Francois Villon: His Life And Times 1431-1463  

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Francois Villon: His Life And Times 1431-1463 (1916) [1] is a book on the life of Francois Villon by Henry De Vere Stacpoole.

Full text[2]

FRANgOIS VILLON

HIS LIFE AND TIMES 1431— 1463

H. DE VERE STACPOOLE

Prince, lei hitn forth be borne by ^olus To Glaucus in that forest far /rom us Where hope nor peace may ever on him glance. For he holds nought in him but worthlessncss Who could wish ill unto the realm of France.

LONDON

HUTCHINSON AND CO.

PATERNOSTER ROW 1916

1592 S73

PREFACE

THE LAND OF THE GARGOYLE

Travelling in France you may often get a glimpse of something that England cannot show you — a chateau with slated roofs and towers pointed each like a witch's cap.

The outline of a Chinese pagoda would not strike upon the retina more strangely than the outline of this veritable figure of stone, ambushed in valley or crouching on hill-top, and showing to the broad light of day the roofs that rose and the towers that took form when Amboise was building and before Bussy was a man. You pass on, the chateau fades from sight, but the picture of it will remain for ever in your mind. You have seen the Middle Ages.

My object is to present to you Fran9ois Villon, one of the strangest figures in all literature, and one of the greatest of French poets. Were I to attempt to reach him immediately and entirely through the MSS. of the Bibliotheque de la Sorbonne, or the Bibliotheque Nationale, or the Archives of the Cote d'Or, and were I to take

vi Preface

you with me, we would both be half asphyxiated by the stuffy smell of parchment, and we would part company, or arrive at our journey's end cross and tired and without finding Villon.

You cannot find a man through manuscripts, unless they are in the handwriting of the man. Archaeologists and museum hunters may tell us all about a man's surroundings, his companions, his status in life, and his morals, as they appeared to his contemporaries, but to find the man one miust find the man, and we can only find him through the expressions of his mind. And that is why so many dead men are so utterly dead. They have left nothing by which we can weigh them as men. Literary men fall under this freezing law no less than others, simply because the large majority of them leave on paper their ideas, fancies, inventions, and so forth, but of themselves little trace. Villon had the magical power of turning himself into literature, and that is why I propose to rob archaeologists and students and all sorts of people on our road, so that we may find out in what sort of country Villon lived and something of the extent of his genius, but to discard or almost to discard these when we come to estimate Villon as a man — to discard everything but the literature which holds his mind and heart, and, almost one might say, his body.

Stand with me, then, on this French road in the year 1914 and, forgetting books and manuscripts for awhile, let that chateau with the pointed towers

Preface vii

touch you with its magic wand. All those modern houses crumble to dust, the railway-track vanishes, mule-bells strike the ear, pilgrims pass, their faces set towards Paris, and troops of soldiers, soon to be disbanded and to join the ranks of the unem- ployed, the labourers, the mendicants, and the robbers.

It is the year 1431. War is smouldering in the land ; only a few short months ago Jean d'Arc was burned at Rouen. Henry VI of England, his archers and men-at-arms, are advancing away there to the west slowly towards Paris. Paris is starving. Charles VII, recently crowned, is King of France but as yet only in name, and over the whole broad land the spirit of the dead Maid is welding together the Armagnacs, the Poitevins, the Bretons, and the Burgundians to form the French nation.

Side by side with this creation of a people is going forward — or soon to go forward — ^the creation of a national language.

Up to this France has spoken almost entirely in stone ; up to this the architect has been the man of letters ; up to this all those scattered tribes, Angevins, Poitevins, Burgundians, Armagnacs, and Bretons, have found expression for the genius that lives in man, not in verse or prose or painting, but in the pointed arch and shrill spire, the cathedral, fortress, and chateau.

We are in the land of the gargoyle. That chateau before us is the mind of the Middle Ages epitomised in stone, severe, narrow-windowed,

viii Preface

armed, and above all fantastic. When we reach Paris along that road on which the pilgrims are straying, you will see that chateau broken up and repeated in a thousand different forms, you will see its pointed roofs in La Tournelles, its weather- cocks on the Hotel de Sens, its towers on the Bas- tille, its portcullis as you cross the Petit Pont, and its fantasy everywhere.

And what you see here and what you will see in Paris is not a collection of stones cemented by mortar, but the carapace of the mind of the people. You are, in effect, looking at the literature of France in the year 1431.

As I have hinted before, France has not learned to express herself fully in poetry or prose. She has not yet learned properly to write, the mind of the people is pregnant with artistic speech, but as yet it can only murmur in verse and in tapestry or cry out in stone, yet even in these tapestries you may see the prefiguration of French literature, and even in these stones.

Over there at Bourges you will find the first verse of Villon's Ballade of Jean Cotart, not yet to be written for thirty years, on the main porch where Noah lies drunk and naked, and you will find his ballade of the Contredicts de Franc Gontier hinted at in the sculptures of the Salle des Cheminees of the Palais de Justice in Paris. You will find Rabelais everywhere, from the Abbey de Bocher- ville to the Church of St. Jacques de la Boucherie, though Rabelais is not yet to be born for many

Preface ix

and many a year. Grim humour, gross humour, fantasy and a vague gloom, arising from the skull which is the basis of Gothic art, are found every- where ; we find facades that sneer, porches that criticise, bas-reliefs filled with pointed stories, a whole literature petrified and inhuman. The attempt, in fact, of the human mind to express itself in stone.

To Villon, who was born last month, will fall the high mission of helping to give the human mind expression in speech. The mocking verses of his Testaments will give voice to the spirit of mockery whose expression can now only be found chiselled in the lavatory of the Abbey de Bocherville,^ or in the sculptures of Guillaume de Paris ; his tenderness, his humanity, his tears can be found as yet nowhere, for stone cannot give expression to these.

Leaving aside the genius and directness of vision of this man who has just been born into the world — or rather perhaps because of them — Villon's highest mission will be to tell future ages , that the inhabitants of the land of the gargoyle were living and human beings, not mediaeval figures. That will be the highest mission of one who, with Aristophanes and Homer, holds the position, far above all royal positions, of a world-link — the man whose destiny it is to be ever living in a world ever dying.

So, standing here on this French road in the

1 See Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris.

X Preface

year 1431 before that isolated chateau and under its spell we may gather some hint of the rigid world into which our poet has just been born, some idea of that huge edifice of stone which Art has constructed as a mode of expression for the dreams and the humours of man, and which has turned into a sarcophagus for the corpse of thought — a sarcophagus to be shattered by the voice of that infant over there in Paris and by the voices of others still unborn.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

PAQK

The Land of the Gargoyle . . . v

CHAPTER I The Dim People of the Roads ... 1

CHAPTER II

The City of the Priest and the Noble . 6

CHAPTER III

The Childhood of Villon ... 23

CHAPTER IV

His University Career . . . .29

xii Contents

CHAPTER V

PA.ai

His First Exile 55

CHAPTER VI

The Robbery at the College of Navarre 60

CHAPTER VII

What took Place in Paris after Villon's

Flight 68

CHAPTER VIII Villon begins his Wanderings . . 78

CHAPTER IX He leaves Angers ..... 83

CHAPTER X

His Visits to Moulins .... 87

CHAPTER XI

He visits the Duke of Orleans . . 91

Contents xiii

CHAPTER XII

PAoa

He reaches the Castle of the Ogre (1461) 101

CHAPTER XIII He returns to Paris, 1461 , . .106

CHAPTER XIV Fate 116

CHAPTER XV

What Happened to Him ? . , .130

CHAPTER XVI Summary . . . . . . 135

CHAPTER XVII The " Petit Testament "... 136

CHAPTER XVIII

The " Grand Testament '* . . .146

xiv Contents

CHAPTER XIX

PAGE

The Ballades not Contained in the

"Testaments" 218

CHAPTER XX

Some Names and People . . . 234

CHAPTER XXI

Modern Commentators, Writers, and

Translators ..... 240

Bibliographical Notes on the Various Editions of Villon's Works up to 1916 247

Index ....... 255

FRANCOIS VILLON

i

His Life and Times 1431—1463

CHAPTER I

THE DIM PEOPLE OF THE ROADS

As we step back from the Past and stand here to-day before the old French chateau, glance for a moment at the country around us. To-day the word "country" calls up pleasant visions to the human mind. To-day poets sing of the beauty of the fields, and trees, and rivers, and mountains ; even to-day we find some murmurings about verdure and flowers in the tapestries and songs of the folk who lived protected in the chateaux of 1431, but the country beyond the chateau garden was a grim place, where men, women, and children lived the lives of beasts, half starved, overworked, and ever followed by three phantoms — ^the soldier, the wolf, and the robber.

A peasant existed by virtue of his poverty — he

was not worth killing or robbing ; a wolf by virtue

of his heels or his teeth ; a soldier by the length of

his sword ; a noble by the strength of his castle ;

1

hangois Villon

and a robber by the sharpness of his dagger and his wits.

The country, in fact, in the year of our Lord 1431 and for many years after, was a desolation between two cities, a place where corn was gro^wTi and men were robbed, where the lamb came into the world and the wolf came out of the wood. The wolves were perhaps the first among the visible terrors of the country, and one may gauge their ferocity from the fact that they attacked the towns. They fought the dogs in the streets of Paris itself, and slew women and children within the walls. After the wolf came the soldier. War was always looming up in the form of armed bands : now the English ; now the Burgundians, more savage than the English ; now the Arma- gnacs, more savage than the Burgundians. And war to the poor man in the country did not come as war ; he knew nothing of the name of the thing or the glory of the thing ; he only knew it as an evil that added to the misery of life, — armed men breaking from among the trees, raiding the flocks, emptying the larder, firing the thatch ; women ravished, children slain.

In England the countryman was in comparative peace and safety, free from invasion and the sword. But here the soldier was one of the worst problems of a bitter life, and after the soldier the robber.

In England the robber was of the soil, he was a home-grown product, he was far better held in check, and he was less ferocious. When I say

The Dim People of the Roads 3

home-grown I mean that here m France terrific aUens, men from the Barbary coast, Tm'ks, and Easterns, men from Russia and Poland and the continent in general, joined the army of crime. They brought ideas cruel as the kriss, tricks as treacherous as the split dagger, weapons as keen as their wits and vices as terrible as their faces. There were no police. The archers and the horse and foot sergents who kept order in Paris were not found on the country roads. Justice was dealt out in a rough-and-ready manner by the lords who lived in the chateaux and their men-at-arms, and even by the country-people themselves when they could get hold of a single robber and string him to a tree. But the utter absence of organised law left the evil practically untouched, and all over France in the year 1431, and for many years to come, crime organised itself, little trammelled, and the robbers, tricksters, petty thieves, and beggars were forming themselves into companies and societies with rules, laws, and even languages of their own. The gypsies had their king, their captains, their signs, and their argot; but the Coquillards or companions of the cockle-shell easily stood first among these robber bands of France. They stood first, not because of their numbers, but because of their methods and their genius. They were not robbers pure and simple, though always ready for robbery. They were dice throwers, with loaded dice; gamblers, with marked cards ; coiners ; sellers of smuggled indul-

4 Frangois Villon

gences ; drunkards, followers of girls, and brawlers in general.

All sorts of people joined them — priests, stu- dents, soldiers, and wastrels from the ranks of the nobility. The Coquillards numbered in their list the names of many well-known characters : that of Regnier Montigny, for instance, a sinister figure, allied to several of the noblest families — ^the Saint- Armands, the Brebans, the Chartrains. Montigny who, after numerous thefts and misdeeds, was sentenced, despite his nobility, to be hanged and strangled {pendu et itrangU), which sentence was carried out at Montfaucon. We also find in their list the names of Dambourg, Jacquet le Grand, Nicholas de Launay, Colin Cayeux; possibly of Jacques Raguyer, destined to die Bishop of Troyes ; possibly of Frangois Villon, destined to live for all time ; certainly of Guy Tabary, and a swarm- ing host of other men destined in name, but not perhaps in soul, to die for all eternity.

The language of this extraordinary band of malefactors who in dim procession are to enter the literature of future ages, the language — or rather the argot under which they hid their evil thoughts and designs — is destined to live, though masked and almost unintelligible, in two pieces of writing. One is the information which Perrenet le Fournier handed to the magistrates at Dijon in 1455, a docu- ment containing many details and some slight clue to the argot ; the other consists of six weird ballades, which, under the title of Jargon et Jobelin,

The Di7n People of the Roads 5

Pierre Levet published in an edition of Villon's poems in the year 1489.

This argot is full of mystery and night. The few known words are full of vigour. Prison figures as "La Jarte," a cut-purse as "le vendangeur."

The argot of these shadows was a language born of cities, but as the winter drives wolves from the wood, so did the winter of Justice drive the Coquillards and other bands of robbers from the cities and the towns. They were the terror of the roads, just as the wolves were the terror of the woods and the soldiers of the fields.

Under the influence of these terrors, to say nothing of the terrors of hunger, frost, and snow, one can form some estimate of the mind of the ordinary countryman and of its attitude towards travellers with lean purses.

One can understand almost completely why a Paris poet with nothing in his pocket might prefer to sing of other things than the joys of the country.

It has been said of Villon that nature made no appeal to him.

Can you wonder ?

CHAPTER II

THE CITY OF THE PRIEST AND THE NOBLE

If one could recapture a few billion miles of the great coloured picture that is ever rushing off from the world to be lost in space, and re-read from it the history of the world, or that part of it which would show the growth of Paris, we would see, were we to start at the very begin- ning of things, the Seine flowing quietly between green banks and around a small island covered with trees. We could never imagine the destiny of this sylvan spot of earth with its bending willows, flowing river, and quiet little island around which the river flows. Who could fancy that the gods had selected these few acres of rest and peace on which to build a city which above all others must stand as the city of fever and unrest ?

As our imaginary picture moved forward it would show trees being felled on this island surrounded by the Seine and huts being erected. Then scenes of war would come, with men taking refuge on the island and discovering the fact that a piece of land surrounded by water is a natural fortification and the next best thing to a castle.

6

The City of the Priest and the Noble 7

Then you would see houses rising on the island, and on the island's banks rude earthworks to pro- tect the houses. By this time the men who have seized the island have discovered the fact which England has discovered by this — the fact that water can be the best friend of man. Just as the Channel gives England peace, the strip of swiftly flowing Seine on either side of the island gives the inhabitants comparative security.

The houses increase and multiply, and now the moving picture shows two bridges building to join the island to the bank on either side — one on the right, one on the left ; and where the bridges join the river-banks two fortresses rising to protect the end of each bridge.

The fortress which protects the bridge on the right bank is called the Grand Chatelet, that on the left the Petit Chatelet.

When the bridges and fortifications are finished, we have the first city of Paris — an island town where huts are giving place to houses and houses to churches, and where the masons are soon to be at work on Notre Dame, whose corner-stone was laid by Charlemagne.

Years pass and Paris still remains a tiny place, self-contained, protected by the Seine and seem- ingly always to remain a little toNvn.

But this little town has in it the germ of growth. It can no more remain a little town than a genius can remain in the ranks of mediocrity. Just as our poet Villon was the stock from which the

8 Francois Villon

bouillon of French literature is made, so was this little town the pot which held the fiery stew of Parisian character. It boiled over. Houses began to appear on either bank, and round the houses to protect them a wall.

But Paris was still growing, and beyond this wall more houses appeared, and so rapidly did they appear, and so numerous did they become, that to protect them Philip Augustus was compelled to build a circular line of towers that stood like armed men warning enemies off, and warning Paris to contain itself and grow no larger. But Paris was still growing, and, impelled by this mysterious spirit of growth, it passed the towers of Philip Augustus and spread beyond them, strewing the plain with houses, till Charles V in the year 1367 was compelled to protect these new houses with yet another wall. In the time of Villon — that is to say, towards the year 1450 — Paris had long passed the wall of Charles V, and was already an enormous city and not far short in size of the Paris of the Second Empire. It had already gathered to itself not only men and arms, but ideas and learning and the fine arts. Its life was varied, multi-coloured, and vivid. It held the mother of all French cathedrals in Notre Dame, the first of all French palaces in the H6tel de St. Pol ; its university numbered forty-two colleges and occupied the whole left bank of the river; it had four thousand taverns where the men who were learning to laugh in flesh, not in stone, might

d

The City of the Priest and the Noble 9

forgather and sharpen their wits with wine and conversation ; its women could out-chatter all women ; and, despite the frosts of winter and the hardness of the times, it showed a warmth of social life to be found nowhere else in Europe. Let us never forget that the sun shone in the Middle Ages just as it shines to-day. Never let Montfaucon and Henri Cousin the sworn tormentor govern entirely your ideas of the Paris of 1450 ; nor Claude Frollo your ideas of its monastic life ; nor Montigny and Colin de Cayeux your ideas of its tavern life. Men were men in those days, and not mediaeval figures, and women were women and life was life, and to show you Paris with the sun shining and the bells ringing and the breezes blow- ing, you must rise with me as the bird rises into the blue, and forget the present in reviewing what we are pleased to call the Past.

Beneath us lie ten thousand roofs and half a thousand spires, and who can number the weather- cocks twisting and turning to the winds of spring?

Immediately beneath us lies the island of the Cit6 crusted with houses and churches. Twenty- one spires beside the towers of Notre Dame rise from this small quarter alone. A sharp eye can pick out the Rue de la Juiverie, where is situated one of the most notable taverns in Paris — the Pomme de Pin. That square space across which people are straying in front of Notre Dame is the Parvis de Notre Dame, and that heavy roof

10 Francois Villon

nodding at Notre Dame across the Parvis is the roof of the father of all hospitals, the H6tel Dieu.

Heavens ! -what a crush of house roofs, weather- cocks, church roofs, church spires and gables does this tiny island of the Cit6 show to us I It is like a porcupine for points, and were you to fall you would almost certainly be spitted on a spire. Only to eastward is there a little clear space of ground, beside the clear space of the Parvis de Notre Dame, and to westward where lie the gardens of the king.

From this height the streets of the Cite look like narrow trenches cut in this world of roofs and spires. They are many, and the Rue de la Juiverie is the broadest. From this height the roofs of the cite pick themselves out and proclaim what they shelter to the knowing eye. Here we have the leaden roof of the Sainte Chapelle, and to the westward of the Sainte Chapelle those towers, strident and arrogant, proclaim " beneath us lies the Palais de Justice." To southward of Notre Dame that roof recalling the hands of the Roman masons proclaims itself as covering the palace of the Bishop ; close by, the h6tel of Juvenal des Urcines frets the sky ; and there, grim and dark, lie the roofs of the March6 Palus. Then the spires and the towers of the churches — the towers of Notre Dame, the spires of the Sainte Chapelle, St. Denis du Pas, St. Pierre aux Boeufs, St. Landry, and the seventeen other spires of the seventeen other churches congregated in this narrow space —

The City of the Priest and the Noble 11

each one is distinguishable by its form and size and age, and on a feast-day, to the ear, by the voices of its l)ells. Poised above the Cit^ we notice all these things and something more. We are looking down at an island, yet we seem to be looking down not at an island, but on a part of the great city that spreads itself upon the right and the left banks of the river. The five bridges connecting the Cit6 and the banks help to form the illusion. They are so close together and so crusted with houses that they almost hide the water. Oh ! these houses clinging like marten-boxes to the Petit Pont, the Pont au Change, the Pont aux Meuniers, the Pont Notre Dame, and the Pont St. Michel, green with lichen from the river-mists and damp, decayed, old, mysterious, and half sinister in their decrepitude, what pen can paint them as they hang there between river and sky, the back windows convenient from which to drop a corpse into the black water moving like a snake below, the front doors opening on the mediaeval life always pouring across the river from the Univer- sity to the Cite, from the Cit^ to the Ville ? It was to one of these houses that Catharine de' Medici came to consult Ren6 on the eve of St. Bar- tholomew ; and it might have been in one of these houses on the Petit Pont that Villon brought the chattering fish-women into his Ballade of the Women of Paris. They arc houses belonging neither to the Cit^, the University, nor the Ville, only to the thoroughfare connecting those three quarters

12 Frangois Villon

of the city of Paris ; but they remain for me always the most fascinating buildings in this City of Fascination, for the reason that they are the most obscure, hiding in the mists of the river as well as in the mist of the Middle Ages.

Let us pass beyond them to the left bank and poise for a moment high above the University. When all this left bank of the river was green fields and windmills and willows, when Paris was a tiny city contained in the island of the Cit^, when the masons' trowels were sounding on the stones of Notre Dame, the University of Paris was in germination, for the school placed under ward of the chapter of Notre Dame was the seed from which the University sprang.

Then, when Paris burst the bonds of the Cit6 and spread over the right and left banks of the river, by some process of selection impossible to discover, the growing University chose to spread itself over the left bank, the growing opulence of the realm of France, as expressed by the king and the nobles, over the right bank.

So, as in a glass darkly, we can see at the very beginning of things the Church leading its dim procession of scholars across the Petit Pont and through the gateway of the Petit Chatelet to found its colleges on the Montague Ste. (ienevi^ve, and the State leading its king, nobles, heralds, pursuivants, trumpeters, and men-at-arms across the Pont Notre Dame to found on the right bank

The City of the Priest and the Noble 13

the Louvre and the H6tel de St. Pol and the Bastille, whose towers were yet unsketched against the sky.

Poised here high above the University we can see with a glance of the eye the power of Thought.

Dim, grotesque, almost barbaric, with the grammar of iElius Donatus in one hand, with the works of Aristotle clasped to its breast in the other, sandalled and tonsured, half-monk, half-pedagogue ; fierce, gigantic, childlike, it crossed the bridge, cast down its books, and began to build.

And that sea of roofs was the result, covering those acres of houses.

They stretch along the Seine bank from the Toumelles to the H6tel de Nesle, and from the Seine bank they sweep upwards over the Montagne Ste. Genevieve and beyond to the wall of Philip Augustus.

Roofs, roofs, roofs, angular and dark ; flashing in the sun after rain, twirling their weather-cocks to the winds of spring, white under the snow of winter, built together so that the effect is that of one enormous house of ten thousand gables. Nothing could be more striking than this roof view of the huge old University of Paris, angular and hard as the medieval writing in her charters and bleak as the teachings of her theologians. The roofs of the forty-two colleges dominate all the others and spread themselves here and there over the whole University quarter, but more especially over the swelling rise of the Montagne Ste. Gene-

14 Francois Villon

vi6ve ; and, breaking up from amidst them, the shrill spires of the churches and the houses of the religious orders proclaim the dominion of the Church over learning. Here we have the triple spires of the Bernardines, here the spire of St. Benoist le Bien Toum6, there Ste. Genevieve (the church of the patron saint of this sacred hill) ; but the airy spires of the churches, the grace of the Hotel de Cluny and the Logis de Rheims, the humour of the weather-cocks and the elegance of the abbeys, detract scarcely at all from the grim effect of that huge conglomerate of roofs, angular, massive, the very shell of mediaeval logic, arts, and theology.

