A Lodging for the Night
It was late in November 1456. The snow fell over Paris with rigorous,relentless persistence; sometimes the wind made a sally and scatteredit in flying vortices; sometimes there was a lull, and flake afterflake descended out of the black night air, silent, circuitous,interminable. To poor people, looking up under moist eyebrows, itseemed a wonder where it all came from. Master Francis Villon hadpropounded an alternative that afternoon, at a tavern window: wasit only Pagan Jupiter plucking geese upon Olympus, or were the holyangels moulting? He was only a poor Master of Arts, he went on; and asthe question somewhat touched upon divinity, he durst not ventureto conclude. A silly old priest from Montargis, who was among thecompany, treated the young rascal to a bottle of wine in honor of thejest and the grimaces with which it was accompanied, and swore on hisown white beard that he had been just such another irreverent dog whenhe was Villon's age.
The air was raw and pointed, but not far below freezing; and theflakes were large, damp, and adhesive. The whole city was sheeted up.An army might have marched from end to end and not a footfall giventhe alarm. If there were any belated birds in heaven, they saw theisland like a large white patch, and the bridges like slim whitespars, on the black ground of the river. High up overhead the snowsettled among the tracery of the cathedral towers. Many a niche wasdrifted full; many a statue wore a long white bonnet on its grotesqueor sainted head. The gargoyles had been transformed into great falsenoses, drooping toward the point. The crockets were like uprightpillows swollen on one side. In the intervals of the wind there was adull sound of dripping about the precincts of the church.
The cemetery of St. John had taken its own share of the snow. All thegraves were decently covered; tall, white housetops stood around ingrave array; worthy burghers were long ago in bed, benightcapped liketheir domiciles; there was no light in all the neighborhood but alittle peep from a lamp that hung swinging in the church choir, andtossed the shadows to and fro in time to its oscillations. The clockwas hard on ten when the patrol went by with halberds and a lantern,beating their hands; and they saw nothing suspicious about thecemetery of St. John.
Yet there was a small house, backed up against the cemetery wall,which was still awake, and awake to evil purpose, in that snoringdistrict. There was not much to betray it from without; only a streamof warm vapor from the chimney-top, a patch where the snow meltedon the roof, and a few half-obliterated footprints at the door. Butwithin, behind the shuttered windows, Master Francis Villon, the poet,and some of the thievish crew with whom he consorted, were keeping thenight alive and passing round the bottle.
A great pile of living embers diffused a strong and ruddy glow fromthe arched chimney. Before this straddled Dom Nicolas, the Picardymonk, with his skirts picked up and his fat legs bared to thecomfortable warmth. His dilated shadow cut the room in half; and thefirelight only escaped on either side of his broad person, and ina little pool between his outspread feet. His face had the beery,bruised appearance of the continual drinker's; it was covered with anetwork of congested veins, purple in ordinary circumstances, but nowpale violet, for even with his back to the fire the cold pinched himon the other side. His cowl had half fallen back, and made a strangeexcrescence on either side of his bull neck. So he straddled,grumbling, and cut the room in half with the shadow of his portlyframe.
On the right, Villon and Guy Tabary were huddled together over ascrap of parchment; Villon making a ballade which he was to call the_Ballade of Roast Fish_, and Tabary spluttering admiration at hisshoulder. The poet was a rag of a man, dark, little, and lean, withhollow cheeks and thin black locks. He carried his four-and-twentyyears with feverish animation. Greed had made folds about his eyes,evil smiles had puckered his mouth. The wolf and pig struggledtogether in his face. It was an eloquent, sharp, ugly, earthlycountenance. His hands were small and prehensile, with fingers knottedlike a cord; and they were continually flickering in front of him inviolent and expressive pantomime. As for Tabary, a broad, complacent,admiring imbecility breathed from his squash nose and slobbering lips:he had become a thief, just as he might have become the most decent ofburgesses, by the imperious chance that rules the lives of human geeseand human donkeys.
At the monk's other hand, Montigny and Thevenin Pensete played a gameof chance. About the first there clung some flavor of good birth andtraining, as about a fallen angel; something long, lithe, and courtlyin the person; something aquiline and darkling in the face. Thevenin,poor soul, was in great feather: he had done a good stroke of knaverythat afternoon in the Faubourg St. Jacques, and all night he had beengaining from Montigny. A flat smile illuminated his face; his baldhead shone rosily in a garland of red curls; his little protuberantstomach shook with silent chucklings as he swept in his gains.
"Doubles or quits?" said Thevenin.
Montigny nodded grimly.
