Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/765

Rh François Villon. What do you think of him, lass?"

She echoed the name.

"Heart of God! You have not heard of François Villon? The Rue St.-Jacques has not heard of François Villon? Pigs, pigs, that dare not peer out of their sty! Why, I have capped verses with the Duke of Orléans. The very street-boys know my 'Ballad of the Women of Paris.' Not a drunkard in the realm but rants my 'Orison for Master Cotard's Soul' when the bottle passes. 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.

She gave him a woman's answer: " I do not care if you are the greatest lord in the kingdom or the vilest thief that steals ducks from Paris Moat. I love you, François."

For a long time he stood silent, blinking, peering into her love-lit face almost quizzically. She loved him; no questioning that. But presently he put her aside and went slowly toward the open window. This was a matter for consideration.

The night was black as a pocket. Staring into it, François threw back his head and drew a deep, tremulous breath. The rising odor of roses and mignonettes, keen and intolerably sweet, had roused unforgotten pulses in his blood, had set his heart a-drum.

She loved him! Through all these years, with a woman's unreasoning faith, she had loved him, had trusted him. He knew well enough how matters stood between her and Noël d'Arnaye; the host of the Crowned Ox had been garrulous that evening. She was rich. Here for the asking was a competence, love, an ingleside of his own. And he knew that he dare not take it.

"Because I love her. Mother of God! has there been in all my life a day, an hour, a moment when I have not loved her! Just to see her once was all that I craved,—as a lost soul might crave one splendid glimpse of heaven's harps and lutes before the pit take him. And I find that she loves me—me! Fate must have her jest, I see, though the firmament crack for it. She would have been content enough with Noël, thinking me dead. And with me? Ah, if I dared hope that this last flicker of life left in my crazy carcass might bum clear! I have but a little while to live; if I dared hope that I might live that little cleanly! But the next cup of wine, the next light woman? You know the answer, François Villon. And the matter rests with me. Choose, François Villon—choose between the old, squalid, foul life yonder and her happiness. Say if it be of greater import that you be saved from the gibbet or she be happy."

Staring into the darkness, he fought the battle out. Squarely he faced the issue; for a little while he saw François Villon as the last seven years had made him, saw the wine-sodden soul of François Villon, rotten and weak and honeycombed with vice. It had its moments of nobility; momentarily, as now, it might be roused to finer issues; but he knew that no power on earth could hearten it daily to curb the brutish passions. It was no longer possible for François Villon to live cleanly.

Then he turned to her with a crooked smile.

"Listen," said he. "Yonder is Paris—laughing, tragic Paris, who once had need of a singer to voice all her splendor and all her misery. Fate made the man; in necessity's mortar she pounded his soul into the shape Fate needed. To kings' courts she lifted him; to thieves' hovels she thrust him down; Lutetia's palaces and abbeys and taverns and lupanars and gutters and prisons and its very gallows—Fate dragged him past each in turn that he might make the Song of Paris. He could not have made it here in the smug Rue St.-Jacques. And now the song is made, Catherine. So long as Paris endures, François Villon will not be forgot. Villon the singer Fate fashioned to her liking; Villon the man she has damned, body and soul."

She gave a startled little cry and ran to him, her hands fluttering to his breast. "François!" she breathed.

It was not good to have to kill the love in her face.

"You loved François de Montcorbier. François de Montcorbier is dead. The Pharisees of the Rue St.-Jacques killed