"Father John!" and Commines caught the Franciscan by the arm almost roughly, a sudden fear setting his pulses throbbing. "Has Saint-Pierre sent you? Is the King ill—is he—is he?—you of all men know what we fear for him."

"No, my son, no; the King is as you left him, well, praise God! and strong: it is he himself who has sent me after you. He said that such a mission as yours had great need of the blessing of God upon it."

"And was that all his message?"

"That he committed France to your care. He spoke, no doubt, of the Dauphin, who is the hope of France."

"Yes," answered Commines drily, "I do not doubt he spoke of the Dauphin. Now, Father, I fear you must dine in haste, for it is time we were on the road."

"A crust in my hand to eat as we go is enough. It makes me so happy, Monsieur d'Argenton, to see the King at last taking thought for his son."

"Yes," repeated Commines, with the same dryness. "The Dauphin is indeed much in his thought. But though we are in haste there is no need you should die of starvation. France has need of you, Father John. There are plenty to play the devil's game by living, do not you play it by dying before your time."

Twenty minutes later they were again on the road, La Mothe's saddle-bags fastened on his led horse. He himself followed at the hour named by the King, but on foot, a knapsack strapped across his shoulders and on it a lute in open advertisement of his new trade. His sword was with his saddle-bags, but was no loss, so free from danger were the roads under the iron persuasion of the justice of the King. Nor were travellers numerous. Only twice was he passed, once by a courier riding post to Valmy, and once by a lad, little more than a child in age, who thundered up from behind on a great raw-boned roan horse and disappeared ahead in a cloud of dust.



CHAPTER VIII

THE BLACK DOG OF AMBOISE

Blessed four-and-twenty. From the first breath of life until the last, even though by reason of strength there be four-score years, is there a more perfect age? The restraints of the schoolboy are left behind, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil has scattered its fruit about the feet, all sweet, all fresh in their newness, all a delight, even, alas, the worst of them: that of the tree of life seems just within the reach, and the burdens of the world are as yet on other men's backs. Even if the Porter's Knot, which all must bear sooner or later, is already on the shoulder, the light heart of four-and-twenty is untroubled. It believes, in its optimism, that it will tumble the load of carks and cares into the first ditch, and live in freedom ever after!

To Stephen La Mothe's four-and-twenty with the spirit of eighteen the world of that May day was God's good world, and what better could it be than that! If a full-leaved cherry tree, its ripening clusters rosy red and waxen yellow against the dense greenery, flung shade across the road he paused in his tramp, squared his shoulders, and drank a deep breath of the cooler air; if the blazing sun sucked up a subtle, acrid smell from the hot dust stirred by his feet he snuffed it up greedily and found it good to live. A hawk in the air, a thrush whistling from a hazel bush as only a thrush can whistle, the glorious yellow of a break of whin, all were a delight.

"Heigh ho! Love is my life! Live I in loving, and love I to live!"

he sang, and broke into a whistle almost as blithe as the thrush itself that he might think more freely. Commines' gibe had come back to him, and for pastime he would make a verse of his love song, let Ursula de Vesc's eyes be blue, grey, or black!

"Live I in loving, and love I to live,"

was a good line, a line Francois Villon himself could not have bettered, but how should the next line run?

"Heigho! Sweetest of strife!"

Strife! The word jarred the context, but where would he get a better? Wife? Rife? Worse! both worse! Sweetest of strife—of strife—strife,

"Winning the dearest that life can give!"

No! that was not good, not good at all: Villon would have turned the rhyme better than that. But then Villon, wild rogue though he was, was a poet. The dearest life can give—the dearest? What was the dearest life could give? As the question, idly asked, fastened on his mind his whistle sobered into silence, and he plodded on through the dust, seeing neither the sunshine nor the shade.

France came first, the King had said, and then had made it clear that he was France. Was the King's service the dearest thing life could give? In times of peace, when the millstones and the hearts of men alike grind placidly, patriotism is a cold virtue, and even in the hot passion of war it is often the magnetism of the individual man—the personal leader—who wakens the enthusiasm of desperate courage rather than the cause in whose name men die. Roland, La Mothe told himself, might have roused such an enthusiasm, or Coeur de Lion, or Joan of Arc, but never that fierce corpse of Valmy. And if the father was France, what was the son—the twelve-year boy so dreaded and so loved? Was he not France too? Did France plot against France? "All is not well at Amboise," said the King. If that was true in the sense the father meant it, what then? Was this dull ailing boy a double parricide to his father's knowledge?

That, by the law of association of ideas, called up a new thought, and a rush of warmth, which drew none of its heat from the sunshine, flushed La Mothe. What if the boy, dull and neglected though he was, hid such a love for the father as the father hid from the boy, and what if cunning Stephen La Mothe should find it out and make this torn France one in heart? And so, because however one follows the clues through this maze of life they always lead to love at the end, La Mothe broke into his song again:

"Heigh ho! Love is my life, Live I in loving, and love I to live. Heigh ho! Sweetest of strife, Winning the dearest that life can give. Love, who denied me, Hast thou not tried me——

And now, plague take the verse, where is my rhyme for the end?"

But a turn of the road brought him to Limeray with the stream of the Eisse flowing beyond. Another league and he would reach Amboise—Amboise, where the shuttles of fate, the man and the woman, Fear and Love as the King had called them, were waiting to weave into the warp and woof of life a pattern which would never fade; Amboise, where an end was to come—he had forgotten to ask Commines what end—an end which in some obscure way was to serve Commines and serve France. "If I lift a finger he hangs," said the King. That, no doubt, was the human slime of the gutter who had roused Commines' contempt, and yet who was his passport to the castle. A pretty passport, and one not much to his credit, thought La Mothe, and fell to wondering if Ursula de Vesc of the uncertain eyes would class them as birds of a feather—Ursula who found Amboise dull and was to kiss the poet as Margaret had kissed Alain Chartier. But Chartier had been asleep at the time, while La Mothe promised himself he would be very much awake, and then called himself slime of the gutter for the thought. This was not the chivalry and respect for all women he had learned in Poitou. Who was he that a woman, sweet and good he had no doubt, should kiss him because Amboise was dull, and if she did would she be sweet and good? He pulled a wry face and shook himself angrily, the thought was like a bad taste in the mouth.

At Grand-Vouvray he forded the Loire, with Amboise sloping up from the river in full sight, the red roofs of its houses, huddled almost underneath the Chateau for protection, glowing yet more ruddily in the setting sun, and entered the town by the Tours gate as Commines had bidden him. Reared high above the town it at once awed and protected was the grey castle, towered and turreted like a fortress, and fortress it was,—fortress, palace, and prison in one. Round town and castle alike lay the river, holding them in its embrace like a guardian arm, and beyond stretched the rich fertility of the Orleannais.

The Chien Noir was easily found. It seemed as well known in Amboise as Notre Dame in Paris, and from the warmth of his reception La Mothe guessed shrewdly that his coming was expected. Innkeepers were not prone to lavish welcomes on wandering minstrels who carried all their world's gear on their back like any snail. For such light-hearted folk an open window at night was an easier method of payment than an open purse.

"A room and supper? Both, monsieur, and of the best. For the first what do you say to this?" and the landlord threw open a door with a flourish of pride. "Not in the Chateau itself will you find a better. Two windows, as you see: bright by day and cool by night, with all the life of the town passing up and down the road to keep you company if you are dull, and the castle gates in full view so that none can go in or out and you not know it. And for supper—I am my own cook and you may trust Jean Saxe. Give me twenty minutes, monsieur, twenty little minutes, and you'll say blessed be the Black Dog of Amboise!"

"And who are in the castle?"

"Two or three units with a dozen of noughts to their tail to give them value; Monsieur de Commines——"

"Monsieur de Commines? Do you dare speak of Monsieur de Commines so insolently?" burst out La Mothe, too indignant in his loyal devotion to Commines to remember that a wandering singer ate the bread of sufferance and had no opinions. But the innkeeper took no offence, which again suggested that he had his own private opinion of the knapsack and the lute.

"Monsieur, I meant no harm," he protested humbly. "I am Monsieur de Commines' man—that is, the King's man—to the death."

"Well, let it pass. Who else are at the Chateau?"

"Mademoiselle de Vesc——"

"Does she come next in consequence? Why not the Dauphin?"