Looking do\Mi from this height, two streets cutting like trenches through this mass of slating strike the eye more especially. The first is the Rue St. Jacques, which cuts through the whole city, passing over the Petit Pont and through the Cit6 under the name of the Rue de la Juiverie, over the Pont Notre Dame, and through the Ville under the name of the Rue St. Martin. The other street is the Rue du Fouarre, where the schools are situated. It is closed at both ends by barriers. It derives its name from the straw with which the examination-rooms are strewn — straw in winter, herbs in summer — and even at this height we can hear the row of the disputations from its class- rooms. Compared with the other streets of the University quarter it vibrates more shrilly, like the over-stretched string of some solemn instru- ment, a string often threatening to snap in revolt.

T}ie City of tlie Priest and the Noble 15

So, stretched beneath our imagination, lies the great University of Paris — the Mother of Univer- sities, grave and grey and grim, of which Abelard was tlie first professor and of which the last French scholar will be the last student ; the University that gave Roger Bacon hospitality and Villon his degree in arts; the University whose spirit still lives in the minds of its children's children, but whose form has passed away as utterly as a mist blown by the wind.

Turning from it, and crossing the Seine and the Cit^ by the road of the birds, we find beneath us the third great quarter of mediaeval Paris — the Ville. Semi-circular in form, like the University but enormously larger, the Ville lies beneath us, apjicaling to the eye from a hundred points and mostly from the roofs of palaces, the gardens of palaces, the towers of the Bastille, and the roof- tops of the business houses and the houses of the Bourgeoisie situated in the centre of the Ville and surrounding the Croix de Trahoir. Yet another point, and a broad one at that, fascinates the eye — the Place de Gr^ve right on the quay edge, sur- rounded on its three sides by great old houses, marking its junction with the Seine edge by the Tour Roland, and its true function and office by the gibl>et erected in its centre.

But despite the Place de Gr^ve, the Bastille, the Croix de Trahoir, Montfaucon and its gibbets, the Place aux Chats, and the other gloomy points whose verj' names spell punishment and death, the Ville

16 Frangois Villon

continues to hold our eye by the splendour of its palaces and the beauty of its gardens. Along that same Seine edge from which opens the Place de Gr^ve, great houses of the nobility mirror them- selves on the water of the Seine as the towers of Chaumont mirror themselves on the Loire.

Behind them, like a city within a city, lies the Hdtel de St. Pol, owned by the Kings of France, a vast structure composed of four great mansions all joined together, the gardens, lakes, trees, and out-buildings all fused into one common preserve.

In size and certainly in magnificence the Hotel de St. Pol stands first among palaces in this little city of palaces and gardens — the Ville. After the Hotel de St. Pol comes the Louvre with its twenty- three towers ; and after the Louvre, perhaps, comes the Palais de Toumelles fretting the sky with a hundred spires and turrets ; and next to the Tour- nelles the Logis d'Angouleme with its gilded roof. All that great green space beyond the Tournelles is the garden of the King. Trees, flower-beds, la^vns, lakes, and swans, it lies, like the gardens of the Hotel de St. Pol, like the gardens of the Logis d'Angouleme, like the courtyards of the Louvre, like the pleasure-grounds of the Logis de la Reine, like the parterres of the Hotel de Jouy, like the tennis-courts of the Hdtel de Sens, an evidence of the pleasure of the King and the ease of the nobility.

But the King's pleasure speaks loudly and in a

The City of the Priest and the Noble 17

grimmer fashion through the mouthpieces of those great black tubular towers bunched together like eight monstrous malefactors standing on the right of the Toumelles and guarding as it were the Porte St. Antoine. They are the Bastille.

There have been three Bastilles in Paris — the Bastille du Temple, the Bastille de St. Denis, and this, the Bastille of the Porte St. Antoine, of which the first stone was laid by Hugues d'Aubriot, Provost des Marchands in the reign of Charles V, and on the twenty-second day of April, 1369. This first stone was laid by the hand of a bourgeois, but by the order of the King. To-day in the year 1481 the Bastille is only sixty-one years of age ; it is in its youth. When it was bom sixty-one years ago it consisted of two round towers set on either side the Porte St. Antoine ; afterwards two additional towers parallel to the first two were built, and the whole connected by walls ; later on, in the year 1883 in the reign of Charles VI, four more towers were added, and the whole eight towers were joined together by walls of enormous thickness. The old Porte St. Antoine was closed and the way of entrance to the city carried round the building.

Looking down, we can see the tops of the eight guarding towers, the arbal^triers doing sentry-go on the roofs, the mediaeval cannon like black dogs nosing Paris, and in the centre of this great mass of masonry two dark wells. One is the great court, the other is the court of the well. 2

18 Francois Villon

Villon refers to the Bastille simply as the House in the Rue St. Antoine !

Now, beyond the Bastille and the Tournelles, follow with your eye that chain of roofs, the roofs of the numberless religious houses, breasted in by the wall of Charles V, follow the semicircular trend of it till you come to that great break like a pit cut by a rodent ulcer in the architecture of the city. It is the Cour des Miracles. The appalling leprosy of evil seems to have attacked the very stones and tiles of the houses that sur- round that market square, the true Goblin Market of mediaeval France. High above it as we are, we can notice its most salient features. It has corroded and eaten away the old wall of Paris. The high and heavy-eaved houses that surround it seem worn out by debauchery ; ragged, half tiled, and ruinous, they sit like those old prostitutes of Villon's ballad,

Assises bas, k croppetons.

Tout en ung tas comme pelottes,

the very weariness of age and vice. Amidst them stands one of the old towers of the wall like a man-at-arms gone to decay, dismissed the service, and driven by vice to this low company.

The smell of the place comes up to us even here, the smell of garlic, and rags, and offal, and ordure ; decay and death. It is unapproachable. The very sergents of the Chatelet who beard even the University, the very Provost of Paris and his

The City of the Priest and the Noble 19

lieutenants, pause before the Cour des Miracles as men pause before a pestilence. It is the home of the Coquillards, of the gipsies, of the beggars and the thieves. It is known all through Europe and is recruited from every country. It has its argots, its kings, its peo])le who permeate every- where, and its dreadful ambassadors who come from nowhere ; it is the capital of nightmare-land. The Coquillards use it for a head centre, so do the gipsies, so do the robbers and beggars who infest Paris.

Here you will find the Turk and the Spaniard, the Slav and the Greek, and liere you will find, worse even than these, the Parisian ; you will find them all in rags, for rags are the uniform of this company of crime, and all to a man without mercy or religion, and all living here in the Cour des Miracles, within sound of the bells of the forty-four churches of the Ville and the murmurings of the Filles Dieu !

Now, scarcely altering our position, but rising higher in the sky, let us view the whole of this amazing city with one glance of the eye. The University, the Cit^, and the Ville ail lie beneath us, revealing their secrets, their incongruities, their strength and their weaknesses, their l>eauty and their terror.

Here, truly you may see the mind of the Middle Ages made visible. Not a roof in all that city but tells its tale, not a street.

The angel us will soon be sounding from the

20 Francois Villon

Sorbonne, and the same wind that will blow us the sound on this fine April evening is stirring the almond blossom in the gardens of the King and the corpses swinging on the gibbets of Montfaucon. The shadows are falling on the Place de Gr^ve, on the Croix de Trahoir, on the Pont Champeaux, and on the twenty other places where men are hanged every day or broken on the wheel ; on the Cemetery of the Innocents, where prostitutes and thieves forgather at dusk ; on the Rue de la Juiverie, where the Pomme de Pin is filling with students. Beneath us the whole life of the greatest mediaeval city is just on the point of being held up by dusk. The cries of the hawkers in the Rue de la Juiverie are ceasing, and the voices of the fish- wives on the Petit Pont, and the songs of the washerwomen beating their clothes between the bridges. The sounds of the day are changing to the sounds of the night, and the lamps are spring- ing alive and the windows lighting up all along the Seine bank, all across the Ville, the Cit6, and the University. They twinkle for awhile in the gathering darkness, and then the lamps of the Cit6 fade and go out. Notre Dame is sounding the curfew of the Cit6. For an hour the lights of the Ville and the University answer each other across the water, and then the right bank is swallowed by a tide of darkness, for St. Jacques de la Bou- cherie is ringing the curfew of the Ville. The city beneath us seems slowly closing its eyes ; only the lights of the University remain spreading over the

d

The City of the Priest and the Noble 21

Montaj;rne Ste. Genevieve, and in the passing of an hour they too fade, for the Sorbonne is sounding the curfew of the University. Silence follows on the darkness ; the crying of the hawkers, the chatter of women, the bustle of traffic — all have ceased ; but through the silence can be heard the ferment of the night -life of the town, where the students are creeping from the University to beat the streets and the sergents are issuing from the Ch&telet, armed with staves and lighted lanterns, to watch for incendiaries and brawlers ; where the beggars and the homeless are crawling to sleep under the butchers* stalls of the markets, and the light girls, like painted shadows, are hiding in porch and comer, or plying their trade by the Paris moat or in the cemeteries and gardens.

From all those lampless streets, those coigns of darkness and spaces of shadow, now rise points of sound — the call of the watchman, the far-off shout- ing of students, the scream of a woman, and the vague murmur telling of the life that is fed by the four thousand taverns, viewless under the curfew, but plying their trade none the less. The muffled voices of a furious debauchery rise from a city of darkness where no light shines, except over there that glimmer from the window of Made- moiselle le Bruy^rcs, who is telling her beads, and over there that square ember which is the Cour des Miracles, burning its bonfires in the face of the angelus and curfew, and showing against the black- ness like the mouth of Hades.

22 Frangois Villon

As the moon rises and the night passes, the noises of the night resolve themselves into the crowing of cocks and the bells that tell the hours.

Ten thousand roofs, five hundred spires, weather- cocks, domes, and spindled towers cover the dreams of a people fantastic as their city and a city fantastic as a dream. A city where animals are solemnly tried for witchcraft, and where sorcery is a trade and alchemy a fine art. A city where the King rules over the court at the Louvre, where Mathias Hungadi Spicali rules over the court of Miracles, and Aristotle over the schools of the Rue du Fouarre; where Henri Cousin breaks men on the wheel and boils them alive in the cauldron of the swine-market and where Mademoiselle le Bruy^res prays for souls ; where the Abbess de Pourras pays for drinks, and the priest is a liber- tine and the saint a priest ; where the fool is once a year elected Pope, and the Pope degraded into the position of the fool.

Surely of all mad and contradictory people these dreamers beneath their spires, their gargoyles, and spindle towers are the most contradictory and the most mad. Inhuman and beyond the pale of our sympathy, one might say, if one had never heard them speak through the one mouth which God gave them to speak with to posterity — ^the mouth of Fran9ois Villon,

CHAPTER III

THE CHILDHOOD OF VILLON

FRAN901S de Montcorbier, alias Fran9ois des Loges, afterwards to be known as Fran9ois Villon, was bom in the year 1481, and we know nothing about his birth, little about his mother, and less about his father. We can only say positively that he was born of poor parents and within the boundaries of Paris. The fact of being born within the sacred boundary made him a '* child of Paris," and so entitled to sundry quaint old privileges to be mentioned later on.

Nothmg could be darker than the history of the birth and childhood of Villon, and yet nothing in literature is more distinct and lovable than the glimpse he gives us of the mother who bore him, who looked after him in childhood, and to whom he brought sorrow. Of all those wonderful etch- ings, those pictures with the stroke of a pen with which the Ballades and the Testaments fill our mind, that of the Mother of Villon is the most poignant, the most real, and the most living.

Poor, ignorant, superstitious, old, and withered, we see her kneeling for ever before the stained-

23

24 Francois Villon

glass window of the Church of the Celestines in the Ballade which he wrote for her, and we hear him presenting her with this immortal picture of her- self as a sort of solace for all the grief he had given her.

Item, donne k ma bonne mdre. Pour saluer nostre Maistre'se, Qui pour moy eut douleur amdre, Dieu le a^ait, et mainte tristease. . . .

Dieu le S9ait 1

The fact that she was illiterate and unable to read did not prevent her from presenting to the world one of its greatest poets, and the fact that his wildness was a part of his genius, inseparable as the thorn from the rose tree, she could never know ; she lived in utter darkness as to the cause of things. Why God had made her son a trouble to her she could not tell. With no cause for faith she believed in God — and her belief was justified.

The works of Genius are full of incalculable surprises. This ballade of Villon to his mother casts its light in a hundred ways. It reveals to us a woman, and it makes a woman reveal the beauty of her soul, and the Church some part of the mystery of its power ; it tells us that Ignorance cannot touch with its dull hands the knowledge of the heart, and it shows us Faith as no other picture in the world has ever shown us Faith. It lights the evil of the man that wrote it, the weary life of the woman about whom it was written,

The Childhood of Villon 25

and it is the touchstone of the genius of the writer.

Written by the greatest realist that the world has ever known, it teaches us that true realism is not the reproduction of the dirt of life but the soul of thin^. Villon might have dra^^n us a picture of his mother at the wash-tub — had he been a 2k>la that would doubtless have been the extent of his realism. He presents her to us on her knees, and that is his greatest triumph, for that is what she teas.

When Villon was born the English were masters of Paris, and through all the years of his early childhood Paris was the storm-centre of France. Weather and war seemed to vie with one another as to which should' bring the greatest load of misery to the people. Forty days of snow are registered in the archives of 1485, " the trees died and the birds," and the English left in 1486 and Charles VII arrived in 1487 ; but the leaving of the English and the arrival of the King left the poor as miserable as ever, as hungry, and as cold. There was no bread ; people ate the filth of the rubbish heaps and died crying out to Jesus that they died of hunger and cold.

Outside in the country the distress was worse. Even the wolves felt it. The war had stripped the country of food and paralysed labour. Villon, in one of his verses, speaks of poverty driving men to crime as winter drives the wolves from the wood. Our realist was not drawing upon his im-

26 FrariQois Villon

agination ; all through the years of his childhood the wolf had been at the door of Paris. When the starving country-folk sought refuge in the starving city, the wolves came behind them, fighting their way in and attacking and devouring the dogs in the streets ; they killed women and children ; and the smallpox followed on the wolves as the wolves followed on the war. Yet war, wolves, smallpox, cold, and starvation could not kill the quenchless spirit of these Parisians. They hung absurd effigies of the English in the streets, and they lit bonfires to greet the entrance of Charles, and presented plays and mysteries ; they laughed and chattered at sight of the smallest bit of blue sky ; and when the clouds of disaster had passed, the city recovered itself, after the fashion of Paris, which since its birth has always been recovering itself.

We may fancy, then, this Montcorbier house- hold making its fight for life with the rest of the city, and nothing could be much darker than the history of that obscure family were we driven to seek for it in archives and records. Yet already from Villon we know the character and almost the face of the woman on whom no doubt the main stress of the battle fell, and already we see, from the evidence of Villon himself, a grand old figure beginning to sketch itself in that darkness, the figure of the man who adopted him, Guillaume Villon, Canon of St. Benoist. In those days, as now, the Church rested its hand not only on the

A

The Childhood of Villon 27

shoulders of the people but on the heads of the children. Most of what we would call the primary schools were connected with some cathedral or church, and we may very well believe that Fran9oi3 de Montcorbier first came under the notice of Guillaume Villon as Francois sat, a miserable enough spectre of childhood, learning his letters in some cold class-room.

Everything we know about this old Canon Guillaume Villon points to his goodness of heart. He was well-to-do and possessed houses, and did not press the tenants for their rent ; he adopted little Fran9ois de Montcorbier and, what is more, treated him well. Villon loved him, left him his library in derision, and then, with a catch in his tliroat, left him this patent to immortality and all men's friendship in seven words.

Qui ni'a est^ plus doulx que nUre !

Everj'thing we know about the authorities who ruled over the University and the youth of Paris throws the good character of Guillaume into higher relief. Contrast with him that ruffian Jennat de Hainnonville, who beat his pupils and broke their limbs, made their lives a misery, and charged them for board and lodging ; contrast with him all the University crowd, from the Rector to Jean Hue, stiff and starched, severe, mouthing dog- Latin, and ever on the side of the rufiian ktudents as against the town. Peaceable old Guillaume Villon has nothing to do with these. He is th« one warm spot that w« can appreciate

28

Francois Villon

in all that chill University. Sipping his Beaune and friendly towards man, filled with the quaintest fancies about immortality and death, he stands with the mother of the child he adopted at the door of its life.

CHAPTER IV

HIS UNIVERSITY CAREER

GuiLLAUME lived in a house named the Porte Rouge situated in the cloister of St. Benoist le Bien Tourn6, which, in turn, was situated near the Sorbonne. Here he took Fran9ois de Montcorbier to live with hini, paid his college expenses, and started him in life. At twelve years of age one was entitled to present oneself at the University to study in the faculty of Arts, and one must supi)ose that there was some sort of examination for matriculation, inasmuch as the newcomer was exp>ected to be able to read and write.

We have seen the roofs of the University from above, let us examine it now inside as well as out.

Here in the University's streets the sense of chilliness and formality which we gathered from our view of the roofs vanishes like snow in fire. The narrow streets arc violently alive, crowded with students, some in long robes, others — the bloods — in short vests and wearing shoes of soft tanned leather, everyone tonsured, down to the twelve-year-old child just joined, and two out of three with a convenient dagger hidden on the

t9

80 Francois Villon

person. The students of Arts are the gentlemen with the short vests ; we can pick out by different signs all the students belonging to the different faculties, of which there are four — Theology, Medicine, D^cret, and Arts — and you may mistake a student of Theology for a student of Medicine, but you never can mistake an Arts student. He is the devil in all this strange mixture, the centre and cause of all University disturbance ; if he is not wearing a short vest, and rings on his fingers, and shoes d la poulaine,^ he is carrying a stick to beat people with, and if there is no other sign to tell him by, you can make sure of your man by his swagger.

But, scamp though he is as a rule, he does not absorb all the ruffianism of the University; the students who study the science of Medicine — and Heavens 1 what a science it is ! — the Theologians and the others give him a full backing. This University, to put it in plain and straight English, is a hell, and the pet amusements of a large per- centage of these tonsured individuals are fighting — often leading to murder or homicide — drink, gambling, rape, and robbery.

These amusements are conducted for the most part out of the precincts of the University, in the city beyond, where four thousand taverns and

' " Oromedon begat Gemmagog," gays Rabolali, " who was the first inventor of shoes ^ la poulaim, which are open on the foot, and tied over the instep with a iatohet." — Pantagruel, Book 11, chapter i.

His University Career 81

three thousand prostitutes are always beckoning across the water to Learning.

Nearly every one of these men who pass us is attached to a master of the University, lives with him, and boards with him, and you cannot watch them for a moment without being impressed by the fact of their difference in worldly status ; some are the most miserable objects ; if they have shoes they are worn out, if they have souls they are debased by the cxtremest poverty, by hunger, by cold, ill-use, and the performance of eternal drudgerj'. Those of these wretched ones who are attached to a master have to serve at table, to clean the rooms, and perform the meanest work that ever fell to mortal; others beg their bread from door to door ; others keep company with the vilest characters in the Cit6 and Ville and pick up what they can by robbery.

Above these you have men better placed who pay a small sum a week for their board and eke out their existence by doing light jobs, copying books, etc. Above these come the aristocracy of the University with the blood flowing strong in its veins, well dressed but nearly always without a penny, sucked dry of money by the tavern, the brothel, and the gambling-shop, which is, in fact, always a tavern as well.

Here and there in the passing crowd you may sec austere faces, sober faces, and faces lit by the light of ideality ; priests in embryo, bishops in posse, and a saint or two who has never been

32 FratiQois Villon

canonised. Ten sous parisis is about the sum that the wealthy pay for their board ; and at the age of fourteen the clerc is eUgible for the Baccalaureate, the examination taking place in the Rue du Fouarre where the schools are situated. The ex- amination for the Mastership of Arts takes place in the same Rue du Fouarre, and the candidate must be twenty-one years of age.

Villon took his Baccalaureate degree in the March of 1449. We can almost see him both now and at his examination for the Mastership of Arts, before the black-robed examiner, his tongue in his cheek and answering questions, mostly about rubbish. For the Baccalaureate he would be ex- amined upon the Organon of Aristotle, Les Topiques de Boece, Le Grecisme, and Le Doctrinal.

I have said that he would be answeruig questions mostly about rubbish without in the least intend- ing to sneer at the curriculum of the Mother of Universities. She required astronomy and meta- physics, Greek and Latin, and a knowledge of the works of Aristotle — so much for the curriculum. Her professors, however, required much more ; jargon to make clear things opaque, logic after the fashion of the old schoolmen with exquisite argu- ments on no foundation, Averroes to expound Aristotle, Jean de Salisbury to confuse Cicero; everywhere Fancy leading Ignorance, Cleverness constructing the most wonderfully logical yet absurd structures on air. Nonsense masquerading as Sense, and everywhere again, Jargon.

I

His University Career 88

Villon hints that the jargon of the schools nearly drove him crazy.

But they talked sense in the taverns, and as Villon was a genius, and as the whole foundation of genius is commonsense, he, without any doubt, went to the taverns to find it.

They were in a manner the clubs and the coffee- shops of the day, just as the barbers' shops were the coffee-shops and clubs of Athens, and one can fancy the relief of escaping from those frigid and angular class-rooms, from Averrofis and Aristotle and Les Topiqms de Bo^ce, from the logic that led nowhere and the metaphysics and the black-robed metaphysicians, to the warm shelter of a tavern, a glass of good wine, and the company of human beings. There were, as I have said, four thousand public-houses to choose from, from the Pomme de Pin in the Cit^, to the Grand Godet de Gr^ve in the VUle, and to the Mule tavern in the University itself, and they exhibited all the virtues and all the vices that always exhibit themselves naked under the shelter of the vine.

It is very diflicult to estimate the influence of wine on medieeval man, for at times he did most exceedingly drunken things when he was sober. We know him, from Villon's testimony, to have been a human Ijeing extraordinarily like ourselves, yet there are clouds in the mentality of this brother- man, and mists, that no explaining can well account for. Take the Feast of the Fools and see a whole city stirred to madness — by what ? Take the 8

84 Francois Villon

festivals of the Church and see sober churchmen crowning themselves with red roses — why ? Take the whole of the University running like a hare- brained crew to capture the stone in front of the house of Mademoiselle le Bruy^res, and set it up on the Montague Ste. Genevieve — take their worship of it, as will be shown later on, and give me the reason of it.

All these things were the outcome of sobriety. We can trace no such lunatic action to the door of drink. Men fought with one another and killed one another through drink — that was perfectly logical. Men drank so much that they actually exchanged their clothes for drink and walked into the streets mother-naked — that, too, was logical and understandable. Men did all the wicked things that are the logical outcome of human imperfection inflamed by alcohol ; but in their sobriety they often did stupid and wicked things for a reason that is absolutely beyond our comprehension and abso- lutely unconnected with the ordinary promptings of humanity.

