His voice was quiet, and his smile never failed him. It was this steady smile which set her heart to aching. Adelais knew that no natural power could dissuade him; he would go back with her; but she knew how constantly he had hoped for liberty, with what fortitude he had awaited his chance of liberty; and that he should return to captivity, smiling, thrilled her to impotent, heart-shaking rage. It maddened her that he dared love her thus infinitely.
"But, mademoiselle," Fulke d'Arnaye went on, when she had mounted, "let us proceed, if it so please you, by way of Filby. For then we may ride a little distance with this rogue Olivier. I may not hope to see Olivier again in this life, you comprehend, and Olivier is, I think, the one person who loves me in all this great wide world. Me, I am not very popular, you conceive. But you do not object, mademoiselle?"
"No!" she said, in a stifled voice.
Afterward they rode on the way to Filby, leaving Roger Darke to regain at discretion the mastership of his faculties. The two Frenchmen as they went talked vehemently; and Adelais, following them, brooded on the powerful Marquis of Falmouth and the great lady she would shortly be; but her eyes strained after Fulke d'Arnaye.
Presently he fell a-singing; and still his singing praised her in a desirous song, yearning but very sweet, as they rode through the autumn woods; and his voice quickened her pulses as always it had the power to quicken them, and in her soul an interminable battling dragged on.
Sang Fulke d'Arnaye:
_"Had you lived when earth was newWhat had bards of old to doSave to sing in praise of you?
"They had sung of you always,Adelais, sweet Adelais,As worthiest of all men's praise;Nor had undying melodies,Wailed soft as love may sing of theseDream-hallowed names,—of Héloïse,Ysoude, Salomê, Semelê,Morgaine, Lucrece, Antiopê,Brunhilda, Helen, Mélusine,Penelope, and Magdalene:—But you alone had all men's praise,Sweet Adelais"_
5."Thalatta!"
When they had crossed the Bure, they had come into the open country,—a great plain, gray in the moonlight, that descended, hillock by hillock, toward the shores of the North Sea. On the right the dimpling lustre of tumbling waters stretched to a dubious sky-line, unbroken save for the sail of the French boat, moored near the ruins of the old Roman station, Garianonum, and showing white against the unresting sea, like a naked arm; to the left the lights of Filby flashed their unblinking, cordial radiance.
Here the brothers parted. Vainly Olivier wept and stormed before Fulke's unwavering smile; the Sieur d'Arnaye was adamantean: and presently the younger man kissed him on both cheeks and rode slowly away toward the sea.
D'Arnaye stared after him. "Ah, the brave lad!" said Fulke d'Arnaye. "And yet how foolish! Look you, mademoiselle, that rogue is worth ten of me, and he does not even suspect it."
His composure stung her to madness.
"Now, by the passion of our Lord and Saviour!" Adelais cried, wringing her hands in impotence; "I conjure you to hear me, Fulke! You must not do this thing. Oh, you are cruel, cruel! Listen, my lord," she went on with more restraint, when she had reined up her horse by the side of his, "yonder in France the world lies at your feet. Our great King is dead. France rises now, and France needs a brave captain. You, you! it is you that she needs. She has sent for you, my lord, that mother France whom you love. And you will go back to sleep in the sun at Winstead when France has need of you. Oh, it is foul!"
But he shook his head. "France is very dear to me," he said, "yet there are other men who can serve France. And there is no man save me who may to-night serve you, most beautiful lady."
"You shame me!" she cried, in a gust of passion. "You shame my worthlessness with this mad honor of yours that drags you jesting to your death! For you must die a prisoner now, without any hope. You and Orleans and Bourbon are England's only hold on France, and Bedford dare not let you go. Fetters, chains, dungeons, death, torture perhaps—that is what you must look for now. And you will no longer be held at Winstead, but in the strong Tower at London."
"Hélas, you speak more truly than an oracle," he gayly assented.
And hers was the ageless thought of women. "This man is rather foolish and peculiarly dear to me. What shall I do with him? and how much must I humor him in his foolishness?"
D'Arnaye stayed motionless: but still his eyes strained after Olivier.
Well, she would humor him. There was no alternative save that of perhaps never seeing Fulke again.
Adelais laid her hand upon his arm. "You love me. God knows, I am not worthy of it, but you love me. Ever since I was a child you have loved me,—always, always it was you who indulged me, shielded me, protected me with this fond constancy that I have not merited. Very well,"—she paused, for a single heartbeat,—"go! and take me with you."
The hand he raised shook as though palsied. "O most beautiful!" the Frenchman cried, in an extreme of adoration; "you would do that! You would do that in pity to save me—unworthy me! And it is I whom you call brave—me, who annoy you with my woes so petty!" Fulke d'Arnaye slipped from his horse, and presently stood beside the gray mare, holding a small, slim hand in his. "I thank you," he said, simply. "You know that it is impossible. But yes, I have loved you these long years. And now—Ah, my heart shakes, my words tumble, I cannot speak! You know that I may not—may not let you do this thing. Why, but even if, of your prodigal graciousness, mademoiselle, you were so foolish as to waste a little liking upon my so many demerits—" He gave a hopeless gesture. "Why, there is always our brave marquis to be considered, who will so soon make you a powerful, rich lady. And I?—I have nothing."
But Adelais had rested either hand upon a stalwart shoulder, bending down to him till her hair brushed his. Yes, this man was peculiarly dear to her: she could not bear to have him murdered when in equity he deserved only to have his jaws boxed for his toplofty nonsense about her; and, after all, she did not much mind humoring him in his foolishness.
"Do you not understand?" she whispered. "Ah, my paladin, do you think I speak in pity? I wished to be a great lady,—yes. Yet always, I think, I loved you, Fulke, but until to-night I had believed that love was only the man's folly, the woman's diversion. See, here is Falmouth's ring." She drew it from her finger, and flung it awkwardly, as every woman throws. Through the moonlight it fell glistening. "Yes, I hungered for Falmouth's power, but you have shown me that which is above any temporal power. Ever I must crave the highest, Fulke—Ah, fair sweet friend, do not deny me!" Adelais cried, piteously. "Take me with you, Fulke! I will ride with you to the wars, my lord, as your page; I will be your wife, your slave, your scullion. I will do anything save leave you. Lord, it is not the maid's part to plead thus!"
Fulke d'Arnaye drew her warm, yielding body toward him and stood in silence. Then he raised his eyes to heaven. "Dear Lord God," he cried, in a great voice, "I entreat of Thee that if through my fault this woman ever know regret or sorrow I be cast into the nethermost pit of Hell for all eternity!" Afterward he kissed her.
And presently Adelais lifted her head, with a mocking little laugh."Sorrow!" she echoed. "I think there is no sorrow in all the world.Mount, my lord, mount! See where brother Olivier waits for us yonder."
* * * * *
"Fortune fuz par clercs jadis nominée, Qui toi, François, crie et nomme meurtrière."
_So it came about that Adelais went into France with the great-grandson of Tiburce d'Arnaye: and Fulke, they say, made her a very fair husband. But he had not, of course, much time for love-making.
For in France there was sterner work awaiting Fulke d'Arnaye, and he set about it: through seven dreary years he and Rougemont and Dunois managed, somehow, to bolster up the cause of the fat-witted King of Bourges (as the English then called him), who afterward became King Charles VII of France. But in the February of 1429—four days before the Maid of Domremy set forth from her voice-haunted Bois Chenu to bring about a certain coronation in Rheims Church and in Rouen Square a flamy martyrdom—four days before the coming of the good Lorrainer, Fulke d'Arnaye was slain at Rouvray-en-Beausse in that encounter between the French and the English which history has commemorated as the Battle of the Herrings.
