VI
FRANCOIS VILLON, STUDENT, POET, AND HOUSEBREAKER
Perhaps one of the most curious revolutions in literary history is thesudden bull's-eye light cast by M. Longnon on the obscure existence ofFrancois Villon[6]. His book is not remarkable merely as a chapter ofbiography exhumed after four centuries. To readers of the poet it willrecall, with a flavour of satire, that characteristic passage in whichhe bequeaths his spectacles--with a humorous reservation of the case--tothe hospital for blind paupers known as the Fifteen-Score. Thusequipped, let the blind paupers go and separate the good from the bad inthe cemetery of the Innocents! For his own part, the poet can see nodistinction. Much have the dead people made of their advantages. Whatdoes it matter now that they have lain in state beds and nourishedportly bodies upon cakes and cream! Here they all lie, to be trodden inthe mud; the large estate and the small, sounding virtue and adroit orpowerful vice, in very much the same condition; and a bishop not to bedistinguished from a lamplighter with even the strongest spectacles.
Such was Villon's cynical philosophy. Four hundred years after hisdeath, when surely all danger might be considered at an end, a pair ofcritical spectacles have been applied to his own remains; and though heleft behind him a sufficiently ragged reputation from the first, it isonly after these four hundred years that his delinquencies have beenfinally tracked home, and we can assign him to his proper place amongthe good or wicked. It is a staggering thought, and one that affords afine figure of the imperishability of men's acts, that the stealth ofthe private inquiry office can be carried so far back into the dead anddusty past. We are not so soon quit of our concerns as Villon fancied.In the extreme of dissolution, when not so much as a man's name isremembered, when his dust is scattered to the four winds, and perhapsthe very grave and the very graveyard where he was laid to rest havebeen forgotten, desecrated, and buried under populous towns,--even inthis extreme let an antiquary fall across a sheet of manuscript, and thename will be recalled, the old infamy will pop out into daylight like atoad out of a fissure in the rock, and the shadow of the shade of whatwas once a man will be heartily pilloried by his descendants. A littlewhile ago and Villon was almost totally forgotten; then he was revivedfor the sake of his verses; and now he is being revived with a vengeancein the detection of his misdemeanours. How unsubstantial is thisprojection of a man's existence, which can lie in abeyance for centuriesand then be brushed up again and set forth for the consideration ofposterity by a few dips in an antiquary's inkpot! This precarious tenureof fame goes a long way to justify those (and they are not few) whoprefer cakes and cream in the immediate present.
A WILD YOUTH
Francois de Montcorbier, _alias_ Francois des Loges, _alias_ FrancoisVillon, _alias_ Michel Mouton, Master of Arts in the University ofParis, was born in that city in the summer of 1431. It was a memorableyear for France on other and higher considerations. A great-hearted girland a poor-hearted boy made, the one her last, the other his firstappearance on the public stage of that unhappy country. On the 30th ofMay the ashes of Joan of Arc were thrown into the Seine, and on the 2ndof December our Henry Sixth made his Joyous Entry dismally enough intodisaffected and depopulating Paris. Sword and fire still ravaged theopen country. On a single April Saturday twelve hundred persons, besideschildren, made their escape out of the starving capital. The hangman, asis not uninteresting to note in connection with Master Francis, was kepthard at work in 1431; on the last of April and on the 4th of May alone,sixty-two bandits swung from Paris gibbets.[7] A more confused ortroublous time it would have been difficult to select for a start inlife. Not even a man's nationality was certain; for the people of Paristhere was no such thing as a Frenchman. The English were the Englishindeed, but the French were only the Armagnacs, whom, with Joan of Arcat their head, they had beaten back from under their ramparts not twoyears before. Such public sentiment as they had centred about their dearDuke of Burgundy, and the dear Duke had no more urgent business than tokeep out of their neighbourhood.... At least, and whether he liked it ornot, our disreputable troubadour was tubbed and swaddled as a subject ofthe English crown.
