"Winning the dearest that life can give!"
No! that was not good, not good at all: Villon would have turned the rhyme better than that. But then Villon, wild rogue though he was, was a poet. The dearest life can give—the dearest? What was the dearest life could give? As the question, idly asked, fastened on his mind his whistle sobered into silence, and he plodded on through the dust, seeing neither the sunshine nor the shade.
France came first, the King had said, and then had made it clear that he was France. Was the King's service the dearest thing life could give? In times of peace, when the millstones and the hearts of men alike grind placidly, patriotism is a cold virtue, and even in the hot passion of war it is often the magnetism of the individual man—the personal leader—who wakens the enthusiasm of desperate courage rather than the cause in whose name men die. Roland, La Mothe told himself, might have roused such an enthusiasm, or Coeur de Lion, or Joan of Arc, but never that fierce corpse of Valmy. And if the father was France, what was the son—the twelve-year boy so dreaded and so loved? Was he not France too? Did France plot against France? "All is not well at Amboise," said the King. If that was true in the sense the father meant it, what then? Was this dull ailing boy a double parricide to his father's knowledge?
That, by the law of association of ideas, called up a new thought, and a rush of warmth, which drew none of its heat from the sunshine, flushed La Mothe. What if the boy, dull and neglected though he was, hid such a love for the father as the father hid from the boy, and what if cunning Stephen La Mothe should find it out and make this torn France one in heart? And so, because however one follows the clues through this maze of life they always lead to love at the end, La Mothe broke into his song again:
"Heigh ho! Love is my life,
Live I in loving, and love I to live.
Heigh ho! Sweetest of strife,
Winning the dearest that life can give.
Love, who denied me,
Hast thou not tried me——
And now, plague take the verse, where is my rhyme for the end?"
But a turn of the road brought him to Limeray with the stream of the Eisse flowing beyond. Another league and he would reach Amboise—Amboise, where the shuttles of fate, the man and the woman, Fear and Love as the King had called them, were waiting to weave into the warp and woof of life a pattern which would never fade; Amboise, where an end was to come—he had forgotten to ask Commines what end—an end which in some obscure way was to serve Commines and serve France. "If I lift a finger he hangs," said the King. That, no doubt, was the human slime of the gutter who had roused Commines' contempt, and yet who was his passport to the castle. A pretty passport, and one not much to his credit, thought La Mothe, and fell to wondering if Ursula de Vesc of the uncertain eyes would class them as birds of a feather—Ursula who found Amboise dull and was to kiss the poet as Margaret had kissed Alain Chartier. But Chartier had been asleep at the time, while La Mothe promised himself he would be very much awake, and then called himself slime of the gutter for the thought. This was not the chivalry and respect for all women he had learned in Poitou. Who was he that a woman, sweet and good he had no doubt, should kiss him because Amboise was dull, and if she did would she be sweet and good? He pulled a wry face and shook himself angrily, the thought was like a bad taste in the mouth.
At Grand-Vouvray he forded the Loire, with Amboise sloping up from the river in full sight, the red roofs of its houses, huddled almost underneath the Château for protection, glowing yet more ruddily in the setting sun, and entered the town by the Tours gate as Commines had bidden him. Reared high above the town it at once awed and protected was the grey castle, towered and turreted like a fortress, and fortress it was,—fortress, palace, and prison in one. Round town and castle alike lay the river, holding them in its embrace like a guardian arm, and beyond stretched the rich fertility of the Orleannais.
The Chien Noir was easily found. It seemed as well known in Amboise as Notre Dame in Paris, and from the warmth of his reception La Mothe guessed shrewdly that his coming was expected. Innkeepers were not prone to lavish welcomes on wandering minstrels who carried all their world's gear on their back like any snail. For such light-hearted folk an open window at night was an easier method of payment than an open purse.
"A room and supper? Both, monsieur, and of the best. For the first what do you say to this?" and the landlord threw open a door with a flourish of pride. "Not in the Château itself will you find a better. Two windows, as you see: bright by day and cool by night, with all the life of the town passing up and down the road to keep you company if you are dull, and the castle gates in full view so that none can go in or out and you not know it. And for supper—I am my own cook and you may trust Jean Saxe. Give me twenty minutes, monsieur, twenty little minutes, and you'll say blessed be the Black Dog of Amboise!"