The heart was human and like ours, but the brain was tainted by some trace of mist, from who knows where ? — perhaps from the land of Pagan- ism. And this mist, more or less attenuated, we find in all places where serious men forgathered, where they tried animals for witchcraft and put poor wretches to the question by water, where they administered the law, where they administered the sacrament of the Church ; among the players

His University Career 85

who performed mysteries and the audiences that watched, among the masters of the University and the scholars. We see it consoHdated in the leaden figures round the filthy old cap of Louis XI, and it still clings about the gargoyles of Notre Dame, this weird, vague, lunatic Gothic — something beside which the antics of old drunken Jean Cotart are lovable, burglary a relief to the eye, and coining a human, if wicked, art.

This mist may have touched but it never clung to the mind of Villon, his works are free from it, they are all fresh air as compared with the atmosphere which surrounded him. He was perhaps the first entirely sane man who lived in Paris, the first who saw everjiihing around him in absolutely clear air.

And it is a strange thing that the first work of this master realist had to do with the capture of that same stone I spoke about a moment ago, the Pet au Diable, and took the fonn of an epic poem, humorous you may be sure, and recounting the antics of tlie clercs who captured it from before the house of Mademoiselle le Bruy^res and their battle with the sergents of the Provost who tried to take it back.

One day in the year 1451 the students of the University, with Villon among them, you may well be sure, marched en mtuse across the bridges of the Seine to the Place de la Gr^ve, where, before the hdtel of Mademoiselle le Bruy^res stood an immense stone named for some obscure reason the Pel au Diable. They tore it up and carried it off

86 FrariQois Villon

in triumph to the University quarter, where they set it up in state, and if they did not worship it, their actions and their antics around it formed a passably fair imitation of worship.

The outcries of Mademoiselle le Bruy^res and the news of the business caused a great commotion in Paris, so much so that the Parliament took a hand in the affair and ordered the Lieutenant- Criminel of the Chatelet to recapture the stone and prosecute the ravishers. Accordingly Maitre Jean Bergon, attired in all the grandeur of his office and followed by his sergents, swept up the Rue du Mont St. Hilaire, seized the Pet and con- ducted it to the courtyard of the Palais-Royal, where it was placed in safe keeping to be used as a witness in the following inquiry and prosecution. Meanwhile, Mademoiselle le Bruy^res, mourning her Pet as an old lady mourns her lap-dog, put up another stone, either as a tribute to its memory or as a temporary stop-gap, whilst the University, burning at its loss, gave itself furiously to think.

In a trice it gave itself furiously to act. Like a bee-hive burst open it discharged its swarms one evening across the Seine. Clercs and scholars, baccalaureates and graduates. Theology, Medicine, D^cret, and Arts, armed with sticks, stones, mud, and daggers, they stormed the Palais, threatened to kill the porter, and recovered their treasure ; but the rioting, once let loose, did not stop at the Palais. They swept up to the Halles, filling the Ville with sounds of battle. It was now Gown

His University Career 37

against Town with a vengeance, and was in fact only an episode in the eternal Town and Gown warfare going on in Paris. They tried to unhook a public-house sign, and, doing so, one of the precious company broke his back ; then, remem- bering suddenly the fact that Mademoiselle le Bruy^res had set up a rival to their darling, back they tore to the Place de Gr^ve, captured the un- fortunate old lady's new Pet, and made off with it to the University.

Here both stones were set up and crowned with flowers, bonfires were lit, and a mad night of rejoicing followed.

So far so good.

It was now, however, the turn of the Cit^ and Ville to give themselves furiously to thought.

The good City of Paris had long suffered from its University.

The University was, in fact, a little kingdom of its own. Just as in the University of Oxford the undergraduates hold themselves aloof as a body from the townspeople, so did the scholars of Paris stand apart as a body from the civic life of the Ville and the Cit^*. Had they contented them- selves with standing ai)art, the townsfolk would have been very well satisfied, but Messieurs les ^tudiants did not content themselves with standing apart, as a body. Individually they mixed with the life of the city, drank in its taverns, and fre- quented the public places.

They considered themselves a good deal above

38 Francois Villon

ordinary individuals, and as the ordinary indi- vidual of that day was a pretty direct person, fights and brawls were frequent.

People grew grapes in that day right round the walls of Paris, and the students, who liked grapes and had no money or morals, robbed the vines ; ducks paddled on the moat of Paris, and they stole the ducks ; in a hundred small ways friction was always arising between the University and the town and the sparks were always liable to set the thatch alight.

Worse than this, among the rowdy scholars there was a large sprinkling of criminals, wolf-men who were always ready for murder and rape, terrific characters beside whom the thieves and the burglars of the town made small figures ; and the thing that gave all these University men an extra potency for evil was the fact that each one of them, from the full-grown wolf to the cub of twelve, was set apart from the power of the common law and sealed by the mark of the tonsure. Just as a Japanese Daimyo went about with his crest on his back, so did the scholars of the University of Paris go about with the mark of the Church on their heads. The Provost, the Parliament, and even the King had no judicial power over the tonsured head ; a University man caught stealing or ravishing or murdering had to be handed over to the University, and as the University — that is to say, the Church — had a horror of shedding blood, you may guess the result.

His University Career 39

One cannot but feel a sincere sympathy for the bourgeois of Paris. To be assaulted by a ruffian is bad enough, goodness knows, without the know- ledge that the ruffian who assaults you is safe from the law.

The City of Paris, then, when it gave itself to thought over the Pet au Diable affair, found quite a lot to think about : a long succession of riots and brawb dating from before the thirteenth century rose before its mind and suddenly moved it to action.

On the 6th of December, 1452, the City rose in the form of its Provost, Robert d'Estouteville, who, followed by his lieutenants and sergents, horse and foot, poured across the city towards the Uni- versity and went right to the heart of the matter. That is to say, they stormed the steep Rue St. Hilaire, found the Pet^ which stood impudently crowned with rosemary, tore it up, put it on a cart, and wheeled it away. Now, the 6th of De- cember was a feast-day with the University, the ntilitant section of which must have received hard blows from the men of the Provost, for they took refuge in a house, the Ildtel de Stc. ^tienne.

The lieutenant of the l*rovost stormed the Udtel de Ste. ^tienne, broke down the doors, and gave orders to his men to kill all resisters.

It was a dibdcle for the students. They had collected in the hdtcl all their trophies. Just us the young bloods of 1840 and 1860 used to collect trophies of their midnight escapades in the West

40 Francois Villon

End — a gentleman of that period told me some years ago that his included forty-four door-knockers — so used the students of Paris to collect tavern signs, butchers' hooks, and knives. These were all seized by the valorous lieutenant, together with the persons of a number of the students.

Flushed with victory and wine — for they broke open the cellars of the hdtel — ^the city swept on to the house of one of the masters where more of the militants were concealed, broke in, and arrested right and left.

The victory became an orgy. One can fancy the mediaeval professors, masters, and deans congre- gated in safety and listening to the fight, but it would be difficult to imagine their outraged feel- ings when the news was spread that one of the sergents of the Chatelet was strutting about the streets in the robe of a scholar I

However, the University took its defeat for the moment in silence. In the following May, however, it met in solemn council to consider the whole business, and the result of that meeting was a solemn deputation, headed by the Rector, which left the University and wended its way to the house of the Provost. Eight hundred students followed the deputation to give it effect.

The Provost listened to the deputation most affably, and, instead of lecturing it soundly on the maladministration of the University and sending it away with a caution, he promised that all the innocent scholars who had been arrested would

His University Career 41

be set at liberty. He spoke it fair, in fact, and the Rector, followed by the deputation, left him, and regained the street where the eight hundred students, when they heard the news, cheered him to the echo.

Now came the worst of the whole business. The students had come unarmed. Trooping down the Rue de Jouy, they came in clash with Commissary Henry le F^vre, a fiery -tempered gentleman at the head of a company of sergents.

The students jostled the sergents and the ser- gents jostled the students, and the affair might have passed at that but for the fact that the University, which for years had been sowing the wind, was now fated to reap the whirlwind. F^vre called to his men to draw their swords, and in an instant a bloody fight was in progress. The unarmed University men took flight — that is to say, the bullies and the wolves and the cowards. Others remained to protect the Rector. One of these, an innocent and harmless individual, but a hero without any doubt, was killed.

You may be sure that the University did not foil to take advantage of this affair. The City, for once, was completely in the wrong, and the University not only appealed to Parliament to give it reparation, but it also struck work to give extra force to its appeal.

This, perhaps the first strike in history, lasted for a year. Reparation was granted, and the University won.

42 Francois Villon

I have described the affair in detail. It Hghts up the University -with its conflagration, it Hghts up the city, and the mediaeval mind. Men killed, men wounded, Paris in convulsions, the Parlia- ment in confabulation, all the work of the Univer- sity suspended for a year — on account of a stone.

It tells us that the Romance of the Pet au Diable, copied out by Guy Tabary, was not, as Stevenson imagined from its name, an improper romance, but an epic poem describing the whole affair.'

Villon says that it was lying in loose sheets under a table ; he says that it was roughly done, but that

La matiere est si trds notable Qu'elle amende tout le mesfait.

If the poem existed, if its existence was not a figure of Villon's imagination, and if it was wTitten by Villon, its loss is to be counted among the world's great losses. The sane mind and the subtle humour of Maitre Fran9ois Villon would have shown us, without any manner of doubt, these gentlemen of the University and city, not as they appear in the dim gloom of the archives of the Bibliothdque Nationale, but as they were, living and in action. It might also have thrown more light on his o^vn life in the University.

• " The same remark applies to a subsequent legacy of the

poet's Ubrary, with specification of one work which was plainly neither decent nor devout."

Again — " Tabarie was a man — who had copied out a whole improper romance with his own right hand." — R. L. Stevenson, Franks Villon {Familiar Studies of Men and Books).

His Universify Career 48

However, unaided by that powerful lamp, we may see his university life, darkly enough in places, too vividly in other places.

Though he lived with Guillaume Villon in the house called the Porte Rouge in the Cloister of St. Benoist, he studied and boarded with a master, Jean Conflans, Bursar of the College de Navarre, and in Jean Conflans' extraordinary writing, this entry may still be read in MS. No. 1 of the Biblio- thdque de I'Universit^ on a page of the register of the Nation de France :

Dominua Fr«n9oia de Montcorbier de Par. oujua bursa ii 8.p.

Now, two SOUS parisia was the least one could pay for board ; it was the price of starvation, one may say ; yet if Guillaume Villon had been a rich man, which undoubtedly he was, and a good man, of which I am sure, how came it that he allowed his adoptive child so little for food ?

It is quite possible that, the Porte Rouge being close to the College of Navarre, Fran9ois got most of his meals at home, and that the two sous were paid for partial boanl, that old William Villon made some arrangement with Maftre Jean Conflans to this effect.

However that may be, 1 don't believe in the least that he was starved, though he says in the Great Testament that he was always too hungry to have much pleasure in love. He was not the {)erson to starve without complaining, and the old Canon was not the man to close his ears to

44 Francois Villon

the complaints of a hungry adoptive son. Yet I believe that he often suffered hunger through his own fault.

Running wild about Paris, he must often have missed his meals, at home or under the roof of Jean Conflans, and as he always seems to have been hard up, he could not have the wherewithal to pur- chase food as well as pleasure.

To arrive at some estimate of his University environment, imagine an Oxford lifted with some giant*s spade and set down on the Surrey side of the Thames opposite London Bridge. Imagine London infinitely worse in morals and manners than the London of the Regency, and Oxford let loose by day and night on London, and assured in its own mind that, however it might conduct itself, it was pretty safe from the laws of London.

I do not wish to develop an ex parte argument against the University, and one must at least re- member that the City of Paris sometimes — though rarely — said " A fig for the Church 1 " and hanged some tonsured malefactor ; still, there is no deny- ing the fact that few modem men have ever found themselves free to do evil as the students of Paris found themselves in the years that stretch between the years 1431 and 1464, and very few modern men have ever found evil so handy and waiting to be dealt with.

We have seen the students pouring through the streets of the University on their way to the schools or to the celebration of some festival. The

His University Career 45

obverse of that picture is to be found in the streets of the Cit6 and the Ville when night is falling on Paris.

Then, in the old streets of the town, in the Rue de la Juiverie, in the Place de Gr^ve, round about the Abreuvoir Popin, in the Cemetery of the Innocents, you will find these same students prowling like single wolves, or in bands.

I have said that there were four thousand taverns in Paris (according to Guillebert de Metz), but that does not give us a true estimate of the drinking capacity of the city. According to Pierre Cham- pion, nearly everj'one in Paris sold wine, from the highest to the lowest. Some sold it wholesale, some retail, but they sold it, and nearly every house added to the flood of Vin d'Aulnis, Burgundy, and Beaune that deluged the City of Paris.

Nightfall in this city of hard drinkers gave the University element its chance. The streets were unlit after curfew except by a glimmer here and there before a shrine ; the police, if we may call tergents of the Chfttelet police, were as hard drinkers as the rest of the inhabitants and as venal as police have ever been ; and, though the curfew snuffed out the lights of the city, we may be wire it left lamps burning in the drink-shops.

Under the ordonnanccs of St. Louis light women were condemned to inhabit certain quarters of the town, and not leave the streets of these quarters after dark, under pain of a fine of 20 sous.

But ordonnances were made to be broken, as

46 Francois Villon

these were ; we find these women, in fact, living in some of the best streets of the town, and they undoubtedly mix with those shadows which we see flitting about the dark old streets of Paris after nightfall and contributing, as nothing but the female element could contribute, to the rows, the fights, and the general diablerie of the night.

Added to these, and to drink, we have the last pitfall dug by the Devil for medieeval students to tumble into — the gambling-house ; and to make the trap more sure the Devil had fixed the gambling- houses in the taverns.

The ordonnances forbade gambling ; more, they forbade games, even the jeu de paume — a great- great-grandfather, apparently, of our rackets. But the ordonnances did not stop gambling.

Cards and dice were the chief games.

The ordonnances that forbade gambling must have produced a most baleful result, in this way : gambling could not be carried on in the more respectable taverns frequented by honest bour- geoisie, or even in the second-class taverns where hosts were law-abiding and timid men, but only in those houses owned by men who did not fear the law — men with the courage of the criminal classes, or the callousness, if the term pleases you better.

The student who wanted to gamble — and I am very sure that Maitre Fran9ois Villon was of this number — would be drawn to the gambling-taverns and to worse. For in these places you would meet what he undoubtedly met with.

I

I

His University Career 47

You would meet the crook — the man who played with loaded dice and marked cards, the smuggler of indulgences, the thief, and the burglar.

As surely as gravity holds the earth to the sun, so surely these disreputable taverns held the worst characters of Paris, and attracted to the company of those characters men who, without this fatal attraction, might have been fairly honest if not good.

I do not mean to say that these laws created evil, but they concentrated it.

If you will take any modem city you will find the laws producing just the same result. The low public-house is the house where gambling and betting arc to be found, and where they are found you will fmd also the thief, the house- breaker, and the ruffian.

Given the gambling instinct, a student of the University would be attracted to more than the gambling- table ; he would be drawn into a concen- trated atmosphere of vice.

Here he would find ready spread for him the net which Villon found — the net of the Coquillard. These same C'oquillards, as I have hinted before, formed a vast secret society spreading all over France with Paris for its head centre. Its sign was the cockle-shell, which was the sign of the Pilgrim. Its complexity and the extent of its ramifications may he judged by the fact that I am bound to consider it as one of the elements in Villon's university career. The society numbered

48 Francois Villon

among its members all sorts and conditions of men, from the aristocrat to the merchant, from the merchant to the tavern-keeper, from the tavern- keeper to the clerc. It was a large business with as many departments as a New York store, and to extend the simile, its chief aim and object was to make money. Coining, burglary, highway robbery, selling indulgences and false jewellery, card sharp- ing and dice-playing with loaded dice, were chief among its industries.

But if you were to fancy that the Coquillards were pure and simple robbers whose aim in life was pure and simple robbery you would fall slightly short of the truth. Their aim was pleasure. They spent their money freely. They were bona viveurs who had the courage to live well by coining in an age when the coiner was boiled alive, when caught, and then hanged ; by theft in an age when thieves, when caught, were " hanged and strangled."

Personally, I have much more sympathy with a burglar than with a man who adulterates milk ; with a coiner than a man who sweats women ; with a brigand than a promoter of bogus companies ; and, though the Coquillards were without any manner of doubt a right-down bad lot as a whole, do not let us forget that they risked much more than life in the pursuit of pleasure.

The soul of crime is cruelty, the heart of crime is cruelty, the standard — the only logical standard by which we can measure crime — is cruelty. When a pickpocket robs a poor woman of her shabby

I

I

rf

His University Career 49

purse with a few shillings in it, he is committing an act infinitely more criminal than the act of the burglar who robs a rich man of his plate — the act is infinitely more cruel. I have no doubt that I)etty robberies of the poor were committed by members of the Coquillard band, but from the evidence l>efore us their operations were mostly conducted ajjainst the well-to-do.

That is not very much to say for them, but still it is something. You will say that it applies to the criminals of to-day who conduct their opera- tions mainly against the rich. It does. But it does not apply to the criminals of to-day who conduct their operations mainly against the poor. You will find Coquillards in heaven without any doubt, but the worst of the Coquillards will be juliiiiUcd, I am very sure, on the day that St. Peter turns his key for the best of our sweaters and cadeU.*'

Villon was undoubtedly connected with the company of the cockle-shell. How deeply was he involved ? Let us get at some interesting facts.

In the year 1455 the Coquillards were very busy about Dijon, and Jean Rabustel, Procureur- Syndic of Dijon, a nuin evidently as vigorous as the sound of his name, left lesser work in the town and suddenly turned his attention upon them. He routed them out of Dijon, but he did much more t' '!iat. He induced some of them to give « c. He disclosed to the Judges of Dijon

not only the names of over sixty men of all clanei 4

50 Francois Villon

■who were companions of the cockle-shell, but a ■whole literature, or at least a vivid glimpse of it.

Rabustel had managed to get hold of one Perre- net le Fournier, a barber of Dijon. Perrenet had many of the Coquillards among his customers. Perrenet, who must have been a pretty adven- turous individual, not only cut the hair of the Coquillards and trimmed their beards, he drank and gambled, with them, felt his way among them, felt their heads, so to speak, till, finding a head soft enough for his purpose, he extracted its contents. Perrenet always gives me that little shiver which the spider produces on one — the spider that lays its net, catches a fly, and sucks its brains.

Perrenet discovered from his dupes the argot of the Coquillards, he gave Rabustel a list of words from the argot with their equivalents in French, and this list Rabustel laid before the Judges of Dijon. It is still extant in the Archives D^parte- mentales of the C6te d'Or.

You will remember that in the first pages of this book I mentioned the fact that Pierre Levet the publisher produced in the year 1489 an edition of Villon's poems which included six strange ballades written for the most part in a jargon that was quite beyond the power of any man to understand.

They were Greek to Marot, who lived close to Villon's time ; they were equally dark to Auguste Longnon, one of the greatest scholars of recent times ; and they would still be dark to us were it not for Marcel Schwob.

His University Career 51

Marcel Schwob was more than a man, he was a romance. This old white-bearded scholar of the Jewish type, of whom Pierre Champion is the worthy successor and who is shown to us so vividly by Pierre Champion in the nreface of his great work Franqms Villon, sa Vie^et son Temps — this Marcel Schwob, who had devoted his life to the study of Villon amongst other studies, found himself, like Marot, like Gaston Paris, like I^ngnon, and like a dozen more, quite at fault before these six weird old ballades which Pierre Lcvet had included among the poems of Villon.

Marcel Schwob lived in Paris, and away at Dijon lay the archives of the C6te d'Or, dusty, unread, silent yet full of speech. What instinct, what calculation of genius made the old Jewish scholar reach out his hand, so to speak, and open these parchment volumes ? Who can tell ? But he did, and there he found the key to the mystery of the six ballades that sjwke in nn unknown tongue.

That old angular, mediaeval writing of Ralnistel •gave a list of some of the unknown words with which the Ballades were bristling and a translation of them.

The Bidlades were written in the argot of the Coquillards, and Villon, the writer <»f the Ballades, was automatically and at oni*c condenmcd to wear the cockle-shell in his cap.

One might be tempted to nsk whether these six ballades which Pierre Lcvet published under the title of Jargon rt Jobelin were really >^Titten by

52 Francois Villon

Villon or some one ebe. We know that a good deal of matter has been printed under Villon's name without warrant.

The balance of testimony, however, weighs to- wards the fact that Villon %\Tote them. He acknow- ledges in a ballade that is undoubtedly his that he knew the jargon and could talk it. Other ballades undoubtedly written by him and lately discovered shew the stain of the jargon.

And yet these same archives of the C6te d'Or, whilst they link Villon to the Coquillards, do his name a service.

It does not appear on the list of the malefactors drawn up by Rabustel, and yet that list is a long one.

Villon undoubtedly was connected with this society of scoundrels. We ask again, What was the extent of that connection ?

Putting aside all the antiquarians and speaking from my knowledge of the man's mind as revealed by his works, I can answer at once. It was a con- nection that involved part of his time and part of his intelligence. In other words, he was not a continuous and consistent criminal.

WTien you have read all I have to say about him, you will perhaps agree with me in this.

We can scarcely escape from the supposition that Villon formed a connection with this criminal society during his university career, presumably towards the latter end of it, but it would be wrong to imagine that the society he frequented was

II

His University Career 58

entirely that of idle students, and questionable companions, and Coquillards.

One of the most curious things about this extra- ordinary man was the fact that he mixed with the highest and the lowest. He was in " good society.'* We find him dedicating a ballade to Robert d'Estouteville, and who was Robert d'Estoute- ville but the Provost of Paris I He numbered among his friends many notable people, from Guillaume Charriau to Martin Bellafaye, lord of Ferri^res en Boise.

He is making rhymes to-day at the Pomme de Pin or the Mule, and to-morrow, shot out of Paris, he is down south making rhymes at the court of Charles of Orleans.

In Paris he is drinking, to-day, with the Abbesse de Pourras, and to-morrow he is making love to Katherine de Vaucelles.

His position at the University casts a light on all these discrepancies.

Living with old Guillaume Villon, bearing his name, and in the position of his adoptive son, he must have held a very good position both in the eyes of the University and of Paris.

Knowing this, when summing up his university career, one might be tempted to say. Here is a young man with a splendid future before him, what a wastrel to chose the society of thieves, evildoers, and idlers !

Before passing judgment, however, let us con- sider for a moment what the prospect was that

54 Francois Villon

lay before Villon on the day in 1452 when he took his degree of Master of Arts.