"_Some may prefer to dine in state_" wrote Villon, "_On bread andcheese on silver plate_. Or--or--help me out, Guido!"
Tabary giggled.
"_Or parsley on a silver dish_" scribbled the poet.
The wind was freshening without; it drove the snow before it, andsometimes raised its voice in a victorious whoop, and made sepulchralgrumblings in the chimney. The cold was growing sharper as the nightwent on. Villon, protruding his lips, imitated the gust with somethingbetween a whistle and a groan. It was an eerie, uncomfortable talentof the poet's, much detested by the Picardy monk.
"Can't you hear it rattle in the gibbet?" said Villon. "They areall dancing the devil's jig on nothing, up there. You may dance, mygallants, you'll be none the warmer! Whew, what a gust! Downwent somebody just now! A medlar the fewer on the three-leggedmedlar-tree!--I say, Dom Nicolas, it'll be cold to-night on the St.Denis Road?" he asked.
Dom Nicolas winked both his big eyes, and seemed to choke upon hisAdam's apple. Montfaucon, the great grisly Paris gibbet, stood hard bythe St. Denis Road, and the pleasantry touched him on the raw. As forTabary, he laughed immoderately over the medlars; he had never heardanything more light-hearted; and he held his sides and crowed. Villonfetched him a fillip on the nose, which turned his mirth into anattack of coughing.
"Oh, stop that row," said Villon, "and think of rhymes to 'fish.'"
"Doubles or quits," said Montigny doggedly.
"With all my heart," quoth Thevenin.
"Is there any more in that bottle?" asked the monk.
"Open another," said Villon. "How do you ever hope to fill that bighogshead, your body, with little things like bottles? And how do youexpect to get to heaven? How many angels, do you fancy, can be sparedto carry up a single monk from Picardy? Or do you think yourselfanother Elias--and they'll send the coach for you?"
"_Hominibus impossibile_" replied the monk, as he filled his glass.
Tabary was in ecstasies.
Villon filliped his nose again.
"Laugh at my jokes, if you like," he said.
"It was very good," objected Tabary.
Villon made a face at him. "Think of rhymes to 'fish,'" he said. "Whathave you to do with Latin? You'll wish you knew none of it at thegreat assizes, when the devil calls for Guido Tabary, clericus--thedevil with the humpback and red-hot finger-nails. Talking of thedevil," he added, in a whisper, "look at Montigny!"
All three peered covertly at the gamester. He did not seem to beenjoying his luck. His mouth was a little to a side; one nostrilnearly shut, and the other much inflated. The black dog was on hisback, as people say, in terrifying nursery metaphor; and he breathedhard under the gruesome burden.
"He looks as if he could knife him," whispered Tabary, with roundeyes.
The monk shuddered, and turned his face and spread his open hands tothe red embers. It was the cold that thus affected Dom Nicolas, andnot any excess of moral sensibility.
"Come now," said Villon--"about this ballade. How does it run so far?"And beating time with his hand, he read it aloud to Tabary.
They were interrupted at the fourth rhyme by a brief and fatalmovement among the gamesters. The round was completed, and Theveninwas just opening his mouth to claim another victory, when Montignyleaped up, swift as an adder, and stabbed him to the heart. The blowtook effect before he had time to utter a cry, before he had time tomove. A tremor or two convulsed his frame; his hands opened and shut,his heels rattled on the floor; then his head rolled backward overone shoulder with the eyes open, and Thevenin Pensete's spirit hadreturned to Him who made it.
Everyone sprang to his feet; but the business was over in two twos.The four living fellows looked at each other in rather a ghastlyfashion; the dead man contemplating a corner of the roof with asingular and ugly leer.
"My God!" said Tabary, and he began to pray in Latin.
Villon broke out into hysterical laughter. He came a step forward andclucked a ridiculous bow at Thevenin, and laughed still louder. Thenhe sat down suddenly, all of a heap, upon a stool, and continuedlaughing bitterly as though he would shake himself to pieces.
Montigny recovered his composure first.
"Let's see what he has about him," he remarked; and he picked the deadman's pockets with a practised hand, and divided the money into fourequal portions on the table. "There's for you," he said.
The monk received his share with a deep sigh, and a single stealthyglance at the dead Thevenin, who was beginning to sink into himselfand topple sideways off the chair.
"We're all in for it," cried Villon, swallowing his mirth. "It's ahanging job for every man jack of us that's here--not to speak ofthose who aren't." He made a shocking gesture in the air with hisraised right hand, and put out his tongue and threw his head on oneside, so as to counterfeit the appearance of one who has been hanged.Then he pocketed his share of the spoil, and executed a shuffle withhis feet as if to restore the circulation.
