In Necessity's Mortar
THERE went about the Rue St.-Jacques a notable shaking of heads on the day that Catherine de Vaucelles was betrothed to François de Montcorbier.
"Holy Virgin!" said the Rue St,-Jacques; "the girl is a fool. Why has she not taken Noël d'Arnaye—Noël the Handsome? I grant you Noël is an ass, but then he is of the nobility, look you. He has the Dauphin's favor. Noel will be a great man when our exiled Dauphin comes from Geneppe yonder to be King of France. Then, too, she might have had Philippe Sermaise. Sermaise is a priest, of course, and one may not marry a priest, but Sermaise has money, and Sermaise is mad for love of her. She might have done worse. But François! Eh, death of my life! what is François? Perhaps—he, he!—perhaps Ysabeau de Montigny might tell, you say? Perhaps, but I cannot. François is a kindly, peaceable lad enough, I dare say, but what does she see in him? He is a scholar?—well, the College of Navarre has furnished food for the gallows before this. A poet?—rhyming will not fill the pot. Rhymes are a thin diet for two lusty young folk like these. And who knows if Guillaume de Villon, his foster-father, has one sou to rub against another? He is canon at St.-Benoît-le-Bétourné yonder, but canons are not Midases. The girl will have a hard life of it, neighbor, a hard life, I tell you, if—he, he!—if Ysabeau de Montigny does not knife her some day. Eh, yes, Catherine has played the fool."
Thus far the Rue St.-Jacques.
This was on the day of the Fête-Dieu. It was on this day that Noël d'Arnaye blasphemed for a matter of a half-hour, and then went to the Crowned Ox, where he drank himself into a happy insensibility; that Ysabeau de Montigny, having wept a little, sent for Gilles Raguyer, a priest, and aforetime a rival of François de Montcorbier for her favors; and that Philippe Sermaise grinned and said nothing. But afterward he gnawed at his under lip like a madman as he went about seeking for François de Montcorbier.
It verged upon nine in the evening—a late hour in those days—when François climbed the wall of Jehan de Vaucelles's garden.
A wall!—and what is a wall to your true lover? What bones, pray, did the Sieur Pyramus, that famous Babylonish knight, make of a wall? Did not his protestations slip through a chink, mocking at implacable granite and more implacable fathers? Most assuredly they did; and Pyramus was a pattern to all lovers. Thus ran the meditations of Master François as he leaped down into the garden.
He had not seen Catherine for three hours, you understand. Three hours! three eternities rather. In a patch of moonlight François paused and cut an agile caper, as he thought of that coming time when he might see Catherine every day.
"Madame François de Montcorbier," he said, tasting each syllable with gusto. "Catherine de Montcorbier. Was there ever a sweeter juxtaposition of sounds? It is a name for an angel. And an angel shall bear it—eh, yes, an angel, no less. O saints in Paradise, envy me! Envy me," he cried, with a heroical gesture toward the stars, "for François would change places with none of you to-night."
He crept through orderly rows of chestnuts and acacias to a window where a dim light burned. Then he unslung a lute from his shoulder and began to sing, secure in the knowledge that deaf old Jehan de Vaucelles was not likely to be disturbed by sound of any nature till that time when it should please God that the last trump be noised about the tumbling heavens.
