The Project Gutenberg Etext of New Arabian Nights

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"It was none of my shedding," he stammered.

"I had not supposed so," returned his host quietly.

"A brawl?"

"Well, something of that sort," Villon admitted with a quaver.

"Perhaps a fellow murdered?"

"Oh no, not murdered," said the poet, more and more confused. "It
was all fair play - murdered by accident. I had no hand in it, God
strike me dead!" he added fervently.

"One rogue the fewer, I dare say," observed the master of the
house.

"You may dare to say that," agreed Villon, infinitely relieved.
"As big a rogue as there is between here and Jerusalem. He turned
up his toes like a lamb. But it was a nasty thing to look at. I
dare say you've seen dead men in your time, my lord?" he added,
glancing at the armour.

"Many," said the old man. "I have followed the wars, as you
imagine."

Villon laid down his knife and fork, which he had just taken up
again.

"Were any of them bald?" he asked.

"Oh yes, and with hair as white as mine."

"I don't think I should mind the white so much," said Villon. "His
was red." And he had a return of his shuddering and tendency to
laughter, which he drowned with a great draught of wine. "I'm a
little put out when I think of it," he went on. "I knew him - damn
him! And then the cold gives a man fancies - or the fancies give a
man cold, I don't know which."

"Have you any money?" asked the old man.

"I have one white," returned the poet, laughing. "I got it out of
a dead jade's stocking in a porch. She was as dead as Caesar, poor
wench, and as cold as a church, with bits of ribbon sticking in her
hair. This is a hard world in winter for wolves and wenches and
poor rogues like me."

"I," said the old man, "am Enguerrand de la Feuillee, seigneur de
Brisetout, bailly du Patatrac. Who and what may you be?"

Villon rose and made a suitable reverence. "I am called Francis
Villon," he said, "a poor Master of Arts of this university. I
know some Latin, and a deal of vice. I can make chansons,
ballades, lais, virelais, and roundels, and I am very fond of wine.
I was born in a garret, and I shall not improbably die upon the
gallows. I may add, my lord, that from this night forward I am
your lordship's very obsequious servant to command."

"No servant of mine," said the knight; "my guest for this evening,
and no more."

"A very grateful guest," said Villon politely; and he drank in dumb
show to his entertainer.

"You are shrewd," began the old man, tapping his forehead, "very
shrewd; you have learning; you are a clerk; and yet you take a
small piece of money off a dead woman in the street. Is it not a
kind of theft?"

"It is a kind of theft much practised in the wars, my lord."

"The wars are the field of honour," returned the old man proudly.
"There a man plays his life upon the cast; he fights in the name of
his lord the king, his Lord God, and all their lordships the holy
saints and angels."

"Put it," said Villon, "that I were really a thief, should I not
play my life also, and against heavier odds?"

"For gain, but not for honour."

"Gain?" repeated Villon with a shrug. "Gain! The poor fellow
wants supper, and takes it. So does the soldier in a campaign.
Why, what are all these requisitions we hear so much about? If
they are not gain to those who take them, they are loss enough to
the others. The men-at-arms drink by a good fire, while the
burgher bites his nails to buy them wine and wood. I have seen a
good many ploughmen swinging on trees about the country, ay, I have
seen thirty on one elm, and a very poor figure they made; and when
I asked some one how all these came to be hanged, I was told it was
because they could not scrape together enough crowns to satisfy the
men-at-arms."

"These things are a necessity of war, which the low-born must
endure with constancy. It is true that some captains drive over
hard; there are spirits in every rank not easily moved by pity; and
indeed many follow arms who are no better than brigands."

"You see," said the poet, "you cannot separate the soldier from the
brigand; and what is a thief but an isolated brigand with
circumspect manners? I steal a couple of mutton chops, without so
much as disturbing people's sleep; the farmer grumbles a bit, but
sups none the less wholesomely on what remains. You come up
blowing gloriously on a trumpet, take away the whole sheep, and
beat the farmer pitifully into the bargain. I have no trumpet; I
am only Tom, Dick, or Harry; I am a rogue and a dog, and hanging's
too good for me - with all my heart; but just you ask the farmer
which of us he prefers, just find out which of us he lies awake to
curse on cold nights."