Tabary was the last to help himself; he made a dash at the money, andretired to the other end of the apartment.
Montigny stuck Thevenin upright in the chair, and drew out the dagger,which was followed by a jet of blood.
"You fellows had better be moving," he said, as he wiped the blade onhis victim's doublet.
"I think we had," returned Villon with a gulp. "Damn his fat head!" hebroke out. "It sticks in my throat like phlegm. What right has a manto have red hair when he is dead?" And he fell all of a heap againupon the stool, and fairly covered his face with his hands.
Montigny and Dom Nicolas laughed aloud, even Tabary feebly chiming in.
"Cry baby," said the monk.
"I always said he was a woman," added Montigny with a sneer. "Sit up,can't you?" he went on, giving another shake to the murdered body."Tread out that fire, Nick." But Nick was better employed; he wasquietly taking Villon's purse, as the poet sat, limp and trembling, onthe stool where he had been making a ballade not three minutes before.Montigny and Tabary dumbly demanded a share of the booty, which themonk silently promised as he passed the little bag into the bosom ofhis gown. In many ways an artistic nature unfits a man for practicalexistence.
No sooner had the theft been accomplished than Villon shook himself,jumped to his feet, and began helping to scatter and extinguish theembers. Meanwhile Montigny opened the door and cautiously peered intothe street. The coast was clear; there was no meddlesome patrol insight. Still it was judged wiser to slip out severally; and as Villonwas himself in a hurry to escape from the neighborhood of the deadThevenin, and the rest were in a still greater hurry to get rid of himbefore he should discover the loss of his money, he was the first bygeneral consent to issue forth into the street.
The wind had triumphed and swept all the clouds from heaven. Only afew vapors, as thin as moonlight, fleeted rapidly across the stars. Itwas bitter cold; and by a common optical effect, things seemed almostmore definite than in the broadest daylight. The sleeping city wasabsolutely still: a company of white hoods, a field full of littleAlps, below the twinkling stars. Villon cursed his fortune. Would itwere still snowing! Now, wherever he went he left an indelible trailbehind him on the glittering streets; wherever he went he was stilltethered to the house by the cemetery of St. John; wherever he went hemust weave, with his own plodding feet, the rope that bound him to thecrime and would bind him to the gallows. The leer of the dead man cameback to him with a new significance. He snapped his fingers as if topluck up his own spirits, and choosing a street at random, steppedboldly forward in the snow.
Two things preoccupied him as he went: the aspect of the gallows atMontfaucon in this bright windy phase of the night's existence, forone; and for another, the look of the dead man with his bald head andgarland of red curls. Both struck cold upon his heart, and he keptquickening his pace as if he could escape from unpleasant thoughts bymere fleetness of foot. Sometimes he looked back over his shoulderwith a sudden nervous jerk; but he was the only moving thing in thewhite streets, except when the wind swooped round a corner and threwup the snow, which was beginning to freeze, in spouts of glitteringdust.
Suddenly he saw, a long way before him, a black clump and a couple oflanterns. The clump was in motion, and the lanterns swung as thoughcarried by men walking. It was a patrol. And though it was merelycrossing his line of march, he judged it wiser to get out of eyeshotas speedily as he could. He was not in the humor to be challenged, andhe was conscious of making a very conspicuous mark upon the snow. Juston his left hand there stood a great hotel, with some turrets and alarge porch before the door; it was half-ruinous, he remembered, andhad long stood empty; and so he made three steps of it and jumpedinside the shelter of the porch. It was pretty dark inside, afterthe glimmer of the snowy streets, and he was groping forward withoutspread hands, when he stumbled over some substance which offered anindescribable mixture of resistances, hard and soft, firm and loose.His heart gave a leap, and he sprang two steps back and stareddreadfully at the obstacle. Then he gave a little laugh of relief. Itwas only a woman, and she dead. He knelt beside her to make sure uponthis latter point. She was freezing cold, and rigid like a stick. Alittle ragged finery fluttered in the wind about her hair, and hercheeks had been heavily rouged that same afternoon. Her pockets werequite empty; but in her stocking, underneath the garter, Villon foundtwo of the small coins that went by the name of whites. It was littleenough; but it was always something; and the poet was moved with adeep sense of pathos that she should have died before she had spenther money. That seemed to him a dark and pitiable mystery; and helooked from the coins in his hand to the dead woman, and back again tothe coins, shaking his head over the riddle of man's life. Henry V. ofEngland, dying at Vincennes just after he had conquered France, andthis poor jade cut off by a cold draught in a great man's doorway,before she had time to spend her couple of whites--it seemed a cruelway to carry on the world. Two whites would have taken such a littlewhile to squander; and yet it would have been one more good taste inthe mouth, one more smack of the lips, before the devil got the soul,and the body was left to birds and vermin. He would like to use allhis tallow before the light was blown out and the lantern broken.
