Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/761

Rh 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 but a sample. Everywhere François found masklike faces and skirts drawn aside. A little girl in a red cap, Robin Troussecaille's daughter, flung a stone at him as he slunk into the cloister of St.-Benoît-le-Bétourné. In those days a slain priest was God's servant slain, no less.

"My father!" he cried, rapping upon the door of the Hôtel de la Porte-Rouge, "oh, my father, open to me, for I think that my heart is breaking!"

Presently 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!" François cried, as he looked up into the old man's implacable face. "You, too, my father!" He burst into a fit of sobbing.

"Go!" the priest stormed; "go, murderer!"

It was not good to hear François's laughter. "What a world we live in!" he giggled. "You gave me your name and I soiled it? Eh, Master Priest, Master Pharisee, beware! As God lives, I will drag that name through every muckheap in France."

Yet he went to Jehan de Vaucelles's house. "I will give God one more chance at my soul," he said.

In the garden he met Catherine and Noël d'Arnaye coming out of the house. They stopped short. Her face, half muffled in her cloak, flushed to a wonderful rose of happiness, her great eyes glowed, and Catherine reached out her hand to him with a glad little cry.

His heart was hot wax as he fell upon his knees before her.

"O heart's dearest, heart's dearest!" he cried, "forgive me that I doubted you!"

And then for an instant, I think, the balance hung level. But after a while "Monsieur d'Arnaye," said she, in a crisp voice, "thrash for me this betrayer of women."

Noël was a big, bluff man, half English, topping François by two feet. He lifted the boy by his collar, caught up a stick, and set to work. Catherine watched them, her eyes gemlike, cruel.

François did not move a muscle in resistance. God had chosen.

After a little, though, 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 Noël. For a long time he stared at Catherine de Vaucelles, frost-flushed, defiant, incredibly beautiful. Afterward he went out Of the garden, staggering like a drunken man.

He found Montigny at the Crowned Ox. "René," said he, "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?"

René 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."

When the Dauphin came from Geneppe to be crowned King of France, there rode with him Noël d'Arnaye and his brother Raymond. The news that Charles the Well-served was now servitor to Death brought the exiled Louis post-haste to Paris, where the Rue St.-Jacques turned out full force to witness his coronation. They expected Saturnian doings of Louis XI. in those days, a return of the Golden Age; and when the new King began his reign by granting Noël a snug fief in Picardy, the Rue St.-Jacques applauded.

"Noël has served him these ten years," said the Rue St.-Jacques; "it is only just. And now, neighbor, we may look to see Noël the Handsome and Catherine de Vaucelles make a match of it. The girl has a tidy dowry, they say; old Jehan turned out richer than the quar-