"Look at us two," said his lordship. "I am old, strong, and
honoured. If I were turned from my house to-morrow, hundreds would
be proud to shelter me. Poor people would go out and pass the
night in the streets with their children, if I merely hinted that I
wished to be alone. And I find you up, wandering homeless, and
picking farthings off dead women by the wayside! I fear no man and
nothing; I have seen you tremble and lose countenance at a word. I
wait God's summons contentedly in my own house, or, if it please
the king to call me out again, upon the field of battle. You look
for the gallows; a rough, swift death, without hope or honour. Is
there no difference between these two?"

"As far as to the moon," Villon acquiesced. "But if I had been
born lord of Brisetout, and you had been the poor scholar Francis,
would the difference have been any the less? Should not I have
been warming my knees at this charcoal pan, and would not you have
been groping for farthings in the snow? Should not I have been the
soldier, and you the thief?"

"A thief!" cried the old man. "I a thief! If you understood your
words, you would repent them."

Villon turned out his hands with a gesture of inimitable impudence.
"If your lordship had done me the honour to follow my argument!" he
said.

"I do you too much honour in submitting to your presence," said the
knight. "Learn to curb your tongue when you speak with old and
honourable men, or some one hastier than I may reprove you in a
sharper fashion." And he rose and paced the lower end of the
apartment, struggling with anger and antipathy. Villon
surreptitiously refilled his cup, and settled himself more
comfortably in the chair, crossing his knees and leaning his head
upon one hand and the elbow against the back of the chair. He was
now replete and warm; and he was in nowise frightened for his host,
having gauged him as justly as was possible between two such
different characters. The night was far spent, and in a very
comfortable fashion after all; and he felt morally certain of a
safe departure on the morrow.

"Tell me one thing," said the old man, pausing in his walk. "Are
you really a thief?"

"I claim the sacred rights of hospitality," returned the poet. "My
lord, I am."

"You are very young," the knight continued.

"I should never have been so old," replied Villon, showing his
fingers, "if I had not helped myself with these ten talents. They
have been my nursing mothers and my nursing fathers."

"You may still repent and change."

"I repent daily," said the poet. "There are few people more given
to repentance than poor Francis. As for change, let somebody
change my circumstances. A man must continue to eat, if it were
only that he may continue to repent."

"The change must begin in the heart," returned the old man
solemnly.

"My dear lord," answered Villon, "do you really fancy that I steal
for pleasure? I hate stealing, like any other piece of work or of
danger. My teeth chatter when I see a gallows. But I must eat, I
must drink, I must mix in society of some sort. What the devil!
Man is not a solitary animal - CUI DEUS FAEMINAM TRADIT. Make me
king's pantler - make me abbot of St. Denis; make me bailly of the
Patatrac; and then I shall be changed indeed. But as long as you
leave me the poor scholar Francis Villon, without a farthing, why,
of course, I remain the same."

"The grace of God is all-powerful."

"I should be a heretic to question it," said Francis. "It has made
you lord of Brisetout and bailly of the Patatrac; it has given me
nothing but the quick wits under my hat and these ten toes upon my
hands. May I help myself to wine? I thank you respectfully. By
God's grace, you have a very superior vintage."

The lord of Brisetout walked to and fro with his hands behind his
back. Perhaps he was not yet quite settled in his mind about the
parallel between thieves and soldiers; perhaps Villon had
interested him by some cross-thread of sympathy; perhaps his wits
were simply muddled by so much unfamiliar reasoning; but whatever
the cause, he somehow yearned to convert the young man to a better
way of thinking, and could not make up his mind to drive him forth
again into the street.

"There is something more than I can understand in this," he said at
length. "Your mouth is full of subtleties, and the devil has led
you very far astray; but the devil is only a very weak spirit
before God's truth, and all his subtleties vanish at a word of true
honour, like darkness at morning. Listen to me once more. I
learned long ago that a gentleman should live chivalrously and
lovingly to God, and the king, and his lady; and though I have seen
many strange things done, I have still striven to command my ways
upon that rule. It is not only written in all noble histories, but
in every man's heart, if he will take care to read. You speak of
food and wine, and I know very well that hunger is a difficult
trial to endure; but you do not speak of other wants; you say
nothing of honour, of faith to God and other men, of courtesy, of
love without reproach. It may be that I am not very wise - and yet
I think I am - but you seem to me like one who has lost his way and
made a great error in life. You are attending to the little wants,
and you have totally forgotten the great and only real ones, like a
man who should be doctoring a toothache on the Judgment Day. For
such things as honour and love and faith are not only nobler than
food and drink, but indeed I think that we desire them more, and
suffer more sharply for their absence. I speak to you as I think
you will most easily understand me. Are you not, while careful to
fill your belly, disregarding another appetite in your heart, which
spoils the pleasure of your life and keeps you continually
wretched?"