We hear nothing of Villon's father, except that he was poor and of meanextraction. His mother was given piously, which does not imply very muchin an old Frenchwoman, and quite uneducated. He had an uncle, a monk inan abbey at Angers, who must have prospered beyond the family average,and was reported to be worth five or six hundred crowns. Of this uncleand his money-box the reader will hear once more. In 1448 Francis becamea student of the University of Paris; in 1450 he took the degree ofBachelor, and in 1452 that of Master of Arts. His _bourse_, or the sumpaid weekly for his board, was of the amount of two sous. Now two souswas about the price of a pound of salt butter in the bad times of about1417; it was the price of half a pound in the worse times of 1419; andin 1444, just four years before Villon joined the University, it seemsto have been taken as the average wage for a day's manual labour.[8] Inshort, it cannot have been a very profuse allowance to keep a sharp-setlad in breakfast and supper for seven mortal days; and Villon's share ofthe cakes and pastry and general good cheer, to which he is never wearyof referring, must have been slender from the first.
The educational arrangements of the University of Paris were, to our wayof thinking, somewhat incomplete. Worldly and monkish elements werepresented in a curious confusion, which the youth might disentangle forhimself. If he had an opportunity, on the one hand, of acquiring muchhair-drawn divinity and a taste for formal disputation, he was put inthe way of much gross and flaunting vice upon the other. Thelecture-room of a scholastic doctor was sometimes under the same roofwith establishments of a very different and peculiarly unedifying order.The students had extraordinary privileges, which by all accounts theyabused extraordinarily. And while some condemned themselves to an almostsepulchral regularity and seclusion, others fled the schools, swaggeredin the street "with their thumbs in their girdle," passed the night inriot, and behaved themselves as the worthy forerunners of Jehan Frolloin the romance of "Notre Dame de Paris." Villon tells us himself that hewas among the truants, but we hardly needed his avowal. The burlesqueerudition in which he sometimes indulged implies no more than the merestsmattering of knowledge; whereas his acquaintance with blackguard hauntsand industries could only have been acquired by early and consistentimpiety and idleness. He passed his degrees, it is true; but some of uswho have been to modern Universities will make their own reflections onthe value of the test. As for his three pupils, Colin Laurent, GirardGossouyn, and Jehan Marceau--if they were really his pupils in anyserious sense--what can we say but God help them! And sure enough, byhis own description, they turned out as ragged, rowdy, and ignorant aswas to be looked for from the views and manners of their rare preceptor.
At some time or other, before or during his University career, the poetwas adopted by Master Guillaume de Villon, chaplain of SaintBenoit-le-Betourne, near the Sorbonne. From him he borrowed the surnameby which he is known to posterity. It was most likely from his house,called the "Porte Rouge," and situated in a garden in the cloister ofSt. Benoit, that Master Francis heard the bell of the Sorbonne ring outthe Angelus while he was finishing his "Small Testament" atChristmastide in 1456. Towards this benefactor he usually gets creditfor a respectable display of gratitude. But with his trap and pitfallstyle of writing, it is easy to make too sure. His sentiments are aboutas much to be relied on as those of a professional beggar; and in this,as in so many other matters, he comes towards us whining and piping theeye, and goes off again with a whoop and his finger to his nose. Thus,he calls Guillaume de Villon his "more than father," thanks him with agreat show of sincerity for having helped him out of many scrapes, andbequeaths him his portion of renown. But the portion of renown whichbelonged to a young thief, distinguished (if, at the period when hewrote this legacy, he was distinguished at all) for having written somemore or less obscene and scurrilous ballads, must have been littlefitted to gratify the self-respect or increase the reputation of abenevolent ecclesias
tic. The same remark applies to a subsequent legacyof the poet's library, with specification of one work which was plainlyneither decent nor devout. We are thus left on the horns of a dilemma.If the chaplain was a godly, philanthropic personage, who had tried tograft good principles and good behaviour on this wild slip of an adoptedson, these jesting legacies would obviously cut him to the heart. Theposition of an adopted son towards his adoptive father is one full ofdelicacy; where a man lends his name he looks for great consideration.And this legacy of Villon's portion of renown may be taken as the merefling of an unregenerate scapegrace who has wit enough to recognise inhis own shame the readiest weapon of offence against a prosybenefactor's feelings. The gratitude of Master Francis figures, on thisreading, as a frightful _minus_ quantity. If, on the other hand, thosejests were given and taken in good humour, the whole relation betweenthe pair degenerates into the unedifying complicity of a debauched oldchaplain and a witty and dissolute young scholar. At this rate the housewith the red door may have rung with the most mundane minstrelsy; and itmay have been below its roof that Villon, through a hole in the plaster,studied, as he tells us, the leisures of a rich ecclesiastic.
