CHAPTER X

UNDER WHICH KING?

The rose garden seemed to be as quiet as a church-yard. No sound was heard save the faint soughing of the evening wind among the rose bushes, no sight resembling humanity visible save the face of Pan looking down mockingly upon the crimson blossoms that girdled him. Yet in a few seconds it became plain that the god Pan was not the only occupant of the garden. Through quiet alleyways, cloaked and cowled figures came stealing, six in number—men with pilgrims' cloaks about their shoulders, and pilgrims' hoods upon their heads—men who carried cockleshells upon the sleeves of their gabardines—all converging through the dark walks of the garden to a common centre, and that centre the grassy space before the king's watch tower. The six figures huddled together at the base of the image of Pan. One of them who seemed to be their leader, a man of giant form, spoke, and the voice was the voice of Thibaut d'Aussigny.

"Are we all here?" he asked.

The nearest pilgrim to him answered with the voice of René de
Montigny.

"Aye, and ready to gather the royal rose of this garden."

As he spoke there came a faint click at the latch of the tower door.
Thibaut waved his companions apart.

"Keep close," he said, and four of the pilgrim forms disappeared swiftly into the spaces of shadow. Only Thibaut and René remained, standing masked and attentive, their eyes fixed upon the tower door. It opened and Noel le Jolys emerged, followed by, the slight, hunched figure in faded black velvet for whom the eyes of the conspirators were so eager. Noel advanced questioning:

"Is the star-gazer here?"

René de Montigny answered him glibly as a showman patters the praise of his wares.

"Aye. He is the wonder of the world. He can read the stars more easily than a tapster the score on his shutter. He can spell you the high luck and the low. Bohemian, Egyptian, Arabian wisdom have no mysteries for him."

As René ceased, the royal figure with a sweeping gesture of his hand made a sign of dismissal to Noel, who bowed respectfully and withdrew into the tower. The king then beckoned to the mighty figure in the palmer's weed, and Thibaut advanced slowly until he was within touch of his prey, when he suddenly flung out his great hand and caught his enemy by the throat, gripping him into silence while his right hand bared and brandished a dagger. The figure in black dropped under his grasp, trembled and gasped, but the hand of Thibaut was too strong upon him and he could not speak or cry out. Thibaut hissed at him:

"Sire, I can decipher your destiny. Do not speak or I will kill you!"

He pressed the point of the dagger close to the captive's neck and smiled to see him shudder.

"I am Thibaut d'Aussigny, sire, whom you thought to be dead, but who lives to prison you."

As he spoke his companions emerged from the gloom and gathered around Thibaut and the king, a little menacing circle of determined men.

"You are in the toils. Silent you are still a man; give tongue and you are simple carrion. You must come to the knees of Burgundy. You shall be the Duke's footstool!"

The cowering black figure wriggled and quivered as if every one of Thibaut's words were a stroke of a whip that cut into his flesh; his eager hands clawed piteously at Thibaut's grasping arm, until his very agony of terror aroused the contempt of his captor. He pushed the king from him contemptuously, and the king dropped on the ground a black and helpless heap of fear.

"Can a king be such a cur? Burgundy won't hurt you if you do as he bids you. I won't hurt you if you do as I bid you."

The black figure rocked, a pitiable bundle of terrors, apparently sobbing plaintively. Thibaut sickened at such shameless fear.

"Stop crying," he growled.

René de Montigny, who had been watching keenly the actions of the prisoner, interrupted:

"He seems to be laughing," he said.

Thibaut gave a cry of astonishment and stooped down over the prostrate man, who greeted him with a prolonged and hearty peal of laughter, which staggered the giant like a blow in the face. At that moment the tower door was flung open and Tristan appeared.

"The king!" he cried in a voice of thunder.

In another moment, as if by magic, the little garden space was girdled by the archers of the Scottish Guard, strong hands made sure of the baffled conspirators, and to their astonishment Louis himself made his appearance through the open doorway, his malign face smiling in the moonlight.

CHAPTER XI

THE DEATH OF A WANTON

The sham king leaped to his feet, still laughing, flung off the black cap with its little row of leaden saints and the rusty black mantle which mimicked the king's habit, and stood delighted and defiant before Thibaut, the François Villon who thus a second time had crossed his path.

"Well, friend, what has the wizard told you?" Louis asked blandly.

Villon swayed with laughter as he pointed to the bewildered giant.

"Wonders, sire," he answered. "I have not laughed so heartily since I attained greatness." But even as he spoke Thibaut had recovered his wits. He might be defeated but he would not be unavenged.

"You shall laugh no more!" he shouted, wrenching himself free from restraint, and he sprang at his enemy with lifted dagger.

