The Line of Love; Dizain des Mariages Part 15

"Now, by all the fourteen joys and sorrows of Our Lady! I believe that you have never heard of Francois Villon! The Rue Saint Jacques has not heard of Francois 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 pa.s.sed. 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, Francois."

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, Francois 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 Francois 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 G.o.d! 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 carca.s.s 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, Francois 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 Francois Villon as the last seven years had made him, saw the wine-sodden soul of Francois Villon, rotten and weak and honeycombed with vice. Moments of n.o.bility it had; momentarily, as now, it might be roused to finer issues; but Francois knew that no power existent could hearten it daily to curb the brutish pa.s.sions. It was no longer possible for Francois 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," Francois 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, Francois Villon will be remembered. Villon the singer Fate fashioned as was needful: and, in this fashioning, Villon the man was d.a.m.ned in body and soul. And by G.o.d! the song was worth it!"

She gave a startled cry and came to him, her hands fluttering toward his breast. "Francois!" she breathed.

It would not be good to kill the love in her face.

"You loved Francois de Montcorbier. Francois de Montcorbier is dead. The Pharisees of the Rue Saint Jacques killed him seven years ago, and that day Francois 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 c.o.c.klesh.e.l.l--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. Rene 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, la.s.s. _Exegi monumentum_. Villon's glory and Villon's shame will never die."

He flung back his bald head and laughed now, t.i.ttering over that calamitous, shabby secret between all-seeing G.o.d and Francois 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 h.e.l.l 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, Francois,--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, Francois, that thrust you back into temptation. And we are told by those in holy orders that the compa.s.sion of G.o.d 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 Francois 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 Francois 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 m.u.f.fled tones. "Francois! You loved me, Francois. 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 Francois de Montcorbier rest in his grave. Your voice is very sweet, Catherine, and--and he could refuse you nothing, could he, la.s.s? Ah, G.o.d, G.o.d, G.o.d!" 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 Francois 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 G.o.d'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 p.r.o.ne upon his face in the wet gra.s.s. 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 G.o.d," the thief prayed, "grant that Noel may be kind to her! Mother of G.o.d, grant that she may be happy! Mother of G.o.d, 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.

JULY 17, 1484

"_Et puis il se rencontre icy une avanture merveilleuse, c'est que le fils de Grand Turc ressemble a Cleonte, a peu de chose pres_."

_Noel d'Arnaye and Catherine de Vaucelles were married in the September of 1462, and afterward withdrew to Noel's fief in Picardy. There Noel 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 Noel), obtained large grants for its maintenance. Madame d'Arnaye, also, it is gratifying to record, appears to have lived in tolerable amity with Sieur Noel, and neither of them pried too closely into the other's friendships.

Catherine died in 1470, and Noel outlived her but by three years. Of the six acknowledged children surviving him, only one was legitimate--a daughter called Matthiette. The estate and t.i.tle thus reverted to Raymond d'Arnaye, Noel's younger brother, from whom the present family of Arnaye is descended.

Raymond was a far shrewder man than his predecessor. For ten years'

s.p.a.ce, while Louis XI, that royal fox of France, was destroying feudalism piecemeal,--tr.i.m.m.i.n.g 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_.

CHAPTER VI

_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 G.o.ds, 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 l.u.s.ty bridegroom of some twenty-and-odd should be p.r.i.c.ked 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 a.s.sumed an expression of placid sanct.i.ty, 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.