"My lord," he said, dapperly, "here are the names of these night birds."

Villon took the paper and looked straightly into the young man's eyes.

"Have we ever met before?" he asked.

Noel le Jolys made a deprecatory gesture.

"Alas! no," he said. "Your lordship has swept into court like an unheralded comet. You shall tell us tales of Provence to please our ladies."

Still gravely looking at him, Villon questioned him again.

"Messire Noel, if you and I had a mind to pluck the same rose from this garden, which of us would win?"

The affable fribble's intelligence appeared to be baffled.

"I do not understand you," he protested.

Villon shrugged his shoulders. "Never mind," he said, seating himself again on the marble seat and looking at the familiar names on the piece of paper.

"Send me hither René de Montigny."

He was fairly convinced by this time that he was not wandering in the labyrinths of a dream, that he really was awake, but that for some reason which he was unable to fathom, he had been thus strangely transmuted into the semblance of splendour and authority.

"The popinjay fails to recognize me," he said to himself; "so may my bullies," and as he thought, René de Montigny was pushed forward by a couple of soldiers and stood sullenly defiant before him.

Villon leaned forward, oddly interested in the grotesque turn of things which put him in this position with his old companion and fellow-scamp.

"You are—" he questioned.

Montigny answered angrily,

"René de Montigny, of gentle blood, fallen on ungentle days."

"Through no fault of your own, of course?"

"As your grace surmises, through no fault of my own. I am poor, but,
I thank my stars, I am honest."

This remark, which was made aloud for the benefit of all and sundry, provoked a roar of laughter from Guy Tabarie which was promptly converted into a groan as an indignant soldier smote him into silence by a lusty blow on the back. Villon caught him up on the assertion.

"Since when, sir? Since last night?"

"I do not understand your grace."

"When Jason was a farmer in Colchis he sowed dragons' teeth and reaped soldiers. What do you grow in your garden, Sire de Montigny?"

Montigny gave a little start of surprise but his answer came prompt.

"Cabbages."

Villon shook his head. "Arrows, Master René, Burgundian arrows, most condemnable vegetables. Have a care! 'Tis a pestilent crop and may poison the gardener. Stand aside."

René de Montigny stared at his interlocutor in a paroxysm of amazement. Here was his dearest secret loose on the lips of his questioner. It was the first time that he had ventured boldly to gaze into the face of authority and Villon returned his gaze defiantly. But there was no recognition in Montigny's eyes. He could see nothing in common between the splendid gentleman who now addressed him and the ragged rhymester who shared so many squalid adventures with him, and in an instant he averted his head respectfully.

"If your grace will deign," he pleaded, stretching out his hands in entreaty, but Villon was inexorable.

"Stand aside," he repeated, and Montigny protesting was dragged back to his place with his fellows while Villon read the name of the next rogue on the list, which happened to be that of Guy Tabarie.

By this time Villon's spirit had entered into a very complete appreciation of the humours of the situation. Having realized that his identity was safe even from the keen eyes of René de Montigny, he felt assured that he might defy the indifferent scrutiny of his less alert companions. And though he made use of the long pendant fold of his cap to conceal in some measure his countenance, he was now so confident of his safety that he was prepared to greet each prisoner with composure.

Guy Tabarie cut a piteous figure as he tottered across the grass, rudely propelled by the violence of the soldier who escorted him tweaking him by the ear, and fell, a quaking mountain of flesh, at the feet of the man whom he believed to be the Grand Constable of France. With piteous gesticulations and trembling fingers, the red, gross man knelt and attempted to plead for mercy. Villon eyed him sternly though he found it hard to restrain his laughter.

"You come with clean hands?" he asked, and Guy, answered, babbling, his words tumbling from him, incoherent and confused, holding out his huge paws like a schoolboy reproved for want of soap and water:

"As decent a lad, my lord, as ever kept body and soul together by walking on the straight and narrow path that leads to—"

He had stuttered thus far when Villon interrupted him.

"The gallows, Master Tabarie."

Guy's bulk quivered in piteous negation.

"No, no; I have the fear of God in me as strong as any man in
Paris."

Villon leaned over a little nearer to his victim and breathed a question into his ear:

"Do you know the Church of St. Maturin, Master Tabarie?"

The little pig-like eyes of Tabarie widened in surprise and he stammered a "No, my lord," that was in itself a flagrant confession of shameful knowledge. Villon wagged his head wisely.

"Master Tabarie, Master Tabarie, your memory is failing you. Why, no later than the middle of March last you broke into the church at dead of night and pilfered the gold plate from the altar. The fear of God is not very strong in you."

If Master Tabarie had been listening to the words of a wizard, he could not have been more astonished.

"Saints and angels!" he cried aloud. "This Grand Constable is the devil himself! My lord, I was led astray; my lord, I was not alone—"

Villon had had enough entertainment from his fat companion.