"Oh! The Dauphin!" and Jean Saxe blew out his lips in contempt. "We who live in Amboise do not think great things of little Charles. To my mind little Charles is one of the noughts. But wait till you go to the Chateau and then you will understand for yourself."

"And why should I go to the Chateau?"

"Because they love music," and the fellow grinned knowingly as he cocked a cunning eye at the exposed lute, "because there is another who loves music and can open the doors and will say—— There! do you hear him? La, lilla, la! La, la, lilla, la! He always sings over the third bottle, and the King—God bless him—pays for all."

Opening the door to its widest Saxe stood aside listening, his head on one side, his hand beckoning familiarly to La Mothe, as up the dark well of stairs there came the rise and fall of a man's voice in a brisk chant. No words could be caught, but the air ran trippingly, and if the higher notes broke in a crack which told of age or misuse, or both together, the lower ran clear and full, and the tune ran on with a rollicking, careless awing which showed that, whoever might cavil, the singer had at least one appreciative hearer—himself!

"A wonderful man, wonderful," whispered Saxe, his small eyes twinkling with appreciation, but whether at the music or because the King paid for all, La Mothe was uncertain. "A poet of poets, a drinker of drinkers, and a shrewd, bitter-tongued devil drunk or sober. Not that he grows drunk easily, not he! and always he sings at his third bottle."

"What is his name?"

"Whatever he chooses, monsieur, and so long as the King pays what does a name matter? He serves the King as I do and—with great respect—as you do also. Did I ask your name when you said, 'A room and supper'? Not I!"

"I am called Stephen La Mothe."

"As you please, monsieur, and I don't doubt you will eat as good a supper by that name as by any other. Give me twenty minutes and you will say the Black Dog of Amboise is no cur."

Nor was Jean Saxe's boast unjustified. La Mothe not only supped but ate, and with such satisfaction that in the peace of a healthy hunger crowned with as healthy a digestion—unappreciated blessings of four-and-twenty—he forgot alike King and Dauphin, Valmy and the Grey Gates of Amboise in the shadows across the road.

But neither was allowed to remain forgotten. As he sat over the remains of his supper, tapping out a verse of his love song with his finger-tips on the table, the door from the common room of the inn was opened and a man entered whom La Mothe at once guessed to be one of his three good friends in Amboise. In one hand he carried a lighted candle, in the other a great horn cup.

"Thanks, Jean," he said patronizingly, nodding towards the room he had left as he spoke. "Close the door behind me, my good fellow: both my hands are full." Then raising the candle, he turned and scrutinized La Mothe with a curiosity as great as La Mothe's own and much more frankly evident.

And he was worth studying, as a rare specimen is studied in the difficulty of classification. If there were many such men in France La Mothe had never yet met one of them. He was under middle height, the jaunty, alert youthfulness of his slim figure, supple without great strength, contradicted by the grey which shot with silver the thin hair falling almost to his narrow shoulders, and, as La Mothe searched him in the wavering, guttered candle-light, it flashed upon him that contradiction was the note of all his characteristics. The weak chin with the unkempt straggle of a beard gave the lie to a forehead magnificent in its abundant strength of mental power: the promise of the luminous, clear eyes was robbed of fulfilment by the loose mouth with the slime of the gutter and sensuality of the beast writ large upon its thick lips. From the thin peaked nose upwards it was the face of a son of the gods who knew his parentage and birthright; but downward that of a human swine who loved the foulness of the trough for the trough's sake. A Poet of poets, said the eyes: Slime of the gutter and old age unashamed of its shame, retorted the mouth; and both spoke truth. Evidently his scrutiny satisfied him, for he heaved a sigh of contentment as he drew nearer to La Mothe.

"The image of what I was at your age," he said, and again there was the note of contradiction. The voice was the sweet, full voice of a singer, but ruined at the first emotion into roughness by excess. Placing the candlestick on the table he lifted La Mothe's wine bottle and smelt it with slow carefulness, applying it first to one nostril then to the other. "Vintage '63," he said appreciatively, "and that animal Saxe fobs me off with '75."

"Then try my '63," said La Mothe, "and we shall see if Saxe has another bottle of the same."

Promptly the contents of the horn mug were flung with a splash into the open fireplace at La Mothe's back.

"Just what I was at your age! The same to a hair! A gay companion generous of heart and purse. Yes," he went on, half seating himself on the table-edge and sucking down the wine with slow appreciative gulps, "'63; I knew I could not be mistaken, though it is four years since I tasted it last. The palate, Monsieur La Mothe, is like nature and never forgets. For that reason we should never outrage either."

"Four years!" repeated La Mothe with mock admiration, then remembering that this was a poet of poets and should know his Villon, he quoted, "'And where are the snows of Yester Year?'"

The narrow shoulders broadened with a start, the bright eyes grew yet brighter, and a firmer set of the mouth gave the face that note of strength it so sorely needed. If it were not that he was already deep in his fourth bottle La Mothe would have said the wine had set his blood on fire, warming him with a fictitious energy, so sudden and so marked was the change.

"Ah ha!" he said, setting down the horn mug as he leaned towards La Mothe, and this time the voice was as full and round as a woman's. "So you know your Villon, do you? rascal that he was!"

"Was? Is Villon dead?"

"Dead! No! But his rascality is dead: dead but not forgotten! Saints! what a dear sweet life it gave him while it lived, that same rascality. 'Where are the snows of Yester Year?' That is the cry of all the years after, say, four- or five-and-twenty." He paused, his bright keen eyes watching La Mothe with a wistful humour in them, half envious, half reminiscent. "Four-and-twenty! Up to that age it is, Oh, for next year's suns! Oh, for the flowers of a new spring's plucking! and ever after, 'Where are the snows of Yester Year?' I think," he added, pursing his mouth reflectively, "that what the priests call Hell is hot just because last year's snows never come back."

"Gone!" said La Mothe, falling into his humour, "dead like Villon's rascality, but as unforgotten. But are you sure Villon is alive?"

"Monsieur," and the little man slipped from the table-edge to his feet and bowed, his eyes twinkling with an intense enjoyment, "I can vouch for him as you can for Stephen La Mothe: I have the honour to present to you Francois Villon, Master of Arts of Paris and of all the crafts of this wicked world."



CHAPTER IX

FRANCOIS VILLON, POET AND GALLOWS-CHEAT

La Mothe stared up at him incredulously. "You Francois Villon?" he began; "Francois Villon the—the——"

The gallows-cheat, the human pitch whose very touch is defilement was what was in his mind, but with those clear luminous eyes looking down unashamed into his own he could not put the brutal thought into the naked brutality of words. But Villon read something of his meaning in his eyes and rounded off the sentence for him.

"The King's Jackal!" he said, not without a sour resentment.

"Necessite faict gens mesprendre: Et fain sallir le loup des boys!

You don't believe it? But you have been dandled on the knees of respectability all your little life: what do you know of necessity or hunger? I know both, and I tell you necessity and hunger are two gods before whom all who meet them bow down. Better a live jackal than a dead poet. Besides, is he not the greatest of kings? Bishop Thibault had me in gaol for a mere slip of the fingers and talked of a judicial noose—the third I've looked through—but the King fetched me out—God save the King!"

"God save the King!" echoed La Mothe, for want of something better to say. His mind was still confused by this sudden upheaval of his ideals. All that was best in Villon's poetry had stirred his enthusiasm, while all the much which was worst had left his sane wholesomeness untainted. To the half-dreamer, half-downright, practical lad in Poitou, Villon, with his jovial, bitter humour and even flow of human verse, had been something of an idol, and when our idols crash into ruin the thunder of the catastrophe bewilders judgment. But there was more than bewilderment, there was an inevitable disgust. The frankness of this disgust Villon discovered.

"Besides, again, my very young friend," he went on, "what are you in Amboise at all for, you and your lute? Is Villon the only King's Jackal here in the Chien Noir? Do we not hunt in a couple, and have you as good an excuse for your hunting as poor Francois Villon, who looked through a halter, and found the eternity beyond unpoetical to a man of imagination? What brought you to Amboise, I say?"

"The King's orders: the peace of France," began La Mothe, but though the words were fine swelling words in the mouth they somehow failed to fill the stomach of his sense. Nor did Villon let him finish.