While these thoughts were passing through his mind, he was feeling,half-mechanically, for his purse. Suddenly his heart stopped beating;a feeling of cold scales passed up the back of his legs, and a coldblow seemed to fall upon his scalp. He stood petrified for a moment;then he felt again with one feverish movement; and then his loss burstupon him, and he was covered with perspiration. To spendthrifts moneyis so living and actual--it is such a thin veil between them and theirpleasures! There is only one limit to their fortune--that of time; anda spendthrift with only a few crowns is the Emperor of Rome until theyare spent. For such a person to lose his money is to suffer the mostshocking reverse, and fall from heaven to hell, from all to nothing,in a breath. And all the more if he has put his head in the halterfor it; if he may be hanged to-morrow for that same purse, so dearlyearned, so foolishly departed. Villon stood and cursed; he threw thetwo whites into the street; he shook his fist at heaven; he stamped,and was not horrified to find himself trampling the poor corpse. Thenhe began rapidly to retrace his steps toward the house beside thecemetery. He had forgotten all fear of the patrol, which was long goneby at any rate, and had no idea but that of his lost purse. It was invain that he looked right and left upon the snow; nothing was to beseen. He had not dropped it in the streets. Had it fallen in thehouse? He would have liked dearly to go in and see; but the idea ofthe grisly occupant unmanned him. And he saw besides, as he drew near,that their efforts to put out the fire had been unsuccessful; on thecontrary, it had broken into a blaze, and a changeful light playedin the chinks of the door and window, and revived his terror for theauthorities and Paris gibbet.
He returned to the hotel with the porch, and groped about upon thesnow for the money he had thrown away in his childish passion. But hecould only find one white; the other had probably struck sideways andsunk deeply in. With a single white in his pocket, all his projectsfor a rousing night in some wild tavern vanished utterly away. Andit was not only pleasure that fled laughing from his grasp; positivediscomfort, positive pain, attacked him as he stood ruefully beforethe porch. His perspiration had dried upon him; and though the windhad now fallen, a binding frost was setting in stronger with everyhour, and he felt benumbed and sick at heart. What was to be done?Late as was the hour, improbable as was success, he would try thehouse of his adopted father, the chaplain of St. Benoit.
He ran there all the way, and knocked timidly. There was no answer. Heknocked again and again, taking heart with every stroke; and at laststeps were heard approaching from within. A barred wicket fell open inthe iron-studded door, and emitted a gush of yellow light.
"Hold up your face to the wicket," said the chaplain from within.
"It's only me," whimpered Villon.
"Oh, it's only you, is it?" returned the chaplain; and he cursed himwith foul unpriestly oaths for disturbing him at such an hour, andbade him be off to hell, where he came from.
"My hands are blue to the wrists," pleaded Villon; "my feet are deadand full of twinges; my nose aches with the sharp air; the cold liesat my heart. I may be dead before morning. Only this once, father, andbefore God I will never ask again."
"You should have come earlier," said the ecclesiastic, coolly. "Youngmen require a lesson now and then." He shut the wicket and retireddeliberately into the interior of the house.
Villon was beside himself; he beat upon the door with his hands andfeet, and shouted hoarsely after the chaplain.
"Wormy old fox," he cried. "If I had my hand under your twist, I wouldsend you flying headlong into the bottomless pit."
A door shut in the interior, faintly audible to the poet down longpassages. He passed his hand over his mouth with an oath. And then thehumor of the situation struck him, and he laughed and lookedlightly up to heaven, where the stars seemed to be winking over hisdiscomfiture.
What was to be done? It looked very like a night in the frostystreets. The idea of the dead woman popped into his imagination, andgave him a hearty fright; what had happened to her in the early nightmight very well happen to him before morning. And he so young! andwith such immense possibilities of disorderly amusement before him! Hefelt quite pathetic over the notion of his own fate, as if it had beensome one else's, and made a little imaginative vignette of the scenein the morning when they should find his body.
He passed all his chances under review, turning the white between histhumb and forefinger. Unfortunately he was on bad terms with some oldfriends who would once have taken pity on him in such a plight. He hadlampooned them in verses, he had beaten and cheated them; and yet now,when he was in so close a pinch, he thought there was at least one whomight perhaps relent. It was a chance. It was worth trying at least,and he would go and see.
