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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of If I Were King, by Justin Huntly McCarthy
+
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: If I Were King
+
+Author: Justin Huntly McCarthy
+
+Release Date: March, 2004 [EBook #5351]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on July 6, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IF I WERE KING ***
+
+
+
+
+This eBook was created by Charles Aldarondo (pg@aldarondo.net).
+
+
+
+
+
+
+IF I WERE KING
+
+BY
+
+JUSTIN HUNTLY McCARTHY
+
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+To Her
+
+Through Whom and For Whom
+
+This Book was Written
+
+"The Loveliest Lady this side of Heaven."
+
+XXI. XII. MCMI.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  If I were king--ah love, if I were king!
+  What tributary nations would I bring
+  To stoop before your sceptre and to swear
+  Allegiance to your lips and eyes and hair.
+  Beneath your feet what treasures I would fling:--
+  The stars should be your pearls upon a string,
+  The world a ruby for your finger ring,
+  And you should have the sun and moon to wear
+  If I were king.
+
+  Let these wild dreams and wilder words take wing,
+  Deep in the woods I hear a shepherd sing
+  A simple ballad to a sylvan air,
+  Of love that ever finds your face more fair.
+  I could not give you any godlier thing
+  If I were king.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+IN THE FIRCONE TAVERN
+
+
+
+
+
+In the dark main room of the Fircone Tavern the warm June air seemed
+to have lost all its delicacy, like a degraded angel. It was sodden
+through and through, as with the lees of wine; it was stained and
+shamed with the smells of hams and cheeses; it was thick and heavy
+as if with the breaths of all the rogues and all the vagabonds that
+had haunted the hostelry from its evil dawn. Such guttering lights
+and glimmering flames as lit the place--for there was a small fire
+on the wide hearth in spite of the fine weather--peopled the gloom
+with fantastic quivering shadows as of lean fingers that unfolded
+themselves to filch, or clenched themselves to stab in the back. But
+its patrons seemed to like the place well enough in spite of its
+miasma, and Master Robin Turgis, the fat landlord, drowsy with his
+own wine and dripping from the heat, surveyed them complacently, and
+wallowed as it were in the rattle and clink of mug and can, the
+full-throated laughter and the shrill chatter, crisply emphasized by
+oaths, which assured him of the Fircone's popularity with its
+intimates. Master Robin's intelligence was limited; his wit was
+simple; the processes of his mind moved easily along the lines of
+least resistance. The Burgundians might be hammering with mailed
+fists at the walls of Paris; the fire-new crown of Louis the
+Eleventh might be falling from the royal forehead: it mattered not a
+jot to dishonest Robin so long as the Fircone brimmed with company.
+
+There was enough company in the room on this evening to content even
+his wish. It was not the kind of company that a wise man would
+desire to keep, but it delighted the innkeeper, for it drank deeply
+and spent freely, and in Robin's view it was of no more concern to
+him how the money that changed hands was come by than it was how the
+profound potations might affect the brains and stomachs of his
+clients. If any officer of the law had questioned him as to his
+association with a certain mysterious Brotherhood of the
+Cockleshells whose plunderings and pilferings were the pride of the
+Court of Miracles and the fear of citizens with strong boxes, he
+would have shrugged his fat shoulders and shaken his round head and
+disowned all knowledge of any such unlawful corporation. Yet his
+face wrinkled with smiles as his glance rested amiably upon the
+bodily presences of certain illustrious members of the brotherhood,
+wild men in withered frippery, wine-stained to the very bones.
+
+They were five in number, and four of them were huddled round a
+table in the cosiest corner of the room, the corner that was
+sheltered from the heat of the fire by the high-backed settle, the
+corner that was nearest to the main door if one desired--as one
+often did--to slip out in a hurry, and to the red-curtained windows,
+if one desired--as one seldom did--a mouthful of fresh air. Robin
+Turgis knew them all, admired them all, feared them all, and yet he
+held head against them because his Beaune wine was so adorable, and
+because he could keep his own counsel. Slender René de Montigny, in
+a jerkin of rubbed and faded purple velvet, with his malign,
+Italianate face and his delicate Italianate grace; rotund Guy
+Tabarie, bluff, red and bald; Casin Cholet, tall and bird-like, with
+the figure of a stork and the features of a bird of prey; Jehan le
+Loup, who looked as vulpine as his nickname; these Robin Turgis eyed
+and catalogued with a kind of pride. It was a fearsome privilege for
+the Fircone to boast such patronage. On the settle, with his face to
+the fire, Colin de Cayeulx sprawled in a drunken sleep, forgetting
+and forgotten, a harmless looking, good-natured looking knave who
+was neither harmless nor good-natured.
+
+For every man of the gang there was a woman, and there was a woman
+over, who was easily the central star of the flaunting galaxy. The
+shabby bravery of the men was matched by the shabby bravery of five
+out of the six women. Gaudy, painted, assertive strumpets with
+young, fair, shameless faces--worthy Jills of the ill-favoured Jacks
+who cuddled them--Jehanneton, the fair helm-maker; Denise, Blanche,
+Isabeau, and Guillemette, the landlord's daughter, who consorted
+gaily enough with these brightly-plumaged birds of a rogue's
+paradise. But the sixth woman was a bird of quite another feather.
+
+Over all the clatter this woman's voice rose suddenly as clear as
+the call of a thrush, and the hot space seemed to cool and the hot
+air to clean as she sang. She who sang was a girl of five and
+twenty, whom it had pleased to clothe her ripe womanhood in a boy's
+habit, that clasped her fine body as close as a second skin, and she
+might have passed for a man no otherwhere than in a madhouse. She
+looked very charming in the stained and faded daintiness of her male
+attire. She wore a green velvet doublet and green woollen hose, with
+a scarlet girdle and pouch about her waist, and a scarlet feather
+stuck defiantly in her green cap, beneath which her long fair hair
+tumbled in liberal confusion about her shoulders. She sat on the
+edge of a table swinging one shapely leg loose and strained upon its
+fellow while she nursed her lute as if it had been a baby, and
+carolled as if there were no other work in the world to do than to
+sing. The men and women who sat and sprawled around the table kept
+quiet, listening to her and staring at her; sleepy Colin pricked his
+ears; Robin Turgis was alert to hear, for he knew that it was worth
+while to listen when Huguette du Hamel chose to sing. Robin Turgis
+knew all about her. Her gentle blood was wild blood, and in spite of
+her birth and her name she had drifted on the stream of strange
+pleasure to be the idol of the Fircone's shrine. Her voice was sweet
+and the tune had a tender, appealing grace, with a little minor wail
+in it that brought tears into the singer's eyes, and she mouthed the
+words as if she found them sweet as honey. And this is what she
+sang:
+
+  "Daughters of pleasure, one and all,
+    Of form and feature delicate,
+  Of bodies slim, and bosoms small,
+    With feet and fingers white and straight,
+  Your eyes are bright, your grace is great
+    To hold your lovers' hearts in thrall;
+  Use your red lips before too late,
+    Love ere love flies beyond recall."
+
+Her voice dropped and her fingers tinkled over the strings. René de
+Montigny turned his dark, well-featured face in a sweeping leer that
+seemed to taste the familiar graces with gusto. "Devilish good
+advice, Dollies," he shouted, and as he spoke he hugged the nearest
+girl close to him, and tilting up her chin with his free hand,
+kissed her noisily. The girl squealed a little at his roughness; the
+other pairs laughed and clasped after his example, only the singer,
+unheeding, lifted her sweet voice again, and this time there was a
+savour of gall in the sweetness of the honey:
+
+  "For soon the golden hair is grey,
+    And all the body's lovely line
+  In wrinkled meanness slipped astray;
+    The limbs so round and ripe and fine
+  Shrivelled and withered; quenched the shine
+    That made your eyes as bright as day:
+  So, ladies, hear these words of mine,
+    Love, ere love flutter far away."
+
+The drift of the music seemed sadder than before, and there was a
+little silence when the last words floated away into the blackened
+rafters, a silence broken by one of the girls.
+
+"Enne, that was a sad song, Abbess," Isabeau sighed, and her face
+seemed to have paled beneath its false colours and the lines about
+her mouth and eyes to have grown older in surrender to inevitable
+thoughts. She whom the girl called Abbess laughed, and her mirth
+sounded harshly after the dreamy sweetness of her song.
+
+"Master François Villon made it for me t'other day," she answered.
+"' You will grow old, Idol,' he said, 'and I make you this song to
+teach you true things.'"
+
+Guy Tabarie, whose red hair bunched out like little flames from the
+fiery sun of his countenance, clapped his hands to the girl's waist
+and thrust his face near to hers. "Kiss me and forget it," he
+hiccoughed. The girl gave importunacy a little push which sent him
+staggering back to his seat. "I have no kisses for any Jack of you
+all but François," she said, while the others roared at the man's
+discomfiture. "Ah, there is no one of you that can write songs like
+him, or make one sad as he can in the midst of gladness."
+
+The girl whom purple-coated René had kissed so rudely shivered a
+little. "A strange reason for liking a man," she whispered, "that he
+make you sad." She glanced wistfully round at her companions: to the
+faces of the women the influence of the song had lent an unwonted
+softness, but had brought no touch of tenderness to those of the
+men. Jehan le Loup banged his fist heavily on the table in furious
+protestation till the cans and flagons rattled.
+
+"Is this a Court of Love?" he grunted, baring his yellow tusks in a
+swinish rage. "There are other rooms for love-making," and he jerked
+his thumb towards the roof. "We are here for drinking; we are here
+for dicing; to the devil with smocks and sonnets."
+
+He jumbled the ivories lustily as he growled and the familiar jingle
+banished unfamiliar fancies. He slapped the spotted cubes on the
+table and as they rolled into equilibrium eager eyes counted them,
+and fingers eager or reluctant pinched or pushed at coins. The spell
+of the music was broken. The melodious Abbess, with eyes now
+glittering and tearless, swung her supple body from table to bench,
+thrust herself a place among the players, shouted to Robin Turgis to
+bring more wine, and spreading some silver on the dingy board
+surrendered to speculation. Nobody heeded the faint clink which told
+that a hand troubled the latch of the street door; nobody heeded the
+faint creaking which showed that it was being softly opened; nobody
+heeded the man who put his head gently through the opening and
+looked thoughtfully around him. The new-comer was a grim-visaged
+fellow, somewhere near the edge of middle age. He was dressed in the
+sober habit of a simple burgess, and he used the long fold that hung
+from his cloth cap very dexterously to hide his face. He peered into
+the obscurity of the room with a disquieting smile that deepened in
+its unpleasing expression as its owner surveyed the noisy fellowship
+in the corner, and nodded his head as he seemed to identify its
+members. Confident that nobody marked him he stealthily entered the
+room, and holding the door ajar, he motioned to one who still stood
+without to enter. The summons was answered by the entrance of
+another figure, capped and habited like the first, who slipped in
+swiftly and furtively, and made at once for the farthest and
+loneliest angle of the room without looking to right or left, while
+his herald, after closing the door as noiselessly as possible,
+followed quickly in his footsteps. If Master Robin, dancing
+attendance upon his clamourous customers, could have divined the
+identity of the newcomers whose advent he regarded so indifferently,
+his purple face would have paled and his stomach failed him at the
+thought that the Fircone sheltered the baleful presence of the king
+and of his malign satellite, Tristan l'Hermite.
+
+The two strangers seated themselves at a small table in the very
+pole of the room to the place where the Abbess and her friends were
+busy, and the second of the pair, drawing a little apart the
+dark-coloured fold of cloth that almost concealed his features,
+looked around him curiously.
+
+"Is this the eyrie?" he whispered, and his companion answered him in
+the same low tone, "This is the Fircone Tavern, sire." The other's
+finger was lifted to his lip at once in warning. "Hush, gossip,
+hush," he muttered. "No title now, I beg of you. Here I am not Louis
+of France, but a simple sober citizen like yourself. I suppose we
+must take something for the good of the house?" His henchman
+promptly replied that such action was indispensable. But Louis still
+looked doubtful. "Will the liquor be very detestable," he asked,
+inserting two thin fingers in the black pouch at his belt. Tristan
+shook his head. "Nay, you can get good wine here if you know how to
+ask for it--and how to pay for it."
+
+"No one knows better than I how to ask for anything," chuckled the
+king. "Or worse, how to for it," Tristan sneered. The king scowled
+at him. "Then, why do you keep my service?" he snapped. Tristan
+shrugged his shoulders. "Some dregs of devotion, I suppose. Here
+stands Master Innkeeper." For by this time Robin Turgis was at their
+elbow, scanning them narrowly with his small, pig--like eyes that
+could make little, however, of the well-muffled faces. He waited on
+their order with a kind of ferocious submission, draining his rank
+forehead with a sweep of his dirty palm.
+
+"Friend," said Louis, sniffing sardonically at the too odoriferous
+personality of the taverner, "you behold here two decent cits who
+have turned a penny, or twain in a bargain, and have a mind to wet
+their whistles in consequence. Have you aught to offer that is good
+alike for purse and palate?"
+
+Robin Turgis nodded his round head and fondled his round stomach.
+"We have a white wine of Beaune," he said unctuously, as if he were
+tasting the wares he commended, "at two sols the flagon that is
+noble drinking."
+
+The king's sense of economy shivered at the sum; as if it had been a
+wound.
+
+"Pasques-Dieu!" he stammered. "So it should be at the price." Robin
+Turgis remained unmoved: Tristan clinched the business. "Bring it,"
+he said decisively, and as the landlord shambled away towards his
+cellar, Tristan met the king's condemnatory frown squarely.
+
+"I wear out my hands and feet in your service," lie said, "I want to
+save my throat and stomach."
+
+Louis made no answer and was mournfully silent until the obese
+landlord returned with the much-vaunted vintage, which he set down
+on the table with a brace of goblets. Louis fumbled with reluctant
+fingers in his pouch, extracted the exact amount necessary for
+payment and dropped it into the fat paw of Robin Turgis. But Robin
+lingered and Louis looking at him in surprise met the admonishing
+glare of Tristan. "Give him a penny for himself," Tristan whispered,
+and the king, with an unwillingness he was at no pains to conceal,
+added the demanded drink-money to the other coins, and eyed the
+departing back of the landlord with well-defined aversion. "You are
+generous with other people's pennies, friend," he snapped at his
+companion, but Tristan, paying no heed to his querulousness, filled
+the two cups with the clear golden liquid and thrust one of them
+under the nose of the sulky monarch. Its fine dry fragrance soothed
+Louis; he took a deep sip and was mollified; another and he had
+forgiven if not forgotten his generosity. He winked at Tristan
+amiably over the rim of the goblet. "This is seeing life, friend
+Tristan," he murmured, contentedly, stretching his thin legs in
+delicious ease. But Tristan was in no holiday humour.
+
+"Let's hope it mayn't be seeing death, friend Louis" he snorted.
+"There are a couple of rogues in that covey who would spit you or
+split you or slit you for the price of a drink."
+
+Louis laughed affably. "And no such cheap bargain," he commented,
+"seeing what wine costs here. But this is an interesting business."
+
+Tristan would concede nothing to the king's good-humour. "Where's
+the interest?" he asked. "A few bullies, bawds and bonarobas boozing
+together. You can keep the same company at court--only a shade
+cleaner--and not be out of pocket for the privilege either."
+
+The king's mouth puckered in appreciation of some memory. He leaned
+forward and touched Tristan's sleeve.
+
+"Gossip Tristan, there is at my court a scholar who told me an
+Eastern tale."
+
+"Pray God it be a gay one such as your majesty loves,"
+
+"Hush, man; no 'Majesty' here. 'Tis of an Eastern King, one Haroun,
+surnamed, as I shall be surnamed, The Just."
+
+Tristan grunted sceptically, but Louis, ignoring the ejaculation,
+went on.
+
+"It was his pastime to go about Bagdad of nights in disguise, and
+mingling with his people learn much to the advantage of the realm. I
+am following his example, and I expect to learn much in my turn."
+
+Tristan looked pityingly at the complacent king. "You are likely to
+learn how unpopular you are, which I could have told you without
+this trouble; and you will be lucky if you do not get your throat
+cut into the bargain."
+
+Something almost like a smile disturbed the familiar composure of
+the king's wrinkles. He took another sip of the wine and his
+affability expanded. "You are always a bird of evil omen," he
+chirped. "Be bright, man; look at me. The Burgundian Leaguer is at
+my gates; my throne sways like a rocking-chair, yet I don't pull a
+sad face."
+
+"It's a good thing that somebody is pleased," Tristan commented.
+"Yes," said Louis, opening out his thin hands and studying their
+palms attentively, "I am pleased--" Tristan interrupted him roughly.
+"Pleased that the Burgundians threaten you outside the walls of
+Paris; pleased that Thibaut d'Aussigny bullies you inside the walls
+of Paris; pleased that your soldiers are mutinous; pleased that your
+citizens are sullen; by my faith, here are four royal reasons for a
+royal pleasure."
+
+Louis shook his head playfully at his servant's grumbling. "Gossip
+Tristan," he asked, "do you know why I have come to this hovel
+to-night? I do not walk abroad like a king-errant in mere idleness
+of mind. I have come to learn what company my lord the Grand
+Constable keeps." Tristan's shaggy eyebrows arched in surprise as
+the king continued: "Our good Olivier assures us that our dear
+Thibaut d'Aussigny has taken it into his head of late to walk the
+streets by night and to haunt strange taverns such as this same
+Fircone. I am plagued with a womanish curiosity, Tristan, and I
+thought I would peep over Messire Thibaut's shoulder and have an eye
+on his cards."
+
+Tristan chuckled. "The Grand Constable bears you a grudge since you
+chose to turn a kind eye on the girl of Vaucelles."
+
+"She was a wise virgin to dislike Thibaut," mused the king. "Was she
+a foolish virgin to mistrust your majesty?" questioned Tristan.
+Louis shrugged his shoulders. "She is a proud piece, gossip. When I
+told her that she took my fancy she flamed into a red rage that
+chastened me. But if she's not for me she's not for Thibaut either."
+"The Grand Constable is a bad enemy," Tristan commented. The king
+replied at random.
+
+"Tristan, I had a strange dream last night I dreamed that I was a
+swine rooting in the streets of Paris, and that I found a pearl of
+great price in the kennel. I picked it up and set it in my crown--"
+
+"A crowned pig," Tristan interrupted. "'Tis like a tavern sign."
+Louis did not seem to resent the interruption.
+
+"My good gossip, in a dream nothing seems strange. Well, as I said,
+I set this pearl in my crown and the light of it seemed to fill all
+my good city of Paris with glory so that I could see every street
+and alley, every tower and pinnacle, more clearly than in a summer's
+noon. And then memought that the pearl weighed so heavy upon my
+forehead that I plucked it from its place and cast it to the ground,
+and would have trodden it under foot when a star shot swiftly from
+Heaven and stayed me."
+
+The king looked eagerly at his companion, who seemed wholly
+uninterested in the narrative of the royal vision. "Dreams and
+stars, stars and dreams," he sneered. "Leave dreams to weaklings,
+sire." Louis frowned. "Don't sneer, gossip, but instruct, who are
+these people?" and the sharp, lean face of the king thrust itself
+forward a little, bird-like from the nest of its hood, in the
+direction of the gamblers. His companion shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Some of the worst cats and rats in all Paris," he answered. "The
+men belong to a fellowship that is called the Company of the
+Cockleshells, and babble a cant of their own that baffles the
+thief-takers. If your majesty--" but here a warning kick from Louis
+made him wince and change his words-"if you wished to savour
+rascality these are your blades. The women are trulls. Yonder
+she-thing in the man's habit is Huguette du Hamel, a wild wench,
+whom men call the Abbess for her nunnery of light o' loves. There be
+four of her minions with her now, Jehanneton la belle Heaulmiere as
+they name her, Denise the slipper-maker, Blanche and Isabeau. Oh,
+they are delectable doxies!"
+
+King Louis pursed his thin lips in austere censure. "They shall be
+reproved hereafter," he said. "Who are the men?"
+
+"Worthy Adams of such pestilent Eves," Tristan answered. "That
+slender fellow in the purple jerkin is one René de Montigny, of
+gentle birth, and a great breaker of commandments. He with the red
+hair is Guy Tabarie; they are sworn brothers in bawdry and larceny.
+The ferret-faced knave who is tickling the girl's knee is Jehan le
+Loup. Bullies and bawds, pandars and parasites: to enumerate their
+offenses would be to say the Decalogue backward."
+
+"You have a pithy humour, gossip," and Louis grinned. "Our gallows
+shall be busy anon."
+
+Tristan was abcut to open his mouth in approval of a sentiment so
+pleasing to his ears when his words and his purpose were alike
+arrested by a sound of a voice singing outside the tavern door.
+
+The voice was a man's voice, something rough and strained for fine
+music, and yet with a kind of full and florid sweetness that carried
+the words clearly through the red-curtained windows. They seemed to
+make a complaint of Fortune:
+
+  "Since I have left the prison gate
+    Where I came near to say good-bye
+  To this poor life that needs must fly
+    From the malignity of Fate,
+  Perchance she now will pass me by
+    Since I have left the prison gate."
+
+If the king pricked his ear to listen, and even Tristan moved a
+little in his lethargy, the effect of the song upon the company of
+gamblers was instant and pronounced. The Abbess leaped to her feet,
+crying out: "It is the voice of François!" "It is indeed his own
+unutterable pipe," agreed René de Montigny, sweeping his winnings
+into his pouch. Robin Turgis raised his hands in a comical despair
+as he muttered: "Here is the devil out of hell again." All the men
+and women were looking eagerly at the door.
+
+"Who is this?" asked Louis of Tristan, "whose coming seems so to
+flutter these night-birds?"
+
+"The strangest knave in all Paris," Tristan answered. "One François
+Villon, scholar, poet, drinker, sworder, drabber, blabber, good at
+pen, point, and pitcher. In the Court of Miracles they call him the
+King of the Cockleshells. Judge him for yourself."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+MASTER FRANÇOIS VILLON
+
+
+
+
+
+As Tristan spoke the tavern latch rattled, the tavern door was flung
+noisily open, and the king's gaze rested on a strange figure framed
+in the entry. The man was of middle height, spare and slight and
+lean; his thin, eager face was bronzed with the suns and winds of a
+generation, and lined with the stern ciphers of malign experiences.
+His dark, straight hair was long and unkempt; the finer lines of his
+cheeks and chin were blurred with the uncropped growth of a week-old
+beard; his eyes were bright and quick; his glance restless and
+comprehensive. A cunning reader of features would have found a home
+for high thoughts behind the fine forehead, the lines of infinite
+tenderness upon the mobile lips, the light of some noble
+conflagration in the wild eyes. He was dressed in faded finery of
+many colours, so ragged and patched and hostile that he had very
+much the air of a gaudy scarecrow. His ruined cloak was tilted by a
+long sword; his disordered thatch was crowned by a battered cap
+grotesquely adorned with a cock's feather. In his leathern belt a
+small vellum bound book of verses kept company with a dagger. For
+all his whimsical appearance the king's keen eyes could note a
+something gallant in the carriage of the scamp, could spy out
+qualities of manhood beneath the battered bravery. He poised for a
+moment on the threshold in a fantastic attitude of salutation ere he
+slammed the door behind him and strode forward to meet his friends.
+
+"Well, Hearts of Gold, how are ye?" he cried joyously as he advanced
+with head thrown back and open hands extended. "Did ye miss me,
+lads; did ye miss me, lasses?"
+
+Abbess Huguette was at his side in an instant, with her arms about
+his neck fondling him and fawning upon him. "Surely I missed you,"
+she whispered. "Where have you been, little monkey?"
+
+Master François looked at her for a moment with a curious pity. Then
+gently extricating himself from her embrace he called out, "Give me
+a wash of wine for my throat's parched with piping."
+
+Every man thrust his own mug towards Master François, beseeching him
+to drink of it, but he waved them all aside imperially. "Nay, I will
+have my own," he said. "Have we no landlord here? Master Robin, come
+hither."
+
+Robin Turgis, who had kept apart up to now, surveying the new-comer
+with no excess of favour, moved slowly forward with his thumbs in
+his girdle and a sour smile on his fat cheeks. Master François
+addressed him sternly, twitching as he did so the landlord's greasy
+cap from his pate and sending it flying down the room. "Why do you
+not salute gentry when they honour your pot-house? A mug of your
+best Beaune, Master Beggar-maker, to drink damnation to the
+Burgundians."
+
+Robin Turgis made no motion to obey, but his small eyes seemed to
+grow smaller as they stared. "What colour has money now-a-days,
+Master François?" he asked doggedly. In a moment the brown, dirty
+hand of the poet was clapped to his dagger and there was something
+of a wolfish snarl in his voice as he answered menacingly, "The
+colour of blood sometimes." But the landlord, unabashed and
+undismayed, stood his ground.
+
+"None of your swaggering, Master François," he said sturdily. "There
+is such a thing as a king in France and that king's name is writ
+fair on his coinage. Show me a Louis XI. and I will show you my
+Beaune wine."
+
+The face of Master François flushed under its grime, and he fiddled
+at his dagger nervously, as one uncertain whether to laugh or cry at
+the dilemma which confronted him. Huguette and Montigny alike had
+dipped their hands into their pouches for money to pay the poet's
+score when to the amazement of Tristan the king forestalled their
+kindnesses. Rising to his feet with creditable alacrity he advanced
+towards Master François and saluted him with a gracious wave of the
+hand. "Will you let me be of some small service to you," he began
+politely, and as Villon turned to stare at him in surprise he
+continued: "Will you honour me by drinking that Beaune wine our host
+brags of at my expense?"
+
+Villon's astonishment had not unnerved his clutch at opportunity.
+Here was a god out of a machine, proffering cool liquor to dry
+gullets. Master François gave back the salutation with a mien of
+splendid condescension, while the rest of the company glared at the
+burgess who thus thrust himself upon them, and Tristan, cursing the
+king for his temerity, felt for a hidden dagger.
+
+Villon's patronizing wave of the hand was magnificent in its
+effrontery, and his words matched his gesture nobly.
+
+"You are a civil stranger, and I will so far honour you." Louis
+bowed. "I left my purse under my pillow this morning"--a roar of
+laughter saluted the ancient jape--"and this ungentle fellow denies
+me credit. How rarely we meet with an ale-draper who is also a
+gentleman."
+
+With an unmoved countenance Louis listened to Villon's words. "Yet
+the sale of a thing so noble ought to beget a kind of nobility in
+the vendor," he said with great gravity; then turning to Robin
+Turgis, whose mouth was gaping at this colloquy, he bade him bring a
+flagon of his best, and as he did so he tendered him a silver coin
+for which Robin extended his fat fingers--and extended them too
+late. For at the sight of the silver the eyes of Master François had
+glistened, and his lean, brown hand, swift and agile as a hawk, had
+swooped between the king and the publican, and had secured the coin,
+which he promptly held up and surveyed in an apparent ecstasy of
+admiration.
+
+"Is this the good king's counter?" he asked, and as he did so he
+plucked off his shabby bonnet and paid the exalted coin a profound
+obeisance. "Well, God bless his majesty, say I, for I owe him my
+present liberty. There was a gaol-clearing when he came to Paris,
+and as I happened to be in gaol at the time--through an error of the
+law"--here he paused to leer knowingly at his comrades, who yelled
+commendation--"they were good enough to kick me into the free air.
+Will you add to your kindness, old gentleman"--and here Master
+François spun round and solemnly saluted his unknown
+entertainer--"by allowing me to guard and cherish this token of our
+dear monarch in memory of this notable event?"
+
+Louis' fortitude could not prevent him from making something of a
+wry face as he hastily answered, "By all means." He beckoned
+discreetly to Robin Turgis, who, making a wide circle round Master
+François, stole to the king's side, received from him another coin
+and hastened away to bring the drink it paid for.
+
+From his corner Tristan surveyed the episode with a grim enjoyment.
+"Master Villon, Master Villon," he murmured to himself, "you'll be
+sorry for this, very sorry indeed." And in his mind's eye he
+transferred the fantastic figure, posturing and grimacing before
+Louis, to the end of a long rope hanging from a high gallows. Master
+François, ignorant of the immediate irony of existence, wafted a
+kiss airily from the tips of his fingers to his patron. "You are a
+very obliging old gentleman," he said approvingly.
+
+Louis frowned slightly. "You harp on my age, sir," he said. "Yet you
+are yourself no chicken." This mild reproof seemed to irritate
+Villon's friends more than it irritated Villon. The men manifested a
+marked inclination to hustle so questioning a citizen; the women
+cackled at him angrily. Casin Cholet bluntly proposed to lend the
+cit a slap on the chops; and Huguette enquired with every emphasis
+of impoliteness: "What's his age to you, sobersides?" But Villon
+quietly waved his turbulent companions into tranquility. "Patience,
+damsels," he said blandly. "Patience, good comrades of the
+Cockleshell. If our friend is inquisitive at least he has paid his
+fee," and as he spoke he hid his face for a moment behind the huge
+mug of Beaune wine which Robin Turgis at that moment handed to him.
+Much refreshed by his mighty draught he resumed briskly: "For three
+and thirty years I have taken toll of life with such result as you
+see. A light pocket is a plague, but a light heart and a light love
+make amends for much." And as he spoke he slapped his pocket whose
+emptiness gave back no jingle, drummed lightly on his bosom and
+nodded gallantly to the admiring womenkind. "You are a philosopher,"
+said the king. "You are a little angel," cried the Abbess, flinging
+her arms round the poet in an enthusiastic hug. The girl's homage
+seemed little to Villon's taste, for he disengaged himself swiftly
+from the embrace, saying as he did so: "Gently, Abbess, gently! My
+shoulders tingle and my sides ache too sorely for claspings."
+
+Villon's manner was so decisive and his meaning so obvious that the
+curiosity of the gang burned keenly and found voice in René de
+Montigny, who asked what ailed him with commendable solicitude.
+Villon shook his head, applied himself again to the cannakin, and
+emerged from it with a most melancholy expression of countenance.
+"You behold in me, friends," he sighed, "a victim of love," and his
+visage showed so lugubrious that it sorely tempted Louis to laugh,
+and hotly moved Huguette to anger, for she raged up to Villon,
+challenging the meaning of his speech. Villon gently cooled her
+impatience. "Hush, hush, my girl! There are many kinds of love, as
+you ought to know well enough. I am a rogue and a vagabond, no less,
+and so sometimes I love you and other such Athanasian wenches;
+Isabeau there and Jehanneton."
+
+At this mention of her novices' names the Abbess turned on the two
+girls fiercely. "You minxes," she cried. "Do you make eyes at my
+man?" The pair shrank back from her fury, but Master Villon, who
+seemed suddenly to have fallen into a meditative mood, rambled on in
+a, kind of reverie, as indifferent to the Fircone and all his
+surroundings as if he were a lonely shepherd tending his sheep on a
+lonely hillside.
+
+"But also I am, Heaven forgive me, a jingler of rhymes, with the
+stars for my candles and the roses for my toys, and singers of songs
+sometimes love in another fashion. And so it has chanced to me for
+my sins and to my sorrow."
+
+Villon's chin had dropped upon his breast; the cock's feather
+drooped dismally; the singer seemed quite chapfallen. Huguette,
+tired of glaring at her offending minions, again turned her scornful
+attention to her dejected lover. "Cry-baby!" she sneered scornfully,
+pointing with derisive finger at Master François, in whose eyes
+indeed the close observer could discern the threatening of tears.
+Jehanneton came sidling round to Villon, piqued by natural
+curiosity, and the desire to vex Huguette. "Tell us your love-tale,
+François," she pleaded, and her pleading found an immediate
+supporter in Louis. The Arabian nature of his adventure enchanted
+him, and he had a child's taste for a story. "May I support the
+lady's prayer," he said, "unless a stranger's presence distresses
+you?"
+
+Villon turned to him with a mocking laugh. "Lord love you, no," he
+answered. "I have long since forgotten reticence and will discourse
+of my empty purse, my empty belly, and my empty heart to any man.
+Gather around me, cullions and cut-purses, and listen to the strange
+adventure of Master François Villon, clerk of Paris."