"And I say the same. What is more, I say them openly, and do not drown the words with the twanging of a lute. Not that I blame you—not I,

'Toute beste garde sa pel,'

or, as a greater poet than Francois Villon has said, Skin for skin, all that a man hath will he give for his life. Whose hide you guard, your own or another's, I don't know and don't care. Mine was that of bare life, and there you sit and look disgust at me as if to cling fast to this good gift of God which comes to a man but once were a sin. And what are you doing in Amboise? No!" he interrupted himself hastily, emphasizing the negative with a rapid gesture of both hands, "don't tell me. If there is one thing more dangerous than knowing too little it is knowing too much. Tell me, rather, what you want me to do for you and tell me nothing more."

"Gain me a footing in the Chateau."

"I can open the doors, but the footing you must gain and hold for yourself. I warn you Amboise is well guarded. Oh! not with pikes, cross-bows, and such-like useless things in which our beloved King puts his faith, but by eyes that see and hearts that love, and so Amboise is a hard nut to crack. But your teeth are strong, and if the good God had made no peach stones there would be no peaches, and, my faith! peaches are worth the eating."

He drew a long breath and sat silent, the horn mug, which he had again filled and emptied, tilted against his thigh. A smile flickered his loose mouth, and the full bright eyes, turned toward the vacancy of the empty fireplace, were sparkling with reminiscences.

And who should have reminiscences if not Francois Villon? There was not such another judge of peaches in all France, no such authority upon their eating, and few who had broken more teeth over their stones. The smile broadened into a soft chuckle, laughter deepened into puckers the many wrinkles of his crow-footed temples, and he wagged his grey head in the warm appreciation of a happy memory. Dipping a finger-tip into a pool of spilt wine he wrote on the table reflectively, and as La Mothe watched his leering face he understood Commines' outspoken contempt of this old man unashamed of his shamefulness.

"Peaches," he said, scratching his chin with a wet forefinger; "my faith! yes! I have climbed walls for them, robbed gardens of them, found them in market baskets—the gutter even. What matters where they come from so long as the cheek is warm, the bloom fresh, the skin smooth, and the sweetness full in the mouth. And where are they now? Aye! aye! 'Where are the snows of Yester Year?' My young friend, my very young friend, you have but one life, and when you drop it behind you see that only the husks of its possibilities are left: crush the grapes while you may and drink the wine."

"I thought," said La Mothe, "that the rascality of Francois Villon was dead? Leave it in its grave, if you please. It is decenter buried out of sight and does not interest me. How am I to gain entrance to Amboise?"

Villon turned to him with an elaborate appearance of carelessness, but the unctuous complacency was wiped from his face, and the narrow eyes and mouth showed how deep was his anger at La Mothe's disgusted contempt.

"How, but as my friend, pupil, and protege," he replied, with evident enjoyment of the other's discomfiture at the unwelcome association. Then with incredible swiftness his mood changed. The raillery passed from his voice and he went on bitterly, "Do you think I love my life? Perhaps I do—at times. But not always, no, not always. You see that fly there on the table? Watch it now. It tastes the spilt wine, the ragout with its spices, the salad with its oil and its vinegar, everything within reach which tickles its palate: then it rubs its stupid head with its forelegs and trots back to the wine again. Presently"—and Villon suited the action to the word—"a great hand turns an empty tumbler over it and there it is: all the delights of the world it has lost clear within sight, but out of reach—always out of reach. That, my young friend, is what is called Hell. Do you blame the fly because it remembers the wine and spice of life? Perhaps if the great hand is merciful it draws the glass to one side, thus, and still to one side, thus and thus and thus, until, phit! there is a little red patch and no fly; yes, perhaps. Aye, aye, I have seen life. But it is better for the fly to laugh as it runs round and round under the glass than to sulk and cry its heart out for the snows of Yester Year. God save the King!"

The abrupt change of thought and the sudden end seemed to La Mothe so irrelevant that he sat in silent bewilderment, but in an instant comprehension came and a sense of compassion, almost of respect, shot through the disgust.

"Perhaps the hand will lift the glass," he said, "and let the fly back to its spilt wine and spices?"

Villon eyed La Mothe sourly. "Will that give me back my twenty years? Bah! the palate is as stale as the spilt wine, and when the good of life is gone life itself may go. There is Saxe knocking at the door. My faith! but you have indeed scared him into discretion; he never knocks for me. Perhaps he has brought that second bottle."

But Saxe was empty-handed, and by the light of the candle La Mothe could see a quizzical grin upon his face.

"Monsieur," he began, but which of the two he addressed was uncertain, "they are dull at the Chateau."

"And have sent for Francois Villon to make sport! I have dropped the 'de,' Monsieur La Mothe, there are so many rascals amongst the nobility nowadays that I find it more distinguished to be the simple commoner. Dull at the Chateau! Good Lord! don't I know it!" He paused, lifting his head with a quick, bird-like motion: a cunning smile wrinkled his face and he smote the table with his open hand. "Dull, are they? There, my hedge-minstrel from Valmy, is your welcome ready made. Bring your lute and make pretty Ursula's grey eyes dance to a love song, prude that she is."

"To-night?" said La Mothe doubtfully. "Surely not to-night: the Dauphin might resent a stranger's coming so late."

"The Dauphin? Phit! Little Charles is pretty Ursula's echo and nothing more. Come, let us go."

"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 Chateau, 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 Chateau. 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."



CHAPTER X

LOVE, THE ENEMY

Charles was seated on a low stool at the further end of the room, a pale-faced boy with dull, peevish eyes closely set together, the long Valois nose, and a thin, obstinate mouth. His dress was severely, obstinately, contemptuously plain. Again it was as if the King said, This is not the greatness or the glory of France! But love and care had redeemed the derisive parsimony. All the lad wore was exquisitely neat and the very severity lent the little figure a dignity of its own.

Beside him, but a little behind, stood Love, the Enemy, Ursula de Vesc, a slim figure in white. One arm was flung over his shoulder, the hand holding the boy's hand as he raised it across his breast, and she seemed to draw him back to her so that he half leaned, half lay against her knee. Her other hand was caught up against her side below the rounded breast, and pressed there so tensely that the slender, bloodless fingers lay ivory-white against the hardly purer white of the bodice. The whole attitude was one of spontaneous, natural, womanly affection, but as Stephen La Mothe looked a second time he seemed to find in it both defence and defiance, or if not defiance, then that vigilant watchfulness which is almost an antagonism. The clasping arm spoke protection, but a protection which said, "Touch if you dare."

Nor did the expression of her face change his thought. The clear grey eyes were alert with something more than a girl's fresh interest, the firm mouth, even while the lips moved, was set in an unconscious strain, and across the broad forehead two lines were shadowed where no lines ought to have been. If the face of age, when the sorrows and experience of years have written anxiety for the uncertain morrow across it, moves the heart by the story it tells, how much more the face of youth lined by cares which merciful Time should still have held unrevealed? There are more valleys of shadows than that of death, and it seemed to La Mothe that the gloom of some one of them had gathered thickly round Ursula de Vesc.

Of the three or four others grouped at the further end of the room Commines was the only familiar figure, and though all turned at the noise of the brass rings jangling on their rod as Villon drew the curtain there was no recognition in his eyes. It was the opening of the lying masquerade, and La Mothe vaguely felt the white horse stumble as it swerved from the straight course. The soiling of clean hands spoken of by Commines on the road to Chateau-Renaud had begun.

"Gain the girl and win the boy," whispered Villon as, with his hand upon La Mothe's arm, they walked up the room together, then aloud, "Monseigneur and Mademoiselle——"

"Monseigneur, if you please," interrupted the girl, but though she spoke to Villon her eyes were on La Mothe. The voice was cold, the words at once a self-effacement and a rebuke. It was as if she said, "I know my place: know—and keep—yours."

"Monseigneur," went on Villon, quite unruffled, "with the ills of life come their cure: Amboise was dull and I present to you Monsieur Stephen La Mothe."

The Dauphin made no immediate answer, but glanced up at Ursula de Vesc with a question in his eyes, and his clasp on her hand tightened, drawing her yet closer to him. It was the action of a child to its mother rather than that of a boy of twelve to a girl not twice his age, and to those who understood it was curiously instructive. Looking down upon him she smiled and nodded, nor did the gracious softening of the tender face escape La Mothe. Her eyes were grey, and surely grey eyes were the sweetest in all the world?

