If I Were King | Page 6

commandments. He with the red hair is
Guy Tabarie; they are sworn brothers in bawdry and larceny. The
ferret-faced knave who is tickling the girl's knee is Jehan le Loup.
Bullies and bawds, pandars and parasites: to enumerate their offenses
would be to say the Decalogue backward."
"You have a pithy humour, gossip," and Louis grinned. "Our gallows
shall be busy anon."
Tristan was abcut to open his mouth in approval of a sentiment so
pleasing to his ears when his words and his purpose were alike arrested
by a sound of a voice singing outside the tavern door.
The voice was a man's voice, something rough and strained for fine
music, and yet with a kind of full and florid sweetness that carried the
words clearly through the red-curtained windows. They seemed to
make a complaint of Fortune:
"Since I have left the prison gate Where I came near to say good-bye
To this poor life that needs must fly From the malignity of Fate,
Perchance she now will pass me by Since I have left the prison gate."
If the king pricked his ear to listen, and even Tristan moved a little in

his lethargy, the effect of the song upon the company of gamblers was
instant and pronounced. The Abbess leaped to her feet, crying out: "It is
the voice of François!" "It is indeed his own unutterable pipe," agreed
René de Montigny, sweeping his winnings into his pouch. Robin Turgis
raised his hands in a comical despair as he muttered: "Here is the devil
out of hell again." All the men and women were looking eagerly at the
door.
"Who is this?" asked Louis of Tristan, "whose coming seems so to
flutter these night-birds?"
"The strangest knave in all Paris," Tristan answered. "One François
Villon, scholar, poet, drinker, sworder, drabber, blabber, good at pen,
point, and pitcher. In the Court of Miracles they call him the King of
the Cockleshells. Judge him for yourself."
CHAPTER II
MASTER FRANÇOIS VILLON

As Tristan spoke the tavern latch rattled, the tavern door was flung
noisily open, and the king's gaze rested on a strange figure framed in
the entry. The man was of middle height, spare and slight and lean; his
thin, eager face was bronzed with the suns and winds of a generation,
and lined with the stern ciphers of malign experiences. His dark,
straight hair was long and unkempt; the finer lines of his cheeks and
chin were blurred with the uncropped growth of a week-old beard; his
eyes were bright and quick; his glance restless and comprehensive. A
cunning reader of features would have found a home for high thoughts
behind the fine forehead, the lines of infinite tenderness upon the
mobile lips, the light of some noble conflagration in the wild eyes. He
was dressed in faded finery of many colours, so ragged and patched and
hostile that he had very much the air of a gaudy scarecrow. His ruined
cloak was tilted by a long sword; his disordered thatch was crowned by
a battered cap grotesquely adorned with a cock's feather. In his leathern
belt a small vellum bound book of verses kept company with a dagger.

For all his whimsical appearance the king's keen eyes could note a
something gallant in the carriage of the scamp, could spy out qualities
of manhood beneath the battered bravery. He poised for a moment on
the threshold in a fantastic attitude of salutation ere he slammed the
door behind him and strode forward to meet his friends.
"Well, Hearts of Gold, how are ye?" he cried joyously as he advanced
with head thrown back and open hands extended. "Did ye miss me, lads;
did ye miss me, lasses?"
Abbess Huguette was at his side in an instant, with her arms about his
neck fondling him and fawning upon him. "Surely I missed you," she
whispered. "Where have you been, little monkey?"
Master François looked at her for a moment with a curious pity. Then
gently extricating himself from her embrace he called out, "Give me a
wash of wine for my throat's parched with piping."
Every man thrust his own mug towards Master François, beseeching
him to drink of it, but he waved them all aside imperially. "Nay, I will
have my own," he said. "Have we no landlord here? Master Robin,
come hither."
Robin Turgis, who had kept apart up to now, surveying the new-comer
with no excess of favour, moved slowly forward with his thumbs in his
girdle and a sour smile on his fat cheeks. Master François addressed
him sternly, twitching as he did so the landlord's greasy cap from his
pate and sending it flying down the room. "Why do you not salute
gentry when they honour your pot-house? A mug of your