On the way, two little accidents happened to him which colored hismusings in a very different manner. For, first, he fell in with thetrack of a patrol, and walked in it for some yards, although it layout of his direction. And this spirited him up; at least he hadconfused his trail; for he was still possessed with the idea of peopletracking him all about Paris over the snow, and collaring him nextmorning before he was awake. The other matter affected him verydifferently. He passed a street corner, where, not so long before, awoman and her child had been devoured by wolves. This was just thekind of weather, he reflected, when wolves might take it into theirheads to enter Paris again; and a lone man in these deserted streetswould run the chance of something worse than a mere scare. He stoppedand looked upon the place with unpleasant interest--it was a centrewhere several lanes intersected each other; and he looked down themall one after another, and held his breath to listen, lest he shoulddetect some galloping black things on the snow or hear the sound ofhowling between him and the river. He remembered his mother tellinghim the story and pointing out the spot, while he was yet a child. Hismother! If he only knew where she lived, he might make sure at leastof shelter. He determined he would inquire upon the morrow: nay, hewould go and see her, too, poor old girl! So thinking, he arrived athis destination--his last hope for the night.
The house was quite dark, like its neighbors, and yet after a fewtaps, he heard a movement overhead, a door opening, and a cautiousvoice asking who was there. The poet named himself in a loud whisper,and waited, not without some trepidation, the result. Nor had heto wait long. A window was suddenly opened, and a pailful of slopssplashed down upon the doorstep. Villon had not been unprepared forsomething of the sort, and had put himself as much in shelter as thenature of the porch admitted; but for all that, he was deplorablydrenched below the waist. His hose began to freeze almost at once.Death from cold and exposure stared him in the face; he remembered hewas of phthisical tendency, and began coughing tentatively. But thegravity of the danger steadied his nerves. He stopped a few hundredyards from the door where he had been so rudely used, and reflectedwith his finger to his nose. He could only see one way of getting alodging, and that was to take it. He had noticed a house not far awaywhich looked as if it might be easily broken into, and thither hebetook himself promptly, entertaining himself on the way with the ideaof a room still hot, with a table still loaded with the remains ofsupper, where he might pass the rest of the black hours, and whence heshould issue, on the morrow, with an armful of valuable plate. He evenconsidered on what viands and what wines he should prefer; and as hewas calling the roll of his favorite dainties, roast fish presenteditself to his mind with an odd mixture of amusement and horror.
"I shall never finish that ballade," he thought to himself; and then,with another shudder at the recollection, "Oh, damn his fat head!" herepeated fervently, and spat upon the snow.
The house in question looked dark at first sight; but as Villon madea preliminary inspection in search of the handiest point of attack, alittle twinkle of light caught his eye from behind a curtained window.
"The devil!" he thought. "People awake! Some student or some saint,confound the crew! Can't they get drunk and lie in bed snoring liketheir neighbors! What's the good of curfew, and poor devils ofbell-ringers jumping at a rope's-end in bell-towers? What's the use ofday, if people sit up all night? The gripes to them!" He grinned as hesaw where his logic was leading him. "Every man to his business, afterall," added he, "and if they're awake, by the Lord, I may come by asupper honestly for this once, and cheat the devil."
He went boldly to the door, and knocked with an assured hand. On bothprevious occasions he had knocked timidly and with some dread ofattracting notice; but now, when he had just discarded the thought ofa burglarious entry, knocking at a door seemed a mighty simple andinnocent proceeding. The sound of his blows echoed through the housewith thin, phantasmal reverberations, as though it were quite empty;but these had scarcely died away before a measured tread drew near, acouple of bolts were withdrawn, and one wing was opened broadly, asthough no guile or fear of guile were known to those within. A tallfigure of a man, muscular and spare, but a little bent, confrontedVillon. The head was massive in bulk, but finely sculptured; the noseblunt at the bottom but refining upward to where it joined a pairof strong and honest eyebrows; the mouth and eyes surrounded withdelicate markings, and the whole face based upon a thick whitebeard, boldly and squarely trimmed. Seen as it was by the light of aflickering hand-lamp, it looked perhaps nobler than it had a right todo; but it was a fine face, honorable rather than intelligent, strong,simple, and righteous.
"You knock late, sir," said the old man in resonant, courteous tones.
Villon cringed, and brought up many servile words of apology; at acrisis of this sort, the beggar was uppermost in him, and the man ofgenius hid his head with confusion.
