Marie, about to descend the stairs from the platform — her ladies stood in a row waiting for her — turned and said, so softly that only her husband could hear her, “Monseigneur, I am childless.”
The retinue remained standing in silence, watching her departure. Charles seemed suddenly tired and listless. He beckoned to des Saveuses and asked him to announce that the poetry competition would be put off until the following day. At the same time the chamberlain was told to announce both themes to those who had not been present at the meal, so that they could prepare in tranquillity. To Villon, who had witnessed this sudden change of mood with raised brows, Charles said, “Come with me to my study, Messire François. You will have twenty-four hours more to throw yourself into poetic creativity.”
Villon followed the Duke to the library where an odor of parchment, ink and leather hovered in the air. Charles sat down carefully at the long table strewn with papers and, not without effort, stretched out his aching leg on a low footstool.
“Am I correctly informed, did they want to hang you in Paris?” he asked, signalling his guest to sit down wherever he chose. Villon had been looking up at the books in the tall bookcase. He shrugged.
“I had almost forgotten it, Monseigneur. What was really important I was able to put into verse for myself and the other rabble who were going to dance on the gallows.”
“So you once mentally took leave of life,” Charles said slowly, wiping his spectacles on his sleeve. “I should like to hear from you how it feels to have done with the world.”
“It depends on how closely one is attached to life and the world,” replied Villon; a spark of mockery flashed like a falling star through his eyes. “With the rope around my neck I could not feel that I had left much behind that was worthwhile.”
“Then you are free, Villon. How does it feel to be really free of everything?”
“I did not think about that then. I sat on a pile of stinking straw in a dungeon of the Chatelet and scratched the lice from my rags. I bartered my last meal for a piece of paper to write down my epitaph, that rhyme I mentioned to you just now: ‘Brothers, who will live after me …’ ”
“There was no room in your heart for anything but a poem? And all that happened to you was nothing but the source for the writing of poetry?”
Villon grimaced and raised his long, thin brown hands in protest.
“God knows, Monseigneur, I do not deserve the good will of the muse. I have been untrue to her too often for the sake of more tangible charms. But she is the only one who is not fed up with me. In her honor I proclaimed a year and a day ago—’Blonde, brown or black, it is all the same, and woman’s beauty vanishes like last winter’s trackless snow.’”
Charles stared pensively at his visitor. He does not understand what I mean, he thought in disappointment. He can tell me no more than the others about what I want to know because this being-free, this not-being-bound is innate with him, as flying is with birds. He is bound by no chains of obligation; he is not pinched by any feeling of responsibility for so many lives, by the duty of being an axis around which a world turns, even if it is only a world of trifles. And the man does not appreciate his own freedom. How can I expect that he could explain to me what it’s like to find no obstacles between oneself and the expression of one’s feelings?
He sighed, gave a slight cough and put on his spectacles. Villon, who had sat quietly watching him, said suddenly, “A person can carry his own persecutor, his own prison, about with him, Monseigneur. He can — as you know — die of thirst even when he has the clearest water within his reach. To be free … not to be free … it is all relative. No one has to drag along more ballast than he wants to and he who allows himself to be bound is a fool. The biggest fools are those who wear shackles of cobwebs and believe themselves to be helpless.”
Charles did not reply at once. With his head propped upon his hand he looked at his visitor — that thin, sharply delineated face with the shadowed eyes and the wide, bitter mouth, the face of a man who had lived fiercely and violently. Charles recalled the nervous vigilance, the disillusioned look of the youth who had been caught cutting a purse in front of the Celestine cloister; the face of the man who sat across from him in the quiet library at Blois bore no trace of youth, although Villon was not yet thirty years old. In that mask, only the eyes appeared sometimes to be vulnerable as they blazed for a brief moment with affection or enthusiasm. Charles, who was usually quick to strike a note of friendship with his visitors, found himself almost uneasy in Villon’s company. More than the width of the table divided them: there was a whole world between them.
The setting sun gleamed red against the tapestries on the wall; from the leafy thickets at the base of the precipice a cuckoo called incessantly with a high, clear sound, and the poplars along the river rustled in the evening breeze.
“Someone has challenged me to a game of cards,” said Villon suddenly. His voice sounded rough and indifferent once more as it had when the meal commenced. “Somebody in black and green with a bald head and a chin like a turkey cock.”
Charles, startled from his thoughts, could not suppress a smile. “Messire Jean des Saveuses, probably.”
“I shall have to hide from him; I cannot afford to lose.” Villon shrugged. Charles groped in his sleeve and produced a purse of black plaited silk.
“I find it a very disagreeable thought that a guest of mine should walk through my house with empty hands. Take my purse, but don’t make the stakes too high, Messire.”
For a moment Villon looked at the purse with a grimace which was half challenging and half embarrassed. His hesitation was quickly overcome, however. He put out his hand and drew the small weighty pouch toward him over the table. At the same time he stood up.
“You are extraordinarily generous, Monseigneur,” he said. He made a gesture as if he were going to bend the knee before his host, but Charles forestalled this mark of homage with a curt wave of his hand.
“Leave that, Villon,” he said dryly. “Go now; perhaps des Saveuses is looking for you. Write a poem and win the match tomorrow. Good evening, Messire.”
Villon, who noticed the change in the Duke’s manner and in his voice, raised his brows, bowed swiftly and left the room. Charles sat quietly in the red-gold glow of the evening sun which now poured through the arched window.
“Here I sit imprisoned,” he said, half-aloud, “in my old skin. A man in the declining years of his life — grey, fat and so exhausted and indifferent to the very core of my being that I create the impression of generosity.” He shook his head and sighed; the sun disturbed him; he closed his eyes and turned his face away a little.
He had lived for ten long years in carefree, sunny domestic Blois, a world which he had created himself. Study, easy intercourse with friends and acquaintances, the secret bliss he derived from poetry — had satisfied him so fully that no room remained in his heart for other desires. The pleasures which had been denied him as a youth and as a man in the prime of life he now possessed in abundance. He was surrounded by devoted, affectionate members of his household. Yes, he could allow himself his small whims, his distinct peculiarities. He basked in the respectful, indulgent warmth of his surroundings. The outside world no longer mattered to him; he did not even want to know what was happening in the cities and territories through which he had once travelled, filled with a desire to serve King and Kingdom, or even to serve that distant vision: peace. That peace was indeed only a vision, a chimaera, he had been compelled to believe when, to his great shock and profound disappointment, the English, despite all treaties, all diplomatic protests, had proceeded anew to attack Normandy and Brittany. Since then the battle had raged incessantly in the coastal regions — sometimes to the advantage of France, sometimes not.