"Monsieur La Mothe," repeated Charles, as if the girl's look had given him courage to speak. "Monsieur La Mothe of—Valmy?"

"Monsieur La Mothe of everywhere," replied Villon hastily, before La Mothe had time to answer. "Singers and poets are of all the world. They say it took seven cities to give Homer birth."

"And Monsieur La Mothe is another Homer?" said the girl, and Stephen winced at the insolent curve of her lips. He was quite sure they were never meant for such a curve, surely a Cupid's bow would be more natural than contempt, disdain, and a few other injurious opinions all in the one expression. In this belief he hastened to reply, allowing no time for Villon to intervene.

"No, mademoiselle, I am neither a singer nor a poet, at least not such a one as Monsieur Villon."

"I hope not, for your credit's sake," answered the girl drily, nor did she seek to keep the scorn from her voice. "As both singer and poet Monsieur Francois Villon is beyond his age."

"There is no such critic as the one who fails to understand," said Villon, his wrinkled face white with anger, "and I see I was right at first, and should have said Mademoiselle and Monseigneur, not Monseigneur and Mademoiselle."

"Master Villon, you are impertinent," broke in Commines, who loved Ursula de Vesc little, but hated Villon more.

"Monsieur de Commines, if it were not another impertinence I would say that like breeds like," retorted Villon, entirely unabashed. He returned Commines' dislike with energy, and so long as he served the King he had little to fear from the King's minister.

"Poets are privileged," said Mademoiselle de Vesc. "And Monsieur Villon has paid me a compliment: I neither understand his poetry nor desire to." Her tone was still contemptuous and had in it no thanks to Philip de Commines for his reproof on her behalf. She resented it, rather, since she had no desire to owe him either gratitude or thanks.

For a moment there was a pause, a moment which seemed the prelude to a sarcastic outbreak from one or other of those she had wilfully irritated in that intolerance which so often goes hand in hand with a spirit of self-sacrifice. But Stephen La Mothe interposed.

"Mademoiselle, may I have the honour of being presented to Monseigneur?"

"You?" she said, the lines deepening across her forehead. "A roadside singer presented to the Dauphin! Surely you forget yourself—and him?"

"Even a roadside singer may be a loyal son of France," he retorted, looking her full in the face. He keenly resented the false position into which the King's ill-considered scheme had thrust him, but he had gone too far to retreat. "You know best, mademoiselle, whether the Dauphin has need of a man's honest love and devotion."

"Devotion that is here to-day, was God knows where yesterday, and will be God knows where to-morrow! Merci! the Dauphin is indeed grateful."

"Spitfire!" murmured Villon, but so cautiously that only La Mothe heard him. "Certainly I should have said Mademoiselle and Monseigneur. Or better still have left the Monseigneur out altogether. You do not go the right way. Win the girl, I tell you, and the boy will follow like a sheep."

"Let me win her my own way," answered La Mothe, which has always been the man's desire since Adam was in Eden with the one woman in all the world. Then he went on aloud, "Pour your scorn on it as you will, mademoiselle, it is devotion that will wait patiently in Amboise until it has proved itself."

"That will wait patiently in Amboise?" she repeated. Her eyes challenged his as she spoke, and in them there was nothing of the light the sons of Adam have loved to see in a woman's eyes so that they might dwell together in Paradise.

"Why not? And if a poor gentleman desires to see France in this fashion is there any reason against it?"

"A poor gentleman, but not a poor minstrel?"

"As both I can but give my best. May I have the honour, mademoiselle?"

Her clasp upon the boy's hand must have tightened, for again he raised his face to hers as she stooped over him, speaking softly. This time it was he who nodded.

"You know best," he whispered back, and the words would have given La Mothe food for thought had he heard them. "As you say, it will be safer to have him before our eyes than behind our backs. We may be quite sure that Hugues will watch him. Yes, I agree: at least he is prettier to look at than that beast of a Villon."

From her side, where she held it pressed, her left hand slipped down across the Dauphin's shoulder until it too drew him towards her, but when she raised her head the lines were smoothed from the forehead, and if the grey eyes were still watchful, they watched through a smile.

"Monseigneur permits it," she said. "Monseigneur, I have the honour to present to you Monsieur Stephen La Mothe."

"Monsieur La Mothe of where?" asked the boy gravely.

"Of Landless, in the Duchy of Lackeverything," replied La Mothe, bowing with an equal gravity, and at the adroit parrying of a difficult question the smile crept down from Ursula de Vesc's eyes until it loosened the hard lines of the mouth, and bent them to that Cupid's bow La Mothe so much desired to see. "I have many fellow-subjects, Monseigneur."

"Another name for that duchy is Amboise," said Charles, "and so, monsieur, it is my wish that you make the castle your home for as long as it pleases you."

He spoke with such a settled seriousness that it was difficult to be sure whether he understood the jest and played up to it in that spirit of make-believe which had drawn down the King's anger or answered out of a dull uncomprehension. Nor did La Mothe care which it was. His heart leaped within him at the double promise opened up of fulfilling the King's mission at his ease and watching the unbending of the curved bow, but he answered with an equal gravity.

"Then Landless is not Houseless, Monseigneur, and to devotion gratitude is added."

"Discretion and good appetite give a man a longer life than either," said Villon.

"But remember," and Commines spoke to La Mothe for the first time, "the King has first claim upon both."

"On discretion and good appetite?" said Villon gravely. "I fear, Monsieur d'Argenton, His Majesty in his present health has more need of the second than the first."

"Take your ribald impertinences elsewhere, but beware how you attempt them upon me elsewhere," answered Commines, with a stern contempt. "Here Monseigneur and mademoiselle's presence protect you."

"But if I took them elsewhere, even to Paris—and, heavens! how I wish I could—Amboise would be duller than ever," protested Villon, then added, with a significance of tone which gave the careless words a weight, "let us hope that Monseigneur and mademoiselle can protect each other as well as me."

Again there was a dangerous silence, and this time it was Ursula de Vesc who turned aside the threatening storm.

"Monsieur La Mothe is to cure our dullness. Tell us a story, monsieur, if you will neither sing nor play. We love a story, do we not, Charles?"

"A story?" repeated La Mothe slowly. The chance suggestion, more than half malicious, had given him an unexpected opening, and he was turning in his mind how best to use it. "Why, yes, I think I might. Once upon a time——"

"Wait a moment," said Charles. "Here, Ursula," and he rose from his stool as he spoke, "you sit down and I will sit at your feet and lean against your knee. There! That is better. Now we are both comfortable. What is the story about, monsieur?"

"It is an eastern tale, Monseigneur."

"I like the east better than the west, don't you, Ursula?" and he looked up in the girl's face with a laugh, then at Commines in a way which lent the words point and meaning. Valmy, La Mothe remembered, lay towards the west. "Now, monsieur, we are ready."

"There was once a king of the Genie who dwelt in a certain part of Arabia. He was a very great and a very wise king, the greatest and wisest his kingdom had known for many centuries. During his reign he had added province to province——"

"At whose expense?" broke in Villon. "In love and the building of kingdoms there is always a giving and a taking."

"Silence!" cried Charles sharply. "If you interrupt again I will have you removed, even though you are who you are. Now, monsieur, go on, please."

"He added province to province," continued La Mothe, "until in all that part of Arabia there was no such kingdom for greatness or for power, and no king so feared by the kings of the surrounding countries. But though his affairs were so prosperous he had one bitter grief which was never absent from his thoughts: he was estranged from his only son, whom he loved with all a father's love."

"Yes," said Charles gravely, "I see this is really an eastern story: a kind of a fairy tale, is it not, Monsieur La Mothe? A tale one wishes were true, but knows is all make-believe."

"All fairy tales have a heart of truth," answered La Mothe, "and this is a very true one, Monseigneur, as I hope you will believe before I have ended. In all his cares of state, and with so great a kingdom his cares were very many, there was no such care, no such sorrow, as this longing, unsatisfied love of the father's heart. Day and night his one thought was how he might win for his old age the love which his boy——"

"Ursula, I am tired," and Charles rose with a yawn. "Monsieur La Follette, will you please call Hugues, and I will go to bed? If we are duller to-morrow than we are to-day we will hear the rest of the story, but I don't think I like it very much. Even fairy tales should sound probable. Good night, Monsieur d'Argenton, good night, Monsieur La Follette, good night, Monsieur La Mothe," and with a bow which contrived to omit Villon from its scope the Dauphin left the room, followed by Ursula de Vesc. But at the door she paused a moment.