From behind the shadow of the statue of Pan there came a warning shriek, and swiftly between Villon and Thibaut a slim green figure darted and slim green arms clasped Villon around the neck. The dagger of Thibaut drove deep into the soft body of Huguette.

With a curse Thibaut turned and, sweeping aside the archers who tried to stop him, disappeared down the nearest alley. Noel le Jolys, drawing his sword, rushed in pursuit, followed by several soldiers. Villon held the bleeding body of the girl in his arms, and tried his best to stanch the wound which was staining the green jerkin a dull red, but the girl protested faintly, pushing his ministering hand away.

"Let me alone; I am done for," she gasped.

Olivier was by her side in an instant, eyeing the wound with the professional interest of the surgeon-barber and looking from it to the girl's pale face. Villon's gaze questioned him. Olivier shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. Villon knew that the wound was mortal, and his own blood seemed like water within him. He carried the girl across the grass to the marble seat and rested her on it, the red stain on the green coat growing wider and wider as they moved.

"Courage, Abbess, courage, lass," he whispered, fighting with his horror and his sorrow as he moaned to himself: "That any one should die for me!"

The girl's arms clung closer about his neck and her lips moved faintly. He stooped close to her to catch her words.

"This is a strange end, François. I always thought I should die in a bed. Here is another kind of battlefield. Give me drink."

"Some water," Villon cried to Olivier, who stood a little apart from the pair with the resigned look of the physician who knows that his art is of no avail.

Huguette protested faintly.

"Not water. Wine. I have ever loved the taste of it, and 'tis too late to change now."

Olivier filled a cup from the flagon on the table and was for lifting it to the girl's lips, but her feeble hand repulsed him and she pleaded to Villon:

"Give it to me, François."

Villon took the cup from the barber's hand, lifted it to the dying girl's lips, and she drank greedily. The strong wine gave her for a moment something of its own false strength, and she struggled to her feet, Villon rising with her and supporting her.

"Your health, François. I suppose I have been a great sinner. Will
God forgive me?"

Villon stifled a heavy groan, but he was sworn to console her if he could, and, indeed, he believed his words of consolation.

"He understands his children."

The heavy head drooped its golden curls upon his shoulder.

"You always were hopeful," she said brokenly. Then suddenly clasping him tightly, she cried: "Many men have taken my body; only you ever took my heart. Give me your lips."

Villon's spirit was troubled. It seemed to him that his lips were bound to wait for that kiss of his lady's, and yet the dying girl loved him and he had loved the dying girl after a fashion, and he could not refuse her now. He bent to grant her prayer, when suddenly she shook herself free from his arms and began to sing faintly the words of the song he had made for her:

"Daughters of Pleasure, one and all,

Then she caught her breath with a sob and slipped to the last lines of the verse:

"Use your red lips before too late, Love ere love flies beyond recall."

She shook her head back in a wild peal of laughter: then she gave a great cry and fell forward. Villon caught her, looked in her face and knew that she was dead, and that the best of his old bad life lay dead with her.

Olivier in obedience to an order of the king's, gave a signal and the girl's body was swiftly wrapped in a soldier's cloak and laid gently upon a pair of crossed halberds. As this was being done, Noel le Jolys came panting back with a red sword in his hand.

"Thibaut d'Aussigny is dead, sire," he said; "my hand was the hand that finished him."

Then as his eyes fell on the dead body, they shone with sudden tears. Villon went up to him and touched him on the shoulder.

"I leave this dead woman in your hands," he said, "for I think you had a kindness for her. See that she has Christian burial."

Noel bowed his head and followed in silence the girl's body. The garden was left to Louis and Villon, Tristan and Olivier, and the handful of captured rogues who stood apart, strongly guarded and stripped of their pilgrims' garb, gazing amazed at Louis and his double. Villon, silent too, looked after the little group that bore away the dead girl's body. His mind was a warfare of wild memories. Strange recollections of times and places with Huguette came crowding up and beating piteously upon his brain. He thought of what he had been, and groaned; of what he was now, and his soul cried out as in prayer in the name of Katherine.

CHAPTER XII

A VIRGIN'S TEARS

The king's hand fell upon his shoulder and shattered his meditations.

"Are you so dashed by the death of a wanton?" the king asked mockingly.

Villon turned upon him in a noble rage.

"She had God's breath in her body, sire," he said. Then drawing his hand across his forehead as if to dissipate the sad fancies that oppressed him, he went on:

"I have been John-a-Nods for the moment, sire; now I am Jack-a-Deeds again. The hour for battle is at hand."

Louis shrugged his shoulders.

"You have done me a good turn, gossip," he said, "and may ask any grace of me except your life. That depends on your lady."

