cleared him of all blame, Francois set about procuring a pardon. [Footnote: There is humor in his deposition that Gilles and Ysabeau and he were loitering before Saint Benoit's in friendly discourse,—'pour soy esbatre.' Perhaps Rene 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 Rene's way of living. 'You are a thief,' Francois observed to Montigny the day the pardon came, 'but you have played a kindly part by me. I think you are Dysmas, Rene, 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, Francois.'
'Rene, Rene,' 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. '
There was a light crackling frost under foot the day that Francois 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 Francois. 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 Francois found rigid faces, sniffs, and skirts drawn aside. A little girl in a red cap, Robin Troussecaille's daughter, flung a stone at Francois as he slunk into the cloister of Saint Benoit-le- Betourne. 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 Hotel 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!' Francois 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 Francois' laughter. 'What a world we live in!' he giggled. 'You gave me your name and I soiled it? Eh, Master Priest, Master Pharisee, beware!
Yet he went to Jehan de Vaucelles' home. 'I will afford God one more chance at my soul,' said Francois.
In the garden he met Catherine and Noel d'Arnaye coming out of the house.
They stopped short. Her face, half-muffled in the brown fur of her cloak, flushed to a wonderful rose of happiness, the great eyes glowed, and Catherine reached out her hands toward Francois with a glad cry.
His heart was hot wax as he fell before her upon his knees. 'O heart's dearest, heart's dearest!' he sobbed; 'forgive me that I doubted you!'
And then for an instant, the balance hung level. But after a while, 'Ysabeau de Montigny dwells in the Rue du Fouarre,' said Catherine, in a crisp voice,—'having served your purpose, however, I perceive that Ysabeau, too, is to be cast aside as though she were an old glove. Monsieur d'Arnaye, thrash for me this betrayer of women.'
Noel was a big, handsome man, like an obtuse demi-god, a foot taller than Francois. Noel lifted the boy by his collar, caught up a stick and set to work. Catherine watched them, her eyes gemlike and cruel.
Francois did not move a muscle. God had chosen.
After a little, though, the Sieur d'Arnaye flung Francois upon the ground, where he lay quite still for a moment. Then slowly he rose to his feet. He never looked at Noel. 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. 'Rene,' said Francois, '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?'
Rene 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 Francois de Montcorbier.'
But the recruit raised a protesting hand. 'No,' said he,—'Francois Villon. The name is triply indisputable, since it has been put upon me not by one priest but by three.'
6.
When the Dauphin came from Geneppe to be crowned King of France, there rode with him Noel d'Arnaye and Noel'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 Noel a snug fief in Picardy, the Rue Saint Jacques applauded.
'Noel 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. Noel, 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