It was, perhaps, of some moment in the poet's life that he should haveinhabited the cloister of Saint Benoit. Three of the most remarkableamong his early acquaintances are Catherine de Vausselles, for whom heentertained a short-lived affection and an enduring and most unmanlyresentment; Regnier de Montigny, a young blackguard of good birth; andColin de Cayeux, a fellow with a marked aptitude for picking locks. Nowwe are on a foundation of mere conjecture, but it is at least curious tofind that two of the canons of Saint Benoit answered respectively to thenames of Pierre de Vaucel and Etienne de Montigny, and that there was ahouseholder called Nicolas de Cayeux in a street--the Rue desPoirees--in the immediate neighbourhood of the cloister. M. Longnon isalmost ready to identify Catherine as the niece of Pierre; Regnier asthe nephew of Etienne, and Colin as the son of Nicolas. Without going sofar, it must be owned that the approximation of names is significant. Aswe go on to see the part played by each of these persons in the sordidmelodrama of the poet's life, we shall come to regard it as even morenotable. Is it not Clough who has remarked that, after all, everythinglies in juxtaposition? Many a man's destiny has been settled by nothingapparently more grave than a pretty face on the opposite side of thestreet and a couple of bad companions round the corner.
Catherine de Vausselles (or de Vaucel--the change is within the limitsof Villon's licence) had plainly delighted in the poet's conversation;near neighbours or not, they were much together; and Villon made nosecret of his court, and suffered himself to believe that his feelingwas repaid in kind. This may have been an error from the first, or hemay have estranged her by subsequent misconduct or temerity. One caneasily imagine Villon an impatient wooer. One thing, at least, is sure:that the affair terminated in a manner bitterly humiliating to MasterFrancis. In presence of his lady-love, perhaps under her window, andcertainly with her connivance, he was unmercifully thrashed by one Noele Joly--beaten, as he says himself, like dirty linen on thewashing-board. It is characteristic that his malice had notablyincreased between the time when he wrote the "Small Testament"immediately on the back of the occurrence, and the time when he wrotethe "Large Testament" five years after. On the latter occasion nothingis too bad for his "damsel with the twisted nose," as he calls her. Sheis spared neither hint nor accusation, and he tells his messenger toaccost her with the vilest insults. Villon, it is thought, was out ofParis when these amenities escaped his pen; or perhaps the strong arm ofNoe le Joly would have been again in requisition. So ends thelove-story, if love-story it may properly be called. Poets are notnecessarily fortunate in love; but they usually fall among more romanticcircumstances, and bear their disappointment with a better grace.
The neighbourhood of Regnier de Montigny and Colin de Cayeux wasprobably more influential on his after life than the contempt ofCatherine. For a man who is greedy of all pleasures, and provided withlittle money and less dignity of character, we may prophesy a safe andspeedy voyage downward. Humble or even truckling virtue may walkunspotted in this life. But only those who despise the pleasures canafford to despise the opinion of the world. A man of a strong, headytemperament, like Villon, is very differently tempted. His eyes lay holdon all provocations greedily, and his heart flames up at a look intoimperious desire; he is snared and broached-to by anything andeverything, from a pretty face to a piece of pastry in a cookshopwindow; he will drink the rinsing of the wine-cup, stay the latest atthe tavern party; tap at the lit windows, follow the sound of singing,and beat the whole neighbourhood for another reveller, as he goesreluctantly homeward; and grudge himself every hour of sleep as a blackempty period in which he cannot follow after pleasure. Such a person islost if he have not dignity, or, failing that, at least pride, which isits shadow and in many ways its substitute. Master Francis, I fancy,would follow his own eager instincts without much spiritual struggle.And we soon find him fallen among thieves in sober, literal earnest, andcounting as acquaintances the most disreputable people he could lay hishands on; fellows who stole ducks in Paris Moat; sergeants of thecriminal court, and archers of the watch; blackguards who slept at nightunder the butchers' stalls, and for whom the aforesaid archers peeredabout carefully with lanterns; Regnier de Montigny, Colin de Cayeux, andtheir crew, all bound on a favouring breeze towards the gallows; thedisorderly abbess of Port Royal, who went about at fair-time withsoldiers and thieves, and conducted her abbey on the queerestprinciples; and most likely Perette Mauger, the great Paris receiver ofstolen goods, not yet dreaming, poor woman! of the last scene of hercareer when Henry Cousin, executor of the high justice, shall bury her,alive and most reluctant, in front of the new Montigny gibbet.