The Line of Love Part 14

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.

"Francois!" a man cried, meeting him; "ah, name of a name, Francois!"

It was Rene de Montigny, lurching from the Crowned Ox, half-tipsy. He caught the boy by the shoulder and hurried Francois, 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. Rene lied up-hill and down-dale, while in a corner of the room Francois monotonously wept.

Fate grinned and went on with her weaving.

4. "_Necessite Faict Gens Mesprende_"

The Rue Saint Jacques had toothsome sauce for its breakfast. The quarter smacked stiff lips over the news, as it pictured Francois 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 Noel 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! Noel, 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 Noel 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 in _Le 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 Hotel Dieu. He died the following Sat.u.r.day.

Death exalted the man to some n.o.bility. Before one of the apparitors of the Chatelet 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.

Francois and Rene had vanished. "Good riddance," said the Rue Saint Jacques. But Montcorbier was summoned to answer before the court of the Chatelet for the death of Philippe Sermaise, and in default of his appearance, was subsequently condemned to banishment from the kingdom.

The two young men were at Saint Pourcain-en-Bourbonnais, where Rene had kinsmen. Under the name of des Loges, Francois had there secured a place as tutor, but when he heard that Sermaise in the article of death had 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, Pet.i.t 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. "_Yeulx sans Pitie!_"

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, la.s.s--!"

"Faugh!" said Guillemette Moreau, as she pa.s.sed 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 ma.s.s, 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 G.o.d's servant slain, no less; and the Rue Saint Jacques was a respectable G.o.d-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 G.o.d, O G.o.d!" 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! _Villon_ is good French for _vagabond_, an excellent name for an outcast. And as G.o.d lives, I will presently drag that name through every muckheap in France."

Yet he went to Jehan de Vaucelles' home. "I will afford G.o.d 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-m.u.f.fled 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-G.o.d, 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. G.o.d 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 G.o.d in Heaven. But in h.e.l.l there is most a.s.suredly 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 Pet.i.t Jehan and that pig Tabary may come out. I have the honor, messieurs, to offer you a new Companion of the c.o.c.klesh.e.l.l--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. _"Volia l'Estat Divers d'entre Eulx"_

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.