Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/758

706 corner of the room François cried monotonously.

Fate grinned and went on with her weaving.

The Rue St.-Jacques had toothsome sauce for its breakfast. The quarter smacked its lips over the news, as it pictured François de Montcorbier dangling from Montfaucon. "Horrible!" said the Rue St.-Jacques, and deduced a snug moral for the edification of the children.

Guillemette Moreau had told Catherine of the affair before the day was aired. The girl's wrath flamed.

"Sermaise!" said she. "Bah! what do I care for Sermaise? He killed him in fair fight. But within an hour, Guillemette—within an 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, 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."

Noël came, his head tied in a napkin.

"Eh?" said she, "another swine fresh from the gutter? Faugh! it is a bottle, a hogshead! Noël, I will marry you if you like."

He fell to mumbling her hand. An hour later she 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 then went back to his reading.

The patrol had taken Sermaise to the prison of St.-Benoît, where he lay all night. That day he was carried to the hospital of the Hôtel-Dieu. He died the following Saturday.

But 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," he said, manly enough at the last, "by reason of certain causes moving him thereunto." Then he demanded the glove they would find in the pocket of his gown. It was Catherine's glove. The priest kissed it, then began to laugh. Shortly afterwards he died, still gnawing at the glove.

François and René had vanished. "Good riddance," said the Rue St.-Jacques. But Montcorbier was summoned to appear before the court of the Châtelet to answer for the death of Sermaise, and in default of his appearance was subsequently condemned to banishment from the kingdom.

They were at St.-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 had cleared him of blame, he set about procuring a pardon. It was January before he succeeded in this.

Meanwhile he had learned a deal of René's way of living. "You are a thief," he said to him, the day his pardon came, "but you have played a kindly part by me. I think you are Dysmas, René, not Gestas. Eh, 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. "My 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 he, "my heart bleeds for you."

Again Montigny grinned. "You think a great deal about blood nowadays," he commented. "A man might take you for one of the Nine Worthies. Alexander! will you stable the elephant you took from Porus in the Rue St.-Jacques? Eh, my faith, let us first see what the Rue St.-Jacques has to say about it. After that I think you will make one of our party."

There was a light, crackling frost underfoot the day that François came back to the Rue St.-Jacques. A brisk, clear January day. It was good to be home again.

"Eh, Guillemette, Guillemette," he laughed. "Why, lass—"

"Faugh!" said Guillemette Moreau, as she passed him, nose high in air. "A murderer, a priest-killer."

Then the sun went black for François. It was a bucket of cold water, full in the