Adelais was wooed by, and betrothed to, the powerful old Comte de Vaudremont; but died just before the date set for this second marriage, in October, 1429. She left two sons: Noël, born in 1425, and Raymond, born in 1426; who were reared by their uncle, Olivier d'Arnaye. It was said of them that Noel was the handsomest man of his times, and Raymond the most shrewd; concerning that you will judge hereafter. Both of these d'Arnayes, on reaching manhood, were identified with the Dauphin's party in the unending squabbles between Charles VII and the future Louis XI.
Now you may learn how Noël d'Arnaye came to be immortalized by a legacy of two hundred and twenty blows from an osierwhip—since (as the testator piously affirms), "chastoy est une belle aulmosne."_
The Episode Called In Necessity's Mortar
1. "Bon Bec de Paris"
There went about the Rue Saint Jacques a notable shaking of heads on the day that Catherine de Vaucelles was betrothed to François de Montcorbier.
"Holy Virgin!" said the Rue Saint Jacques; "the girl is a fool. Why has she not taken Noël d'Arnaye,—Noël the Handsome? I grant you Noël is an ass, but, then, look you, he is of the nobility. He has the Dauphin's favor. Noël will be a great man when our exiled Dauphin comes back from Geneppe to be King of France. Then, too, she might have had Philippe Sermaise. Sermaise is a priest, of course, and one may not marry a priest, but Sermaise has money, and Sermaise is mad for love of her. She might have done worse. But François! Ho, death of my life, what is François? Perhaps—he, he!—perhaps Ysabeau de Montigny might inform us, you say? Doubtless Ysabeau knows more of him than she would care to confess, but I measure the lad by other standards. François is inoffensive enough, I dare assert, but what does Catherine see in him? He is a scholar?—well, the College of Navarre has furnished food for the gallows before this. A poet?—rhyming will not fill the pot. Rhymes are a thin diet for two lusty young folk like these. And who knows if Guillaume de Villon, his foster-father, has one sou to rub against another? He is canon at Saint Benôit-le-Bétourné yonder, but canons are not Midases. The girl will have a hard life of it, neighbor, a hard life, I tell you, if—but, yes!—if Ysabeau de Montigny does not knife her some day. Oh, beyond doubt, Catherine has played the fool."
Thus far the Rue Saint Jacques.
This was on the day of the Fête-Dieu. It was on this day that Noël d'Arnaye blasphemed for a matter of a half-hour and then went to the Crowned Ox, where he drank himself into a contented insensibility; that Ysabeau de Montigny, having wept a little, sent for Gilles Raguyer, a priest and aforetime a rival of François de Montcorbier for her favors; and that Philippe Sermaise grinned and said nothing. But afterward Sermaise gnawed at his under lip like a madman as he went about seeking for François de Montcorbier.
2. "Deux estions, et n'avions qu'ung Cueur"
It verged upon nine in the evening—a late hour in those days—whenFrançois climbed the wall of Jehan de Vaucelles' garden.
A wall!—and what is a wall to your true lover? What bones, pray, did the Sieur Pyramus, that ill-starred Babylonish knight, make of a wall? did not his protestations slip through a chink, mocking at implacable granite and more implacable fathers? Most assuredly they did; and Pyramus was a pattern to all lovers. Thus ran the meditations of Master François as he leapt down into the garden.
He had not, you must understand, seen Catherine for three hours. Three hours! three eternities rather, and each one of them spent in Malebolge. Coming to a patch of moonlight, François paused there and cut an agile caper, as he thought of that approaching time when he might see Catherine every day.
"Madame François de Montcorbier," he said, tasting each syllable with gusto. "Catherine de Montcorbier. Was there ever a sweeter juxtaposition of sounds? It is a name for an angel. And an angel shall bear it,—eh, yes, an angel, no less. O saints in Paradise, envy me! Envy me," he cried, with a heroical gesture toward the stars, "for François would change places with none of you."
He crept through ordered rows of chestnuts and acacias to a window wherein burned a dim light. He unslung a lute from his shoulder and began to sing, secure in the knowledge that deaf old Jehan de Vaucelles was not likely to be disturbed by sound of any nature till that time when it should please high God that the last trump be noised about the tumbling heavens.
It was good to breathe the mingled odor of roses and mignonette that was thick about him. It was good to sing to her a wailing song of unrequited love and know that she loved him. François dallied with his bliss, parodied his bliss, and—as he complacently reflected,—lamented in the moonlight with as tuneful a dolor as Messire Orpheus may have evinced when he carolled in Hades.
Sang François:
_"O Beauty of her, whereby I am undone!O Grace of her, that hath no grace for me!O Love of her, the bit that guides me onTo sorrow and to grievous misery!O felon Charms, my poor heart's enemy!O furtive murderous Pride! O pitiless, greatCold Eyes of her! have done with cruelty!Have pity upon me ere it be too late!
"Happier for me if elsewhere I had goneFor pity—ah, far happier for me,Since never of her may any grace be won,And lest dishonor slay me, I must flee.'Haro!' I cry, (and cry how uselessly!)'Haro!' I cry to folk of all estate,
"For I must die unless it chance that sheHave pity upon me ere it be too late.
"M'amye, that day in whose disastrous sunYour beauty's flower must fade and wane and beNo longer beautiful, draws near,—whereonI will nor plead nor mock;—not I, for weShall both be old and vigorless! M'amye,Drink deep of love, drink deep, nor hesitateUntil the spring run dry, but speedilyHave pity upon me—ere it be too late!
"Lord Love, that all love's lordship hast in fee,Lighten, ah, lighten thy displeasure's weight,For all true hearts should, of Christ's charity,Have pity upon me ere it be too late."_
Then from above a delicate and cool voice was audible. "You have mistaken the window, Monsieur de Montcorbier. Ysabeau de Montigny dwells in the Rue du Fouarre."
"Ah, cruel!" sighed François. "Will you never let that kite hang upon the wall?"
"It is all very well to groan like a bellows. Guillemette Moreau did not sup here for nothing. I know of the verses you made her,—and the gloves you gave her at Candlemas, too. Saint Anne!" observed the voice, somewhat sharply; "she needed gloves. Her hands are so much raw beef. And the head-dress at Easter,—she looks like the steeple of Saint Benoit in it. But every man to his taste, Monsieur de Montcorbier. Good-night, Monsieur de Montcorbier." But, for all that, the window did not close.
"Catherine—!" he pleaded; and under his breath he expressed uncharitable aspirations as to the future of Guillemette Moreau.
"You have made me very unhappy," said the voice, with a little sniff.
"It was before I knew you, Catherine. The stars are beautiful, m'amye, and a man may reasonably admire them; but the stars vanish and are forgotten when the sun appears."
"Ysabeau is not a star," the voice pointed out; "she is simply a lank, good-for-nothing, slovenly trollop."
"Ah, Catherine—!"
"You are still in love with her."
"Catherine—!"
"Otherwise, you will promise me for the future to avoid her as you would the Black Death."
"Catherine, her brother is my friend—!"