"A room will be made ready for you in the Chateau, Monsieur La Mothe, and perhaps to-morrow you will tell me the end of your story?"

"Dull?" said Villon, stretching himself with vigorous ostentation. "My faith, yes! If you are wise, friend La Mothe, you will finish the night with me at the Chien Noir. It is not often you can rub shoulders with genius familiarly."

But Commines already had a hand on La Mothe's arm.

"Genius?" he said, sternly contemptuous. "Yes! Genius depraved and degraded: genius crapulous and drunken. Take advice, Monsieur La Mothe, and bide indoors: the foulest soiling of God's earth is a foul old age unashamed of its disgrace." Then lowering his voice to a whisper, he added, "Come to my room when all is quiet, son Stephen. Look out for the cross of shadow and take care that the de Vesc girl does not see you."

The de Vesc girl! Stephen La Mothe was almost as offended by the curtly supercilious description of Mademoiselle Ursula as Villon was at the bitter judgment so uncompromisingly passed upon him. That may have been because Cupid's bow had shot its bolt, and love's new wounds are almost as supersensitive as a poet's vanity.



CHAPTER XI

THE CROSS IN THE DARKNESS

Two or three adroit questions addressed to the servant who showed him to his sleeping-quarters gave La Mothe a sufficient clue to the whereabouts of Commines' lodgings. That they were in the same block of buildings as his own, and on the same level, made it comparatively easy to find them. But the Chateau must first settle into sleep, and he had an hour or two to wait before he could safely go in search of them unobserved. In the angry mood which swayed him the delay was fortunate. For the first time in his life his temper was exasperated against the man to whom he owed everything, nor did the sight of his knapsack and lute, sent from the Chien Noir, lessen the irritation. Few things feed the flame of a man's anger as do his own faults, and in every string of the unlucky toy—for it was little more—he saw a sharp reminder of his own false pretence to flick the soreness left by Commines.

What right had Commines to speak of Mademoiselle de Vesc as this de Vesc girl, as if she was some lumpish wench of the kitchen instead of a sweet and gracious woman, gentle and tender as a woman should be, and yet full of a splendid courage? Yes, and La Mothe strode up and down the room to give his indignation ease by the exercise of his muscles; that was Ursula de Vesc, tender, gentle, loving: but wise in her tenderness, strong in her gentleness, and utterly without fear in her love. From which it will be seen that the Cupid's bow had sent its shaft very deep indeed, and Commines by his contemptuous phrase had but driven it more surely home.

There be those who say love dethrones reason, but observe with what admirable logic, what cogency of deduction Stephen La Mothe could argue upon Commines' incapacity for judgment—thus. He had misjudged Ursula de Vesc, why not also Villon? If there had been this undeserved prejudice against an innocent and helpless girl, was not his contempt for Villon equally unjustified? How, in fact, could such a man as Philip de Commines, Commines, the mere man of the world and of the world's affairs, understand or appreciate Villon the poet, Villon who had lifted the whole literature and poetry of France to the highest level it had yet reached? It was preposterous, ridiculous, unthinkable, the one as great a blunder as the other. So Stephen La Mothe gilded his gold, painting his lily lover-fashion time out of mind, and whitewashed into a pleasant greyness all the ugly smirchings with which Villon had so cheerfully daubed himself.

With the door drawn behind him La Mothe found the outer passage intensely dark. Its only illumination came from the narrow lancet windows through which the moonlight streamed so whitely that the rest of the gallery was yet blacker and more hidden by the contrast. Beyond, at the end, was a deeper pool of darkness which he knew was the arched entrance to the main body of the Chateau, his own lodgings being in a projecting wing bounded on the one side by a wide court. A few steps beyond this archway a narrow corridor cut the passageway, opening up three lanes of shadow. These were lit to a bare visibility by as many tiny lamps hung from the vaulted ceilings, mere specks of points of light too small to flicker, and such as all night long hang before the high altar of a church, symbols of changeless faith burning unquenched even in the deepest darkness of the night of the world.

Turning to the left, his hand upon the wall for guidance, La Mothe crept softly on until a further passage opened to his right. Down this he stole, breathing uneasily as men do who walk warily in the dark, intent to keep their presence secret. From the roof depended the same inadequate light, but at the farther end was a hazy blur which marked the head of the stairs, and across the floor luminous shadows drifted here and there from under doorways where the lamp still burned within the chamber. One of these chambers La Mothe knew was allotted to Commines, and as he scanned the flagged floor of the passage, searching for the sign Commines had given him, a shadow amongst the shadows stirred his curiosity, and he stole nearer on tiptoe: it was a mattress laid before a closed door, and stretched upon it lay a man wrapped in a blanket.

Holding his breath, La Mothe paused, listening intently. Though he had resented Commines' brusque reference to Mademoiselle de Vesc, the wisdom of caution was obvious, and he knew the value of secrecy too well to venture an unnecessary risk. But the figure neither moved nor changed its regular deep breathing, and La Mothe slipped past noiselessly, seeking anew for the promised signal. And midway to the well of the stairs, where faint murmurings told of sleepless life even in ill-lit, ill-guarded Amboise, he found it—a nebulous dusky cross, broader than long, stretching its shadowy arms upon the flags, and at his first low tap on the panel the door was softly opened and as softly closed behind him.

"Are you sure no one saw you?"

"No one. But, Uncle, this playing at thief in the night is intolerable. It will be very much better to say quite plainly to Mademoiselle de Vesc——"

"Stephen, Stephen!" and as he spoke Commines, who had been stooping over his signal, a tiny paper cross pinned against the foot of the door so that it blocked the flow of light from the lamp laid on the floor behind, lifted himself and laid his hand strongly on La Mothe's shoulder. "Do you know why you are in Amboise at all? Do you know it is to convict this very Ursula de Vesc of complicity in a plot to murder the King and place the Dauphin on the throne, and that the King believes the Dauphin is privy to the scheme? And do you know what part you are to play?"

Commines spoke in the anxious remonstrance of affection rather than in anger. There was no censure in the tone, no reproof, a pleading rather: but when the irritation of offence is raw it resents expostulation and rebuke alike: they are just so much salt to the wound. So was it now with La Mothe.

"It is we who conspire," he answered angrily, "we who call ourselves men and yet creep about a sleeping house to meet by stealth in the dark. And against whom? Against a weak girl, a weak, defenceless girl whose one offence is that her love is loyal to a boy as helpless as herself. A brave conspiracy truly, brave, worthy, and honourable! You saw her to-night, how she faced us for his sake, unafraid and yet very sorely afraid because she is so womanly through her courage. A girl and a half-grown boy! And we call ourselves men."

"Why do you say 'we'? Me she knows and Villon she knows, but not you."

"Some day she will, my hope is some day she will: pray God I be not ashamed to look her in the face when that day comes."

"Stephen, Stephen, what has changed you? Have you grown mad or is this that drunkenness?"

"I don't know, I only know it is something new. And if it is that drunkenness as you call it, then may I never be sober again my life long."

"Listen," and this time Commines' voice was stern to harshness. The time for pleading, or even remonstrance, had gone by. A more vigorous schooling was needed if Stephen La Mothe was to be saved from folly. "If you must go girl-drunken as every sentimental boy does sooner or later, do not go blind-drunk or sense-drunk, but keep your eyes open and your mind clear. Mademoiselle de Vesc may be blameless or she may not: that is what we are here to prove. You call her weak, but the greatest folly of a foolish man is to despise weakness. Contempt of weakness has lost more battles than strength of arms has won. Charles the Bold despised the weakness of the Swiss, and the devotion of the weak Swiss crushed him. Weak, you say? Love is never weak. Fifty years ago a weak girl saved France because of her great love for France, and to-day another just as weak might ruin France through another great love. Never despise the power of love nor call it weak even in the weakest. If faith can remove mountains, love is greater than faith, and of mademoiselle's devotion to the Dauphin I have no doubt."

"Who has the better claim upon it?" answered La Mothe sullenly.

