"Sire, you have wreaked a royal revenge upon a woman. There are no tears in my eyes yet, but I pray they will come that I may weep myself clean of this memory."
With clasped hands and set lips she moved away from Louis and stood apart in the moonlight, a fixed and rigid figure of despair. Louis stepped to where Villon stood in stricken anguish and whispered to him:
"I am afraid you will hang to-morrow, Master Villon."
Villon threw back his head defiantly.
"I should be glad to greet the gallows now, but I have a deed to do before I die."
As he spoke the great bell of the palace beat out the first stroke of the hour of nine. It roused the wounded spirit in his soul. He moved to where Katherine stood and spoke to her:
"I dreamed that love through which I have been born again could lift me to your lips. The dream is over. But you bade me serve France, and I ride and fight for you to-night."
While he spoke the Lords of Lau, of Eiviere and of Nantoillet in panoply of war came from the palace with their immediate followers. The garden began to fill with the picked men of the enterprise hurrying on the summons of the warning bell to follow their leader on his sortie. Villon's pages brought the armour of the Grand Constable and began to buckle it upon him. While this was being done, he turned and spoke to his brothers-in-arms:
"Comrades, let each man carry himself to-night as if the fate of France depended upon his heart, his arm, his courage. Strike for the mothers that bore you, the wives that comfort you, the children that Renéw you—the women that love you." For a moment his voice quailed and almost failed him. There were happy men there, no doubt, whom women loved. But he rallied in a breath and his voice rang out valiantly again: "Forward in God's name and the king's!"
And every soldier present echoed him: "Forward in God's name and the king's!"