Villon looked over at the corner where his old boon companions were huddled together, the miserable centre of a circle of soldiers.

"Sire," he said; "grant me the lives of those rascals. They shall ride with me and fight for France to-night. It is better than making them play bob-apple on the evil tree."

The king whispered a few words to Tristan, and Tristan very reluctantly gave the order of liberation. The comrades of the Cockleshell were freed of their bonds and bade to stand apart, under guard and out of earshot, to wait on destiny for future commands. At this moment Louis, glancing upwards, caught sight between the flower vases on the terrace of a gleam of crimson, the crimson silk of a woman's robe. It betrayed the presence of Katherine de Vaucelles, who had come hard upon the hour of nine to seek for her lover, but who paused irresolute at the head of the stairs, noting the presence of the king. Louis beckoned to her amicably, and she began slowly to descend the staircase. Louis came over to Villon and whispered in his ear:

"Here comes your lady. I think your love-fruit is ripe and you need not stand on tip-toe to pick it."

Villon answered him with burning eyes:

"Sire, I believe I have won the rose of the world."

Louis chuckled like an enraptured raven.

"The Count of Montcorbier is luckier than François Villon. But the lady has a high mind and a fierce spirit. She may not relish the deception, pardon the cheat his lie!"

Something in the king's words struck upon Villon's fiery hopes like a stream of ice-cold water and seemed to quench them. He was like a man who, long playing at blind-man's-buff, suddenly has the bandage plucked from his eyes and stands dazzled and blinking in the sunlight. After all, he was not the Count of Montcorbier; after all, he was not the Grand Constable of France; after all, he was only a masquerading beggar who had won the heart of a lady under false colours; who had triumphed by flying a false flag. In all those seven splendid days this simple thought had never come to him. His whole soul had been so taken captive by the fascination of the part he had been permitted to play that he forgot he was playing a part, and allowed his fancy to believe that a week-long dream would endure forever. Now he knew himself and what he had done and what he must do. A divine farce had turned to sudden tragedy. He turned to the king with a groan.

"Cheat, lie," he repeated. "Sire, those words fling me from my fool's paradise. Kill me if I fail to win her, but I will tear this mask from my face, this falsehood from my heart."

Louis grinned at him.

"Please yourself. Win her or swing. Either way contents me."

As he spoke, he turned away. Katherine had descended the steps and was moving across the grass to greet her hero, who stood with clasped hands in the moonlight like a man struck dumb. Katherine was carrying in her hands a crimson scarf fringed with gold, and she lifted it to him as she spoke.

"Wear this with my prayers. With it, I give you my hand and heart. You shall carry my plighted troth with you into the battle. Let me tell my love to all the world."

Swiftly and lightly she threw it about his neck before he could find words, but now he spoke:

"Wait, wait! You must say no more until you know me."

The girl's eyes widened with surprise.

"Do I not know you?"

Villon thrust his face forward very close to hers.

"Look into my face," he said. "Look well. Do you see nothing there that reminds you of other hours?"

Katherine smiled divinely.

"Of happy hours in this rose garden."

Villon insisted fiercely:

"No, no! Of a dark night, a tavern, a cloaked woman, a sordid fellow dreaming sottishly by the fire, a prayer, a love-tale and a promise, a crowd of bullies and wantons, a quarrel, a fight with sword and lantern in the dark, a breast knot of ribbon flung from a gallery—"

Katherine recoiled a little, with a horror in her eyes.

"What are you trying to tell me?" she asked.

Villon dropped on his knees with a groan.

"Here is the knot of ribbon which you flung to me in the Fircone
Tavern. Oh, pity me! I am François Villon."

Katherine pressed her hands to her forehead.

"I can hear what you say, but it makes no mark on my brain."

Villon's words ran fast from him:

"I am François Villon and yet no longer he, for my old evil self is dead. I am François Villon who served you with his sword, who praised you with his pen, and who loves you with all his soul."

The girl's whole body shook with fear as she answered:

"It isn't true! It isn't true! I don't believe you."

Villon sprang to his feet.

"Whatever my fate is," he cried, "you shall know the truth."

Turning to where the released conspirators stood apart, he called to them peremptorily:

"Guy! Eene! All of you, come here!"

Amazed to be thus summoned in their own names by so great a personage as the Grand Constable of France, the thieves crept forward timidly and, in obedience to Villon's commanding gestures, gathered about him as he turned to them, pressing his face near to their faces, and cried:

"Look at me closer—closer. Don't you know François Villon in spite of this new spirit shining in his eyes?"

René de Montigny gave a cry of recognition.

"I should never have known you. You are so strangely changed."