Villon was sensibly nettled under all this sermonising. "You think
I have no sense of honour!" he cried. "I'm poor enough, God knows!
It's hard to see rich people with their gloves, and you blowing in
your hands. An empty belly is a bitter thing, although you speak
so lightly of it. If you had had as many as I, perhaps you would
change your tune. Any way I'm a thief - make the most of that -
but I'm not a devil from hell, God strike me dead. I would have
you to know I've an honour of my own, as good as yours, though I
don't prate about it all day long, as if it was a God's miracle to
have any. It seems quite natural to me; I keep it in its box till
it's wanted. Why now, look you here, how long have I been in this
room with you? Did you not tell me you were alone in the house?
Look at your gold plate! You're strong, if you like, but you're
old and unarmed, and I have my knife. What did I want but a jerk
of the elbow and here would have been you with the cold steel in
your bowels, and there would have been me, linking in the streets,
with an armful of gold cups! Did you suppose I hadn't wit enough
to see that? And I scorned the action. There are your damned
goblets, as safe as in a church; there are you, with your heart
ticking as good as new; and here am I, ready to go out again as
poor as I came in, with my one white that you threw in my teeth!
And you think I have no sense of honour - God strike me dead!"

The old man stretched out his right arm. "I will tell you what you
are," he said. "You are a rogue, my man, an impudent and a black-
hearted rogue and vagabond. I have passed an hour with you. Oh!
believe me, I feel myself disgraced! And you have eaten and drunk
at my table. But now I am sick at your presence; the day has come,
and the night-bird should be off to his roost. Will you go before,
or after?"

"Which you please," returned the poet, rising. "I believe you to
be strictly honourable." He thoughtfully emptied his cup. "I wish
I could add you were intelligent," he went on, knocking on his head
with his knuckles. "Age, age! the brains stiff and rheumatic."

The old man preceded him from a point of self-respect; Villon
followed, whistling, with his thumbs in his girdle.

"God pity you," said the lord of Brisetout at the door.

"Good-bye, papa," returned Villon with a yawn. "Many thanks for
the cold mutton."

The door closed behind him. The dawn was breaking over the white
roofs. A chill, uncomfortable morning ushered in the day. Villon
stood and heartily stretched himself in the middle of the road.

"A very dull old gentleman," he thought. "I wonder what his
goblets may be worth."

THE SIRE DE MALETROIT'S DOOR

Denis de Beaulieu was not yet two-and-twenty, but he counted
himself a grown man, and a very accomplished cavalier into the
bargain. Lads were early formed in that rough, warfaring epoch;
and when one has been in a pitched battle and a dozen raids, has
killed one's man in an honourable fashion, and knows a thing or two
of strategy and mankind, a certain swagger in the gait is surely to
be pardoned. He had put up his horse with due care, and supped
with due deliberation; and then, in a very agreeable frame of mind,
went out to pay a visit in the grey of the evening. It was not a
very wise proceeding on the young man's part. He would have done
better to remain beside the fire or go decently to bed. For the
town was full of the troops of Burgundy and England under a mixed
command; and though Denis was there on safe-conduct, his safe-
conduct was like to serve him little on a chance encounter.

It was September 1429; the weather had fallen sharp; a flighty
piping wind, laden with showers, beat about the township; and the
dead leaves ran riot along the streets. Here and there a window
was already lighted up; and the noise of men-at-arms making merry
over supper within, came forth in fits and was swallowed up and
carried away by the wind. The night fell swiftly; the flag of
England, fluttering on the spire-top, grew ever fainter and fainter
against the flying clouds - a black speck like a swallow in the
tumultuous, leaden chaos of the sky. As the night fell the wind
rose, and began to hoot under archways and roar amid the tree-tops
in the valley below the town.

