"Then Mademoiselle de Vesc may object."
"Mademoiselle de Vesc? So you know her name, do you? And what girl objects to a love song? I never yet knew one who did, and Francois Villon has lived his life. If they pout and turn aside don't believe them: it's just that you may not see how the heart beats. Black eyes, blue, grey, hazel, brown; Fat Meg and Lean Joan, wrinkled fifty and smooth sixteen, their eyes have all the same sparkle, the same dear light in them when the heart melts. I should know, for I have made love to every colour under the sun. Except Albino," he added reflectively and with the conscientious air of one who desires to tell the whole truth. "I wonder what it would be like to make love to an Albino. But now I shall never know, the fly must run round and round its glass until the day of the red blotch. It is a mercy I tasted the oil and vinegar in time. That disgusts you, does it? My young friend, you must learn not to say more with your face than you do with your tongue if you are to keep your secrets and the King's. Come, I talk too much and they are waiting for us."
But Stephen La Mothe left his lute behind him. He had accepted the part allotted to him half as a jest and half for the sake of the adventure it promised, but Villon had put a less pleasant gloss on this open-faced masquerade, nor had the blunt question, Why are you in Amboise? been easy of answer. Or rather, the answer was easy, but one he did not relish in its naked truth. If to be the secret almoner of the King's love for the Dauphin had been the sole reply to the question, his scruples would have been as light as his love song. But that answer was insufficient: there was a second answer, an answer which Commines knew and these two men, Villon and Saxe, suspected, one which would leave a soiling on clean hands, yet which must be faced.
He found himself in the position of a circus-rider who, with one foot on the white horse—which was Honour—and the other on the piebald—which was duty and a King's instructions,—has lost control of their heads and feels his unhappy legs drawn wider and wider apart with every stride. And in the emergency La Mothe did exactly what the circus-rider would have done—he clung to both with every desperate sinew on the strain. To keep his piebald still under him he went with Villon to the Château, and that he might not part utterly from his white he left his lying lute behind him. But he was not happy: mental and spiritual unhappiness is the peculiar gift of compromise.
Nor did Villon make any protest at his decision. "As you will, it is between you and the King," he said, with all the indifference of the beast whose one thought is for his own skin, and then immediately proved that he was less indifferent than he seemed. "But if I knew which of the two you wish to win over, the boy or the woman, I might help you."
"The boy," answered La Mothe, remembering the gifts of a father's love which lay in the saddle-bags Commines had brought for him to the Château. Ursula de Vesc was but a means to an end, the Dauphin was the end itself.
"The boy?" Villon paused as they crossed the road in the sweet coolness of the young night, and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "That's not so easy. Women, of course, I know like my ten fingers, but children are too subtle for me. And little lathy Charles with his long, narrow white face and obstinate chin, is no A B C of a boy. You must know something more than your horn-book before you understand him. To-day he received Monsieur de Commines with all the gravity of the Pope: 'Where is Monsieur Tristan, Tristan of the House of Great Nails?' he asked, peering about him with those dull, tired eyes of his which see so much more than most men imagine. 'Tristan?' says Monsieur de Commines, very sourly for so great a man, 'Tristan does not travel with me, Monseigneur.' 'He must be somewhere near,' says little Charles, 'since you come from my father, do you not? and you are both friends of his.' It was a sharp thrust and it was not the Dauphin who looked the fool. Now, was that more or less than the impishness that's in all boys, prince or gutter rat? More, I say. No, children are too subtle for me: give me women for simplicity! But I may help you with him all the same."
Though a king dwelt in Valmy and a king's son in Amboise, never was there a greater contrast than between the watchfulness exercised for their safety. At Valmy guards had thronged at every turn, more vigilant than pickets who hold the lives of a sleeping army in their keeping, but at Amboise the doors swung open to the touch of almost the first comer, though it was not easy to be certain how much of this laxity was due to the guarantee of Villon's presence. A careless porter kept the outer gate, a single sentinel, lounging in the guard-room, let them pass into the central court unchallenged, and the servant or two they met upon the stairs gave them no more than a heedless glance. That, at least, was La Mothe's first impressions. But when he saw the same face in the lower hall, again at the stair-head, yet again in the ante-room, and recognized that the plainly dressed serving-man had kept them under observation at every turn, unobtrusively but of evident purpose, he decided that a casual stranger could not have penetrated to the heart of Amboise without first giving a good account of himself. The watcher was Hugues, the Dauphin's valet. And yet when Villon gently drew aside a curtain masking a doorway which opened upon the stair-head, there was no one in attendance to announce them. It was as if the King said, more significantly, more emphatically than in any words, "My son may be the Dauphin, but I alone am France."
"There are the boy and the woman," said Villon softly, "Charles and Ursula de Vesc. Now, had I been your age I would rather have won the woman."