"René de Montigny is, to the knowledge of the entire Rue Saint Jacques, a gambler and a drunkard and, in all likelihood, a thief. But you prefer, it appears, the Montignys to me. An ill cat seeks an ill rat. Very heartily do I wish you joy of them. You will not promise? Good-night, then, Monsieur de Montcorbier."
"Mother of God! I promise, Catherine."
From above Mademoiselle de Vaucelles gave a luxurious sigh. "DearFrançois!" said she.
"You are a tyrant," he complained. "Madame Penthesilea was not more cruel. Madame Herodias was less implacable, I think. And I think that neither was so beautiful."
"I love you," said Mademoiselle de Vaucelles, promptly.
"But there was never any one so many fathoms deep in love as I. Love bandies me from the postern to the frying-pan, from hot to cold. Ah, Catherine, Catherine, have pity upon my folly! Bid me fetch you Prester John's beard, and I will do it; bid me believe the sky is made of calf-skin, that morning is evening, that a fat sow is a windmill, and I will do it. Only love me a little, dear."
"My king, my king of lads!" she murmured.
"My queen, my tyrant of unreason! Ah, yes, you are all that is ruthless and abominable, but then what eyes you have! Oh, very pitiless, large, lovely eyes—huge sapphires that in the old days might have ransomed every monarch in Tamerlane's stable! Even in the night I see them, Catherine."
"Yet Ysabeau's eyes are brown."
"Then are her eyes the gutter's color. But Catherine's eyes are twin firmaments."
And about them the acacias rustled lazily, and the air was sweet with the odors of growing things, and the world, drenched in moonlight, slumbered. Without was Paris, but old Jehan's garden-wall cloistered Paradise.
"Has the world, think you, known lovers, long dead now, that were once as happy as we?"
"Love was not known till we discovered it."
"I am so happy, François, that I fear death."
"We have our day. Let us drink deep of love, not waiting until the spring run dry. Catherine, death comes to all, and yonder in the church-yard the poor dead lie together, huggermugger, and a man may not tell an archbishop from a rag-picker. Yet they have exulted in their youth, and have laughed in the sun with some lass or another lass. We have our day, Catherine."
"Our day wherein I love you!"
"And wherein I love you precisely seven times as much!"
So they prattled in the moonlight. Their discourse was no more overburdened with wisdom than has been the ordinary communing of lovers since Adam first awakened ribless. Yet they were content, who, were young in the world's recaptured youth.
Fate grinned and went on with her weaving.
3. "Et Ysabeau, Qui Dit: Enné!"
Somewhat later François came down the deserted street, treading on air. It was a bland summer night, windless, moon-washed, odorous with garden-scents; the moon, nearing its full, was a silver egg set on end—("Leda-hatched," he termed it; "one may look for the advent of Queen Heleine ere dawn"); and the sky he likened to blue velvet studded with the gilt nail-heads of a seraphic upholsterer. François was a poet, but a civic poet; then, as always, he pilfered his similes from shop-windows.
But the heart of François was pure magnanimity, the heels of François were mercury, as he tripped past the church of Saint Benoit-le-Bétourné, stark snow and ink in the moonlight. Then with a jerk François paused.
On a stone bench before the church sat Ysabeau de Montigny and Gilles Raguyer. The priest was fuddled, hiccuping in his amorous dithyrambics as he paddled with the girl's hand. "You tempt me to murder," he was saying. "It is a deadly sin, my soul, and I have no mind to fry in Hell while my body swings on the Saint Denis road, a crow's dinner. Let François live, my soul! My soul, he would stick little Gilles like a pig."
Raguyer began to blubber at the thought.
"Holy Macaire!" said François; "here is a pretty plot a-brewing." Yet because his heart was filled just now with loving-kindness, he forgave the girl."Tantaene irae?"said François; and aloud, "Ysabeau, it is time you were abed."
She wheeled upon him in apprehension; then, with recognition, her rage flamed. "Now, Gilles!" cried Ysabeau de Montigny; "now, coward! He is unarmed, Gilles. Look, Gilles! Kill for me this betrayer of women!"
Under his mantle Francois loosened the short sword he carried. But the priest plainly had no mind to the business. He rose, tipsily fumbling a knife, and snarling like a cur at sight of a strange mastiff. "Vile rascal!" said Gilles Raguyer, as he strove to lash himself into a rage. "O coward! O parricide! O Tarquin!"
François began to laugh. "Let us have done with this farce," said he. "Your man has no stomach for battle, Ysabeau. And you do me wrong, my lass, to call me a betrayer of women. Doubtless, that tale seemed the most apt to kindle in poor Gilles some homicidal virtue: but you and I and God know that naught has passed between us save a few kisses and a trinket or so. It is no knifing matter. Yet for the sake of old time, come home, Ysabeau; your brother is my friend, and the hour is somewhat late for honest women to be abroad."
"Enné?" shrilled Ysabeau; "and yet, if I cannot strike a spark of courage from this clod here, there come those who may help me, François de Montcorbier. 'Ware Sermaise, Master François!"
François wheeled. Down the Rue Saint Jacques came Philippe Sermaise, like a questing hound, with drunken Jehan le Merdi at his heels. "Holy Virgin!" thought François; "this is likely to be a nasty affair. I would give a deal for a glimpse of the patrol lanterns just now."
He edged his way toward the cloister, to get a wall at his back. ButGilles Raguyer followed him, knife in hand. "O hideous Tarquin! OAbsalom!" growled Gilles; "have you, then, no respect for churchmen?"
With an oath, Sermaise ran up. "Now, may God die twice," he panted, "if I have not found the skulker at last! There is a crow needs picking between us two, Montcorbier."
Hemmed in by his enemies, François temporized. "Why do you accost me thus angrily, Master Philippe?" he babbled. "What harm have I done you? What is your will of me?"
But his fingers tore feverishly at the strap by which the lute was swung over his shoulder, and now the lute fell at their feet, leaving François unhampered and his sword-arm free.
This was fuel to the priest's wrath. "Sacred bones of Benoit!" he snarled; "I could make a near guess as to what window you have been caterwauling under."
From beneath his gown he suddenly hauled out a rapier and struck at the boy while Francois was yet tugging at his sword.
Full in the mouth Sermaise struck him, splitting the lower lip through. Francois felt the piercing cold of the steel, the tingling of it against his teeth, then the warm grateful spurt of blood; through a red mist, he saw Gilles and Ysabeau run screaming down the Rue Saint Jacques.
He drew and made at Sermaise, forgetful of le Merdi. It was shrewd work. Presently they were fighting in the moonlight, hammer-and-tongs, as the saying is, and presently Sermaise was cursing like a madman, for François had wounded him in the groin. Window after window rattled open as the Rue Saint Jacques ran nightcapped to peer at the brawl. Then as Francois hurled back his sword to slash at the priest's shaven head—Frenchmen had not yet learned to thrust with the point in the Italian manner—Jehan le Merdi leapt from behind, nimble as a snake, and wrested away the boy's weapon. Sermaise closed with a glad shout.
"Heart of God!" cried Sermaise. "Pray, bridegroom, pray!"
But François jumped backward, tumbling over le Merdi, and with apish celerity caught up a great stone and flung it full in the priest's countenance.