The Church, Law, and Medicine lay open before hini.

There is no doubt at all that he could have made a good living in the Church. But the Church of that day was scarcely the field for a mind like the mind of Villon. He who saw the soul of things so clearly and the body of things so forcibly must have seen the Church of his time pretty much as we see it. He preferred to rob it rather than belong to it. Of two bad courses he chose the worse for his prosi)erity's sake, but for his soul's sake who shall say ?

He could have joined the profession of Medicine, in a day when boiled toads and excrement, snake's heads and gibberish, were part and parcel of that wonderful science which, born with all the dis- gusting manners and language of an idiot, has at least learned sense and extreme cleanliness.

He did not become a medical man.

And the Law, which boiled a man and then hanged him, tried men and animals for witchcraft and condemned men to the horrors of the Ch&telet and the mercy of the wheel, seems to have attracted him no more than Medicine or the Church.

So it came about that the degree of Master of Arts was the highest university honour he rose to. He took it in the year 1452, and so severed, at least so far as we are concerned, his connection with the University.

CHAPTER V

HIS FIRST EXILE

Three years of darkness follow that same summer day when Jean Conflans, standing before the register of the Nation of France, gave Villon his certificate of Master of Arts and entered the fact in the register.

Then, of a sudden, the darkness clears away and we see him next in the full light of a summer's evening, on the 5th of June, 1455, seated on a stone under the clock of St. Benoist le Bien Tourn6.

It had been a feast-day, and Villon, who had been assisting at a procession of the Church, had taken his seat to rest himself and talk with two friends — a priest named Gilles and a girl named Isabeau.

Whilst they were talking up came another priest, Philippe Sermoisc by name, accompanied by a friend, Maltre Jean le Mardi.

Philippe had a grudge against Villon, and began to pick a quarrel with him. Villon — according to his own account — tried to soothe the other, and even rose to offer him his seat. But Philip{)e refused

6S

66 Francois Villon

all advances, used some insulting language, and then Villon, in his turn, took fire.

Sermoise drew a dagger from his robe, and Villon not only drew a dagger but picked up a heavy stone.

Then, taking fright, Gilles and Isabeau ran away.

One can see the whole scene — the flying figures of the priest and the woman, and the two men left face to face.

Le 2dardi tried to patch up the quarrel, but Sermoise advanced to the attack and Villon re- treated, whilst Sermoise, striking at him, wounded him in the lip. Villon, striking back, wounded Sermoise so that he fell, and then, to keep him quiet, struck him on the head with the stone which he was still carrying in his right hand.

That last seems a blackguard action, and yet there is no outcry against it from Maitre le Mardi, the friend of the wounded man, and Sermoise would scarcely have forgiven Villon had the latter used foul play. How came the stone into Villon's hands ?

The picking of it up shows, I think, that he was on the defensive, not on the offensive side of the quarrel. You ask me how I would establish this fact, and I reply that as a man of action who has engaged in quarrels, instinct tells me that the man who attacks another man is not likely to add a stone to his armoury at the last moment, whereas the man who is attacked is certain to grasp at any extra weapon.

His First Exile 57

Besides, since the earliest times the stone is the weapon used by man to repel attack — chiefly the attack of wolves and dogs. This fact still lingers in the mentality of men and dogs, and if you wish to prove it, bend down and pretend to pick up a stone the next time you have any trouble with a dog. The most vicious dog must run away before this action of yours, not, primarily, because he fears you, but because he must. His mental clockwork has been constructed so to act through long generations of ancestors with a knowledge of men and the power of stones, and it acts auto- matically.

It is the same with men, and a man alarmed and on the defensive would, most undoubtedly, have acted automatically just as Villon acted.

He was repelling attack.

Leaving Sermoise lying on the ground, he rushed off streaming with blood to the nearest barber to have his wounds dressed.

The barbers of that day were also surgeons, and they must have had their hands full dealing with wounds given and received by desi^eradoes, for they were bound by law to inquire the names of their patients and of the men with whom their patients had been quarrelling.

VUlon gave the name of Michel Mouton, and did not wait to have the name verified. He left Paris almost immediately.

As for Sermoise, they carried him — with the dagger still in the wound — to the Cloister of St.

58 Francois Villon

Benoist and then to the H6tel Dieu, where he died some days later.

His deposition is entirely in favour of Villon having been the defendant in the quarrel. Ser- moise, without declaring himself in the wTong, asked that the affair might l)e let drop, and said that he pardoned the man who killed him.

Sermoise, despite the fact that he drew the quarrel, certainly comes out of the affair l)etter than Villon, or at least in a more heroic manner. But, weighing everything, we can only bring in a verdict of manslaughter against the latter.

The fact that he gave a false name and ran away from Justice is against him. And yet Justice in the year 1455 was a monster so frightful that to run when it was after you must have been an extremely natural act.

Villon left Paris — left the house in the Porte Rouge, its shelter and protection, and vanished into the darkness outside Paris. Where he went to no man knows.

It has been suggested that he took shelter at Bourg la Reine, a town near Paris on the Orleans road. He may have done so, but I suspect he went farther.

He remained in exile seven months, and then he obtained a pardon from the King and returned to Paris.

Stevenson in his essay on Villon turns this pardon about and sniffs at it.

Villon, to make sure, got in reality two pardons —

d

His First Exile 59

one under the style and title of Fran9ois des Loges, otherwise known as Fran9ois Villon, the other under the name of Francois de Montcorbier. There was nothing at all dark or sinister in that. He was always knoMH by those names, and it was only prudent for him to obtain a pardon covering all those names, so that the Law of the time, which had as many teeth as it had letters, should not seize him by one of the tricks inseparable from Law and drag him into the Ch&telet.

To represent this perfectly frank declaration of his aliases as a transaction pointing to shadiness of character is to muddy the clear water of evi- dence, and heaven knows, as regards the life of Villon, the evidence requires clarifying, not thicken- ing.

One thing is certahi. He was pardoned, and he returned to Paris and the shelter of the Porte Rouge in January 1450.

CHAPTER VI

THE BOBBERY AT THE COLLEGE OF NAVARRE

One can fancy Guillaume Villon receiving him that cold January day, and one can fancy some- thing of the life which he took up again in Paris during the next few months — months that formed the turning-point of his career.

One might fancy that the Sennoise affair would have acted as a check on his exuberant nature, did not we know that a check to a nature like this acts often as a dam to a river — the water must go somewhere, and it goes over the fields.

He was always a great person to run after the women, and it seems certain that he ran after one woman in particular this sunomer, Kathcrine de Vaucelles, no less, a girl evidently of good birth and, from what we can gather of her, a cold and unlovable character in a beautiful body.

Had he come across just now one of those creative women, one of those women who by the alchemy that lives alone in love can bend a man's character, even though the bending had been ever so little, she might have saved him from the

00

The Robbery at the College of Navarre 61

catastrophe towards which he was moving and which took place in the following December.

But Katherinc de Vaucelles, incapable of in- spiring the love that saves, was capable of inspiring the lust that ruins.

She raised his desires and rejected his advances, and Villon, in his anger, insulted her in some way. Unable to resist the insult herself, she deputed the business to a very capable person, Noel le Joly, who, Villon admits with charming frankness, beat him as a washerwoman beats the clothes she is scouring.

This beating, though undoubtedly deserved, did not soften his nature or help to turn him to the better things of life, and in the next vivid picture of him that comes to us out of the darkness of the past he is seated in his room at the Porte Rouge writing by the aid of a single candle.

It is near Christmas of the same year 1456,

En ce temps que J'ay dit devant, 8ur le Nott, Moite saiaon.

The wolves are howling at the gates of Paris, the curfew of the Ville and the Cit^ has sounded, but the bell of the Sorbonne has not yet rung the curfew of the University.

The candle, which still shines, and will shine for ever, gives an uncertain light, the ink is nearly frozen in the ink-pot, his fingers are stiff with cold, and he is putting the last touches to the Petit Testament. The LittU Testament^ whicli, in

62 Francois Villon

the course of its forty verses, tells us that, being hard stricken by love and Katherine de Vaueclles, he is leavinjf Paris immediately, gives a list of people to whom he bequeathes parting legacies, and winds up with a grimace at the professors of the University and their jargon.

But the man who is writing the Petit Testament is not quite the same man who killed Philippe Ser- moise a few months ago, nor the same man who was beaten by Noel le Joly a few weeks ago. In the course of the last few days he has become in deed, if not in soul, a criminal. That was the catastrophe at which 1 hinted just now, and it came about like this.

Villon, among all the rest of his acquaintances, bad and good, had a friend named Guy Tabary.

Tabary was a sort of criminal Boswell, and he has this distinction, that he stands perhaps the most clearly defined of all the figures that inhabit the Paris of the Middle Ages.

One can laugh at Tabary still, and he still possesses the power to irritate one. He was a hanger-on of Villon's ; he had copied out with his own hand Villon's first poem, he obeyed Villon's orders, ran on his messages, took bad treatment without a grumble, and was never happier than when he was talking.

A few days ago Villon and three other friends, finding themselves very hard up, and knowing where plenty of money was to l^e had for the taking, decided to take it.

The Robbery at the College of Navarre 68

Villon sent for Tabary, invited him to supper at the Mule Tavern in the Rue St. Jacques quite close to St. Benoist's, and gave him the money to buy the food with.

The supper party took place at about five o'clock, and there sat do-wn to table Villon, Colin de Cayeux (picklock — afterwards hanged), Guy Tabary, Petit Jehan (most likely hanged as well) and Dom Nicholas (a Picardy monk).

After supper they came down the Rue St. Jacques in the direction of the College de Navarre till they reached an unoccupied house belonging to Maitre Robert de Saint-Simon and adjoining the college. They got into the house without any difficulty, and here Villon, Dom Nicholas, Petit Jehan, and Colin de Cayeux stripped themselves of their upper garments, left Tabary to guard the clothes, and, going into the courtyard, climbed over the wall that divided the courtyard from the college pre- cincts, by means of a ladder.

They entered the vestry of the college chapel, and there they found what they sought.

In the gloom, but sufficiently lit up by the thieves* candle, stood a huge iron-lK)und box with four locks. We can sec them standing round whilst Colin de Cayeux, on his knees and with the dex- terity of a surgeon probing a wound, examined the mechanism of the locks with his crochet.

He managed to pick one, and presumably failed with the others, for they were driven to use an iron bar with which they levered up the lid.

M Francois Villofi

Inside they found a small coffer of walnut wood which they easily opened, and there, before their eyes, lay the treasure they had been seeking — five hundred cro>NT>s in gold.

The aumries lay still to their hand waiting to be opened, but their nerves had Ijeen shaken, pre- sumably by the lock-picking difficulties they had encountered, so, dividing up the spoil, they put tilings in order as far as they could, slipped out of the vestry, and regained the empty house where Tabary was waiting for them and guarding their clothes.

They gave Tabary ten crowns and promised him a dinner, and Tabary took his ten crowns without an inquiry or grumble. He was very much of a child, Tabary, as will be seen more especially later on.

Villon was not long in spending his share of the money.

He is sitting to-night finishing his Testament without a sou in his pocket, or at least " with only a little false coin, and even thai will soon be gone 1 '* and the tragic thing is that old Guillaume Villon is sipping his wine or saying his prayers in one of the rooms below, ignorant of the fact that the man in the attic — his adoptive son — is a burglar who has also committed sacrilege.

The Petit Testament at which he is writing to- night is his first poem, or at least the first that has managed to survive.

It shows in its forty verses scarcely anything of

The Robbery at the College of Navarre 65

the greatness of the poet, though much of the humour and cynicism of the man.

Twenty-five years of life — fifteen years of which have been fairly comfortable life under the pro- tection of Guillaume Villon — have produced what ? A complaint about the cruelty of his mistress, a string of jesting legacies, and a sneer at the Univer- sity.

The five years to follow now, five years of exile and hardship interspersed with prison, are to produce the Great Testament, a work different when taken all together from the Little Testament as the sky is from the earth.

As regards the TestamentSy I do not know any critic who has properly pointed out the worth- lessucss of the Little Testament as compared with the Great; whilst many critics lump the two together and so let the stain of the Less con- taminate the worth of the Great — and have left their readers in ignorance of the fact that the difference between the two works is the measure of the growth of a soul.

Let us say a word on this matter.

In all literature there is nothing more interesting, nothing more illuminating, than the difference of the work on which Villon is engaged on this evening towards the Christmas of 1456 and the work he is to produce five years later.

To-night he is writing just as a clever and cynical blackguard might write, and except in the first few verses his tongue is never out of his check. 5

66 Francois Villon

What he is engaged on is well named the Little TeatamenL

What he is to write five years hence will be well named the Great Testament. Having said that much, we will leave the full consideration of his work till we have done with his life.

As he is finishing his writing he hears the clock of the Sorbonne striking nine. It is the curfew of the University, and, putting what he has written away, he blows out the candle and, slipping from the house, makes off through the dark streets to some place where he has appointed a meeting with some of his robber friends.

He is leaving for Angers to-morrow, driven from Paris by a nervous dread of the consequences of the robbery at the College de Navarre and by irritation over his spoilt love-affair, drawn to Angers by the fact that he has a rich uncle there who is a fine mark for robbery. He is going to-night to make the last arrangements with Colin de Cayeux and the other Parisian experts in burglary, who are to follow him to Angers when he has located the treasure.

This is the story as told by Guy Tabary, that eternal cackler, when he was cackling some months later on the leather mattress of the Ch&telet, and under the gentle persuasion of Henri Cousin, the sworn tormentor of Paris.

I am quite willing to believe it, and yet there are dubious points not entirely cleared up.

Who was the uncle, of whom we hear no more ?

The Robbery at tlie College of Navarre 67

and why, if he were going to Angers to commit a felony, did he leave his new address in writing? Then we know that the burglary never took place.

Yet we must believe Guy Tabary, simply because he was such an ass that he would never have invented the story. He was of the genus of fools who always speak the truth.

It may have been that Villon, anxious to escape from Paris and get free from the entanglement of his fellow-criminals without showing the white feather, made up the story of the rich uncle at Angers.

The band he belonged to were making all sorts of new plots and plans, and his prescient mind may have warned him of what was to take place almost immediately in Paris.

However that may be, two facts alone remain — he left Paris, and the uncle at Angers, if he ever lived, was never robl>cd.

CHAPTER VII

WHAT TOOK PLACE IN PARIS AFTER VILLON'S FLIGHT

Scarcely had Villon made his escape from Paris than the redoubtable band to which he belonged set to business.

They had hidden up their work and their traces so well that the robbery at the College of Navarre had not yet been discovered, and was not dis- covered, in fact, till two months after the night of the robbery.

Emboldened by this success, they made an attempt on the Church of St. Mathurin, but dogs gave the alarm and the affair came to nothing.

Shortly after a very daring act was committed. There lived at the Monastery of the August ines a very wealthy cleric named Guillaume Coiffier. In that age every man was his own banker, and Coiffier, though he may have had a lot of money in house property or out at interest, kept a large sum by him in hard cash. He had, besides, some valuable silver plate.

The thieves, by the agency of one of their clerical members, beguiled Coiffier away from his rooms for a few hours, and during the absence stole his

68

What took Place in Paris 69

money and his silver plate. It was this theft, not the robbery at the College of Navarre, that brought destruction to Tabary and the band, as will immediately be seen.

Meanwhile the robbery at the College of Navarre was discovered, and on the 9th of March an inquiry into the business was instituted by Jean Mautaint and Jean du Four at the request of the Faculty of Theology.

The inquiry disclosed nothing, and the whole affair and Villon's connection with it might have remained for ever in darkness but for the inter- vention of a stranger.

This stranger was an old gentleman named Pierre Marchand, the Prior of Paray in the diocese of Chartres, who arrived in Paris on business the 23rd of April, which was — to be exact — the Satur- day before Quasimodo Sunday.

He put up at the Three Chandeliers, and he seems to have amused himself with business not altogether ecclesiastical, for we find him next morning breakfasting at a tavern, the Chaise, situated on the Petit Pont, with — of all people in the world — Guy Tabary I

Of course the venerable Pierre Marchand may have been the most straight-livhtg man in the world ; the fact remains, however, that we find him, a few hours after his arrival in Paris, break- fasting in very strange company. But, let his morals have been what they may, his mentality and almost his (person come to us with an astonish-

70 Francois Villon

ing \'ividncss nnd fireshness. He, like Guy Tabary, was a character. They might both of llicm have stepped into our minds out of the pages of Dumas.

Tabary, flushed with wine and conversation with the jolly, bright-eyed, and rosy-cheeke<l churchman, asked the latter to tell of his adventures on the way to Paris, and, when Pierre Marchand had done, Tabary, the eternal babbler, fired with the desire to tell of his adventures, and having none but discreditable ones to tell — told of them.

Now, Marchand had heard p\\ about Guillaume Coiffier's loss — he was his friend — and he instantly set to work with the wisdom and the wile of a Sherlock Holmes to pump Tabary.

Tabary confessed that he had been imj)rLsoned in the prison of the Archbishop of Paris under suspicion of bcuig a picklock.

On a laugh and wink from Marchand, he waxed bolder, and another glass of wine brought out the fact that he knew all about how these " crochets " were made, these skeleton keys with which a coffer might be opened in a twinkling.

" 3/ordwru/" cries Marchand, " what a man you are ! It*s only in Paris one could come across your sort. With a companion like you a man like myself might get along very well, for between you and me, compere^ those crochets you spoke of, what are they but the keys of Paradise ? — the Paradise of good wine and pretty girls ? You open a box full of gold and then you are in Para- dise. I am not a young man, and I would like to

What took Place in Paris 71

see Paradise before I die — ha ha ! before I die. Help yourself — the bottle is at your elbow — and pass it along. Um — this is a good Beaune, but I know where there is better, just as I know where there is gold enough to buy it. Did I tell you the talc of the bottle of Beaune and the girl from Avignon ? '*

" Pardie ! " says Tabary, exploding over the un- printable tale, " give me a churchman for a good story and a nose for a pretty girl. But this gold you sjwke of ? "

" Safely locked up," says Marchand, " but we might — ^with those crochets of yours you spoke of, and which I would give my eyes to see — we might do something. Produce your keys, Peter, and let's see those ugly and wonderful things that can yet find us so much beauty and pleasure."

" Alas ! " says Tabary, who, by the way, had never confessed to possessing sucli things, but had forgotten that fact, *' I cannot ; I threw mme away."

" Threw them away 1 "

• • For prudence* sake. A little time ago there

was an alarm, and — into the Seine they went."

• • Con/jteor/ " says Marchand, " that was a pity."

" As you say, it was a pity, but what would you have ? The Seine tells no tales. But though my crochets are gone, there are others to be found in Paris ; and if all the crochets in Paris were to be sent to Seine mud, why, little Thil^ud would make crochets as good again in a trice, just as quick as he could mdt a chalice."

72 Francois Villoyx

'* Tliis Thihaud is a goldsmith then ? "

• ' Goldsmith and locksmith both. The bottle is

empty — I'll pay."

• ' Put your money away. Respect the orders of

the Church, my son. Landlord, ho 1 there — an- other bottle. Well, all this you have been saying is very interesting — ^and I wish I were a younger man."

• ' Young ! why, age is nothing, and you, I dare

swear, you are as hearty as the best of us." Marchand shakes his head.

• ' Not on the legs, my son ; but in the head, well,

in the head I have some strength in me left, and

if ever we become companions "

" But we are companions," cries the wine- flushed Tabary, " and never have I met a bottle companion to beat you — ^and you must know the others. Pardieu! you must know the others."

And so it comes about that Marchand makes an appointment to meet Guy Tabary at the Pomme de Pin tavern in the Rue de la Juiverie in the Cit6 on the morrow.

Accordingly, on the morrow they meet at the Pomme de Pin and have sundry drinks together. Properly warmed, they start off to meet the others who are in the precincts of Notre Dame, not for piety's sake, but for the sake of sanctuary.

They have escap)ed from prison, in fact, and have bolted like rabbits to the shelter of the great cathedral, under whose shadow they are safe from the Law.

What took Place in Paris 73

How the old ecclesiastic turned detective must have licked his chops when Guy jx)inted out to him the knot of young blackguards, five in number, conversing together, their thumbs in their girdles, beneath the solemn stone efiigies of Chilperic and King Pharamond.

" Look," says Guy, " that little fellow with the long hair, he is the strongest of the lot, and there is not his equal in Paris at cracking a coffer open. That's Thibaud."

He introduces Marchand, and Thibaud and his companions bow and are very civil; but, clever as the Prior of Paray may be, he can get nothing definite out of them.

You see, they are not fresh from a tavern like Tabary, and have not experienced the pleasure of the Prior of Paray's seductive conversation and smutty tales ; they do not know, as Tabary knows, what a really good sort he is, and so they are rather reserved.

Tabary feels that his friend has fallen rather flat ; he takes him off, and into another tavern they go.

It is not in the chronicles that they went into a tavern after leaving Notre Dame, but they most certainly did, and here Tabary made amends for the silence of his confederates. He told everything he knew about himself and his companions, of burglaries completed and burglaries, so to speak, in the egg.

He told of a scheme in hand to rob another rich Augustine monk, a bibliophile named Robert de la

74 Francois Villon

Portc, and, the Prior of Paray promising to help, shook hands on the bargain.

The robbery, for some reason or the other, did not come off.

Something alarmed the gang. Someone — Thi- baud for choice — took fright at this churchman firom the provinces who was so anxious to add to his income by burglary, and the gang, like a flock of evil birds, prepared for flight.

Marchand, no less alarmed lest they should escape from the net which he had constructed and which was just about to close, went straight to the Ch&telet and made his deposition.

But he was too late. When the Law started to seize the robbers, they were not to be found. They had left Paris.

But Tabary had done his work. His foolishness had betrayed every member of the gang, Fran9ois Villon included.

Tabary did not remain long at large. He was caught on the 25th of June, 1458, and thrown into prison. He admitted a number of thuigs and denied others, but finished by making a clean breast of the whole business.

They did not hang Tabary. The College of Navarre was too anxious to get even part of its money back, and Tabary's poor old mother came to hb rescue.

She arranged with the College to pay tiiein back fifty 6cus in gold, the said sum to be payable in two lots.

What took Place in Paris 75

She finished the payment in the next year, and Tabary was set at liberty. Then, as now, it was the woman that paid, and as for Tabary, we hear nothing more of him.

Let us finish with Villon's other companions now and at once. We know the fate of at least two — Montigny and Colin de Cayeux. Whilst all these things had been happening in Paris, Jean Uabustel, as we know already, hud been busy rooting out the Coquillards of Dijon, and in the list of malefactors which he drew up appeared the name of Regnier de Montigny, Villon's friend, to whom in the Petit Testament he leaves a jesting legacy of dogs.

