Seek Mademoiselle, will you! he said in his heart, grimly jesting, then seek her beggar-fashion, and if your tongue asks no hire for your sword's service your rags will hint an importunity. In the glimmering light of the Star of Flanders she may have taken you for a gentleman; go, if you will go, in the broad light of day, and let these rags speak for you!
But if he thought shame would turn me from my purpose, court life must, for once, have blunted his perception. I hold that a sweet kernel has no need to think shame of a rough shell, and from a quality in her voice, an impulse in her act, I guessed that Mademoiselle was not one to judge a man wholly by the outside. A true and noble womanliness had at all times rung through her pleading, and if that were not enough there was this, she had flung no scorn even on such a feeder on garbage as this François Villon, until the man's foul mind hinted a license. Then, indeed, her soul flashed out. "Will no man rid us of this wretch!" It was the foul mind she scorned, and not the poverty peeping through his tatters. No! Monsieur de Commines' jest, so far from turning me from my purpose, confirmed me in it; I would have been ashamed to feel shamed that I dared not seek her face even in rags.
It was at the gate by which we had entered on the previous night I first learned that to lodge in a royal palace had its obligations as well as its honours, and that Monsieur de Commines had other arrows in this quiver besides that levelled at my self-conceit. One of the three or four on guard stopped me when I would have passed out.
"Your permit, Monsieur, if you please," said he, civilly enough.
"Permit? I have none," I answered. "I am lodging with Monsieur de Commines."
"Ah, I remember now. Monsieur has that droll of a Martin to follow him, and came in with Monsieur le Prince last night? As a form, Monsieur, I will send for my officer; will Monsieur wait?"
What could Monsieur do but wait, fretting and fuming, for twenty minutes. Then a smooth-faced boy came, smiling, cordial, and full of words. Had Monsieur Hellewyl rested well? Were his lodgings to his mind? Was it his first visit to Paris? Had he seen—Pish! it was Monsieur Hellewyl this, Monsieur Hellewyl that, and I answering yes or no, like a country blockhead with a vocabulary of one syllable. But when at last I got my plea in he shrugged his shoulders with a grimace.
"Would you have Tristan hang me? How can I give passes from the Louvre? Let us go to the lieutenant."
So from the east gate we went to the south, and as we crossed the angle of the court, the sun being above the walls, I felt like a half-plucked daw beside a parrot, so gaily plumed was he in silks and laces such as women love, and not a thread out of place. He said nothing, but the corner of his eye burned holes in my rags, and for the twitch of his mouth I could have shaken the life half out of him with exultant satisfaction.
The lieutenant of the southern gate was Monsieur de Commines' companion of the night before, limping slightly from a wound in the thigh, and again my greeting was most cordial. There is no introduction like a common danger. But the whole Louvre seemed in league to make me welcome, nor could even my impatience resent such friendliness to one who was a stranger. My wound and his had to be enquired for, and for the first time I learned that we had received them in a scuffle in the streets. Such brawls, it seemed, were of nightly occurrence, and I had to listen to a long complaint of how badly Paris was governed.