+
+Joyous applause greeted his speech, Jehan le Loup, seizing upon an
+empty barrel that stood in a corner, trundled it forward, and
+standing it on one end invited Villon to take his seat upon this
+whimsical throne. The poet sprang lightly upon the perch thus
+provided for him, and sat there with his legs crossed, holding his
+long sword against his knees with both hands. The men and women
+gathered about him, like bees about a rose-bush. Huguette placed
+herself on a stool at his feet. Jehanneton flung herself full length
+on the ground and stared up into his face. Robin Turgis straddled a
+bench at some distance and grinned. Louis seized the opportunity to
+whisper behind his hand to Tristan that he found the fellow
+diverting, to which Tristan replied gruffly that he for his part
+found him a dull ape. Louis might have argued the point but his
+interest was claimed by the voice of Villon, who, being comfortably
+installed on his wine-cask, was beginning his promised narrative. A
+philosopher would have discerned something pathetic in the picture
+of the ragged rascal thus girdled about with blackguards of a baser
+sort, his lean body quivering, his eager face alive with emotions,
+mockery on his lips and sorrow in his eyes: to the sardonic king it
+afforded nothing more and nothing less than amusement. "You must
+know, dear Devils and ever-beautiful Blowens, that three days ago,
+when I was lying in the kennel, which is my humour, and staring at
+the sky, which is my recreation--I speak, honest citizen, but in
+parable or allegory, a dear device with the schoolmen--I saw between
+me and Heaven the face of a lady, the loveliest face I ever saw."
+
+Here the poor Abbess, indignation overcrowding her borrowed
+mannishness, began to sniffle and to assert that the speaker was a
+faithless pig, but Villon, unheeding her whimpers, went on with
+his tale.
+
+"She was going to church--God shield her--but she looked my way as
+she passed, and though she saw me no more than she saw the
+cobble-stone I stood on, I saw her once and for ever. We
+song-chandlers babble a deal of love, but for the most part we know
+little or nothing about it, and when it comes it knocks us silly. I
+was knocked so silly that--well, what do you think was the silly
+thing I did?"
+
+Villon turned his alert face to each member of his audience, and his
+derisive mouth belied the sadness of his eyes.
+
+"Emptied a can for oblivion," Montigny suggested. Blanche was no
+less practical.
+
+"Kissed a wench for the same purpose," she cried. "The times that
+I've been wooed out of my name!"
+
+"Picked the woman's pocket," Casin Cholet hinted, wagging his shock
+head wisely, while Jehan le Loup, with a hideous leer, sniggered:
+"Got near her in the crowd and pinched her," and suited the action
+to the word with finger and thumb on Blanche's plump shoulder.
+
+Master François dissipated all this roguish philosophy with a
+contemptuous gesture.
+
+"La, la, la," he chirruped. "Sillier than all these. I followed her
+into the church."
+
+The silence of astonishment fell upon the audience. Only Colin de
+Cayeulx had sufficient presence of mind to formulate his amazement
+in a prolonged whistle. Louis crossed himself repeatedly under his
+gown. "You are not a church-goer, sir?" he questioned sourly. Villon
+answered him sweetly.
+
+"No, old Queernabs, unless there's an alms-box to open or a matter
+of gold plate to pilfer." Guy Tabarie hurriedly interrupted him with
+a warning cry of "Cave!" and a significant glance at the strangers,
+but Villon derided his fears.
+
+"Nonsense," he cried, leaning forward and playfully slapping Louis
+on the back with his sword. "This good Cuffin has a friendly face
+and can take a joke. Can't you, old rabbit?"
+
+Louis winced and then grinned as Tristan gasped in anger. "I thank
+Heaven I have a sense ot humour," he said, with a sly glance at his
+companion. Villon went on with his story.
+
+"Well, I sprawled there in the dark, with my knees on the cold
+ground, and all the while the sound of her beauty was sweet in my
+ears, and the taste of her beauty was salt on my lips, and the pain
+of her beauty was gnawing at my heart, and I prayed that I might see
+her again."
+
+At this point Huguette, who had been following the narrative with a
+feline ferocity, caught up a wine-jug and made to throw it at the
+poet's head, but was dexterously disarmed by Guy Tabarie before the
+vessel had time to quit her fingers. Sulkily she plumped herself
+down on her stool again, while Villon, quite unconscious of the
+averted peril, rambled on dreamily.
+
+"And the incense tickled my nostrils and the painted saints sneered
+at me, and bits of rhymes and bits of prayers jigged in my brain and
+I felt as if I were drunk with some new and delectable liquor. And
+then she slipped out and I after her. She took the Holy Water from
+my fingers."
+
+Villon's voice sank reverently and Huguette took advantage of the
+pause.
+
+"I wish it had burned you to the bone," she interrupted spitefully.
+Master Villon shook his head.
+
+"It burned deeper than that, believe me. Outside, on God's steps,
+stood a yellow-haired, pink-faced puppet who greeted her and they
+ambled away together, I on their heels. Presently they came to a
+gateway and in slips my quarry, and as she did so she turned to her
+squire and I saw her face again and lost it, for the tears came into
+my eyes." With a heavy sigh he turned to Louis. "I suppose you
+wonder why I talk like this, but when my heart's in my mouth I must
+spit it out or it chokes me."
+
+"I have learned to wonder at nothing," Louis answered sagely. Villon
+picked up the dropped thread of his tale.
+
+"I saluted the gallant and begged to know the lady's name. He took
+me for a madman, but he told me."
+
+In a second Huguette was on her legs again and nestling her eager
+face close to that of Villon as she whispered coaxingly:
+
+"What was the lady's name, dear François?"
+
+Master François looked into her watchful eyes with a wise smile.
+
+"Be secret, sweet," he murmured. "It was Her Majesty, the Queen." A
+wild roar of laughter from Villon's friends greeted this sally, and
+the fury it brought to Huguette's face. Louis, royally angered, made
+as if to rise in protest, but the heavy hand of Tristan fell on his
+shoulder and restrained him, and Villon, noticing his irritation,
+waved him down with a pacifying gesture.
+
+"Now, now, my rum duke," he cried, "your loyalty need not take fire.
+It was not her majesty, but her name I shall keep to myself, though
+it is written on my shoulders in fair large blue and black bruises."
+
+This statement stirred a murmur of surprise in the gathering. "Did
+the pink and gold popinjay beat you?" Montigny asked, interpreting
+the general curiosity.
+
+"No, no," Villon answered. "It came about thus. We tinkers of verses
+set a price on our wares that few find them worth, yet with the
+love-fever in my veins I wrote rhymes to this lady and sent them to
+her fairly writ on a piece of parchment that cost me a dinner."
+
+"Did you think she would come to your whistle like a bird to a
+lure?" Louis enquired playfully. Villon sighed again.
+
+"In this kind of madness a minstrel thinks himself a new Orpheus who
+could win a woman out of hell with his music. But I got my
+answer--oh, I got my answer."
+
+He dropped suddenly into a moody silence, which was not to the taste
+of the fellowship who were interested in the adventure. Montigny,
+leaning forward, gave Villon a clap on the back which made him
+shrink, and shouted "What was the answer?"
+
+Villon began to laugh, a loud, mirthless laugh that had no human
+warmth in it.
+
+"A fellow like a page boarded me here three days ago. He asked me if
+I had sent certain verses to a certain quarter. If so I was to
+follow him at once. I followed like a sheep with my heart drumming
+till we came to a quiet place, and there four boobies with yard-long
+cudgels fell upon me. I was taken unawares, I had no weapon but my
+jackdagger, the blows were raining upon me as fast as acorns fly in
+a high wind, so I thought it no shame to take to my heels. The
+varlets pursued me, full cry, till I led them to a part of Paris
+where their lives would not have been worth a minute's purchase and
+they had to stay their chase. But I have been rarely drubbed and
+roundly basted, and my poor back and sides are most womanishly
+tender. I go abroad no more without Excalibur." He tapped his sword
+hilt as he spoke. Huguette glared fiercely up at him. "Will it teach
+you not to play the fool again?" asked, with a vicious snap of her
+white teeth.
+
+"It will teach me not to play the fool again," Villon answered
+sadly. "The mark of the beast is upon me and I shall dream no more
+dreams." He shook himself as if he were trying to shake away
+clinging memories and extended his empty can to Montigny, saying:
+"I'm thirsty again. More liquor."
+
+As Montigny filled up for his leader, Louis commented, "You drink
+more than is good for your health, sir." Villon rounded on him
+angrily, with flushed face and shining eyes.
+
+"Mind your own business!" he shouted, and the rest shouted with him
+applaudingly. "What can a man do but drink when France is going to
+the devil, with the Burgundians camped in the free fields where I
+played in childhood, and a nincompoop sits on the throne and lets
+them besiege his city?" The rascals laughed. Tristan whispered to
+himself, "You'll be sorry you spoke, Master Villon." The king
+propounded a problem. "No doubt you could do better than the king if
+you wore the king's shoes?"
+
+Villon rolled about on his barrel in an ecstasy of entertainment.
+"If I could not do better than Louis Do-Nothing, Louis Dare-Nothing,
+having his occasions and advantages, may Huguette there never kiss
+me again."
+
+His boon companions laughed. Huguette whispered sulkily, "Perhaps she
+never will."
+
+Isabeau came sidling and bridling up to Louis, wheedling like a cat
+as she said: "Our François has made a rhyme of it, sir, how he would
+carry himself if he wore the king's shoes."
+
+Louis was always ready for any kind of gallantry. He put his arms
+around the girl's slim body and drew her on to his knee. "Has he,
+indeed, pretty minion?" he said. "May we not hear it, Master Poet?"
+
+Villon, with mock modesty, had tried to restrain Isabeau from
+speaking of the work, but now he changed his tune. "You may; you
+shall; for 'tis a true song, though it would cost me my neck if it
+came to the king's ears, very likely. But you are not tall enough to
+whisper in them, so here goes."
+
+With a shout Villon sprang to his feet, draped his tattered cloak
+closely about him, struck a commanding attitude, and began to recite
+with great solemnity. Louis scooped his claw-like fingers behind his
+ear, that he might hear the better the words that fell from the wild
+poet's mouth:
+
+  "All French folk, whereso'er ye be,
+    Who love your country, soil and sand.
+  From Paris to the Breton sea,
+    And back again to Norman strand,
+  Forsooth ye seem a silly band,
+    Sheep without shepherd, left to chance--
+  Far otherwise our Fatherland
+    If Villon were the King of France!"
+
+Louis glanced grimly at Tristan; the rogues rubbed their hands and
+chuckled. Villon smiled in pride and went on:
+
+  "The figure on the throne you see
+    Is nothing but a puppet, planned
+  To wear the regal bravery
+    Of silken coat and gilded wand.
+  Not so we Frenchmen understand
+    The Lord of lion's heart and glance,
+  And such a one would take command
+    If Villon were the King of France!"
+
+The king's face was a study in sardonics. Tristan was poppy-red with
+rage. The gang applauded and Villon glowed with their applause.
+
+  "His counsellors are rogues, Perdie!
+    While men of honest mind are banned.
+  To creak upon the Gallows Tree,
+    Or squeal in prisons over-mann'd;
+  We want a chief to bear the brand,
+    And bid the damned Burgundians dance;
+  God! Where the Oriflamme should stand
+    If Villon were the King of France!"
+
+Mugs and cans clattered approval. The rhymer's eyes widened as he
+drew breath to blow forth the envoi of his ballade.
+
+  "Louis the Little, play the grand;
+    Buffet the foe with sword and lance;
+  'Tis what would happen, by this hand,
+    If Villon were the King of France!"
+
+A roar of enthusiasm came from the full throats of the band.
+Montigny slapped Villon on the back with a "Well crowed,
+Chanticleer!" Huguette flung her arms around him and hugged him as
+she cried passionately: "I forgive you much, for that light in your
+eyes."
+
+But the poet seemed weary after so much heat. He pushed the girl
+away and drooped on his hogshead. The rogues rattled away to their
+table again, and Villon was left alone with Louis, who questioned
+him drily: "You call yourself a patriot, I suppose?"
+
+Villon had recovered sufficient energy to drain a mug of wine. He
+turned to the king, passing his hand over his forehead. "By no such
+high-sounding title," he answered. "I am but a poor devil with a
+heart too big for his body and a hope too large for his hoop. Had I
+been begotten in a brocaded bed, I might have led armies and served
+France; have loved ladies without fear of cudgellings, and told
+kings truths without dread of the halter, while as it is, I consort
+with sharps and wantons, and make my complaint to a dull little
+buzzard like you, old noodle! Oh,'tis a fool's play and it were well
+to be out of it."
+
+"You won't have long to worry," Tristan muttered to himself under
+his breath, and found great comfort in the thought. Louis merely
+said: "You are sententious!"
+
+Villon took him up swiftly. "The quintessence of envy, no less. I
+have great thoughts, great desires, great ambitions, great
+appetites, what you will. I might have changed the world and left a
+memory. As it is I sleep in a garret under the shadow of the
+gallows, and shall be forgotten to-morrow, even by the wolves I pack
+with. But this is dry thinking; let's to drinking!" As he spoke
+Villon rose to join his comrades, when his quick eye noted that
+Robin Turgis had fallen asleep on his bench. Villon skipped lightly
+toward him, dexterously unhooked his bunch of keys from his girdle,
+and, with a triumphant gesture, made on tiptoe for the cellar door,
+which he unlocked and through which he disappeared. Louis looked
+after him with an acid smile. Tristan leaned forward and plucked at
+the kind's sleeve. "Shall I hang him to-morrow?" he asked, hoarsely.
+The king turned, musing, to his henchman. "We shall see! He is a
+loose-lipped fellow, but he might have been a man. He has set me
+thinking of my dream. I was a swine rioting in the streets of Paris
+and I found a pearl-well, well. Let us kill the time with cards till
+Thibaut d'Aussigny comes." Tristan produced a pack of cards from his
+pouch and laid them on the table. "Do you think he will come?" he
+asked.
+
+"He does not expect to find me here, I promise you," Louis answered.
+"He would not come if he did. Barber Olivier is to warn me of his
+coming." As he spoke the inn-door opened a little and the king,
+hearing the click of the catch, asked: "Is that he?"
+
+Tristan glanced round over his shoulder. The door was pushed partly
+open, and an old, stooped woman was peeping curiously into the room.
+Tristan shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"No, sire," he snarled, "another old woman."
+
+By this time the king had arranged the cards to his satisfaction. He
+made an imperative gesture to his companion to seat himself and in a
+few seconds had forgotten everything else in the excitement of the
+game. Meanwhile the old woman, having pushed the door wide open,
+came softly into the room. She was a quiet, mild-faced creature, one
+of those human shadows who suggest without tragedy faded youth and
+withered comeliness. She was very poorly but very neatly dressed, in
+worn grey and rusty black, and the linen folds about her lined face
+were scrupulously clean. She looked anxiously around her, shading
+her eyes with her hand, in the dim light of the tavern, unable to
+discern much but evidently eager to discern something.
+
+René de Montigny, tired of teasing Isabeau, suddenly looked up and
+caught sight of the old woman as she stood, very helpless and
+wistful, peering about her. An impish spirit floated leaf-like on
+the surface of his mind. He rose to his feet and danced towards her
+in a fantastic manner, sweeping her a profound salutation as he
+approached her.
+
+"Your pleasure, sweet princess?" he said with mock deference.
+
+The old woman turned her wrinkled visage up to his in wonder.
+
+"Is Master François Villon in this company, sir?" she faltered.
+
+Montigny treated her to another profound bow.
+
+"Sweet creature," he simpered, "I kiss your hand and inquire."
+
+He turned to his companions at the table and his eye rested
+mockingly on the bowed figure of Huguette. After Master Villon had
+told his tale Huguette had been glum enough, and her comrades
+finding her snappish wisely left her to herself. She had pulled a
+pack of cards from her scarlet pouch; she had been spelling out her
+fortune silently, and the death card insisted itself again and again
+with grim pertinacity. With a sense of despair that was strange to
+her airy nature she had bowed her face on her arms and was sobbing
+softly to herself. Montigny was not a man to be touched by a woman's
+sorrow. He mockingly gesticulated over her bent shoulders as he
+cried to the others in a false whisper,
+
+"There is a beautiful woman at the door, beseeching our François."
+
+The moment these words fell on Huguette's ears, they stung her into
+life and activity. She leaped to her feet in a flash.
+
+"What do you say?" she raged, and then, seeing a woman's form a few
+feet away from her, she rushed towards the stranger furiously while
+the others rose in cages expectation of some new excitement.
+
+"What do you seek here?" she asked fiercely of the old woman, and
+then as she saw the pitiful wrinkled face staring up at her, she
+started back in surprise.
+
+The old woman, misinterpreting the sex of her questioner from the
+dress that Huguette wore, began apologetically.
+
+"Asking your pardon, young gentleman," and for a moment her words
+were drowned in a shout of delighted laughter, as the listening
+rogues appreciated the blunder she had made.
+
+"Asking your pardon, young gentleman, I seek Master François
+Villon."
+
+Huguette snapped at her impatiently, "Seek him and find him." Then
+turning to René, she cried, "Montigny, you beast!" and with her hand
+on her dagger, made hotly for him.
+
+Montigny, grinning like a delighted monkey, skipped for safety,
+dodging her around the table, while the others perceiving a victim
+in the bewildered old woman, joined hands in a ring and began
+dancing wildly around her, singing a ribald song. The old woman, as
+frightened and timid as a mouse might be if it suddenly found itself
+the centre of a circle of dancing cats, stood still.
+
+At this moment the cellar door opened, and François reappeared,
+carrying in his arms a large jug of wine. Perceiving that the
+landlord still lay in his heavy sleep, he smiled delightedly to
+himself, closed the cellar door softly and placed his booty in the
+corner of the fireplace nearest to the settle. The noise of the
+tumult attracted him from his successful plunder, and looking up, he
+became aware of what was happening. In a second his contented mien
+changed, and dashing into the dancing crowd, he struck Jehan le Loup
+a heavy blow with the bunch of keys, which felled him to the ground
+like a log. In a moment the cluster of rascals dissipated, and
+Villon caught the old woman in his arms.
+
+"Damn you, chubs!" he shouted at them. "It's my mother." Then as he
+drew the trembling old woman towards the fireplace, he whispered in
+her ears, "Don't be frightened, mammy, they meant no harm."
+
+A certain hang-dog air of contrition was on the faces of most of the
+members of the gang as they stood apart and eyed the mother and son
+shame-facedly. Guy Tabarie, who had a wholesome dislike to quarrels,
+slipped quietly into the cool street to seek pleasure in some place
+where the atmosphere might be less stormy.
+
+Robin Turgis wakened from his heavy sleep, clapped his hand
+instinctively to his girdle and found that his keys were missing.
+
+"My keys! my keys!" he shouted--"where are my keys?" And then,
+catching sight of them where they lay by the prostrate form of Jehan
+le Loup, he rushed forward and secured them greedily.
+
+By this time Jehan le Loup had recovered the senses which Villon's
+swinging blow had knocked out of him and was crawling slowly into a
+sitting posture. He glared ferociously at Master François and his
+evil right hand stole to the pommel of his dagger.
+
+"You have cracked my crown, curse you," he grunted, and then swiftly
+sprang to his feet with the bare blade in his hand and rushed at his
+assailant. But Villon was too alert to be taken unawares. He had not
+time to draw his sword, but in a second he had snatched a spit from
+the fire and extending it scientifically kept Jehan le Loup at arm's
+length. Huguette seized Jehan by the dagger arm.
+
+"She is his mother!" she said angrily. "You all had mothers, I
+suppose? Let him alone!"
+
+Jehan le Loup unwillingly sheathed his weapon; Huguette dragged him
+back to the table; Villon replaced the spit, which had somewhat
+burned his fingers, and sat down by his mother's side on the settle,
+in peace.
+
+"Did they frighten you, mammy?" he whispered. "But they meant no
+harm. Boys and girls, girls and boys."
+
+The old woman put her arms tightly about him. Villon grimaced. Her
+loving touch was as painful as a hostile one to his bruised body,
+but he made no attempt to repress her embrace.
+
+"Come home, François," she said. "Come home. Where have you been
+these three days?"
+
+Villon caressed the old woman very tenderly, as he answered:
+
+"Very busy, mammy--state secrets. Mum's the word. How did you find
+me out?"
+
+"They told me at the Unicorn," the old woman said, "that I might
+find you here."
+
+Villon made a gesture of contempt.
+
+"Oh, the Unicorn is no longer fashionable. They want payment on the
+nail there, confound them! Besides, this is nearer the walls and we
+can hear the Burgundians shouting. It is as good as a relish with
+our wine."
+
+Mother Villon shook her grey head sadly.
+
+"Come away," she entreated. "You have had wine enough."
+
+Villon contradicted her instantly.
+
+"Never in my life, mammy. I have a fool's head and always get into
+my altitudes too soon."
+
+Then, seeing the look of disappointment that made her grey old face
+look greyer still,--he added, "I cannot come home just now, mammy,
+but there is something I can do for you. Do you remember when I was
+a little child--"
+
+Something in the words made him stop suddenly. The hideous contrast
+between the phrase and the place wherein he was, between the mother
+who fondled him and the wild men-savages and women-savages who were
+his daily friends and who were drinking and dicing behind him at the
+other side of the settle, came upon him like a great wave of pain
+and knocked the mirth out of him. He turned away from his mother and
+repeated to himself dismally, "God! when I was a little child!" The
+mother's pity, the mother's protection immediately asserted
+themselves.
+
+"You were the prettiest child woman ever bore," she said, softly.
+
+Villon turned towards her again, while he tried to wink the tears
+out of his eyes.
+
+"You used to sing me to sleep," he said, and as he spoke he rocked
+her slowly backward and forward in his arms, while he crooned the
+words of that old nurse's song which has soothed so many generations
+of French children to sleep, "Do, do, l'enfant do, l'enfant dormira
+tantot."
+
+"Well, mammy, your dutiful son has made a song for you to sing
+yourself to sleep with. I went to church the other day. Oh, on my
+honour, I did"--this was in reply to a startled look of surprise
+that flooded the old woman's face--"and a prayer came into my
+head--a prayer for you to say to our Lady."
+
+The old woman kissed him fondly on the forehead.
+
+"My love bird," she said, and as she spoke a boyish look that had
+long been absent from Villon's face came back to it for a moment.
+
+"Here it is," he said. "Listen." And he whispered to her the verses
+he had made, while the old woman crossed herself reverentially.
+
+  "Lady of Heaven, Queen of Earth,
+  Empress of Hell, I kneel and plead
+  You pity, by the holy birth,
+  The humblest Christian of the Creed;
+  I cannot write; I cannot read;
+  I am a woman poor and old,
+  But in the Church, where I behold
+  The gates of Paradise, I cry
+  Woman to woman, make me bold
+  In thy belief to live and die."
+
+"There, mammy, there is a pretty prayer for you."
+
+Mother Villon was dissolved in tears and sobbed on his shoulder.
+
+"You should have been a good man," she said.
+
+Villon stroked her hair very gently.
+
+"We are as Heaven pleases, dear." He paused for a moment, then
+suddenly remembering the silver coin which he had confiscated from
+the king, he dipped his fingers into his pouch and produced it.
+
+"Here is something for you, mammy," he said, and as the old woman,
+with a faint flush on her worn cheeks, seemed about to protest, he
+insisted. "Oh, yes. Take it, take it. It was honestly come by, and
+you will spend it more honestly than I should." He forced the coin
+into her lean, brown hand, and added, "Now run away, mammy, and pray
+yourself to sleep, You shall see me soon, I promise you."
+
+He led her gently across the tavern floor to the door, which he
+opened for her. As she turned to go, she looked up to him and
+repeated two lines of his prayer:
+
+"Woman to woman, make me bold In thy belief to live and die."
+
+As the door closed and Villon turned to come back to his seat, Jehan
+le Loup, who had been eyeing him and who was eager to pay off the
+score of his cracked crown, rose to his feet, dragging Isabeau with
+him, and barred his passage.
+
+"Kiss a young mouth for a change," he said, and thrust the girl
+against the poet. Villon brushed them both aside.
+
+"Go to the devil," he said angrily, and passed them. Once again
+Jehan's hand sought his weapon and once again he was restrained.
+
+"He is in one of his bad moods," said Isabeau. "Leave him to
+himself," and she drew her reluctant companion back to the table,
+while Villon seated himself in a corner of the settle, staring into
+the fire.
+
+At the moment the tavern door was thrust open violently and Guy
+Tabarie rushed into the room, his great moon face sweating, his eyes
+bulging, his fringe of crimson locks flaming out from the eggshell
+dome of his bald head, his mighty belly swaying with a passion of
+excitement.
+
+"Friends!" he shrieked, at the top of his voice, "there's a fight at
+Fat Margot's between two wenches. They are stripped to the waist and
+at it hammer and tongs. Come and see for the love of God!"
+
+The whole band was afoot in an instant, clamantly agog. Guy Tabarie
+turned as he finished speaking and rushed through the open door into
+the shining moonlit street. The rest trailed after him, wandering
+stars in the tail of a dishonourable comet, shouting, screaming,
+laughing, pushing, panting, eager for the promised sport.
+
+"I'll crown the victor!" cried Montigny as he ran and "I'll console
+the vanquished!" shouted Jehan le Loup, as he brought up the rear of
+the road and vanished, clattering, into the night. Only Huguette
+remained of all the fellowship, and she turned instinctively to
+Villon when he crouched over the dying fire.
+
+"Will you come, François?" she whispered softly. Villon lifted his
+head for a moment from his hands to signify a refusal.
+
+"Nay, I am reading."
+
+Huguette blazed out at him a fierce "You lie!" which failed to move
+the poet from his melancholy resolve.
+
+"A man may read without book," he said. "Go your ways, girl, and
+skelp both the hussies!" He drooped into a dejected heap again,
+oblivious of the girl, who looked at him half sadly, half angrily
+for an instant, and then disappeared in her turn into the causeway,
+calling upon her knavish heralds to wait for her.
+
+Robin Turgis, shutting the door after her with a sigh of
+satisfaction, retired to his own quarters to seek sleep until custom
+should return. Louie and Tristan, deep in their cards, paid little
+heed to anything else.
+
+"Your barber tarries," Tristan said, after a panse.
+
+"The game makes amends," Louis answered.
+
+"You are winning, sire," Tristan grunted. The king chirruped
+merrily.
+
+"My grandsire will be remembered longer than most kings for the sake
+of these wasters and winners that they made to soothe his madness."
+
+But even as he spoke his mirth faded, for a turn of Fortune gave
+Tristan an opportunity.
+
+"My game, sire!" he said, and swept the stakes into his pocket.
+
+The king fell into a frowning silence as Tristan dealt the cards
+again, and scrutinized his new hand with a sombre care, as if the
+fate of Empire depended upon it. Scarcely a sound disturbed the
+heavy quiet of the room. Master François Villon glooming in his
+settle corner, sucked a long noiseless draught from his stolen jug
+and meditated drearily. Between wine and weariness his head was
+beginning to swim. His head felt as heavy as lead and his brain as
+light and foolish as a wind-tumbled feather. Two women's faces
+danced before his eyes, one proud and beautiful and young, the other
+humble and pitiful and old, and he tried his best to shut both of
+them out of his senses. Vaguely he tried to shape a ballade, a noble
+ballade in honour of all things good to eat. He had got at least an
+excellent overword. "A dish of tripe's the best of all." He mouthed
+the line with a relish, but his eyes were seeing straws and his
+stubbled chin scraped his breast. There came a click at the latch,
+but he did not heed it. He would scarcely have heeded a Burgundian
+cannon shot; he had drifted into a lumpish doze. And yet the way of
+the world depended, for him, upon that lift of a latch.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE COMING OF KATHERINE
+
+
+
+
+
+The door opened and a woman entered the room, a woman closely
+muffled after the fashion adopted by discreet ladies when they
+walked abroad in Paris in the fifteenth century. She was followed by
+an armed serving-man to whom she turned and spoke in a whisper as
+she paused upon the threshold.
+
+"You are sure this is the place?" she asked, and the man answered--
+
+"Sure!"
+
+"Wait outside!" the muffled lady commanded, and the servant with an
+obeisance stepped back into the street. The woman looked cautiously
+about her, only her bright eye showing over the lifted fold of her
+cloak. Villon was hidden from her while he sat; there was no one in
+her view save the two men playing cards. She came cautiously forward
+and touched Tristan, who was nearest to her, on the shoulder. He
+swung round, with hooded face, to answer the challenge, and as he
+did so Louis took advantage of his turned back to examine Tristan's
+hand, which he had laid upon the table, and to substitute a card
+from his own hand for one of his adversary's.
+
+"Has Master François Villon been here to-night?" the woman asked.
+Her voice was full and sweet, and Tristan knew it well though he
+listened unmovably. She had lowered her cloak enough to allow him a
+glimpse of a young, lovely face, but he needed no, glimpse to assure
+him.
+
+"Yonder he squats by the hearth," he answered, masking his own voice
+with hoarseness and jerking his thumb towards the settle. The girl's
+eyes followed the signal and saw for the first time the huddled
+figure on the bench. "I thank you," she said simply, and moved away
+into the background, her eyes fixed on the crouching form, her
+fingers clasped nervously, waiting an impatient patience upon
+resolution.
+
+Tristan leaned hurriedly over to the king.
+
+"Zounds, sire! do you know who that was?"
+
+Louis, smiling at his adopted cards, answered carelessly, "Some
+bonaroba who took you for a gull," but Tristan's nest words pricked
+him from his indifference.
+
+"It was your majesty's kinswoman, the Lady Katherine de Vaucelles."
+
+The king rose cautiously to his feet.
+
+"Oh, ho, Oh, ho!" he chuckled. "Does lovely Katherine come to meet
+Thibaut?"
+
+"She seeks François Villon, sire."
+
+The king started.
+
+"Is she the girl he spoke of? Do we catch her tripping?"
+
+Louis looked at the motionless figure of the girl, then his gaze
+travelled rapidly around the room. Behind him was a doorway.
+Soundlessly he opened it, saw that it gave on to a dark passage,
+motioned Tristan through it, bade him in a whisper to wait in the
+darkness. As Tristan disappeared the girl seemed to make up her mind
+and moved slowly across the floor toward the dozing poet. The king
+watched her narrowly as he, too, began to move, skulking among the
+shadows along the wall. His goal was the distant space behind the
+settle, where his cunning mind discerned a good listening place--for
+to listen was Louis' passion. The king's cread was cat-quiet--the
+king's breath was mouse-still; for a moment he paused at the
+street-door as if about to pass out, but seeing that he was
+unnoticed he drifted unheeded through obscurity to his haven and
+nestled there just as the girl, bending forward, touched the sleeper
+firmly on the shoulders and then drew back, defiantly abiding by her
+temerity.
+
+Villon moved uneasily, as if resenting the interruption to his
+slumbers that the firm touch had disturbed, and he grumbled
+sullenly, without looking up, "What is it?"
+
+The woman bent towards him again and whispered "A word with you."
+
+Villon rose wearily to his feet, and as he did so the woman drew
+back towards the open centre of the room, which now appeared to her
+to be empty. Her nerves were too highly strung to note anything
+surprising in the disappearance of the two visitors. If she thought
+of them at all it was only to be glad that they had gone their ways
+and left the place so lonely. Villon followed her almost
+unconsciously, too sleepy for wonder. Suddenly the woman threw off
+the folds that muffled her face and the vision that had haunted him
+flashed on his frightened eyes, the vision so proud, so beautiful
+and young. He crossed himself as he questioned in a voice that
+sounded strangely alien to him, "Are you real?"
+
+"Do I look like a ghost?" the fair woman answered.
+
+In an ecstasy of joy Villon fell on his knees as he seldom kneeled
+in prayer, while he gasped,
+
+"If this be a dream, pray Heaven I may never wake."
+
+The girl drew from her bosom a little piece of folded parchment and
+held it out towards him.
+
+"You wrote me these verses. My elders tell me that poets say much
+and mean little; that their oaths are like gingerbread, as hot and
+sweet in the mouth and as easily swallowed. 'Are you such a one?"
+
+Villon rose to his feet. He knew that this exquisite presence was
+flesh and biood; that her speech was human speech. He answered her
+very gravely--
+
+"My words are life. I love you!"
+
+"Just because I show a smooth face?"
+
+A great wave of rapture swept over the poet's soul and his brain
+seemed as busy with words as a hive with bees. He spoke slowly like
+a man inspired.
+
+"Because you are the loveliest she alive. If all my dreams of
+loveliness had been pieced together into one perfect woman she would
+have been like you. All my life I have read tales of love and tried
+to find their secret in the bright eyes about me--tried and failed.