[9] Nay,our friend soon began to take a foremost rank in this society. He couldstring off verses, which is always an agreeable talent; and he couldmake himself useful in many other ways. The whole ragged army ofBohemia, and whosoever loved good cheer without at all loving to workand pay for it, are addressed in contemporary verses as the "Subjects ofFrancois Villon." He was a good genius to all hungry and unscrupulouspersons; and became the hero of a whole legendary cycle of tavern tricksand cheateries. At best, these were doubtful levities, rather toothievish for a schoolboy, rather too gamesome for a thief. But he wouldnot linger long in this equivocal border-land. He must soon havecomplied with his surroundings. He was one who would go where thecannikin clinked, not caring who should pay; and from supping in thewolves' den, there is but a step to hunting with the pack. And here, asI am on the chapter of his degradation, I shall say all I mean to sayabout its darkest expression, and be done with it for good. Somecharitable critics see no more than a _jeu d'esprit_, a graceful andtrifling exercise of the imagination, in the grimy ballad of Fat Peg(_Grosse Margot_). I am not able to follow these gentlemen to thispolite extreme. Out of all Villon's works that ballad stands forth inflaring reality, gross and ghastly, as a thing written in a contractionof disgust. M. Longnon shows us more and more clearly at every page thatwe are to read our poet literally, that his names are the names of realpersons, and the events he chronicles were actual events. But even ifthe tendency of criticism had run the other way, this ballad would havegone far to prove itself. I can well understand the reluctance of worthypersons in this matter; for of course it is unpleasant to think of a manof genius as one who held, in the words of Marina to Boult--
"A place, for which the pained'st fiend Of hell would not in reputation change."
But beyond this natural unwillingness, the whole difficulty of the casesprings from a highly virtuous ignorance of life. Paris now is not sodifferent from the Paris of then; and the whole of the doings ofBohemia are not written in the sugar-candy pastorals of Muerger. It isreally not at all surprising that a young man of the fifteenth century,with a knack of making verses, should accept his bread upon disgracefulterms. The race of those who do so is not extinct; and some of them tothis day write the prettiest verses imaginable.... After t
his, it wereimpossible for Master Francis to fall lower: to go and steal for himselfwould be an admirable advance from every point of view, divine or human.
And yet it is not as a thief, but as a homicide, that he makes his firstappearance before angry justice. On June 5, 1455, when he was abouttwenty-four, and had been Master of Arts for a matter of three years, webehold him for the first time quite definitely. Angry justice had, as itwere, photographed him in the act of his homicide; and M. Longnon,rummaging among old deeds, has turned up the negative and printed it offfor our instruction. Villon had been supping--copiously we maybelieve--and sat on a stone bench in front of the Church of St. Benoit,in company with a priest called Gilles and a woman of the name ofIsabeau. It was nine o'clock, a mighty late hour for the period, andevidently a fine summer's night. Master Francis carried a mantle, like aprudent man, to keep him from the dews (_serain_), and had a sword belowit dangling from his girdle. So these three dallied in front of St.Benoit, taking their pleasure (_pour soy esbatre_). Suddenly therearrived upon the scene a priest, Philippe Chermoye or Sermaise, alsowith sword and cloak, and accompanied by one Master Jehan le Mardi.Sermaise, according to Villon's account, which is all we have to goupon, came up blustering and denying God; as Villon rose to make roomfor him upon the bench, thrust him rudely back into his place; andfinally drew his sword and cut open his lower lip, by what I shouldimagine was a very clumsy stroke. Up to this point, Villon professes tohave been a model of courtesy, even of feebleness: and the brawl, in hisversion, reads like the fable of the wolf and the lamb. But now thelamb was roused; he drew his sword, stabbed Sermaise in the groin,knocked him on the head with a big stone, and then, leaving him to hisfate, went away to have his own lip doctored by a barber of the name ofFouquet. In one version he says that Gilles, Isabeau, and Le Mardi ranaway at the first high words, and that he and Sermaise had it out alone;in another, Le Mardi is represented as returning and wresting Villon'ssword from him: the reader may please himself. Sermaise was picked up,lay all that night in the prison of Saint Benoit, where he was examinedby an official of the Chatelet and expressly pardoned Villon, and diedon the following Saturday in the Hotel Dieu.
