"Again Monsieur has said it! Twice, no, when I come to think of it, thrice Montfauçon has sighed for me, and yet I live. By my faith! I begin to think I shall die in my bed if I do not first starve in the streets!"
"François Villon——"
"I have said it, I have said it; King François Villon, François the first, François the last, François Villon, the lover of all the Muses and every pretty woman in the world! And now that you know me, Monsieur, your purse, that François Villon the man and his tax collectors may drink and bless you. What? You will not? Ah, be persuaded, be gently persuaded, what is a purse or two, a handful of beggarly coins, compared with—Mademoiselle is with you, is she not? Then God forbid that I should finish the comparison. As a poet I hate ugly realities, as a man I love pretty women, and François Villon the man—Alas! we all have our passions, our frailties, you understand; eh? Look at us, we can be rough at times, just as our brother Louis can, and not having seen Mademoiselle's face I do not know if it is worth our while to quarrel. One peep, Mademoiselle, one little glimpse for the poet; the man, whose delights are not altogether pleasures of the mind, can come later if it is worth his while; one look, just one," and leaning across the narrow table he stretched out a long arm as if to twitch her hood aside.
"Mon Dieu! Monseigneur," she cried, not shrinking back, but holding herself erect just out of reach of the foul and twitching fingertips. "Is there no one to kill this infamous wretch?"
In a flash her neighbour's sword was out, and with its point at Villon's throat he cried;
"Another inch, and she shall see it done!"
To do him justice, Villon never flinched, but stood there silent, rigid as a statue, his loose lips parted in an evil smile, his eyes searching the shaded faces of the two fronting him. But if he held his peace, those about him did not. Look on us! he had said, and said wisely. It was a frank warning, a cynical invitation to repulsion and disgust. From noisome cellars and crazy garrets, down rotting stairways, by crooked sunless lanes, from thieves' dens and nameless stews of vice where neither law, honour, or sweetness of life ever went, they had come, these garbage rats of the sewers of Paris, of which he said, Look on us! And the brand of their lives was red on them, as if stamped by the hangman's iron. Weasel face, rat face, wolf face; look on us! human brutes every one. And like brutes they bore themselves, growling, snarling, spitting; their teeth bared to bite.
Little by little they had pressed in after Villon, little by little they had spread themselves through the room, but mostly at the upper end, guessing that the sweetest pickings lay there, and in a herd, as if they drew a natural brute courage from the feel and jostle of numbers. Never for an instant were they still, but shifted restlessly like wolves in a cage; never for an instant were they silent, and when the chief brute of them all, he of the God-given brain, laid upon the altar of service to the devil, said, Look on us! a guttural chorus rose that gave point and barb to the menace. They knew the power of evil and gloried in it. Arms were shaken in the air, arms in sleeves, arms in tatters, arms bare, women's arms, men's arms, and in every fist was a weapon, a knife, a cleaver, a bludgeon, anything that could maim or bruise, even cobble stones torn from the streets were flourished above shock heads, the slime of the kennel still wet upon them.
With the blade at Villon's throat the chorus swelled to a roar, and I was passing up behind Martin's back, my own sword half drawn, when he stopped me.
"No, no, Monsieur Gaspard," he whispered, clinging to my sleeve as he had clung to Roland's bridle the day Solignac was burned. "Let them settle it among themselves; our way is by the window opposite. What have we to do with other men's brawls. Once in the courtyard and——" He stopped short and swung round on his heel. "Dame! there is the fellow who struck Ninus across the muzzle! With you, Monseigneur, with you! A Hellewyl! a Hellewyl! Only for heaven's sake, let the women stand back." And before I could follow his change of mood he had flung our candle into a corner and was leaning across the table side by side with him I have called Monsieur Narbonne. "We pay no debts in Paris, do we not?" he cried, jerking a knee on to the table with his left hand while he lunged with the right, "My faith! but we do, we of Flanders!" and his blade went home.