"The image of what I was at your age," he said, and again there was the note of contradiction. The voice was the sweet, full voice of a singer, but ruined at the first emotion into roughness by excess. Placing the candlestick on the table he lifted La Mothe's wine bottle and smelt it with slow carefulness, applying it first to one nostril then to the other. "Vintage '63," he said appreciatively, "and that animal Saxe fobs me off with '75."
"Then try my '63," said La Mothe, "and we shall see if Saxe has another bottle of the same."
Promptly the contents of the horn mug were flung with a splash into the open fireplace at La Mothe's back.
"Just what I was at your age! The same to a hair! A gay companion generous of heart and purse. Yes," he went on, half seating himself on the table-edge and sucking down the wine with slow appreciative gulps, "'63; I knew I could not be mistaken, though it is four years since I tasted it last. The palate, Monsieur La Mothe, is like nature and never forgets. For that reason we should never outrage either."
"Four years!" repeated La Mothe with mock admiration, then remembering that this was a poet of poets and should know his Villon, he quoted, "'And where are the snows of Yester Year?'"
The narrow shoulders broadened with a start, the bright eyes grew yet brighter, and a firmer set of the mouth gave the face that note of strength it so sorely needed. If it were not that he was already deep in his fourth bottle La Mothe would have said the wine had set his blood on fire, warming him with a fictitious energy, so sudden and so marked was the change.
"Ah ha!" he said, setting down the horn mug as he leaned towards La Mothe, and this time the voice was as full and round as a woman's. "So you know your Villon, do you? rascal that he was!"
"Was? Is Villon dead?"
"Dead! No! But his rascality is dead: dead but not forgotten! Saints! what a dear sweet life it gave him while it lived, that same rascality. 'Where are the snows of Yester Year?' That is the cry of all the years after, say, four- or five-and-twenty." He paused, his bright keen eyes watching La Mothe with a wistful humour in them, half envious, half reminiscent. "Four-and-twenty! Up to that age it is, Oh, for next year's suns! Oh, for the flowers of a new spring's plucking! and ever after, 'Where are the snows of Yester Year?' I think," he added, pursing his mouth reflectively, "that what the priests call Hell is hot just because last year's snows never come back."
"Gone!" said La Mothe, falling into his humour, "dead like Villon's rascality, but as unforgotten. But are you sure Villon is alive?"