This, as I have said, was in June. Not before January of the next yearcould Villon extract a pardon from the King; but while his hand was in,he got two. One is for "Francois des Loges, alias (_autrement dit_) deVillon"; and the other runs in the name of Francois de Montcorbier. Nay,it appears there was a further complication; for in the narrative of thefirst of these documents it is mentioned that he passed himself off uponFouquet, the barber-surgeon, as one Michel Mouton. M. Longnon has atheory that this unhappy accident with Sermaise was the cause ofVillon's subsequent irregularities; and that up to that moment he hadbeen the pink of good behaviour. But the matter has to my eyes a moredubious air. A pardon necessary for Des Loges and another forMontcorbier? and these two the same person? and one or both of themknown by the _alias_ of Villon, however honestly come by? and lastly, inthe heat of the moment, a fourth name thrown out with an assuredcountenance? A ship is not to be trusted that sails under so manycolours. This is not the simple bearing of innocence. No--the youngmaster was already treading crooked paths; already, he would start andblench at a hand upon his shoulder, with the look we know so well in theface of Hogarth's Idle Apprentice; already, in the blue devils, he wouldsee Henry Cousin, the executor of high justice, going in dolorousprocession towards Montfaucon, and hear the wind and the birds cryingaround Paris gibbet.
A GANG OF THIEVES
In spite of the prodigious number of people who managed to get hanged,the fifteenth century was by no means a bad time for criminals. A greatconfusion of parties and great dust of fighting favoured the escape ofprivate housebreakers and quiet fellows who stole ducks in Paris Moat.Prisons were leaky; and as we shall see, a man with a few crowns in hispocket, and perhaps some acquaintance among the officials, could easilyslip out and become once more a free marauder. There was no want of asanctuary where he might harbour until troubles blew by; and accompliceshelped each other with more or less good faith. Clerks, above all, hadremarkable facilities for a criminal way of life; for they wereprivileged, except in cases of notorious incorrigibility, to be pluckedfrom the hands of rude secular justice and tried by a tribunal of theirown. In 1402, a couple of thieves, both clerks of the University, werecondemned to death by the Provost of Paris. As they were taken toMontfaucon, they kept crying "high and clearly" for their benefit ofclergy, but were none the less pitilessly hanged and gibbeted. IndignantAlma Mater interfered before the King; and the Provost was deprived ofall royal offices, and condemned to return the bodies and erect a greatstone cross, on the road from Paris to the gibbet, graven with theeffigies of these two holy martyrs.[10] We shall hear more of thebenefit of clergy; for after this the reader will not be surprised tomeet with thieves in the shape of tonsured clerks, or even priests andmonks.
To a knot of such learned pilferers our poet certainly belonged; and byturning over a few more of M. Longnon's negatives, we shall get a clearidea of their character and doings. Montigny and De Cayeux are namesalready known; Guy Tabary, Petit-Jehan, Dom Nicolas, little Thibault,who was both clerk and goldsmith, and who made picklocks and meltedplate for himself and his companions--with these the reader has still tobecome acquainted. Petit-Jehan and De Cayeux were handy fellows andenjoyed a useful pre-eminence in honour of their doings with thepicklock. "_Dictus des Cahyeus est fortis operator crochetorum_," saysTabary's interrogation, "_sed dictus Petit-Jehan, ejus socius, estforcius operator_." But the flower of the flock was little Thibault; itwas reported that no lock could stand before him; he had a persuasivehand; let us salute capacity wherever we may find it. Perhaps the term_gang_ is not quite properly applied to the persons whose fortunes weare now about to follow; rather they were independent malefactors,socially intimate, and occasionally joining together for some seriousoperation, just as modern stockjobbers form a syndicate for an importantloan. Nor were they at all particular to any branch of misdoing. Theydid not scrupulously confine themselves to a single sort of theft, as Ihear is common among modern thieves. They were ready for anything, frompitch-and-toss to manslaughter. Montigny, for instance, had neglectedneither of these extremes, and we find him accused of cheating at gamesof hazard on the one hand, and on the other of the murder of oneThevenin Pensete in a house by the Cemetery of St. John. If time hadonly spared us some particulars, might not this last have furnished uswith the matter of a grisly winter's tale?
