. "Learn to curb your tongue when you speak with old and
honorable men, or some one hastier than I may reprove you in a sharper
fashion." And he rose and paced the lower end of the apartment,
struggling with anger and antipathy. Villon surreptitiously refilled
his cup, and settled himself more comfortably in the chair, crossing
his knees and leaning his head upon one hand and the elbow against the
back of the chair. He was now replete and warm; and he was in nowise
frightened for his host, having gauged him as justly as was possible
between two such different characters. The night was far spent, and in
a very comfortable fashion after all; and he felt morally certain of a
safe departure on the morrow.
"Tell me one thing," said the old man, pausing in his walk. "Are you
really a thief?"
"I claim the sacred rights of hospitality," returned the poet. "My
lord, I am."
"You are very young," the knight continued.
"I should never have been so old," replied Villon; showing his
fingers, "if I had not helped myself with these ten talents. They have
been my nursing mothers and my nursing fathers."
"You may still repent and change."
"I repent daily," said the poet. "There are few people more given to
repentance than poor Francis. As for change, let somebody change my
circumstances. A man must continue to eat, if it were only that he may
continue to repent."
"The change must begin in the heart," returned the old man solemnly.
"My dear lord," answered Villon, "do you really fancy that I steal for
pleasure? I hate stealing, like any other piece of work or danger. My
teeth chatter when I see a gallows. But I must eat, I must drink,
I must mix in society of some sort. What the devil! Man is not
a solitary animal--_Cui Deus foeminam tradit_. Make me king's
pantler--make me abbot of St. Denis; make me bailly of the Patatrac;
and then I shall be changed indeed. But as long as you leave me the
poor scholar Francis Villon, without a farthing, why, of course, I
remain the same."
"The grace of God is all-powerful."
"I should be a heretic to question it," said Francis. "It has made you
lord of Brisetout, and bailly of the Patatrac; it has given me nothing
but the quick wits under my hat and these ten toes upon my hands. May
I help myself to wine? I thank you respectfully. By God's grace, you
have a very superior vintage."
The lord of Brisetout walked to and fro with his hands behind his
back. Perhaps he was not yet quite settled in his mind about the
parallel between thieves and soldiers; perhaps Villon had interested
him by some cross-thread of sympathy; perhaps his wits were simply
muddled by so much unfamiliar reasoning; but whatever the cause, he
somehow yearned to convert the young man to a better way of thinking,
and could not make up his mind to drive him forth again into the
street.
"There is something more than I can understand in this," he said, at
length. "Your mouth is full of subtleties, and the devil has led you
very far astray; but the devil is only a very weak spirit before God's
truth, and all his subtleties vanish at a word of true honor, like
darkness at morning. Listen to me once more. I learned long ago that a
gentleman should live chivalrously and lovingly to God, and the king,
and his lady; and though I have seen many strange things done, I
have still striven to command my ways upon that rule. It is not only
written in all noble histories, but in every man's heart, if he will
take care to read. You speak of food and wine, and I know very well
that hunger is a difficult trial to endure; but you do not speak of
other wants; you say nothing of honor, of faith to God and other men,
of courtesy, of love without reproach. It may be that I am not very
wise--and yet I think I am--but you seem to me like one who has lost
his way and made a great error in life. You are attending to the
little wants, and you have totally forgotten the great and only real
ones, like a man who should be doctoring a toothache on the Judgment
Day. For such things as honor and love and faith are not only nobler
than food and drink, but, indeed, I think that we desire them more,
and suffer more sharply for their absence. I speak to you as I think
you will most easily understand me. Are you not, while careful to fill
your belly, disregarding another appetite in your heart, which spoils
the pleasure of your life and keeps you continually wretched?"
Villon was sensibly nettled under all this sermonizing. "You think I
have no sense of honor!" he cried. "I'm poor enough, God knows! It's
hard to see rich people with their gloves, and you blowing your hands.
An empty belly is a bitter thing, although you speak so lightly of
it. If you had had as many as I, perhaps you would change your tune.
Anyway, I'm a thief--make the most of that--but I'm not a devil from
hell, God strike me dead. I would have you to know I've an honor of my
own, as good as yours, though I don't prate about it all day long, as
if it were a God's miracle to have any. It seems quite natural to me;
I keep it in its box till it's wanted. Why now, look you here, how
long have I been in this room with you? Did you not tell me you were
alone in the house? Look at your gold plate! You're strong, if you
like, but you're old and unarmed, and I have my knife. What did I want
but a jerk of the elbow, and here would have been you with the cold
steel in your bowels, and there would have been me, linking in the
streets, with an armful of gold cups! Did you suppose I hadn't wit
enough to see that? And I scorned the action. There are your damned
goblets, as safe as in a church; there are you, with your heart
ticking as good as new; and here am I, ready to go out again as poor
as I came in, with my one white that you threw in my teeth! And you
think I have no sense of honor--God strike me dead!"