He made a sign, and instantly a soldier swooped upon the grovelling figure, twitched him to his feet and drew him apart, stuttering furious protestations of innocence.

Villon looked at the list in his hand, and this time he called for two names, "Colin de Cayeulx and Casin Cholet," and as he spoke, the two knaves were pushed forward towards him. Villon drew the pair a little way apart and stood between them, eyeing their roguish faces on which false affability struggled with a very real fear.

"Are you good citizens, sirs?" he asked, and Colin immediately answered him:

"I am loath to sing my own praises, but I can speak frankly for my friend here. The king has no better subject, and Paris no more peaceable burgess than Casin Cholet."

As he spoke he waved Casin Cholet a warm salutation, and Cholet responded to his praises with a friendly grin and yet more friendly words:

"If I have any poor merits, I owe them all to this good gentleman's example. I have followed his lead, halting and humble. 'Keep your eye on Colin de Cayeulx,' I have ever said to myself, 'and learn how a good man lives.'"

The two men leered at each other across Villon, hoping that their praises of each other might have due effect upon the great lord who seemed so condescending to them. Villon smiled.

"You are the Castor and Pollux of purity? Do you remember the night of last Shrove Tuesday and the girl you carried off to Fat Margot's and held to ransom?"

The effect of his words upon the two men was startling. The ugly episode loomed up in their memories and they shivered to find it known. In a second the simulated friendship of bandit for bandit vanished and the two men glared at each other with the ferocity of fighting dogs as they hurled accusation and denial at each other:

"That was Colin's adventure!"

"That was Casin's enterprise!"

"I deplored it."

"I had no hand in it."

Forgetting their respect for authority in the fury of their antagonism, they struck angrily at each other across their questioner and were for grappling in close combat when Villon made a signal and they, in their turn, were dragged back raging into the ranks of their fellow prisoners.

There was only one left now—Jehan le Loup—who stood with folded arms and lowering brows, surveying the efforts of his comrades..Villon made a sign, and the man was dragged into his presence. Villon clapped him on the shoulder.

"You seem a brisk, assured fellow for a man in duress."

The friendly demeanour of the great man cheered the prisoner and he answered bluffly:

"My good conscience sustains me."

Villon's demeanour was still amicable as he put his next question in a voice that came only to Jeban's ears.

"I am glad to hear it. How did Thevenin Pensete come to his death?"

The muscles of Jehan le Loup's face twitched for a moment, but he clinched his fingers tightly to restrain himself and answered with a surly impassability,

"How should I know, my lord?"

Villon drew him nearer and spoke lower still.

"Who better? That nasty quarrel over the cards, the high words and a snatch for the winnings, a tilted table, an extinguished taper, a stab in the dark and a groan. Exit Thevenin Pensete. Your dagger doesn't grow rusty!"

Jehan's grey face grew greyer and uglier, but he kept his countenance.

"Monseigneur," he answered, "I loved him like a brother."

"As Cain loved Abel," Villon said. He made a sign, and Jehan le Loup was taken back to his fellows.

So far Villon had been sufficiently diverted. He had played upon the terrors of his friends, he had bewildered them to the top of his desire. He now foresaw the possibility of sport more delicate as his glance fell upon the group of girls who clustered together like frightened birds at the foot of the statue of Pan. He made a sign to Messire Noel, and the gilded exquisite drew near.

"Bring me hither those four gentlewomen," he commanded.

The fop's face lengthened with amazed disapprobation.

"Gentlewomen, messire? Those four doxies?"

Villon reproved him.

"They are women, good captain, and you and I are gentlemen, or should be, and must use them gently."

Messire Noel frowned and his hand made a gesture in the direction of his sword-hilt; then he remembered the folly of quarrelling with so great a man and contented himself with shrugging his shoulders as he questioned,

"And the demirep in the doublet and hose?"

"Let her stay for the present," Villon answered, and in obedience to a sign from Noel the four girls came timidly forward with downcast eyes, while Huguette remained apart, leaning composedly against the image of Pan and surveying the scene with a good-humoured indifference.

When the girls were close to him, Villon spoke:

"Well, young ladies, what is this trade of yours that has brought you into trouble?"

Jehanneton dropped a curtsey.

"I make the caps that line helmets."

Isabeau followed quickly,

"I am a lace weaver. Enne, an honest trade."

Blanche came next,

"I am a slipper maker."

Denise ended the catalogue.

"And I a glover."

Mischief danced in Villon's eyes.

"No worse and no better. A word in your ear." He whispered something into each girl's ear in turn, and as he did so, each girl started, drew back, looked confused, laughed and blushed.

