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Title: If I Were King

Author: Justin Huntly McCarthy

Release Date: March, 2004 [EBook #5351]
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[This file was first posted on July 6, 2002]

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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, a