Denis de Beaulieu walked fast and was soon knocking at his friend's
door; but though he promised himself to stay only a little while
and make an early return, his welcome was so pleasant, and he found
so much to delay him, that it was already long past midnight before
he said good-bye upon the threshold. The wind had fallen again in
the meanwhile; the night was as black as the grave; not a star, nor
a glimmer of moonshine, slipped through the canopy of cloud. Denis
was ill-acquainted with the intricate lanes of Chateau Landon; even
by daylight he had found some trouble in picking his way; and in
this absolute darkness he soon lost it altogether. He was certain
of one thing only - to keep mounting the hill; for his friend's
house lay at the lower end, or tail, of Chateau Landon, while the
inn was up at the head, under the great church spire. With this
clue to go upon he stumbled and groped forward, now breathing more
freely in open places where there was a good slice of sky overhead,
now feeling along the wall in stifling closes. It is an eerie and
mysterious position to be thus submerged in opaque blackness in an
almost unknown town. The silence is terrifying in its
possibilities. The touch of cold window bars to the exploring hand
startles the man like the touch of a toad; the inequalities of the
pavement shake his heart into his mouth; a piece of denser darkness
threatens an ambuscade or a chasm in the pathway; and where the air
is brighter, the houses put on strange and bewildering appearances,
as if to lead him farther from his way. For Denis, who had to
regain his inn without attracting notice, there was real danger as
well as mere discomfort in the walk; and he went warily and boldly
at once, and at every corner paused to make an observation.

He had been for some time threading a lane so narrow that he could
touch a wall with either hand, when it began to open out and go
sharply downward. Plainly this lay no longer in the direction of
his inn; but the hope of a little more light tempted him forward to
reconnoitre. The lane ended in a terrace with a bartizan wall,
which gave an out-look between high houses, as out of an embrasure,
into the valley lying dark and formless several hundred feet below.
Denis looked down, and could discern a few tree-tops waving and a
single speck of brightness where the river ran across a weir. The
weather was clearing up, and the sky had lightened, so as to show
the outline of the heavier clouds and the dark margin of the hills.
By the uncertain glimmer, the house on his left hand should be a
place of some pretensions; it was surmounted by several pinnacles
and turret-tops; the round stern of a chapel, with a fringe of
flying buttresses, projected boldly from the main block; and the
door was sheltered under a deep porch carved with figures and
overhung by two long gargoyles. The windows of the chapel gleamed
through their intricate tracery with a light as of many tapers, and
threw out the buttresses and the peaked roof in a more intense
blackness against the sky. It was plainly the hotel of some great
family of the neighbourhood; and as it reminded Denis of a town
house of his own at Bourges, he stood for some time gazing up at it
and mentally gauging the skill of the architects and the
consideration of the two families.

There seemed to be no issue to the terrace but the lane by which he
had reached it; he could only retrace his steps, but he had gained
some notion of his whereabouts, and hoped by this means to hit the
main thoroughfare and speedily regain the inn. He was reckoning
without that chapter of accidents which was to make this night
memorable above all others in his career; for he had not gone back
above a hundred yards before he saw a light coming to meet him, and
heard loud voices speaking together in the echoing narrows of the
lane. It was a party of men-at-arms going the night round with
torches. Denis assured himself that they had all been making free
with the wine-bowl, and were in no mood to be particular about
safe-conducts or the niceties of chivalrous war. It was as like as
not that they would kill him like a dog and leave him where he
fell. The situation was inspiriting but nervous. Their own
torches would conceal him from sight, he reflected; and he hoped
that they would drown the noise of his footsteps with their own
empty voices. If he were but fleet and silent, he might evade
their notice altogether.

Unfortunately, as he turned to beat a retreat, his foot rolled upon
a pebble; he fell against the wall with an ejaculation, and his
sword rang loudly on the stones. Two or three voices demanded who
went there - some in French, some in English; but Denis made no
reply, and ran the faster down the lane. Once upon the terrace, he
paused to look back. They still kept calling after him, and just
then began to double the pace in pursuit, with a considerable clank
of armour, and great tossing of the torchlight to and fro in the
narrow jaws of the passage.

Denis cast a look around and darted into the porch. There he might
escape observation, or - if that were too much to expect - was in a
capital posture whether for parley or defence. So thinking, he
drew his sword and tried to set his back against the door. To his
surprise, it yielded behind his weight; and though he turned in a
moment, continued to swing back on oiled and noiseless hinges,
until it stood wide open on a black interior. When things fall out
opportunely for the person concerned, he is not apt to be critical
about the how or why, his own immediate personal convenience
seeming a sufficient reason for the strangest oddities and
resolutions in our sublunary things; and so Denis, without a
moment's hesitation, stepped within and partly closed the door
behind him to conceal his place of refuge. Nothing was further
from his thoughts than to close it altogether; but for some
inexplicable reason - perhaps by a spring or a weight - the
ponderous mass of oak whipped itself out of his fingers and clanked
to, with a formidable rumble and a noise like the falling of an
automatic bar.