It is ever to be deplored that the worthy Dom Gregory, whose ecclesiastical history of Poitou is the source of so much curious information concerning Villon, should have omitted, from a mistaken sense of delicacy, to chronicle precisely what it was that the poet whispered in the ears of each of the girls. All he condescends to record in his crabbed, canine Latin, is that Villon showed such intimate acquaintance with certain physical peculiarities or whimsical adventures private to each damsel that she believed the speaker's knowledge to be little less than supernatural. Literature of the skittish sort must deplore the monastic reticence, but history can do no more than accept it and leave imagination to fill in the blank as best it pleases.

All history is certain of is that the girls gathered together, chatting like sparrows, each speaking rapidly:

"The gentleman is a wizard. Why, he told me—"

"Enne, a miracle; he reminded me—"

"Why, he knows—"

"What do you think he said?"

Each girl was whispering to the other what Villon had told her, when
Villon interrupted them.

"Young women, young women, the world is a devil of a place for those who are poor. I could preach you a powerful sermon on your follies and frailties, but, somehow, the words stick in my gullet. Here is a gold coin apiece for you. Go and gather yourself roses, my roses, to take back to what, Heaven pity you! you call your homes."

Jehanneton gave a little gasp of surprise.

"Are we free?"

Villon answered her sadly,

"Free? Poor children! Such as you are never free. Go and pray Heaven to make men better, for the sake of your daughter's daughters."

His extended hands were full of gold pieces, but they were soon emptied by the eager girls who pounced upon them. Then they left him with many curtsies and salutations and drifted away delightedly into the mazes of the rose garden.

Villon turned to look at the men prisoners, who were anxiously scanning his actions.

"As for these gentlemen," he said to Noel, "let them go where they will, but first give them food and drink and a pocketful of money."

The effect of his words was almost as paralyzing upon the rogues as it was upon Messire Noel. It pleased the one as much as it displeased the other.

Noel looked the contempt he did not venture to express. The men rushed forward, choking with gratitude.

"God save you, sir."

"Your Excellency is of a most excellent excellence."

"Long live the Grand Constable!"

"A most rare Constable."

Villon waved them away.

"Go your ways," he said, "and if you can, mend them."

Shouting and dancing for joy, the men took advantage of his permission and disappeared in their turn among the alleys of the rose garden, seeking and finding the wandering women and vanishing with them in due course into the labyrinths of Paris.

Villon turned to Noel.

"You may dismiss your soldiers," he said. "Attend me within call," and as Noel obeyed him, he advanced to where Huguette was standing, with a smile of scornful indifference still on her fair face.

Villon asked himself as he went:

"Why, in God's name, does the world appear so 'different to-day? Is it the thing they call the better self, or merely this purple and fine linen?"

What he said when he came to the girl was,

"Fair mistress, you have a comely face and you make it very plain that you have a comely figure. Why do you go thus?"

The girl shrugged her green shoulders and shifted the balance of her body from one green leg to the other, as she answered impudently,

"For ease and freedom, to please myself, and to show my fine shape to please others."

Last night this girl had been his own familiar friend; to-day she lay leagues away from his fairy greatness. There was pity in his next speech.

"Are you a happy woman, mistress?"

"Happy enough," she answered as she snapped her fingers defiantly, "when fools like you don't clap me into prison for living my life in my own way."

"I may be a fool, but I did not clap you into prison. Heaven forbid!"

A curious look came into the girl's eyes, and she drew a little nearer to him. Her voice was a caress; the tenor of her hands was a caress; every supple curve of her alluring body caressed. She seemed to coax him, cat-like, as she whispered:

"Your voice sounds familiar, Monseigneur. Had I ever the honour to serve you?"

Villon drew away from her. He felt suddenly body-sick and soul-sick; sorry for the woman, sorry for himself.

"Who knows?" he answered. The girl laughed and turned aside.

"Who cares? What are you going to do with me?"

"Set you free, my delicate bird of prey. Those wild wings were never meant for clipping and caging. Is there anything I can do to please you?"

On the instant her enticement shifted; all her being was a tremulous entreaty.

"What has come to Master François Villon?"

"Why do you ask?"

"He was with us when we were snared last night. But he did not share our prison and he is not with us now. Does he live?"

Villon hesitated for a moment before speaking.

"He lives. He is banished from Paris, but he lives."

Huguette clasped her hands in gratitude.

"The sweet saints be thanked!" she said; and there was that in her voice which made the simple words sound very sincere to Villon's ears.

"What do you care for the fate of this fellow?"

"As I am a fool, I believe I love him."

"Heaven's mercy! Why?"

"I cannot tell you, Messire. A look in his eyes, a trick of his voice—the something—the nothing that makes a woman's heart run like wax in the fire. He never made woman happy yet, and I'll swear no woman ever made him happy. If you gave him the moon, he would want the stars for a garnish. He believes nothing; he laughs at everything; he is a false monkey—and yet, I wish I had borne such a child."