+I might as well have been seeking for the Holy Grail. But when I saw
+you the old Heaven and the old Earth seemed to shrivel away and I
+knew what love might mean, and God-like desire and God-like
+surrender. The world is changed by; your coming, all sweet tastes
+and fair colours and soft sounds have something of you in them. I
+eat and drink, I see and hear in your honour. The people in the
+street are blessed because you have passed among them. That stone on
+the ground is sacred, for your foot has touched it; or the dusty
+booth at the corner, which your sleeve has brushed in passing. I
+love you! All philosophy, all wisdom, religion, honour, manhood,
+hope, beauty lie in those words--I love you!"
+
+The girl looked at him with wide eyes, quite fearless, much
+astonished, as a brave maid might look at some wild beast of the
+woods that came in her way. But the purport of his words seemed to
+please her, for she answered him quickly and readily.
+
+"Well, I have come to you to put your protestations to the proof. If
+you meant every word you said, every syllable, every letter, you can
+serve me well. If not, good-night and good-bye."
+
+And with these words she moved a little as if she were ready to say
+farewell to him then and there. Villon put forward an appealing hand
+that stayed her.
+
+"I wrote with my heart's blood," he protested, and even a green girl
+could not fail to read the truth in his voice. Now she came close to
+him, speaking very low but very distinctly.
+
+"Listen. I am one of the Queen's ladies; Thibaut d'Aussigny, the
+Grand Constable of France, loves me a little and my broad lands
+much. He wills that I should marry him. He tried to force me to his
+will, to shame me to his pleasure, and so I hate him, and so should
+you, for it was he who gave you your beating."
+
+Villon, who had been listening to her in wonder, started as if he
+had been struck anew.
+
+"Oh, it was he?" he interrupted. The girl came a little closer,
+became a little more confidential.
+
+"He gave your rhymes to me and told me how you had been treated.
+When I read them I said--here, if a poet speaks truth, is the one
+man in France who can help me."
+
+Villon drew himself back with a little shiver of intelligence. The
+lumes of wine, the fumes of wonder were drifting away from him,
+leaving him face to face with naked, amazing reality.
+
+"Why not your yellow-haired, pink-faced lover?" he asked. Katherine
+frowned disdain.
+
+"Noel le Jolys is a man many women might love, but I love no man; I
+only hate Thibaut d'Aussigny. Do you understand?"
+
+"I begin to understand," Villon answered, sadly.
+
+The girl came nearer to Villon. Her face was very pale in the dim
+light, and a fleeting image of the moon in clouds teased his fancy.
+Her lips were as red, he thought, as the ruby of a bishop's ring,
+and her eyes out-starred Venus. So it was he who trembled and not
+the maiden who was saying strange unmaiden-like words in a clear,
+steel-like whisper.
+
+"Kill Thibaut d'Aussigny. You are a skillful swordsman, they say.
+You are little better than an outlaw. You say you love me more than
+life. Kill Thibaut d'Aussigny!"
+
+Villon looked at her queerly. To save his life he could not keep his
+face from quivering. He was eating his heart and it tasted very
+bitter, and his own voice sounded far away to him, like a voice
+heard in a dream.
+
+"So that you and Noel what's his name may live happily ever after?"
+
+Katherine drew back from him, a little scorn in her eyes and on her
+lips.
+
+"Are you less eager to serve me than you were?"
+
+The question struck him in the breast like the stroke of a sword. He
+remembered his golden vows and his golden verses, and sickened at
+his shadow of disloyal doubt and anger.
+
+"No, by Heaven, but I've been dozing and dreaming, and I've got to
+rub the sleep out of my eyes and the dream out of my heart. Tell me
+how to serve you."
+
+She was reassured on the instant and neared him again confidently.
+
+"Thibaut d'Aussigny comes here to-night. He has come here before in
+disguise, for I have had him followed. I think he means to betray
+the king to Burgundy, so you will serve France as well as me. How do
+such men as you kill each other?"
+
+Villon looked at her ironically out of the corner of his eyes;
+answered her ironically out of the corner of his mouth. He saw
+himself as she saw him, and was sadly entertained at the sight.
+
+"Generally in a drunken scuffle. Will you wait here till he comes,
+pretty lady, for I never saw him? Then leave the rest to me."
+
+Something in his voice, though it was firm and clear, seemed to
+touch the girl's ear more than any word he had yet uttered. A new
+curiosity seemed to lurk in her eyes and there was almost a sound of
+pity in her speech.
+
+"You love me very much?" she asked softly. Villon drew himself up
+proudly and answered her proudly.
+
+"With all the meaning that the word can have in Paradise."
+
+A faint shade of colour came into the woman's pale, pure cheeks.
+
+"You didn't expect to be taken at your word?"
+
+Villon smiled brightly and his eyes were dancing, though his heart
+was heavy enough.
+
+"I didn't hope to be, I will try to be worthy of the honour."
+
+The girl's eyes shone with wonder.
+
+"You love and laugh in the same breath," she asserted.
+
+Villon made a deprecatory gesture with his hands, half in protest,
+half in approval.
+
+"That is my philosophy."
+
+This view of life seemed to astonish her not a little. She caught
+her breath for a moment, then suddenly glided close to him.
+
+"If you wish," she said in an even whisper, "you may kiss me once."
+
+All the blood in the man's heart seemed to turn to fire and flame
+into his face as he turned towards her, making as if he would take
+her face in his hands and seal his soul upon her mouth. Then he
+sharply flung himself away from her.
+
+"Nay, I can fight and if needs must die in your quarrel, but if once
+I touched your lips--that would make life too sweet to adventure."
+
+The woman's face had flushed a little at her offer: it now paled
+again.
+
+"As you will," she said, and as she spoke there came the noise of
+shouting, singing and trampling feet outside. The poet dropped in a
+moment from the dizzy pinnacle of dreamland to the calm valley of a
+commonplace world.
+
+"These are my friends returning," he said. "They mustn't see you.
+Come this way." As he spoke he caught her hand and drew her across
+the room to the stairs that led to the upper gallery. On the gallery
+he bade her wait.
+
+"Here you can see without being seen. When he comes, show him to me.
+Then you can reach the street by this passage."
+
+Even as he spoke the main door was dashed open and the wild rout
+foamed into the room, bubbling with exhilaration, Huguette leaping
+like a bubble on the eddies of their enthusiasm. Louis and Tristan
+took advantage of the confusion to emerge from their hiding places
+and resume their seats at their table,
+
+"That was rare sport while it lasted," Colin shouted.
+
+"It didn't last long enough," Jehan yelled.
+
+"Things took a different turn when you came, Abbess," Montigny said,
+patting the girl on the back approvingly. Huguette shook her long
+hair out of her eyes and laughed as she turned down her rolled-up
+sleeves.
+
+"I did as François bade me and basted both the jades. Wine,
+landlord, wine! My arms ache."
+
+Robin Turgis was prompt; flagons and pipkins rattled as the men and
+women gathered round their table and Renéwed their drinking and
+dicing with fresh zest from the scuffle they had just witnessed. Guy
+Tabarie laughed one of his long fat laughs as he lingered over
+memory's picture of the way Huguette had trussed and trounced each
+of the amazons. "Lord, how they squeaked and wriggled!" he said
+unctuously.
+
+Louis whispered to his companion.
+
+"Our mad poet may do me a good turn, Gossip Tristan."
+
+Even as he spoke the inn door opened and a man entered--a small man,
+plainly clad, with his hood about his face. He glanced about him
+anxiously till he caught sight of Louis and Tristan, for whom he
+made immediately. Villon, craning over the balustrade, saw him and
+touched the girl on the arm to call her attention to the new-comer.
+
+"Is that he?" he whispered. The girl shook her head.
+
+"No, no. Thibaut is a big man. Yet that figure seems familiar."
+
+The stranger came to the table and stooped between Louis and
+Tristan. Louis looked up and grinned recognition of his barber,
+Olivier le Dain.
+
+"He is coming, sire," Olivier said.
+
+"You are sure?"
+
+"We dogged his footsteps all the way, till I slipped ahead. Here he
+comes!"
+
+With finger on lip Olivier glided through the door behind which
+Tristan had been concealed a few moments before. The king rubbed his
+hands and chuckled. Even Tristan looked pleased.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+ENTER THIBAUT
+
+
+
+
+
+Once again the door swung on its hinges admitting a very tall,
+powerful man, dressed like a common soldier, his brawny bulk
+panoplied in steel and leather. He glanced about him as he entered,
+exchanged looks with René de Montigny and came down to the settle,
+where he flung his vast body with a clatter while he called to the
+landlord in a bull's bellow to bring him some wine.
+
+Katherine leaning and looking gave a little gasp. "That is he!" she
+breathed into Villon's ear. Villon gave an involuntary sigh, partly
+indeed of satisfaction at the thought that his quarry was before
+him, a very vast and royal stag for a hunter's hand to threaten, but
+partly too of exquisite regret. It had been very sweet to crouch
+there in the darkness of the stairway so close to the one fair woman
+of all the world, to feel her breath upon his cheek, almost to hear
+her heart-beats, to know that once if only for once they were alone
+together and allied in a common purpose, to feel the touch of her
+soft gown, to know that if he chose he could touch her hair with his
+outstretched hand. Those seconds of strange intimacy seemed to be
+worth all the rest of his life--and now they had come to an end. Now
+he had to show that he deserved them. "Good," he said, and leaving
+her side he softly descended the stairs, crept cat-foot across the
+tavern floor and insinuated himself dexterously into the society of
+his friends, who were by this time far too mad and merry to show any
+surprise at his sudden re-appearance, or to question whence he came.
+Only one of the fellowship was away from the board--René de
+Montigny, who had risen as soon as the soldier had taken his seat by
+the fireplace, and had come down to greet him in a seemingly
+careless, off-hand fashion. Villon dexterously moving from friend to
+friend managed to niche himself by the back of the settle where he
+could catch some of the words that passed between Montigny and the
+stranger, whose meeting was also the subject of unsuspected scrutiny
+on the part of the unassuming burgesses who sat apart and to whom no
+one now gave heed.
+
+"A fine evening, friend," Montigny said affably.
+
+"Pretty fine for the time of year," the soldier answered. "How is
+your garden, friend?"
+
+Montigny smiled whimsically.
+
+"Very salubrious, if it were not for the shooting stars."
+
+Then as the soldier stared at him he hastened to explain.
+
+"My quip. The shooting star was a Burgundian arrow a cloth-yard long
+which came winging its way over the walls at noon and made itself at
+home in my garden. Here is what the arrow carried."
+
+He pulled from his pouch a small piece of parchment folded and
+sealed, and handed it to the seeming soldier. The disguised
+constable took the missive and scanned it narrowly.
+
+"The seal has not been tampered with," he said to himself. Ren
+caught him up with a noble gesture of indignation.
+
+"I never read other people's letters," he protested.
+
+Thibaut shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"It would have profited you little if you had," he said, as he broke
+the seal and turning aside stooped a little to read by the faint
+fire light what the letter said. It was couched in words that seemed
+commonplace enough, but Thibaut knew their secret meaning, knew that
+the Duke of Burgundy would do all that he asked, give him a duchy,
+give him the girl he coveted, all that he might ask for or lust for
+if he would only play the traitor and deliver Louis into the Duke of
+Burgundy's hands. As this was precisely what Thibaut was resolved to
+do, a pleased smile played over his lips as he tossed the parchment
+into the glowing ashes and watched it wither into nothingness. He
+turned to Montigny, who was watching him attentively.
+
+"Can you command some safe rogues of your kidney who think better of
+Burgundian gold than of the fool on the throne?"
+
+Montigny answered him behind his hand. "Aye. I know of half a dozen
+stout lads who would pilfer the king from his palace of the Louvre
+if they were paid well enough for the job," and he jerked his thumb
+over his shoulder in the direction of his carousing comrades.
+Thibaut nodded approval. He thrust some gold into Montigny's ready
+palm, whispered to him to meet him again to-morrow, and as Montigny
+rejoined his friends he turned to leave the tavern.
+
+To his surprise he found himself confronted by Villon, who feigning
+intoxication barred his passage with an air of great hilarity. "You
+walk abroad late, honest soldier," he hiccoughed.
+
+"That's my business," Thibaut answered, trying to pass, but Villon
+still delayed him.
+
+"Don't be testy. Come and crack a bottle."
+
+"I've had enough, and you've had more than enough," Thibaut growled.
+"Go to bed!"
+
+Villon's false good humour changed in a clap.
+
+"You're a damned uncivil fellow, soldier, and don't know how to
+treat a gentleman when you see one."
+
+Thibaut began to lose patience.
+
+"Get out of the way!" he said, and gave Villon a little push with
+his open hand that made him stagger. Villon's voice rose to a yell.
+
+"I will not get out of the way! How do I know you are an honest
+soldier? How do I know that you are a true man?"
+
+As Villon's voice rose the altercation attracted the attention of
+the revellers. Montigny glided to Villon's side and whispered him.
+
+"Let him alone, François; he's not what he seems."
+
+"Seems! Who cares what he seems?" Villon shouted. "It's what he is I
+want to know. Perhaps he's not an honest soldier at all. Perhap's
+he's a damned Burgundian spy!"
+
+Thibaut lifted his hand to crush Villon, but the poet's naked dagger
+menaced him and he paused.
+
+"Fling this drunken dog into the street," he commanded angrily.
+Villon's friends snapped at him furiously. Villon flung back the
+phrase.
+
+"Drunken dog, indeed! You are a lying, ill-favoured knave! Keep the
+door, friends, this rogue has insulted me. Pluck out your iron,
+soldier!"
+
+In a moment the whole pack were between Thibaut and the door, every
+woman a fury, every man a fighter, every man with the exception of
+René de Montigny, who, dexterously disentangling himself from the
+mass of his companions, made for the side door and slipped out of it
+unheeded in the confusion. It was his intention to alarm the watch
+and intervene for the protection of his powerful patron, and with
+this purpose in his mind he disappeared into the darkness of the
+street and ran as fast as his legs could carry him.
+
+In the meantime the quarrel at the Fircone raged hotter. Thibaut,
+glaring at his enemies as a bull might glare at barking dogs, asked
+savagely of the poet who was brandishing his sword:
+
+"Who the devil are you?"
+
+Villon flung has head back defiantly and flourished his sword.
+
+"I am François Villon, and my sword is as good as another man's."
+
+The moment the name fell on Thibaut's ears the giant gave a giant's
+laugh.
+
+"Are you François Villon?" he thundered. "Lend me a cudgel, some
+one," and he looked around as if seeking for the weapon he asked
+for..Villon snatched up a mug and flung the heel taps in the
+soldier's face, spotting his cheeks with drops of crimson that
+trickled on to his breast plate. With a choking cry of rage Thibaut
+dragged his sword into the air.
+
+"You fool," he hissed, "I'll kill you!"
+
+"We shall see," Villon answered gallantly, as he stood on guard
+alert and wary.
+
+For a moment the he-rascals and she-rascals held their breath. The
+great figure in the shining steel seemed so to dominate the slight
+frame of their favourite that anything like an equal contest between
+the two men seemed little less than ridiculous. What skill of
+Villon's could hope to avail against the mighty sweep of that huge
+soldier's weapon? Suddenly the swift spirit of Huguette solved the
+problem. Springing forward with the delicate agility of a young
+panther, she poised, opinionative, between the opponents.
+
+"Fair play!" she screamed. "This is David and Goliath," and as she
+spoke she pointed with one hand at Villon while with the other she
+struck with her open palm a ringing blow on the cuirass of Villon's
+antagonist. "Let them fight it out with sword and lantern in the
+dark."
+
+A loud shout of applause greeted the girl's suggestion. That
+fantastic form of duello was not unfamiliar to the free companions
+of the Court of Miracles, and Villon himself, eager as he was for
+the combat, was keen enough to see how well this way might work for
+the surety of his purpose. Skill, inches, tricks of fence, all
+things were equal when men fought as shadows in shadowland.
+
+"What do you say, Goliath?" he laughed, and the grim face of Thibaut
+smiled responsive.
+
+"As you please," he said, serenely confident in his strength and
+length of arm. "It is all one to me." Then suddenly looking round on
+the leering, sullen faces about him, a wolfish girdle of ferocity,
+he caught back his agreement and held it for a moment. "On this
+condition," he added. "When there is an end of you, there is an end
+of the quarrel. Your friends here must agree to that."
+
+Villon agreed on the instant. He was all for ridding the world of
+Thibaut, but he wanted to do it himself for the sake of the white
+girl crouching on the stairway.
+
+"I promise," he said, "for myself and for them," and turning to the
+girl, he insisted, "Promise, Huguette; swear it!"
+
+"I swear it," Huguette answered.
+
+"That is settled," said Villon. "Now, friends, make a ring and dowse
+the glim."
+
+In another instant, the preparations for the combat were afoot,
+Robin Turgis, angrily protesting against the desecration of his
+orderly hostelry and shouting wild words about summoning the watch,
+was promptly overpowered by Jehan le Loup, who forced him on to a
+bench and kept him there with a dagger's point at his throat. The
+women huddled, screaming and excited, on the stairway a little below
+the place where Katherine crouched, holding her breath and peeping
+through the railings. The men stood behind tables and on benches,
+while Casin Cholet and Colin de Cayeulx dived into the landlord's
+quarters and reappeared bearing each in his hand a lighted lantern.
+While these preparations were being hurried toward, Tristan, full of
+alarm, leaned forward and plucked at the king's mantle.
+
+"This must be put a stop to, sire," he whispered; but the king shook
+his head with a grim smile of satisfaction.
+
+"On the contrary, gossip," he answered, "whichever of these rascals
+kills the other, does the state a service and saves the hangman some
+labour."
+
+Villon crossed the room and came close to where Thibaut waited
+sullen. "I think I shall square our reckoning, Master Thibaut," he
+whispered. The giant stared at him. "You know me?" he gasped. "Your
+varlets thumped me yesterday," Villon answered. "I shall tickle you
+to-day. Turn, turn about, friend Thibaut."
+
+Even as he spoke Guy Tabarie puffed out the last candle left alight
+in the room, which was plunged instantly into almost total darkness.
+Even the faint moonlight that had come through the window was
+swiftly veiled by Huguette, who drew the crimson curtains close
+together. The dim light from the fire only seemed to accentuate and
+intensify the darkness through which the two lanterns burned, pale
+planets of yellow fire, in the hands of Casin and Colin. Villon
+snatched the one and Thibaut took the other. There was a moment of
+intense silence; then the voice of Huguette cried out of the
+blackness: "Are you ready?"
+
+Both combatants cried, "Yes!" in the same breath, and in the next
+the battle began.
+
+No stranger fight had ever been fought within those walls before, or
+even perhaps within the walls of Paris. In the dense obscurity the
+two antagonists groped for each other, alternately guided and
+baffled by the light of the lanterns, as their holder lifted his
+light suddenly in the air or dexterously concealed it under the fold
+of his mantle. Every now and then the swords would meet with a
+clash, there would be a hurried exchange of thrust and blow, and
+then the adversaries would drift back again to grope and gleam and
+seek each other anew, their lanterns flashing and disappearing like
+accentuated glow-worms, and their blades now shining in sudden
+illumination like streaks of blue lightning across the blackness and
+now invisible even to those who held them in their hands.
+
+Tristan had in vain endeavoured to persuade the king to leave before
+the preliminaries for the fantastic strife had been completed, but
+Louis was firm in his determination to remain.
+
+"I would not miss this for the world, man," he had insisted. All his
+childlike delight in the adventurous was being sated to the full
+this evening, and there was no happier man at that moment in the
+kingdom than the man who by strange fortune was its king.
+
+The fight persisted for some minutes that seemed like hours to more
+than one of the anxious spectators. Now the room would be steeped in
+the deepest silence, and now, as the revealed lantern glowed and the
+naked weapons met, some woman's scream or some man's suppressed oath
+would fill the place with a sense of watching, eager humanity.
+
+Suddenly, when the tension of watcher and watched was keenest, there
+came a mighty crashing at the door and a voice shouted loudly a
+summons to open in the king's name.
+
+Tristan knew well enough what the summons meant. "It is the watch,
+sire," he whispered to the king.
+
+Thibaut too, groping for his nimble antagonist and beginning to
+despair of crushing the man, heard and understood the summons. He
+was tired of the baffling struggle.
+
+"Open the door!" he shouted noisily, and the cry stirred Villon to a
+more vehement assault. He sprang like a cat at the giant, flashed
+the lantern dazzlingly in his eyes, and as Thibaut, furious, made a
+wild lunge at him, Villon dexterously swung his lantern on to his
+enemy's sword point and in another second had driven his own blade
+into Thibaut's side.
+
+"Not so fast, rat-catcher!" he shouted exultantly, and as Thibaut
+fell with a heavy crash of rattling armour on the floor, the door
+was dashed open and the armed watch poured in with blazing torches,
+filling the room with light and armoured men. François, after a
+moment's glance of triumph at the fallen giant, sprang round and
+glanced up at the gallery.
+
+Katherine, standing, leaned over the balustrade and flung a knot of
+ribbon to her champion, who caught it as it skimmed through the air,
+pressed it to his lips and thrust it into the bosom of his jerkin.
+In another moment Katherine had disappeared and Villon found himself
+roughly held in the strong grasp of two soldiers, while the captain
+of the watch surveyed the scene with some astonishment, and the
+rogues were overawed by the bills of the new-comers.
+
+"What is this tumult?" the captain demanded. Villon answered him
+airily, smiling over the crossed pikes that penned him.
+
+"A fair fight, good captain, conducted according to the honourable
+laws of sword and lantern."
+
+The captain of the watch turned his attention to Thibaut, who,
+assisted by one of the soldiers, had raised himself upon one elbow
+and was glaring vindictively at Villon.
+
+"Who is this man?" he asked.
+
+A desire for revenge got the better of the wounded man's discretion.
+
+"I am Thibaut d'Aussigny," he gasped. "I am the Grand Constable."
+
+A little shiver of surprise and alarm ran round the room at the
+sound of that dreaded name. The captain of the watch kneeled in
+salutation.
+
+"Monseigneur," he said, "how did this happen?" Thibaut's senses were
+running away from him with his running blood, but malignity
+overcrowed weakness for a moment. He pointed at Villon. "Take that
+fellow and hang him on the nearest lantern," and as he spoke he
+swooned. Promptly the captain turned towards his prisoner. "Take
+that fellow outside and hang him," he commanded curtly. Villon
+glanced wildly about for a way to escape and saw none. His friends
+gave a groan of sympathy, but they could do no more, for the
+soldiers overawed them. Huguette flung her arms about him, sobbing.
+The grasp of his captors tightened and Villon shivered at the clasp.
+Suddenly the little insignificant burgess at the table rose and
+advanced towards the soldier.
+
+"Stop, sir," he said imperatively. "That young gentleman is my
+affair." The soldier turned angrily upon the interfering citizen.
+
+"Who are you," he growled, "who dare to interfere with the king's
+justice?"
+
+The citizen pulled his heavy cap from his head and revealed the
+wrinkled, eager visage that was so well known and so well feared.
+
+"I am the king's justice," he said simply, while Tristan behind him
+cried "God save the king!" and the astonished soldier bent the knee
+in homage. Villon, staring, dumfounded, caught the humour of the
+situation and could not hold his tongue.
+
+"The king! Good Lord!" he said, and punctuated his comment with a
+prolonged whistle.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE VOICES OF THE STARS
+
+
+
+
+
+Louis loved roses. All that was royal in his nature went out to the
+royal flower; whatever desire of beauty lay hidden in his heart
+found its gratification in its splendid colours, in its splendid
+odours. The Greeks believed that the red rose only came into being
+on the fair day when Venus, seeing Ascanius slumbering on a bed of
+white roses, pressed handsful of the blossoms to her lips, and the
+pale petals blushed into their crimson loveliness beneath the kisses
+of the goddess. Louis the Eleventh knew nothing of the legend, but
+the red rose was his fancy and a corner of the royal garden was
+dedicated to its service. In the oldest part of the palace, hard by
+the grey and ancient tower where the king loved to out-watch the
+stars and to brood over strange wisdom, overlooked by a terrace
+whose very steps were littered with petals, the caressed earth
+glowed into a very miracle of roses. Every shade of red that a rose
+can wear was represented in that dazzling pleasaunce, from the faint
+pink that surely the lips of divinity had scarcely brushed to the
+smiling scarlet that suggested Aphrodite's mouth, from the imperial
+purple of a Caesar's pomp to the crimson so deep that it was almost
+black, black as the congealed blood on the torn thigh of Adonis.
+Here, when the stars eluded or deceived him, King Louis would come,
+creeping down the winding stairs of his tower, with the names of
+saints upon his thin lips, to breathe the sunlit or moonlit
+fragrance of his roses, to seek a little rest for his restless mind,
+a little quiet for his unquiet heart.
+
+On the morning after his visit to the Fircone Tavern King Louis sat
+in his rose garden and snuffed the scented air with pleasure, while
+his keen eyes shifted from a scroll of parchment on his knee to the
+face of one who stood beside him, and spoke in a low voice, pointing
+as he spoke to marks and figures on the outspread parchment. The
+king's companion was an old man in a furred gown, whose countenance
+was seamed with years and study, and whose eyes seemed always to be
+gazing at objects that others could not see. In his right hand he
+held a large sphere of crystal, and whenever the king lapsed into
+silent study of his scroll the sage would lift the shining globe and
+gaze into its glassy depths with an air of exaggerated wisdom.
+
+From one of these moments of abstraction the king suddenly looked
+up, and immediately the astrologer's glance swung from the sphere to
+the face of Louis.
+
+"You know the aspect of the planetary bodies," said the king, "and
+you know of the strange dream that I have dreamed three nights
+running."
+
+The sage inclined his head gravely. The king had told him of the
+dream in all its particulars at least a dozen times that morning. It
+seemed to be mixed up with the sunlight and the scent of the roses;
+to be a portion of the chorus of the birds. But he listened to the
+narrative with the same air of surprised attention that he had
+offered to its first recital.
+
+"I dreamed that I was a swine rooting in the streets of Paris, and
+that I found a pearl of great price in the gutter. I set it in my
+crown and it filled all Paris with its light. But it seemed to grow
+so heavy for my forehead that I cast it from me and would have
+trodden it into the earth, but that a star fell from heaven and
+stayed me, and I awoke trembling."
+
+The king's nasal voice droned through the familiar repetition; then
+he suddenly turned his head with a kind of bird-like alacrity upon
+the astrologer and asked sharply: "Well, what do you make of it?"
+
+The astrologer shook his head. "The stars are bright," he said
+slowly, "but their brightness is bewildering to mortal eyes and it
+is hard to read between the lines of their effulgence. Dreams are
+dim, and it is difficult for mortal minds to interpret their
+obscurity."
+
+The king frowned. "I know well enough," he said, "that stars are
+bright and that dreams are dim, but your wisdom is clothed and
+housed and nourished for deeper knowledge than this. Interpret my
+dream for France as Joseph interpreted the vision of the Egyptian."
+
+With an unmoved face the astrologer scanned the crystal. "Thus I
+seem to read the riddle of your dream, sire," he answered. "There is
+one in the depths who, if exalted to the heights, might do you great
+service and who yet might irk you so greatly that you would seek to
+cast him back again into the depths from which he rose. The stars
+seem to speak of such a coming, and, as it seems to me, this
+stranger should have potent influence for good for a period of seven
+days from this day. I have sought and sought in vain to see
+something of this man in the crystal. I only see confusedly great
+crowds of people, pageants and masques, and movings of many
+soldiers, battle and bloodshed, and great victory for France--and
+then a star falls from heaven and all the vision vanishes."
+
+The king was silent for a moment; then with an imperative gesture he
+dismissed the astrologer, who entered the tower and climbed the
+winding stairs to the room where he pursued his occult studies. The
+king walked restlessly up and down, indifferent to the roses,
+thinking only of the stars.
+
+"If François Villon were the king of France," he muttered. "How that
+mad ballad maker glowed last night. Fools are proverbially
+fortunate, and a mad man may save Paris for me as a mad maid saved
+France for my sire."
+
+A heavy tread behind him stirred him from his meditations. Turning,
+he beheld the companion of his adventure of the previous evening.
+
+"Well, Tristan?" he questioned apprehensively, for Tristan had the
+evil smile on his face which he always wore when he had news of any
+disagreeable kind to impart.
+
+"The bird has flown, sire," he said. "Thibaut d'Aussigny's wound was
+much slighter than we thought last night. After we carried him to
+his house, he made his escape thence in disguise, and has, as I
+believe, fled from Paris to join the Duke of Burgundy."
+
+The king shrugged his shoulders indifferently.
+
+"I wish the duke joy of him," he said. "He is more dangerous to my
+enemy when he is on my enemy's side. Where are the rascals of last
+night?"
+
+"The tavern rabble are in custody of Messire Noel."
+
+"And my rival for royalty?"
+
+"Barber Olivier has charge of him. I would have hanged the rogue out
+of hand."
+
+"Your turn will come, gossip, never doubt it. But the stars warn me
+that I need this rhyming ragamuffin. There is a tale of Haroun al
+Raschid--"
+
+Tristan stifled a yawn and a sneer. "Another tale, sire," he said
+with something like piteous protest, for the king's tales did not
+always entertain Tristan.
+
+Louis went on, however, indifferent to his companion's feelings:
+
+"How he picked a drunken rascal from the streets and took him to his
+palace. When the rascal woke sober, the courtiers persuaded him that
+he was the Caliph, and the Commander of the Faithful found great
+sport in his behaviour. I promise myself a like diversion."
+
+Tristan stared in surprise. This form of entertainment was new to
+him and did not seem to be particularly amusing.
+
+"Are you going to let him think he is king, sire?" he asked.
+
+A queer smile wrinkled the king's malign face.
+
+"Not quite," he said. "When he wakes, he is to be assured that he is
+the Count of Montcorbier and Grand Constable of France. His antics
+may amuse me, his lucky star may serve me, and his winning tongue
+may help to avenge me on a certain froward maid, who disdained me.
+Send me here Olivier."
+
+Tristan bowed gravely and turned on his heel. In his heart he was
+inclined to a kind of contempt for the monarch's humours. When there
+was a chance of hanging a man, it seemed to him a waste of time to
+play the fool in this fashion. The cat and mouse policy was never
+Tristan's way. He was ever for the dog's way with the rat.
+
+Louis resumed his restless walk with his hands folded behind him and
+his head thrust forward as if he were scanning the ground for some
+lost object. His mind was busy revolving many thoughts. He knew very
+well how precarious his position was, how unpopular he was with his
+people, how strong were the forces that the Duke of Burgundy had
+arrayed against him, how little he could count upon the allegiance
+of the people of Paris if once the enemy were able to put a foot
+within the walls of the capital city. He was very ambitious, he was
+very confident, he was very brave, and yet he felt that ambition,
+confidence and courage were not enough at that crisis to give his
+throne support. The superstitious side of his nature turned
+restlessly to the unknown and his spirit dived into crystals or
+soared among the spinning planets, struggling for occult
+enlightenment. To the superstitious, trifles are the giants of
+destiny, and the king's escapade of the previous evening had taken a
+firm hold on his fancy. The picturesque blackguard who had mouthed
+so gallantly his desire to reign over France and save her would in
+any case have tickled the king's taste for the eccentric, but when
+the encounter with the poet came upon the heels of the king's
+strange dream and was followed by the vague prognostications of the
+star-gazer, the business loomed majestic in his eyes. He had always
+before his mind the memory of the radiant, saintly maiden who had
+come like a messenger from heaven to help his father when his
+father's fortunes seemed to be in the very dust, and it was in all
+seriousness that he permitted himself to hope and almost to believe
+that some such succour might be vouchsafed him from the fantastic
+rhymester who had so lately hectored him in tho Fircone Tavern. As
+the king lifted his eyes a fairer form than that of Villon's was
+impressed upon his consciousness and yet the sight only served to
+strengthen the current of the king's thoughts.
+
+A very beautiful girl, tall, stately, imperious, was coming down one
+of the roseways with her arms full of the great crimson blossoms. If
+the king had been a scholar in the learning of the Greeks he would
+have compared the girl to some one of the glorious goddesses of the
+Hellenic Pantheon. As it was, he was merely aware in a fierce way
+that the girl was very beautiful, that her beauty appealed to him
+very keenly, and stirred in him a keen sense of resentment at his
+slighted homage. This girl, whom Thibaut d'Aussigny wanted to marry,
+this girl whom the king coveted, this girl whom the mad poet
+worshipped, what part would she play in the fantastic comedy which
+was gradually shaping itself in the distorted mind of Louis?