The rest was hideous. For a breathing space Sermaise kept his feet, his outspread arms making a tottering cross. It was curious to see him peer about irresolutely now that he had no face. François, staring at the black featureless horror before him, began to choke. Standing thus, with outstretched arms, the priest first let fall his hands, so that they hung limp from the wrists; his finger-nails gleamed in the moonlight. His rapier tinkled on the flagstones with the sound of shattering glass, and Philippe Sermaise slid down, all a-jumble, crumpling like a broken toy. Afterward you might have heard a long, awed sibilance go about the windows overhead as the watching Rue Saint Jacques breathed again.
Francois de Montcorbier ran. He tore at his breast as he ran, stifling. He wept as he ran through the moon-washed Rue Saint Jacques, making animal-like and whistling noises. His split lip was a clammy dead thing that napped against his chin as he ran.
"François!" a man cried, meeting him; "ah, name of a name, François!"
It was René de Montigny, lurching from the Crowned Ox, half-tipsy. He caught the boy by the shoulder and hurried François, still sobbing, to Fouquet the barber-surgeon's, where they sewed up his wound. In accordance with the police regulations, they first demanded an account of how he had received it. René lied up-hill and down-dale, while in a corner of the room François monotonously wept.
Fate grinned and went on with her weaving.
4. "Necessité Faict Gens Mesprende"
The Rue Saint Jacques had toothsome sauce for its breakfast. The quarter smacked stiff lips over the news, as it pictured François de Montcorbier dangling from Montfaucon. "Horrible!" said the Rue Saint Jacques, and drew a moral of suitably pious flavor.
Guillemette Moreau had told Catherine of the affair before the day was aired. The girl's hurt vanity broke tether.
"Sermaise!" said she. "Bah, what do I care for Sermaise! He killed him in fair fight. But within an hour, Guillemette,—within a half-hour after leaving me, he is junketing on church-porches with that trollop. They were not there for holy-water. Midnight, look you! And he swore to me—chaff, chaff! His honor is chaff, Guillemette, and his heart a bran-bag. Oh, swine, filthy swine! Eh, well, let the swine stick to his sty. Send Noël d'Arnaye to me."
The Sieur d'Arnaye came, his head tied in a napkin.
"Foh!" said she; "another swine fresh from the gutter? No, this is a bottle, a tun, a walking wine-barrel! Noël, I despise you. I will marry you if you like."
He fell to mumbling her hand. An hour later Catherine told Jehan de Vaucelles she intended to marry Noël the Handsome when he should come back from Geneppe with the exiled Dauphin. The old man, having wisdom, lifted his brows, and returned to his reading inLe Pet au Diable.
The patrol had transported Sermaise to the prison of Saint Benoit, where he lay all night. That day he was carried to the hospital of the Hôtel Dieu. He died the following Saturday.
Death exalted the man to some nobility. Before one of the apparitors of the Châtelet he exonerated Montcorbier, under oath, and asked that no steps be taken against him. "I forgive him my death," said Sermaise, manly enough at the last, "by reason of certain causes moving him thereunto." Presently he demanded the peach-colored silk glove they would find in the pocket of his gown. It was Catherine's glove. The priest kissed it, and then began to laugh. Shortly afterward he died, still gnawing at the glove.
François and René had vanished. "Good riddance," said the Rue SaintJacques. But Montcorbier was summoned to answer before the court of theChâtelet for the death of Philippe Sermaise, and in default of hisappearance, was subsequently condemned to banishment from the kingdom.
The two young men were at Saint Pourçain-en-Bourbonnais, where René had kinsmen. Under the name of des Loges, François had there secured a place as tutor, but when he heard that Sermaise in the article of death had cleared him of all blame, François set about procuring a pardon. [Footnote: There is humor in his deposition that Gilles and Ysabeau and he were loitering before Saint Benoît's in friendly discourse,—"pour soy esbatre." Perhaps René prompted this; but in itself, it is characteristic of Montcorbier that he trenched on perjury, blithely, in order to screen Ysabeau.] It was January before he succeeded in obtaining it.
Meanwhile he had learned a deal of René's way of living. "You are a thief," François observed to Montigny the day the pardon came, "but you have played a kindly part by me. I think you are Dysmas, René, not Gestas. Heh, I throw no stones. You have stolen, but I have killed. Let us go to Paris, lad, and start afresh."
Montigny grinned. "I shall certainly go to Paris," he said. "Friends wait for me there,—Guy Tabary, Petit Jehan and Colin de Cayeux. We are planning to visit Guillaume Coiffier, a fat priest with some six hundred crowns in the cupboard. You will make one of the party, François."
"René, René," said the other, "my heart bleeds for you."
Again Montigny grinned. "You think a great deal about blood nowadays," he commented. "People will be mistaking you for such a poet as was crowned Nero, who, likewise, gave his time to ballad-making and to murdering fathers of the Church. Eh, dear Ahenabarbus, let us first see what the Rue Saint Jacques has to say about your recent gambols. After that, I think you will make one of our party."
5. "Yeulx sans Pitié!"
There was a light crackling frost under foot the day that François came back to the Rue Saint Jacques. Upon this brisk, clear January day it was good to be home again, an excellent thing to be alive.
"Eh, Guillemette, Guillemette," he laughed. "Why, lass—!"
"Faugh!" said Guillemette Moreau, as she passed him, nose in air. "A murderer, a priest-killer."
Then the sun went black for François. Such welcoming was a bucket of cold water, full in the face. He gasped, staring after her; and pursy Thomas Tricot, on his way from mass, nudged Martin Blaru in the ribs.
"Martin," said he, "fruit must be cheap this year. Yonder in the gutter is an apple from the gallows-tree, and no one will pick it up."
Blaru turned and spat out, "Cain! Judas!"
This was only a sample. Everywhere François found rigid faces, sniffs, and skirts drawn aside. A little girl in a red cap, Robin Troussecaille's daughter, flung a stone at François as he slunk into the cloister of Saint Benoit-le-Bétourné. In those days a slain priest was God's servant slain, no less; and the Rue Saint Jacques was a respectable God-fearing quarter of Paris.
"My father!" the boy cried, rapping upon the door of the Hôtel de la Porte-Rouge; "O my father, open to me, for I think that my heart is breaking."
Shortly his foster-father, Guillaume de Villon, came to the window. "Murderer!" said he. "Betrayer of women! Now, by the caldron of John! how dare you show your face here? I gave you my name and you soiled it. Back to your husks, rascal!"
"O God, O God!" François cried, one or two times, as he looked up into the old man's implacable countenance. "You, too, my father!"
He burst into a fit of sobbing.
"Go!" the priest stormed; "go, murderer!"
It was not good to hear François' laughter. "What a world we live in!" he giggled. "You gave me your name and I soiled it? Eh, Master Priest, Master Pharisee, beware!Villonis good French forvagabond, an excellent name for an outcast. And as God lives, I will presently drag that name through every muckheap in France."
Yet he went to Jehan de Vaucelles' home. "I will afford God one more chance at my soul," said François.
In the garden he met Catherine and Noël d'Arnaye coming out of the house.They stopped short. Her face, half-muffled in the brown fur of her cloak,flushed to a wonderful rose of happiness, the great eyes glowed, andCatherine reached out her hands toward François with a glad cry.
His heart was hot wax as he fell before her upon his knees. "O heart's dearest, heart's dearest!" he sobbed; "forgive me that I doubted you!"
And then for an instant, the balance hung level. But after a while,"Ysabeau de Montigny dwells in the Rue du Fouarre," said Catherine, in acrisp voice,—"having served your purpose, however, I perceive thatYsabeau, too, is to be cast aside as though she were an old glove.Monsieur d'Arnaye, thrash for me this betrayer of women."