There was a sudden pain at Villon's heart, as if the girl's fingers had seized it and squeezed it, but he replied lightly:

"Let us speak no more of this rascal. He believes more and laughs less than he did. He is so glad to be alive that his forehead scrapes the sky and the stars fall at his feet in gold dust. Paris is well rid of such a jackanapes."

"You are a merry gentleman."

"I would be more gentle than merry with you. Will you wear this ring for my sake? Fancy that it comes from Master François Villon, who will always think kindly of your wild eyes."

"Let me see your face," she requested, but Villon denied her. He signed to Noel le Jolys, where he stood apart, and the young soldier came hurriedly to him.

"Captain," he said, "give this lady honourable conduct."

He moved away and left the pair together—the mannish woman and the womanish man, looking at each other, the man in admiration and the woman in veiled disdain.

"You are a comely girl," Noel affirmed roundly.

Huguette laughed.

"This is news from no-man's land."

Noel spoke lower.

"Where do you lodge?"

Huguette was a woman of business in an instant. She flashed in Noel's face the ring the Grand Constable had given her as she answered:

"At the sign of the Golden Scull, hard by the Fircone. Will you visit me?"

Noel clapped his hands together.

"As I am a man, I will."

A good understanding being thus established, the pair drifted away together and were soon lost to sight. Villon looking after them mused:

"Heaven forgive me, I am becoming a most pitiful loud preacher. Every rogue there deserves the gallows, but so do I, no less, and I have not swallowed enough of this court air to make me a hypocrite. Well, all this justice is thirsty work, and, mad or sane, sleeping or waking, let me drink while I can."

He returned to the golden flagons, poured out a full cup of Burgundy, watched it glow in the sunlight, and lifted it to his lips.

"To the loveliest lady this side of heaven!" he said for a toast, but ere he touched his lips to the cup, he lowered it again.

Olivier le Dain had come on to the terrace, and with Olivier there came a lady.

"By heaven," Villon cried, "my eyes dazzle, for I believe I see her!"

CHAPTER VI

GARDEN LOVE

On the terrace the fair girl leaned and looked over at the garden and its golden occupant. To the eyes of Villon her beauty had never seemed rarer, and the wild passion which had prompted him to spin his very soul into song burnt with a new, delicious strength of hope. He stared at her as a worshipper might stare at some sudden vision of a long dreamed of goddess, and as he stared, Olivier descended the steps, soft-footed, and came and stood before him.

"My lord, there is a lady there who desires to speak with you."

Villon turned his gaze unwillingly from the gracious apparition above him to the sombre servitor.

"I desire to speak with her," he said earnestly, and again his eyes travelled in the direction of the lady.

Olivier came close to him and touched him respectfully on the wrist.

"Remember, my lord," he said, very softly, "that you are François of Corbeuil, Lord of Montcorbier, Grand Constable of France, newly come to Paris from the Court of His Majesty of Provence. Remember this as if it were written in letters of gold upon tables of iron. Forget all else. The king commands it."

The words sounded dully enough on Villon's brain, absorbed as he was in the contemplation of his queen, but at least they served to convince him of what he had already begun to assure himself, that for some purpose or other King Louis wished him well and granted him golden chances.

François of Corbeuil, Count of Montcorbier, stood in a very different relation to the Lady Katherine from that of the lowly poet and gaolbird who had rhymed and sighed and battled in the Fircone Tavern last night.

"The king shall be obeyed," he said gravely, and Olivier, turning, made a sign to Katherine, who descended the steps slowly. As she reached the last step, Olivier saluted Villon and the lady profoundly and, mounting the steps, vanished within the palace.

The man and the woman were left alone in the rose garden. Villon felt a sudden strange sensation at his heart, exquisite pain and exquisite pleasure, and he clasped his hands together.

"I am awake," he assured himself; "no dream could be as fair as she."

Even at the thought, Katherine flung herself swiftly at his feet, divinely gracious in her surrender of dignity as she kneeled to him with uplifted imploring hands and eyes.

"My lord," she cried, "will you listen to a distressed lady?"

Villon stooped and caught her white fingers and drew her to her feet.

"Not while the lady kneels," he said gently, and he looked with a strange apprehension into the frank, bright eyes of Katherine. Would she know him for what he was, he wondered. He read no recognition in her sweet eyes. Katherine returned his gaze, unflinchingly regarding him as a great lady might regard some stranger her equal of whom she could ask a favour.

"She does not know me," Villon's delight cried in his heart, and at the thought his spirit fluttered with fierce exaltation. The Lord of Moncorbier, who was Grand Constable of France, might say many things that were denied to the lips of François Villon.