The round, at that very moment, debauched upon the terrace and
proceeded to summon him with shouts and curses. He heard them
ferreting in the dark corners; the stock of a lance even rattled
along the outer surface of the door behind which he stood; but
these gentlemen were in too high a humour to be long delayed, and
soon made off down a corkscrew pathway which had escaped Denis's
observation, and passed out of sight and hearing along the
battlements of the town.

Denis breathed again. He gave them a few minutes' grace for fear
of accidents, and then groped about for some means of opening the
door and slipping forth again. The inner surface was quite smooth,
not a handle, not a moulding, not a projection of any sort. He got
his finger-nails round the edges and pulled, but the mass was
immovable. He shook it, it was as firm as a rock. Denis de
Beaulieu frowned and gave vent to a little noiseless whistle. What
ailed the door? he wondered. Why was it open? How came it to shut
so easily and so effectually after him? There was something
obscure and underhand about all this, that was little to the young
man's fancy. It looked like a snare; and yet who could suppose a
snare in such a quiet by-street and in a house of so prosperous and
even noble an exterior? And yet - snare or no snare, intentionally
or unintentionally - here he was, prettily trapped; and for the
life of him he could see no way out of it again. The darkness
began to weigh upon him. He gave ear; all was silent without, but
within and close by he seemed to catch a faint sighing, a faint
sobbing rustle, a little stealthy creak - as though many persons
were at his side, holding themselves quite still, and governing
even their respiration with the extreme of slyness. The idea went
to his vitals with a shock, and he faced about suddenly as if to
defend his life. Then, for the first time, he became aware of a
light about the level of his eyes and at some distance in the
interior of the house - a vertical thread of light, widening
towards the bottom, such as might escape between two wings of arras
over a doorway. To see anything was a relief to Denis; it was like
a piece of solid ground to a man labouring in a morass; his mind
seized upon it with avidity; and he stood staring at it and trying
to piece together some logical conception of his surroundings.
Plainly there was a flight of steps ascending from his own level to
that of this illuminated doorway; and indeed he thought he could
make out another thread of light, as fine as a needle and as faint
as phosphorescence, which might very well be reflected along the
polished wood of a handrail. Since he had begun to suspect that he
was not alone, his heart had continued to beat with smothering
violence, and an intolerable desire for action of any sort had
possessed itself of his spirit. He was in deadly peril, he
believed. What could be more natural than to mount the staircase,
lift the curtain, and confront his difficulty at once? At least he
would be dealing with something tangible; at least he would be no
longer in the dark. He stepped slowly forward with outstretched
hands, until his foot struck the bottom step; then he rapidly
scaled the stairs, stood for a moment to compose his expression,
lifted the arras and went in.

He found himself in a large apartment of polished stone. There
were three doors; one on each of three sides; all similarly
curtained with tapestry. The fourth side was occupied by two large
windows and a great stone chimney-piece, carved with the arms of
the Maletroits. Denis recognised the bearings, and was gratified
to find himself in such good hands. The room was strongly
illuminated; but it contained little furniture except a heavy table
and a chair or two, the hearth was innocent of fire, and the
pavement was but sparsely strewn with rushes clearly many days old.

On a high chair beside the chimney, and directly facing Denis as he
entered, sat a little old gentleman in a fur tippet. He sat with
his legs crossed and his hands folded, and a cup of spiced wine
stood by his elbow on a bracket on the wall. His countenance had a
strongly masculine cast; not properly human, but such as we see in
the bull, the goat, or the domestic boar; something equivocal and
wheedling, something greedy, brutal, and dangerous. The upper lip
was inordinately full, as though swollen by a blow or a toothache;
and the smile, the peaked eyebrows, and the small, strong eyes were
quaintly and almost comically evil in expression. Beautiful white
hair hung straight all round his head, like a saint's, and fell in
a single curl upon the tippet. His beard and moustache were the
pink of venerable sweetness. Age, probably in consequence of
inordinate precautions, had left no mark upon his hands; and the
Maletroit hand was famous. It would be difficult to imagine
anything at once so fleshy and so delicate in design; the taper,
sensual fingers were like those of one of Leonardo's women; the
fork of the thumb made a dimpled protuberance when closed; the
nails were perfectly shaped, and of a dead, surprising whiteness.
It rendered his aspect tenfold more redoubtable, that a man with
hands like these should keep them devoutly folded in his lap like a
virgin martyr - that a man with so intense and startling an
expression of face should sit patiently on his seat and contemplate
people with an unwinking stare, like a god, or a god's statue. His
quiescence seemed ironical and treacherous, it fitted so poorly
with his looks.

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