Just as Tabary rcmauis the most human of the band with which Villon is associated, so is Mon- tigny the most sinister. He undoubtedly had a profound effect on Villon and deserves a word as to his life and death.

Montigny was the son of Jean de Montigny, Elu de Paris, and of Colette de Canlers, daughter of Jacques de Canlers, sccrctiiry to the King. He was allied to half a duzen of the best families and seems to have gone wrong from the very first. He had committed numerous robberies and thefts ; he had against him grim evidence {)ointing to the fact that he had murdered a man named Th6venin Pcnsete who lived in the HOtel du Mouton near the Cemetery of St. John, and he was seized on this charge by the Provost of Paris in the summer of 1457.

76 Franfoia Villon

He was condemned to death.

His relations, disgusted, shamed, and i)erhaps glad to be rid of him, did nothing; his sister Jeanne, the wife of Robert Chartrain, alone made an appeal for him.

She was enceinte, and she implored the King, Charles VII, to grant Regnier a pardon for the sake of her child yet unborn. That appeal, which has not been unused in our days, coming to us from the darkness of the Middle Ages, links the present with the past as no work or creation of man can link them. It gives us some faint hint, also, of the stir the affair must have made, of the consultations between the relatives, the wagging of heads in sombre, tapestried rooms over this mauvais ordure Regnier, pale women listening behind the arras, and children quieted by the sense of disaster.

Charles VII listened to Jeanne's appeal, granted letters of mercy, and commuted the penalty to a year's imprisonment and a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Jacques de Compostelle.

But the Law was very much in earnest over Regnier.

It pointed out that the letters of mercy made no mention of the most serious of the charges against the condemned. Parliament pushed the King's pardon aside, and Regnier de Montigny was hanged at Montfaucon on a gibbet which ever after bore his name.

We hear nothing more of Jeanne and her unborn

What took Place in Paris 77

son ; the waters of time close over the affair, leaving nothing visible but a bit of wreckage.

As to Colin de Cayeux, who escajjed with the rest of the band when the Prior of Paray had sprung the alarm, he wandered about the Provinces for a good while associating with the Coquillards. We find him now at Montpippcau, now at Ueule — see Villon's Belle Leqon de Villon aux Enfans Perdus — and now we find him at Senlis, seized by the Pro- vost of Senlis in the C hurch of St. Leu d'Esserent.

Colin had always clung to his tonsure, and when they carried him off to Paris and imprisoned him in the Conciergeric, the Church, in the form of the Bishop of Senlis and the Bishop of Beauvais, tried to reclaim the tonsured one and wrest him from the clutches of the civil law.

But the Law was firm, refused to recognise a churchman in a thief, and Colin was hanged and strangled — pendu et HrangU — on the 2Cth of Sep- tember, 1460.

And what became of the Prior of Paray, who so cleverly had betrayed the confidence of Guy Tabary, broken up the band, and condemned so many to exile and death ?

Who knows ? But, wherever he went, he re- mains the most curious and one of the most inter- esting figures of all those associated with the life of Fran 9018 Villon.

CHAPTER VIII

VILLON BEGINS HIS WANDERINGS

When Villon dried the ink of the Petit Testament^ bade goodbye to his bad companions, and started on foot for Angers, he little knew how much walking there was before him, and that his short visit to the country was to last for five very long years.

Without any manner of doubt the robbery at the College of Navarre was his travelling com- panion, and for miles and miles along the Anjou road, after he had left the gates of Paris behind him, horse-hoofs following, or a sudden hail, would make him turn with a very special liveliness.

The act he had committed possessed a vileness all its ovm. The College of Navarre was his own college, he knew the ins and outs of the place, and it was this knowledge that had enabled him to bring the affair to a successful issue.

It was, besides, his first step in crime, and the echo of it must have sounded portentously loud in the silence of the country. He little knew that the point from which retribution was to strike him was not Paris, but Paray away in the diocese of

78

Villon begins his Wanderings 79

Chartres, where, just now, a venerable ecclesiastic named Marchand was, no doubt, talking to his housekeeper of his forthcoming visit to the capital.

He little knew that what he had to fear was not the robbery he had helped to commit at the College of Navarre, but the robbery by his companions of Coi flier's gold pieces and silver plate — a robbery which, though as yet uncommitted, was to bring down on him all the consequences following the College of Navarre business.

One is tempted to put the book on one's knee and fall into a reverie for a moment over this lesson that comes to us from the remote past — a lesson which teaches us, among other things, the zig-zag method in which destiny works.

One afternoon, having outwalked his fears, and feeling himself a thousand miles from the College of Navarre and its menace, Villon saw, sketched before him on the horizon, spindle-shaped towers, spires, and roof-tops sending their trace of smoke to the winter sky. It was Angers. As he drew closer he could have picked out the roofs of the Uni- versity — for Angers was a university town — above the machicolated guarding wall, and the towers of King Rent's Palace near the University ; for Angers was also a royal residence, and at this moment it held among its residents one of the most interesting royal figures in History — Rend of Anjou, or to give him his other title, Rcnatus I.

King Rend at this moment was a man getting on

80 Francois Villon

in life. He was bom in 1409, and succeeded his brt>ther Louis III as Duke of Anjou and Count of Provence. In the late wars he had lost the terri- tories of Anjou and Maine to the English, but his daughter having married Henry VI of England, they were now returned to him.

On the restoration of peace Rend, a huge man, bluff and powerful, a great fighter, a lover of jousts and tourneys, hawking and hunting, dis- closed his real nature, or at least a strange part of it.

This enormous barbarian with the face of a gladiator had already, down in Provence, shown himself keenly interested in very practical matters. He had interested himself in encouraging the glass- factories and woollen industry, and it was he who first introduced the Muscatel grape into Provence. He was a keen agriculturist, and had a passion for tree-i)lanting.

But on the cessation of the English wars, Ren6, as I have said, disclosed a new side of his mind. The warrior Ren6 vanished, and there appeared in his stead a charming and curious character : a man of culture, a collector and lover of old books, china, glass, tapestrj', and all the delightful things that make life worth living ; a poet, or at least a writer of elegant verse ; and a philosopher who discovered in his time what we are beginning to discover — ^the charm of the simple life.

This delightful King, whom one grieves never to have known, would forsake his palace for the

ii

Villon begins his }Va7i(lcnngs 81

fields, and there in the pleasant country of Anjou, by the banks of the river, under the blue sky of spring he would lead the simple life dressed as a shepherd, now fishing in the river, now holding sylvan fStes, and now scribbling his verses that even still hold some faint echo and perfume of those April days.

Ren^ had, however, the defects of his qualities, and despite his love for the simple life he seems to have spent a great lot of money on his collections, his feasts, his jousts and his tournaments, and he seems to have squeezed his subjects to obtain the money. However, at this distance of time the complaints of these folk reach our ears as little as the groaning of the builders of the Pyramids. Ren6 remains, and we doubt whether his subjects could have spent their money better than in helping to construct for us that delightful figure.

At first sight it seems surprising that Villon, the greatest poet of his time, should not have struck up a friendship with the King, who seems to have collected poets just as he collected books. The mystery disappears, however, if we examine the matter more fully.

The man who arrived in Angers in the January of 1457 was not Villon the poet, still to show him- self, but Villon the author of the Petit Testament, the cynical, scoundrelly ex-student of the Paris University, to whom wine and women were every- thing, to whom the verses of the poets of his time were of no more interest than the babbling of a 6

82

Francois Villon

brook, and collections of tapestry and glass of little more significance than algebra to a footpad : on entirely human and material person who could never rise to the contemplation of lilies, but who was yet to sing of the sorrows, the humours, and the frailty of man.

This i^erson was little likely to shine at the court of King Ren^ the dilettante.

So far as we can make out, he never even entered it.

CHAPTER IX

HE LEAVES ANGERS

We know absolutely nothing of Villon's stay in Angers. We can guess, however, that some whis- per of what happened in Paris that April reached him through his friends the Coquillards and drove him still farther from tlie capital. We only know that he left Angers and started on a wandering journey that lasted for five years, and that the sufferings to which he afterwards referred in the verses of the Great Testament were almost cer- tainly endured during this part of his life.

In the Little Testaitient, which he left l)ehind him before starting on this momentous pilgrimage, we find him full-blooded, jocular, cynical, and full of the impudence of youth. In the Great Testament we find him old, broken-down, with a voice like a rook, '* spitting white," physically done for, yet immense in mind and spirit.

What were the incidents of this strange journey that had such a wonderful effect on his soul and body, and what was the country like through which he travelled ?

83

Si Francois Villon

It is twenty-six years since that year 1481 in which in the first pages of this book wc stood on the road looking at the old French chateau. The wars have died away, the wolves have retreated uito the woods, and armed bands no longer destroy the flocks. The tide of life has begun to flow again between village and town, and to^\Ti and city, but danger has not vanished nor has mistrust disappeared. There are robbers everywhere, and the Coquillards, despite Rabustcl and his kind, are flourishing.

Mendicants Avith jmintcd sores, such as the one we meet with in the Cloister and the Hearth, gipsies, stealers of children, and cheats, are everywhere. Among these we have real pilgrims, monks, honest merchants, lords travelling in state, and bands of players of mysteries — ^wandering actors at whom Villon hints in his ballade of Good Advice — and, far pleasanter than these, and also sketched for us by the hand of Villon, jugglers and wandering singers, the great-great-grandfathers of Murgcr's Bohemians, people who live from hand to mouth, without thought of the morrow :

Danoen, and jugglers that turn the wheel Needle-sharp, quick as a dart, each one Voiced like the bells 'midst the hills that peal.

Singers who sing without law thdr lay. Laughing and jovial in words and ways. Feather-brained folk, yet always gay. Who run without coin good or bad their race.

He leaves Angers 85

We see them sketched by the master-hand, just as we see the mystery-players sketched by the self- same band :

Song, jest, oymbalfl, lutos, Don these signs of minstrelsy. Farce, imbroglio, play of flutes Make in hamlot or city. Act in play or mystery. Gain at cards or ninopin-hurls All your profits, where go they ? All on taverns and on girls.

Among this crowd, now dropping a word of argot to a Coquillard, now chumming witli the Hght folk, the feather-brained, harmless ephemerae of life, pushed aside by the pages and horsemen of some passing lord, begging, feasting, starving, and laughing, we see the figure of Villon, now in the gutter, now in prison, now at court.

We catch echoes of this extraordinary wander- ing in the verses of the Great Testament. He found time and means to have love-affairs. lie lifts the veil with the tip of his finger and two charming girls peep at us from the ninety-fourth verse of the Great Testament. Girls very fair and kindly, living at St. Gcnou near St. Julian des Voventcs — or in the Marches of Brittany or Poitu.

He drops the veil and they vanish. He has not even given us their right address.

At nights he would sometimes put up at one of those places of rest, half farms, half inns, whicli Charles Reade has so ably pictured ; and if he had

86 Francois Villon

not the money to pay for a lodging, there were always the fields.

The wanderings of Villon fill Ihc imagination with all sorts of pictures, but of the facts we have very little knowledge, and it is now time to marshal the few facts that are indisputable.

CHAPTER X

HIS VISITS TO MOULINS

The Duke of Bourbon, a good fellow and a patron of the arts, lived at that time and kept his court at Moulins.

We can see Moulins still. If you go to Paris and call at the Biblioth^que Nationale, you can see its representation in an old drawing (Bibl. Nat. fr. 22297, fol. 869), a tiny walled city with spindle towers fretting the sky, a gate, a draw- bridge, and a moat.

With its ducal castle, drawbridge, spindle towers, and its weather-cocks all twirling in the winds of spring, Moulins shows itself again. The artist has not even forgotten the ducks on the moat, and one can almost hear the cocks crowing across these crenellated walls that contain the houses like a great pic-crust.

It was here that Villon presented himself. He passed over that drawbridge, visited the kindly duke in the castle, and did his business.

He came for money.

To beg ? O dear me, no— just to borrow. 87

88 Francois Villon

The duke gave him six 6cus, and off he started again on his wanderings.

He soon spent the money, and later on, remem- bering the HberaHty of Monsieur de Bourbon, he returned to Moulins on the quest of another loan.

Taking his seat in some tavern of the town, he called for pen, ink, and paper, and wrote a letter to the Duke — a letter in the form of a ballade. Here it is.

[Original Frtnck\ LA IV IE QUE VILLON BAILLA A

N m;neur de bourbon*

Le mien seigneur et prince redoubt^, Fleuron de Lys, royale geniture, Fran^oys Villon, que travail a domptd A coups orbes, par force do batture, Vous eupplie, par cette humble eecripture. Que luy faciee quelque gracious prest. De s'obliger en toutes cours est prest ; 8i ne doubles que bien ne vous contente. Sans y avoir dommage n'interest, Vous n'y perdrec aeulement que I'attente.

A prince n'a ung denier emprunt^,

Fors k vous seul, vostre humble Cloture.

Des six escus que lui avez presto

Cela pi^^a, il mist en nourriture ;

Tout se payera ensemble, c'eet droicture,

Hais ce aera li6g^rement et prest :

Car, se du gland rencontre en la forest

D'entour Patay, et chastaignee ont vente,

Pay4 seres sans delay ny arrest :

Voua n'y perdres seulement que Tattonte.

' Jean n, died in 1487.

II is Visits to Moulins 89

Si je pensois vendre do ma sant^ A itng Lombard, usurier par nature, Fanlte d'argent m*a si fort enchant^, Que ]*eo prendrois, ce croy-jo, I'mlvonture. Ajngent ne peod k gippon no ceincture ; BecMi aire Dieux I je m'osbahyz que c'eet. Que devant moy oroix ne se comparoist, Sinon de bois ou pierro, quo ne monte ; Mais s'une fols la vrayo m'apparoist, Vous n'y perdres seulement quo I'attente.

ENVOI

Prince du Lys, qui k tout bien complaist. Que cuydez-vous comment il me deeplaist, Quand je ne puis venir k mon entente ! Bien m'entendes, aydez-moi, s'il vous plaist Vous n'y perdrec seulement que I'attente.

[Translation] THE REQUEST TO MONSIEUR DE BOURBON

Seigneur and prince redoubtable, givo oar.

Flower of the lily, child of royalty.

For Franfois Villon, who has learned to bear

The bruises bom of boating, speaks to thee ;

This humble writing tells his poverty,

And in it for a loan request is laid ;

His thanks before all courts shall then be said

To thee — and shouldst thou not his plaint refuse.

The sum in full, with int<<ro8t, nhnll bo paid ;

Nought but the time in waiting wilt thou lose.

Of other prince no denier, that I swear. Have I thine humble creature had in foe ; The ax 6ous you hcmdod to me were All q>ent in food, not in frivolity, AU shall be paid together preMoUy, If in the woods of Patay, in mom glade, Acoms be found for sale, or oheetnute made Into a profit whore folk buy and ohooee. AU shall be paid in full, be not afraid ; Nooi^t but the time in waiting wilt thou lose.

90 Franfois Villon

If I oould aoll the health I hold so doar

Unto a Lombard bom in u«ury,

To that extreme adventure I would near

Be brought by want of food and penury ;

In bolt or puree no denier clings to mo,

Dear God I the wonder makes me half-dismayed.

No cross I see in sunshine or in shade.

Save those of wood or stone — I do not gloze ;

Yet, if to me the true cross be displayed,*

Nought but the time in waiting wilt thou loee.

ENVOI

Prince of the Lily, all whose deeds are weighed By mercy, guess my grief at having strayed 80 far from that intent these lines disclose ; I wait me thy decision, having prayed ; Nought but the time in waiting wilt thou lose.

What the result was no man knows — ^most prob- ably another loan, to be repaid when Villon sold the chestnuts he gathered in the woods of Patay.

However that may be, we love the ballade, the only promissory note that Time has honoured.

> The cross on the silver coins of the day.

CHAPTER XI

HE VISITS THE DUKE OF ORLEANS

Villon paid two visits to the court of Charles of Orleans at Blois. At the time of Villon's visits to him Charles would have been a man well advanced in years. The son of Louis dc Valois, Duke of Orleans, he had been brought up in a court where prose was used for the direction of servants, conversation about ordinary affairs, and the settlement of household accounts, whilst verse seems to have been the real medium for the exchange of thought.

Nothing is more astonishing than this fever for rhyme which filled the minds of the men and women of this age, where court ladies exchanged thoughts in rondels and soldiers flung ballads at each other's heads, where men took one another's reputations away in chansonettes and fought duels with adjectives, where everywhere you find twisted phrases and hardly anywhere honest thought. It was no wonder, then, that Charles, who was born with a teeming fancy but no imagina- tion, fell a victim to the malady of his time and expended a vast amount of energy on rhyming.

91

92 Francois Villon

Yet the life of this man without imagination had the food in it for many volumes of Romance.

At fifteen years of age he was unhappily married to a girl of seventeen, Isabella, the widow of King Riehard II of England.

There was something of comedy as well as tragedy in this marriage which made it a fit pre- lude to the tragi-comedy of Charles's life.

A little more than a year after his marriage his father, Louis of Orleans, was assassinated by his old enemy John, Duke of Burgundy. A more hateful and brutal murder it would be hard to conceive, or a more disastrous. It threw France into civil war.

We see Charles at the head of his ill-guided troops always trying to get at John, Duke of Burgundy, and John — otherwise called the Fear- less — always getting the better of Charles, without crushing him.

When the parents of Villon were young, chil- dren of humble parents and therefore exposed to all the ruinous consequences of civil war, France, with a mad king on the throne, was l^eing deci- mated by the wars between these dukes, one a ruffian and a murderer, the other the son of the murderer's victim.

Town fought town, and the cry of "The Bur- gundians are at the gates " would clear the streets more effectively than the cry of " wolves." Babies without mothers, children without food, families homeless, homes roofless, corpses festering

lie visits the Duke of Orleans 93

in the ditches, all proclaimed for five long years to the patient skies that civil war was in the land.

And when we contemplate Jolm the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, and consider the devastation that can follow on the act of one ruffian man, we are driven to formulate a new code of morality as regards the attitude of the people as against the body and person of the man who, holding power, pre- sents his will in opposition to the commonwealth.

It is from the individual man that most uni- versal miseries arise.

Charles, feeling himself unable to cope with the Burgundians, calls in the Armagnacs to his aid and makes an alliance with Bernard d'Armagnac, who takes supreme command, and so the war goes on with redoubled fury, the war of madmen against madmen with an end signifying nothing.

For Charles is not touched, and John of Bur- gundy is not touched, peace is concluded, but no man may count the number of the slain.

But Charles, though unsuccessful, comes out of the business like a gentleman and a warrior ; despite his passion for making rhymes and all his weaknesses, he can fight, and wc next find hira fighting the English and leading his troops in the thick of the battle at Agincourt some fifteen years before the birth of Villon.

Taken prisoner at Agincourt, he was conveyed to England, and there he remained a prisoner for five-and-twenty years. Five-and-twenty years is a terribly long time when measured against human

94 Franfois Villon

life. He wns taken prisoner fifteen years before the birth of Villon, and when Villon was ten years of age Charles of Or!(^*ans w;is being released from captivity.

He had been well treated by the English, but prison had not enlarged his mind, and when Villon met him for the first time Charles was a gentle- man of over sixty, grey-haired and hard of hear- ing, and saddened by the knowledge that he had passed the best days of his life in captivity.

It is a strange coincidence that whilst Ren6 of Anjou was an exponent of the modem idea, the simple life, Charles of Orleans in his later years would have been a fit president of a peace con- ference at The Hague. He had seen war and weighed it and found it wanting. And he said so.

This kindly and rather deaf old gentleman, rather narrow, too, and very much of a prince, was scarcely the person to draw out the robust genius of Villon, or to appreciate it were it drawn out.

We have little evidence of the effect that the one produced on the other, but we have material for forming a vivid mind-picture of that strange court at Blois where Villon found himself during the course of his wanderings.

Sitting on the little hill of Bon Bee, to-day, with all Touraine spread before one under the pleasant spring weather, one can see the past as only the setting of Nature can show it to us.

The^apple^blossoms are blowing in the closes just

He visits the Duke of Orlians 95

as they blew on that day when the Vidame de Chart res captured their beauty in his verse, and the Loire is flowing just as then from its home in the heart of the Cevennes ; the Castle of Blois on its hill, away over there, still dominates the land, which, save for that puff of smoke on the railway from Tours, is just the same, when seen from a distance, as the land which Charles of Orleans knew and loved.

The charm of spring lies in its antiquity, all tliis freshness carries in its heart the call of immemorial ages, and, to-day, up here, across that distance and the silence and azure of April, come the songs and sounds that were fresh as now at the building of Orleans and the birth of Pharamond.

Beneath us lies the Ballade country. The far- billowing foliage, the fields, the flowing river, Orleans a trace in the distance, Chambord mirror- ing its towers in the waters of the Loire, and all the ch&teaux of Ch&teaux-land, and all the poetry of Ballade-land half seen, half guessed, half heard.

It was here that Villon came, dusty and sore- footed along that road lying by that clump of woods. We can fancy him turning that comer from which you get so good a view of the town of Blois and the castle above it.

He came along that road, and, for myself, I believe he came in company ; semi-attached to one of those strolling bands of actors and mystery- players at which he hints in his ballades.

One can scarcely imagine him attacking that

96 Francois Villon

castle alone. It is hard enough to imagine him there, in whatever way he reached it.

Not that poverty or poor clothes would have daunted him, for the hero of the Repues Franches would have found means to cover himself decently, or that socially he would have found himself out of place, for we have splendid evidence to show us tliat in Paris he had mixed in good society. It is the intellectual Villon that we find difficulty in fitting into the court society of Charles of Orleans.

Villon was many things, but one thing he was not — a rhymer. Yet he managed to hold his own amid the rhymers of Blois. On his first visit the coloured and perfumed jjcople of the court of Blois were deeply engaged in constructing a ballade on the line —

I die of thirst beside the fountain's edge,

and Villon who had all his life been dying of thirst beside the fountain's edge, managed to do so again in verse. This is it :

[Original French]

BALLADE VILLON*

Je meurs de soif auprds de la fontaino, Chauld comrae feu, ot tremble dent k dent, En men pais suis en terre loingtaine ; Lee un brazier fri^onne tout ardent ; Nu comme ung ver, vestu en president ;

> Ballade eompot6e sur un aujet et avec un refrain donnia par le due d'OrUans. Le manuscrit des poitiea de ce prince contient onze autre* baUadea faitea A la mime occaaion par onze poetca i aa cour.

He visits the Ditke oj Orleans 97

Je ris en pleurs ei atteoB Mma eqpair ; Confort rcprans en triste deaespoir ; Je m'eajouys et n'ay plaisir aucun ; Puiasant je suis sans force et Bans povoir ; Bien recueilly, d^bout^ de chascun.