Katherine pleaded warmly:

"There is a man in prison at this hour for whom I would implore your clemency. His name is François Villon. Last night he wounded Thibaut d'Aussigny—"

Villon smiled a contented smile.

"Thereby making room for me," he suggested.

Katherine went on unheeding:

"The penalty is death. But Thibaut was a traitor sold to Burgundy."

"Did this Villon fight him for his treason?"

"No. He fought for the sake of a woman. He risked his life with a light heart because a woman asked him."

"How do you know all this?"

"Because I was the woman. This man had seen me, thought he loved me, sent me verses—"

"How insolent!"

"It was insolence—and yet they were beautiful verses. I was in mortal fear of Thibaut d'Aussigny. I went to this Villon and begged him to kill my enemy. He backed his love tale with his sword—and he lies in the shadow of death. It is not just that he should suffer for my sin."

Villon turned suddenly upon the beautiful suppliant. A thought had come into his brain so whimsical and so fantastic that it made him as dizzy for an instant as if the smooth grass beneath him had yawned into a sheer and evil precipice.

"Do you by any chance love this Villon?"

A little wave of disdain rippled over the girl's calm face.

"Great ladies do not love tavern bravos. But I pity him, and I do not want him to die, though, indeed, life cannot be very dear to him if he would fling it away to please a woman."

She had held a rose in her hand, and as she spoke she flung it from her in dainty symbolism of the life which the poor tavern poet had risked so bravely for her sake. A mad resolve came into Villon's mind. If he was, indeed, all that this woman thought him to be, all that those with whom he had spoken had assured him he was, now was his chance to play the lover to his heart's desire. If the Grand Constable had the power to pardon, surely the Grand Constable had also the right to woo. She had drawn a little way from him and he followed her up, standing so close to her that with a little movement he might have kissed her on the cheek.

"Even when you are the woman? If I had stood in this rascal's shoes,
I would have done as he did for your sake."

The girl gave a joyous cry.

"If you think this, you should grant the poor knave his freedom."

Villon flung his hands apart with a magnificent gesture of liberation.

"That broker of ballads shall go free. Your prayer unshackles him and we will do no more than banish him from Paris. Forget that such a slave ever came near you."

The lady dropped him a magnificent curtsey, and her cheeks glowed with gratitude.

"I shall remember your clemency."

She made as if she would leave his presence, but his boldness waxed within him as a fire waxes with new wood, and he caught her lightly by the wrist.

"By Saint Venus, I envy this fellow that he should have won your thoughts. For I am in his case and I, too, would die to serve you!"

Surprise flamed in the girl's eyes, surprise and amusement mingled.

"My lord, you do not know me," she laughed, and her laughter was as fresh and merry as a milkmaid's in the meadows.

"Did he know you? Yet when he saw you he loved you and made bold to tell you so."

Her forehead wrinkled prettily in a little protesting frown.

"His words were of no more account than the wind in the eaves. But you and I are peers and the words we change have meanings."

Villon caught his breath. The Lord of Montcorbier was, indeed, wardered by very different stars from the fellow of the Fircone. He saluted her banteringly.

"Though I be newly come to Paris I have heard much of the beauty and more of the pride of the Lady Katherine de Vaucelles."

A little fire burned in the girl's pale cheeks, and she flung her head back scornfully.

"I am humble enough as to my beauty, but I am very proud of my pride."

Villon, leaning forward with entreating hands, pleaded with beseeching lips.

"Would you pity me if I told you that I loved you?"

Katherine laughed, and the music of her laughter seemed to wake faint echoes among the roses as if every blossom were a magic bell with a fairy hand at the clapper.

"Heaven's mercy," she said. "How fast your fancy gallops. I care little to be flattered and less to be wooed, and I swear that I should be very hard to win."

She turned to mount the steps as she spoke, as if she had said all that she wanted to say, but Villon delayed her with imploring protest.

"I have more right to try than your taproom bandit. I see what he saw; I love what he loved."

Again the girl's laughter brightened the summer air.

"You are very inflammable."

Villon caught at her words.

"My fire burns to the ashes. You can no more stay me from loving you than you can stay the flowers from loving the soft air, or true men from loving honour, or heroes from loving glory. I would rake the moon from heaven for you."

The girl swayed her head daintily, as a queen rose might in a realm of roses. There was something like pity in her eyes, but laughter lingered on her lips.

"That promise has grown rusty since Adam first made it to Eve." She eyed him in silence for a second time, deriding his sighs with a smile: then "There is a rhyme in my mind," she cried, "about moons and lovers," and she began to declaim, half muse, half minx, some lines that had pleased her, to tease the importunate stranger.

  "Life is unstable,
    Love may uphold;
  Fear goes in sable,
    Courage in gold.
  Mystery covers
    Midnight and noon,
  Heroes and lovers
    Cry for the moon."