+Katherine de Vaucelles saw the king, and dropped him a stately
+curtsey.
+
+"Where are you going, girl?" Louis asked.
+
+She answered quietly, "To her majesty, sire, who bade me gather
+roses."
+
+"Give me one," said the king, and then as the girl handed him one of
+the longest and reddest of her splendid cargo, the king lightly
+swaying the flower, brushed the girl's flower face with it and
+surveyed her mockingly.
+
+"You are a pretty child," he said. "You might have had a king's
+love. Well, well, you were a fool. Does not Thibaut d'Aussigny woo
+you?"
+
+"He professes to love me, sire, and I profess to hate him."
+
+"He was sorely wounded last night in a tavern scuffle."
+
+The girl gave a little cry of disappointment.
+
+"Only wounded, sire?"
+
+The king laughed heartily.
+
+"Your solicitude is adorable. Be of cheer. He may recover. And we
+have clapped hands on his assassin. He shall pay the penalty."
+
+Katherine drew a little nearer to the king. Her eyes were very
+eager, and there was eagerness in the tones of her voice.
+
+"Sire, I bear this man no malice for hurting Thibaut d'Aussigny."
+
+"You are clemency itself. It would never do to have a woman on the
+throne. But to hurt a great lord is to hurt the whole body politic.
+He shall swing for it."
+
+The girl frowned slightly.
+
+"This man should not die, sire. Thibaut was a traitor, a villain--"
+
+Louis' mirth deepened but he kept the gravity of his speech.
+
+"Take care, sweeting, lest you wade out of your depth. But you women
+are fountains of compassion. If this knave's life interests you,
+plead for it to my lord the Grand Constable."
+
+The girl made a gesture of despair.
+
+"Thibaut is pitiless," she said. Her mouth hardened as she thought
+of the man she hated and of her own failure to thrust him from her
+path, but it softened again on the next words of the king.
+
+"Thibaut is no longer in office. Try your luck with his successor."
+
+She leaned forward beseechingly.
+
+"His name, sire?"
+
+Louis looked at her thoughtfully.
+
+"He is the Count of Montcorbier," he said. "He is a stranger in our
+court, but he has found a lodging in my heart. He came under safe
+conduct from the South last night. He is recommended to me highly by
+our brother of Provence. I believe he will serve me well, and I am
+sure he will always be lenient to loveliness."
+
+The king smiled affably as the ready lies slipped smoothly from his
+lips. He was amusing himself immensely with the threads of the fairy
+tale he was spinning.
+
+"You shall have audience with him." The king paused. He caught sight
+on the steps of the dark familiar figure of the royal barber, who
+was approaching him deferentially. He called to him:
+
+"Olivier, by and by, when my Lord of Montcorbier takes the air in
+the garden, bring this lady to him. You understand?"
+
+He turned to Katherine again and once more tickled her chin with the
+swaying rose.
+
+"Now, go, girl, or my wife and your queen will be wanting her
+roses."
+
+Katherine again saluted the king and went slowly up the steps into
+the palace. Louis watched her as she went, watched her until she was
+out of sight, and then turned sharply upon his servant.
+
+"Well, goodman barber, what of François Villon?"
+
+"A pot of drugged wine last night sent him to sleep in a prison.
+This morning he woke in a palace, lapped in the linen of a royal
+bed. He has been washed and barbered, sumptuously dressed and rarely
+perfumed. He is so changed that his dearest friend would not know
+him again. He does not seem to know himself. He carries himself as
+if he had been a courtier all his days."
+
+The king chuckled.
+
+"I have little doubt that when the jackass wore the lion's skin he
+thought himself the lion. But is he not amazed?"
+
+"Too much amazed, sire, to betray amazement. His attendants assure
+him, with the gravest faces, that he is the Grand Constable of
+France. I believe he thinks himself in a dream, and, finding the
+dream delicate, accepts it."
+
+"Remember," said Louis, "to keep to the tale. This fellow came here
+from Provence last night. None must know who he is save you and I
+and Tristan. Blow it about to all the court that he is the Count of
+Montcorbier, the favourite of our brother of Provence, and now my
+friend and counsellor. I have a liking for you, Olivier, as you
+know, and Tristan and I are very good friends, but neither of your
+heads are safe on their shoulders if this sport of mine be spoiled
+by indiscretions."
+
+Olivier bowed deeply.
+
+"I cannot speak for Tristan, sire," he said, "but I can speak for
+myself. The God Harpocrates is not more symbolical of silence than I
+when it is my business to hold my tongue."
+
+"It is well," said Louis. "I will answer for Tristan. Have this
+fellow sent to me here."
+
+With another reverence Olivier left the king and ascended the steps
+into the palace. The king sniffed pensively at the rose which
+Katherine had given to him. The perfume seemed to sooth him and he
+mused, sunning himself and feeding his fancy with the entertainment
+which playing with the lives of others always afforded to him.
+
+"This Jack and Jill shall dance to my whimsy like dolls upon a wire.
+It would be rare sport if Mistress Katherine disdained Louis to
+decline upon this beggar. He shall hang for mocking me. But he
+carried himself like a king for all his tatters and patches, and he
+shall taste of splendour."
+
+Glancing up at the terrace he perceived the returning figure of
+Olivier le Dain, and guessed that his henchman was serving as herald
+to the new Grand Constable. Behind Olivier came a little cluster of
+pages, and behind them again the king could see a shining figure in
+cloth of gold.
+
+"Here comes my mountebank," he said to himself, "as pompous as if he
+were born to the purple." He moved swiftly to the door of the tower
+and entered it, disappearing as the little procession descended the
+steps into the Rose Garden. There was a little grating in the door
+of the tower, a little grating with a sliding shutter, and through
+this grating the king now peered with infinite entertainment at the
+progress of the comedy himself had planned. Olivier had spoken truly
+when he said that Master Villon had been greatly changed. The
+barber's own handiwork had so cleansed and shaved his countenance,
+had so trimmed and readjusted his locks that his face now shone as
+different from the face of the tavern-haunter as the face of the
+moon shines from the face of a lantern. He was as sumptuously
+attired as if he were a prince of the blood royal: the noonday sun
+seemed to take fresh lustre from his suit of cloth of gold, the air
+to be enriched by his perfume, the world to be vastly the better for
+his furs and jewels. Though it was plain that the tricked-out poet
+was in a desperate dilemma he managed to bear himself with a dignity
+that consorted royally with his pomp. Olivier bowed low to the
+figure in cloth of gold.
+
+"Will your dignity deign to linger awhile in this rose arbour?" he
+asked.
+
+The gentleman in cloth of gold looked at him in wonder. In truth,
+the gentleman in cloth of gold was in a very bewildered frame of
+mind. He had seen but now a clean and smooth-shaven face in the
+mirror, with elegantly trimmed hair, and he tried to associate the
+image in the mirror with his own familiar face, unwashed, unkempt,
+unshaven. He eyed the splendid clothes that covered him and his
+memory fumbled in perplexity over the horrors of a dingy, filthy
+wardrobe, ragged, wine-stained and ancient. He looked at the solemn
+pages who stood about him with golden cups and golden flagons in
+their hands, and he tried to remember how he had escaped from the
+society of Master Robin Turgis into this gilded environment. His
+head ached with the endeavour and he abandoned it. Olivier repeated
+his question, and at last Villon found words, though his voice
+sounded strange and hollow on his ears, and hard to command.
+
+"My dignity will deign to do anything you suggest, good master
+Blackamoor," he answered, but to his heart he whispered that it was
+better to humour these strange satellites whose persons he found it
+impossible to reconcile with any memories of the real world as he
+knew it. The barber bowed deferentially.
+
+"I shall have to trouble you presently with certain small cares of
+state," he said.
+
+Villon beamed on him benignly. He was wondering what his
+interlocutor was talking about, but he felt that it was the course
+of the wise man to betray no wonder. The conditions were, indeed,
+bewildering, but also they were not disagreeable, and it was as well
+to take them cheerfully.
+
+"No trouble, excellent myrmidon," he answered. "These duties are
+pleasures to your true man."
+
+Olivier bowed anew.
+
+"His majesty will probably honour you with his company later."
+
+Villon beamed again, and again his wonder found words which seemed
+to him to make the most and the best of the situation. Perhaps in
+this singular region of dreams he was the king's man and the king's
+friend. At least it could do no harm to assume such friendship when
+his solemn companion seemed to take it for granted.
+
+"Always delighted to see dear Louis. He and I are very good friends.
+People say hard things of him, but believe me, they don't know him."
+
+He was trying his best to piece together the disordered fragments of
+his memory and to explain to himself how it came to pass that he was
+on terms of friendship with the king. His head was dizzy and heavy
+and he felt like a man in a dark room who was groping to find the
+door handle. The voice of the barber interrupted these mental
+struggles.
+
+"May we take our leave, monseigneur?"
+
+Villon's face lighted. He felt that it would be pleasanter for him
+to be alone while he was attempting to regain control of his
+faculties, more especially as he noted that the pages had placed
+their golden cups and flagons on the marble table and that his
+instinct assured him that these precious vessels sheltered no less
+precious wine.
+
+"You may, you may," he assented, and then as the barber made to
+depart, Villon's mood changed and he caught him by the sleeve and
+drew him confidentially toward him.
+
+"Stay one moment," he murmured. "You know this plaguy memory of
+mine--what a forgetful fellow I am. Would you mind telling me again
+who I happen to be?"
+
+No look of surprise stirred the barber's face; there came no change
+in his extreme complaisance.
+
+"You are the Count of Montcorbier, monseigneur," he answered,
+gravely. "You have just arrived in Paris from the Court of Provence,
+where you stood in high favour with the king of that country, but
+your favour is, I believe, greater with the King of France, for he
+has been pleased to make you Grand Constable. It is his majesty's
+wish that you contrive to remember this."
+
+Villon laughed a laugh which he tried hard to make hearty and
+natural, but with indifferent success.
+
+"Of course, it was most foolish of me to forget. I suppose, good
+master Long-toes, that a person in my exalted rank has a good deal
+of power, influence, authority, and what not?"
+
+"With the king's favour, you are the first man in the realm."
+
+Villon gave a gasp of gratification. The dream was growing in glory.
+
+"Quite so. And does my exalted position carry with it any agreeable
+perquisite in the way of pocket money?"
+
+"If you will dip your finger in your pouch--" Olivier suggested,
+pointing a thin forefinger at Villon's jewelled belt.
+
+Villon thrust his fingers into the pocket that hung from it and
+brought them out again loaded with great golden coins, bright and
+clear from the mint, that gleamed joyously in the sunlight. He gave
+a little cry of delight as he let them run in a shining stream from
+hollowed hand to hollowed hand, and contemplated their jingle and
+glitter with the delight of a new Midas. But the first thought that
+welled up in his heart to welcome this strange wealth was bravely
+unselfish.
+
+"Gold counters, on my honour. Dear drops from the divine stream of
+Pactolus. Good sir, will you straightway despatch some one you can
+trust with a handful of these broad pieces to the Church of the
+Celestins and inquire of the beadle there for the dwelling of Mother
+Villon, a poor old woman, sorely plagued with a scapegrace son? Let
+him seek her out--she dwells in the seventh story and therefore the
+nearer to the Heaven she deserves--and give her these coins that she
+may buy herself food, clothes and firing."
+
+He was too confused to reason clearly with his situation, but he
+felt sure that whoever he was and wherever he was in this amazing
+dream of his, the poor old woman whom he loved so well must needs be
+in it and might benefit by this gift of fairy gold.
+
+Olivier bowed deferentially.
+
+"It shall be done," he said, transferring the great gold discs to
+his own pocket. Then pointing to a small golden bell which one of
+the pages had placed upon the table, he added, "If there be anything
+your dignity should desire, he has only to strike upon this bell."
+
+"You are very good," Villon responded solemnly, and on the phrase
+Olivier and the pages withdrew into the palace with every sign of
+the most profound respect. The king at his peep-hole was pleased to
+observe that his commands were being obeyed most strictly and that
+no hint of any secret mirth, no obvious consciousness of a hidden
+joke marred for one moment the monumental gravity of the parts which
+Olivier and the pages had to play.
+
+As soon as Villon found himself alone he looked cautiously around
+him, comprehending in his astonished glance the grey walls of the
+palace, the moss-grown terrace, the petal-strewn steps, the old,
+stern tower with its ominous sun dial, and the wealth of wonderful
+roses all about him, making the air a very paradise of exquisite
+colours and exquisite odours. He shut his eyes for a few seconds and
+then opened them sharply as if expecting to find that the scene had
+vanished shadow-like into thin impalpable air, but castle and
+terrace, tower and roses remained as they had been, very plain to
+the poet's astonished senses. Tiptoeing cautiously across the grass,
+he reached a marble seat which stood beneath a bower of roses and
+seemed to be protected by a great terminal statue of the god Pan,
+which had been given as a present to Louis by an Eastern prince who
+had carried it from Athens. Pressing his hand to his forehead,
+Villon tried to recall the events of the evening before, which for
+some fantastic reason seemed to lie long centuries behind him. He
+could remember dimly an evil looking cell with straw upon the floor
+and chains upon the walls; he could recall the sullen faces of
+unfriendly gaolers. One of these gaolers he remembered had thrust a
+mug of wine into his hand and bade him drink surlily, and he had
+drunk greedily, as was his way when free drink was offered to him,
+and drinking, drank oblivion sudden and complete.
+
+But why he had gone to a dungeon? His senses ached as he asked
+himself this, and faint pictures began to piece themselves together
+out of the episodes of the dead night. He saw again the squalid
+walls of the Fircone Tavern and his mind jumped back to his
+recitation of the ballad and his fierce sense of indignation at the
+humiliation of Paris, girdled by a wall of hostile Burgundians and
+governed by an impotent king. Then came the vision of an angel's
+visit and a prayer that had more of devil than angel in it, and then
+came a quarrel, and a fight in darkness shattered by the flaming
+torches of the watch and Thibaut's huge body lying on the ground a
+huddled heap of shining armour. He remembered the ribbon that had
+been flung to him from the gallery and thrust his hand into the
+bosom of his vest of cloth of gold and found the token there, its
+glossiness of white and gold soiled by its touch of the floor. Then
+came his capture, his contumelious march through the gloomy streets,
+his taste of an unknown prison, his taste of poppied wine, and then
+sleep.
+
+His next consciousness was that he was lying on a soft bed instead
+of on a truss of straw, and that the darkness about him was not the
+darkness of the cell. Suddenly someone drew a curtain and in a
+second the place where he lay filled with a soft light and showed
+that to Villon which astonished him as much as if the gates of
+Paradise had parted before him and shown him the shining lines of
+the hosts of Heaven. He remembered that he was lying in a stately
+bed, nestled in snowy linen beneath a coverlet of crimson silk. He
+remembered that the bed stood in a gorgeous room, heavy with
+magnificent tapestry and roofed with a carved and painted ceiling
+that glittered with gilt and stars. Curtains of purple velvet
+admitted the daylight through windows on which rich armorial
+bearings glowed in coloured glass. Soft and delicate odours
+impregnated the atmosphere and tender strains of delicate music
+stole wooingly on the senses from the strings of a distant lute.
+
+Then there carne, so kindly memory assured him, an obsequious man in
+black, with no less obsequious attendants, and singular ceremonies
+of bathing, perfuming and hair dressing and a putting on of sweet
+linen and furred raiment and jewels, and all the ceremonials for the
+transfiguration of a ragged robin into the likeness of a mighty
+lord. On the top of all this preparation rose the sun of a splendid
+banquet, served in ware of gold and silver and waited on by the same
+obsequious figure in black and the same respectful pages. Then
+followed the summons to walk into the air, the procession through
+quiet corridors on to the cool grey terrace and the final
+installment in the scented solitude of the rose garden. Villon was
+head-sick and heart-sick with the effort to put so much of the past
+together. He felt as if in some strange titanic way he had ruined a
+world and was suddenly called upon by Providence to piece the
+fragments together and make all whole again. He tapped his forehead
+wonderingly.
+
+"Last night I was a red-handed outlaw, sleeping on the straw of a
+dungeon. To-day I wake in a royal bed and my varlets call me
+monseigneur. There are but three ways of explaining this singular
+situation. Either I am drunk or I am mad or I am dreaming. If I am
+drunk, I shall never distinguish Bordeaux Wine from Burgundy--a
+melancholy dilemma. Let's test it."
+
+The marble table stood but a little way from him. The golden vessels
+that stood upon it had served him at that morning meal which was
+still an immediate excellent memory, and he remembered how his
+attendants had told him that one held wine of Bordeaux and one wine
+of Burgundy. He rose and crept across the soft grass to the table
+and lifted one of the golden flagons gingerly, sniffed at it
+fearfully and poured some of its contents carefully into a golden
+goblet. Lifting it cautiously to his lips, he tasted it judiciously.
+A ripe, warm, royal flavour rewarded him.
+
+"By Heaven!" he cried; "no nobler juice ever rippled from Burgundian
+vineyards."
+
+He drained the cup and set it down to fill another from the
+companion vessel and to repeat the ceremony of sniffing, tasting and
+swallowing. Again the desire of his palate was pleased and pacified.
+He reflected as he sipped and swallowed.
+
+"This quintessence of crushed violets ripened no otherwhere than in
+the valleys of Bordeaux. Ergo, I am not drunk. I do not think I am
+mad, neither, for I know in my heart that I am poor François Villon,
+penniless Master of Arts, and no will o' the wisp Grand Constable.
+Then I am dreaming, fast asleep in the chimney corner of the Fircone
+Tavern, having finished that flask I filched, and everything since
+then has been and is a dream. The coming of Katherine, a dream. My
+fight with Thibaut d'Aussigny, a dream. Then the king--popping up
+at the last moment, like a Jack-in-the-Box--a dream. These clothes,
+these servants, this garden--dreams, dreams, dreams. I shall wake
+presently and be devilish cold and devilish hungry, and devilish
+shabby. But in the meantime, these dream liquors make good
+drinking."
+
+He was about to fill himself another cup when a shadow fell at his
+feet, the shadow of Olivier le Dain standing before him with his air
+of emphasized respect, which was beginning to pall upon the
+transfigured poet.
+
+"Your dignity will forgive me, but it is the king's wish you should
+pass judgment on certain prisoners."
+
+Villon stared at him.
+
+"I? And here?"
+
+"Such is the king's pleasure."
+
+"What prisoners?"
+
+"Certain rogues and vagabonds, mankind and womankind, taken brawling
+in the Fircone Tavern last night."
+
+Villon stroked his chin thoughtfully. An idea seemed to take command
+of his confused mind. Here was a chance to learn something of the
+reality that lay at the core of all this mystery of roses and wine
+and fine raiment. He leaned forward curiously and almost whispered
+to the attendant barber,
+
+"Tell me, is Master François Villon, Master of Arts, rhymer at his
+best, vagabond at his worst, ne'er-do-well at all seasons, and
+scapegrace in all moods, among them?"
+
+Olivier smiled complacently as those in office are accustomed to
+smile at the humours of great men.
+
+"Your dignity is pleased to jest. Shall I send you the prisoners?"
+Villon caught at the offer sharply.
+
+"Can I do with them as I wish?"
+
+"Absolutely as you wish. Such is the king's will."
+
+Villon leaned back in resigned surrender to an astonishing
+situation. He had dreamed strange dreams in his days and nights, but
+never a dream like this dream.
+
+"Set a thief to try a thief," he philosophized, "Well, bring them
+in."
+
+Olivier bowed and disappeared silently along the rose alley by which
+he had come. When he was alone again Villon slapped his forehead
+resoundingly, as if he hoped to scare his senses back into sanity by
+violent assault.
+
+"Oh, my poor head," he moaned. "Am I awake? Am I asleep? What an
+embroglio!"
+
+A sense of dislike to his respectful attendant surged up through his
+perplexity. "That damned fellow in black is confoundedly
+obsequious," he muttered. "I wonder if I could order him to be
+hanged; he has a hanging face."
+
+Even as this kind reflection came into his head, his meditations
+were disturbed by the tramp of many feet and the rattle and clank of
+weapons, and a small company of soldiers came wheeling round into
+the rose garden from the side of the palace, guarding a number of
+men and women, in whom Villon instantly recognized his familiar
+friends of the Fircone Tavern. At the head of the soldiers marched a
+dapper gentleman, courtier-soldier or soldier-courtier, a thing of
+silk and steel, half dandy, half man-at-arms, exquisitely attired
+and flagrantly aware of his own attractions. He, too, was familiar
+to the poet, for he was no other than the pink and white gentleman
+whom he had seen acting as escort to Katherine on the day when he
+first beheld her, and whose name, as he had learned on the previous
+evening from Katherine's own lips, was Noel le Jolys.
+
+"The puppet who dangles after my lady," he grumbled to himself. "He
+jars the dream."
+
+Villon felt profoundly sorry for his imprisoned playfellows, and
+profoundly hostile to the pink and white gentleman. His friends
+looked so wretched, so woebegone, so bedraggled, while their captor
+looked so point-device and self-satisfied that Villon felt a fierce
+indignation burn within him over the injustices of the world.
+
+"How hang-dog my poor devils look and how dirty," he thought to
+himself, as the soldiers ranged their prisoners in a line before him
+at the base of the terrace, and their prinked and fragrant captain
+came trippingly forward and saluted Villon, presenting to him at the
+same time a piece of paper, covered with writing.
+
+"My lord," he said, dapperly, "here are the names of these night
+birds."
+
+Villon took the paper and looked straightly into the young man's
+eyes.
+
+"Have we ever met before?" he asked.
+
+Noel le Jolys made a deprecatory gesture.
+
+"Alas! no," he said. "Your lordship has swept into court like an
+unheralded comet. You shall tell us tales of Provence to please our
+ladies."
+
+Still gravely looking at him, Villon questioned him again.
+
+"Messire Noel, if you and I had a mind to pluck the same rose from
+this garden, which of us would win?"
+
+The affable fribble's intelligence appeared to be baffled.
+
+"I do not understand you," he protested.
+
+Villon shrugged his shoulders. "Never mind," he said, seating
+himself again on the marble seat and looking at the familiar names
+on the piece of paper.
+
+"Send me hither René de Montigny."
+
+He was fairly convinced by this time that he was not wandering in
+the labyrinths of a dream, that he really was awake, but that for
+some reason which he was unable to fathom, he had been thus
+strangely transmuted into the semblance of splendour and authority.
+
+"The popinjay fails to recognize me," he said to himself; "so may my
+bullies," and as he thought, René de Montigny was pushed forward by
+a couple of soldiers and stood sullenly defiant before him.
+
+Villon leaned forward, oddly interested in the grotesque turn of
+things which put him in this position with his old companion and
+fellow-scamp.
+
+"You are--" he questioned.
+
+Montigny answered angrily,
+
+"René de Montigny, of gentle blood, fallen on ungentle days."
+
+"Through no fault of your own, of course?"
+
+"As your grace surmises, through no fault of my own. I am poor, but,
+I thank my stars, I am honest."
+
+This remark, which was made aloud for the benefit of all and sundry,
+provoked a roar of laughter from Guy Tabarie which was promptly
+converted into a groan as an indignant soldier smote him into
+silence by a lusty blow on the back. Villon caught him up on the
+assertion.
+
+"Since when, sir? Since last night?"
+
+"I do not understand your grace."
+
+"When Jason was a farmer in Colchis he sowed dragons' teeth and
+reaped soldiers. What do you grow in your garden, Sire de Montigny?"
+
+Montigny gave a little start of surprise but his answer came prompt.
+
+"Cabbages."
+
+Villon shook his head. "Arrows, Master René, Burgundian arrows, most
+condemnable vegetables. Have a care! 'Tis a pestilent crop and may
+poison the gardener. Stand aside."
+
+René de Montigny stared at his interlocutor in a paroxysm of
+amazement. Here was his dearest secret loose on the lips of his
+questioner. It was the first time that he had ventured boldly to
+gaze into the face of authority and Villon returned his gaze
+defiantly. But there was no recognition in Montigny's eyes. He could
+see nothing in common between the splendid gentleman who now
+addressed him and the ragged rhymester who shared so many squalid
+adventures with him, and in an instant he averted his head
+respectfully.
+
+"If your grace will deign," he pleaded, stretching out his hands in
+entreaty, but Villon was inexorable.
+
+"Stand aside," he repeated, and Montigny protesting was dragged back
+to his place with his fellows while Villon read the name of the next
+rogue on the list, which happened to be that of Guy Tabarie.
+
+By this time Villon's spirit had entered into a very complete
+appreciation of the humours of the situation. Having realized that
+his identity was safe even from the keen eyes of René de Montigny,
+he felt assured that he might defy the indifferent scrutiny of his
+less alert companions. And though he made use of the long pendant
+fold of his cap to conceal in some measure his countenance, he was
+now so confident of his safety that he was prepared to greet each
+prisoner with composure.
+
+Guy Tabarie cut a piteous figure as he tottered across the grass,
+rudely propelled by the violence of the soldier who escorted him
+tweaking him by the ear, and fell, a quaking mountain of flesh, at
+the feet of the man whom he believed to be the Grand Constable of
+France. With piteous gesticulations and trembling fingers, the red,
+gross man knelt and attempted to plead for mercy. Villon eyed him
+sternly though he found it hard to restrain his laughter.
+
+"You come with clean hands?" he asked, and Guy, answered, babbling,
+his words tumbling from him, incoherent and confused, holding out
+his huge paws like a schoolboy reproved for want of soap and water:
+
+"As decent a lad, my lord, as ever kept body and soul together by
+walking on the straight and narrow path that leads to--"
+
+He had stuttered thus far when Villon interrupted him.
+
+"The gallows, Master Tabarie."
+
+Guy's bulk quivered in piteous negation.
+
+"No, no; I have the fear of God in me as strong as any man in
+Paris."
+
+Villon leaned over a little nearer to his victim and breathed a
+question into his ear:
+
+"Do you know the Church of St. Maturin, Master Tabarie?"
+
+The little pig-like eyes of Tabarie widened in surprise and he
+stammered a "No, my lord," that was in itself a flagrant confession
+of shameful knowledge. Villon wagged his head wisely.
+
+"Master Tabarie, Master Tabarie, your memory is failing you. Why, no
+later than the middle of March last you broke into the church at
+dead of night and pilfered the gold plate from the altar. The fear
+of God is not very strong in you."
+
+If Master Tabarie had been listening to the words of a wizard, he
+could not have been more astonished.
+
+"Saints and angels!" he cried aloud. "This Grand Constable is the
+devil himself! My lord, I was led astray; my lord, I was not
+alone--"
+
+Villon had had enough entertainment from his fat companion.
+
+He made a sign, and instantly a soldier swooped upon the grovelling
+figure, twitched him to his feet and drew him apart, stuttering
+furious protestations of innocence.
+
+Villon looked at the list in his hand, and this time he called for
+two names, "Colin de Cayeulx and Casin Cholet," and as he spoke, the
+two knaves were pushed forward towards him. Villon drew the pair a
+little way apart and stood between them, eyeing their roguish faces
+on which false affability struggled with a very real fear.
+
+"Are you good citizens, sirs?" he asked, and Colin immediately
+answered him:
+
+"I am loath to sing my own praises, but I can speak frankly for my
+friend here. The king has no better subject, and Paris no more
+peaceable burgess than Casin Cholet."
+
+As he spoke he waved Casin Cholet a warm salutation, and Cholet
+responded to his praises with a friendly grin and yet more friendly
+words:
+
+"If I have any poor merits, I owe them all to this good gentleman's
+example. I have followed his lead, halting and humble. 'Keep your
+eye on Colin de Cayeulx,' I have ever said to myself, 'and learn how
+a good man lives.'"
+
+The two men leered at each other across Villon, hoping that their
+praises of each other might have due effect upon the great lord who
+seemed so condescending to them. Villon smiled.
+
+"You are the Castor and Pollux of purity? Do you remember the night
+of last Shrove Tuesday and the girl you carried off to Fat Margot's
+and held to ransom?"
+
+The effect of his words upon the two men was startling. The ugly
+episode loomed up in their memories and they shivered to find it
+known. In a second the simulated friendship of bandit for bandit
+vanished and the two men glared at each other with the ferocity of
+fighting dogs as they hurled accusation and denial at each other:
+
+"That was Colin's adventure!"
+
+"That was Casin's enterprise!"
+
+"I deplored it."
+
+"I had no hand in it."
+
+Forgetting their respect for authority in the fury of their
+antagonism, they struck angrily at each other across their
+questioner and were for grappling in close combat when Villon made a
+signal and they, in their turn, were dragged back raging into the
+ranks of their fellow prisoners.
+
+There was only one left now--Jehan le Loup--who stood with folded
+arms and lowering brows, surveying the efforts of his
+comrades..Villon made a sign, and the man was dragged into his
+presence. Villon clapped him on the shoulder.
+
+"You seem a brisk, assured fellow for a man in duress."
+
+The friendly demeanour of the great man cheered the prisoner and he
+answered bluffly:
+
+"My good conscience sustains me."
+
+Villon's demeanour was still amicable as he put his next question in
+a voice that came only to Jeban's ears.
+
+"I am glad to hear it. How did Thevenin Pensete come to his death?"
+
+The muscles of Jehan le Loup's face twitched for a moment, but he
+clinched his fingers tightly to restrain himself and answered with a
+surly impassability,
+
+"How should I know, my lord?"
+
+Villon drew him nearer and spoke lower still.
+
+"Who better? That nasty quarrel over the cards, the high words and a
+snatch for the winnings, a tilted table, an extinguished taper, a
+stab in the dark and a groan. Exit Thevenin Pensete. Your dagger
+doesn't grow rusty!"
+
+Jehan's grey face grew greyer and uglier, but he kept his
+countenance.
+
+"Monseigneur," he answered, "I loved him like a brother."
+
+"As Cain loved Abel," Villon said. He made a sign, and Jehan le Loup
+was taken back to his fellows.
+
+So far Villon had been sufficiently diverted. He had played upon the
+terrors of his friends, he had bewildered them to the top of his
+desire. He now foresaw the possibility of sport more delicate as his
+glance fell upon the group of girls who clustered together like
+frightened birds at the foot of the statue of Pan. He made a sign to
+Messire Noel, and the gilded exquisite drew near.
+
+"Bring me hither those four gentlewomen," he commanded.
+
+The fop's face lengthened with amazed disapprobation.
+
+"Gentlewomen, messire? Those four doxies?"
+
+Villon reproved him.
+
+"They are women, good captain, and you and I are gentlemen, or
+should be, and must use them gently."
+
+Messire Noel frowned and his hand made a gesture in the direction of
+his sword-hilt; then he remembered the folly of quarrelling with so
+great a man and contented himself with shrugging his shoulders as he
+questioned,
+
+"And the demirep in the doublet and hose?"
+
+"Let her stay for the present," Villon answered, and in obedience to
+a sign from Noel the four girls came timidly forward with downcast
+eyes, while Huguette remained apart, leaning composedly against the
+image of Pan and surveying the scene with a good-humoured
+indifference.
+
+When the girls were close to him, Villon spoke:
+
+"Well, young ladies, what is this trade of yours that has brought
+you into trouble?"
+
+Jehanneton dropped a curtsey.
+
+"I make the caps that line helmets."
+
+Isabeau followed quickly,
+
+"I am a lace weaver. Enne, an honest trade."
+
+Blanche came next,
+
+"I am a slipper maker."
+
+Denise ended the catalogue.
+
+"And I a glover."
+
+Mischief danced in Villon's eyes.
+
+"No worse and no better. A word in your ear." He whispered something
+into each girl's ear in turn, and as he did so, each girl started,
+drew back, looked confused, laughed and blushed.
+
+It is ever to be deplored that the worthy Dom Gregory, whose
+ecclesiastical history of Poitou is the source of so much curious
+information concerning Villon, should have omitted, from a mistaken
+sense of delicacy, to chronicle precisely what it was that the poet
+whispered in the ears of each of the girls. All he condescends to
+record in his crabbed, canine Latin, is that Villon showed such
+intimate acquaintance with certain physical peculiarities or
+whimsical adventures private to each damsel that she believed the
+speaker's knowledge to be little less than supernatural. Literature
+of the skittish sort must deplore the monastic reticence, but
+history can do no more than accept it and leave imagination to fill
+in the blank as best it pleases.
+
+All history is certain of is that the girls gathered together,
+chatting like sparrows, each speaking rapidly:
+
+"The gentleman is a wizard. Why, he told me--"
+
+"Enne, a miracle; he reminded me--"
+
+"Why, he knows--"
+
+"What do you think he said?"