Rien no m'est sear que la chose incertaine; Obecur, fon ce qui est tout evident ; Doubte ne fais, fora en choee certaine ; Science tiens & soudain accident ; Je gaigne tout, et demeure perdant ; Au point du jour, diz : " Dieu vous doint bon soir ! " Giaant envers, j'ay grant paour de cheoir ; J'ay bien de quoy, et si n'en ay pas un ' ; Eachotcto attens,' et d'homme ne suis hoir ; Bien recueilly, d6bout6 de choacun.

Do hena n'ny Hoiup, si tiK tz t'uifo ina pnine D'acqu^rir binis, c t n'y sui.s prottmiaiU ; Qui mioulx mo dit, o'cut oil qui plus ni'attaiiie,* Et qui plus vray, lors plus me va bourdunt ; Mon ami est qui mo fait entendant D'ung cygno blanc que c'est img corbeau noir ; Et qui me nuyst croy qu'il m'aide h povoir. V^rit^, bourdo, aujoiu-d'huy m'ost tout un. Jo rotieos tout, riens ne s^uy concepvoir ; Bien recueilly, ddbout^ de chascun.

L' ENVOI

Prinoe olemeot, or vooa pUiM Mvoir Quo j'entena moult, et n'ay ubdm no a^avoir ; Paroial auia, 4 toutes lota commun. Que faia je plus T Quoy t Lea gaigea ravoir, Bien recueilly, d6bout^ de chaacua.

• Not * aoa.

•. I wait wieoaMJon.

• Woonda me.

98 Francois I'illon

[TrantUxtion]

BALLADE VILLON

( Composed at the Court of Charles of OrUans at some time between the year* 1460 and 1461)

Beaide the fountain's odgo of thirst I die, I bum like flame with teeth a-chattering. In my own country far from home I lie. Beside the brazier I am shivering. Worm>naked I am clothed like any king, I laugh in tears, wait though no hope is here. Take comfort in the midst of blank despair. Enjoy myself, though pleasures have I none ; Wield power, thoiigh no sign of strength I wear ; Am well receivod, and kicked by every one.

Of nought I'm sure except uncertainty,

The thing obscures my only cloar-soon thing,

I only doubt the truth in clarity,

My learning is what accident may bring.

1 win all, yet remain without winning.

Give you good night at point of morning fair,

Stretched on my bock I dread to fall down stair.

Have goods in plenty, yot no sou I own.

Await succession though I'm no man's heir ;

Am well received, and kicked by every one.

I have no need of anything, yet I

Sedc wealth, though unto wealth no claim I bring.

Who praise me T they who do me injury ;

Who speak me truth T ev'n they whose jeers most

My friend is he who makes me see on wing

White swans like blackest crows that fly in air.

Who works me ill I hold for me hath care,

Troth and a lie seem equal 'neath the sun.

Vva memory-full, yet of conception bare ;

Am well received, and kicked by every one.

He visits the Duke of Orleans 99

ENVOI

Prince, I would ask you in your mind to bear I'hnt much I know, yet have of sense no share ; I st-and apart, though of the common nm, I ask my wage nor other wish declare ; Am well received, and kicked by every one.

It is where intellect touches everyday life that we fail to join him with the people of Blois. Those long days that held nothing but pageantry and play, peacocks strutting on the grassed terraces, ladies and lords as akin to real and strenuous life as the lords and ladies in tapestry, playing chess, flirting, ballade-making, scandal-mongering, a court convulsed by the arrival of a dwarf or a juggler, thought as false as the rhymes conveying it were perfect — all this was an exceeding strange surrounding for the man who had killed Sermoisc, who had robbed the College of Navarre, who had slept under hedges, and to whose genius the real stuff of life was as food and drink. It is a true thing to say that the greatest poet of France was more in his |)oetieal element when giving a leg- up to a burglar than when giving a rhyme to a lady at a court where verse was the speech of the courtiers.

The burglary was a bit of life, and life alone could inspire Villon, who drew into his verse the soul of the crust he ate, the mother who bore him, the rojic that swung for him, the bottle he sucked from ; who lived by the vitality of common things — the only earthly immortals.

100 Francois Villon

Sitting here lo-day, throned above the Ballade country, we can realise to the full how close to the real life of man Villon stood, for in all that country around us we can see nothing of him. The butter- flies and birds and bees say nothing of him, and the wind over the tree-tops nothing.

They are the pretty occasional dialogue in an intense play, absolutely unessential to the action. If you doubt my word, read Villon.

Yet, to-day, they seem the whole play, and the M'hole business of the play. The lark unlocks doors of an impossible heaven, the blue, blue sky reveals nothing of the black, black sky l^eyond. Orleans, speaking with the voices of the thrush and the cuckoo, says, " I am a fairy city " ; Tours, across leagues of beauty, " There is no sorrow here." Blois unlocks the gates of her castle and the pages troop down to receive Baudet Ilarcnc, to note whose coming the ladies are peepuig from the terrace walls.

Imagination can do anything here, and paint anything — but Villon.

CHAPTER XII

HE REACHES TIIE CASTLE OF THE OGRE (1461)

About twelve miles over there from Blois the towii of Meung lies on the right bank of the Loire. It is hidden from here by that rise in the ground where tlie trees a month later will have completed their summer dress and will show a dome of verdure curved like a woman's breast.

That little town whieh we cannot see was des- tined to be the last stage in Villon's wanderings before he returned to Paris.

lie had met many jjeople on his jounicy, jugglers, thieves, priests, honest folk — all the mixed and moving population of the roads. He had visited the Duke of Bourlx)n at Moulins, the Duke of Orleans at Blois ; he had been driven, for some reason or other, as far as Roussillun ; he had slept under the sky and under a palace roof, in the prison of OrK*ans, and no doubt in other prisons as well ; but he was now, in the last summer of his pilgrimage, to meet such a man as he had never met before.

Thibault d'Aussigny was at that moment Bishop of Orleans. He was a man of tremendous force of character, hardness, and cruelty.

101

102 Francois ViUon

Not the cruelty that tortures for pleasure, but the cruelty of the righteous man who has no heart. He was a strict disciplinarian, a man with as much bowels as a cathedral, with a will that broke down all the formidable obstacles that barred him from his bishopric, and a hand that bowed the necks of many men and all but broke the body of Villon.

You will find many Thibault d'Aussignys in the world still, diluted, and without the power for oppression enjoyed by this ogre of the Church of the Middle Ages, and I hate the type so intensely that I would willingly bring forward any evidence I could find agamst Thibault's character. But to be strictly just, his character seems to have been good. He clutched hard at money and power, but he did well by the Church, according to his lights ; he introduced order into the monasteries of his diocese, and we cannot find any trace of wine and women in his private history.

If we could, we might perhaps feel more kindly towards him, for there is nothing more repellent than righteousness turned to stone.

Thibault, leaning from his tower, seized Villon by the scruff and dropped him into a pit in the Tour de Manasses of the gaol of Meung, and we do not know in the least what Villon had done to deserve this treatment. The Ahh6 Patron, with- out any foundation, apparently, supposed that it was because of a robbery committed in the church of Baccon. Pierre Champion suggests that it might have been in consequence of a robbery com-

He reaches the Castle of the Ogre 103

mitted at Montpipeau by Colin de Cayeux. The whole thing is dark, dark as the pit into which Villon was dropped by the hand of Thibault.

It has been supposed that Villon was imprisoned in a lower chamber of the Tour de Manasses. But the testimony of Villon does not speak of a lower chamber but of a pit.

He asks, in his ballade crying for mercy, to be lifted out in a basket. A man in a lower chamber does not require to be lifted out in a basket.

He was imprisoned in a pit so dark that, to use his o>\'n words, he could not even see the lightning of a thunderstorm, so close that no breath of air ever stole to him ; he had neither stool to sit nor bed to lie on, and nothing to eat but bits of dry bread flung down to him by his gaolers.

Close your eyes and think for a moment of the sanitation, of the vermm, of the darkness by day and night, of the damp, and cold, and heat, and fumes of this infernal place maintained by a churchman for the punishment of fellow-men.

Contrast the robber in the pit with the bishop in the palace. Villon later on hi his Testament hopes that God will treat Thibault as Thibault treated Villon. With all his matchless gift of language he could not have cursed Thibault in a more terrible manner.

And the imprisonment lasted, not for a day or for a week, but for three long months.

Poor Villon 1 No man loved a good dinner better than he, and few men have been served so

104 Francois Villon

badly by Fate in this respect. His cliicf grumble against Thibault was on the score of food, or, rather, of want of food. He was starved, and the strange thing is, that as he lay starving in the pit of Meung, the man whose death was to bring him deliverance was starving at Mehun-sur-Yevre, and that man was Charles VH of France. It is also curious and intercstmg to note that, when Thibault had been elected to the Bishopric of Orl6ans in 1447, Charles had opposed his election, having a candi- date of his own, Pierre Bureau, arid that Thi})ault of the iron will, nothing daunted, had stuck to his position in face of King and Pope. Charles uncon- sciously was to bend the will of Thibault. I have said he was dying of starvation ; the monomania had seized him that his children had conspired to poison him ; he refused food, and died of exliaustion on July 22nd, 1401.

His death released Villon.

A few weeks after the death of the King, Villon in his pit heard the tramping of horse-hoofs, the trumpets of heralds, and the confusion and stir of the townspeople swarming to greet some new and important arrival.

It was the new King, Louis XI, who with the Duke of Orleans was passing to Tours, and as it was the law of the day that when a king entered a town for the fu^t time there should be a general gaol delivery, for once in its evil course the Law, illogical even in its mercy, did a kindly act.

One can fancy how Thibault must have grumbled,

He reaches the Castle of the Ogre 105

but it is an over-stretch of fancy to picture the prisoner being " most joyfully hauled up."

Villon went into the pit of Thibault a living human being, he came out the remains of one. The cold, the dark, the hunger and misery of those three months had broken everything but his spirit.

He was an old man.

Remember that only five years ago he had left Paris a young man, a man of twenty-five, full of blood and life, as the Petit Testament well shows. His four years and nine months of wandering, followed by three months of the mercy of Thibault d*Aussigny, had left him bald, broken, diseased, used up and done for.

Contrast the jesting and mocking spirit of the Petit Testatnetit with the roundel with which he celebrates his return.

On return from that hard prison Whoro life noar was reft from me. If fate still shows cruelty, Judge if she shows not misprision. For it seems to me with reason She hath foimd satiety. On return.

For the fato is but unreason That still wills my misery. Grant, God I I find aanctoary. In thy house from her dark treaaon. On return.

Our prisoner was not yet entirely free. He liad to receive letters of remission. These he obtained, and maylx; some help in the form of money from Charles of Orleans to assist him in his journey to Paris.

CHAPTER XIII

HE RETURNS TO PARIS, 1461

Villon returned to Paris that same autumn.

What gave him the courage to return ? Wc can only surmise that he was tired of wandering, desperate, and so changed in appearance that he hoped to be able to hide in the capital undis- covered. His mother was still alive, and so was Guillaume Villon. These two, the best friends he ever had and the only real friends of his we know of, must have exercised a strong attraction upon him.

Besides, the death of Charles VII had altered things considerably; all his place-men were dis- placed and their ofl&ces filled with the creatures of Louis XI. The very Provost of Paris, Robert d'Estouteville, had been superseded by a man of Louis, Jacques de Villiers ; and when the Provost goes you may be sure that the less important people, even down to the sergents of the Chatelet and the gaolers, will go as well.

Everyone in a general supersession like this has friends to employ, and the newcomers in the

106

He returns to PoriSy 1461 107

service of Justice were not likely to have old criminals in their minds.

So it came about that Villon took heart of grace and, drawing to himself as little observation as possible, you may be sure, passed the gates of Paris one evening in autumn and found himself once again in the city of a thousand spires. But it was not the city he had left five years ago, and even less was it the city in which he had been bom. The Burgundians and the Armagnacs no longer warred one with the other, Agincourt seemed a very long distance away, and the wolves, made timid by peace, no longer howled so loudly in winter at the gates of Paris.

Charles VII was dead and had carried off a whole age with him ; and in stating this I state but a fact. It is almost impossible for us to under- stand the relationship of the men of mediaeval times to the past. With us the past has a yester- day and a day before yesterday, and a last year and a year before last. With us in this year 1916 King Edward VII is still an almost living figure, and the light eternal and steadfast that we call History has not yet come to absolute rest on the grand figure of Victoria, which still seems slightly to move and almost to smile before settling to immortality.

But in the Middle Ages a man dead yesterday was already a man belonging to the past, a man dc.'ul a year belonged to the region of chimeras and dreams. There were few distances, there was

108 FrariQois Villon

little perspective. The Maid of Orleans, who died in the year of Villon's birth, was ranked by him ■with Flora of Rome, with Harembourgcs of Mayne, with H^loise, with Thais ; and the dead King Charles was already with Pharamond, and the age which men associated with his name was dead as the age of Childebert.

The past, for the men of the Middle Ages, was, as a Chinese picture is for us, a country almost without perspective. Gothic art and Gothic thought had so few and such stereotyix^d major ideas about death and everything connected with death that a man once dead was like a man who had put on the habit of the Benedictines or the Augustines — indistinguishable from his fellows ; and men in general were so ignorant of History that

• ' Nabugodonosor " and Jason walked in the

same field with Absalom and Glaueus, the last good Duke d'Alen9on with Calixtus the Third ; and Simon Magus with the Lords of Dijon and the Lords of Dolles.

You will understand me that this statement must not be taken as absolutely rigid. I am refer- ring mainly to the mind of the mass of the people, and if I draw my illustrations from Villon's verse I am not bound to the opinion that his view of the past presented a picture as flat as that pre- sented to the gaze of the general folk in Paris city.

Charles VII, then, when Villon entered Paris, was already an historical figure in the minds of the people, the air was still vibrating with the joy-

He returns to Paris, 1461 109

bells rung for the accession of Louis XI, all sorts of new places were filled by all sorts of new men, and the life of the capital, for the moment at least, was, perhaps, more full and abundant than at any time during the past thirty years.

We can fancy Villon passuig through the busy streets, dusty and footsore, on the look-out for a lodging for the night, some hole to hide himself in, some friend to shelter him.

The men he had known, the students he had dnmk with, the robbers, even, with whom he had associated, where were they now ? In the twenty- ninth and following verses of the Great Testament he asks the question :

Where are the gallonU with whom I consorted of old, ao fine in song and speech, so pleasant in acts and words ? Some are dead, they rest in Paradise — and may God have the remainder in His keeping.

Some — Dieu Mercy \ — have become great lords and masters. Some beg naked, and never see bread, imless in the windows of the bcJcers* shops. Others are in the cloisters of tho Coleetines and Cbartreox. "■

They have all vanished in one way or another.

Montigny and Colin de Cayeux are dangling their bones at Montfaucon, Guy Tabary has gone who knows where, even the Provost of Paris has vanished, giving place to a newcomer.

It was a bad return, and we do not know where Villon went that night for a shelter, but we do know that he did not seek permanent shelter with Guillaume Villon. We know this from the

110 Frarifois Villon

seventy-seventh verse of the Great TestamerUt where he implores Guillaume VUlon, his more than father, who has saved him from many a danger, not to search for him. John Payne suggests, and reason supports the suggestion, that he took shelter with some one of his old companions still left — possibly, says Payne, with La Grosse Margot.

Now, everyone who knows anything about Villon knows about the Ballade of La Grosse Margot. It is one of the most fiercely unprintable things in literature. Monsieur Longnon has sug- gested that it was not written round a woman at all, but round a tavern ; that it was not a j^iece of {personal experience, but more in the nature of an allegory. VVc will notice it later on, and I need only say, here, that, from internal evidence, one is driven to believe that M. Longnon's kind sug- gestion must fall to the ground.

Wherever Villon went, either to the house of La Grosse Margot or elsewhere, he found shelter, a pen and ink, and time to formulate his thoughts.

Driven from ]X)st to pillar during his exile of five years, he may have had time to write a few ballades and rondels, and to lay in his imagina- tion the seeds for more, but it seems absolutely clear that his genius had never gathered itself properly together till now, when, fresh from the pit of Meung, without material hope and with the energy of a stream long damned, it found its relief in that extraordinary outburst of laughter, tears, regrets, and sighs, the Great Testament.

He returns to Paris, 14G1 111

In whatever house he hid himself he opened windows for us to look out upon the streets of that new Paris of 1461.

lie is done with the University now, and, had we no other testimony at all, the Great Testament^ by its brilliant and fugitive glimpses of life, would help us to construct a vivid picture of the city in which it was written.

We have seen the Cit6 and the Ville from above, we have seen the University both from the outside and the inside ; we are to see the city now all alive and chattering — moving, coloured, in dazzling glimpses.

The washenvomen are beating their clothes on the river-bank just as they beat them to-day, and the fish-women are quarrelling on the Petit Pont ; and what a crowd it Is we see crossing the Petit Pont, swarming down the Rue de la Juiverie, across the Pont Notre Dame and up that broad street on the right bank that leads to the Croix de Trahoir.

Chartrcux and Celestines, divotes and mendi- cants, idlers stopping for a drink at the Pomme de Pin, servants running on eminds, the showman and his marmots, the clown and juggler, the light

^'irls with their bi*easts half naked, the staid

widow ; joh and folks, sotz and sotics laughing, jibing, whistling, ellxnved here and there by black- guards and bullies, jesting at the sergents of police, stopi)ing to speak of the new King Lt)uis and the laic King Charles ; light-hearted, blasphemous,

112 Francois yUlon

and crossing themselves with their tongues in their cheeks.

There goes the captain of the archers, Jehan Rou, ferocious and redoubtable, and Mattre Guil- laume Charniau with his big paunch where one might fancy he stored all the learning which he never digested at the University before taking that degree of Master of Arts which he flung aside to turn merchant, and there goes Ythier Marchand, furtive and secretive-looking, whom you would never imagine in the r61e of a lover. Yet Ythier Marchand away in the past had a love-affair which inspired Villon the poet with a rondel, which is the only rondel that ever had a soul.'

Mixed in the crowd you see Jehan le Loup and Casin Chollet, those two seedy-looking gentlemen with whom you would not go down a side-street for worlds and worlds — duck-thieves, that is all they are; and after them, pretending to see nothing, stamp>ed with the air of authority and dressed in the uniform of sergents of the Pro- vostry, come Denis Richier and Jehan Vallette. From a window in that old house a girl is singing a song of the day. Ma Doulce Amour. It is strange to think of that singing shadow, dust so long and love still sweet ; and it is strange to think that drink still makes men merry when one looks at that old man passing under the window, Jehan Cotart, no less, with the lump on his forehead he got by falling against a butcher's stall last night.

1 See Rondel, p. 179.

He returns to Paris, 1461 118

Jehan trembles before one's eyes for a moment and then vanishes either into a tavern or into the crowd. The latter most like, for we can hear the blackguard boys shouting after a drunken man, their thin piercing cry cutting through all the hubbub of the street,

" Aux Uouls, saouls ! saouh ! saouls ! " That terrible-looking man is the Seigneur de Grigny; and here comes the fat grocer Thibult de la Garde of Reuil, who has come up to Paris for the day to let us have a look at him; the two Perdryers, Fran9ois and Jean, foxy and prosperous- looking, with slanderous tongues and false hearts ; the prosperous-looking Andr^ Courault, King Rend's representative in Paris ; Marion I'YdoUe and Big Joan of Brittany, arm-in-arm, treading on the heels of Andrd Courault with an eye for the police and a wink for everyone else. They all pass, dissolve, and vanish, and the sunlight fades and we see the lights springuig alive on the bridges. Close to the Petit Pont lies the Abrcuvoir Popin, lit by the glow of a bonfire round which a few old hags are sitting with their chins on their knees and a hand stretched out to the warmth.

Women who have once been young.

The tavcni by the Abrcuvoir Popin is roaring, and across the lighted space you can see the beggars and mumpers crawling with painted sores, false wounds, patches on their eyes, to sleep under the butchers* stalls of the markets.

And then all this fades away and the Cemetery 8

114 Frangois Villon

of the Innocents takes its place, pale in the lij,'ht of the moon that has risen over Paris, and lilled with the tombs where the dead lie, good and bad, young and old, rich and poor, Great lords and ladies who no longer curtsey one to another —

Now they arc dead, God take their souls I Seigneurs and dames, soft and tenderly nourished on cream, frumenty and rioe. all mouldering to dust. May Christ absolve them I

The Cemetery of the Innocents is empty to-night of all but the dead, for the late edicts have closed it to the light women who made it a resort, and all the loose characters that followed them ; and from the Rue de la F^rronerie on the one side of the cemetery and the Rue au Fer on the other, and from all the streets beyond, the sounds of the night come loud. Somewhere a voice is singing a song of the day — or rather of the night — Ouvrez voire huys Guillemette. Voices are mumbling close to the wall ; the mumblers curse and take to flight at the sound of the tramp of armed men who are approaching. It is De Tusca, Sergent of Police, at the head of his squad. They are clearing the streets of suspicious characters, and if we leap over the wall and follow them they will lead us to many a queer place, even to the house of La Grosse Margot where there is revelling going on, though the curfews of the Ville, the Cit6, and the Univer- sity have rung and it is time that all decent citizens should be in bed.

Villon lived in this swarming and busy Paris of 1461 for a year without being detected, or at least

He returns to PariSf 1461 115

without stirring up any recollection of his part in the affair of the robbery at the College of Navarre" in the minds of the Faculty of Theology.

Now see how fate fell upon him.

On November 2nd, 1462, he was arrested m con- nection with a robbery.'

CHAPTER XIV

FATE

He does not seem to have had any hand in the business, for he was almost immediately acquitted. Living as he did from hand to mouth among questionable people, it is quite possible that he was not living an entirely innocent life, but the pomt is that we may presume he was mnocent of the particular charge on which he was arrested, for the drastic justice of 1462 did not open the prison doors for a robber against whom the smallest scintilla of evidence could be adduced.

And the doors of the Chatelet were just about to open and let Villon out when Fate interposed.

The authorities of the College of Navarre got wind of the fact that Frangois Villon had returned to Paris, and down came Maitre Laurens Poutrcl to interview the prisoner and to close the half- opened door.

Villon confessed to the whole business of the robbery at the College of Navarre, and surely one might say all was over with him now. But the love of money which is the root of all evil, and

116

4

Fate 117

which was the cause of the robbery, proved now to be the temporary salvation of the robber.

The College of Navarre was very, very angry at its loss, but it was even more anxious to get its money back, or even part of its money, and Poutrel having, no doubt, read the prisoner a homily, pointed out his position, and threatened him with pictures of what the consequences might be, came to the point in his mind.

Could Villon refund any of the sum, and if so how much ?""

Villon could not.

We can fancy the interview between the quick- witted robljer-poet and the rigid-witted Poutrel.

But Poutrel held the cards.