Guy Tabarie endorsed him.

"Still,'tis his dear old countenance."

Katherine watching the scene in sick despair, turned piteously to the king.

"Sire, sire, is this true?"

Louis, who had been watching all with unmitigated satisfaction, answered fleeringly:

"Most true, pretty mistress. You disdained me for this."

With blazing eyes and trembling hands Katherine moved across the grass to where Villon stood.

"Pitiful traitor, why did you live this lie?"

Villon pleaded desperately:

"I loved you."

Katherine's anger flamed into a great fire.

"Do not shame the sweet word. I hate you! To think the face that I have learned to love should mask so base a heart!"

Then as Villon drew a little closer to her, in an agony of entreaty, she struck out at him with both hands, beating him on the breast in an unconquerable fury. Villon bowed beneath the blow while she raged at him:

"You have stolen my love like a thief, you have crucified my pride. I hate you! Go back to the dregs and lees of life, skulk in your tavern, forget, what I shall never forget, that so base a thing as you ever came near me!"

The king was by her side in an instant and whispering into her ear:

"Is this the course of true love?"

She swung upon him in scorn.

"Sire, you have wreaked a royal revenge upon a woman. There are no tears in my eyes yet, but I pray they will come that I may weep myself clean of this memory."

With clasped hands and set lips she moved away from Louis and stood apart in the moonlight, a fixed and rigid figure of despair. Louis stepped to where Villon stood in stricken anguish and whispered to him:

"I am afraid you will hang to-morrow, Master Villon."

Villon threw back his head defiantly.

"I should be glad to greet the gallows now, but I have a deed to do before I die."

As he spoke the great bell of the palace beat out the first stroke of the hour of nine. It roused the wounded spirit in his soul. He moved to where Katherine stood and spoke to her:

"I dreamed that love through which I have been born again could lift me to your lips. The dream is over. But you bade me serve France, and I ride and fight for you to-night."

While he spoke the Lords of Lau, of Eiviere and of Nantoillet in panoply of war came from the palace with their immediate followers. The garden began to fill with the picked men of the enterprise hurrying on the summons of the warning bell to follow their leader on his sortie. Villon's pages brought the armour of the Grand Constable and began to buckle it upon him. While this was being done, he turned and spoke to his brothers-in-arms:

"Comrades, let each man carry himself to-night as if the fate of France depended upon his heart, his arm, his courage. Strike for the mothers that bore you, the wives that comfort you, the children that Renéw you—the women that love you." For a moment his voice quailed and almost failed him. There were happy men there, no doubt, whom women loved. But he rallied in a breath and his voice rang out valiantly again: "Forward in God's name and the king's!"

And every soldier present echoed him: "Forward in God's name and the king's!"

CHAPTER XIII

THE REDE OF FIVE RIDING ROGUES

Through the silent streets of Paris a slender line of steel moved slowly—the thread of which Master François Villon was the needle pricked to sew the realm of France together. The Grand Constable rode at the head with the Lords of Lau, of Riviere, and of Nantoillet, and somewhere at the tail rode the five released rascals and babbled beneath their breaths as they rode. For the order to keep silence did not count until the gates of Paris were reached and began to turn on their hinges to let Villon's adventurers forth. Every man of the ruffians had a stout sword swinging at his girdle; every man of them sported a steel cap upon his head; every man of them felt his heart pulsing with rare emotions and his brain busy with strange thoughts. René de Montigny spoke first the thing that filled his mind.

"It must be a devil of a business," he reflected, "to be bullied like that by a beauty. Blood, but she is beautiful, and blood, but she can bellow."

Guy Tabarie chuckled fatly. "I have been bullied so many times by grey-faced drabs that I would take my trouncing patiently from such a pair of lips. It was meat and drink to look at her and think thoughts."

Jehan le Loup frowned sourly. "Had I been Master François and black
Louis not been by I should have tried to mend my luck with a cudgel.
At best and worst she would have had something to curse for after a
lusty thumping."

Casin Cholet licked his lips. "I shall think of her," he said, "when next I meet with a sweetheart. With a little wit your honest rascal can be as happy as a king. In the dark all fur is of the same colour."

Oolin de Cayeulx yawned. "What are we going a-riding for?" he questioned. "I would sooner have stayed in the king's rose garden and filled my belly as we did last week when the great lord in gold tissue pitied us. And to think that it was no more than François after all! I could jam my dagger between his shoulder-blades for making such a ninny of me."

"I knew him all the time," Guy Tabarie was beginning when René de Montigny silenced him with a ringing clip on the nearest ear which nearly unsaddled the fat rogue. "You lie, Mountain, you lie," he whispered. "Do you think that if he cheated me your pig's eyes could read the riddle? No, no, he fooled us fairly and he fooled us well, but he treated us kindly and we can afford to cry quits."