+
+Each girl was whispering to the other what Villon had told her, when
+Villon interrupted them.
+
+"Young women, young women, the world is a devil of a place for those
+who are poor. I could preach you a powerful sermon on your follies
+and frailties, but, somehow, the words stick in my gullet. Here is a
+gold coin apiece for you. Go and gather yourself roses, my roses, to
+take back to what, Heaven pity you! you call your homes."
+
+Jehanneton gave a little gasp of surprise.
+
+"Are we free?"
+
+Villon answered her sadly,
+
+"Free? Poor children! Such as you are never free. Go and pray Heaven
+to make men better, for the sake of your daughter's daughters."
+
+His extended hands were full of gold pieces, but they were soon
+emptied by the eager girls who pounced upon them. Then they left him
+with many curtsies and salutations and drifted away delightedly into
+the mazes of the rose garden.
+
+Villon turned to look at the men prisoners, who were anxiously
+scanning his actions.
+
+"As for these gentlemen," he said to Noel, "let them go where they
+will, but first give them food and drink and a pocketful of money."
+
+The effect of his words was almost as paralyzing upon the rogues as
+it was upon Messire Noel. It pleased the one as much as it
+displeased the other.
+
+Noel looked the contempt he did not venture to express. The men
+rushed forward, choking with gratitude.
+
+"God save you, sir."
+
+"Your Excellency is of a most excellent excellence."
+
+"Long live the Grand Constable!"
+
+"A most rare Constable."
+
+Villon waved them away.
+
+"Go your ways," he said, "and if you can, mend them."
+
+Shouting and dancing for joy, the men took advantage of his
+permission and disappeared in their turn among the alleys of the
+rose garden, seeking and finding the wandering women and vanishing
+with them in due course into the labyrinths of Paris.
+
+Villon turned to Noel.
+
+"You may dismiss your soldiers," he said. "Attend me within call,"
+and as Noel obeyed him, he advanced to where Huguette was standing,
+with a smile of scornful indifference still on her fair face.
+
+Villon asked himself as he went:
+
+"Why, in God's name, does the world appear so 'different to-day? Is
+it the thing they call the better self, or merely this purple and
+fine linen?"
+
+What he said when he came to the girl was,
+
+"Fair mistress, you have a comely face and you make it very plain
+that you have a comely figure. Why do you go thus?"
+
+The girl shrugged her green shoulders and shifted the balance of her
+body from one green leg to the other, as she answered impudently,
+
+"For ease and freedom, to please myself, and to show my fine shape
+to please others."
+
+Last night this girl had been his own familiar friend; to-day she
+lay leagues away from his fairy greatness. There was pity in his
+next speech.
+
+"Are you a happy woman, mistress?"
+
+"Happy enough," she answered as she snapped her fingers defiantly,
+"when fools like you don't clap me into prison for living my life in
+my own way."
+
+"I may be a fool, but I did not clap you into prison. Heaven
+forbid!"
+
+A curious look came into the girl's eyes, and she drew a little
+nearer to him. Her voice was a caress; the tenor of her hands was a
+caress; every supple curve of her alluring body caressed. She seemed
+to coax him, cat-like, as she whispered:
+
+"Your voice sounds familiar, Monseigneur. Had I ever the honour to
+serve you?"
+
+Villon drew away from her. He felt suddenly body-sick and soul-sick;
+sorry for the woman, sorry for himself.
+
+"Who knows?" he answered. The girl laughed and turned aside.
+
+"Who cares? What are you going to do with me?"
+
+"Set you free, my delicate bird of prey. Those wild wings were never
+meant for clipping and caging. Is there anything I can do to please
+you?"
+
+On the instant her enticement shifted; all her being was a tremulous
+entreaty.
+
+"What has come to Master François Villon?"
+
+"Why do you ask?"
+
+"He was with us when we were snared last night. But he did not share
+our prison and he is not with us now. Does he live?"
+
+Villon hesitated for a moment before speaking.
+
+"He lives. He is banished from Paris, but he lives."
+
+Huguette clasped her hands in gratitude.
+
+"The sweet saints be thanked!" she said; and there was that in her
+voice which made the simple words sound very sincere to Villon's
+ears.
+
+"What do you care for the fate of this fellow?"
+
+"As I am a fool, I believe I love him."
+
+"Heaven's mercy! Why?"
+
+"I cannot tell you, Messire. A look in his eyes, a trick of his
+voice--the something--the nothing that makes a woman's heart run
+like wax in the fire. He never made woman happy yet, and I'll swear
+no woman ever made him happy. If you gave him the moon, he would
+want the stars for a garnish. He believes nothing; he laughs at
+everything; he is a false monkey--and yet, I wish I had borne such a
+child."
+
+There was a sudden pain at Villon's heart, as if the girl's fingers
+had seized it and squeezed it, but he replied lightly:
+
+"Let us speak no more of this rascal. He believes more and laughs
+less than he did. He is so glad to be alive that his forehead
+scrapes the sky and the stars fall at his feet in gold dust. Paris
+is well rid of such a jackanapes."
+
+"You are a merry gentleman."
+
+"I would be more gentle than merry with you. Will you wear this ring
+for my sake? Fancy that it comes from Master François Villon, who
+will always think kindly of your wild eyes."
+
+"Let me see your face," she requested, but Villon denied her. He
+signed to Noel le Jolys, where he stood apart, and the young soldier
+came hurriedly to him.
+
+"Captain," he said, "give this lady honourable conduct."
+
+He moved away and left the pair together--the mannish woman and the
+womanish man, looking at each other, the man in admiration and the
+woman in veiled disdain.
+
+"You are a comely girl," Noel affirmed roundly.
+
+Huguette laughed.
+
+"This is news from no-man's land."
+
+Noel spoke lower.
+
+"Where do you lodge?"
+
+Huguette was a woman of business in an instant. She flashed in
+Noel's face the ring the Grand Constable had given her as she
+answered:
+
+"At the sign of the Golden Scull, hard by the Fircone. Will you
+visit me?"
+
+Noel clapped his hands together.
+
+"As I am a man, I will."
+
+A good understanding being thus established, the pair drifted away
+together and were soon lost to sight. Villon looking after them
+mused:
+
+"Heaven forgive me, I am becoming a most pitiful loud preacher.
+Every rogue there deserves the gallows, but so do I, no less, and I
+have not swallowed enough of this court air to make me a hypocrite.
+Well, all this justice is thirsty work, and, mad or sane, sleeping
+or waking, let me drink while I can."
+
+He returned to the golden flagons, poured out a full cup of
+Burgundy, watched it glow in the sunlight, and lifted it to his
+lips.
+
+"To the loveliest lady this side of heaven!" he said for a toast,
+but ere he touched his lips to the cup, he lowered it again.
+
+Olivier le Dain had come on to the terrace, and with Olivier there
+came a lady.
+
+"By heaven," Villon cried, "my eyes dazzle, for I believe I see
+her!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+GARDEN LOVE
+
+
+
+
+
+On the terrace the fair girl leaned and looked over at the garden
+and its golden occupant. To the eyes of Villon her beauty had never
+seemed rarer, and the wild passion which had prompted him to spin
+his very soul into song burnt with a new, delicious strength of
+hope. He stared at her as a worshipper might stare at some sudden
+vision of a long dreamed of goddess, and as he stared, Olivier
+descended the steps, soft-footed, and came and stood before him.
+
+"My lord, there is a lady there who desires to speak with you."
+
+Villon turned his gaze unwillingly from the gracious apparition
+above him to the sombre servitor.
+
+"I desire to speak with her," he said earnestly, and again his eyes
+travelled in the direction of the lady.
+
+Olivier came close to him and touched him respectfully on the wrist.
+
+"Remember, my lord," he said, very softly, "that you are François of
+Corbeuil, Lord of Montcorbier, Grand Constable of France, newly come
+to Paris from the Court of His Majesty of Provence. Remember this as
+if it were written in letters of gold upon tables of iron. Forget
+all else. The king commands it."
+
+The words sounded dully enough on Villon's brain, absorbed as he was
+in the contemplation of his queen, but at least they served to
+convince him of what he had already begun to assure himself, that
+for some purpose or other King Louis wished him well and granted him
+golden chances.
+
+François of Corbeuil, Count of Montcorbier, stood in a very
+different relation to the Lady Katherine from that of the lowly poet
+and gaolbird who had rhymed and sighed and battled in the Fircone
+Tavern last night.
+
+"The king shall be obeyed," he said gravely, and Olivier, turning,
+made a sign to Katherine, who descended the steps slowly. As she
+reached the last step, Olivier saluted Villon and the lady
+profoundly and, mounting the steps, vanished within the palace.
+
+The man and the woman were left alone in the rose garden. Villon
+felt a sudden strange sensation at his heart, exquisite pain and
+exquisite pleasure, and he clasped his hands together.
+
+"I am awake," he assured himself; "no dream could be as fair as
+she."
+
+Even at the thought, Katherine flung herself swiftly at his feet,
+divinely gracious in her surrender of dignity as she kneeled to him
+with uplifted imploring hands and eyes.
+
+"My lord," she cried, "will you listen to a distressed lady?"
+
+Villon stooped and caught her white fingers and drew her to her
+feet.
+
+"Not while the lady kneels," he said gently, and he looked with a
+strange apprehension into the frank, bright eyes of Katherine. Would
+she know him for what he was, he wondered. He read no recognition in
+her sweet eyes. Katherine returned his gaze, unflinchingly regarding
+him as a great lady might regard some stranger her equal of whom she
+could ask a favour.
+
+"She does not know me," Villon's delight cried in his heart, and at
+the thought his spirit fluttered with fierce exaltation. The Lord of
+Moncorbier, who was Grand Constable of France, might say many things
+that were denied to the lips of François Villon.
+
+Katherine pleaded warmly:
+
+"There is a man in prison at this hour for whom I would implore your
+clemency. His name is François Villon. Last night he wounded Thibaut
+d'Aussigny--"
+
+Villon smiled a contented smile.
+
+"Thereby making room for me," he suggested.
+
+Katherine went on unheeding:
+
+"The penalty is death. But Thibaut was a traitor sold to Burgundy."
+
+"Did this Villon fight him for his treason?"
+
+"No. He fought for the sake of a woman. He risked his life with a
+light heart because a woman asked him."
+
+"How do you know all this?"
+
+"Because I was the woman. This man had seen me, thought he loved me,
+sent me verses--"
+
+"How insolent!"
+
+"It was insolence--and yet they were beautiful verses. I was in
+mortal fear of Thibaut d'Aussigny. I went to this Villon and begged
+him to kill my enemy. He backed his love tale with his sword--and he
+lies in the shadow of death. It is not just that he should suffer
+for my sin."
+
+Villon turned suddenly upon the beautiful suppliant. A thought had
+come into his brain so whimsical and so fantastic that it made him
+as dizzy for an instant as if the smooth grass beneath him had
+yawned into a sheer and evil precipice.
+
+"Do you by any chance love this Villon?"
+
+A little wave of disdain rippled over the girl's calm face.
+
+"Great ladies do not love tavern bravos. But I pity him, and I do
+not want him to die, though, indeed, life cannot be very dear to him
+if he would fling it away to please a woman."
+
+She had held a rose in her hand, and as she spoke she flung it from
+her in dainty symbolism of the life which the poor tavern poet had
+risked so bravely for her sake. A mad resolve came into Villon's
+mind. If he was, indeed, all that this woman thought him to be, all
+that those with whom he had spoken had assured him he was, now was
+his chance to play the lover to his heart's desire. If the Grand
+Constable had the power to pardon, surely the Grand Constable had
+also the right to woo. She had drawn a little way from him and he
+followed her up, standing so close to her that with a little
+movement he might have kissed her on the cheek.
+
+"Even when you are the woman? If I had stood in this rascal's shoes,
+I would have done as he did for your sake."
+
+The girl gave a joyous cry.
+
+"If you think this, you should grant the poor knave his freedom."
+
+Villon flung his hands apart with a magnificent gesture of
+liberation.
+
+"That broker of ballads shall go free. Your prayer unshackles him
+and we will do no more than banish him from Paris. Forget that such
+a slave ever came near you."
+
+The lady dropped him a magnificent curtsey, and her cheeks glowed
+with gratitude.
+
+"I shall remember your clemency."
+
+She made as if she would leave his presence, but his boldness waxed
+within him as a fire waxes with new wood, and he caught her lightly
+by the wrist.
+
+"By Saint Venus, I envy this fellow that he should have won your
+thoughts. For I am in his case and I, too, would die to serve you!"
+
+Surprise flamed in the girl's eyes, surprise and amusement mingled.
+
+"My lord, you do not know me," she laughed, and her laughter was as
+fresh and merry as a milkmaid's in the meadows.
+
+"Did he know you? Yet when he saw you he loved you and made bold to
+tell you so."
+
+Her forehead wrinkled prettily in a little protesting frown.
+
+"His words were of no more account than the wind in the eaves. But
+you and I are peers and the words we change have meanings."
+
+Villon caught his breath. The Lord of Montcorbier was, indeed,
+wardered by very different stars from the fellow of the Fircone. He
+saluted her banteringly.
+
+"Though I be newly come to Paris I have heard much of the beauty and
+more of the pride of the Lady Katherine de Vaucelles."
+
+A little fire burned in the girl's pale cheeks, and she flung her
+head back scornfully.
+
+"I am humble enough as to my beauty, but I am very proud of my
+pride."
+
+Villon, leaning forward with entreating hands, pleaded with
+beseeching lips.
+
+"Would you pity me if I told you that I loved you?"
+
+Katherine laughed, and the music of her laughter seemed to wake
+faint echoes among the roses as if every blossom were a magic bell
+with a fairy hand at the clapper.
+
+"Heaven's mercy," she said. "How fast your fancy gallops. I care
+little to be flattered and less to be wooed, and I swear that I
+should be very hard to win."
+
+She turned to mount the steps as she spoke, as if she had said all
+that she wanted to say, but Villon delayed her with imploring
+protest.
+
+"I have more right to try than your taproom bandit. I see what he
+saw; I love what he loved."
+
+Again the girl's laughter brightened the summer air.
+
+"You are very inflammable."
+
+Villon caught at her words.
+
+"My fire burns to the ashes. You can no more stay me from loving you
+than you can stay the flowers from loving the soft air, or true men
+from loving honour, or heroes from loving glory. I would rake the
+moon from heaven for you."
+
+The girl swayed her head daintily, as a queen rose might in a realm
+of roses. There was something like pity in her eyes, but laughter
+lingered on her lips.
+
+"That promise has grown rusty since Adam first made it to Eve." She
+eyed him in silence for a second time, deriding his sighs with a
+smile: then "There is a rhyme in my mind," she cried, "about moons
+and lovers," and she began to declaim, half muse, half minx, some
+lines that had pleased her, to tease the importunate stranger.
+
+  "Life is unstable,
+    Love may uphold;
+  Fear goes in sable,
+    Courage in gold.
+  Mystery covers
+    Midnight and noon,
+  Heroes and lovers
+    Cry for the moon."
+
+As the first words of the verse fell from her lips, Villon's heart
+leaped and his eyes brightened for he knew the sound. They were part
+of the rhymes himself had sent her on that very parchment which had
+cost him first a dinner and then a drubbing. He had fancied the
+words and the rhymes when he wrote them, but now they seemed to
+sound on his ears with the married music of all the falling waters
+and all the blowing winds of the world. It was a shining face that
+he turned to the girl as he jeered, denying the thought in his
+heart:
+
+"What doggerel!"
+
+The girl flashed scorn at him.
+
+"Doggerel! It is divinity," she insisted, flinging a kiss from her
+finger-tips in Godspeed, as it were, to the banished ballad-maker,
+as she moved a little further up the steps. Villon followed her. Let
+come what might come, he was the maid's equal for the moment and
+would press his suit if he died for it.
+
+"Tell me what I may do," he said, "to win your favour."
+
+The girl's smiling face grew graver as she looked down on the
+imploring poet.
+
+"A trifle," she said lightly, as a child might bid for a doll; and
+then, as Villon's eyes glowed questions, her voice rang out like the
+call of a clarion. "Save France!" she trumpeted.
+
+Villon caught fire from both her moods.
+
+"No more?" he said, and though the sound of his voice jested, the
+look in his eyes was earnest.
+
+The girl responded to jest and earnest royally.
+
+"No less. Are you not Grand Constable, chief of the king's army?
+There is an enemy at the gates of Paris, and none of the king's men
+can frighten him away." She pointed out where, in the distance,
+beyond the walls of Paris, the pitched tents of the enemy fluttered
+their hostile flags. Her bosom heaved with great desire. "Oh, that a
+man would come to court! For the man who shall trail the banners of
+Burgundy in the dust for the king of France to walk on, I may
+perhaps have favours."
+
+Villon looked at her as men must have looked at Joan of Arc when she
+bade them rise up and strike for France.
+
+"You are hard to please," he said, but his heart was full of joy at
+the thought of trying to please her. If he could do this thing!
+
+The girl answered his words and not his thoughts.
+
+"My hero must have every virtue for his wreath, every courage for
+his coronet. Farewell."
+
+By this time she had reached the terrace and she made to enter the
+palace. Villon called to her longingly:
+
+"Stay! I have a thousand things to say to you."
+
+The girl smiled denial.
+
+"I have but one," she said, "and I have said it long since.
+Farewell."
+
+Villon made a dash for audacity.
+
+"I will follow you," he said, and he moved to do so, but the girl's
+lifted finger stayed him.
+
+"You may not," she said peremptorily. "I go to the queen." And so
+with a swift salutation, gracious as the dip of a dancing wave, she
+entered the palace and left him standing there, dazed and ardent, as
+a man might be who had just been vouchsafed the vision of an angel.
+He murmured to himself her words as he slowly descended the steps to
+the ground,
+
+"Oh, that a man would come to court," and on that text he wove the
+hopeful commentary of his thoughts.
+
+"Why should I not deserve her? Last night I was only a poor devil
+with a rusty sword and a single suit. To-day all's different. I am
+the king's friend, it would seem, a court potentate, a man of mark.
+What may I not accomplish? This finery smiles like sunlight and the
+world will warm its hands at me."
+
+He was exquisitely pleased with himself, exquisitely pleased with
+the world that held him and Katherine. He forgot, as lovers always
+will forget, that there was any one else in the world save himself
+and his beloved, and he was so wrapped in his sweet contemplations
+that he did not hear the tower door gently open, did not hear the
+soft, creeping footsteps of the king as he came out of his hiding
+place and shuffled across the soft grass toward his plaything.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE ANSWER TO BURGUNDY
+
+
+
+
+
+A touch on the shoulder roused Villon from his honeyed meditations,
+and he turned with a start to find the sable figure of the king at
+his side and the sinister visage smiling upon him.
+
+"Good afternoon, Lord Constable," Louis said amiably, and as Villon
+dropped respectfully on his knee, he questioned:
+
+"Does power taste well?"
+
+"Nobly, sire. On my knees let me thank your majesty."
+
+"Nonsense, man; I'm pleasing myself. You sang yourself into
+splendour. 'If François were the king of France,' eh?"
+
+Villon rose with voice and gesture of apologetic entreaty.
+
+"Your majesty will understand--"
+
+Louis brushed his apologies aside blandly.
+
+"Perfectly. My good friend, you captivated me. With what a flashing
+eye, with what a radiant forehead, with what a lofty carriage you
+thundered your verses at me. 'There,' I said to myself, 'is a real
+man, a man with a mission, a man who may serve France.'"
+
+"Sire, that has been my hunger's dream of plenty."
+
+Louis clasped his thin arms across his chest and hugged himself
+affectionately.
+
+"Well, I couldn't very well make you king, you know, and I wouldn't
+if I could, for I have a fancy for the task myself. But I owed you a
+good turn and your own words prompted the payment. 'This poor devil
+shall taste power,' I said. 'I will make him my Grand Constable--'"
+
+Villon's joy was so great that he was unable to hear the king out,
+but interrupted him with enthusiastic promises.
+
+"Sire, I will serve you as never king was served."
+
+Louis went on unheeding, and his quiet, monotonous words fell on the
+hot brain of the poet and chilled it.
+
+"I will make him my Grand Constable for a week."
+
+If Louis had jerked a dagger into Villon's side, he could not have
+more surely hurt his victim.
+
+"A week, sire?" Villon gasped, almost unable to realize the meaning
+of the king's words.
+
+Louis turned upon him and snarled at him:
+
+"Good Lord, did your vanity credit a permanent appointment? Come,
+friend, come, that would be pushing the joke too far!"
+
+All the sunlight seemed to have gone out of the world, all the scent
+out of the roses. Villon could only repeat to himself: "A week!" and
+stare vacantly at the king. The king emphasized his offer, lingering
+over it lovingly.
+
+"Even so. One wonderful week, seven delirious days." He paused for
+an instant as he counted. "One hundred and sixty-eight heavenly
+hours. It's the chance of a lifetime. The world was made in seven
+days. Seven days of power, seven days of splendour, seven days of
+love."
+
+Villon gave a groan of despair for his golden hopes.
+
+"And then go back to the garret and the kennel, the tavern and the
+brothel!"
+
+Louis' malign smile deepened. He came closer to the poet and tapped
+him on the chest with his lean forefinger. He was enjoying himself
+immensely.
+
+"No, no, not exactly." he hummed. "You don't taste the full force of
+the joke yet. In a week's time you will build me a big gibbet in the
+Place de Greve, and there your last task as Grand Constable will be
+to hang Master François Villon."
+
+If the world had been colourless and scentless before, it was now no
+better than a hideous heap of ashes. If Villon had run up a heavy
+reckoning with the king at the Fircone Tavern, must he wipe out the
+score with his life-blood? Villon fell at the king's feet with
+extended hands and agonized, beseeching eyes.
+
+"Sire, sire, have pity!"
+
+The king looked down on him in disdain.
+
+"Are you so fond of life? Are you so poor a thing that you prize
+your garret and your kennel, your tavern and your brothel so
+highly?"
+
+Villon bowed his head.
+
+"I was content yesterday."
+
+The king surveyed the cowering figure with growing contempt.
+
+"Can you be content to-day? Please yourself. There is still a door
+open to you. You can go back to your garret this very moment if you
+choose. Say the word and my servants shall strip you of your smart
+feathers and drub you into the street."
+
+Villon buried his face in his hands. "Your majesty, be merciful!" he
+implored.
+
+The king's scorn blazed out:
+
+"You read Louis of France a lesson, and Louis of France returns the
+compliment. I took you for true gold and I am afraid that you are
+only base metal. You mouthed your longing for the chance to show
+what you could do. Here is your chance! Take it or leave it. But
+remember that I never change my mind. You may have your week of
+wonder if you wish, but if you do, by my word as a king, you shall
+swing for it."
+
+Villon rose to his feet and caught at his throat as if the grip of
+the rope were at that very moment closing about it. He choked as he
+spoke.
+
+"In God's name, sire, what have I done that you should torture me
+thus?"
+
+The king snapped his answer:
+
+"You have mocked a king and maimed a minister. You can't get off
+scot free."
+
+Villon's bewildered thoughts forced themselves into words. He spoke
+not so much to the king as to himself, desperately trying to decide.
+
+"Heaven help me! Life, squalid, sordid, but still life, with its
+tavern corners and its brute pleasures of food and drink and warm
+sleep, living hands to hold and living laughter to gladden me--or a
+week of cloth of gold, of glory, of love--and then a shameful
+death!"
+
+He flung himself on the marble seat and crouched there, shuddering.
+
+The king patted him on the back.
+
+"Pray, friend, pray, to help your judgment!"
+
+He had taken off his black velvet cap and ran his eye over the
+little row of metal saints which encircled it as if he were
+meditating to which particular patron he should recommend his Grand
+Constable to address himself. As he did so, Olivier le Dain came
+through the garden and moved swiftly to the king's side.
+
+"Sire," he said, "the Burgundian herald, Toison d'Or, attends under
+a flag of truce with a message for your majesty."
+
+Louis turned to his barber.
+
+"We will receive him here, Olivier, in this green audience chamber.
+We need the free air when we hold speech with Burgundy."
+
+As Olivier left the royal presence a little thing happened which
+meant much to four people. Katherine came on to the terrace with
+Noel le Jolys. She had a lute in her hand and she touched its chords
+lightly, seeking to make an air for words as she idled the time with
+her wooer. Louis saw her, though Villon did not, for he was huddled
+in a heap on the marble seat with his head in his hands trying to
+control his whirling thoughts. A new demon of mischief entered the
+king's heart.
+
+"How," he thought, "if my lady Virtue, who flouted me, could be
+lured to love this beggar-man?" He ambled across to where Villon
+lay and tapped him on the shoulder. Villon turned to him a face
+drawn and white with agony.
+
+"One further chance, fellow," said the king. "If the Count of
+Montcorbier win the heart of Lady Katherine de Vaucelles within the
+week, he shall escape the gallows and carry his lady love where he
+pleases."
+
+"On your word of honour, sire?"
+
+"My word is my honour, Master François. Well?"
+
+At this very moment it pleased heaven that Katherine, sitting on the
+terrace and smiling at the adoration in Noel le Jolys' eyes, seemed
+to find the air she sought and began to sing. The tune was quaint
+and plaintive, tender as an ancient lullaby, the words were the
+words of the tortured poet, and as he heard them a new hope seemed
+to come into his heart.
+
+  "Life is unstable,
+    Love may uphold;
+  Fear goes in sable,
+    Courage in gold.
+  Mystery covers
+    Midnight and noon,
+  Heroes and lovers
+    Cry for the moon."
+
+"Well," said the king; "you cried for the moon; I give it to you."
+
+"And I take it at your hands!" Villon thundered. "Give me my week of
+wonders though I die a dog's death at the end of it. I will show
+France and her what lay in the heart of the poor rhymester."
+
+Louis applauded, clapping his thin hands together gleefully.
+
+"Spoken like a man! But remember, a bargain's a bargain. If you fail
+to win the lady, you must, with heaven's help, keep yourself for the
+gallows. No self-slaughter, no flinging away your life on some other
+fool's sword. I give you the moon, but I want my price for it."
+
+Villon's blood now ran warm again in its channels, and he answered
+stoutly:
+
+"Sire, I will keep my bargain. Give me my week of opportunity, and
+if I do not make the most of it I shall deserve the death to which
+you devote me."
+
+Even as he spoke the air was stirred with a cheerful flourish of
+trumpets and the quiet garden was invaded by Tristan l'Hermite and a
+company of soldiers, escorting a tall and stately gentleman, whose
+gorgeous tabard proclaimed him to be Toison d'Or, the herald of the
+Duke of Burgundy. The news of his coming had run through the palace,
+and the terrace was suddenly flooded with courtiers and ladies eager
+to hear what the enemy's envoy had to say and what answer the king
+would send back to him. Louis seated himself on the marble seat
+anigh the image of Pan and drew Villon down beside him.
+
+"Listen well to this man's words, my Lord Constable," he whispered,
+and then turning to the gleaming figure of the herald, he demanded:
+
+"Your message, sir?"
+
+Toison d'Or advanced a few feet nearer to the monarch and spoke in a
+ringing voice.
+
+"In the name of the Duke of Burgundy and of his allies and
+brothers-in-arms assembled in solemn leaguer outside the walls of
+Paris, I hereby summon you, Louis of France, to surrender this city
+unconditionally and to yield yourself in confidence to my master's
+mercy."
+
+The king folded his hands over his knees and inclined his head a
+little, like an enquiring bird.
+
+"And if we refuse, Sir Herald?"
+
+The herald answered promptly:
+
+"The worst disasters of war, fire and sword and famine, much blood
+to shed and much gold to pay and for yourself no hope of pardon."
+
+"Great words," the king sneered.
+
+The herald replied proudly:
+
+"The angels of great deeds."
+
+Villon had been sitting listening as a man listens in a dream,
+almost unconscious of what was taking place. Among the ladies on the
+terrace Katherine stood conspicuous in her youth and beauty, and to
+her his eyes were turned in worship. The quarrels of great princes,
+the destinies of France were for the moment indifferent to him. He
+forgot his high desires of empire, his swelling belief in his real
+mission. He was only conscious that a great prize lay temptingly
+within his grasp, that he might win his heart's desire. Louis
+interrupted his reverie:
+
+"The Count of Montcorbier, Constable of France, is my counsellor.
+His voice delivers my mind. Speak, friend, and give this messenger
+his answer."
+
+He touched Villon on the arm and Villon turned to him in
+astonishment. "As I will, sire?"
+
+The king caught him up impatiently.
+
+"Yes, go on, go on. 'If Villon were the king of France.'"
+
+Villon leaped to his feet and advanced toward the herald. A wild
+exultation filled his veins with fire. He felt as if he were the
+lord of the world, as if his hands held the scales that decided the
+destinies of nations. He had always dreamed of the great deeds he
+would do, and now great deeds were possible to him, and at least he
+would try to do them. He looked straight into the herald's
+changeless face, but his heart shrined Katherine as he spoke.
+
+"Herald of Burgundy, in God's name and the king's, I bid you go back
+to your master and say this: Kings are great in the eyes of their
+people, but the people are great in the eyes of God, and it is the
+people of France who answer you in the name of this epitome. The
+people of Paris are not so poor of spirit that they fear the croak
+of the Burgundian ravens. We are well victualled, we are well armed;
+we lie snug and warm behind our stout walls; we laugh at your
+leaguer. But when we who eat are hungry, when we who drink are dry,
+when we who glow are frozen, when there is neither bite on the board
+nor sup in the pitcher nor spark upon the hearth, our answer to
+rebellious Burgundy will be the same. You are knocking at our doors,
+beware lest we open them and come forth to speak with our enemy at
+the gate. We give you back defiance for defiance, menace for menace,
+blow for blow. This is our answer--this and the drawn sword. God and
+St. Denis for the King of France!"
+
+As he spoke, he drew his sword and flashed it aloft in the sunlight.
+There was contagion in his burning words, and every soldier present
+bared his blade and pointed it to heaven while Villon's cry was
+repeated upon a hundred lips. As Toison d'Or turned and left the
+presence, Katherine came swiftly down the steps and flung herself at
+Villon's feet.
+
+"My Lord," she said. "With my lips the women of France thank you for
+your words of flame."
+
+Louis leaned forward, smiling sardonically.
+
+"Mistress, what does this mean?" he questioned.
+
+The girl rose to her feet, looking into Villon's face with eyes that
+mirrored the admiration shining in his eyes.
+
+"It means, sire, that a man has come to court!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+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
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+
+
+
+On the seventh day of Villon's week of wonder, his glory was at its
+greatest. No fairer day had traced that radiant month of June and no
+more splendid pageantry had adorned the illustrious reign of the new
+Grand Constable. Mimic battles, fountains running wine, free doles
+of food, fantastic pageants, grotesque dances, all the gorgeous
+mummery that the fifteenth century delighted in was offered in
+profusion to please the fancy and win the hearts of the people of
+Paris. But the crowning triumph was the great festival which the
+Grand Constable gave with the king's permission in the king's own
+rose garden, the magnificent mascarado in the Italian manner, to
+which all who were associated with the court were summoned. This
+revelry which began at sunset was intended to overtop all possible
+courtly ceremonials in the splendour of its equipment, the
+lavishness of its display, the richness and profusion of its
+hospitality.
+
+It was near to the hour of sunset when Villon sat with the king in
+the little room in the grey tower from which the king loved to
+follow the movements of the heavenly bodies. On the table by which
+the king and Villon were seated lay a large chart of the country in
+the immediate neighbourhood of Paris, and in front of the table
+stood three of the king's most trusty commanders, the Lord du Lau,
+the Lord Poncet de Riviere and the Lord of Nantoillet.
+
+Villon had been explaining to the king and to his military advisers
+a scheme which had been growing in his mind throughout the week for
+the confusion of the enemy, a scheme for which the gorgeous
+entertainment to be given that evening was to serve as a golden
+mask. Villon touched a point on the map which represented a spot
+very familiar to him, a little dip in the swelling land, where he
+used to play as a child and gather wildflowers and hide himself, and
+imagine that he was a bandit or a great captain or a fairy
+prince--any one of the thousand illusions of childhood at its play.
+
+"There, sire," he said. "If we can lure the Burgundians to that
+hollow, the day is ours. The sloping ground above it will mask a
+thousand men."
+
+Poncet de Riviere leaned forward questioningly.