"You are cold," repeated the old man, "and hungry? Well, step in." Andhe ordered him into the house with a noble enough gesture.
"Some great seigneur," thought Villon, as his host, setting down thelamp on the flagged pavement of the entry, shot the bolts once moreinto their places.
"You will pardon me if I go in front," he said, when this was done;and he preceded the poet up-stairs into a large apartment, warmed witha pan of charcoal and lit by a great lamp hanging from the roof. Itwas very bare of furniture; only some gold plate on a sideboard; somefolios; and a stand of armor between the windows. Some smart tapestryhung upon the walls, representing the crucifixion of our Lord in onepiece, and in another a scene of shepherds and shepherdesses by arunning stream. Over the chimney was a shield of arms.
"Will you seat yourself," said the old man, "and forgive me if I leaveyou? I am alone in my house to-night, and if you are to eat I mustforage for you myself."
No sooner was his host gone than Villon leaped from the chair on whichhe just seated himself, and began examining the room, with the stealthand passion of a cat. He weighed the gold flagons in his hand, openedall the folios, and investigated the arms upon the shield, and thestuff with which the seats were lined. He raised the window-curtains,and saw that the windows were set with rich stained glass in figures,so far as he could see, of martial import. Then he stood in the middleof the room, drew a long breath, and retaining it with puffed cheeks,looked round and round him, turning on his heels, as if to impressevery feature of the apartment on his memory.
"Seven pieces of plate," he said. "If there had been ten I would haverisked it. A fine house, and a fine old master, so help me all thesaints."
And just then, hearing the old man's tread returning along thecorridor, he stole back to his chair, and began toasting his wet legsbefore the charcoal pan.
His entertainer had a plate of meat in one hand and a jug of wine inthe other. He set down the plate upon the table, motioning Villonto draw in his chair, and going to the sideboard, brought back twogoblets, which he filled.
"I drink to your better fortune," he said, gravely touching Villon'scup with his own.
"To our better acquaintance," said the poet, growing bold. A mereman of the people would have been awed by the courtesy of the oldseigneur, but Villon was hardened in that matter; he had made mirthfor great lords before now, and found them as black rascals ashimself. And so he devoted himself to the viands with a ravenousgusto, while the old man, leaning backward, watched him with steady,curious eyes.
"You have blood on your shoulder, my man," he said.
Montigny must have laid his wet right hand upon him as he left thehouse. He cursed Montigny in his heart.
"It was none of my shedding," he stammered.
"I had not supposed so," returned his host quietly. "A brawl?"
"Well, something of that sort," Villon admitted with a quaver.
"Perhaps a fellow murdered?"
"Oh, no, not murdered," said the poet, more and more confused. "It wasall fair play--murdered by accident. I had no hand in it, God strikeme dead!" he added fervently.
"One rogue the fewer, I dare say," observed the master of the house.
"You may dare to say that," agreed Villon, infinitely relieved. "Asbig a rogue as there is between here and Jerusalem. He turned up histoes like a lamb. But it was a nasty thing to look at. I dare sayyou've seen dead men in your time, my lord?" he added, glancing at thearmor.
"Many," said the old man. "I have followed the wars, as you imagine."
Villon laid down his knife and fork, which he had just taken up again.
"Were any of them bald?" he asked.
"Oh, yes, and with hair as white as mine."
"I don't think I would mind the white so much," said Villon. "His wasred." And he had a return of his shuddering and tendency to laughter,which he drowned with a great draught of wine. "I'm a little put outwhen I think of it," he went on. "I knew him--damn him! And the coldgives a man fancies--or the fancies give a man cold, I don't knowwhich."
"Have you any money?" asked the old man.
"I have one white," returned the poet, laughing. "I got it out ofa dead jade's stocking in a porch. She was as dead as Caesar, poorwench, and as cold as a church, with bits of ribbon sticking in herhair. This is a hard world in winter for wolves and wenches and poorrogues like me."
"I," said the old man, "am Enguerrand de la Feuillee, seigneur seBrisetout, bailly du Patatrac. Who and what may you be?"
Villon rose and made a suitable reverence. "I am called FrancisVillon," he said, "a poor Master of Arts of this university. I knowsome Latin, and a deal of vice. I can make chansons, ballades, lais,virelais, and roundels, and I am very fond of wine. I was born in agarret, and I shall not improbably die upon the gallows. I may add,my lord, that from this night forward I am your lordship's veryobsequious servant to command."
"No servant of mine," said the knight; "my guest for this evening, andno more."
"A very grateful guest," said Villon, politely; and he drank in dumbshow to his entertainer.