He guessed that Villon had friends who would help him, he no doubt imagined fondly that this draggled butterfly would, when driven to it, help his friends to help him by setting to some sort of work, and the upshot of the business was that Poutrel consented to Villon's release on the promise of " ledict Villon " to repay 120 dcus in gold of the stolen money in the course of three years.

One does not love the Faculty of Theology of the University of Paris, but no one can deny that in this matter they behaved with common sense and generosity. There is no doubt at all in my mind that Poutrel in that interview recog- nised the fact that Villon had already been well punished for his behaviour in the past.

118 Francois Villon

The poet was set at liberty and returned to his miserable lodgings, wherever they were, only to find that Fate was less kind than Poutrel.

He had picked up many acquaintances in this new Paris, but he had found little in the way of money, and one evening, having passed the day without food, he made bold to call on a friend of his, Robin Dogis, living in the Rue Parchcminerie, and to suggest that Dogis should stand him a supjjer.

The supper took place at the house of Dogis, and four sat down to table — Villon, Dogis, a man named Hutin du Moustier, and a clerc of the University, Rogier Pichart by name.

Pichart was one of the " bloods," a violent and quarrelsome ruffian, es{)ecially when in his cups, and when supper was fmished and Pichart had drunk as much as he could conveniently carry, the four revellers left the house, proposing to go to Villon's lodgings and there finish the evening.

They came up the Rue St. Jacques, it was after curfew and the streets were in darkness, not a lamp was to be seen and only one light, a dim glow that came from the office window of Maitre Fran- 9ois Ferrebouc the notary.

Ferrebouc's office was situated next to the Mule tavern — the same tavern that Rabelais frequented in later years — and the sight of the lightless tavern and the luminous office window seems to have been too much for the soul of Rogier Pichart. He came to the lit window and looked in at the clerks

J

FaU 119

all busily engaged, sober, and working hard at their accounts.

He began to jibe at them, and then, not content with words, spat into the room where they were working.

Then the clerks came out.

The venerable and discreet Fran9ois Ferrebouc, hearing the noise of the fight, picked up his skirts and came out also to assist against the enemy. He struck Robin Dogis, Dogis in a fury whipped out a dagger, and, next moment, Ferrebouc was on the ground stabbed, but not mortally.

Dogis and his companions made their escape. Villon seems to have had no hand in the matter, yet he had been recognised as a companion of the others, and next day he was arrested, thrown into the Ch&telet, tried as an accompUce of the others, and condemned to death.

There is something about this episode that brings us to a halt. That something meditcval which clings still to gargoyles, that strange per- version which, in the Middle Ages, now made justice drivellingly lenient when leniency might be least expected, now fantastically cruel when leniency might be most expected, seems to have seii^ with both hands the life of Villon.

" Here is a man," one might fancy it saying,

• ' whom I might have hanged several times for

crimes committed. He has now conmiittcd no crime — let us hang him."

The irony of the business acted on Viiion in a

120 Francois Villon

strange manner at first. He sought in his mind for something to say about this villainous trick of Fate, and like the costermonger in the story he could not rise to the circumstances. The thing was beyond even his powers of language. He accepted it with this quatrain, which I translate :

[Tran$lation]

THE QUATRAIN

Made by Villon irA«n he u>aa sentenced to death

For my sorrow, I am Franfoia,

Bom in Paris near to Pontoise.

Soon the six-foot cord that sways

Will teach my neck what my weighs.

[Original French]

LE QUATRAIN

Que feit Villon quand il fut jxtgi d mourir

Je suis Fran9oi8, dont ce me poise, N6 de Paris empr6s Ponthoise. Or d'une corde d'une toise' Sanra mon col que mon cul poise.

It was just a statement of the bare facts of the case — ^with two jokes thrown in ; and at first sight one might be tempted to say, "What a callous scoundrel I "

But take the facts of the case and the Gallic spirit of the scoundrel.

It was the refusal to pay homage to disaster, a

1 Toise o 6*39459 feet ; roughly speaking, a fathom.

il

FaU 121

snub for death, an acceptance of the worst with a joke. It was the Merde of Cambronne before the overthrow of his world at Waterloo.

On second thoughts Villon took a different view of the situation and addressed an appeal to Parliament, pointing out the facts of the case, including the major fact that he had no hand or part in the assault on Ferrebouc.

Whilst waiting the result of the appeal, and almost certain in his own mind that he had no hope of a mitigation of the sentence, he wrote the Ballade des Pendus, called in the first edition of his works printed by Pierre Levet the epitaph of VUlon.

I give the original ballade and translation :

[Original French]

L'EPITAPHE EN FORME DE BALLADE

Que feit ViUon pour lay et tet oompttgnon*, a'aUettdant tstr* pendu avee eulx

FMrea humoina, qui apr^s noua vives,

N'ayea lea ouours contro nous ondurcis,

Car, ■ piti4 de noua pouvrea svea,

Diea en aura pluatoat d« voua meroiB.

Voua noua voyes oy aitaobea oinq, aiz :

Quant do la chair, que trop avona nourrio,

BUe eat piAfa d6vor6e at pourrie,

Bt DOOB, laa oa, devenooa oendre et pooldi*.

De noatre mal peraonne ne a'en rie,

Maia priaa Diea que toua noua vuaille abeouldre I

8e vooa elamona^ frftrea, paa n'en dennm Avoir deadaing, quoyqoe foamaa oeoia Par juatioe. Touteafoia. vooa agaTW Que toua lea hommea n'oot paa boo aaoa aaaia ;

122 Frangois Villon

Int«rcc(icz doncquoe, do cueur raaaia, Envor8 lo Filz do la Vierge Marie, Que Ba grace no soit pour noua iarie. Nous preeervant do rinfemale fouldro. Nous sommes mors, amc ne nous harie ; Mais pricz Dieu que tous nous vuoillo absouldre I

La pluye nous a debues et laves,

Et le soloil deasechea et noirciz ;

Pies, corbeaulx, nous ont les yeux caves,

Et arrochez la barbe et lee sourdlz.

Jamais, nul temps, nous ne sommes raasia ;

Puis 9J1, puis \h, comme le vent vane,

A son plaisir sans cesser nous charie,

Plus bocquetes d'oyseaulx que doz k couldro.

Ne soyez done de nostre confrairio,

Mais pricz Dieu que tous nous vueille absouldre i

ENVOI

Prince Jesus, qui sur tous seigneurie.

Garde qu'Enfer n'ayt do nous la maistrie :

A luy n'ayons quo fairo ne que souldre.

Hommes, icy n'usez de mocquerie

Mais pries Dieu que tous nous vueille absouldre I

[Translatioh] EPITAPH IN FORM OF A BALLADE

Ul BAIXADX DBS PKKDU8

O brother men who after us shall thrive, Let not your hearts against us hardened be. For all the pity unto us ye give God will return in mercy unto ye ; We five or six here swinging from the tree. Behold, and all oiu: flesh that once was fair. Rotted, and eaten by the beaks that tear. Whilst we the bones to dust and ash dissolve. Let no man mock us or the fate we bear ; But pray to God that He may us absolve.

(

Fate 123

O brothers, hear us and do not reoetvo Our lamentations in disdain, though wo Came here by Justice ; for all men that live Are not bom into good sense equally. Moke interoession for us, graoioudy. With Him whose life the Virgin onoe did share, That His grace comes to us as water clear. Nor hell's destructions on our heads devolve ; Dead are we, and as dead men leave us hero. But pray to God that He may us absolve.

The rain has washed us as we'd been alive. The sun has dried and blackened us, ye see. The pies and crows that all eiround us strive Leave us of eyes and board and eyebrows free. Never from torment have we sanctuary. Ever and always driven here and there. At the wind's will, and every change of air. More dented than the fniit that beaks revolve ; Men I gase on us, bo warned, and onward faro — But pray to Qod thnt He may us absolve.

ENVOI

Prince Jesus, Lord of all, have us in care. And keep from us tho firoe of hell that flare^ Lest those dread fires our fate and future solve. O brothers, make no mock of what wo are. Out pray to Qod that Ho may us absolve.

We may be grateful to the men who sentenced ViUon to death, for the death-sentence acted on Villon's mind, making it disclose itself as nothing else could have done.

Under that potent stimulus we see him writing the Je 8uis FratK^ois quatrain, and with the same pen the greatest ballade in literature.

124 Francois Villon

But the death-sentence was to give us more of his character.

His appeal was successful.

Filled with relief and the joy of assured life, he sits down and dashes off the following letter in the form of a ballade to his friend Gamier.

I append my translation of it and the original :

[Translation]

BALLADE OF ^^LL0N•8 APPEAL

Qamier, what of my appeal T Was it sense or not — you see Every beast must from the steel Guard its skin by subtlety. Or by flight, and so with me. Since, then, all this needless pain Came about through treachery. Was it time for silence then T

Were I heir to Hue Cappel. " Butchers were his ancestry," They would not have made me swell In their damned escorcherie. You know well that trickery. Since for pleasure's sake those men Chanted forth their homily, Was it time for silence then 7

Think you 'neath my cap did dwell Not enough philosophy Just to answer " J'en appel " And my speechless tongue to free 7 When the greffier, notary. Read the verdict out, and whm

• ' Pendu serez " finished he.

Was it time for silence then 7

FaU 125

BKYOI

Prince, had I stood foolishly VoioeleM, •• with pip tho hen. By CloUure's > my corpse would be : Was it time for silence then T

[Original FrencKl

BALLADE

DB L'Arrai. DB vnxoN

Qae dites-voas de men appel. Gamier T Feickje sens ou follio 7 Touto beete garde sa pel ; Qui la contrainct, efforoe ou lye, 8'eUe peult, elle se deslie. Quand ^ cesto peine arbi^ture On me jugoa par tricherie, Estoit-il lors temps de me taire ?

8e fusBO des hoirs Hue Capel.* Qui fut oxtraiot de boucherio, On ne ro'eust, parmy co drapol, Faiot boyre k ooUa «Moroherie : Vous entandea biea joncherie 7 Quand done, par ploisir voluntaire Chants me fut coete hora^lie, ' Etoit-il lors temps do me taire 7

Cuydfls-voua que soubt mon oappel N'y oust tant de philosophie Commo do dire : " J'en appel 7 " 8i avoit, je vous certifle, Combien que point trop ne m'y fie. Quand on me dit, pr6aent notairo : " Psodu aereai 1 '* je vous affle, Estoit-il lors temps do me taire T

• The gibbe* of Ifontfaacoo was situated near the abbey of

St. Deoia, where Olotaire III was buried (Prampaault.)

• The heirs of Hugues Capot. * The senteooe of death.

126

Francois Villon

Prince, n j'euase eu 1a popie,

Pi^ je fume oft est Clotaire,

Aux champs debout commo ung eepie.

Estoit-il loni temps do mo taire ?

That important work finished, and the ink scarcely dry on tlie pa}>cr, he writes a petition to the Parliament also in ballade form.

The translation which follows — with the original — will give you some idea of this request :

H

[Translation]

THE REQUEST OF VILLON

Presented to the Court of Parliament in the Form of a Ballade

All my five senaee, hearing, touch, and taste.

My noee, and you the cyee with which I see.

And every momber of me held disgraced,

E!ach from its place doth speak assuredly.

Most sovereign court, by whoso grace hero we be.

Whose hand discomfiture from us doth fUng,

The tongue hath no sufTiciont offering

So gratitude with speech doth us invest.

We tptek. i O daughter of the sovereign king,

Mother of good, sister of angels blest.

Heart, split in twain, or pierced be and laid waste.

But be not harder through perversity

Than the hard rock the wandering Jews once faced

And Mosee split at Horeb anciently.

Weep, and seek mercy, in humility,

Ev'n as a hximble heart in suffering.

Bow to the court that doth our empire bring

Strength, and protection to each foreign guest ;

Bom of the sky that doth the broad earth ring,

Moth» of good, sistOT of angels blest.

Fate 127

And yoa my ieetb, eaoh in ita lodcet placed.

Answer, and onto all men say " Mercy,"

Louder than trumpet let your voice be raiaed.

Louder than bell or organ's minstrelsy.

Think never more of eating, I pray ye.

Consider how I sufiFored, ye who sing.

Spleen, heart, and liver touched by terror's sting.

And, Body, lest you'd soom no more than beast.

Praise now the Court that wrought for you this thing.

Mother of good, sister of angela blest.

ENVOI

Prince, to whose clemency my hope does cling. Three days to see my friends ere I take wing. Grant, for without them I have coin nor vest. Great Court, lend oar to my petitioning, Mother of good, sister of angels bleatw

[Original French]

LA REQUE8TE DE VILLON

PrisenUe d ta Cour de ParUment, en forme dc baUade

Tous mes cinq Sens, yeulx, oreilles et boucho,

Le nes, et vous, le sensitif, aussi ;

Tous mes membres oCt il y a roprouche,

£n son endroit ung chasoun die ainsi :

" Court aouverain, par qui sommos icy,

Vous nous aves gard^ de desoonflre ;

Or, la langue na peut mmem sufBre

A vous rendre suffisantes louengos :

8i prions tous, fillo au souvorain Sire,

Mtee des booa^ et scaur dea benoista anges 1 "

Cneor, feDde»>voas, oa peroes d'une brooha^ Et ne soyea, an moina, plus eodurcy Qu'au desert fut la forte biso rocho Dont le peuplo des Juifs fut adouloy ; Foodea lamios, ei veoea 4 meroy.

128 Francois Villon

Comme humble oueur qui tondremont souspiro LouflB la Court, conjoincto au sainct Empire, L'heur des Franfoys, le confort dos estranges, Proor6e \k sub au oiel empire, Mdre dea bona, et soeur doe benoistz onges I

Et vouB, mea dents, chaaoune si s'esloche ;

SoiUec avant, reodes toutea meroy.

Plus haoltement qu'orgue, trompe, ne cloche,

Et de maaohor n'ayes ores aouloy ;

Conatdorea que je fuase transy,

Foye, pommon, et rate qui respire ;

Et vous, men corps, vil qui eetes ou pire

Qu'oura ne poxwceau, qui faict son nid ds fangea

Looea la Court, avant qu'il vous empire,

Mdre des bona, ot soeur des benoistz anges !

EWVOl

Prince, trois joura no vuoilloz m'escondiro, Pour moy pourvoir, ct aux miens adieu dire ; Sans oulx, argent je n'ay, icy n'aux changes Court triumphant, fiat, sans me desdire, Mdre dee bons, et soeur des benoistz anges !

The postscript is the humorous part of the thing and the pith of the whole matter.

One would like to have seen the faces of th< grave Parliament men as they read it.

The mother of good and sister of the blessed angels succumbed to the flattery, and three days' grace were granted.

It is a pity that afterwards, when Villon was beyond their reach, some hand did not present to them the Gamier Ballade.

These four productions, the Quatrairif the Bal- lade des Pendus, the Garnier Ballade, and the

4

Fate 129

Petition, all springinff almost at the same time from one mind, give us a glimpse and a gauge of that same mind which nothing else can give us.

Such a glimpse of laughter and trickery, gran- deur and opportunism, beauty of word and thought, effrontery and fawning, as is given to us in this group of verses it would be hard to find though we searched the whole of literature.

In any reasoned edition of Villon's works they should be printed in order, in one group, and with the label—" This is Villon."

Leaving prison, freed from the fear of death and with three days' grace before quitting Paris, we may fancy that Villon recovered somewhat from his attack of good spirits. The prospect before him was sufficiently dreary. Remember that though in this age an exile conducted himself into exile, the business of the going and remaining was as strict as the business of transportation in the nineteenth century.

Villon was forbidden to return to Paris for ten years, and the punishment for return was death, not death on the gallows after a trial, but instant death from the sword of the first officer of justice that met him.

He visited his friends, his mother possibly, and old Guillaume V^illon amongst the rest, and on the 8th day of January, 1463, he left Paris, never to return.

CHAPTER XV

WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM ?

When the gates of Paris closed behind him for this the last time, he walked off into the unknown, and we have not even an echo of his footsteps.

We know absolutely nothing of what happened to him or where he went, or where or in what manner he died.

He is mentioned four times by Rabelais, and I give two passages for what they are worth.

Master Francis Villon, in hia old age, retired to St. Maizent, in Poitou, under the patronage of a good honest abbot of the place. There, to make sport for the mob, he undertook to get the pattion acted after the way and in the dialect of the country. The parts being distributed, the play having been rehearsed, and the stage prepared, he told the mayor and aldermen that the mjrstery would be ready after Niort fair, and that there only wanted properties and necessaries, but chiefly cloaths fit for the parts : so the mayor and his brethren took care to get them.

Villon, to dress an old clownish father grey-beard, who was to represent G — d the father, begged of Friar Stephen Tickletoby, MteiisCan to the franciscan friars of the place, to lend him a cope and a stole. Tickletoby refused him, alledging, that by their pro- vincial statutes, it was rigoroiisly forbidden to give or lend any- thing to players. Villon replied, that the statute reached no farther than farces, drolls, antics, loose and dissolute games, and that he asked no more than what he had seen allowed at Brussels

ISO

What Happened to Him? 181

and other places. Tickletoby. notwithstanding, peremptorily bid him provide himaelf elsewhere if he would, and not to hope for anything out of his monastical wardrobe. Villon gave an account of this to the players, as of a most abominable action ; adding, that God would diorily revenge himself, and make an example of Tickletoby.

The Saturday following he had notice given him that Tickle- toby, upon the filly of the convent (so they call a young mare that waa never leaped yet) was gone a mumping to St. Ligarius, and would be back about two in the afternoon. Knowing this, hs made a cavalcade of his devils of the passion through the town. They were all rigged with wolves, calves, and rams' skins, laoed and trimmed with sheep's heads, bulls' feathers, and large kitchen t«ater hooks, girt with broad leathern girdles ; whereat hang'd Wangling huge cow-bells and hor8e-belL bisaooo.

" A plague on his frianihip," said the devils then ; " the lousy beggar would not lend a poor cope to the fatherly father ; let us frigiit him." " Well said," cried Villon : " but let us hide our- sclvua till he comes by, and then charge him home briskly with your squibs and burning sticks." 'i'ickletoby being come to the place, they all rushed on a sudden into the road to meet him, and in a frightful manner threw fire from all sides upon him and his filly foal, ringing and tingling their bells, and howling like so many real devils, " Hho. hho. hho, hho, brrou, rrou, rrourrs, rrrourrs, hoo, hou, huu, hho, liliu, hhut. Priar Stephen, don't we play the devils rarely t " The filly was sooo SOMtd out of

A monk's double pouoh.

132 fran^ois Villon

hi»r (icvMi iiMi»e«. and bcf^an to start, to funk it, to squirt it, to trot it, to bound it. to (gallop it. to kick it. to spurn it, to caleitrata it, to wince it, to frisk it, to leap it. to curvet it, with double jirks ; insomuch that she threw down Tickletoby. though he held fast by the tree of the pack-saddle with might and main. Now his straps and stirrups were of cord ; and on the right side his sandal was so entangled and twisted, that he could not for the heart's blood of him get out his foot. Thus he was dragged about by the filly through the road, scratching his bare breech all the way ; she still multiplpng hor kicks against him, and straying for fear over hodge and ditch ; insomuch that she trepanned his thick skull so. that his cockle brains were dashed out near the osanna or high-cross. Then his arms fell to pieces, one this way and the other that way ; and even so were his legs served at the same time. Then she made a bloody havock with his puddings ; and being got to the convent, brought back only his right foot and twisted sandal, leaving them to guess what was become of the rest.

Villon seeing that things had succeeded as he intended, said to his devils, " You will act rarely, gentlemen devils, you will act rarely ; I dare engage you will top your parts. I defy the devils of Saumur, Douay, Montmorillion, Langcz, St. Espain, Angers ; nay, by gad, even those of Poictiers, for all their bragging and vapouring, to match you." — Pantagruel, book iv. chup. xiii.

Exemple autre ou roy d'Angleterre, Edouart le quint. Maistre Pran^oys Villon, hanny de Prance, s'estoit vers luy rotir6 : il ratjoit en H grande privaulti repceu que rien ne luy celoyt des menuee negooee de sa maison. Un jour le roy susdict, estant a MS affaires, monstra a Villon les armes de France en paincture, et luy dist : " Voyds tu quelle reverence je porte a tes roys Francoys ? AiUeurs n'ay je leurs armoiryea que en ce retraict icy, pres ma scelle pers^e." — " Sacre Dieu (respondist Villon) tant vous estez saige, prudent, ent«ndu, ct curieux de vostre ■ant^ ? Et tant bien eetes servy de vostre docte medicin Thomaa Linacer. II. voyant que naturellement sus vog vieulx jours estiez eonstipp^ du ventre, et quo joumellement vous fcuUoit au cul fourrer un apotheceure, je diz un clystere, aultrement ne povyez vous esmeutir, vous a faict icy aptement, non ailleurs, paindre lea armes de France, par mnguliere et vertueuse providence.

H

What Happened to Him ? 183

Car, seulemont les voyant, vous avez telle vezarde, et paour si horrificque, que soubdain voua fiantez oomme dix huyct bonases de Paeonie. Si painctes eatoient en aultro lieu de vostre maison, en voatre chambre, en voetre salle, en voetre chapelle, en voa gualleriee, ou aiUeun, sacre Dieu, vous chihez partout sua rinstant que vous les auriez veuea. Et croy que, si d'abondant vous avies icy en paincture la grande Oriflamme de France, a la veue d'icelle vous rendhez les boyaulx du ventre par le fonde- ment. Mais hen, hen, ai qut iterum hen,

Ne suys je Badault de Paris ? De Paris, diz je, aupres Pontoiae : Et d'une chorde d'une toise Sfaura mon coul, que mon cul poise.

Badault, dix je, nud advis^, inal entendu, nud entendent quand, venent icy avecques vous, m'esbahissoys de ce qu'ea vostre ohambre vous estez faict vos chausses destaoher. Verit- ablement je peosoys qu'en ycelle, darriere la tapisaerie, ou Ml la venelle du lict, foust vostre scelle perstSe. Aultrement, me sewbloit le cas grandeinent incongru, soy ainsi destacher ea chambre, pour si loing allor au retraict lignagier. N'est ce ung vray pensement do Badault 7 Le cas est faict pour bien d'autre mystece, de par Dieu. Ainsi faisant, voua faictoz bien. Je diz si bien, que mieulx ne sf auriez. Faictcz vous a bomio heure, bien loin, bien a poinct dostacher. Car, a vous entrant icy, n'eatant dectach^, voyant cestes armoyriea, notes bien tout, saore Dieu, le (ond de voe chausaea feroit office de laaanon, pital, basain fecal, et de aoeUe perste." — Pantagrutl, book iv. chap. Izvii.