"A strange thing," mused Colin, "that a trifle of hair less on a man's chin and a trifle of dirt less on a man's cheek, with some matter of clean linen and a smooth jerkin, can make such a difference."

"Not at all," said René de Montigny," we are all the same at the core, every man-jack and woman-jill of us, hungering, thirsting, lusting, just after the same fashion. 'Tis only the coat that counts."

"'Tis you who lie now," grunted Tabarie. "There's no gold tissue in the world that would make you as cunning as François. You would never have done as he did if the king had made you the pick of the litter."

Rend whistled through his teeth. "May be so, may be not," he said. "No man can tell what he may do till he is given his chance to test his mettle. Oh opportunity, golden opportunity! If I were François Villon I would shape an image of gold in your name and praise you for a saint."

"I wonder what that girl will say," mused Tabarie, "if our François comes back with the Duke of Burgundy in his pocket!"

"I wonder what she will say," sneered Jehan le Loup, "if he trundles back feet foremost with a hole in his body and half a head."

"Whatever happens is sure to vex her," said Casin Cholet. "Women are made that way."

"Our poor minions will be lonely to-night," said Colin.

"I doubt it," said René de Montigny drily, and then he sighed a little. "Poor Abbess!"

Sudden tears smeared Tabarie's fat cheeks.

"She was a brave wench if ever," he snivelled. "Through wellfare or illfare she was always the same, and would share board and blanket with a friend though his pouch were as barren as Sarah's body."

"It was ten thousand pities," said Eene, "that she fell so love-sick for François. Did he give her some philtre, some elixir, do you think? François is a fine fellow though, I'll not deny it, but he's had the devil's own luck, and by our patron St. Nicholas there be others as fine as he."

As he spoke the great gate of the city yawned noiselessly, and stealthy and silent the hope of Paris glided into the darkness and was swallowed up by the night.

CHAPTER XIV

THE BANNERS OF BURGUNDY

The yellow dawn, rippling over Paris, found her streets strangely silent, strangely quiet. A few good citizens were abed, but most good citizens were abroad on that kindly June morning, for there was business doing outside the walls of Paris which tempted every man inside the walls to those walls, and that business was the battle that was raging, and had raged since nightfall, between the troops of King Louis on one side under the Grand Constable of France, and the troops of the Duke of Burgundy and his allies on the other. Paris might have been that strange city of slumber told of by the wanderer in the Arabian tale, or that poppied palace where the sleeping beauty and her court lay waiting the coming of the hero. If Asmodeus whisking his way on the wings of the wind with any astonished travelling companion in tow had paused over Paris and unroofed it for the benefit of his fellow-voyager, most of the rooms would have been found as empty as the streets.

But there was one spot in the city—an open place by the river, between an ancient gate and the church of the Celestins—which was alive and busy with a strange activity of its own. It was empty enough and the windows of its houses stared vacantly upon its emptiness, but there were two men in possession of its tranquillity who had been toiling hard at a singular piece of work. They were putting the finishing touches to the erection of a tall, gaunt gallows with its steps and platform, which occupied a space midway between the gateway and the grey old Gothic church. In curious contrast to the sinister grimness of the gibbet, there rose opposite to it on the side of the church a dais, richly draped with royal velvet, splendidly spangled with fleur-de-lis and brave with armourial bearings.

The two men who were working at the gallows having finished their job, came out into the open space and stretched themselves. One was a tall, thin, grave, poplar-tree of a man, clad in sad-coloured clothes and conspicuous for a long rosary of enormous beads which he carried around his neck and which from time to time he handled with ostentatious sanctimony. The other was as complete a contrast to his companion as could be desired by the humorous painter. He was a plump, spry little fellow, brightly dressed and bubbling over with merry, roguish spirits, which formed the most fantastic foil to the lugubriousness of his fellow-worker. Any good citizen of Paris, arising belated, if any such there may have been, and hurrying to the walls to know how things went for the king's cause, would have recognized readily enough in these two strange opposites two of the most dreaded of the myrmidons of Tristan l'Hermite, no less than his two chief hangmen, Trois-Echelles and Petit-Jean. Trois-Echelles was the long, cadaverous hangman; Petit-Jean was the stout, droll hangman, but when it came to a push and a pinch, both were hangmen and hung in the same manner, if not with the same manners. Petit-Jean pulled a flagon of wine from under the platform of the gallows, lifted it to his lips, drained a mighty draught, sighed with satisfaction, and held out the bottle to his brother craftsman.

"Drink and be merry."