Noël was a big, handsome man, like an obtuse demi-god, a foot taller than François. Noel lifted the boy by his collar, caught up a stick and set to work. Catherine watched them, her eyes gemlike and cruel.
François did not move a muscle. God had chosen.
After a little, though, the Sieur d'Arnaye flung François upon the ground, where he lay quite still for a moment. Then slowly he rose to his feet. He never looked at Noël. For a long time Francois stared at Catherine de Vaucelles, frost-flushed, defiant, incredibly beautiful. Afterward the boy went out of the garden, staggering like a drunken person.
He found Montigny at the Crowned Ox. "René," said François, "there is no charity on earth, there is no God in Heaven. But in Hell there is most assuredly a devil, and I think that he must laugh a great deal. What was that you were telling me about the priest with six hundred crowns in his cupboard?"
René slapped him on the shoulder. "Now," said he, "you talk like a man." He opened the door at the back and cried: "Colin, you and Petit Jehan and that pig Tabary may come out. I have the honor, messieurs, to offer you a new Companion of the Cockleshell—Master François de Montcorbier."
But the recruit raised a protesting hand. "No," said he,—"François Villon. The name is triply indisputable, since it has been put upon me not by one priest but by three."
6."Volia l'Estat Divers d'entre Eulx"
When the Dauphin came from Geneppe to be crowned King of France, there rode with him Noël d'Arnaye and Noël's brother Raymond. And the longawaited news that Charles the Well-Served was at last servitor to Death, brought the exiled Louis post-haste to Paris, where the Rue Saint Jacques turned out full force to witness his triumphal entry. They expected, in those days, Saturnian doings of Louis XI, a recrudescence of the Golden Age; and when the new king began his reign by granting Noël a snug fief in Picardy, the Rue Saint Jacques applauded.
"Noël has followed the King's fortunes these ten years," said the Rue Saint Jacques; "it is only just. And now, neighbor, we may look to see Noel the Handsome and Catherine de Vaucelles make a match of it. The girl has a tidy dowry, they say; old Jehan proved wealthier than the quarter suspected. But death of my life, yes! You may see his tomb in the Innocents' yonder, with weeping seraphim and a yard of Latin on it. I warrant you that rascal Montcorbier has lain awake in half the prisons in France thinking of what he flung away. Seven years, no less, since he and Montigny showed their thieves' faces here. La, the world wags, neighbor, and they say there will be a new tax on salt if we go to war with the English."
Not quite thus, perhaps, ran the meditations of Catherine de Vaucelles one still August night as she sat at her window, overlooking the acacias and chestnuts of her garden. Noël, conspicuously prosperous in blue and silver, had but now gone down the Rue Saint Jacques, singing, clinking the fat purse whose plumpness was still a novelty. That evening she had given her promise to marry him at Michaelmas.
This was a black night, moonless, windless. There were a scant half-dozen stars overhead, and the thick scent of roses and mignonette came up to her in languid waves. Below, the tree-tops conferred, stealthily, and the fountain plashed its eternal remonstrance against the conspiracy they lisped of.
After a while Catherine rose and stood contemplative before a long mirror that was in her room. Catherine de Vaucelles was now, at twenty-three, in the full flower of her comeliness. Blue eyes the mirror showed her,—luminous and tranquil eyes, set very far apart; honey-colored hair massed heavily about her face, a mouth all curves, the hue of a strawberry, tender but rather fretful, and beneath it a firm chin; only her nose left something to be desired,—for that feature, though well-formed, was diminutive and bent toward the left, by perhaps the thickness of a cobweb. She might reasonably have smiled at what the mirror showed her, but, for all that, she sighed.
"O Beauty of her, whereby I am undone," said Catherine, wistfully. "Ah, God in Heaven, forgive me for my folly! Sweet Christ, intercede for me who have paid dearly for my folly!"
Fate grinned in her weaving. Through the open window came the sound of a voice singing.
Sang the voice:
"O Beauty of her, whereby I am undone!O Grace of her, that hath no grace for me!O Love of her, the bit that guides me onTo sorrow and to grievous misery!O felon Charms, my poor heart's enemy—"
and the singing broke off in a fit of coughing.
Catherine had remained motionless for a matter of two minutes, her head poised alertly. She went to the gong and struck it seven or eight times.
"Macée, there is a man in the garden. Bring him to me, Macée,—ah, love of God, Macée, make haste!"
Blinking, he stood upon the threshold. Then, without words, their lips met.
"My king!" said Catherine; "heart's emperor!"
"O rose of all the world!" he cried.
There was at first no need of speech.
But after a moment she drew away and stared at him. François, though he was but thirty, seemed an old man. His bald head shone in the candle-light. His face was a mesh of tiny wrinkles, wax-white, and his lower lip, puckered by the scar of his wound, protruded in an eternal grimace. As Catherine steadfastly regarded him, the faded eyes, half-covered with a bluish film, shifted, and with a jerk he glanced over his shoulder. The movement started a cough tearing at his throat.
"Holy Macaire!" said he. "I thought that somebody, if not Henri Cousin, the executioner, was at my heels. Why do you stare so, lass? Have you anything to eat? I am famished."
In silence she brought him meat and wine, and he fell upon it. He ate hastily, chewing with his front teeth, like a sheep.
When he had ended, Catherine came to him and took both his hands in hers and lifted them to her lips. "The years have changed you, François," she said, curiously meek.
François put her away. Then he strode to the mirror and regarded it intently. With a snarl, he turned about. "The years!" said he. "You are modest. It was you who killed François de Montcorbier, as surely as Montcorbier killed Sermaise. Eh, Sovereign Virgin! that is scant cause for grief. You made François Villon. What do you think of him, lass?"
She echoed the name. It was in many ways a seasoned name, but unaccustomed to mean nothing. Accordingly François sneered.
"Now, by all the fourteen joys and sorrows of Our Lady! I believe that you have never heard of François Villon! The Rue Saint Jacques has not heard of François Villon! The pigs, the gross pigs, that dare not peep out of their sty! Why, I have capped verses with the Duke of Orleans. The very street-boys know my Ballad of the Women of Paris. Not a drunkard in the realm but has ranted my jolly Orison for Master Cotard's Soul when the bottle passed. The King himself hauled me out of Meung gaol last September, swearing that in all France there was not my equal at a ballad. And you have never heard of me!"
Once more a fit of coughing choked him mid-course in his indignant chattering.
She gave him a woman's answer: "I do not care if you are the greatest lord in the kingdom or the most sunken knave that steals ducks from Paris Moat. I only know that I love you, François."
For a long time he kept silence, blinking, peering quizzically at her lifted face. She did love him; no questioning that. But presently he again put her aside, and went toward the open window. This was a matter for consideration.
The night was black as a pocket. Staring into it, François threw back his head and drew a deep, tremulous breath. The rising odor of roses and mignonette, keen and intolerably sweet, had roused unforgotten pulses in his blood, had set shame and joy adrum in his breast.
The woman loved him! Through these years, with a woman's unreasoning fidelity, she had loved him. He knew well enough how matters stood between her and Noel d'Arnaye; the host of the Crowned Ox had been garrulous that evening. But it was François whom she loved. She was well-to-do. Here for the asking was a competence, love, an ingleside of his own. The deuce of it was that Francois feared to ask.