As the first words of the verse fell from her lips, Villon's heart leaped and his eyes brightened for he knew the sound. They were part of the rhymes himself had sent her on that very parchment which had cost him first a dinner and then a drubbing. He had fancied the words and the rhymes when he wrote them, but now they seemed to sound on his ears with the married music of all the falling waters and all the blowing winds of the world. It was a shining face that he turned to the girl as he jeered, denying the thought in his heart:

"What doggerel!"

The girl flashed scorn at him.

"Doggerel! It is divinity," she insisted, flinging a kiss from her finger-tips in Godspeed, as it were, to the banished ballad-maker, as she moved a little further up the steps. Villon followed her. Let come what might come, he was the maid's equal for the moment and would press his suit if he died for it.

"Tell me what I may do," he said, "to win your favour."

The girl's smiling face grew graver as she looked down on the imploring poet.

"A trifle," she said lightly, as a child might bid for a doll; and then, as Villon's eyes glowed questions, her voice rang out like the call of a clarion. "Save France!" she trumpeted.

Villon caught fire from both her moods.

"No more?" he said, and though the sound of his voice jested, the look in his eyes was earnest.

The girl responded to jest and earnest royally.

"No less. Are you not Grand Constable, chief of the king's army? There is an enemy at the gates of Paris, and none of the king's men can frighten him away." She pointed out where, in the distance, beyond the walls of Paris, the pitched tents of the enemy fluttered their hostile flags. Her bosom heaved with great desire. "Oh, that a man would come to court! For the man who shall trail the banners of Burgundy in the dust for the king of France to walk on, I may perhaps have favours."

Villon looked at her as men must have looked at Joan of Arc when she bade them rise up and strike for France.

"You are hard to please," he said, but his heart was full of joy at the thought of trying to please her. If he could do this thing!

The girl answered his words and not his thoughts.

"My hero must have every virtue for his wreath, every courage for his coronet. Farewell."

By this time she had reached the terrace and she made to enter the palace. Villon called to her longingly:

"Stay! I have a thousand things to say to you."

The girl smiled denial.

"I have but one," she said, "and I have said it long since.
Farewell."

Villon made a dash for audacity.

"I will follow you," he said, and he moved to do so, but the girl's lifted finger stayed him.

"You may not," she said peremptorily. "I go to the queen." And so with a swift salutation, gracious as the dip of a dancing wave, she entered the palace and left him standing there, dazed and ardent, as a man might be who had just been vouchsafed the vision of an angel. He murmured to himself her words as he slowly descended the steps to the ground,

"Oh, that a man would come to court," and on that text he wove the hopeful commentary of his thoughts.

"Why should I not deserve her? Last night I was only a poor devil with a rusty sword and a single suit. To-day all's different. I am the king's friend, it would seem, a court potentate, a man of mark. What may I not accomplish? This finery smiles like sunlight and the world will warm its hands at me."

He was exquisitely pleased with himself, exquisitely pleased with the world that held him and Katherine. He forgot, as lovers always will forget, that there was any one else in the world save himself and his beloved, and he was so wrapped in his sweet contemplations that he did not hear the tower door gently open, did not hear the soft, creeping footsteps of the king as he came out of his hiding place and shuffled across the soft grass toward his plaything.

CHAPTER VII

THE ANSWER TO BURGUNDY

A touch on the shoulder roused Villon from his honeyed meditations, and he turned with a start to find the sable figure of the king at his side and the sinister visage smiling upon him.

"Good afternoon, Lord Constable," Louis said amiably, and as Villon dropped respectfully on his knee, he questioned:

"Does power taste well?"

"Nobly, sire. On my knees let me thank your majesty."

"Nonsense, man; I'm pleasing myself. You sang yourself into splendour. 'If François were the king of France,' eh?"

Villon rose with voice and gesture of apologetic entreaty.

"Your majesty will understand—"

Louis brushed his apologies aside blandly.

"Perfectly. My good friend, you captivated me. With what a flashing eye, with what a radiant forehead, with what a lofty carriage you thundered your verses at me. 'There,' I said to myself, 'is a real man, a man with a mission, a man who may serve France.'"

"Sire, that has been my hunger's dream of plenty."

Louis clasped his thin arms across his chest and hugged himself affectionately.

"Well, I couldn't very well make you king, you know, and I wouldn't if I could, for I have a fancy for the task myself. But I owed you a good turn and your own words prompted the payment. 'This poor devil shall taste power,' I said. 'I will make him my Grand Constable—'"

Villon's joy was so great that he was unable to hear the king out, but interrupted him with enthusiastic promises.

"Sire, I will serve you as never king was served."

Louis went on unheeding, and his quiet, monotonous words fell on the hot brain of the poet and chilled it.

"I will make him my Grand Constable for a week."