Trois-Echelles, making gestures of protestation with his head but taking the bottle with his hand none the less, drew a deep draught from its throttle and sighed as sadly as his friend sighed gladly.

"I will drink but I cannot be merry. What's the good of building a noble gallows if nobody looks at it? One might as well be building a church."

Petit-Jean laughed good-naturedly.

"All Paris is on the walls watching the battle. Lucky Paris!"

Trois-Echelles laughed ill-humoredly.

"Not so lucky if we don't win the battle."

Petit-Jean was complacent.

"Whichever wins will need us to hang the losers. Look at the bright side, man."

Trois-Echelles fumbled his beads furtively.

"I've lost heart, I tell you. I haven't hanged a man for a week."

As he mourned over this melancholy retrospect, the door of a little house hard by the church opened and an old woman, propping herself on a crutch stick, came hobbling slowly across the open space towards the church. Petit-Jean knew her well enough, for they both lodged in the same house and both on the same floor of attics. He knew she was the mother of the greatest scapegrace in all Paris, a rascal named François Villon, who had disappeared, Heaven alone knew where, to the old lady's great despair. He saluted her good humoredly.

"Good morrow to your nightcap, mother. Have you found your lost sheep?"

Mother Villon shook her head wistfully.

"They say he is banished, but he has sent me money, bless him! though I touch none of it, lest it be badly come by."

Trois-Echelles stopped fumbling his beads and advanced towards her, extending his hand.

"Give it to me to spend on masses?" he asked sanctimoniously.

Petit-Jean danced between them.

"Lend it to me for drink money," he urged.

The old woman paid no heed to their proposals. Her tired eyes had caught sight of the grim structure in wood which usurped a place in a familiar scene. She shaded her eyes and peered at it, asking:

"For whom do you build this gallows?"

The glum hangman answered gloomily:

"Oddly enough, we don't know. 'Make me a gallows here,' says the Constable, 'in the open place, and sieges for the king and his courtiers.'"

Mother Villon, her simple curiosity easily satisfied, dropped her informant a curtsey and hobbled slowly up the steps into the church.

Petit-Jean stretched himself again and yawned.

"I'll to sleep and dream of hanging a king."

Trois-Echelles put a lean finger to his lean chin.

"Treason, friend, if Tristan heard you."

Petit-Jean's eyes twinkled.

"Well, let's say an archbishop," he said.

Trois-Echelles nodded approvingly.

"An archbishop ought to make a good end."

His mind pleased itself with the picture of so high a dignitary of the church in his full canonicals coming under his tender care and being exhorted by his pious counsels.

The two hangmen climbed on the platform of the grisly erection, and, calmly indifferent to the nature of their bed, were in a few moments fast asleep and snoring as merrily as if every man in the world had been hung and there was nothing else for them to do but to take it easy for the rest of their days.

The hard weariness of work and the easy weariness of wine had made them so heavy-headed that their slumbers were not disturbed by the sound of footfalls, though the footfalls echoed strangely loud in the lonely deserted place-the footfalls of a woman, swift and impatient, the footfalls of a man swiftly pursuing. In another moment the woman and the man came into the open space, now bright and shining with the risen sun. The woman was Katherine de Vaucelles; the man was Noel le Jolys.

As Katherine entered the silent square, she paused for a moment a few paces from the church, and turning, looked at her silent follower.

"Why do you follow me?" she asked, and Noel le Jolys, who had dogged her footsteps from the palace, answered her briskly:

"You should not walk unguarded. Therefore I shadow you."

Katherine scorned him.

"You may well play the shadow, for you cast no shadow of your own. The streets are very idle—the streets are very quiet. I would sooner have my loneliness than your company. Let me pass to my prayers." For Noel had glided between her and the church, and stood barring her passage deferentially.

"For your lover?" he asked, and Katherine flashed at him:

"You have a small mind to ask, yet I have a great mind to answer. My prayers are for a brave gentleman whom I shall never see again."

As she spoke, the cup of her heart seemed to run over with red tears, and the bitter waters trembled in her eyes. Her thoughts wandered over the long white night and her sleepless sorrow, and her vigil by the window, looking out into the rose garden, and her tired eyes straining in vain through the dark for any sight, and her tired ears straining in vain for any sound of the battle in which the lord of her heart was risking his life. For she knew it now; she had learned it through those age-long hours of agony, that he whom she called her enemy was the lord of her heart, that in spite of all her rage at the cheat that had been put upon her, she loved, not the great noble who had done so much to save France—no, nor the ragged poet who had lent her his sword-arm and his sword, but just the man, by whatever name he might be called and in whatever way of life his wheel of fortune might spin, whose hand had proved to be of the right size to hold her heart in its hollow. The Katherine of yesterday seemed to be dead and buried, to have died a fiery death of fierce thoughts, fierce agonies, fierce exultations, and from that travail a new Katherine had come into being with cleansed eyes to see the world truly and with a cleansed soul to know a great soul's truth.