+
+"Are you sure of the lay of the land?"
+
+Villon answered positively:
+
+"Sure. I played truant there when I was no higher than your sword
+belt."
+
+Nantoillet spoke as a man who weighs his words:
+
+"The scheme seems feasible, sire."
+
+Villon glanced up from the table in humourous apology.
+
+"You may think me a raw soldier," he said; "yet I have practised
+strategy all my days."
+
+Du Lau answered him approvingly:
+
+"My lord, you reason like a seasoned veteran."
+
+Pleased with the praise Villon turned to the king.
+
+"Sire, I have blown it abroad that your majesty feasts to-night.
+While the Duke of Burgundy believes us to be carousing, we shall
+make a sortie from St. Anthony's gate. Our horses' hooves will be
+muffled, no spur shall jingle, and no bridle clink. We will steal
+through the night like shadows. At the cross road some few of us
+will make an attack upon the enemy's left and beat a retreat. This
+will tempt him into our ambuscade and as I believe end in his rout.
+At nine, my lords. Farewell."
+
+He raised his hand in dismissal; the three captains saluted the king
+and his minister and passed out of the presence. As they descended
+the winding stairs, du Lau said to his companions:
+
+"I do not know your hearts, my lords, but I love this soldier of
+fortune."
+
+Nantoillet answered cordially:
+
+"God knows where he came from and God knows where he will go to, but
+I would ride with him to the world's end."
+
+"My father," said Poncet de Riviere, "told me often of the Maid of
+Orleans and her power with bearded men. He must be of her kindred,
+for he wins me against my will."
+
+As the sound of their feet died away in the depths of the tower,
+Villon turned to the king.
+
+"If the Duke of Burgundy falls into my trap," he said; "men will
+call me a great captain. Yet it is no more than remembering the
+shape of a meadow where I played in childhood. Strange that an
+urchin's playground should become a Golgotha of graves and glories."
+
+The king clapped him playfully on the shoulder.
+
+"Where did you learn wisdom?"
+
+"In the school of hope deferred. When I was--what I was, I still
+believed that this dingy carcass swaddled a Roman spirit. In the
+pomp of my pallet I dreamed Olympian dreams. And the dreams have
+come true."
+
+"You are an amazing fellow. Here in a week, you have made me more
+popular than I made myself since my accession. In court, in camp, in
+council, men are pleased to call you paragon."
+
+"I am a man of the people and I know what the people need. A week
+ago the good people of Paris were disloyal enough. I repeal the tax
+on wine and to-day they clap their hands and cry 'God save King
+Louis' lustily. A week ago your soldiers were mutinous because they
+were ill fed, worse clothed, and never paid at all. I feed them
+full, clothe them warm, pay them well, and to-day your majesty has
+an army that would follow me to the devil if I whistled a marching
+tune."
+
+"But in the meantime, your sands are running out. Is your heart
+failing? Is your pulse flagging?"
+
+"Not a whit. I have been translated without discredit from the
+tavern to the palace, and if the worse comes to the worst, I may say
+with the dying Caesar, 'Applaud me.'"
+
+The king grinned sardonically.
+
+"Will the worse come to the worst?" he piped, "How is your suit with
+the Lady Katherine?"
+
+Villon's smile lingered still on his lips as he answered:
+
+"Sire, no wise man boasts that he knows the heart of a woman, and
+yet, I hope for the best."
+
+"But if you fail," the king persisted.
+
+Villon's smile grew more philosophical. In his heart he felt fairly
+confident, but spoke cautiously.
+
+"Why, then, when the housewife moon kindles her pale fire on the
+hearth of heaven to-morrow, I shall be quiet enough. But either way
+you have given me a royal week, and I have made the most of it,
+lived a thousand lives, eaten my cake to the last sweet crumb and
+have known the meaning of kingship."
+
+Louis laughed.
+
+"You speak as if you had reigned for a century."
+
+Villon's sententious mood deepened.
+
+"A man might live a thousand years and yet be no more account at the
+last than as a great eater of dinners. Whereas to suck all the sweet
+and snuff all the perfume but of a single hour, to push all its
+possibilities to the edge of the chessboard, is to live greatly
+though it be not to live long, and an end is an end if it come on
+the winged heels of a week or the dull crutch of a century."
+
+Louis leaned back and looked at his companion in astonishment.
+
+"Pray heaven this philosophy may sound as fine when your neck is in
+the halter."
+
+"Your majesty's wit and my wish run nose and nose in a leash."
+
+Louis changed the subject as if there were more important matters in
+the world than the life, loves and death even of a Grand Constable.
+
+"Messire Noel brings me a new astrologer to-night. The heavens seem
+in a conspiracy of confusion, the stars are all a tangle! My dream
+of a star falling from heaven defies divination."
+
+Villon looked at him pityingly.
+
+"Do you never tire of these sky doctors?" he questioned.
+
+Louis frowned, as he always frowned at any hint of disbelief in the
+science of the stars.
+
+"Don't jest, master poet," he said, "but ply your suit with proud
+Kate, for I swear if you fail, you shall hang to-morrow. Now leave
+me, for I must work while you play," and he bent over a chart and
+seemed to forget all else in his profound contemplation.
+
+Villon looked at him for a moment in silence and then went out of
+the room and descended the steps, opened the little door, and passed
+into the garden. The summer sun was dying in a splendid riot of
+colour among the rose trees. Its last rays, falling on the face of
+the god Pan, illuminated his fantastic features and seemed to lend
+them the life of an ironic leer. The warm air was rich with the
+blended odours of a thousand blossoms, and from the palace, faint
+and far off, came the sound of joyous voices. It was almost the
+moment when the rose garden was to be thrown open to the royal
+guests.
+
+Villon pulled a rose from a bush by his hand and gazed into its
+crimson heart as if he sought to read there the secret which all
+flowers hold but which no flower has ever yet betrayed to the
+longing eyes of a poet. He leaned against the statue of Pan and
+mused pensively.
+
+"The petals of my reign are falling from me full of life, full of
+colour to the end. Shall I win this wonderful woman? Am I mad to
+hope it? If I lose, it is a short shrift and a long rope at the end
+of a dazzling dream."
+
+He shivered as he thought and cast the rose he held away from him.
+
+"How cold the June air seems, and these roses smell of graves." He
+paused a little till his hopes took heart again. "But if I win, how
+will it be, I wonder, to marry my heart's desire, to grow old
+sedately, to live again with the children on my knee, a little
+François here more honest than his father, a little Katherine there
+less comely than her mother!"
+
+He flung out his hands as if he were dismissing the phantoms of his
+fancy.
+
+"Run away, my dear dream children to your playground of shadows
+where you belong, for your father may be hanged to-morrow, and he
+fights for love and life to-night."
+
+Villon's reflections were fluttered by a sudden blare of music, and
+a gaudy fellow in a pursuivant's coat made his appearance on the top
+of the terrace and rattled blast after blast from his brazen
+trumpet. In obedience to the long-looked-for signal, a many-coloured
+crowd of revellers gushed from the palace and flowed like a glowing
+wave of merry-making down the steps and into the walks and alleys of
+the rose garden. All the strange figures that a freakish fancy could
+suggest leaped and danced and shouted in a rapture of mirth-satyrs
+and follies, clowns and devils wheeled wildly by, waving torches,
+clashing cymbals, or screaming at the top of their voices, while
+sedater spirits, masked and muffled in mantles of sombre hue, moved
+through the tumultuous throng and found their abated pleasure in
+mystification and intrigues.
+
+Villon had a mask in his girdle. He put it on and pushing into the
+press allowed himself to drift hither and thither with the eddying
+currents of pleasure. His fantastic imagination took fire from the
+strange shapes and sounds about him. The sense of being in a dream,
+which had never deserted him from the first moment of his awakened
+consciousness in the rose garden, clung closely about him on this
+night, and the jocund figures around him flitted by as unreal as the
+phantoms of a noon-tide sleep.
+
+Suddenly his attention was arrested by the sound of a voice that
+seemed familiar to him. A man habited like a pilgrim from the Holy
+Land, in long hood and gabardine of grey, and with the pilgrim's
+cockleshell on his shoulder, had met another masker, habited like
+himself. The pair were exchanging salutations, in a speech that the
+speakers might well assume to be unknown to any person in the royal
+garden. The speech, however, jingled very familiarly on Villon's
+ear, for the man was talking in the amazing jargon which the
+worshipful company of cockleshells had devised for the better
+furtherance of their thievish purposes, and it appealed to Villon as
+intimately as a song that is learned in childhood.
+
+The first pilgrim questioned the other,
+
+"What do you carry in your scrip?"
+
+And the second answered:
+
+"I carry a cockleshell."
+
+The first pilgrim questioned again:
+
+"What do you carry in your hand?"
+
+And the second responded:
+
+"A foot of steel."
+
+Yet again the first speaker queried:
+
+"Will you drink the king's health?"
+
+And the answer came decisively:
+
+"In a flagon of Burgundy."
+
+Whereat the two pilgrims saluted and parted and went their several
+ways and were swallowed up in the motley masquerade.
+
+Villon's curiosity was piqued to the quick.
+
+"How in heaven's name," he asked himself, "does it come to pass that
+people speaking the thieves' lingo of the Court of Miracles find
+themselves at a feast in the rose garden of King Louis?"
+
+He set himself to try and track down one or the other of the
+mysterious pilgrims, but neither of them was to be found. His
+wanderings brought him back to the fair space at the foot of the
+terrace protected by the image of the god Pan. The place was
+deserted; the revellers had drifted elsewhere. A lute lay on the
+marble seat. Villon seated himself and taking up the instrument was
+touching it carelessly, when a light step on the grass arrested him,
+the sweetest voice in the world sounded in his ears, and he found
+himself addressed by the Lady Katherine de Vaucelles, who was
+attended by a number of fair court ladies.
+
+"I am the voice of these ladies to pray for a favour."
+
+Villon bowed low.
+
+"My ear is all obedience," he said, "and my heart all homage."
+
+"You are a poet, my lord," said Katherine, "and this is an eve which
+should please a poet. Rhyme us a rhyme which shall match this night
+of summer."
+
+Villon sighed a little.
+
+"No rhyme ever rhymed was worth a beam of summer sun or summer moon;
+but I have lingered in Provence where every man is a nightingale,
+and I caught there the fever of improvisation. What shall I rhyme
+about?"
+
+Katherine laughed as she pointed to her attendant ladies.
+
+"Your suitors are women; therefore, nothing better nor worse than
+love."
+
+"The burden of the world," Villon said. "Sigh, my lute, sigh."
+
+He let his fingers ripple over the strings, waking the faint wail of
+a plaintive minor. In a moment or two he began to recite, touching
+every now and then a chord on his lute to emphasize the words he
+spoke:
+
+  "I wonder in what Isle of Bliss
+    Apollo's music fills the air;
+  In what green valley Artemis
+    For young Endymion spreads the snare:
+  Where Venus lingers debonair:
+    The Wind has blown them all away--
+  And Pan lies piping in his lair--
+    Where are the Gods of Yesterday?
+
+  "Say where the great Semiramis
+    Sleeps in a rose-red tomb; and where
+  The precious dust of Caesar is,
+    Or Cleopatra's yellow hair:
+  Where Alexander Do-and-Dare;
+    The Wind has blown them all away--
+  And Redbeard of the Iron Chair;
+    Where are the Dreams of Yesterday?
+
+  "Where is the Queen of Herod's kiss,
+    And Phryne in her beauty bare;
+  By what strange sea does Tomyris
+    With Dido and Cassandra share
+  Divine Proserpina's despair;
+    The Wind has blown them all away--
+  For what poor ghost does Helen care?
+    Where are the Girls of Yesterday?
+
+  "Alas for lovers! Pair by pair
+    The Wind has blown them all away:
+  The young and yare, the fond and fair:
+    Where are the Snows of Yesterday?"
+
+The little group whom he addressed lingered in a gracious silence
+for a short space. Singer and listeners seemed to be in an exquisite
+isolation of moonlight and soft odours. Katherine murmured pensively
+to herself:
+
+"Where are the snows of yesterday?"
+
+Her eyes were shining like summer stars, her parted lips made Villon
+think of ripe pomegranates, her mind was wandering in the Islands of
+the Blest with the lovers and ladies whom Villon had praised. Villon
+dismissed melancholy with a jest:
+
+"Sweet ladies," he said; "my song is sung. Do not let it dishearten
+you, for, believe me, it will snow again next year and lie white and
+light on the graves of dead lovers. Yesterday is dead, and to-morrow
+comes never."
+
+He drew very close to Katherine and whispered the end of his
+sentence in her ear:
+
+"Let us live and love to-day."
+
+Katherine gave a little start as she dropped from cloudland and
+looked at him. He drew back and turned to the others.
+
+"Fair ladies," he said; "shall we go to the great hall where the
+Italian players gambol?"
+
+The women gathered about him, thanking him for his song, and then
+fluttered away like brilliant birds, up the steps to the terrace. As
+they did so a figure in a pilgrim's gown came from the scented gloom
+of one of the rose alleys, paused for a moment as if undecided as to
+his course, and then proceeded to cross the space of moonlit grass.
+He did not heed Katherine, standing in the shadow, till he almost
+touched her. Then he glanced at her, and with a stifled exclamation
+hurried past, plunged into the darkness of an opposite alley, and
+disappeared. Katherine gave a little cry that was almost a cry of
+fear, and ran swiftly to where Villon stood apart at the foot of the
+steps awaiting her pleasure.
+
+"My lord!" she cried, and he, turning, swiftly responded:
+
+"My lady!"
+
+"This masking kindles fancies. I thought but now that the eyes of
+Thibaut d'Aussigny glared on me from under a pilgrim's hood."
+
+Villon frowned.
+
+"A villainous apparition. For the news is that he lies dead in the
+camp of Burgundy."
+
+Katherine gave a little shudder.
+
+"I always hated him; almost feared him. If he be dead, I hope he
+will not haunt me. Ah! I tingle to-night like a lute that is tuned
+too high."
+
+"Let us think of no evil things to-night," Villon responded. "Will
+you watch the players?"
+
+Katherine shook her head.
+
+"Nay, I am more in a mood for moonlight than candlelight."
+
+Villon looked at her in silence, a silence of seconds that seemed to
+both of them like the silence of hours. The hearts of both were
+houses of sweet hopes, and the brains of both were hives of happy
+thoughts.
+
+"May I ask you a question?" Villon said, and the girl answered:
+
+"Surely."
+
+"Are you content with me?"
+
+"You have done much."
+
+"I have more to do. For seven days I have wrestled with greatness as
+Jacob wrestled with the angels; I have made the king popular, the
+Parisians loyal, the army faithful--"
+
+"Then why do you linger here where courtiers feast and ladies
+dance?"
+
+Villon's voice swelled proudly as he answered:
+
+"I want the Duke of Burgundy to believe that the king's favourite is
+a zany, and the king's court an orgy, where the king's honour melts
+like a pearl in a pot of vinegar. But our swords are tempered in
+wine and sharpened to dance music, and to-night we ride."
+
+The girl sighed. "I would that I were a man that I might ride with
+you."
+
+Villon came close to her and peered into her eyes.
+
+"I ride in your honour. Heaven has been very good to me, and I serve
+France serving you. Perhaps I serve both for the last time."
+
+"For the last time?" she repeated.
+
+"Even so, my sweet Lady Echo. Those far away lanterns warn me that I
+may die to-morrow. Some of us will be dreaming our last dreams by
+sunrise. I may be one of those heavy sleepers."
+
+"Why, you may die if you ride on the king's business, but so may I
+who sit at home and eat my heart."
+
+"For whom?"
+
+"I will tell you that to-morrow."
+
+Villon touched her lightly on the wrist and pointed to the grey
+tower on whose weather-beaten wall the quaint old dial showed
+plainly in the bright moonlight, with its wise Latin inscription:
+"Dum Spectas, Fugit Hora, Carpe Diem."
+
+"There is no time like now time. That dial there is as wise as the
+wisest." And he rapidly rendered the antique maxim into a running
+rhyme:
+
+  "Observe how fast time hurries past,
+    Then use each hour while in your power;
+  For comes the sun but time flies on,
+    Proceeding ever, returning never."
+
+Katherine tried to laugh.
+
+"This was old wisdom when Noah sailed the seas," she said, and drew
+a little apart from him. Villon followed her.
+
+"Well, let to-morrow tell to-morrow's story. To-night I feel like a
+happy child in a world of make-believe. To-night we are immortal,
+you and I, wandering forever in this green garden under those
+indifferent stars, breathing this rose-scented air, spelling the
+secret of the world."
+
+"You may say what you please to-morrow," she whispered, but Villon
+would not have it so.
+
+"Alas, no! To-morrow I shall be mortally sober; to-night I am
+divinely drunk-drunk with star wine, flower wine, song wine. The
+stars burn my brain; the roses pierce my flesh; the songs trouble my
+soul. To-night, if I dared, I would ease my heart."
+
+The girl spoke so faintly that only a lover's ears could hear the
+words:
+
+"You may say what you please to-night."
+
+Villon caught at his heart as if to keep it in the compass of his
+breast.
+
+"If I were to die to-morrow, I would tell you this to-night: I love
+you. These are easy words to say, yet my heart fails as I say them,
+for their meaning is as full and musical as the Bell of Doom. Men
+are such fools that they have but one name for a thousand meanings,
+and beggar the poor love-word to base kitchen usages and work-a-day
+desires. But I would keep it holy for the flame which it sometimes
+pleases heaven to light in one heart for the worship of another. I
+never knew what love was till I saw a girl's face on a May morning
+and wisdom stripped the rind from my naked heart. The God in me
+leaped into being to greet the God in your eyes. I love you. This is
+what I would say if I were to die to-morrow."
+
+He was very close to her now, and his eyes were looking into her
+eyes. She answered him frankly:
+
+"If you were to die to-morrow, I might tell you this much to-night.
+A woman may love a man because he is brave, or because he is comely,
+or because he is wise, or gentle--for a thousand thousand reasons.
+But the best of all reasons for a woman loving a man is just because
+she loves him, without rhyme and without reason, because heaven
+wills it, because earth fulfils it, because his hand is of the right
+size to hold her heart in its hollow."
+
+The lovers' hands were closely clasped, the lovers' lips were very
+near to meeting. Only the god Pan smiled and sneered as if he knew
+that sometimes lovers' lips fail to meet even when the space between
+fervent mouth and mouth is no bigger than a rose-leaf.
+
+"Katherine," Villon whispered, and drew her closer to him. Love,
+happiness, life were coming to his arms as to a shrine.
+
+In the sudden bliss that had come upon both the lovers they paid no
+heed to a footstep upon the terrace, till a voice struck like a
+sword-stroke across their ecstasy, the voice of Noel le Jolys.
+
+"Where are the lovers of yesterday?" Noel said mockingly as he
+slowly descended the steps to join them.
+
+There was a red rage in Villon's heart, but he bridled it as he
+turned upon the interloper contemptuously.
+
+"Your pink and white lady-bird," he said to Katherine, and then
+waving his hand at Noel with a gesture of disdain and dismissal,
+chanted at him:
+
+"Lady-bird, lady-bird, fly away home."
+
+Noel's pink face flushed a poppy red and his white hand went to his
+sword hilt. There was courage in the foppish substance, and he would
+clearly have rejoiced to try his chance in a passage-at-arms.
+
+"My lord," he said, "I will measure word and sword with you at any
+season, but now I seek promised speech with this lady."
+
+Villon laughed at his menace.
+
+"While I have better business in hand, you shall know only the
+smooth of my tongue and the flat of my falchion. Compass your
+swelling heart lest you play the lion before a lady."
+
+The two men eyed each other like angry dogs, eager to spring at each
+other's throats. Katherine dropped her restraining hand on Villon's
+arm.
+
+"My lord," she whispered, "he has importuned me for audience. I will
+speak with you again ere you ride."
+
+Villon turned to her.
+
+"We ride at nine, remember," he said in a low voice; and then in a
+louder tone, looking at Noel, he added mockingly, "Till then I shall
+busy myself in writing my last will and testament, and bequeathing a
+thousand nothings to a thousand nobodies to puzzle posterity. You
+shall taste of my bounty, Messire Noel," and he began to improvise
+derisively:
+
+  "To Messire Noel, named the neat
+  By those who love him, I bequeath
+  A helmless ship, a houseless street,
+  A wordless book, a swordless sheath,
+  An hourless clock, a leafless wreath,
+  A bed sans sheet, a board sans meat,
+  A bell sans tongue, a saw sans teeth,
+  To make his nothingness complete."
+
+Noel shrugged his shoulders and turned his back. He was very irate,
+but he was resolved to show nothing but indifference.
+
+"Do you leave me nothing?" Katherine whispered, and Villon answered:
+
+"Now and always the heart of my heart."
+
+He turned on his heel and glided into the liquid darkness of the
+rose alley, alone with exquisite thoughts.
+
+Katherine turned to Noel haughtily.
+
+"Well?" she said.
+
+"I have always to seek you nowadays," Noel protested.
+
+Katherine tossed her head, and her tresses trembled like leaves in
+the moonlight.
+
+"The world is not yet so old that the wooing must be done by women."
+
+"I am out of favour," Noel complained, "since a fellow from nowhere
+plays the fool in high places."
+
+Katherine's eyes showered scorn upon him.
+
+"I do not hate you for railing at him, but it does not help me to
+love you."
+
+Noel caught at the word.
+
+"You loved me once," he asserted.
+
+She shook her head pityingly.
+
+"We played with great words as children play with coloured balls. It
+is easy to say 'I love you,' and often very sweet; yet the coloured
+balls roll into the corner, and the child forgets them when the moon
+of childhood wanes."
+
+A wistful irritation puckered Noel's smooth countenance.
+
+"You have outgrown me?" he questioned.
+
+Katherine drew away from him till the moonlight that shone between
+them lay wide and white. She answered quietly:
+
+"My soul was in bud a week ago. To-day it is in blossom."
+
+Noel threw up his arms impatiently.
+
+"God have mercy! What can this fellow do that is denied to me? Can
+he stride a horse, or fly a hawk better? show a brighter sword in
+quarrel, or tune a smoother lute in calm? Can he out-dance me,
+out-drink me, out-courtier me, out-soldier me? No, no, no! And must
+I now believe that he can out-love me?"
+
+Katherine, weary of the controversy, began to ascend the steps to
+the palace. She spoke as she mounted:
+
+"When a man comes to court, it is worth while to be a woman. You
+will learn that some day, Sir Noel, if you grow to be a man."
+
+Noel retorted:
+
+"It is no great blazon to be the favourite of a king. Gentlemen who
+brag little may do much. The old love may outlast the new."
+
+Katherine frowned at his mystery.
+
+"You speak like a scented Sphinx, but I am too idle for enigmas.
+Farewell!" and she vanished into the palace.
+
+Noel looked after her fretfully:
+
+"Why are the women all sunflowers to this scaramouch?" he asked
+himself querulously. "Well, there are other women, and a wise man
+gathers the nearest grapes."
+
+A flagon and cup stood on the table by the marble seat. Noel poured
+himself out some wine and drank it, seeking consolation. His duty
+called him shortly to the service of the king, but he lingered in
+the garden on the chance of a hoped-for meeting.
+
+"I shall be revenged," he said to himself, "if my astrologer plays
+his part and tells the weak king that this Lord of Montcorbier is
+his evil spirit."
+
+His thoughts were busy with the events of the past week; if
+Katherine had been disdainful, the girl Huguette had been kind, and
+the Golden Scull had found the dainty soldier a frequent visitor. It
+was Huguette who, after listening to Noel's complaints of the Grand
+Constable, had suggested to him, in apparent artlessness of heart,
+that he could play upon the king's superstitions through a new
+astrologer and had promised to find him a star-gazer who would say
+anything and everything that Messire Noel wished to have said. The
+scheme had appealed to Noel, and this very evening he expected
+Huguette to bring the astrologer to him, to which end he had
+entrusted her with a password which would admit strangers into the
+royal garden.
+
+As he mused, a figure in a pilgrim's gown came cautiously out of the
+shadows into the moonlight behind him and stood for a moment
+watching him. The god Pan could see the face that smiled under the
+pilgrim's hood--a girl's face, with bright eyes framed in golden
+hair, but when the girl saw Noel, she slipped a mask over her face,
+drew her pilgrim's gown closely about her slim body, and tip-toed
+lightly across the grass to touch Noel on the shoulder.
+
+Noel turned with a start, and faced, as he believed, a masquerading
+palmer.
+
+"May I vend you a benevolence, gentleman?" Huguette asked,
+disguising her voice in an unfamiliar gruffness.
+
+Noel waved aside importunacy.
+
+"Pass your ways, pilgrim. I am in no mood for motley."
+
+He turned away, but the persistent pilgrim followed him.
+
+"Are you in a maid's mood, or a mood for a maid?"
+
+Noel stopped impatiently.
+
+"Are you pander as well as pilgrim? I wait for a woman."
+
+The pilgrim's pertinacity was not to be baffled.
+
+"Is she tall or short, young or old, dark or fair, sweet or sour?"
+
+Noel answered whimsically:
+
+"She is of the colour of the chameleon, of the age of the ancient
+world, of the height of any man's heart, and as bitter-sweet as a
+crushed quince."
+
+The girl pulled off her mask and threw back her hood.
+
+"Is she of my feet, favour, years and savour?"
+
+The moment he saw her face Noel gave a cry of delight.
+
+"You are welcome, witch," he shouted, "for you. bring the best love
+in the world!"
+
+He sprang to catch the girl in his arms, but she repulsed him
+gently.
+
+"Hush! I am no love-monger now, no gallantry girl, but a most
+politic plotter. The world spins like a potter's wheel to shape the
+vessel of our enterprise. We have a wizard ready for your king. Will
+Louis come?"
+
+Noel nodded decisively.
+
+"As linnet to looking-glass. He is greedy of star-wisdom. Does your
+astrologer know his lesson?"
+
+"He is parrot-perfect. When all is quiet, give an owl's cry thrice,
+and a friend will bring him. He will warn the king against his Grand
+Constable; he will praise Tristan, applaud Olivier, and commend
+Messire Noel le Jolys."
+
+Noel chuckled.
+
+"Then I shall be king of the castle, and you shall have a great gold
+chain and pearls as big as a virgin's tears."
+
+Noel did not detect the scorn in Huguette's voice, as she answered
+with apparent amiability:
+
+"You know the way to win a woman."
+
+"I am no jingling rhyme-broker, I thank heaven!" Noel cried. "I pay
+my way."
+
+He caught Huguette in his arms as he spoke and sought to kiss her,
+but she avoided him dexterously.
+
+"I will kiss you when you win," she cried.
+
+Noel would have pushed his suit further, but at that moment the
+great clock of the palace chimed the half-hour and struck upon his
+memory as well as upon his ear. He knew that the king expected him
+and he abandoned his love-making reluctantly.
+
+"You are indeed a politician," he sighed. "I must wait on the king."
+
+He opened the door of the tower and stood for a moment looking
+regretfully at the girl, who smiled at him temptingly, then he
+passed in and drew the door behind him.
+
+The moment he had disappeared, the girl's bearing changed. Her face
+and gesture blazoned a world of contempt for her courtier lover.
+
+"Fool, dunce, dolt, ass, peacock, buzzard, owl!" she stormed. Then
+her rage faded and she turned sadly on her heel as another man's
+name came into her heart and fluttered to her lips. "The world is as
+sour as a rotten orange since François went into exile."
+
+Her glance fell on the lute which lay on the marble seat where
+Villon had left it. She took it up and began to thrum it pensively,
+whispering to herself the words of Villon's song:
+
+"Daughters of Pleasure, one and all, Of form and features delicate,"
+
+she murmured to herself. As she did so, Villon, weary of wandering
+in the rose alleys, came into the moonlit space and saw the cloaked
+and hooded figure where it sat. In a moment his mind recalled the
+strange greetings he had overheard between the two pilgrims.
+
+"There is another of those pilgrims," he said to himself, determined
+now to solve the mystery. He crossed the grass quickly to the
+figure's side and saluted it.
+
+"Hail, little brother."
+
+Huguette leaped to her feet and answered lightly:
+
+"Hail, little sister."
+
+"Why little sister?" Villon asked in some astonishment.
+
+The masked pilgrim answered him smartly:
+
+"If I am a brother of yours, you must need be a sister of mine. But
+you talk out of the litany."
+
+"What harm," Villon retorted, "if you give me responses?"
+
+Huguette shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"I will give you no more than good-bye," she said, and turned to
+leave him, but Villon caught her by the arm.
+
+"You shall not show me your heels till I show myself your face," he
+insisted.
+
+Before the girl could prevent him, he had flung back her hood and
+snatched the mask from her face. To his amazement he found himself
+looking on the fair, familiar face of Huguette, and in astonishment
+he cried her name. The girl, astounded at being recognized, came
+close to him.
+
+"Who are you? "she asked.
+
+For answer, Villon unmasked.
+
+Huguette looked closely into his face, at first Without any sign of
+recognition, then suddenly the knowledge came to her and she caught
+him in her arms with a cry of joy.
+
+"François, you dear devil, where have you been this thousand years?
+They said you were banished. How brave you are! Where did you steal
+so much splendour? Are you cutting purses? Are you plucking
+mantles?"
+
+Villon tried to stay her questions.
+
+"What are you doing here, Abbess?"
+
+"The fair fool Noel has taken a week-long fancy to me, and I am
+making an age-long fool of him. Kiss me," she urged, putting her
+face very near to Villon's. Villon drew back his head.
+
+"You should keep your kisses for the fair fool Noel."
+
+Huguette drew away from him angrily.
+
+"When you were as lean as a cat and as ragged as a sparrow, you were
+not so nice a precisian. Has some great lady bewitched you? Can you
+only woo in silk and win in velvet? If the kernel be sweet, what
+does the husk matter? Heaven's pity! Why should a woman love you?"
+
+Villon took no notice of her petulance but repeated his question:
+
+"What are you doing here, Abbess?"
+
+The girl's rage was as short as a summer's shower. She turned again
+to him, fondling him.
+
+"Well, I cannot shut the door of my heart in your smooth face. Ren
+de Montigny has a great game afoot, and you are back in time to
+share in it."
+
+"What game?" Villon asked.
+
+Huguette answered:
+
+"The fair fool Noel, advised by me, has persuaded the king to see an
+astrologer here to-night when the gardens are quiet. Noel believes
+that the astrologer will advise the king to fling his Grand
+Constable out of the window and call Messire Noel in at the door,
+but the comrades of the cockleshell really mean much more mischief.
+When once we get the king within reach of our fingers, we mean to
+snap him up and carry him out of Paris, willy nilly, and sell him to
+the Duke of Burgundy."
+
+Villon caught his breath.
+
+"A great game!" he cried. "But who is this astrologer?"
+
+"Thibaut d'Aussigny," she answered, "who pretends to be dead, but
+who lives for this revenge."
+
+Villon leaped to his feet. He remembered what Katherine thought she
+had seen.
+
+"Then it was he!" he said.
+
+Huguette went on with her story.
+
+"Noel is to give us the signal by crying an owl's cry thrice."
+
+Villon was revolving many thoughts in his mind and he hardly heeded
+her.
+
+"This adventure of the astrologer might be turned to my advantage.
+Here is a chance in a thousand," he muttered to himself, as he paced
+restlessly on the grass. "I have but to close my eyes and shut my
+ears and the good Thibaut carries the good Louis to the good
+Burgundy to-night, and there can be no hanging to-morrow."
+
+The girl followed after him, catching at his sleeve to stay him.
+
+"What are you talking about?"
+
+Villon went on, unheeding her, whispering to himself:
+
+"If they cut Gaffer Louis' throat between them, the world were rid
+of a crooked-witted king, and I free to win Katherine, hold Paris,
+be the first man in France--"
+
+"François, speak to me," Huguette pleaded, but she pleaded in vain.
+
+"One would say I were a fool to let such occasion slip through my
+ten commandments. But I have learned a thing called honour, which I
+must not lose for the sake of my lady."
+
+Huguette flung herself in front of him and stopped his restless
+walk.
+
+"François! François!"
+
+"Yes, child, yes."
+
+"What does it matter to you what they do with the fool king?"
+
+"Abbess, I must have a finger in this pie. Abbess, for the old
+sake's sake, will you keep me a secret?"
+
+The girl looked up at him lovingly.
+
+"I will always do your bidding."
