Stories By English Authors: France (Selected by Scribners) | Page 9

turned from my house to-morrow, hundreds would be proud to
shelter me. Poor people would go out and pass the night in the streets
with their children, if I merely hinted that I wished to be alone. And I
find you up, wandering homeless, and picking farthings off dead
women by the wayside! I fear no man and nothing; I have seen you
tremble and lose countenance at a word. I wait God's summons
contentedly in my own house, or, if it please the king to call me out
again, upon the field of battle. You look for the gallows; a rough, swift
death, without hope or honour. Is there no difference between these
two?"
"As far as to the moon," Villon acquiesced. "But if I had been born lord
of Brisetout, and you had been the poor scholar Francis, would the
difference have been any the less? Should not I have been warming my
knees at this charcoal pan, and would not you have been groping for
farthings in the snow? Should not I have been the soldier, and you the
thief?"
"A thief?" cried the old man. "I a thief! If you understood your words,
you would repent them."
Villon turned out his hands with a gesture of inimitable impudence. "If
your lordship had done me the honour to follow my argument!" he said.
"I do you too much honour in submitting to your presence," said the
knight. "Learn to curb your tongue when you speak with old and
honourable men, or some one hastier than I may reprove you in a
sharper fashion." And he rose and paced the lower end of the apartment,
struggling with anger and antipathy. Villon surreptitiously refilled his
cup, and settled himself more comfortably in the chair, crossing his
knees and leaning his head upon one hand and the elbow against the

back of the chair. He was now replete and warm; and he was in no wise
frightened for his host, having gauged him as justly as was possible
between two such different characters. The night was far spent, and in a
very comfortable fashion after all; and he felt morally certain of a safe
departure on the morrow.
"Tell me one thing," said the old man, pausing in his walk. "Are you
really a thief?"
"I claim the sacred rights of hospitality," returned the poet. "My lord, I
am."
"You are very young," the knight continued.
"I should never have been so old," replied Villon, showing his fingers,
"if I had not helped myself with these ten talents. They have been my
nursing mothers and my nursing fathers."
"You may still repent and change."
"I repent daily," said the poet. "There are few people more given to
repentance than poor Francis. As for change, let somebody change my
circumstances. A man must continue to eat, if it were only that he may
continue to repent."
"The change must begin in the heart," returned the old man, solemnly.
"My dear lord," answered Villon, "do you really fancy that I steal for
pleasure? I hate stealing, like any other piece of work or of danger. My
teeth chatter when I see a gallows. But I must eat, I must drink; I must
mix in society of some sort. What the devil! Man is not a solitary
animal--cui Deus foeminam tradit. Make me king's pantler, make me
Abbot of St. Denis, make me bailie of the Patatrac, and then I shall be
changed indeed. But as long as you leave me the poor scholar Francis
Villon, without a farthing, why, of course, I remain the same."
"The grace of God is all powerful."

"I should be a heretic to question it," said Francis. "It has made you
lord of Brisetout and bailie of the Patatrac; it has given me nothing but
the quick wits under my hat and these ten toes upon my hands. May I
help myself to wine? I thank you respectfully. By God's grace, you
have a very superior vintage."
The lord of Brisetout walked to and fro with his hands behind his back.
Perhaps he was not yet quite settled in his mind about the parallel
between thieves and soldiers; perhaps Villon had interested him by
some cross-thread of sympathy; perhaps his wits were simply muddled
by so much unfamiliar reasoning; but whatever the cause, he somehow
yearned to convert the young man to a better way of thinking, and
could not make up his mind to drive him forth again into the street.
"There is something more than I can understand in this," he said at
length. "Your mouth is full of subtleties, and the devil has led you very
far astray; but the devil is only a very weak spirit before God's truth,
and all his subtleties vanish at