"—Because I am still past reason in all that touches this ignorant, hot-headed, Pharisaical, rather stupid wench! That is droll. But love is a resistless tyrant, and, Mother of God! has there been in my life a day, an hour, a moment when I have not loved her! To see her once was all that I had craved,—as a lost soul might covet, ere the Pit take him, one splendid glimpse of Heaven and the Nine Blessed Orders at their fiddling. And I find that she loves me—me! Fate must have her jest, I perceive, though the firmament crack for it. She would have been content enough with Noel, thinking me dead. And with me?" Contemplatively he spat out of the window. "Eh, if I dared hope that this last flicker of life left in my crazy carcass might burn clear! I have but a little while to live; if I dared hope to live that little cleanly! But the next cup of wine, the next light woman?—I have answered more difficult riddles. Choose, then, François Villon,—choose between the squalid, foul life yonder and her well-being. It is true that starvation is unpleasant and that hanging is reported to be even less agreeable. But just now these considerations are irrelevant."
Staring into the darkness he fought the battle out. Squarely he faced the issue; for that instant he saw François Villon as the last seven years had made him, saw the wine-sodden soul of François Villon, rotten and weak and honeycombed with vice. Moments of nobility it had; momentarily, as now, it might be roused to finer issues; but François knew that no power existent could hearten it daily to curb the brutish passions. It was no longer possible for François Villon to live cleanly. "For what am I?—a hog with a voice. And shall I hazard her life's happiness to get me a more comfortable sty? Ah, but the deuce of it is that I so badly need that sty!"
He turned with a quick gesture.
"Listen," François said. "Yonder is Paris,—laughing, tragic Paris, who once had need of a singer to proclaim her splendor and all her misery. Fate made the man; in necessity's mortar she pounded his soul into the shape Fate needed. To king's courts she lifted him; to thieves' hovels she thrust him down; and past Lutetia's palaces and abbeys and taverns and lupanars and gutters and prisons and its very gallows—past each in turn the man was dragged, that he might make the Song of Paris. He could not have made it here in the smug Rue Saint Jacques. Well! the song is made, Catherine. So long as Paris endures, François Villon will be remembered. Villon the singer Fate fashioned as was needful: and, in this fashioning, Villon the man was damned in body and soul. And by God! the song was worth it!"
She gave a startled cry and came to him, her hands fluttering toward his breast. "François!" she breathed.
It would not be good to kill the love in her face.
"You loved François de Montcorbier. François de Montcorbier is dead. The Pharisees of the Rue Saint Jacques killed him seven years ago, and that day François Villon was born. That was the name I swore to drag through every muckheap in France. And I have done it, Catherine. The Companions of the Cockleshell—eh, well, the world knows us. We robbed Guillamme Coiffier, we robbed the College of Navarre, we robbed the Church of Saint Maturin,—I abridge the list of our gambols. Now we harvest. René de Montigny's bones swing in the wind yonder at Montfaucon. Colin de Cayeux they broke on the wheel. The rest—in effect, I am the only one that justice spared,—because I had diverting gifts at rhyming, they said. Pah! if they only knew! I am immortal, lass.Exegi monumentum. Villon's glory and Villon's shame will never die."
He flung back his bald head and laughed now, tittering over that calamitous, shabby secret between all-seeing God and François Villon. She had drawn a little away from him. This well-reared girl saw him exultant in infamy, steeped to the eyes in infamy. But still the nearness of her, the faint perfume of her, shook in his veins, and still he must play the miserable comedy to the end, since the prize he played for was to him peculiarly desirable.
"A thief—a common thief!" But again her hands fluttered back. "I drove you to it. Mine is the shame."
"Holy Macaire! what is a theft or two? Hunger that causes the wolf to sally from the wood, may well make a man do worse than steal. I could tell you—For example, you might ask in Hell of one Thevenin Pensete, who knifed him in the cemetery of Saint John."
He hinted a lie, for it was Montigny who killed Thevenin Pensete. Villon played without scruple now.
Catherine's face was white. "Stop," she pleaded; "no more, François,—ah,Holy Virgin! do not tell me any more."
But after a little she came to him, touching him almost as if with unwillingness. "Mine is the shame. It was my jealousy, my vanity, François, that thrust you back into temptation. And we are told by those in holy orders that the compassion of God is infinite. If you still care for me, I will be your wife."
Yet she shuddered.
He saw it. His face, too, was paper, and François laughed horribly.
"If I still love you! Go, ask of Denise, of Jacqueline, or of Pierrette, of Marion the Statue, of Jehanne of Brittany, of Blanche Slippermaker, of Fat Peg,—ask of any trollop in all Paris how François Villon loves. You thought me faithful! You thought that I especially preferred you to any other bed-fellow! Eh, I perceive that the credo of the Rue Saint Jacques is somewhat narrow-minded. For my part I find one woman much the same as another." And his voice shook, for he saw how pretty she was, saw how she suffered. But he managed a laugh.
"I do not believe you," Catherine said, in muffled tones. "François! You loved me, François. Ah, boy, boy!" she cried, with a pitiable wail; "come back to me, boy that I loved!"
It was a difficult business. But he grinned in her face.
"He is dead. Let François de Montcorbier rest in his grave. Your voice is very sweet, Catherine, and—and he could refuse you nothing, could he, lass? Ah, God, God, God!" he cried, in his agony; "why can you not believe me? I tell you Necessity pounds us in her mortar to what shape she will. I tell you that Montcorbier loved you, but François Villon prefers Fat Peg. An ill cat seeks an ill rat." And with this, tranquillity fell upon his soul, for he knew that he had won.
Her face told him that. Loathing was what he saw there.
"I am sorry," Catherine said, dully. "I am sorry. Oh, for high God's sake! go, go! Do you want money? I will give you anything if you will only go. Oh, beast! Oh, swine, swine, swine!"
He turned and went, staggering like a drunken person.
Once in the garden he fell prone upon his face in the wet grass. About him the mingled odor of roses and mignonette was sweet and heavy; the fountain plashed interminably in the night, and above him the chestnuts and acacias rustled and lisped as they had done seven years ago. Only he was changed.
"O Mother of God," the thief prayed, "grant that Noël may be kind to her! Mother of God, grant that she may be happy! Mother of God, grant that I may not live long!"
And straightway he perceived that triple invocation could be, rather neatly, worked out in ballade form. Yes, with a separate prayer to each verse. So, dismissing for the while his misery, he fell to considering, with undried cheeks, what rhymes he needed.
* * * * *
"Et puis il se rencontre icy une avanture merveilleuse, c'est que le fils de Grand Turc ressemble à Cléonte, à peu de chose prés."
_Noël d'Arnaye and Catherine de Vaucelles were married in the September of 1462, and afterward withdrew to Noël's fief in Picardy. There Noël built him a new Chateau d'Arnaye, and through the influence of Nicole Beaupertuys, the King's mistress, (who was rumored in court by-ways to have a tenderness for the handsome Noël), obtained large grants for its maintenance. Madame d'Arnaye, also, it is gratifying to record, appears to have lived in tolerable amity with Sieur Noël, and neither of them pried too closely into the other's friendships.
Catherine died in 1470, and Noël outlived her but by three years. Of the six acknowledged children surviving him, only one was legitimate—a daughter called Matthiette. The estate and title thus reverted to Raymond d'Arnaye, Noël's younger brother, from whom the present family of Arnaye is descended.