Noel watched her silence but it meant nothing to him, and he tripped into her high thoughts cheerfully.

"I am a brave gentleman," he said, patting himself approvingly upon the breast. "I slew Thibaut d'Aussigny last night. The king has taken me back into favour. If I played the fool's part yesterday, I can play the wise man's part to-morrow. I was a bubble and a gull and a dunce, if you like, but I meant no harm to the king, and the king smiles on me. Cannot you do the like?"

Katherine came out of her dream and stood upon the earth again, and disdained him.

"No, for you envy a great spirit and your envy makes you a base thing."

Noel protested pettishly:

"He is no man-angel. He is made of Adam's clay like the rest of us."

Katherine's thoughts had wandered away from her escort; her mind's eyes were busy with waving banners, the shock of meeting lances, the glitter of steel coats and the beating of steel upon steel. Through all the melley, her fancy spied one shining figure in bright armour like, so it seemed to her, Archangel Michael or Archangel Gabriel, riding in the pride of the fight with a smile on his lips, sorrow in his heart, and a token of white ribbon between his breast-plate and his breast.

She answered, not Noel's words, but her thoughts:

"My pride has the right to hate him, but I think he is still my soul's man."

Noel was about to speak again, when he suddenly fell back and doffed his bonnet. Perched on the steps of the church stood the stooped sable figure of the king, just coming from his matinal devotions. In the shadow behind him stood his shadows—Tristan and Olivier.

Katherine, her attention swerved by Noel's glance, turned and swayed a reverence to Louis as he slowly descended the steps. The king surveyed them sardonically.

"Good morning, friends," he said. Then turning to Noel, he ordered, "Take the top of your speed to St. Anthony's gate and bring hot news of the battle."

Noel bowed and sped on his errand. Katherine requested:

"Have I your majesty's leave?"

Tristan and Olivier withdrew themselves discreetly apart, under the shadow of the gallows, that building of all human buildings which was most dear to their hearts and most sacred in their eyes.

Louis came very close to the pale girl and whispered:

"Are you so hungry for your devotions that you cannot waste some worldly words on me? Are you still angry with me for the trick I played on you?"

Katherine's pale face flushed a little as she answered:

"It is wasted spirit to be angry with a king."

Louis grinned.

"You are as pat with your answers as a clerk at matins. Could you give me your heart now if I bent my knee?"

Katherine stifled a great sigh.

"I lost my heart last night; I have not found it again."

Louis flung up his hands in contemptuous amusement.

"The fellow was a fool to blab so glibly. I would have carried the jest farther. But he stood on the punctilio and would not win you without confession."

The girl's heart swelled.

"I am glad he had so much honour," she said, and the shining figure in the bright armour seemed more archangel-like than ever.

Louis looked at her intently, tickling his chin with his forefinger.

"If you wait in the church for his homecoming, you will see how the jest ends," he said.

Katherine made the king a profound reverence and slowly entered the church, every pulse of her body pleading in prayer for her lost lover. She scarcely heeded an old, bowed woman who tottered out, propped on a crutch stick, and who dropped the great lady a respectful curtsey as she passed and went her ways into the silent streets. So the two women in the world whom Villon loved met for the firsf time.

Louis, left alone, beckoned to Tristan and Olivier, who hurried down to him.

"There goes a brave lady, gossips, a fair lady, a chaste lady. She
sails in the high latitudes of lore and deserves to find the
Fortunate Islands. Are there not better things to do with Master
Villon than to hang him?"

Olivier protested:

"This Villon is such a damnable double dealer that the ass-headed populace loves him better than you."

The king's visage soured.

"That is enough to hang him. Yet I have a kind of liking for the fellow, and my dream troubles me—the star that fell from heaven."

Tristan commented bluffly:

"Hang the rascal while you can and thank heaven you are well rid of him."

Even as he spoke the world seemed suddenly to be full of many noises and many voices. From beyond the gate on the ways that led to the city walls came the clamour of hoarse shouts and cries and the thudding din of running feet. From the other side, from the street that led to the Louvre, came the ordered tramp of soldiers.

Olivier interpreting one interruption, said:

"The people are coming from the walls."

And Tristan interpreted the other.

"The queen, sire," he announced.

