He drew and made at Sermaise, forgetful of le Merdi. It was shrewd work. Presently they were fighting in the moonlight, hammer-and-tongs, as the saying is, and presently Sermaise was cursing like a madman, for François had wounded him in the groin. Window after window rattled open as the Rue Saint Jacques ran nightcapped to peer at the brawl. Then as Francois hurled back his sword to slash at the priest's shaven head—Frenchmen had not yet learned to thrust with the point in the Italian manner—Jehan le Merdi leapt from behind, nimble as a snake, and wrested away the boy's weapon. Sermaise closed with a glad shout.
"Heart of God!" cried Sermaise. "Pray, bridegroom, pray!"
But François jumped backward, tumbling over le Merdi, and with apish celerity caught up a great stone and flung it full in the priest's countenance.
The rest was hideous. For a breathing space Sermaise kept his feet, his outspread arms making a tottering cross. It was curious to see him peer about irresolutely now that he had no face. François, staring at the black featureless horror before him, began to choke. Standing thus, with outstretched arms, the priest first let fall his hands, so that they hung limp from the wrists; his finger-nails gleamed in the moonlight. His rapier tinkled on the flagstones with the sound of shattering glass, and Philippe Sermaise slid down, all a-jumble, crumpling like a broken toy. Afterward you might have heard a long, awed sibilance go about the windows overhead as the watching Rue Saint Jacques breathed again.
Francois de Montcorbier ran. He tore at his breast as he ran, stifling. He wept as he ran through the moon-washed Rue Saint Jacques, making animal-like and whistling noises. His split lip was a clammy dead thing that napped against his chin as he ran.
"François!" a man cried, meeting him; "ah, name of a name, François!"
It was René de Montigny, lurching from the Crowned Ox, half-tipsy. He caught the boy by the shoulder and hurried François, still sobbing, to Fouquet the barber-surgeon's, where they sewed up his wound. In accordance with the police regulations, they first demanded an account of how he had received it. René lied up-hill and down-dale, while in a corner of the room François monotonously wept.
Fate grinned and went on with her weaving.
4. "Necessité Faict Gens Mesprende"
The Rue Saint Jacques had toothsome sauce for its breakfast. The quarter smacked stiff lips over the news, as it pictured François de Montcorbier dangling from Montfaucon. "Horrible!" said the Rue Saint Jacques, and drew a moral of suitably pious flavor.
Guillemette Moreau had told Catherine of the affair before the day was aired. The girl's hurt vanity broke tether.
"Sermaise!" said she. "Bah, what do I care for Sermaise! He killed him in fair fight. But within an hour, Guillemette,—within a half-hour after leaving me, he is junketing on church-porches with that trollop. They were not there for holy-water. Midnight, look you! And he swore to me—chaff, chaff! His honor is chaff, Guillemette, and his heart a bran-bag. Oh, swine, filthy swine! Eh, well, let the swine stick to his sty. Send Noël d'Arnaye to me."
The Sieur d'Arnaye came, his head tied in a napkin.
"Foh!" said she; "another swine fresh from the gutter? No, this is a bottle, a tun, a walking wine-barrel! Noël, I despise you. I will marry you if you like."
He fell to mumbling her hand. An hour later Catherine told Jehan de Vaucelles she intended to marry Noël the Handsome when he should come back from Geneppe with the exiled Dauphin. The old man, having wisdom, lifted his brows, and returned to his reading in Le Pet au Diable.
The patrol had transported Sermaise to the prison of Saint Benoit, where he lay all night. That day he was carried to the hospital of the Hôtel Dieu. He died the following Saturday.
Death exalted the man to some nobility. Before one of the apparitors of the Châtelet he exonerated Montcorbier, under oath, and asked that no steps be taken against him. "I forgive him my death," said Sermaise, manly enough at the last, "by reason of certain causes moving him thereunto." Presently he demanded the peach-colored silk glove they would find in the pocket of his gown. It was Catherine's glove. The priest kissed it, and then began to laugh. Shortly afterward he died, still gnawing at the glove.
François and René had vanished. "Good riddance," said the Rue Saint Jacques. But Montcorbier was summoned to answer before the court of the Châtelet for the death of Philippe Sermaise, and in default of his appearance, was subsequently condemned to banishment from the kingdom.
The two young men were at Saint Pourçain-en-Bourbonnais, where René had kinsmen. Under the name of des Loges, François had there secured a place as tutor, but when he heard that Sermaise in the article of death had cleared him of all blame, François set about procuring a pardon. [Footnote: There is humor in his deposition that Gilles and Ysabeau and he were loitering before Saint Benoît's in friendly discourse,—"pour soy esbatre." Perhaps René prompted this; but in itself, it is characteristic of Montcorbier that he trenched on perjury, blithely, in order to screen Ysabeau.] It was January before he succeeded in obtaining it.
Meanwhile he had learned a deal of René's way of living. "You are a thief," François observed to Montigny the day the pardon came, "but you have played a kindly part by me. I think you are Dysmas, René, not Gestas. Heh, I throw no stones. You have stolen, but I have killed. Let us go to Paris, lad, and start afresh."
Montigny grinned. "I shall certainly go to Paris," he said. "Friends wait for me there,—Guy Tabary, Petit Jehan and Colin de Cayeux. We are planning to visit Guillaume Coiffier, a fat priest with some six hundred crowns in the cupboard. You will make one of the party, François."
"René, René," said the other, "my heart bleeds for you."
Again Montigny grinned. "You think a great deal about blood nowadays," he commented. "People will be mistaking you for such a poet as was crowned Nero, who, likewise, gave his time to ballad-making and to murdering fathers of the Church. Eh, dear Ahenabarbus, let us first see what the Rue Saint Jacques has to say about your recent gambols. After that, I think you will make one of our party."
5. "Yeulx sans Pitié!"
There was a light crackling frost under foot the day that François came back to the Rue Saint Jacques. Upon this brisk, clear January day it was good to be home again, an excellent thing to be alive.
"Eh, Guillemette, Guillemette," he laughed. "Why, lass—!"
"Faugh!" said Guillemette Moreau, as she passed him, nose in air. "A murderer, a priest-killer."
Then the sun went black for François. Such welcoming was a bucket of cold water, full in the face. He gasped, staring after her; and pursy Thomas Tricot, on his way from mass, nudged Martin Blaru in the ribs.
"Martin," said he, "fruit must be cheap this year. Yonder in the gutter is an apple from the gallows-tree, and no one will pick it up."
Blaru turned and spat out, "Cain! Judas!"
This was only a sample. Everywhere François found rigid faces, sniffs, and skirts drawn aside. A little girl in a red cap, Robin Troussecaille's daughter, flung a stone at François as he slunk into the cloister of Saint Benoit-le-Bétourné. In those days a slain priest was God's servant slain, no less; and the Rue Saint Jacques was a respectable God-fearing quarter of Paris.
"My father!" the boy cried, rapping upon the door of the Hôtel de la Porte-Rouge; "O my father, open to me, for I think that my heart is breaking."
Shortly his foster-father, Guillaume de Villon, came to the window. "Murderer!" said he. "Betrayer of women! Now, by the caldron of John! how dare you show your face here? I gave you my name and you soiled it. Back to your husks, rascal!"