Raymond was a far shrewder man than his predecessor. For ten years' space, while Louis XI, that royal fox of France, was destroying feudalism piecemeal,—trimming its power day by day as you might pare an onion,—the new Sieur d'Arnaye steered his shifty course between France and Burgundy, always to the betterment of his chances in this world however he may have modified them in the next. At Arras he fought beneath the orifiamme; at Guinegate you could not have found a more staunch Burgundian: though he was no warrior, victory followed him like a lap-dog. So that presently the Sieur d'Arnaye and the Vicomte de Puysange—with which family we have previously concerned ourselves—were the great lords of Northern France.
But after the old King's death came gusty times for Sieur Raymond. It is with them we have here to do_.
The Episode Called The Conspiracy of Arnaye
1.Policy Tempered with Singing
"And so," said the Sieur d'Arnaye, as he laid down the letter, "we may look for the coming of Monsieur de Puysange to-morrow."
The Demoiselle Matthiette contorted her features in an expression of disapproval. "So soon!" said she. "I had thought—"
"Ouais, my dear niece, Love rides by ordinary with a dripping spur, and is still as arbitrary as in the day when Mars was taken with a net and amorous Jove bellowed in Europa's kail-yard. My faith! if Love distemper thus the spectral ichor of the gods, is it remarkable that the warmer blood of man pulses rather vehemently at his bidding? It were the least of Cupid's miracles that a lusty bridegroom of some twenty-and-odd should be pricked to outstrip the dial by a scant week. For love—I might tell you such tales—"
Sieur Raymond crossed his white, dimpled hands over a well-rounded paunch and chuckled reminiscently; had he spoken doubtless he would have left Master Jehan de Troyes very little to reveal in his Scandalous Chronicle: but now, as if now recalling with whom Sieur Raymond conversed, d'Arnaye's lean face assumed an expression of placid sanctity, and the somewhat unholy flame died out of his green eyes. He was like no other thing than a plethoric cat purring over the follies of kittenhood. You would have taken oath that a cultured taste for good living was the chief of his offences, and that this benevolent gentleman had some sixty well-spent years to his credit. True, his late Majesty, King Louis XI, had sworn Pacque Dieu! that d'Arnaye loved underhanded work so heartily that he conspired with his gardener concerning the planting of cabbages, and within a week after his death would be heading some treachery against Lucifer; but kings are not always infallible, as his Majesty himself had proven at Peronne.
"—For," said the Sieur d'Arnaye, "man's flesh is frail, and the devil is very cunning to avail himself of the weaknesses of lovers."
"Love!" Matthiette cried. "Ah, do not mock me, my uncle! There can be no pretence of love between Monsieur de Puysange and me. A man that I have never seen, that is to wed me of pure policy, may look for no Alcestis in his wife."
"You speak like a very sensible girl," said Sieur Raymond, complacently. "However, so that he find her no Guinevere or Semiramis or other loose-minded trollop of history, I dare say Monsieur de Puysange will hold to his bargain with indifferent content. Look you, niece, he, also, is buying—though the saying is somewhat rustic—a pig in a poke."
Matthiette glanced quickly toward the mirror which hung in her apartment. The glass reflected features which went to make up a beauty already be-sonneted in that part of France; and if her green gown was some months behind the last Italian fashion, it undeniably clad one who needed few adventitious aids. The Demoiselle Matthiette at seventeen was very tall, and was as yet too slender for perfection of form, but her honey-colored hair hung heavily about the unblemished oval of a countenance whose nose alone left something to be desired; for this feature, though well shaped, was unduly diminutive. For the rest, her mouth curved in an irreproachable bow, her complexion was mingled milk and roses, her blue eyes brooded in a provoking calm; taking matters by and large, the smile that followed her inspection of the mirror's depths was far from unwarranted. Catherine de Vaucelles reanimate, you would have sworn; and at the abbey of Saint Maixent-en-Poitou there was a pot-belly monk, a Brother François, who would have demonstrated it to you, in an unanswerable ballad, that Catherine's daughter was in consequence all that an empress should be and so rarely is. Harembourges and Bertha Broadfoot and white Queen Blanche would have been laughed to scorn, demolished and proven, in comparison (with a catalogue of very intimate personal detail), the squalidest sluts conceivable, by Brother François.
But Sieur Raymond merely chuckled wheezily, as one discovering a fault in his companion of which he disapproves in theory, but in practice finds flattering to his vanity.
"I grant you, Monsieur de Puysange drives a good bargain," said Sieur Raymond. "Were Cleopatra thus featured, the Roman lost the world very worthily. Yet, such is the fantastic disposition of man that I do not doubt the vicomte looks forward to the joys of to-morrow no whit more cheerfully than you do: for the lad is young, and, as rumor says, has been guilty of divers verses,—ay, he has bearded common-sense in the vext periods of many a wailing rhyme. I will wager a moderate amount, however, that the vicomte, like a sensible young man, keeps these whimsies of flames and dames laid away in lavender for festivals and the like; they are somewhat too fine for everyday wear."
Sieur Raymond sipped the sugared wine which stood beside him. "Like any sensible young man," he repeated, in a meditative fashion that was half a query.
Matthiette stirred uneasily. "Is love, then, nothing?" she murmured.
"Love!" Sieur Raymond barked like a kicked mastiff. "It is very discreetly fabled that love was brought forth at Cythera by the ocean fogs. Thus, look you, even ballad-mongers admit it comes of a short-lived family, that fade as time wears on. I may have a passion for cloud-tatters, and, doubtless, the morning mists are beautiful; but if I give rein to my admiration, breakfast is likely to grow cold. I deduce that beauty, as represented by the sunrise, is less profitably considered than utility, as personified by the frying-pan. And love! A niece of mine prating of love!" The idea of such an occurrence, combined with a fit of coughing which now came upon him, drew tears to the Sieur d'Arnaye's eyes. "Pardon me," said he, when he had recovered his breath, "if I speak somewhat brutally to maiden ears."
Matthiette sighed. "Indeed," said she, "you have spoken very brutally!" She rose from her seat, and went to the Sieur d'Arnaye. "Dear uncle," said she, with her arms about his neck, and with her soft cheek brushing his withered countenance, "are you come to my apartments to-night to tell me that love is nothing—you who have shown me that even the roughest, most grizzled bear in all the world has a heart compact of love and tender as a woman's?"
The Sieur d'Arnaye snorted. "Her mother all over again!" he complained; and then, recovering himself, shook his head with a hint of sadness.
He said: "I have sighed to every eyebrow at court, and I tell you this moonshine is—moonshine pure and simple. Matthiette, I love you too dearly to deceive you in, at all events, this matter, and I have learned by hard knocks that we of gentle quality may not lightly follow our own inclinations. Happiness is a luxury which the great can very rarely afford. Granted that you have an aversion to this marriage. Yet consider this: Arnaye and Puysange united may sit snug and let the world wag; otherwise, lying here between the Breton and the Austrian, we are so many nuts in a door-crack, at the next wind's mercy. And yonder in the South, Orléans and Dunois are raising every devil in Hell's register! Ah, no, ma mie; I put it to you fairly is it of greater import that a girl have her callow heart's desire than that a province go free of Monsieur War and Madame Rapine?"
"Yes, but—" said Matthiette.