The old man stretched out his right arm. "I will tell you what
you are," he said. "You are a rogue, my man, an impudent and a
black-hearted rogue and vagabond. I have passed an hour with you. Oh!
believe me, I feel myself disgraced! And you have eaten and drank at
my table. But now I am sick at your presence; the day has come, and
the night-bird should be off to his roost. Will you go before, or
after?"
"Which you please," returned the poet, rising. "I believe you to be
strictly honorable." He thoughtfully emptied his cup. "I wish I could
add you were intelligent," he went on, knocking on his head with his
knuckles. "Age, age! the brains stiff and rheumatic."
The old man preceded him from a point of self-respect; Villon
followed, whistling, with his thumbs in his girdle.
"God pity you," said the lord of Brisetout at the door.
"Good-bye, papa," returned Villon, with a yawn. "Many thanks for the
cold mutton."
The door closed behind him. The dawn was breaking over the white
roofs. A chill, uncomfortable morning ushered in the day. Villon stood
and heartily stretched himself in the middle of the road.
"A very dull old gentleman," he thought. "I wonder what his goblets
may be worth."
INDEX
Aesop
beast-fables
Apuleius
_The Golden Ass_
likeness to Kipling
Aristotle
_Secretum Secretorum_
Barrett, Charles Raymond
_Short-Story Writings_
Beast-fables
Boccaccio
_Teseide_
_Decameron_
Brown, Dr. John (1810-1882)
_Rab and His Friends_
Bunyan, John
Cable
_Strange True Stories of Louisiana_
Cervantes
_Don Quixote_
Chaucer
Coleridge
_Ancient Mariner_
_Deeds of the Romans, The_
Defoe, Daniel (1661-1731)
_Short-Story Essay_
_The Apparition of Mrs. Veal_
Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)
_The Boots at the Holly-Tree Inn_
Drelincourt
_Book on Death_
Fenton, Geoffrey
_Tragical Discourses_
Fuller, Thomas
Garnett, Richard
_The Poison Maid_
_Gesta Romanorum, The_
Hardy, Thomas (1840)
_The Three Strangers_
Harris, Chandler
_Uncle Remus_
Harte, Bret (1839-1902)
_The Outcasts of Poker Flat_
Hawthorne, Nathaniel (1807-1864)
_Dr. Heidegger's Experiment_
Hogg, James (1770-1835)
the Ettrick Shepherd
early life
_Shepherd's Calendar_
_The Brownie of Bodsbeck_
Professor Wilson on
_The Mysterious Bride_
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
_Elsie Venner_
Hood, Thomas
_The Dream of Eugene Aram_
_Ingoldsby Legends, The_
Irving, Washington (1783-1859)
_The Devil and Tom Walker_
James, Henry (1843)
_Julia Bride_
Kipling, Rudyard
_Just-so Stories_
_Jungle-Book_
_Finest Story in the World_
_The Man Who Would be King_
Laws of the short-story
_Leech of Folkstone, The_
Malory, _Morte D'Arthur_
Matthews, Professor Brander
Morris, William, _Defence of Guinevere_
Nathaniel Hawthorne, _Rappaccini's Daughter_
North, Sir Thomas, _Plutarch's Lives_
_Of Temporal Tribulation_
_Of the Transgressions and Wounds of the Soul_
Paynter, William, _The Palace of Pleasure_
_Peregrine Pickle_
Poe, Edgar Allan (1809-1849),
laws of short-story;
essay on Hawthorne;
_Tale of the Ragged Mountains_;
_The Purloined Letter_.
Powell, Prof. J.W.
_Practical Treatise on the Art of the Short-Story_
_Redgauntlet_
_Roderick Random_
Rossetti, _White Ship_
Shakespeare, _Pericles, Prince of Tyre_;
borrower.
Shelton, Thomas, _Don Quixote_
Short-Story, Evolution of the
Smith, Herbert H.
Sterne, Laurence
Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850-1894),
_A Lodging for the Night_
Stockton, Frank R. (1834-1902),
_A Story of Seven Devils_
Tennyson,
_The Idylls of the King_;
_The Lady of Shalott_.
_Tom Jones_
Trollope, Anthony
Twain, Mark (1835),
_A Dog's Tale_
Underdown, Thomas, _Heliodorus_
_Vicar of Wakefield_
Walton, Isaak
Wilson, Professor, on James Hogg
END OF VOL. I