"I remember very well. Yes, Ursula, I shall tell him since he asks. I wondered whether a son who hated his father, or a father who hated his son, would be most certainly damned."
"My son, my son," cried the priest, horrified. "How could you allow such a terrible thought?"
"Oh!" And the boy shook off the restraining hand impatiently. "You come from Valmy and are like all the rest of them. Monsieur La Mothe, let us go and thank Grey Roland."
But as he followed the Dauphin out of the room La Mothe asked himself whether, even with Ursula de Vesc's help, the end of the story could possibly be Love, Peace, and Faith.
CHAPTER XVI
TOO SLOW AND TOO FAST
"I told you at the first you were not going the right way about it."
"And you were wrong," answered La Mothe. "I am only ten days in Amboise, ten days which seem like so many hours, and already Charles trusts me as he trusts Mademoiselle de Vesc."
Pushing out his loose-hung under lip Villon eyed his companion quizzically, but with a little pity through the banter. They were alone in the common room of the Chien Noir, and on the table by which they sat were two bottles of the famous '63 wine, one empty, the other with its tide at a low ebb, but La Mothe's horn mug was still unemptied after its first filling. With some men this would have been an offence, but not with Francois Villon. "Good-fellowship is not in wine but in words, or surer still, in silence," he would say, "and another man's drinking neither warms my heart nor cools my thirst. Besides, there is the more left for the wiser man."
"Ten days of opportunity, and you are content that a boy trusts you! Lovers were not so coldly contented in the good old days of the Paris pavements. Soul of the world! but there is no talk like Paris talk. La Mothe, you will never be a man till you hear it. Cling-clang go the feet, and cling-clang sing the flags under them, cling-clang, cling-clang, and I'll never hear it again—never. Content, d'you say? I'll not believe it. I'll not think so little of you. The Good God never meant man to be content. How would the world move?"