"Granted, but that is not the point. And what if the devotion is misdirected? It is a quality of love that it only sees the lights in the jewels and not the flaws. If love saw all the flaws in us it would hardly be love. What if Mademoiselle de Vesc, seeing the boy neglected—and I grant the neglect,—seeing him unhappy—and I grant the unhappiness,—seeing him denied his high position—and I grant the denial while I assert that the King, who is a wise king, must have wise reasons I do not understand; what if Mademoiselle de Vesc, I say, seeing all these things and understanding the reasons for them as little as I do, seeing no deeper than her devotion and knowing nothing of the King's wise reasons, were moved by this same devotion to some desperate effort which would right this wrong at any cost? Supposing that were so, what would hold her back? Fear? She is no coward, and there is no such courage on God's earth as the courage of a loving woman. Weakness? Love is strong as death and stronger, for love builds up where death can only destroy. The crime? In her eyes the crime lies in the unhappiness and neglect of Amboise, and to right the wrong by any means, however desperate, would be no offence before God or man. What would hold her back? I ask you. Nothing, nothing at all."

"Granted," said La Mothe, impressed in spite of himself and falling back upon the last resort of baffled argument. "It is all very plausible, but I do not believe it all the same."

"Because you are drunken," retorted Commines, "and because, too, there are none so blind as those who will not see. But supposing I am right, is not the King justified, and are not we, the King's servants, justified too? And is the Dauphin such a fool as to be blind to this devotion, he who has known so little love in his life? Stephen, if the King is right and Mademoiselle de Vesc's love has overcome both fear and weakness, he is right, too, when he links Charles with her in her abominable plot."

"But why has he sent——" La Mothe broke off lamely, remembering in time that he had no right to say to Commines, Why has he sent such a message of a father's love as lies in those saddle-bags I see in the corner? Very naturally Commines misunderstood the interrupted sentence.

"Why has he sent you to Amboise?"



CHAPTER XII

LA MOTHE BELIEVES, BUT IS NOT CONVINCED

But having ended the sentence Commines broke off at the end as La Mothe had done in the middle, and with much the same embarrassment. His face, harsh and stern of feature both by nature and schooling, grew almost tender as he turned aside troubled. To speak plainly to any man of honour and generous spirit, answering his own question in direct words, would have been difficult, but how much greater the difficulty when the man was brother to that dear dead woman who had sunk to her sleep comforted by his promise of care and protection? "Watch over him, Philip, for my sake." But into the memory of the tired voice he had loved there clashed the King's harsh question so curtly asked in Valmy, and torn by the conflict of the two natures warring within him Commines paced the room in silence. La Mothe was not the only man in Amboise who found his skill as a circus-rider tried to the utmost, and like La Mothe Commines temporized.

"Who are we to judge the King?" He spoke harshly, even aggressively, and as if combating some undeveloped argument of La Mothe's. A burst of temper may not convince a man's own conscience, or quiet its uneasiness, but it silences its voice for a time as declamation can always silence pleading. "Who are we to question his justice or deny its right to strike? And it is as his arm of justice that you are here in Amboise."

"I?" And into La Mothe's mind, as he stood silent after the startled ejaculation, there flooded significant, misunderstood hints dropped by the King in Valmy, and by Commines himself on the road to Chateau-Renaud, hints which had seemed to him meaningless in the memory of the little coat of mail which was the secret gift of a father's love. "I, the King's arm of justice? In God's name how can that be?"

"The days of Brutus have gone by," answered Commines, never ceasing from his restless pacing of the room. The motion eased the tension of his nervous distress and made speech less formal, less difficult. "Treason is treason wherever found. You know its punishment, but the days of Brutus are gone. The justice of the King, the justice of the father, can no longer—no longer——" But even his restless pacing could not give him power to clothe the grim thought in blunt words, and Commines was silent.

La Mothe's scornful indignation had no such reticence, nor had he yet learned how to cloak the ugliness of a naked truth in the pleasant euphemisms of diplomacy. With frank brutality he completed Commines' broken sentence.

"The father can no longer murder the son and call it justice. But, monsieur," and it was significant that the adoptive relationship was unceremoniously swept aside, "what has the father's murder of the son to do with me?"

"Treason is treason," repeated Commines, finding some comfort and strength in the bald platitude: it was incontrovertible and at least gave him firm ground under his feet. "Nor can treason go unpunished, or how would the throne be safe for a day? But what the father cannot do, though a king, another can and must; and must," he reiterated, steeling himself with a rising emphasis for what was to follow. "And you have been chosen as the King's arm in Amboise."

This time there was no outburst of scorn or indignation. It was not that the crisis was too deep for noisy declamation, though human nature differs from organic in that it commonly meets its most grave crises in quietness. The truth was, simply, that La Mothe did not grasp the full meaning of the words.

"The King's arm in Amboise?" he said uncomprehendingly. "The King's arm? What does that mean?" Then, by the very repetition of the phrase, enlightenment dawned in part and he shrank back, his fingers closing in upon his palms. "Not that! For God's sake, Monsieur de Commines, say it is not that! Not that the father—— Oh! it cannot be, it cannot. Is it—is it murder?"

"Justice," replied Commines doggedly through his shut teeth. "Let us call things by their proper names. I say justice, justice of——"

"Hell!" broke in La Mothe fiercely. "Justice is sacred, to God Almighty, and this—this—— Where is God's hand? Where is—? Oh, no, no, it is damnable, damnable!"

"Justice," repeated Commines, quoting Louis. "Not even the son of a king is above or beyond justice."

"Vicarious murder!" retorted La Mothe. "No smooth sophism can make it less. He would have another commit an iniquity he dare not commit himself. And I am the arm of the King in Amboise? Never! God helping me. I am to obey you, Monsieur de Commines; these were the King's orders; but not in this, never in this, never, so help me God!"

"Listen, Stephen." Commines had fuller command of himself now and spoke more quickly, but also with more assumption of authority. "Put yourself in the King's place and consider the truth dispassionately."

"Consider dispassionately how a father can best kill his own son; yes, Uncle?"

But Commines took no umbrage at the crude sarcasm, a sarcasm aimed at himself and the King alike. He understood it as a sign that La Mothe's mind was recovering from the shock which had swung its balance awry. Five minutes earlier he would have declared that murder could never be dispassionate. That he would listen at all was something gained.

"The King is both more and less than father," Commines went on: "that is to say, his responsibilities are greater than those of a simple citizen, and his private rights in his son are less. He and the Dauphin do not belong to themselves. France comes first. Do you admit that France comes first?"

"God knows!" replied La Mothe moodily. The dying out of his first hot passionate protest had left him fretful and desperate. He remembered, too, something the King had said about France being the mother of them all, and at the time he had agreed; nor could he quite see where Commines' argument might lead. "There was a time when I thought right was eternally right, but now it seems a father may wipe out his fatherhood in blood and be justified."

"France comes first," went on Commines, emphasizing the point which he saw had weight. "The millions of lives in France come first. Could a son who plots against his father's life reign in France?"

"He is a child."

"In a year he will be old enough to reign: answer me, could such a son reign?"

"Are there not prisons?"

"You do not answer my question. I ask again, could such a son reign?"

"I am answering it in my own way, and, I repeat, there are prisons."

"And would there not be conspiracies? Would France not be torn asunder in civil war? Would the blood of France not flow like water? Be sensible, Stephen: am I not right?"

"I will never be the King's arm in Amboise, never, never. I would sooner ride back to Valmy and face the justice of the King. The justice of the King!" scoffed La Mothe, to ease his troubled soul. "And in any case I shall return to Valmy; my word is passed."

Again Commines let the sarcasm levelled at the King's justice pass unchallenged: it is never wise to block a safety-valve when a high pressure, whether of steam or of passion, is blowing itself off.

"These things being granted," he went on, "what course is the King to follow? Is he to pardon the crime against the nation? for that is what it is; is he to pass it over in silence and leave the criminal free to weave a second and perhaps successful conspiracy? The King dare not: for the nation's sake he dare not. What then? Is he to arrest and try the prince by solemn course of law? I doubt if the Dauphin of France is not above the common law of France, but apart from that again the King dare not. France would be rent from end to end, and her enemies, England, Spain, Burgundy, would swoop upon her and lay her waste, as in the days before the coming of The Maid. I say again, the King dare not. What course is left? Nothing but the arm of justice, that justice which is Almighty God's, striking in secret, and so France is saved."