+
+"I have a mind to play my part in this enterprise. I am the king of
+the Cockleshells and I have returned to authority. Give me your
+pilgrim's gown, girl, and mind, not a word to the brotherhood. I
+want to take friend Thibaut by surprise."
+
+As he spoke, he pulled off the pilgrim's gown, and Huguette stood
+before him in her familiar boy's dress of green.
+
+"Hide among the roses until the sport begins," he cried.
+
+The girl flung her arms about him.
+
+"Dear François!" she cried, and then ran swiftly away from him and
+disappeared into the rose-scented night.
+
+Villon looked after the girl as she ran.
+
+"The girl is as fleet as a hare and as wild witted," he said to
+himself. Then he flung Huguette from his thoughts and faced the
+great problem.
+
+"How does the balance go?" he asked himself, and he weighed the air
+with his hands as if their cups held the precious things he spoke
+of.
+
+"In the one hand, a great king's life; in the other, a poor poet's
+honour. King, beggar, beggar, king."
+
+He paused a moment, looking down the long lane of infinite
+possibilities. He owed nothing to Louis after all. Louis had made
+him the plaything of a shameless trick; had thrust honour upon him
+in mockery; had tantalized him with a dream of a dream. Ere another
+sunset, if a woman's heart were not his for the winning, he would be
+swinging, grisly enough, with his tongue through his teeth, and the
+ravens wheeling about his ears, upon the Paris gallows. It was but
+to let Thibaut d'Aussigny play out his play and snare the old black
+fox, and then Villon had Paris to himself, was absolved from all
+penalty, might in the light of the new love the people had for him,
+do, or at least try to do, pretty much as he pleased with the
+kingless kingdom. It was a dazzling prospect.
+
+"Why not?" he asked himself. Then, in a moment, the reasons why not
+rose up against him--not to be cheated, not to be banished. He had
+given his word; he had sworn fealty to the fantastic monarch who had
+played with him and to whom he owed at least the--realization of
+great dreams and the golden chance of winning his heart's desire. He
+had given his word. That would not have meant much to him eight days
+ago when he lived in a sick atmosphere of lies and dodges and tricks
+and meannesses, where the lips were as ready to deceive as the
+fingers to filch, and where a successful falsehood was almost as
+much applauded as a successful theft. But now, as he had said, he
+had learned a thing called honour; the whole meaning of life had
+been changed for him in the sunshine of a fair girl's favour, and
+what was but yesterday possible, probable, even pleasant, was to-day
+surely impossible. He murmured her name to himself--"Katherine!"--as
+a charm against horrible temptation, and his heart strengthened
+under the spell.
+
+He turned to enter the tower, but as he did so the tower door was
+pushed out against him and he found himself face to face with Noel
+le Jolys. Noel started in astonishment at the sight of his rival,
+but Villon caught him by the wrist. The poor popinjay was too brave
+a bird to be Thibaut d'Aussigny's decoy-duck.
+
+"Messire Noel," he said; "I have a word to say; in your ear," and he
+drew him inside the tower and stood with him for a moment in the
+darkness, whispering speech that made Noel's pulse beat fast. Then
+Villon left him and sped swiftly up the winding stairs that led to
+the king's room, while Noel, left alone, pushed open the door again
+and passed out into the garden, his head dizzy with strange news.
+Placing his hands like a shell about his mouth, he gave the cry of
+an owl three times with a little interval between each cry, and then
+softly withdrew again into the tower, and in his turn raced with a
+throbbing heart up the narrow steps that led to the king's chamber.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+UNDER WHICH KING?
+
+
+
+
+
+The rose garden seemed to be as quiet as a church-yard. No sound was
+heard save the faint soughing of the evening wind among the rose
+bushes, no sight resembling humanity visible save the face of Pan
+looking down mockingly upon the crimson blossoms that girdled him.
+Yet in a few seconds it became plain that the god Pan was not the
+only occupant of the garden. Through quiet alleyways, cloaked and
+cowled figures came stealing, six in number--men with pilgrims'
+cloaks about their shoulders, and pilgrims' hoods upon their
+heads--men who carried cockleshells upon the sleeves of their
+gabardines--all converging through the dark walks of the garden to
+a common centre, and that centre the grassy space before the king's
+watch tower. The six figures huddled together at the base of the
+image of Pan. One of them who seemed to be their leader, a man of
+giant form, spoke, and the voice was the voice of Thibaut
+d'Aussigny.
+
+"Are we all here?" he asked.
+
+The nearest pilgrim to him answered with the voice of René de
+Montigny.
+
+"Aye, and ready to gather the royal rose of this garden."
+
+As he spoke there came a faint click at the latch of the tower door.
+Thibaut waved his companions apart.
+
+"Keep close," he said, and four of the pilgrim forms disappeared
+swiftly into the spaces of shadow. Only Thibaut and René remained,
+standing masked and attentive, their eyes fixed upon the tower door.
+It opened and Noel le Jolys emerged, followed by, the slight,
+hunched figure in faded black velvet for whom the eyes of the
+conspirators were so eager. Noel advanced questioning:
+
+"Is the star-gazer here?"
+
+René de Montigny answered him glibly as a showman patters the praise
+of his wares.
+
+"Aye. He is the wonder of the world. He can read the stars more
+easily than a tapster the score on his shutter. He can spell you the
+high luck and the low. Bohemian, Egyptian, Arabian wisdom have no
+mysteries for him."
+
+As René ceased, the royal figure with a sweeping gesture of his hand
+made a sign of dismissal to Noel, who bowed respectfully and
+withdrew into the tower. The king then beckoned to the mighty figure
+in the palmer's weed, and Thibaut advanced slowly until he was
+within touch of his prey, when he suddenly flung out his great hand
+and caught his enemy by the throat, gripping him into silence while
+his right hand bared and brandished a dagger. The figure in black
+dropped under his grasp, trembled and gasped, but the hand of
+Thibaut was too strong upon him and he could not speak or cry out.
+Thibaut hissed at him:
+
+"Sire, I can decipher your destiny. Do not speak or I will kill
+you!"
+
+He pressed the point of the dagger close to the captive's neck and
+smiled to see him shudder.
+
+"I am Thibaut d'Aussigny, sire, whom you thought to be dead, but who
+lives to prison you."
+
+As he spoke his companions emerged from the gloom and gathered
+around Thibaut and the king, a little menacing circle of determined
+men.
+
+"You are in the toils. Silent you are still a man; give tongue and
+you are simple carrion. You must come to the knees of Burgundy. You
+shall be the Duke's footstool!"
+
+The cowering black figure wriggled and quivered as if every one of
+Thibaut's words were a stroke of a whip that cut into his flesh; his
+eager hands clawed piteously at Thibaut's grasping arm, until his
+very agony of terror aroused the contempt of his captor. He pushed
+the king from him contemptuously, and the king dropped on the ground
+a black and helpless heap of fear.
+
+"Can a king be such a cur? Burgundy won't hurt you if you do as he
+bids you. I won't hurt you if you do as I bid you."
+
+The black figure rocked, a pitiable bundle of terrors, apparently
+sobbing plaintively. Thibaut sickened at such shameless fear.
+
+"Stop crying," he growled.
+
+René de Montigny, who had been watching keenly the actions of the
+prisoner, interrupted:
+
+"He seems to be laughing," he said.
+
+Thibaut gave a cry of astonishment and stooped down over the
+prostrate man, who greeted him with a prolonged and hearty peal of
+laughter, which staggered the giant like a blow in the face. At that
+moment the tower door was flung open and Tristan appeared.
+
+"The king!" he cried in a voice of thunder.
+
+In another moment, as if by magic, the little garden space was
+girdled by the archers of the Scottish Guard, strong hands made sure
+of the baffled conspirators, and to their astonishment Louis himself
+made his appearance through the open doorway, his malign face
+smiling in the moonlight.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE DEATH OF A WANTON
+
+
+
+
+
+The sham king leaped to his feet, still laughing, flung off the
+black cap with its little row of leaden saints and the rusty black
+mantle which mimicked the king's habit, and stood delighted and
+defiant before Thibaut, the François Villon who thus a second time
+had crossed his path.
+
+"Well, friend, what has the wizard told you?" Louis asked blandly.
+
+Villon swayed with laughter as he pointed to the bewildered giant.
+
+"Wonders, sire," he answered. "I have not laughed so heartily since
+I attained greatness." But even as he spoke Thibaut had recovered
+his wits. He might be defeated but he would not be unavenged.
+
+"You shall laugh no more!" he shouted, wrenching himself free from
+restraint, and he sprang at his enemy with lifted dagger.
+
+From behind the shadow of the statue of Pan there came a warning
+shriek, and swiftly between Villon and Thibaut a slim green figure
+darted and slim green arms clasped Villon around the neck. The
+dagger of Thibaut drove deep into the soft body of Huguette.
+
+With a curse Thibaut turned and, sweeping aside the archers who
+tried to stop him, disappeared down the nearest alley. Noel le
+Jolys, drawing his sword, rushed in pursuit, followed by several
+soldiers. Villon held the bleeding body of the girl in his arms, and
+tried his best to stanch the wound which was staining the green
+jerkin a dull red, but the girl protested faintly, pushing his
+ministering hand away.
+
+"Let me alone; I am done for," she gasped.
+
+Olivier was by her side in an instant, eyeing the wound with the
+professional interest of the surgeon-barber and looking from it to
+the girl's pale face. Villon's gaze questioned him. Olivier shrugged
+his shoulders and shook his head. Villon knew that the wound was
+mortal, and his own blood seemed like water within him. He carried
+the girl across the grass to the marble seat and rested her on it,
+the red stain on the green coat growing wider and wider as they
+moved.
+
+"Courage, Abbess, courage, lass," he whispered, fighting with his
+horror and his sorrow as he moaned to himself: "That any one should
+die for me!"
+
+The girl's arms clung closer about his neck and her lips moved
+faintly. He stooped close to her to catch her words.
+
+"This is a strange end, François. I always thought I should die in a
+bed. Here is another kind of battlefield. Give me drink."
+
+"Some water," Villon cried to Olivier, who stood a little apart from
+the pair with the resigned look of the physician who knows that his
+art is of no avail.
+
+Huguette protested faintly.
+
+"Not water. Wine. I have ever loved the taste of it, and 'tis too
+late to change now."
+
+Olivier filled a cup from the flagon on the table and was for
+lifting it to the girl's lips, but her feeble hand repulsed him and
+she pleaded to Villon:
+
+"Give it to me, François."
+
+Villon took the cup from the barber's hand, lifted it to the dying
+girl's lips, and she drank greedily. The strong wine gave her for a
+moment something of its own false strength, and she struggled to her
+feet, Villon rising with her and supporting her.
+
+"Your health, François. I suppose I have been a great sinner. Will
+God forgive me?"
+
+Villon stifled a heavy groan, but he was sworn to console her if he
+could, and, indeed, he believed his words of consolation.
+
+"He understands his children."
+
+The heavy head drooped its golden curls upon his shoulder.
+
+"You always were hopeful," she said brokenly. Then suddenly clasping
+him tightly, she cried: "Many men have taken my body; only you ever
+took my heart. Give me your lips."
+
+Villon's spirit was troubled. It seemed to him that his lips were
+bound to wait for that kiss of his lady's, and yet the dying girl
+loved him and he had loved the dying girl after a fashion, and he
+could not refuse her now. He bent to grant her prayer, when suddenly
+she shook herself free from his arms and began to sing faintly the
+words of the song he had made for her:
+
+"Daughters of Pleasure, one and all,
+
+Then she caught her breath with a sob and slipped to the last lines
+of the verse:
+
+"Use your red lips before too late, Love ere love flies beyond
+recall."
+
+She shook her head back in a wild peal of laughter: then she gave a
+great cry and fell forward. Villon caught her, looked in her face
+and knew that she was dead, and that the best of his old bad life
+lay dead with her.
+
+Olivier in obedience to an order of the king's, gave a signal and
+the girl's body was swiftly wrapped in a soldier's cloak and laid
+gently upon a pair of crossed halberds. As this was being done, Noel
+le Jolys came panting back with a red sword in his hand.
+
+"Thibaut d'Aussigny is dead, sire," he said; "my hand was the hand
+that finished him."
+
+Then as his eyes fell on the dead body, they shone with sudden
+tears. Villon went up to him and touched him on the shoulder.
+
+"I leave this dead woman in your hands," he said, "for I think you
+had a kindness for her. See that she has Christian burial."
+
+Noel bowed his head and followed in silence the girl's body. The
+garden was left to Louis and Villon, Tristan and Olivier, and the
+handful of captured rogues who stood apart, strongly guarded and
+stripped of their pilgrims' garb, gazing amazed at Louis and his
+double. Villon, silent too, looked after the little group that bore
+away the dead girl's body. His mind was a warfare of wild memories.
+Strange recollections of times and places with Huguette came
+crowding up and beating piteously upon his brain. He thought of what
+he had been, and groaned; of what he was now, and his soul cried out
+as in prayer in the name of Katherine.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+A VIRGIN'S TEARS
+
+
+
+
+
+The king's hand fell upon his shoulder and shattered his
+meditations.
+
+"Are you so dashed by the death of a wanton?" the king asked
+mockingly.
+
+Villon turned upon him in a noble rage.
+
+"She had God's breath in her body, sire," he said. Then drawing his
+hand across his forehead as if to dissipate the sad fancies that
+oppressed him, he went on:
+
+"I have been John-a-Nods for the moment, sire; now I am Jack-a-Deeds
+again. The hour for battle is at hand."
+
+Louis shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"You have done me a good turn, gossip," he said, "and may ask any
+grace of me except your life. That depends on your lady."
+
+Villon looked over at the corner where his old boon companions were
+huddled together, the miserable centre of a circle of soldiers.
+
+"Sire," he said; "grant me the lives of those rascals. They shall
+ride with me and fight for France to-night. It is better than making
+them play bob-apple on the evil tree."
+
+The king whispered a few words to Tristan, and Tristan very
+reluctantly gave the order of liberation. The comrades of the
+Cockleshell were freed of their bonds and bade to stand apart, under
+guard and out of earshot, to wait on destiny for future commands. At
+this moment Louis, glancing upwards, caught sight between the flower
+vases on the terrace of a gleam of crimson, the crimson silk of a
+woman's robe. It betrayed the presence of Katherine de Vaucelles,
+who had come hard upon the hour of nine to seek for her lover, but
+who paused irresolute at the head of the stairs, noting the presence
+of the king. Louis beckoned to her amicably, and she began slowly to
+descend the staircase. Louis came over to Villon and whispered in
+his ear:
+
+"Here comes your lady. I think your love-fruit is ripe and you need
+not stand on tip-toe to pick it."
+
+Villon answered him with burning eyes:
+
+"Sire, I believe I have won the rose of the world."
+
+Louis chuckled like an enraptured raven.
+
+"The Count of Montcorbier is luckier than François Villon. But the
+lady has a high mind and a fierce spirit. She may not relish the
+deception, pardon the cheat his lie!"
+
+Something in the king's words struck upon Villon's fiery hopes like
+a stream of ice-cold water and seemed to quench them. He was like a
+man who, long playing at blind-man's-buff, suddenly has the bandage
+plucked from his eyes and stands dazzled and blinking in the
+sunlight. After all, he was not the Count of Montcorbier; after all,
+he was not the Grand Constable of France; after all, he was only a
+masquerading beggar who had won the heart of a lady under false
+colours; who had triumphed by flying a false flag. In all those
+seven splendid days this simple thought had never come to him. His
+whole soul had been so taken captive by the fascination of the part
+he had been permitted to play that he forgot he was playing a part,
+and allowed his fancy to believe that a week-long dream would endure
+forever. Now he knew himself and what he had done and what he must
+do. A divine farce had turned to sudden tragedy. He turned to the
+king with a groan.
+
+"Cheat, lie," he repeated. "Sire, those words fling me from my
+fool's paradise. Kill me if I fail to win her, but I will tear this
+mask from my face, this falsehood from my heart."
+
+Louis grinned at him.
+
+"Please yourself. Win her or swing. Either way contents me."
+
+As he spoke, he turned away. Katherine had descended the steps and
+was moving across the grass to greet her hero, who stood with
+clasped hands in the moonlight like a man struck dumb. Katherine was
+carrying in her hands a crimson scarf fringed with gold, and she
+lifted it to him as she spoke.
+
+"Wear this with my prayers. With it, I give you my hand and heart.
+You shall carry my plighted troth with you into the battle. Let me
+tell my love to all the world."
+
+Swiftly and lightly she threw it about his neck before he could find
+words, but now he spoke:
+
+"Wait, wait! You must say no more until you know me."
+
+The girl's eyes widened with surprise.
+
+"Do I not know you?"
+
+Villon thrust his face forward very close to hers.
+
+"Look into my face," he said. "Look well. Do you see nothing there
+that reminds you of other hours?"
+
+Katherine smiled divinely.
+
+"Of happy hours in this rose garden."
+
+Villon insisted fiercely:
+
+"No, no! Of a dark night, a tavern, a cloaked woman, a sordid fellow
+dreaming sottishly by the fire, a prayer, a love-tale and a promise,
+a crowd of bullies and wantons, a quarrel, a fight with sword and
+lantern in the dark, a breast knot of ribbon flung from a gallery--"
+
+Katherine recoiled a little, with a horror in her eyes.
+
+"What are you trying to tell me?" she asked.
+
+Villon dropped on his knees with a groan.
+
+"Here is the knot of ribbon which you flung to me in the Fircone
+Tavern. Oh, pity me! I am François Villon."
+
+Katherine pressed her hands to her forehead.
+
+"I can hear what you say, but it makes no mark on my brain."
+
+Villon's words ran fast from him:
+
+"I am François Villon and yet no longer he, for my old evil self is
+dead. I am François Villon who served you with his sword, who
+praised you with his pen, and who loves you with all his soul."
+
+The girl's whole body shook with fear as she answered:
+
+"It isn't true! It isn't true! I don't believe you."
+
+Villon sprang to his feet.
+
+"Whatever my fate is," he cried, "you shall know the truth."
+
+Turning to where the released conspirators stood apart, he called to
+them peremptorily:
+
+"Guy! Eene! All of you, come here!"
+
+Amazed to be thus summoned in their own names by so great a
+personage as the Grand Constable of France, the thieves crept
+forward timidly and, in obedience to Villon's commanding gestures,
+gathered about him as he turned to them, pressing his face near to
+their faces, and cried:
+
+"Look at me closer--closer. Don't you know François Villon in spite
+of this new spirit shining in his eyes?"
+
+René de Montigny gave a cry of recognition.
+
+"I should never have known you. You are so strangely changed."
+
+Guy Tabarie endorsed him.
+
+"Still,'tis his dear old countenance."
+
+Katherine watching the scene in sick despair, turned piteously to
+the king.
+
+"Sire, sire, is this true?"
+
+Louis, who had been watching all with unmitigated satisfaction,
+answered fleeringly:
+
+"Most true, pretty mistress. You disdained me for this."
+
+With blazing eyes and trembling hands Katherine moved across the
+grass to where Villon stood.
+
+"Pitiful traitor, why did you live this lie?"
+
+Villon pleaded desperately:
+
+"I loved you."
+
+Katherine's anger flamed into a great fire.
+
+"Do not shame the sweet word. I hate you! To think the face that I
+have learned to love should mask so base a heart!"
+
+Then as Villon drew a little closer to her, in an agony of entreaty,
+she struck out at him with both hands, beating him on the breast in
+an unconquerable fury. Villon bowed beneath the blow while she raged
+at him:
+
+"You have stolen my love like a thief, you have crucified my pride.
+I hate you! Go back to the dregs and lees of life, skulk in your
+tavern, forget, what I shall never forget, that so base a thing as
+you ever came near me!"
+
+The king was by her side in an instant and whispering into her ear:
+
+"Is this the course of true love?"
+
+She swung upon him in scorn.
+
+"Sire, you have wreaked a royal revenge upon a woman. There are no
+tears in my eyes yet, but I pray they will come that I may weep
+myself clean of this memory."
+
+With clasped hands and set lips she moved away from Louis and stood
+apart in the moonlight, a fixed and rigid figure of despair. Louis
+stepped to where Villon stood in stricken anguish and whispered to
+him:
+
+"I am afraid you will hang to-morrow, Master Villon."
+
+Villon threw back his head defiantly.
+
+"I should be glad to greet the gallows now, but I have a deed to do
+before I die."
+
+As he spoke the great bell of the palace beat out the first stroke
+of the hour of nine. It roused the wounded spirit in his soul. He
+moved to where Katherine stood and spoke to her:
+
+"I dreamed that love through which I have been born again could lift
+me to your lips. The dream is over. But you bade me serve France,
+and I ride and fight for you to-night."
+
+While he spoke the Lords of Lau, of Eiviere and of Nantoillet in
+panoply of war came from the palace with their immediate followers.
+The garden began to fill with the picked men of the enterprise
+hurrying on the summons of the warning bell to follow their leader
+on his sortie. Villon's pages brought the armour of the Grand
+Constable and began to buckle it upon him. While this was being
+done, he turned and spoke to his brothers-in-arms:
+
+"Comrades, let each man carry himself to-night as if the fate of
+France depended upon his heart, his arm, his courage. Strike for the
+mothers that bore you, the wives that comfort you, the children that
+Renéw you--the women that love you." For a moment his voice quailed
+and almost failed him. There were happy men there, no doubt, whom
+women loved. But he rallied in a breath and his voice rang out
+valiantly again: "Forward in God's name and the king's!"
+
+And every soldier present echoed him: "Forward in God's name and the
+king's!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE REDE OF FIVE RIDING ROGUES
+
+
+
+
+
+Through the silent streets of Paris a slender line of steel moved
+slowly--the thread of which Master François Villon was the needle
+pricked to sew the realm of France together. The Grand Constable
+rode at the head with the Lords of Lau, of Riviere, and of
+Nantoillet, and somewhere at the tail rode the five released rascals
+and babbled beneath their breaths as they rode. For the order to
+keep silence did not count until the gates of Paris were reached and
+began to turn on their hinges to let Villon's adventurers forth.
+Every man of the ruffians had a stout sword swinging at his girdle;
+every man of them sported a steel cap upon his head; every man of
+them felt his heart pulsing with rare emotions and his brain busy
+with strange thoughts. René de Montigny spoke first the thing that
+filled his mind.
+
+"It must be a devil of a business," he reflected, "to be bullied
+like that by a beauty. Blood, but she is beautiful, and blood, but
+she can bellow."
+
+Guy Tabarie chuckled fatly. "I have been bullied so many times by
+grey-faced drabs that I would take my trouncing patiently from such
+a pair of lips. It was meat and drink to look at her and think
+thoughts."
+
+Jehan le Loup frowned sourly. "Had I been Master François and black
+Louis not been by I should have tried to mend my luck with a cudgel.
+At best and worst she would have had something to curse for after a
+lusty thumping."
+
+Casin Cholet licked his lips. "I shall think of her," he said, "when
+next I meet with a sweetheart. With a little wit your honest rascal
+can be as happy as a king. In the dark all fur is of the same
+colour."
+
+Oolin de Cayeulx yawned. "What are we going a-riding for?" he
+questioned. "I would sooner have stayed in the king's rose garden
+and filled my belly as we did last week when the great lord in gold
+tissue pitied us. And to think that it was no more than François
+after all! I could jam my dagger between his shoulder-blades for
+making such a ninny of me."
+
+"I knew him all the time," Guy Tabarie was beginning when René de
+Montigny silenced him with a ringing clip on the nearest ear which
+nearly unsaddled the fat rogue. "You lie, Mountain, you lie," he
+whispered. "Do you think that if he cheated me your pig's eyes could
+read the riddle? No, no, he fooled us fairly and he fooled us well,
+but he treated us kindly and we can afford to cry quits."
+
+"A strange thing," mused Colin, "that a trifle of hair less on a
+man's chin and a trifle of dirt less on a man's cheek, with some
+matter of clean linen and a smooth jerkin, can make such a
+difference."
+
+"Not at all," said René de Montigny," we are all the same at the
+core, every man-jack and woman-jill of us, hungering, thirsting,
+lusting, just after the same fashion. 'Tis only the coat that
+counts."
+
+"'Tis you who lie now," grunted Tabarie. "There's no gold tissue in
+the world that would make you as cunning as François. You would
+never have done as he did if the king had made you the pick of the
+litter."
+
+Rend whistled through his teeth. "May be so, may be not," he said.
+"No man can tell what he may do till he is given his chance to test
+his mettle. Oh opportunity, golden opportunity! If I were François
+Villon I would shape an image of gold in your name and praise you
+for a saint."
+
+"I wonder what that girl will say," mused Tabarie, "if our François
+comes back with the Duke of Burgundy in his pocket!"
+
+"I wonder what she will say," sneered Jehan le Loup, "if he trundles
+back feet foremost with a hole in his body and half a head."
+
+"Whatever happens is sure to vex her," said Casin Cholet. "Women are
+made that way."
+
+"Our poor minions will be lonely to-night," said Colin.
+
+"I doubt it," said René de Montigny drily, and then he sighed a
+little. "Poor Abbess!"
+
+Sudden tears smeared Tabarie's fat cheeks.
+
+"She was a brave wench if ever," he snivelled. "Through wellfare or
+illfare she was always the same, and would share board and blanket
+with a friend though his pouch were as barren as Sarah's body."
+
+"It was ten thousand pities," said Eene, "that she fell so love-sick
+for François. Did he give her some philtre, some elixir, do you
+think? François is a fine fellow though, I'll not deny it, but he's
+had the devil's own luck, and by our patron St. Nicholas there be
+others as fine as he."
+
+As he spoke the great gate of the city yawned noiselessly, and
+stealthy and silent the hope of Paris glided into the darkness and
+was swallowed up by the night.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE BANNERS OF BURGUNDY
+
+
+
+
+
+The yellow dawn, rippling over Paris, found her streets strangely
+silent, strangely quiet. A few good citizens were abed, but most
+good citizens were abroad on that kindly June morning, for there was
+business doing outside the walls of Paris which tempted every man
+inside the walls to those walls, and that business was the battle
+that was raging, and had raged since nightfall, between the troops
+of King Louis on one side under the Grand Constable of France, and
+the troops of the Duke of Burgundy and his allies on the other.
+Paris might have been that strange city of slumber told of by the
+wanderer in the Arabian tale, or that poppied palace where the
+sleeping beauty and her court lay waiting the coming of the hero. If
+Asmodeus whisking his way on the wings of the wind with any
+astonished travelling companion in tow had paused over Paris and
+unroofed it for the benefit of his fellow-voyager, most of the rooms
+would have been found as empty as the streets.
+
+But there was one spot in the city--an open place by the river,
+between an ancient gate and the church of the Celestins--which was
+alive and busy with a strange activity of its own. It was empty
+enough and the windows of its houses stared vacantly upon its
+emptiness, but there were two men in possession of its tranquillity
+who had been toiling hard at a singular piece of work. They were
+putting the finishing touches to the erection of a tall, gaunt
+gallows with its steps and platform, which occupied a space midway
+between the gateway and the grey old Gothic church. In curious
+contrast to the sinister grimness of the gibbet, there rose opposite
+to it on the side of the church a dais, richly draped with royal
+velvet, splendidly spangled with fleur-de-lis and brave with
+armourial bearings.
+
+The two men who were working at the gallows having finished their
+job, came out into the open space and stretched themselves. One was
+a tall, thin, grave, poplar-tree of a man, clad in sad-coloured
+clothes and conspicuous for a long rosary of enormous beads which he
+carried around his neck and which from time to time he handled with
+ostentatious sanctimony. The other was as complete a contrast to his
+companion as could be desired by the humorous painter. He was a
+plump, spry little fellow, brightly dressed and bubbling over with
+merry, roguish spirits, which formed the most fantastic foil to the
+lugubriousness of his fellow-worker. Any good citizen of Paris,
+arising belated, if any such there may have been, and hurrying to
+the walls to know how things went for the king's cause, would have
+recognized readily enough in these two strange opposites two of the
+most dreaded of the myrmidons of Tristan l'Hermite, no less than his
+two chief hangmen, Trois-Echelles and Petit-Jean. Trois-Echelles was
+the long, cadaverous hangman; Petit-Jean was the stout, droll
+hangman, but when it came to a push and a pinch, both were hangmen
+and hung in the same manner, if not with the same manners.
+Petit-Jean pulled a flagon of wine from under the platform of the
+gallows, lifted it to his lips, drained a mighty draught, sighed
+with satisfaction, and held out the bottle to his brother craftsman.
+
+"Drink and be merry."
+
+Trois-Echelles, making gestures of protestation with his head but
+taking the bottle with his hand none the less, drew a deep draught
+from its throttle and sighed as sadly as his friend sighed gladly.
+
+"I will drink but I cannot be merry. What's the good of building a
+noble gallows if nobody looks at it? One might as well be building a
+church."
+
+Petit-Jean laughed good-naturedly.
+
+"All Paris is on the walls watching the battle. Lucky Paris!"
+
+Trois-Echelles laughed ill-humoredly.
+
+"Not so lucky if we don't win the battle."
+
+Petit-Jean was complacent.
+
+"Whichever wins will need us to hang the losers. Look at the bright
+side, man."
+
+Trois-Echelles fumbled his beads furtively.
+
+"I've lost heart, I tell you. I haven't hanged a man for a week."
+
+As he mourned over this melancholy retrospect, the door of a little
+house hard by the church opened and an old woman, propping herself
+on a crutch stick, came hobbling slowly across the open space
+towards the church. Petit-Jean knew her well enough, for they both
+lodged in the same house and both on the same floor of attics. He
+knew she was the mother of the greatest scapegrace in all Paris, a
+rascal named François Villon, who had disappeared, Heaven alone knew
+where, to the old lady's great despair. He saluted her good
+humoredly.
+
+"Good morrow to your nightcap, mother. Have you found your lost
+sheep?"
+
+Mother Villon shook her head wistfully.
+
+"They say he is banished, but he has sent me money, bless him!
+though I touch none of it, lest it be badly come by."
+
+Trois-Echelles stopped fumbling his beads and advanced towards her,
+extending his hand.
+
+"Give it to me to spend on masses?" he asked sanctimoniously.
+
+Petit-Jean danced between them.
+
+"Lend it to me for drink money," he urged.
+
+The old woman paid no heed to their proposals. Her tired eyes had
+caught sight of the grim structure in wood which usurped a place in
+a familiar scene. She shaded her eyes and peered at it, asking:
+
+"For whom do you build this gallows?"
+
+The glum hangman answered gloomily:
+
+"Oddly enough, we don't know. 'Make me a gallows here,' says the
+Constable, 'in the open place, and sieges for the king and his
+courtiers.'"
+
+Mother Villon, her simple curiosity easily satisfied, dropped her
+informant a curtsey and hobbled slowly up the steps into the church.
+
+Petit-Jean stretched himself again and yawned.
+
+"I'll to sleep and dream of hanging a king."
+
+Trois-Echelles put a lean finger to his lean chin.
+
+"Treason, friend, if Tristan heard you."
+
+Petit-Jean's eyes twinkled.
+
+"Well, let's say an archbishop," he said.
+
+Trois-Echelles nodded approvingly.
+
+"An archbishop ought to make a good end."
+
+His mind pleased itself with the picture of so high a dignitary of
+the church in his full canonicals coming under his tender care and
+being exhorted by his pious counsels.
+
+The two hangmen climbed on the platform of the grisly erection, and,
+calmly indifferent to the nature of their bed, were in a few moments
+fast asleep and snoring as merrily as if every man in the world had
+been hung and there was nothing else for them to do but to take it
+easy for the rest of their days.
+
+The hard weariness of work and the easy weariness of wine had made
+them so heavy-headed that their slumbers were not disturbed by the
+sound of footfalls, though the footfalls echoed strangely loud in
+the lonely deserted place-the footfalls of a woman, swift and
+impatient, the footfalls of a man swiftly pursuing. In another
+moment the woman and the man came into the open space, now bright
+and shining with the risen sun. The woman was Katherine de
+Vaucelles; the man was Noel le Jolys.
+
+As Katherine entered the silent square, she paused for a moment a
+few paces from the church, and turning, looked at her silent
+follower.
+
+"Why do you follow me?" she asked, and Noel le Jolys, who had dogged
+her footsteps from the palace, answered her briskly:
+
+"You should not walk unguarded. Therefore I shadow you."
+
+Katherine scorned him.
+
+"You may well play the shadow, for you cast no shadow of your own.