If Louis had jerked a dagger into Villon's side, he could not have more surely hurt his victim.

"A week, sire?" Villon gasped, almost unable to realize the meaning of the king's words.

Louis turned upon him and snarled at him:

"Good Lord, did your vanity credit a permanent appointment? Come, friend, come, that would be pushing the joke too far!"

All the sunlight seemed to have gone out of the world, all the scent out of the roses. Villon could only repeat to himself: "A week!" and stare vacantly at the king. The king emphasized his offer, lingering over it lovingly.

"Even so. One wonderful week, seven delirious days." He paused for an instant as he counted. "One hundred and sixty-eight heavenly hours. It's the chance of a lifetime. The world was made in seven days. Seven days of power, seven days of splendour, seven days of love."

Villon gave a groan of despair for his golden hopes.

"And then go back to the garret and the kennel, the tavern and the brothel!"

Louis' malign smile deepened. He came closer to the poet and tapped him on the chest with his lean forefinger. He was enjoying himself immensely.

"No, no, not exactly." he hummed. "You don't taste the full force of the joke yet. In a week's time you will build me a big gibbet in the Place de Greve, and there your last task as Grand Constable will be to hang Master François Villon."

If the world had been colourless and scentless before, it was now no better than a hideous heap of ashes. If Villon had run up a heavy reckoning with the king at the Fircone Tavern, must he wipe out the score with his life-blood? Villon fell at the king's feet with extended hands and agonized, beseeching eyes.

"Sire, sire, have pity!"

The king looked down on him in disdain.

"Are you so fond of life? Are you so poor a thing that you prize your garret and your kennel, your tavern and your brothel so highly?"

Villon bowed his head.

"I was content yesterday."

The king surveyed the cowering figure with growing contempt.

"Can you be content to-day? Please yourself. There is still a door open to you. You can go back to your garret this very moment if you choose. Say the word and my servants shall strip you of your smart feathers and drub you into the street."

Villon buried his face in his hands. "Your majesty, be merciful!" he implored.

The king's scorn blazed out:

"You read Louis of France a lesson, and Louis of France returns the compliment. I took you for true gold and I am afraid that you are only base metal. You mouthed your longing for the chance to show what you could do. Here is your chance! Take it or leave it. But remember that I never change my mind. You may have your week of wonder if you wish, but if you do, by my word as a king, you shall swing for it."

Villon rose to his feet and caught at his throat as if the grip of the rope were at that very moment closing about it. He choked as he spoke.

"In God's name, sire, what have I done that you should torture me thus?"

The king snapped his answer:

"You have mocked a king and maimed a minister. You can't get off scot free."

Villon's bewildered thoughts forced themselves into words. He spoke not so much to the king as to himself, desperately trying to decide.

"Heaven help me! Life, squalid, sordid, but still life, with its tavern corners and its brute pleasures of food and drink and warm sleep, living hands to hold and living laughter to gladden me—or a week of cloth of gold, of glory, of love—and then a shameful death!"

He flung himself on the marble seat and crouched there, shuddering.

The king patted him on the back.

"Pray, friend, pray, to help your judgment!"

He had taken off his black velvet cap and ran his eye over the little row of metal saints which encircled it as if he were meditating to which particular patron he should recommend his Grand Constable to address himself. As he did so, Olivier le Dain came through the garden and moved swiftly to the king's side.

"Sire," he said, "the Burgundian herald, Toison d'Or, attends under a flag of truce with a message for your majesty."

Louis turned to his barber.

"We will receive him here, Olivier, in this green audience chamber.
We need the free air when we hold speech with Burgundy."

As Olivier left the royal presence a little thing happened which meant much to four people. Katherine came on to the terrace with Noel le Jolys. She had a lute in her hand and she touched its chords lightly, seeking to make an air for words as she idled the time with her wooer. Louis saw her, though Villon did not, for he was huddled in a heap on the marble seat with his head in his hands trying to control his whirling thoughts. A new demon of mischief entered the king's heart.

"How," he thought, "if my lady Virtue, who flouted me, could be lured to love this beggar-man?" He ambled across to where Villon lay and tapped him on the shoulder. Villon turned to him a face drawn and white with agony.

"One further chance, fellow," said the king. "If the Count of Montcorbier win the heart of Lady Katherine de Vaucelles within the week, he shall escape the gallows and carry his lady love where he pleases."

"On your word of honour, sire?"

"My word is my honour, Master François. Well?"

At this very moment it pleased heaven that Katherine, sitting on the terrace and smiling at the adoration in Noel le Jolys' eyes, seemed to find the air she sought and began to sing. The tune was quaint and plaintive, tender as an ancient lullaby, the words were the words of the tortured poet, and as he heard them a new hope seemed to come into his heart.