Sieur Raymond struck his hand upon the table with considerable heat. "Everywhere Death yawps at the frontier; will you, a d'Arnaye, bid him enter and surfeit? An alliance with Puysange alone may save us. Eheu, it is, doubtless, pitiful that a maid may not wait and wed her chosen paladin, but our vassals demand these sacrifices. For example, do you think I wedded my late wife in any fervor of adoration? I had never seen her before our marriage day; yet we lived much as most couples do for some ten years afterward, thereby demonstrating—"
He smiled, evilly; Matthiette sighed.
"—Well, thereby demonstrating nothing new," said Sieur Raymond. "So do you remember that Pierre must have his bread and cheese; that the cows must calve undisturbed; that the pigs—you have not seen the sow I had to-day from Harfleur?—black as ebony and a snout like a rose-leaf!—must be stied in comfort: and that these things may not be, without an alliance with Puysange. Besides, dear niece, it is something to be the wife of a great lord."
A certain excitement awoke in Matthiette's eyes. "It must be very beautiful at Court," said she, softly. "Masques, fêtes, tourneys every day;—and they say the new King is exceedingly gallant—"
Sieur Raymond caught her by the chin, and for a moment turned her face toward his. "I warn you," said he, "you are a d'Arnaye; and King or not—"
He paused here. Through the open window came the voice of one singing to the demure accompaniment of a lute.
"Hey?" said the Sieur d'Arnaye.
Sang the voice:
"When you are very old, and I am gone,Not to return, it may be you will say—Hearing my name and holding me as oneLong dead to you,—in some half-jesting wayOf speech, sweet as vague heraldings of MayRumored in woods when first the throstles sing—'He loved me once.' And straightway murmuringMy half-forgotten rhymes, you will regretEvanished times when I was wont to singSo very lightly, 'Love runs into debt.'"
"Now, may I never sit among the saints," said the Sieur d'Arnaye, "if that is not the voice of Raoul de Prison, my new page."
"Hush," Matthiette whispered. "He woos my maid, Alys. He often sings under the window, and I wink at it."
Sang the voice:
_"I shall not heed you then. My course being runFor good or ill, I shall have gone my way,And know you, love, no longer,—nor the sun,Perchance, nor any light of earthly day,Nor any joy nor sorrow,—while at playThe world speeds merrily, nor reckoningOur coming or our going. Lips will cling,Forswear, and be forsaken, and men forgetWhere once our tombs were, and our children sing—So very lightly!—'Love runs into debt.'
"If in the grave love have dominionWill that wild cry not quicken the wise clay,And taunt with memories of fond deeds undone,—Some joy untasted, some lost holiday,—All death's large wisdom? Will that wisdom layThe ghost of any sweet familiar thingCome haggard from the Past, or ever bringForgetfulness of those two lovers metWhen all was April?—nor too wise to singSo very lightly, 'Love runs into debt.'
"Yet, Matthiette, though vain rememberingDraw nigh, and age be drear, yet in the springWe meet and kiss, whatever hour besetWherein all hours attain to harvesting,—So very lightly love runs into debt."_
"Dear, dear!" said the Sieur d'Arnaye. "You mentioned your maid's name, I think?"
"Alys," said Matthiette, with unwonted humbleness.
Sieur Raymond spread out his hands in a gesture of commiseration. "This is very remarkable," he said. "Beyond doubt, the gallant beneath has made some unfortunate error. Captain Gotiard," he called, loudly, "will you ascertain who it is that warbles in the garden such queer aliases for our good Alys?"
2.Age Glosses the Text of Youth
Gotiard was not long in returning; he was followed by two men-at-arms, who held between them the discomfited minstrel. Envy alone could have described the lutanist as ill-favored; his close-fitting garb, wherein the brave reds of autumn were judiciously mingled, at once set off a well-knit form and enhanced the dark comeliness of features less French than Italian in cast. The young man now stood silent, his eyes mutely questioning the Sieur d'Arnaye.
"Oh, la, la, la!" chirped Sieur Raymond. "Captain, I think you are at liberty to retire." He sipped his wine meditatively, as the men filed out. "Monsieur de Frison," d'Arnaye resumed, when the arras had fallen, "believe me, I grieve to interrupt your very moving and most excellently phrased ballad in this fashion. But the hour is somewhat late for melody, and the curiosity of old age is privileged. May one inquire, therefore, why you outsing my larks and linnets and other musical poultry that are now all abed? and warble them to rest with this pleasing but—if I may venture a suggestion—rather ill-timed madrigal?"
The young man hesitated for an instant before replying. "Sir," said he, at length, "I confess that had I known of your whereabouts, the birds had gone without their lullaby. But you so rarely come to this wing of the chateau, that your presence here to-night is naturally unforeseen. As it is, since chance has betrayed my secret to you, I must make bold to acknowledge it; and to confess that I love your niece."
"Hey, no doubt you do," Sieur Raymond assented, pleasantly. "Indeed, I think half the young men hereabout are in much the same predicament. But, my question, if I mistake not, related to your reason for chaunting canzonets beneath her window."
Raoul de Frison stared at him in amazement. "I love her," he said.
"You mentioned that before," Sieur Raymond suggested. "And I agreed, as I remember, that it was more than probable; for my niece here—though it be I that speak it—is by no means uncomely, has a commendable voice, the walk of a Hebe, and sufficient wit to deceive her lover into happiness. My faith, young man, you show excellent taste! But, I submit, the purest affection is an insufficient excuse for outbaying a whole kennel of hounds beneath the adored one's casement."
"Sir," said Raoul, "I believe that lovers have rarely been remarkable for sanity; and it is an immemorial custom among them to praise the object of their desires with fitting rhymes. Conceive, sir, that in your youth, had you been accorded the love of so fair a lady, you yourself had scarcely done otherwise. For I doubt if your blood runs so thin as yet that you have quite forgot young Raymond d'Arnaye and the gracious ladies whom he loved,—I think that your heart must needs yet treasure the memories of divers moonlit nights, even such as this, when there was a great silence in the world, and the nested trees were astir with desire of the dawn, and your waking dreams were vext with the singular favor of some woman's face. It is in the name of that young Raymond I now appeal to you."
"H'm!" said the Sieur d'Arnaye. "As I understand it, you appeal on the ground that you were coerced by the moonlight and led astray by the bird-nests in my poplar-trees; and you desire me to punish your accomplices rather than you."
"Sir,—" said Raoul.
Sieur Raymond snarled. "You young dog, you know that in the most prosaic breast a minor poet survives his entombment,—and you endeavor to make capital of the knowledge. You know that I have a most sincere affection for your father, and have even contracted since you came to Arnaye more or less tolerance for you,—which emboldens you, my friend, to keep me out of a comfortable bed at this hour of the night with an idiotic discourse of moonlight and dissatisfied shrubbery! As it happens, I am not a lank wench in her first country dance. Remember that, Raoul de Frison, and praise the good God who gave me at birth a very placable disposition! There is not a seigneur in all France, save me, but would hang you at the crack of that same dawn for which you report your lackadaisical trees to be whining; but the quarrel will soon be Monsieur de Puysange's, and I prefer that he settle it at his own discretion. I content myself with advising you to pester my niece no more."
Raoul spoke boldly. "She loves me," said he, standing very erect.
Sieur Raymond glanced at Matthiette, who sat with downcast head. "H'm!" said he. "She moderates her transports indifferently well. Though, again, why not? You are not an ill-looking lad. Indeed, Monsieur de Frison, I am quite ready to admit that my niece is breaking her heart for you. The point on which I wish to dwell is that she weds Monsieur de Puysange early to-morrow morning."