He ended, but La Mothe returned no answer. Not that he was convinced, no, not by a hairbreadth. But the sophism, and he knew it to be a sophism, was too subtle for him, and his safest refuge was silence. And yet his inability to tear the sophism to tatters was not the sole cause of the silence. Commines' last question, What is left? though a mere flourish of rhetoric, had stirred another possible reply. Reconcilement was left, the union of father and son in love was left. Inexorable logic as voiced by Commines, if it was logic at all and not a sophism, might coerce the King to a terrible justice, but would the father's love not welcome the reconcilement of a son's penitence as a way of escape from the ultimate horror of the logic? And surely that love must be a very tender, very yearning, very forgiving love when even in the midst of just anger it could bend to such gentle thoughts as lay hidden in those gifts through the hand of a stranger. Surely, surely, surely. And so La Mothe kept silence.

"There may be no plot: there is no plot," he said at last, though in the face of Commines' assertion he had little hope he was right; then he added, "and what of Mademoiselle de Vesc?"

"The greater includes the less," replied Commines shortly.

"What do you mean by that?"

"If the King may not spare his son can he spare the girl?"

"There is no plot," repeated La Mothe, more emphatically than before, "and I shall remain in Amboise." Crossing the room he knelt beside his saddle-bags, opening and taking from them the package wrapped in a linen napkin which contained the King's gifts to the Dauphin. "I suppose I must live upon my knapsack for the present, but this I shall take with me. Is there anything more to be said?"

"Not for the present."

"Then good night."

The passage was plunged in the same quiet and as deep a gloom as when he had traversed it an hour before, and La Mothe plumed himself on regaining his room unseen. But had he paused and turned at the first angle he would have seen the shadow which lay stretched in the deeper shadows of the doorway stir itself, and Hugues' white face, a blur upon the darkness, watching him. Beyond that door slept the Dauphin, and Villon was right when he said that the guards of Amboise were not pikes or cross-bows, but eyes that saw and hearts that loved.



CHAPTER XIII

"FRIEND IS MORE THAN FAMILY"

With his overnight's irritation still unallayed, and more than ever convinced that the prejudice which could so misread Mademoiselle de Vesc must also wrong Francois Villon, La Mothe was early at the Chien Noir. Of the Amboise household he had seen nothing, which means that he had looked in vain for Ursula of the Cupid's bow, and his temper was not thereby improved. But he had the day before him, and he promised himself some recompense for his disappointment before it was many hours old. Meanwhile, he would show Villon that all who came from Valmy were not sharers in Commines' harsh judgment. He found the poet contemplative over the remains of his breakfast, but in a mood as captious as his own.

"Have you found already that the inn has a warmer welcome than the Chateau? I tell you this, my young friend, it will cost you less to live here than there, though in either case it is the King who pays."

"To every man his wages," answered La Mothe, but Villon shook his head. His knowledge of the paying of wages, or at least of the earning of them, gave the chance phrase a sinister meaning.

"As to that, we all look for more than our dues in this world and less in that to come. God's mercy keep us from justice! If our wages were paid in full where would we be? What is little Charles doing?"

"Sleeping, I suppose."

"And Mademoiselle de Vesc?"

"How should I know!" answered La Mothe crossly. It vexed him that Villon should speak at all of Ursula de Vesc, and still more that his answer was so lame. But recognizing the symptoms out of a wide experience, Villon only laughed softly at the brusque retort.

"Some peaches hang themselves high," he said, the laugh broadening as La Mothe's face grew wrathful, "but they are peaches all the same. Shake the tree, my young friend, shake the tree, and see that you keep your mouth open when the fruit drops."

"Monsieur Villon, if we are to be friends——"

"So young, so very young," said Villon softly. "Friends? most certainly. If we are not friends, who should be? Are we not both jackals hunting in the one pack, and jackal does not bite jackal." Then his mood changed with a swiftness which La Mothe soon found to be characteristic, a kindliness cast out the jarring banter from his face, and his luminous eyes grew wistful. "Friends? It is a good word, the very best word in the world. Friends are more than family or kinship, and not many care to call old Francois Villon friend nowadays. There was a time——" He paused, running his hand down the long trail of his beard reflectively, a slender-fingered supple hand. La Mothe noted it was, a hand that had a distinct character of its own, just as the contradictory face had, though the finger-tips were less sensitive than in the days when their itching acquisitiveness had brought their owner to the cold shadows of the gallows. "Aye! there was a time. There were four of us——"

"The ballad says six," said La Mothe.

"Four, four: a man—yet, more, a woman—may have many lovers but few friends, many to tuck an arm in his or throw it across his neck when the pockets are full. But that's not friendship, and I don't call every man friend who dips his fingers into the same till with me. Yes, there were four of us, Montigny, Tabary, Cayeux, poor snows of yester year sucked down by the cold earth. But while the blood was warm in our veins we four were as one with one purse. When it was full we laughed and sang and feasted as no king feasts, because no king has such spice of appetite nor can snap his fingers at the world and care as we could: when it was empty, and it was mostly empty, we laughed and sang the louder and shared our crusts or went gaily hungry. Brave lads every one, and brave days. Aye, aye."

"And where are they now?"

"With the snows of yester year! God knows where! and I fear me the devil knows too. Montigny was hung in '57, Tabary in '58, and Cayeux, Cayeux of the light heart and lighter fingers, went by the same path two years later: I only am left. They said I killed a man and would have hung me—me! Francois Villon! Certainly a man died or there would be no Villon now: it was either he or I, and they would have hung me." The full lips parted in a comfortable laugh and the eyes twinkled. "I appealed to Parliament in a ballad, and the humour of the notion moved the good gentlemen to mercy. 'How can we choke the breath from so sweet a singer?' said they. 'There are ten thousand hangable rogues in Paris, but only one poet amongst them!' God be praised for humour. I think it gave Francois Villon his life; but since then friendship has walked the other side of the street."

"And yet," La Mothe laid his hand on the elder man's shoulder, letting it lie there in kindliness, "you who so gibe at your best self are the Francois Villon of the ballad to Mary the Mother. How is that?"

"Can I tell you?

'Je cognois tout fors que moy mesme.'

Man is Eden in little: there is the slime of the serpent under the tree of knowledge, but the Lord God walks through the garden in the cool of the day. What are we but contradictions, shadows of Montfaucon shot through by glories from Notre Dame. Perhaps some day a clearer knowledge than ours will straighten out the tangles," and with a laugh, which had little joyousness in it, Villon plunged afresh into memories which seemed to strike the whole gamut of a soul's experience from A to G.

La Mothe allowed him to run on without interruption. The alternations of mood, tender and callous by turns, but never remorseful, never regretful, except with the regrets for a lost delight, both amused and repelled him, but at last as Villon sat silent he turned to the window and flung open the wooden sun-blinds.

"At last they are awake in the Chateau," he said. "Horses? hawks? Are they going hunting, do you suppose?"

"Saxe will know. Hulloa! Saxe! Saxe! What is little Charles doing to-day?"

"I was coming for you both," answered Saxe from the open door. "They are riding to Chateau-Renaud, and your worships are so beloved by both the Dauphin and mademoiselle that you must needs go with them. Monsieur de Commines and Monsieur La Follette have gone hawking for the day."

"Do not go," said Villon. "They know you at Chateau-Renaud, and how could you explain if they recognized you?"

"But we may not go near the inn," answered La Mothe, to whom the ride meant neither more nor less than a morning with Ursula de Vesc, therefore a delight not to be denied. "But what of horses?"

"They are being saddled this very moment," replied Jean Saxe, and then went on to paint out La Mothe's roseate dreams with the dull brush of realities. "Always," and he lowered his voice as he spoke, "whether by day or by night, you will find a horse waiting ready for your ride to Valmy. It is in the stall facing the door, monsieur. By day the stable is open and not a soul will ask questions; saddle and bridle for yourself, then ride like the devil. By night send a stone through the last window on the left and I will be with you in three seconds. Don't spare your spurs, that's my advice."

"God send the man who rides to Valmy nothing redder than a red spur." Villon had joined La Mothe at the window, and was peering out at the stir of men and horses in the open space between the inn and the castle gates.

