Chapter 23

There was a light crackling frost under foot the day that François came back to the Rue Saint Jacques. Upon this brisk, clear January day it was good to be home again, an excellent thing to be alive.

“Eh, Guillemette, Guillemette,” he laughed. “Why, lass⁠—!”

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

Then the sun went black for François. Such welcoming was a bucket of cold water, full in the 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 only a sample. Everywhere François found rigid faces, sniffs, and skirts drawn aside. A little girl in a red cap, Robin Troussecaille’s daughter, flung a stone at François as he slunk into the cloister of Saint Benoit-le-Bétourné. In those days a slain priest was God’s servant slain, no less; and the Rue Saint Jacques was a respectable God-fearing quarter of Paris.

“My father!” the boy cried, rapping upon the door of the Hôtel de la Porte-Rouge; “O my father, open to me, for I think that my heart is breaking.”

Shortly his foster-father, Guillaume de Villon, came to the window. “Murderer!” said he. “Betrayer of women! Now, by the cauldron 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, one or two times, as he looked up into the old man’s implacable countenance. “You, too, my father!”

He burst into a fit of sobbing.

“Go!” the priest stormed; “go, murderer!”

It was not good to hear François’ laughter. “What a world we live in!” he giggled. “You gave me your name and I soiled it? Eh, Master Priest, Master Pharisee, beware! Villon is good French for vagabond, an excellent name for an outcast. And as God lives, I will presently drag that name through every muckheap in France.”

Yet he went to Jehan de Vaucelles’ home. “I will afford God one more chance at my soul,” said François.

In the garden he met Catherine and Noël d’Arnaye coming out of the house. They stopped short. Her face, half-muffled in the brown fur of her cloak, flushed to a wonderful rose of happiness, the great eyes glowed, and Catherine reached out her hands toward François with a glad cry.

His heart was hot wax as he fell before her upon his knees. “O heart’s dearest, heart’s dearest!” he sobbed; “forgive me that I doubted you!”

And then for an instant, the balance hung level. But after a while, “Ysabeau de Montigny dwells in the Rue du Fouarre,” said Catherine, in a crisp voice⁠—“having served your purpose, however, I perceive that Ysabeau, too, is to be cast aside as though she were an old glove. Monsieur d’Arnaye, thrash for me this betrayer of women.”

Noël was a big, handsome man, like an obtuse demigod, a foot taller than François. Noël lifted the boy by his collar, caught up a stick and set to work. Catherine watched them, her eyes gemlike and cruel.

François did not move a muscle. God had chosen.

After a little, though, the Sieur d’Arnaye flung François 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 François stared at Catherine de Vaucelles, frost-flushed, defiant, incredibly beautiful. Afterward the boy went out of the garden, staggering like a drunken person.

He found Montigny at the Crowned Ox. “René,” said François, “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—Master François de Montcorbier.”

But the recruit raised a protesting hand. “No,” said he⁠—“François Villon. The name is triply indisputable, since it has been put upon me not by one priest but by three.”