+The streets are very idle--the streets are very quiet. I would
+sooner have my loneliness than your company. Let me pass to my
+prayers." For Noel had glided between her and the church, and stood
+barring her passage deferentially.
+
+"For your lover?" he asked, and Katherine flashed at him:
+
+"You have a small mind to ask, yet I have a great mind to answer. My
+prayers are for a brave gentleman whom I shall never see again."
+
+As she spoke, the cup of her heart seemed to run over with red
+tears, and the bitter waters trembled in her eyes. Her thoughts
+wandered over the long white night and her sleepless sorrow, and her
+vigil by the window, looking out into the rose garden, and her tired
+eyes straining in vain through the dark for any sight, and her tired
+ears straining in vain for any sound of the battle in which the lord
+of her heart was risking his life. For she knew it now; she had
+learned it through those age-long hours of agony, that he whom she
+called her enemy was the lord of her heart, that in spite of all her
+rage at the cheat that had been put upon her, she loved, not the
+great noble who had done so much to save France--no, nor the ragged
+poet who had lent her his sword-arm and his sword, but just the man,
+by whatever name he might be called and in whatever way of life his
+wheel of fortune might spin, whose hand had proved to be of the
+right size to hold her heart in its hollow. The Katherine of
+yesterday seemed to be dead and buried, to have died a fiery death
+of fierce thoughts, fierce agonies, fierce exultations, and from
+that travail a new Katherine had come into being with cleansed eyes
+to see the world truly and with a cleansed soul to know a great
+soul's truth.
+
+Noel watched her silence but it meant nothing to him, and he tripped
+into her high thoughts cheerfully.
+
+"I am a brave gentleman," he said, patting himself approvingly upon
+the breast. "I slew Thibaut d'Aussigny last night. The king has
+taken me back into favour. If I played the fool's part yesterday, I
+can play the wise man's part to-morrow. I was a bubble and a gull
+and a dunce, if you like, but I meant no harm to the king, and the
+king smiles on me. Cannot you do the like?"
+
+Katherine came out of her dream and stood upon the earth again, and
+disdained him.
+
+"No, for you envy a great spirit and your envy makes you a base
+thing."
+
+Noel protested pettishly:
+
+"He is no man-angel. He is made of Adam's clay like the rest of us."
+
+Katherine's thoughts had wandered away from her escort; her mind's
+eyes were busy with waving banners, the shock of meeting lances, the
+glitter of steel coats and the beating of steel upon steel. Through
+all the melley, her fancy spied one shining figure in bright armour
+like, so it seemed to her, Archangel Michael or Archangel Gabriel,
+riding in the pride of the fight with a smile on his lips, sorrow in
+his heart, and a token of white ribbon between his breast-plate and
+his breast.
+
+She answered, not Noel's words, but her thoughts:
+
+"My pride has the right to hate him, but I think he is still my
+soul's man."
+
+Noel was about to speak again, when he suddenly fell back and doffed
+his bonnet. Perched on the steps of the church stood the stooped
+sable figure of the king, just coming from his matinal devotions. In
+the shadow behind him stood his shadows--Tristan and Olivier.
+
+Katherine, her attention swerved by Noel's glance, turned and swayed
+a reverence to Louis as he slowly descended the steps. The king
+surveyed them sardonically.
+
+"Good morning, friends," he said. Then turning to Noel, he ordered,
+"Take the top of your speed to St. Anthony's gate and bring hot news
+of the battle."
+
+Noel bowed and sped on his errand. Katherine requested:
+
+"Have I your majesty's leave?"
+
+Tristan and Olivier withdrew themselves discreetly apart, under the
+shadow of the gallows, that building of all human buildings which
+was most dear to their hearts and most sacred in their eyes.
+
+Louis came very close to the pale girl and whispered:
+
+"Are you so hungry for your devotions that you cannot waste some
+worldly words on me? Are you still angry with me for the trick I
+played on you?"
+
+Katherine's pale face flushed a little as she answered:
+
+"It is wasted spirit to be angry with a king."
+
+Louis grinned.
+
+"You are as pat with your answers as a clerk at matins. Could you
+give me your heart now if I bent my knee?"
+
+Katherine stifled a great sigh.
+
+"I lost my heart last night; I have not found it again."
+
+Louis flung up his hands in contemptuous amusement.
+
+"The fellow was a fool to blab so glibly. I would have carried the
+jest farther. But he stood on the punctilio and would not win you
+without confession."
+
+The girl's heart swelled.
+
+"I am glad he had so much honour," she said, and the shining figure
+in the bright armour seemed more archangel-like than ever.
+
+Louis looked at her intently, tickling his chin with his forefinger.
+
+"If you wait in the church for his homecoming, you will see how the
+jest ends," he said.
+
+Katherine made the king a profound reverence and slowly entered the
+church, every pulse of her body pleading in prayer for her lost
+lover. She scarcely heeded an old, bowed woman who tottered out,
+propped on a crutch stick, and who dropped the great lady a
+respectful curtsey as she passed and went her ways into the silent
+streets. So the two women in the world whom Villon loved met for the
+firsf time.
+
+Louis, left alone, beckoned to Tristan and Olivier, who hurried down
+to him.
+
+"There goes a brave lady, gossips, a fair lady, a chaste lady. She
+sails in the high latitudes of lore and deserves to find the
+Fortunate Islands. Are there not better things to do with Master
+Villon than to hang him?"
+
+Olivier protested:
+
+"This Villon is such a damnable double dealer that the ass-headed
+populace loves him better than you."
+
+The king's visage soured.
+
+"That is enough to hang him. Yet I have a kind of liking for the
+fellow, and my dream troubles me--the star that fell from heaven."
+
+Tristan commented bluffly:
+
+"Hang the rascal while you can and thank heaven you are well rid of
+him."
+
+Even as he spoke the world seemed suddenly to be full of many noises
+and many voices. From beyond the gate on the ways that led to the
+city walls came the clamour of hoarse shouts and cries and the
+thudding din of running feet. From the other side, from the street
+that led to the Louvre, came the ordered tramp of soldiers.
+
+Olivier interpreting one interruption, said:
+
+"The people are coming from the walls."
+
+And Tristan interpreted the other.
+
+"The queen, sire," he announced.
+
+Through the narrow space that led into the open square there came a
+line of soldiers escorting a number of splendidly caparisoned
+litters--the carriages of the queen and the queen's chief ladies.
+Louis advanced to the first litter, and extending his hand, assisted
+the queen to descend and conducted her with an elaborate display of
+polite affection to the gorgeous dais by the side of the church,
+where they sat side by side on the small thrones that had been
+prepared for them. The ladies and gentlemen of the court ranged
+themselves in their places behind the royal pair and the Scottish
+archers formed a solid force in front. Through the open gateway came
+a few running, shouting enthusiasts, outstrippers of the mass of
+citizens who were returning from the walls. Even the heavy sleep of
+Trois-Echelles and Petit-Jean was not proof against all this tumult.
+They awoke, rubbed their eyes, then climbing briskly to their feet,
+leaned over the platform on the handrails of the gallows and
+surveyed the scene with interest.
+
+Noel le Jolys pushed his way through the crowd aboat the gateway and
+advanced to the king.
+
+"Sire," he said, "the latest message from the battle: The day is
+wholly ours. The Grand Constable returns in triumph. You can hear
+his music now."
+
+Louis nodded.
+
+"It is very well," he affirmed gravely.
+
+Through the gateway the crowd of people was pouring thick and fast,
+shouting and cheering and filling the square in front of the dais
+with a throng of enthusiastic men, women and children, all waving
+their arms, flinging flowers and yelling welcomes at the topmost
+pitch of their lungs. The sound of military music and the tramp of
+marching men could be heard approaching louder and louder.
+
+Five girls had forced their way to the very front row of the throne
+and were applauding and shouting with the rest. These were the light
+ladies of the Fircone, Isabeau, Jehanneton, Denise, and Blanche with
+Guillemette, fat Robin Turgis' fat daughter. They were all in a
+state of great excitement, for their lovers had vanished over night
+and their Abbess had disappeared like a dream, and they knew not
+what had become of them. They had little fear for their lovers, for
+the good gentlemen of the Fellowship of the Cockleshell had a way of
+diving into the deep waters of existence at intervals in order to
+escape the too attentive eye and the too particular finger of the
+law, and the girls had a vague idea of some great scheme on hand
+which might easily result in trouble for the brotherhood. As for
+their Abbess, they were none too sorry to be free from her somewhat
+decisive authority, and they chattered and babbled like birds
+escaped from a cage.
+
+By this time the advance guard of the army began to pour in through
+the narrow mouth of the gateway and to form a line in front of the
+populace, thus leaving a wide open space between the assembled
+people and the seated king. From every window heads were thrust and
+hands extended waving scarfs of silk or scattering flowers. The
+blare of the soldiers' music grew louder and louder, the tramp of
+horse and men came nearer and nearer, and then, when the cheering
+was at its shrillest and the rain of flowers thickest, Villon rode
+in through the gateway on his great warhorse with his five ruffians
+close at his heels. Villon's lifted hand gave the signal for a halt
+and he leaped lightly off his horse and advanced towards the king, a
+glorious figure to the eyes of the crowd in his shining armour with
+a scarlet coif upon his helmet. If for a moment his glance rested on
+the gaunt skeleton of the gallows there came no change in the proud
+composure of his face. Immediately behind him followed the faithful
+ragamuffins, each of whom bore vivid signs in slung arm, swathed leg
+or bandaged forehead of the lusty work he had done in the king's
+name upon the king's enemies. But the slings and swathes and
+bandages were of no common sort, but splendid bits of silk of many
+colours, bearing fantastic devices and rich in threads of gold and
+silver.
+
+As Villon and his fantastic escort strode towards the presence, Noel
+interposed indignantly. He stretched a pair of protecting arms wide
+out to ward off from the king the approach of so singular a
+deputation, while he demanded angrily:
+
+"In heaven's name, sir, who are these scarecrows who flaunt their
+tatters in the presence of the king?"
+
+The king nursed his chin with an amused smile as Villon answered:
+
+"The scarecrows are rogues who have fought like gentlefolk and these
+rags are the banners of the enemy."
+
+Even as he spoke the rapscallions stripped the pieces of silk from
+arm and leg and forehead, shook them out into such semblance of
+their original shape as battle had left to them and flung them with
+a gesture of imperial pride on the ground at the foot of the dais.
+
+"Well answered," said Louis regally, while two pursuivants pounced
+swiftly upon the bits of silk, and gathering them up with
+reverential fingers, laid them upon the railing in front of the
+king's chair to be examined with loving care by the queen. Standing
+erect, Villon addressed the king: "Louis of France, we bring you
+these silks for your carpet. An hour ago they wooed the wind from
+Burgundian staves and floated over Burgundian helmets. I will make
+no vain glory of their winning. Burgundy fought well, but France
+fought better, and these trophies trail in our triumph. To a
+mercer's eyes these bits of tissue are but so many squares of
+damaged web. To a soldier's eye, they cover crowded graves with
+honour. To a king's eye, they deck one throne with lonely splendour.
+When we here, who breathe hard from fighting, and ye, who stand
+there and marvel, are dust, when the king's name is but a golden
+space in chronicles grey with age, these banners shall hang from
+Cathedral arches and your children's children's children, lifted in
+reverent arms, shall peep through the dim air at the faded colours,
+and baby lips shall whisper an echo of our battle."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE SHADOW OF THE GALLOWS
+
+
+
+
+
+As Villon ended a great peal of music came from the church, the
+magnificent music of a Te Deum Laudamus; while from the soldiers who
+choked the archway, a glowing sea of steel, there rose one common
+cry of "God save the Grand Constable!"
+
+Olivier leaned over and whispered to the king;
+
+"They cheer him, sire."
+
+Louis waved him impatiently aside, and leaning over the railing,
+spoke:
+
+"My Lord Constable, and you, brave soldiers, the King of France
+thanks you for your gift. Victory was indeed assured you by the
+justice of our cause. My Lord of Montcorbier, you may promise these
+brave fellows that their sovereign will remember them."
+
+Swiftly Villon turned and addressed the motley throng behind him:
+
+"In the king's name, a gold coin to every man who fought and a cup
+of wine to every man, woman and child who wishes to drink the king's
+health."
+
+The king smiled wryly.
+
+"Ever generous," he said.
+
+"To the end, sire," Villon answered, with an ironic salutation,
+which Louis answered by an ironic question.
+
+"What have you now to do?"
+
+Villon saluted the king again.
+
+"My latest duty, sire," he answered, and once again he turned to
+address the multitude:
+
+"Soldiers who have served under me, friends who have fought with me,
+and you, people, whom I have striven to succour, listen to my
+amazing swan song. You know me a little as Count of Montcorbier,
+Grand Constable of France. I know myself indifferently well as
+François Villon, Master of Arts, broker of ballads and somewhile
+bibber and brawler. It is now my task as Grand Constable of France
+to declare that the life of Master François Villon is forfeit and to
+pronounce on him this sentence, that he be straightway hanged upon
+yonder gibbet."
+
+His words fell like the beat of a passing bell upon the ears of an
+absolutely silent crowd and for some few year-long seconds the
+silence brooded over the place. The five wantons on the fringe of
+the crowd caught at each others' fingers and gasped. Was that
+splendid gentleman their old friend, François Villon? As for the
+five rogues who knew the secret, they had begun to laugh at Villon's
+first words, but the laughter dried upon their lips as he ended.
+
+From the church suddenly the exultant music of the Te Deum ceased to
+swell and in its place crept forth upon the silent air the awful
+notes of a Miserere. The king had been at the ear of the organist
+that morning and had planned his effects well. The melancholy music
+stirred the people to murmurs of surprise and protest.
+
+Guy Tabarie, flourishing his notched and bloody sword, thrust his
+round body forward.
+
+"What jest is this?" he asked.
+
+And Villon answered him:
+
+"Such a jest as I would rather weep over to-morrow than laugh at
+to-day. For the pitcher breaks at the well's mouth this very
+morning. Messire Noel, to you I surrender my sword. I like to
+believe that it has scraped a little shame from its master's coat."
+
+He drew his great war-sword and handed it to Noel le Jolys, who, for
+one of the few times in his life, astonished into forgetfulness of
+courtly etiquette, had been staring, open-mouthed, at the
+astonishing revelation that had just been made to him. The gleam of
+the war-worn weapon recalled him to himself and he took it from the
+hands of the doomed man with a grave courtesy which meant something
+more than the official fulfillment of a formal duty. Noel le Jolys
+was a soldier and his eyes paid homage to a brave man.
+
+Villon turned to Tristan.
+
+"Master Tristan, perform your office upon this self-doomed felon."
+
+With great alacrity, Tristan moved towards Villon, but his motion
+was met by such angry murmurs from the crowd, and not from the crowd
+alone, but from the soldiers who had followed Villon to victory,
+that even he shrank back instinctively before its menace. There came
+cries from a thousand throats, calling on the king to pardon the
+Grand Constable, calling upon those who loved him to rescue him.
+
+"King, is this justice?" René de Montigny, shouted, and his question
+evoked a roar of approval from the multitude.
+
+The king's keen glance surveyed the scene with no sign of fear and
+no sign of annoyance. Leaning easily upon the railing, as a man
+might lean who surveyed an amusing farce or interlude, he addressed
+the crowd:
+
+"Good people of Paris, you have heard your Grand Constable pronounce
+sentence upon a criminal. Has Master François Villon any reason to
+urge, any plea to offer, why the sentence should not be carried
+out?"
+
+Villon waved his hand disdainfully.
+
+"I have nothing whatever to say, sire. François Villon must die.
+It's bad luck for him, but he has worse luck and so--to business."
+
+As he spoke he drew near to the line of Scottish archers and two of
+their number laid hands on him, one at either side. The sight of
+their hero thus in the very clutch of justice spurred the multitude
+to Renéwed exasperation. Angry demands for justice, for mercy, for
+rescue, shook the summer air. Unarmed citizens broke into an
+armourer's shop hard by, and, seizing whatever weapons they could
+lay their hands upon, flourished them aloft in significant assertion
+that their words were but the prefaces to deeds. Again Tabarie's
+bull voice bellowed to those about him:
+
+"Kings must listen to the voice of the people. Shall the man who led
+us to victory die a rogue's death?"
+
+And again his thunder heralded a storm. Soldiers and citizens alike
+seemed prepared to rescue Villon by force from the hands of his
+enemies. The Scottish archers with levelled arquebusses formed a
+line in front of the dais and every courtier drew his sword. Only
+the king seemed unmoved, only the king seemed entertained by the
+wind he had sowed, the whirlwind he had reaped. He asked quite
+quietly:
+
+"Does Master François Villon ask his life?"
+
+Villon shook his head.
+
+"No, sire. Master François Villon played and Master François Villon
+pays."
+
+As he spoke the angry people, swaying like a sea, shouted new shouts
+of rescue, clamoured new cries for pardon. Olivier, green-pale,
+whispered eagerly to the king:
+
+"Sire, the rogues are in a damnable temper. Can you not gain time,
+postpone, promise?"
+
+Louis answered imperturbably:
+
+"Are the fools so fond of the fellow? I know a way to stop their
+shouting."
+
+As he spoke, for the first time he rose from his seat, a frail,
+small, black figure, to dominate those raging waves of humanity,
+while Olivier, holding up his hand to order silence, shouted:
+
+"Peace, peace! The king would speak with his good people of Paris."
+
+The noisy voices dropped slowly into silence to hear what the king
+said.
+
+"Good people of Paris, I am no tyrant. But a king is the father of
+his people, and his ears can never be shut against the cries of his
+children. You all love this man? Hear, then, my judgment! This man's
+life is forfeit. Which of you will redeem it? If there be one among
+you ready to take Master François Villon's place on yonder gibbet,
+let that one speak now."
+
+There was a brief silence as the mob began to realize the meaning of
+the king's words, a silence broken by angry cries.
+
+"What does he mean? Take his place on the gallows! A trick--a
+trick!"
+
+Louis grinned complacently.
+
+"No trick, friends, but a simple bargain. Here is a man condemned to
+death; here is an idle gibbet. If ye prize him so highly, let one
+among you die for him. It has been said by the wise Apostle:
+'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life
+for his friends.' On my word as a king, when such a splendid
+volunteer is swinging at the end of yonder rope that moment Master
+François Villon shall go free. Come, who will slip neck in noose for
+the sake of a hero?"
+
+Villon protested haughtily:
+
+"No man shall die for me."
+
+But, indeed, his protest was premature. The anger of the crowd
+dwindled into sullen clamours.
+
+"The king laughs at us! 'Tis too much to ask."
+
+A faint, exultant smile flickered over the king's face as he asked:
+
+"Now, friends, where is your idol's supplement? Who will be his
+lieutenant, who will be heir to his heritage of a cross bar and a
+rope? You are not so brisk as you were. Does your devotion falter?
+Were you mocking me and him?"
+
+Villon looked at the king with a kind of disdainful admiration.
+
+"King of foxes!" he applauded, and the king heard him and smiled
+again.
+
+"Tristan," he said, "go into yonder church and bring me an inch of
+candle."
+
+Tristan bowed and entered the church. The king went on:
+
+"Our royal mercy is mild, our royal mercy is patient. As it is our
+hope and our belief to live in history as a good and gracious
+sovereign, we would not have it said of us that we denied even a
+felon all due and reasonable opportunity."
+
+Even while he spoke, Tristan came out of the church carrying in his
+hand a great gold candlestick in whose socket a little piece of
+candle, scarce an inch high, still was burning. He gave it into the
+hands of one of the soldiers of the Scottish Guard, who held it in
+his strong grasp and stood as immovable as a statue, while the thin
+faint flame pointed spear-like towards heaven in the warm and
+windless air.
+
+Louis stopped and whispered to a page behind him who bowed and
+entered the church. Then the king spoke again to the silent,
+wondering crowd:
+
+"So long as this candle burns, so long François Villon lives. If
+while it burns, one of you is moved to take Master Villon's place on
+the gallows, so much the better for Master Villon, and so much the
+worse for his substitute. Herald, proclaim our pleasure."
+
+At a sign from Montjoye, the royal herald, two pursuivants stirred
+the air with the blast of golden trumpets. Then Montjoye spoke:
+
+"The king's grace and the king's justice is ready to grant life and
+liberty to François Villon if anyone be found willing to take his
+place on the gallows and die his death that he may live his life!"
+
+As Montjoye's words died away a great silence fell upon the
+assembled people, a silence so still and cruel that men's hearts
+grew cold and the warm June air seemed to be sighing over fields of
+ice. The king leaned over and addressed his prisoner confidentially:
+
+"Master Villon, Master Villon, you see what human friendship means
+and the sweet voices of the multitude."
+
+Villon answered boldly:
+
+"Sire, it is no news to me that men love the dear habit of living."
+
+Louis signalled to Montjoye.
+
+"Proclaim again," he said; and once more the pair of pursuivants
+blew their trumpets and once again Montjoye made his singular
+proposition of pardon to the assemblage.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+"WE SPEAK TO MEN"
+
+
+
+
+
+It fell this time upon fresh ears, the ears of an old woman who was
+patiently pushing her way through the crowd in her effort to reach
+her humble lodging. She had succeeded in making her way to the open
+space as the last words of the herald's offer were being spoken, and
+suddenly her dulled brain caught the full significance of Montjoye's
+speech. Looking wildly around her, she saw where Villon stood, an
+armoured figure held captive, and without attempting to realize the
+meaning of what she beheld, she dropped her stick and tottered
+forward to the dais, where she fell on her knees with clasped,
+entreating hands.
+
+"Sire, sire, I will die for him!"
+
+Villon's heart leaped to his throat when he saw her.
+
+"Mammy, mammy, go away!" he cried, and he made a vain attempt to
+move towards his mother, a movement instantly restrained by the
+crossed weapons of his captors. At the same moment Katherine de
+Vaucelles came out of the church door in obedience to the summons of
+a royal page, who had found her at her prayers, and who told her
+that the king desired her presence. She paused at the head of the
+steps in amazed survey of the crowded place and a scene that at
+first she could not understand.
+
+"Who is this woman?" Louis asked, looking down at the poor old dame,
+who knelt before him and besought him. Olivier answered in his ear:
+
+"The fellow's mother, sire."
+
+A very little tenderness came into Louis' eyes, a very little
+tenderness trembled on his lips.
+
+"Woman, we cannot hear you," he said. "By God's law you have given
+him life once and by my law you may not give him life again."
+
+"Sire, I beseech you," Mother Villon entreated; but the king's pity
+was not to be purchased so.
+
+"Take her away and use her gently," he said.
+
+Noel le Jolys stooped to obey the king's command, but the old woman,
+rising to her feet, repulsed him fiercely.
+
+"No! no!" she said. "I will not leave my son," and she flung her old
+body passionately upon the prisoner's neck and clasped with her lean
+arms his mailed shoulders.
+
+Louis bade Montjoye proclaim for the last time, and once again the
+trumpets thundered and once again the cold, calm voice of Montjoye
+propounded the grim terms of the king's clemency.
+
+The silence that followed was swiftly broken by; the sweet, clear
+voice of a girl.
+
+"I will," said Katherine de Vaucelles from her stand on the church
+steps, and on the instant all eyes were turned to the spot where the
+maiden stood with face as white as pear-blossom and her hands
+tightly clenched by her sides. She moved slowly down the steps in
+the dead silence and paused before the king's throne.
+
+"I will die for him, sire," she said quietly.
+
+From Villon's lips there came a mighty cry of "Katherine!" and a
+fain spot of colour rose on the king's cheeks.
+
+"Mistress, we speak to men," he said.
+
+Tristan pressed his great hands together.
+
+"By St. Denis, our women seem to make the best men," he grunted.
+
+Katherine stood, tall and proud, facing the king. Mother Villon,
+stirred by this heavenly interference, left her son to fall at the
+feet of the angel lady and kiss the hem of her garment.
+
+Katherine spoke bravely:
+
+"Sire, I love this man and would be proud to die for him. It may
+chime with your pleasure to slay him; it cannot chime with your
+honour to deny me. Your word is given and a king must keep his
+word."
+
+The king made an impatient gesture.
+
+"We speak to men."
+
+Villon caught at his words.
+
+"I speak to a woman," he cried, and gazirig passionately at his
+love, he called to her: "Katherine, my Katherine, death is a little
+thing. For love is deathless and you give me a better thing than
+life."
+
+With unmoved voice, with unchanged face, Katherine persisted:
+
+"Sire, I claim your promise."
+
+Louis again denied her.
+
+"We speak to men. Tristan, do your office."
+
+At this moment the situation suddenly changed. Villon unexpectedly
+wrenched himself free from the control of the two soldiers beside
+him, whose hold had relaxed in their wonder at what was passing, and
+sprang towards Katherine. His act instantly inspired the hearts and
+hands of his sympathisers, and in a second he was caught up and
+encircled by a crowd of armed and determined men, who drove back the
+Scottish archers. Villon snatched a drawn sword from the hand of
+René de Montigny and held it high in the air while he shouted:
+
+"No, by God's rood, the candle of my grace has not yet burnt to the
+socket! People of Paris, shall I not speak to my lover before I die?"
+
+The place was a raving bedlam of noise and menace. The Scottish
+archers did not dare to make any attempt to recapture their escaped
+prisoner, but kept their line in front of the royal dais, while
+Villon stood by the side of Katherine with drawn sword, an archangel
+of insurrection, ready at any moment to fling the forces behind him
+upon his adversaries. Yet the king remained as unmoved as if he had
+been witnessing a puppet show. In his thin, even voice, he
+commanded:
+
+"Speak to her while the candle burns, not a second longer."
+
+With one accord, Villon's adherents drew back and Villon was left
+with Katherine alone in the open space.
+
+Katherine whispered to him:
+
+"François, will you not take life at my hands?"
+
+Villon answered her tenderly:
+
+"Dear child, if that crowned Judas there had taken you at your word,
+do you think I would have outlived you by the space of a second?"
+
+She looked fixedly into his eyes.
+
+"You are resolved?"
+
+He smiled back at her.
+
+"I am as stubborn as a mule and no pleadings will move me."
+
+She looked over her shoulder with a shudder.
+
+"Dearest, the candle flickers in the wind. There is a dagger in your
+girdle. Slay me and yourself."
+
+"You mean it?" he gasped, and she answered firmly:
+
+"By God's Mother and God's Son."
+
+A sudden, wonderful thought flashed through Villon's mind. He had
+won love, he could not hope to win life, but at least he might so
+manage as to die a soldier's death and not a knave's. He whispered
+to her eagerly:
+
+"Then we will spoil old Louis' pleasure yet. Lore, will you marry me
+here at the foot of the gallows?"
+
+She answered him:
+
+"With all my heart."
+
+Instantly he turned and left her and strode towards the throne.
+
+"King, I crave your patience, but your sentence must tarry and turn,
+for I claim to marry this lady."
+
+Louis smiled derisively.
+
+"It is too late. Sing your neck-rhyme and have done, for your noose
+is too large for a wedding ring."
+
+Villon gave him back smile for smile.
+
+"Sire," he said, "I am a Master of Arts of the University of Paris
+and as such have the right in extremis to any sacrament of the
+church. I have lived a confirmed bachelor, but now I have a mind to
+change my state. Find me a priest, King Louis."
+
+Olivier stooped to the king.
+
+"He speaks the truth, sire. He can claim this right"
+
+Louis leaned forward interested.
+
+"What do you hope to gain by this?"
+
+Villon answered calmly:
+
+"The right to die like a soldier by the sword, not like a rogue by
+the rope."
+
+A murmur of approval stirred the silent crowd, but it died away as
+Katherine suddenly advanced and stood, a white figure like a fair
+lily, between the king and Villon.
+
+"Nay, you gain more than this. I am the Lady Katherine de Vaucelles,
+kinswoman of the royal house, mistress of a hundred lands, Grand
+Seneschale of Gascony, Warden of the Marches of Poitou. In my own
+domains I exercise the High Justice and the Low. This man is of
+humble birth, and when I marry him he becomes my vassal. Over my
+vassals I hold the law of life and death."
+
+Villon dropped on his knees beside his lady.
+
+Louis clapped his thin hands together as a man might applaud a play.
+
+"You are a bold minion and you have a quick wit. But if you marry
+this gaol bird you decline to his condition. Your high titles fall
+from you, your great estates are forfeit to the crown and you and he
+must go out into exile together; the beggar woman with the beggar
+man."
+
+Katherine turned to Villon where he knelt beside her.
+
+"'Tis a little price to pay for my lover."
+
+Villon looking up into her eyes, questioned her:
+
+"Do you think I'm worth it, Kate? 'Tis a big price to pay for this
+poor anatomy."
+
+She repeated her words.
+
+"'Tis a little price to pay for my lover. Do you doubt me?"
+
+Unheeded a man-at-arms pushed his way through the crowd to the
+king's dais and whispered some words in the ear of Noel le Jolys,
+who in turn whispered in the ear of Olivier and Olivier hearing,
+grew paler than before. Villon caught Katherine by the hand.
+
+"No, Kate, no! The world is wide, our hearts are light. For a star
+has fallen to me from heaven and it fills the earth with glory."
+
+His words fell on the king's ears like the voice of an oracle.
+Standing in his place with staring eyes and trembling fingers, he
+repeated falteringly the mystic words.
+
+"A star has fallen from heaven. My dream, my dream!"
+
+Olivier plucked at his mantle, whispering with twitching lips:
+
+"My liege, this story spreads like the plague in the city and every
+alley vomits mutiny."
+
+Louis pushed him aside.
+
+"Rub your pale cheeks," he said; "for all is well. Destiny has
+spoken."
+
+Then leaning over and stretching his thin hand towards the crowd, he
+cried:
+
+"People of Paris, that man shall have his life; this woman her
+lover. I have tried a man's heart and found it pure gold; a woman's
+soul and found it all angel. True man and true woman, to each
+other's arms!"
+
+And Katherine and Villon obeyed the king.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE
+
+
+
+
+
+At about this point in his narrative, Dom Gregory, as those happy
+few who are familiar with his manuscript in the Abbey of Bonne
+Aventure are aware, diverges from the full current of his story to
+indulge in some philosophical reflections upon the character of
+Louis XI.
+
+What, Dom Gregory asks in cautious interrogation, were the real
+intentions of the monarch with regard to François Villon and the
+Lady Katherine de Vaucelles? His enemies no doubt assert that he
+played with their destinies for a purely malignant purpose and was
+only prevented from carrying his evil intentions into effect by the
+storm of popular indignation that threatened him. Others, again, who
+pretend to a more intimate acquaintance with the shifty character of
+the king, insist that he did indeed purpose to send Master Villon to
+the gallows, or at least and worse, into a beggar's exile, but that
+lie was stayed by Master Villon's happy use of the phrase concerning
+a star fallen from heaven, which words, harping upon the
+superstitious wits of his majesty, made him believe that the dream
+which had puzzled him was interpreted and fulfilled. In this regard
+Dom Gregory records with a sly gravity how many suggest that Master
+François used those words of set purpose with the very intention of
+playing upon the strained strings of the king's mind. But there be
+those, too, Dom Gregory adds, and we gather from his manner that he
+is inclined to include himself in their number, there be those
+partisans of the king who maintain that the king's cruelty was from
+the start a mere mask for clemency, that he only intended a little
+malicious sport with the too outspoken lover and the too disdainful
+lass, and that it had never been in the scope of his thoughts
+seriously to punish either the broker of ballads or the valiant maid
+of Vaucelles.
+
+Starting from this point, Dom Gregory indulges in a great many
+reflections upon kings and kingship and the consequences of kingly
+acts, all of which seemed perhaps more momentous at the time when
+they were written and in the sleepy Abbey where they lie enshrined,
+than in busier and more bustling times. One could have wished that
+Dom Gregory had let such philosophies go by the board and had given
+us instead some greater knowledge of what happened to François
+Villon and Katherine de Vaucelles after they fell upon each other's
+necks in that open place in Paris, with the mob huzzahing, the king
+staring and Tristan's strange satellites busily dismantling the
+useless gibbet. But here Dom Gregory is little less than dumb.
+Losses in the manuscript account for much of his silence; perhaps
+his ecclesiastical indifference to the wedded state may account for
+more. If we can gather vaguely from other sources that the poet and
+his mistress settled down on a small and quiet estate in Poitou,
+lived a peaceful country life for many years and died a peaceful
+country death at the end, it is the most we can hope to gain with
+surety. We are glad to believe in their happiness, for he was a true
+lover and she was a fair woman.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's If I Were King, by Justin Huntly McCarthy
+
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