"Saxe, what man of yours is that who is bitting Grey Roland? I don't know his face."

"A stop-gap," answered Saxe indifferently. "A gipsy fellow I think he is by his colour. Old Michel is drunk in the barn—how I don't know, but the Chien Noir is none the better for it—this other is in his place for the day. I don't know his name, but he can tell a horse from a mule by more than the ears, and that's name enough for me."

"Who owns that huge, raw-boned roan?" asked La Mothe. "Surely I have seen it somewhere."

"It's as much a stranger to me as Michel's stop-gap," answered Saxe. "It's not one of the regular Chateau horses, that's certain. The beast has power in his legs, rough though he is. Why do you ask, monsieur?"

But La Mothe had already lost his interest. "There is the Dauphin," he said. "Come, let us go."

But his gaze was fixed on the slender figure which followed the boy, and the eyes of a much greyer age than a lover of twenty-four with the heart of eighteen might well have lit into a sparkle at the charm of the picture. He was not learned in women's stuffs, or the hundred little arts through which an accent, as it were, is put upon a charm already sufficiently gracious, or a beauty brought into yet clearer relief for the luring and undoing of the unsuspecting male, and so could not have told whether Ursula de Vesc was clad in sober grey or sunny lightness. She was Ursula de Vesc, and that was enough, Ursula de Vesc, the woman of a single hour of life, and yet the one sweet woman in the world.

"A lover's arms ought to be her riding-chair," said Villon, following La Mothe's gaze. "No, there is no offence meant," he added, as Stephen's face reddened with the beginnings of umbrage. "She may be a spitfire and not love Francois Villon, but she is a good girl, and my four eyes are not blind."

"Your four eyes?" questioned La Mothe; "most of us have but two."

"Two in my head and two in my sense, and it is by the two in his sense a man should marry. The two in the head are the greatest liars and deceivers in creation."

The Dauphin had already mounted when La Mothe and Villon crossed the roadway with their horses following, led by drunken Michel's substitute, and his greeting to both was of the curtest. The apologue of the night before was neither forgotten nor forgiven. But with Ursula de Vesc's grey eyes smiling at him La Mothe cared little for the boy's dour looks. Hugues, who had mounted his master, still waited by the horse's head, a spirited, high-bred bay, sleek and well groomed, which stood shifting its feet with impatience at the delay. The bridle of the less fiery but no less well-cared-for jennet intended for the girl was held by a stable-helper, while in a group behind the escort made ready to mount. Neither Commines nor La Follette was present; they had gone hawking, as Saxe had said, nor was Hugues booted for riding.

"Good morning, Monsieur La Mothe." Ursula de Vesc spoke gaily, frankly, as if she had not a care in the world, and the greeting in the soft clear voice stirred La Mothe's heart as the smile in the grey eyes had stirred it. "We missed you at breakfast: what early risers you poets are."

"Mademoiselle," stammered La Mothe, "my day has but now begun."

"Then you must walk in your sleep," she interrupted laughingly. "Monseigneur, do you hear? Monsieur La Mothe walks in his sleep. So do not be frightened if you hear him in the corridor o' nights. He has been up these three hours and says the day has only now begun."

"I hear," replied Charles, turning on La Mothe those dull, watchful eyes which, according to Villon, saw so much more than men supposed. "And Hugues hears too. While Hugues sleeps at my door I shan't be frightened. Come, Ursula, mount and let us go. Bertrand is so restive I can scarcely hold him."

At that moment La Mothe felt the bridle of Grey Roland pushed into his hand with a "Hold that a moment, monsieur," and Jean Saxe's stop-gap crossed to the Dauphin's side.

"Your pardon, Monseigneur," he said, stooping, "there is a buckle loose, if your Highness would lift your leg a moment while I fasten it."

"A buckle? Where?"

"Below the saddle-flap, Monseigneur: a shift of the leg—thank you, Monseigneur, that is right," and he drew back toward the Chien Noir, nor paused until he was lost in the crowd of idlers. For a gipsy he was singularly unobtrusive.



CHAPTER XIV

FOR LIFE AND A THRONE

Slipping his foot back into the stirrup the Dauphin mechanically closed his knees, as a rider does to renew his grip after it has been relaxed. But with the tightening of the grip the bay started as if goaded by a vicious double rasp of the spurs, swerved violently, shaking his head till the chains rattled, then plunging to right and left he sprang forward at a gallop.

"Hugues, Hugues, catch the reins," cried mademoiselle, but the swerve had sent Hugues staggering, and before he had steadied himself or regained his wits Bertrand was tearing madly under the city gates, his reins hanging loose, his neck stretched like a racer's.

"The Dauphin! the Dauphin! Oh! for God's sake—Hugues—Monsieur La Mothe—is there no one to help? They will be in the Loire—drowned while you stand there staring. Oh! that I could ride like a man: why don't you move, some of you, stocks that you are?"

The gasped words were but a breath, so quickly the broken sentences followed one another, but before the frightened girl could lash them with the whip of her distress a second time La Mothe had his fingers knit in Grey Roland's mane and was climbing into the saddle, and the last he heard, as, swaying in his seat, he groped blindly for a missing stirrup, was the girl's deep breath, half sob, half cry.

Bertrand had a long start, but on Grey Roland's back was a rider who in his horsemanship had learned not only how to save his beast, so that no ounce of strength might be unduly hurried to waste, but who also knew how to compel into immediate energy all that reserve force which endures the trials of a long day's march.

Bareheaded—his hat was in his hand as he jested with Ursula de Vesc, and in the stress of the surprise he had flung it aside—La Mothe crouched low in the saddle, the reins gathered into his left hand so that he and Grey Roland alike were just conscious of the bit in the sensitive mouth. For the moment, with that tense grip of the knees, they were as one flesh; the need was they should be of one spirit. With a quiet word La Mothe soothed the excitement which might have plunged them both to sudden destruction on the rounded cobbles of the paved streets, but once the gates were passed, and the dust of the high road underfoot, he loosed the light tension and pressed his heels home into the flanks. There, ahead, a shifting vision in the rising swirl of dust, was the bay, thundering at top speed. Behind there were shouts, cries, the clatter of iron shoes upon the stones, but La Mothe heard only the muffled rhythm of galloping hoof-beats sounding through the roar of the blood swelling his temples and booming in his ears like the surf of a far-off sea. Away to the side, with a stretch of sunburnt grass between, lay the river. Let Bertrand keep to the winding road and all was well. Gallop how he might Grey Roland would wear him down, but let him swerve, let the fluttering of a bird startle him aside, and Ursula de Vesc's prophetic terrors would be justified.

As the memory of her dread flashed into his mind afresh, there swept across Stephen La Mothe one of those sudden storms of temptation which at some time or another beat into every life, even the most sheltered, and surely prove that the curse of primal sin still dwells inherent in our best humanity. "He will drown! Well, let him drown!" and in the instant of the thought, by some instinct of the brain, the loose rein was drawn in with a jerk, which forced the grey to change his stride. Let him drown and there was an end to the tangle which made a hell in the possible heaven of Amboise, an end to the unnatural strife of father and son, an end to the threatened rending asunder of France, who was the mistress and mother of them all, whether King, Dauphin, or pawn in the terrible game of life and death, an end to the danger which hung over the head of Ursula de Vesc. Let him drown: death would pay all debts, and the crooked would be made straight.

Gritting his teeth La Mothe drew a deep breath. With the fuller realization of the thought the sudden convulsion of his heart choked him, and while his blood buzzed the louder for the possibility, fate, chance, or what you will threw the cards in the game his way. Beyond a bend of the road a waggoner's leisurely wain plodded its way to Amboise, and next instant the clearer thunder of Bertrand's hoofs came ringing back from the harder sod which lay between the river and the road. The bay had headed for the bank where, by the same bend, the river curved to a line ahead. Death would pay all debts, and the crooked would be made straight: he would pay Commines all he owed him and there would be clean hands for them both. Clean hands? "By God! No!" he cried, and shook the tightened rein loose. Clean hands? Saul, who consented to Stephen's death, was as red-handed as the man who hurled the first stone: what better was it to let the boy ride to his fate unaided? That way there was no cleansing of hands. To permit a preventable death was murder—murder.