Through the narrow space that led into the open square there came a line of soldiers escorting a number of splendidly caparisoned litters—the carriages of the queen and the queen's chief ladies. Louis advanced to the first litter, and extending his hand, assisted the queen to descend and conducted her with an elaborate display of polite affection to the gorgeous dais by the side of the church, where they sat side by side on the small thrones that had been prepared for them. The ladies and gentlemen of the court ranged themselves in their places behind the royal pair and the Scottish archers formed a solid force in front. Through the open gateway came a few running, shouting enthusiasts, outstrippers of the mass of citizens who were returning from the walls. Even the heavy sleep of Trois-Echelles and Petit-Jean was not proof against all this tumult. They awoke, rubbed their eyes, then climbing briskly to their feet, leaned over the platform on the handrails of the gallows and surveyed the scene with interest.

Noel le Jolys pushed his way through the crowd aboat the gateway and advanced to the king.

"Sire," he said, "the latest message from the battle: The day is wholly ours. The Grand Constable returns in triumph. You can hear his music now."

Louis nodded.

"It is very well," he affirmed gravely.

Through the gateway the crowd of people was pouring thick and fast, shouting and cheering and filling the square in front of the dais with a throng of enthusiastic men, women and children, all waving their arms, flinging flowers and yelling welcomes at the topmost pitch of their lungs. The sound of military music and the tramp of marching men could be heard approaching louder and louder.

Five girls had forced their way to the very front row of the throne and were applauding and shouting with the rest. These were the light ladies of the Fircone, Isabeau, Jehanneton, Denise, and Blanche with Guillemette, fat Robin Turgis' fat daughter. They were all in a state of great excitement, for their lovers had vanished over night and their Abbess had disappeared like a dream, and they knew not what had become of them. They had little fear for their lovers, for the good gentlemen of the Fellowship of the Cockleshell had a way of diving into the deep waters of existence at intervals in order to escape the too attentive eye and the too particular finger of the law, and the girls had a vague idea of some great scheme on hand which might easily result in trouble for the brotherhood. As for their Abbess, they were none too sorry to be free from her somewhat decisive authority, and they chattered and babbled like birds escaped from a cage.

By this time the advance guard of the army began to pour in through the narrow mouth of the gateway and to form a line in front of the populace, thus leaving a wide open space between the assembled people and the seated king. From every window heads were thrust and hands extended waving scarfs of silk or scattering flowers. The blare of the soldiers' music grew louder and louder, the tramp of horse and men came nearer and nearer, and then, when the cheering was at its shrillest and the rain of flowers thickest, Villon rode in through the gateway on his great warhorse with his five ruffians close at his heels. Villon's lifted hand gave the signal for a halt and he leaped lightly off his horse and advanced towards the king, a glorious figure to the eyes of the crowd in his shining armour with a scarlet coif upon his helmet. If for a moment his glance rested on the gaunt skeleton of the gallows there came no change in the proud composure of his face. Immediately behind him followed the faithful ragamuffins, each of whom bore vivid signs in slung arm, swathed leg or bandaged forehead of the lusty work he had done in the king's name upon the king's enemies. But the slings and swathes and bandages were of no common sort, but splendid bits of silk of many colours, bearing fantastic devices and rich in threads of gold and silver.

As Villon and his fantastic escort strode towards the presence, Noel interposed indignantly. He stretched a pair of protecting arms wide out to ward off from the king the approach of so singular a deputation, while he demanded angrily:

"In heaven's name, sir, who are these scarecrows who flaunt their tatters in the presence of the king?"

The king nursed his chin with an amused smile as Villon answered:

"The scarecrows are rogues who have fought like gentlefolk and these rags are the banners of the enemy."

Even as he spoke the rapscallions stripped the pieces of silk from arm and leg and forehead, shook them out into such semblance of their original shape as battle had left to them and flung them with a gesture of imperial pride on the ground at the foot of the dais.

"Well answered," said Louis regally, while two pursuivants pounced swiftly upon the bits of silk, and gathering them up with reverential fingers, laid them upon the railing in front of the king's chair to be examined with loving care by the queen. Standing erect, Villon addressed the king: "Louis of France, we bring you these silks for your carpet. An hour ago they wooed the wind from Burgundian staves and floated over Burgundian helmets. I will make no vain glory of their winning. Burgundy fought well, but France fought better, and these trophies trail in our triumph. To a mercer's eyes these bits of tissue are but so many squares of damaged web. To a soldier's eye, they cover crowded graves with honour. To a king's eye, they deck one throne with lonely splendour. When we here, who breathe hard from fighting, and ye, who stand there and marvel, are dust, when the king's name is but a golden space in chronicles grey with age, these banners shall hang from Cathedral arches and your children's children's children, lifted in reverent arms, shall peep through the dim air at the faded colours, and baby lips shall whisper an echo of our battle."