Villon in llabclais' tinic was only a rumour, a shade, a legend, and, as Chuni[)ion points out, the man who makes Thomas Lmacre physician to Edward V cannot be trusted as an historian. It would have been better for Rabelais to have left Villon untouched, for never has his madness for dirt shown itself to less advantage than when he drags the clean Villon into a noxious little story.

184 Francois Villon

\\c may presume that Villon died very shortly after his exit from Paris.

It was the best thing he could do. He had lived his life. Recklessness, disaster, starvation, punish- ment, and death, all these terrible things seized him in turn, and from them all, as they devoured him, he drew the food for his genius — but more especially from death.

%

CHAPTER XVI

SUMMARY

This is the summary of the life of Villon :

Bom .....

1481

Took his Baccalaureate degree

March

1449

Took his Master of Arts .

1452

Killed Semioise

June 1455

Assisted in the robbery of the

College of Navarre

Dec.

1456

Started on his five years' pilgri-

mage ....

Jan.

1457

Imprisoned at Meung

Summer,

1461

Released .....

Autumn,

1461

Returned to Paris

Autumn,

1461

Imprisoned and released, Paris .

1462

Imprisoned on account of Ferre-

bouc affair and condemned to

death

Released and left Paris

Jan.

1468

Never heard of again.

136

CHAPTER XVII

THE " PETIT TESTAMENT "

When one comes to estimate the worth of a man in morals or in mind, does it matter so much whether he was good or bad or dull or brilliant ? Is it not a fact that the chief question that matters much may be put in three words — did he grow ?

The world is full of brilliant men who have never grown, of good men gone decayed for want of growth. The natural human and faulty men who grow in goodness, and the brilliant men who grow in brilliancy, are not these the people who count ?

What is growth ? As regards the mind of man it is the result of a process of testing, selecting, and rejecting of all the various food offered to the mind by the universe in which it finds itself ; the process of fmding out for oneself what is poisonous, what is garbage, and what is really worth eating and assimilating. Directly, it implies the power of employing this process, and of digesting and using for constructive purj>oses the food selected.

It is sometimes a terribly slow business. A man

136

TJie " Peiit Testament " 187

may seem bad, worthless, or stupid till he is twenty, till he is thirty, till he is forty, and yet all the time he may be doing the only thing worth doing in the world — growing or preparing to grow. God, and the man of forty who has outlived the wildness of his younger days, alone know the truth of this.

And this growth, this natural building of the soul by the soul, of the mind by the mind, this fmd- ing out for oneself of the bad and good in life and profiting by the discovery, is the chief thing that counts so far as man is concerned.

Did Villon grow in the world in which he found himself ? did he discover the difference between garbage and good food and profit by the discovery ? Most undoubtedly he did, and, as I have said before, the triumphant evidence of this lies in his work.

The difference between the style and manner and matter of the two Testaments is the measure of his growth in worth, both in mind and morals, and the soul of the evidence lies in the fact that the jeering, laughing, tricky Villon of the Petit Testament still peeps forth in the Grand Testament. Here we find no assumption of morality, of tender- ness or pity. The natural man is still in evidence, but with what a difference I He still laughs, he still leaves jesting legacies, he still busies hhnself with the little things of life, he falls back into his mockery and trickery at moments — all that is nothing beside the fact that he has learned to weep

188 Francois Villon

and that his tears are real, that he has freed himself, in part, from the hateful engrossment of the moment, and recognises colgurs to which he seemed bhnd before, and tones to which he seemed deaf.

And to demonstrate his moral growth I would bring forward not a shred of the direct evidence which is abundant enough in the Testament and the Ballades, the best evidence lies in the splendour of his best work.

We have seen him writing the Petit Testament. Now let us see what he has been writing.

The Petit Testament consists of exactly forty verses. Three hundred and twenty lines in all.

We may believe that it was written in a hurry. He states in the first few lines that he is off to Angers and that he is writing these same lines with the Christmas bells, so to speak, still ringing in his ears, and we know that he left for Angers almost immediately after Christmas. There is nothing in this production to prove that it was not written in a hurry. There is nothing of much value in it at all, with the exception of the state- ment about Katharine de Vaucelles in the first six verses, the light which the jesting legacies cast on his own mind and the persons of the legatees, the hard bright wit which we can only partially appreciate, and the revelation here and there of what seems almost a modern sense of humour.

All the same, it is a most interesting document.

First of all, it gives us a date.

The "■ Petit Testament " 130

L'an quatre cena cinquant« ei nix, Je Francois ViUon, eecoUier, Considerant de sens raaais. La frain aux dents, franc au collier, Qu'on doit sea oeuvres conseiller. Comma Vegdoe le racompte, Saige Remain, grant comwiller, Ou autremont on ae meacompte.

All that is worth having just for the sake of the precious date in the first line which pins this pro- duction down to the board.

In the next verse and the following six we have the reason for his projected journey to Angers. And that reason is love. Unrequited love.

Now, from the evidence of Guy Tabary, the reason of his journey to Angers was robbery ; are these seven love-sick verses, then, to be taken as a jest or perhaps as a cloak for his real intention ? I do not think so. That the man was inspired by a real passion for Katherine de Vaucelles is proved by the fact that five years later her memory could still move him to resentment. The verses themselves seem genuine ; they bore one, they are long-winded, and they have, in fact, all the stamp of a lover's productions — a stamp which, witli a few great exceptions, has never altered throughout the ages.

My own private opinion, as stated before, leans to the supposition that the projected robbery at Angers was an excuse to leave Paris and escape from further entanglements and from the proximity of the woman who would have no more to do with him. But even had the motive been

140 Francois Villon

robbery, the desire to leave Paris on account of Katlierine may have been conjoined with it.

For myself, I believe that his unfortunate love- affair with Katherine was at the root of the whole business.

Who was this Katherine de Vaucelles ? There is absolutely no answer to that question. Both Payne and Stevenson supposed her to have been the niece of Pierre de Vaucel, one of the canons of St. Benoist, but the balance of opinion is now against this. The connection is entirely imaginary and based on the idea that the word Vaucel is a corruption of Vaucelles — which it is not.

Who was Noel le Jolis or Joly, the person who carried out the sentence of Katherine upon Villon ? That question is also unanswerable.

Villon, having registered his complaint against this unknown woman so mysteriously vtiled by time, proceeds in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and the Glorious Mother to be- queath to old Guillaume Villon his fair name and his armorial bearings, and also, to the woman who has treated him so badly, his dead heart, praying GJod to forgive her.

Then he proceeds to make other valuable gifts. First among the legatees comes Maitre Ythier Marchand, to whom he leaves his sword of steel, Ythier Marchand we must presume to have been a friend of Villon in his student days ; he was aftenvards one of the officers of Louis XI. He was unfortunate in his love-affairs and more

The " Petit Tesiament " 141

unfortunate in politics, and seems to have always been plotting and intriguing, a dangerous game in the time of Louis XI, as Ythier found to his cost, for he was imprisoned in 1474 — and died mysteri- ously in prison. Villon leaves this gentleman his sword, a perplexing enough legacy taken literally — in reality an unclean jest common among the blackguard students of the University and under- scoring vividly the whole tone and matter of this precious Petit Testament.

Next — to Pierre de Saint-Amand he leaves the Mule tavern and White Horse, and to Blaru his diamond and the Striped Ass, and the decretal which begins Otnnis utriusque sexus, to the priests. Now, Pierre de Saint-Amand was clerk to the treasury, and a person in a very good position, and the legacy is interesting inasmuch as it points to the fact, before mentioned, that Villon moved in good society when he was not moving in bad. As to the legacy, it holds no doubt a jest, the point of which is lost, and the same may be said of the gift to Blaru.

One may say at once that all the legacies to all the people mentioned in the Petit Testament are to be taken in the spirit of jest, that some of these jests are cruelly pointed, even to our eyes, and that others are quite obscure. Amongst the most notable is the gift of his breeches to Maitre Robert Valine, so that the said Mattre Robert Valine may clothe his mistress Jehanncton de Milliers more decently.

142 Francois Villon

To the captain of the watch he leaves a heaulme (a closed helmet the wearing of which would make the said captain of the watch blinder than ever). To Perrenet Marchand, otherwise called the Bastard de la Barre, he leaves three trusses of straw :

It«m k Perrenet Mnrchant, Ou'on dit le BasUird de la Barre, Pource qu'il est ung bon Marchant, Luy laiase trois gluyoiis de fouarre. Pour estendre deasua Is terre A fuire I'ammoureux meatier, Ou il luy fauldra sa vie querre. Car il n'eachet autre meutier.

The point will be seen in the last four lines, and the spirit of the business is on a par with the legacy bequeathed to Ythier Marchand. Perrenet was one of the sergents of the Chatelet.

But the most tricky of all the legacies is the following. I give the original French.

Item je laiase, et en piti<^, A troys petits enfans toua nudz, Nommes en ce present traictie Povres orphelins impour\'euz Tous deschaussee, tous deepourveuz, E desnuez comme le ver : J'ordonne qu'ils seront pourveuz, Au moins pour passer cest yver.

Premierement Colin Laurens Oirard Gossoyen et Jehan Marceau Desprins de biens et de parens, Et n'ont Vaillant I'anse d'lmg sceau : Chascun de mes biens ung faisaeau, Ou quatre blancs, si I'ayment mieulx . . . IIz mangeront le bon morceau. Sea enfans, quand je seray vieulx !

The ** Petit Testament '* 148

He leaves — so a rough translation runs — in pity, to three small children, quite naked, poor, im- poverished orphans without boots (or stockings), naked as worms, the order that they shall be taken care of at least till the winter is over. He gives the names of these poor orphans. They are Colin Laurens, Girard Gossoyen, and Jean Marceau.

Who were these poor little children in reality ? Colin Laurens was a merchant and money-lender of Paris ; Girard Gossoyen was a money-lender and a speculator in salt ; and Jean Marceau was a mer- chant of Rouen and Paris and also a money-lender who seems to have been pitiless in his transactions with his fellow-merchants.

These were the three poor children, naked as worms, to whom Villon left a share of his goods or four blancs (the blanc was one of the smallest coins of the day).

Villon, proceeding with his bequests, leaves his barber the clippings of his hair, without any deduc- tions, his old boots to his bootmaker, and his old clothes to his tailor. He leaves the Mendicant Orders the Filles-Dieu and the Beguins the follow- ing legacy :

It«in, je UuMe aux Mendian*. Aux PiUe»>Dieu et mux B«guyn««, 8«vour«uz moroeaulx ci Mans, Cha|>aoa. pigons, grMMs f«liiMi^ Et puia prMobar lea Quini* SIgnM, Et abatr« pain k deux maina, Camtea dhavaulohant nos voiainaa. Mail oala na ro'aat qua du main*.

144 Francois J^ilhv

The pith of all that lies in tlie last two lines just as the pith of verse twenty-three lies in the last four lines.

We next find him leaving the Mortier d'Or (one of the famous grocery shops in Paris) to Jehan the grocer of la Garde, and a gibbet from St. Mor to act as a pestle for the pounding of his mustard. To Mairebeuf and Nicholas de Louvieulx, each, an eggshell filled with francs and ^cus ! and to Pierre de Ronseville, Governor of Gouvieulx, all the money given him by the Princes who visit Gouvieulx to distribute among the gaolers.

I have picked out these legacies from the most understandable in the Petit Testament. They are indicative of the spirit of the whole work — a work brilliant and satirical enough in those parts where the brilliancy still shows through the rust and dust of ages, and a work brilliant, no doubt, all through if we could clean away all the dust and rust of time and see fully the people whom the satirist touched on the raw and how cleverly he touched them.

But the brilliancy is the brilliancy of a street- lamp, not of a star. Villon was not a great satirist. On that side of his mind he touched not man, but men. He could make tfife captain of the watch ridiculous and laughter follow the fat usurers Colin Laurens and Jean Marceau ; he could make Jehan de la Garde fume, and Mairebeuf and Nicolas de Louvieulx objects of derision ; but to

I

The " Petit Testament " 145

appreciate his satire one must consult old docu- ments, not the human heart.

He was a caricaturist pure and simple when he took up the satirists' pen, and it was with that pen he wrote the Petit Testament and some verses of the Grand Testament as well.

10

CHAPTER XVin

THE " GRAND TESTAMENT "

The Grand Testament opens on a very different note.

En Tan trentiesme me de mon aage, Que toutes mes hontes j'ay beues, Ne du tout fol, ne du tout sage, Nonobstant maintes peines eues, Leequelles j'ay toutes receues, Soubz la main Thibault d'Aussigny : 8'evesue il est, seignant les rues, Qu'il soit le mien je le reny !

In the thirtieth year of his age he now takes up his pen, he is just free from the prison of Thibault d'Aussigny, and still broken and sore from that three months of torture and starvation. He recognises that he Is not altogether a fool, yet not altogether a wise man. He is humble enough, but God I how he must have hated Thibault 1

Yet he holds himself in. Searching in all the pockets of Villon's mind, I would be better pleased to find curses in this pocket that holds the memory of Thibault d'Aussigny. There is something almost disturbing in his restraint. He says that Thibault is no bishop of his, etc., etc., and he

146

H

The " Grand Testament " 147

humbly wishes that if Thibault showed him mercy, God may show equal mercy to Thibault. It is a terrible malediction, and all the worse because it is mumbled.

When he is going to pray for Thibault he will begin his prayer with the seventh verse of the Psalm Deus laudem, which verse will express the hope that —

Win days may be reduced tu the gmallcflt number, nod that his bishopric may pass to another.

Then, forgetting Thibault, he gives praise to God and King Louis of France on whom he showers blessings.

Villon was an unlucky man. Most of his friends came to grief, many of the people he mentions in his writings, and nearly all the people to whom he wishes well. He brought sorrow to his mother and old Guillaume Villon. He now wishes Louis luck and twelve fair sons, brave as Charles the Great and good as St. Martial I He wishes luck to the Dauphin, Joachin, son of Charlotte de Savoie, and the Dauphin died at the age of eleven 1

Then, having exhausted himself with good wishes and feeling very weak, he sets too on his TettamerU '* written in the year 1461.'*

Eioripi I'ay Tan K>ixant« et ung. Que le bon Roy me delivni, De la dure priaoo de Mehan.

This brings us up to the eleventh verse of the Grand Testament, and now immediately tlierc follow

148 Francois Villon

thirty verses of lamentation for the past, regret, self-excuse. There is nothing in literature quite like these thirty verses, this voice that comes to us from such a terrible distance in the past, these regrets and excuses for things and deeds that have been so long, long forgotten.

Je plains le tempa de ma jeuneese.

He tells to himself the story of Alexander and the pirate Diomedes. It is all like a child trying to explain a fault.

The pirate, brought in chains before the great Emperor, makes bold to explain his case. It is all Fate. He was poor, and poverty makes men do wicked things. If only circumstances had been different, he might have been a king like Alexander*

Se comme toy me peuase armer, Comma toy empereur je fusse.

Upon which the Emperor said to Diomedes, " I will change your fortune from bad to good." As he said, so he did, and Diomedes became a reformed character.

If God had given Villon the luck of Diomedes the result would have been the same, Villon would have reformed — so he told himself.

It is a question open to doubt ; but the story remains the same, and the teller, and the attempt at excuse made half a thousand years ago just as men make it to-day.

He mourns over his lost youth, which will never

J

The " Grand Testament " 149

return to him. Here he is, a wreck, useless, without money, aged, and forgotten by his relatives. He looks over the tale of his past sins. What has he done ?

What has he really done that so much misery should have fallen upon him ? He has never been lecherous nor a glutton. The punishment has been so severe that his faults seem to be forgotten in the contemplation of it. Forgotten the death of Ser- moise, forgotten the College of Navarre business, forgotten the numerous faults which he has no doubt been guilty of. He seems to be looking not at his acts but at his intentions. How many men do the same ! He feels that he has never willingly injured any man or woman, he feels no ill-will against the people of the world, with a reservation perhaps as regards Thibault and the two Perdryers. Why, then, should he have been so persecuted by Fate ?

He makes half an answer in the twenty-sixth verse.

Ho Dieu ! B j'euMo entudii

Att t«mp« de m* jeuneMe foUe,

Et 4 bonnaa meun dodi6

J'euaM maiaoD et oouche moUe !

That would sound strange coming after all the self-excuse if all this self-excuse and these regrets were a subterfuge to gain pity. It is, however, the seal of their genuineness. It is the ** All dear me i if I had only done better ! " of the man who is reviewing his past in reverie.

150 Frangois Villon

In the next verse he retouches the matter and in twu Hnes sums up an eternal truth.

Car jeunease et adolescence . . . Ne sont qu'abus et ignorance.

You will now begin to understand what I said about the difference between the Villon of 1456 and the Villon of 1461. The difference, in very truth, between the penitent and the impenitent thief.

Penitence ! you may say, a nice sort of peni- tence, seeing that the man only regrets the loss of material things and comforts — a house and a soft bed. To which I reply that penitence of whatever sort is precious if it directs our eyes over our past and over our misdeeds ; if it makes us recog- nise what we have missj^ent ; and more especially precious if it can find expression in such poetry as immediately follows in verse twenty-eight :

Mes jours s'en sont alles errant, Comme, dit Job, d'un touaille Sont lea filetz, quant tisserant Tient en son poing ardenie pculle : Lors, s'il y a nul bout saille, Soudainement il le ravit. 81 ne Grains plus que rien m'asstulle, Car b, la mort tout s'assouvit.

He recognises that his days have been wasted. They are like the loose threads on the loom which the weaver bums off with a torch. What matter I — he finishes — death will free him at last.

Written by a yoimg and strong man, those lines

The *' Grand Testament " 151

would only strike us as the expression of a pose ; but death already has his hand on Villon's shoulder, and Villon knows it. Through all this Testament runs his swan song, over all of it lies the shadow of death. He bequeaths in it absurd legacies, he laughs, he jeers, he coughs, he spits, but death is always beside him.

It may be said of Villon that his true greatness never appeared till he came near death. In his natural frame of mind he was mostly animal ; under the immediate shadow of death he was all genius.

In his natural frame of mind he has given us work that must always live by virtue of its won- derful technique, its concision, brilliancy, and wit ; but now an entirely new form of his genius appears, and we have the first hint of it in verse thirty-six of the Grand Testament.

He suddenly drops the subject of poverty with which he has been playing, and turns to the subject of death.

Ah well ! he says, what matter ? At least I am alive, and my heart has often said to me it is better to be alive and poor than a dead lord rotting under a splendid tomb.

He continues to talk of this strange thing death that seizes all men somehow and sonictinie.

His father is dead, God rest his spirit 1 His mother must soon die, and her son will not survive her. Poor and rich, wise men and fools, clergy and laymen, nobles and serfs, great and small,

152 FrariQois Villon

women of all conditions, death seizes them without exception.

And be it Paris or Helen dying, whoever dies he dies in pain, and none may help him or take his place through that ordeal, neither children nor sister nor brother. Death makes him tremble and pale and sweat — ah ! who can tell the salt and the bitterness of that sweat ?

And even the bodies of women, so tender, so sweet, and so precious, must go through all this suffering — or else go straight alive to heaven.

Reverie has led him from height to height; the voice that a minute ago was mumbling about poverty has grown clear and sonorous ; it rises higher still, and freeing itself from the verse of the Testament becomes bell-like and beautiful as the song which it has found to sing.

The song of all the women who have ever lived and died — the Ballade du Dames des Temps jadis.

There is nothing at all in lyric poetry to equal this ballade of thirty-six lines which speaks to the heart so poignantly, and yet in the form of state- ment says — nothing.

Every line is a question.

Never in the world has so much been upborne on so little, and never has a touch so light destroyed the commonplace for the purpose of revelation.

A revelation that includes the artistic soul of the man who five years ago left Maitrc Robert Val6e his breeches, so that the said Maitre Robert Val6e might clothe his mistress more decently.

The " Grand Testament *' 158

[Original FretKh] BALLADE DES DA.AIES DU TEMPS JADIS

Dictes-moy odJ, n'on quel pays.

Est Flora, la belle Romaine T

Archipiade, ne Thais,

Qui fut sa cousine germaine ?

Echo, parlant quand bruyt on maine

Dessus riviere ou bus estan,

Qxii beault^ eut trop plus qu'humaina ? . . .

Mais oii sout lea aeiges d'antan !

Oil est la tres-sage Helols, Pour qui fut chastr^ et puis moyne Pierre Esbaillart, k Saincfc-Denys T Pour son amour eut oeet esaoyne. Semblablement, oCi est la Royne Qui oommanda que Buridan Fust jett^ en ung sao en Seine T . . . Mais ou sont lea nnges d'antan t

La royne Blanche comme ung lys. Qui chantoit k voix de seraine, Berthe au grand pied, Beatrix, Allys, Haremburges, qui tint le Mayne, Et Jehanne, la bonne Lorraine, Qu'Anglois bruslerent k Rouen : Oix aont-ilz, Vierge souvoraine T . . . Mais oil sont lea neiges d'antau t

■NVOI

Prince, n'enquercc, d» sepmaino, Ou oUes sont. ne de cest an. Car ca refrain le vqus r«maine : Mais o(i sont les neiges d'antan !

Following this ballade comes the Ballade of the Lords of Old Timtt less beautiful and less excellent

154 Francois Villon

for a reason not inherent in the poet but in his subject. Just as men are far below women in all things lovable and most things excellent, so is this ballade far less powerful in appeal than its beautiful sister.

{Original French\

BALLADE DES SEIGNEURS DU TEMPS JADI8, 8UYVANT LE PROPOS PRECEDENT

Quoi plus t OCi est le tiers Calixte, Deraier decode de ce nom, Qui quatre ana tint le Papsliste ? Alphonse, le roy d'Aragon, Le grsM^ieux due de Bourboa, Et ArtuB, le due de Bretaigne. Et Charles septiesuie, le Bon ? . . . Mais oCi est le preux Cbarlemaigne !

Semblablenient, le roy Scotiste, Qui demy-face eut, ce dit-on, Vermeille conuue une amathiste Depuis le front jusqu'au menton T Le Roy de Chypre, de renom, Helas ! et le bon Roy d'Espaigne, Duquel je ne S9ay pas le nom 7 . . . Mais oi^ est le preux Charlemaigne !

D'en plus parler je me desiste : Ce n'est que touto abusion. II n'eet qui contre mort resiste, Ne qui treuve provision. Encor fais une question : Lancelot, le roy de Behaigne, Oil est-il 7 Ou est son tayon 7 . . . Mais oik est le preux Charlemaigue :

The " Grand Testament " 155

ENVOI

Oil est CLaquia, le bon Breton ? Oil le comte Daulphin d'Auvergne, Et le boa feu due d'Alenf on T . . . Mais oil eet le preux Cbarlemaigae !

Then, without a break, comes the third ballade of this wonderful trilogy, calling up the shades of the Saints Apostles, the shades of Constantine's successor, and the ghost of the great French King