  "Life is unstable,
    Love may uphold;
  Fear goes in sable,
    Courage in gold.
  Mystery covers
    Midnight and noon,
  Heroes and lovers
    Cry for the moon."

"Well," said the king; "you cried for the moon; I give it to you."

"And I take it at your hands!" Villon thundered. "Give me my week of wonders though I die a dog's death at the end of it. I will show France and her what lay in the heart of the poor rhymester."

Louis applauded, clapping his thin hands together gleefully.

"Spoken like a man! But remember, a bargain's a bargain. If you fail to win the lady, you must, with heaven's help, keep yourself for the gallows. No self-slaughter, no flinging away your life on some other fool's sword. I give you the moon, but I want my price for it."

Villon's blood now ran warm again in its channels, and he answered stoutly:

"Sire, I will keep my bargain. Give me my week of opportunity, and if I do not make the most of it I shall deserve the death to which you devote me."

Even as he spoke the air was stirred with a cheerful flourish of trumpets and the quiet garden was invaded by Tristan l'Hermite and a company of soldiers, escorting a tall and stately gentleman, whose gorgeous tabard proclaimed him to be Toison d'Or, the herald of the Duke of Burgundy. The news of his coming had run through the palace, and the terrace was suddenly flooded with courtiers and ladies eager to hear what the enemy's envoy had to say and what answer the king would send back to him. Louis seated himself on the marble seat anigh the image of Pan and drew Villon down beside him.

"Listen well to this man's words, my Lord Constable," he whispered, and then turning to the gleaming figure of the herald, he demanded:

"Your message, sir?"

Toison d'Or advanced a few feet nearer to the monarch and spoke in a ringing voice.

"In the name of the Duke of Burgundy and of his allies and brothers-in-arms assembled in solemn leaguer outside the walls of Paris, I hereby summon you, Louis of France, to surrender this city unconditionally and to yield yourself in confidence to my master's mercy."

The king folded his hands over his knees and inclined his head a little, like an enquiring bird.

"And if we refuse, Sir Herald?"

The herald answered promptly:

"The worst disasters of war, fire and sword and famine, much blood to shed and much gold to pay and for yourself no hope of pardon."

"Great words," the king sneered.

The herald replied proudly:

"The angels of great deeds."

Villon had been sitting listening as a man listens in a dream, almost unconscious of what was taking place. Among the ladies on the terrace Katherine stood conspicuous in her youth and beauty, and to her his eyes were turned in worship. The quarrels of great princes, the destinies of France were for the moment indifferent to him. He forgot his high desires of empire, his swelling belief in his real mission. He was only conscious that a great prize lay temptingly within his grasp, that he might win his heart's desire. Louis interrupted his reverie:

"The Count of Montcorbier, Constable of France, is my counsellor. His voice delivers my mind. Speak, friend, and give this messenger his answer."

He touched Villon on the arm and Villon turned to him in astonishment. "As I will, sire?"

The king caught him up impatiently.

"Yes, go on, go on. 'If Villon were the king of France.'"

Villon leaped to his feet and advanced toward the herald. A wild exultation filled his veins with fire. He felt as if he were the lord of the world, as if his hands held the scales that decided the destinies of nations. He had always dreamed of the great deeds he would do, and now great deeds were possible to him, and at least he would try to do them. He looked straight into the herald's changeless face, but his heart shrined Katherine as he spoke.

"Herald of Burgundy, in God's name and the king's, I bid you go back to your master and say this: Kings are great in the eyes of their people, but the people are great in the eyes of God, and it is the people of France who answer you in the name of this epitome. The people of Paris are not so poor of spirit that they fear the croak of the Burgundian ravens. We are well victualled, we are well armed; we lie snug and warm behind our stout walls; we laugh at your leaguer. But when we who eat are hungry, when we who drink are dry, when we who glow are frozen, when there is neither bite on the board nor sup in the pitcher nor spark upon the hearth, our answer to rebellious Burgundy will be the same. You are knocking at our doors, beware lest we open them and come forth to speak with our enemy at the gate. We give you back defiance for defiance, menace for menace, blow for blow. This is our answer—this and the drawn sword. God and St. Denis for the King of France!"

As he spoke, he drew his sword and flashed it aloft in the sunlight. There was contagion in his burning words, and every soldier present bared his blade and pointed it to heaven while Villon's cry was repeated upon a hundred lips. As Toison d'Or turned and left the presence, Katherine came swiftly down the steps and flung herself at Villon's feet.

"My Lord," she said. "With my lips the women of France thank you for your words of flame."

Louis leaned forward, smiling sardonically.

"Mistress, what does this mean?" he questioned.

The girl rose to her feet, looking into Villon's face with eyes that mirrored the admiration shining in his eyes.

"It means, sire, that a man has come to court!"