"You are shrewd," began the old man, tapping his forehead, "veryshrewd; you have learning; you are a clerk; and yet you take a smallpiece of money off a dead woman in the street. Is it not a kind oftheft?"
"It is a kind of theft much practised in the wars, my lord."
"The wars are the field of honor," returned the old man proudly."There a man plays his life upon the cast; he fights in the name ofhis lord the king, his Lord God, and all their lordships the holysaints and angels."
"Put it," said Villon, "that I were really a thief, should I not playmy life also, and against heavier odds?"
"For gain, and not for honor."
"Gain?" repeated Villon with a shrug. "Gain! The poor fellow wantssupper, and takes it. So does the soldier in a campaign. Why, what areall these requisitions we hear so much about? If they are not gainto those who take them, they are loss enough to the others. Themen-at-arms drink by a good fire, while the burgher bites his nails tobuy them wine and wood. I have seen a good many ploughmen swinging ontrees about the country; ay, I have seen thirty on one elm, and a verypoor figure they made; and when I asked some one how all these came tobe hanged, I was told it was because they could not scrape togetherenough crowns to satisfy the men-at-arms."
"These things are a necessity of war, which the low-born must endurewith constancy. It is true that some captains drive overhard; thereare spirits in every rank not easily moved by pity; and, indeed, manyfollow arms who are no better than brigands."
"You see," said the poet, "you cannot separate the soldier from thebrigand; and what is a thief but an isolated brigand with circumspectmanners? I steal a couple of mutton chops, without so much asdisturbing the farmer's sheep; the farmer grumbles a bit, but supsnone the less wholesomely on what remains. You come up blowinggloriously on a trumpet, take away the whole sheep, and beat thefarmer pitifully into the bargain. I have no trumpet; I am only Tom,Dick, or Harry; I am a rogue and a dog, and hanging's too good forme--with all my heart--but just you ask the farmer which of us heprefers, just find out which of us he lies awake to curse on coldnights."
"Look at us two," said his lordship. "I am old, strong, and honored.If I were turned from my house to-morrow, hundreds would be proud toshelter me. Poor people would go out and pass the night in the streetswith their children, if I merely hinted that I wished to be alone.And I find you up, wandering homeless, and picking farthings off deadwomen by the wayside! I fear no man and nothing; I have seen youtremble and lose countenance at a word. I wait God's summonscontentedly in my own house, or, if it please the king to call me outagain, upon the field of battle. You look for the gallows; a rough,swift death, without hope or honor. Is there no difference betweenthese two?"
"As far as to the moon," Villon acquiesced. "But if I had been bornlord of Brisetout, and you had been the poor scholar Francis, wouldthe difference have been any the less? Should not I have been warmingmy knees at this charcoal pan, and would not you have been groping forfarthings in the snow? Should not I have been the soldier, and you thethief?"
"A thief!" cried the old man. "I a thief! If you understood yourwords, you would repent them."
Villon turned out his hands with a gesture of inimitable impudence."If your lordship had done me the honor to follow my argument!" hesaid.
"I do you too much honor in submitting to your presence," said theknight. "Learn to curb your tongue when you speak with old andhonorable men, or some one hastier than I may reprove you in a sharperfashion." And he rose and paced the lower end of the apartment,struggling with anger and antipathy. Villon surreptitiously refilledhis cup, and settled himself more comfortably in the chair, crossinghis knees and leaning his head upon one hand and the elbow against theback of the chair. He was now replete and warm; and he was in nowisefrightened for his host, having gauged him as justly as was possiblebetween two such different characters. The night was far spent, and ina very comfortable fashion after all; and he felt morally certain of asafe departure on the morrow.
"Tell me one thing," said the old man, pausing in his walk. "Are youreally a thief?"
"I claim the sacred rights of hospitality," returned the poet. "Mylord, I am."
"You are very young," the knight continued.
"I should never have been so old," replied Villon; showing hisfingers, "if I had not helped myself with these ten talents. They havebeen my nursing mothers and my nursing fathers."
"You may still repent and change."
"I repent daily," said the poet. "There are few people more given torepentance than poor Francis. As for change, let somebody change mycircumstances. A man must continue to eat, if it were only that he maycontinue to repent."
"The change must begin in the heart," returned the old man solemnly.
"My dear lord," answered Villon, "do you really fancy that I steal forpleasure? I hate stealing, like any other piece of work or danger. Myteeth chatter when I see a gallows. But I must eat, I must drink,I must mix in society of some sort. What the devil! Man is nota solitary animal--_Cui Deus foeminam tradit_. Make me king'spantler--make me abbot of St. Denis; make me bailly of the Patatrac;and then I shall be changed indeed. But as long as you leave me thepoor scholar Francis Villon, without a farthing, why, of course, Iremain the same."
"The grace of God is all-powerful."
"I should be a heretic to question it," said Francis. "It has made youlord of Brisetout, and bailly of the Patatrac; it has given me nothingbut the quick wits under my hat and these ten toes upon my hands. MayI help myself to wine? I thank you respectfully. By God's grace, youhave a very superior vintage."
The lord of Brisetout walked to and fro with his hands behind hisback. Perhaps he was not yet quite settled in his mind about theparallel between thieves and soldiers; perhaps Villon had interestedhim by some cross-thread of sympathy; perhaps his wits were simplymuddled by so much unfamiliar reasoning; but whatever the cause, hesomehow yearned to convert the young man to a better way of thinking,and could not make up his mind to drive him forth again into thestreet.
"There is something more than I can understand in this," he said, atlength. "Your mouth is full of subtleties, and the devil has led youvery far astray; but the devil is only a very weak spirit before God'struth, and all his subtleties vanish at a word of true honor, likedarkness at morning. Listen to me once more. I learned long ago that agentleman should live chivalrously and lovingly to God, and the king,and his lady; and though I have seen many strange things done, Ihave still striven to command my ways upon that rule. It is not onlywritten in all noble histories, but in every man's heart, if he willtake care to read. You speak of food and wine, and I know very wellthat hunger is a difficult trial to endure; but you do not speak ofother wants; you say nothing of honor, of faith to God and other men,of courtesy, of love without reproach. It may be that I am not verywise--and yet I think I am--but you seem to me like one who has losthis way and made a great error in life. You are attending to thelittle wants, and you have totally forgotten the great and only realones, like a man who should be doctoring a toothache on the JudgmentDay. For such things as honor and love and faith are not only noblerthan food and drink, but, indeed, I think that we desire them more,and suffer more sharply for their absence. I speak to you as I thinkyou will most easily understand me. Are you not, while careful to fillyour belly, disregarding another appetite in your heart, which spoilsthe pleasure of your life and keeps you continually wretched?"
Villon was sensibly nettled under all this sermonizing. "You think Ihave no sense of honor!" he cried. "I'm poor enough, God knows! It'shard to see rich people with their gloves, and you blowing your hands.An empty belly is a bitter thing, although you speak so lightly ofit. If you had had as many as I, perhaps you would change your tune.Anyway, I'm a thief--make the most of that--but I'm not a devil fromhell, God strike me dead. I would have you to know I've an honor of myown, as good as yours, though I don't prate about it all day long, asif it were a God's miracle to have any. It seems quite natural to me;I keep it in its box till it's wanted. Why now, look you here, howlong have I been in this room with you? Did you not tell me you werealone in the house? Look at your gold plate! You're strong, if youlike, but you're old and unarmed, and I have my knife. What did I wantbut a jerk of the elbow, and here would have been you with the coldsteel in your bowels, and there would have been me, linking in thestreets, with an armful of gold cups! Did you suppose I hadn't witenough to see that? And I scorned the action. There are your damnedgoblets, as safe as in a church; there are you, with your heartticking as good as new; and here am I, ready to go out again as pooras I came in, with my one white that you threw in my teeth! And youthink I have no sense of honor--God strike me dead!"
The old man stretched out his right arm. "I will tell you whatyou are," he said. "You are a rogue, my man, an impudent and ablack-hearted rogue and vagabond. I have passed an hour with you. Oh!believe me, I feel myself disgraced! And you have eaten and drank atmy table. But now I am sick at your presence; the day has come, andthe night-bird should be off to his roost. Will you go before, orafter?"
"Which you please," returned the poet, rising. "I believe you to bestrictly honorable." He thoughtfully emptied his cup. "I wish I couldadd you were intelligent," he went on, knocking on his head with hisknuckles. "Age, age! the brains stiff and rheumatic."
The old man preceded him from a point of self-respect; Villonfollowed, whistling, with his thumbs in his girdle.
"God pity you," said the lord of Brisetout at the door.
"Good-bye, papa," returned Villon, with a yawn. "Many thanks for thecold mutton."
The door closed behind him. The dawn was breaking over the whiteroofs. A chill, uncomfortable morning ushered in the day. Villon stoodand heartily stretched himself in the middle of the road.
"A very dull old gentleman," he thought. "I wonder what his gob
A Lodging for the Night was featured as
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Sun, Jan 01, 2012
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