At Christmas-time in 1456, readers of Villon will remember that he wasengaged on the "Small Testament." About the same period, _circa festumnativitatis Domini_, he took part in a memorable supper at the MuleTavern, in front of the Church of St. Mathurin. Tabary, who seems tohave been very much Villon's creature, had ordered the supper in thecourse of the afternoon. He was a man who had had troubles in his time,and languished in the Bishop of Paris's prisons on a suspicion ofpicking locks; confiding, convivial, not very astute--who had copied outa whole improper romance with his own right hand. This supper-party wasto be his first introduction to De Cayeux and Petit-Jehan, which wasprobably a matter of some concern to the poor man's muddy wits; in thesequel, at least, he speaks of both with an undisguised respect, basedon professional inferiority in the matter of picklocks. Dom Nicolas, aPicardy monk, was the fifth and last at table. When supper had beendespatched and fairly washed down, we may suppose, with white Baigneuxor red Beaune, which were favourite wines among the fellowship, Tabarywas solemnly sworn over to secrecy on the night's performances; and theparty left the Mule and proceeded to an unoccupied house belonging toRobert de Saint-Simon. This, over a low wall, they entered withoutdifficulty. All but Tabary took off their upper garments; a ladder wasfound and applied to the high wall which separated Saint-Simon's housefrom the court of the College of Navarre; the four fellows in theirshirt-sleeves (as we might say) clambered over in a twinkling; andMaster Guy Tabary remained alone beside the overcoats. From the courtthe burglars made their way into the vest
ry of the chapel, where theyfound a large chest, strengthened with iron bands and closed with fourlocks. One of these locks they picked, and then, by levering up thecorner, forced the other three. Inside was a small coffer, of walnutwood, also barred with iron, but fastened with only three locks, whichwere all comfortably picked by way of the keyhole. In the walnutcoffer--a joyous sight by our thieves' lantern--were five hundred crownsof gold. There was some talk of opening the aumries, where, if they hadonly known, a booty eight or nine times greater lay ready to their hand;but one of the party (I have a humorous suspicion it was Dom Nicolas,the Picardy monk) hurried them away. It was ten o'clock when theymounted the ladder; it was about midnight before Tabary beheld themcoming back. To him they gave ten crowns, and promised a share of atwo-crown dinner on the morrow; whereat we may suppose his mouthwatered. In course of time, he got wind of the real amount of theirbooty and understood how scurvily he had been used; but he seems to haveborne no malice. How could he, against such superb operators asPetit-Jehan and De Cayeux; or a person like Villon, who could have madea new improper romance out of his own head, instead of merely copying anold one with mechanical right hand?
The rest of the winter was not uneventful for the gang. First they madea demonstration against the Church of St. Mathurin after chalices, andwere ignominiously chased away by barking dogs. Then Tabary fell outwith Casin Chollet, one of the fellows who stole ducks in Paris Moat,who subsequently became a sergeant of the Chatelet and distinguishedhimself by misconduct, followed by imprisonment and public castigation,during the wars of Louis Eleventh. The quarrel was not conducted with aproper regard to the King's peace, and the pair publicly belaboured eachother until the police stepped in, and Master Tabary was cast once moreinto the prisons of the Bishop. While he still lay in durance, anotherjob was cleverly executed by the band in broad daylight, at theAugustine Monastery. Brother Guillaume Coiffier was beguiled by anaccomplice to St. Mathurin to say mass; and during his absence, hischamber was entered and five or six hundred crowns in money and somesilver plate successfully abstracted. A melancholy man was Coiffier onhis return! Eight crowns from this adventure were forwarded by littleThibault to the incarcerated Tabary; and with these he bribed the jailerand reappeared in Paris taverns. Some time before or shortly after this,Villon set out for Angers, as he had promised in the "Small Testament."The object of this excursion was not merely to avoid the presence of hiscruel mistress or the strong arm of Noe le Joly, but to plan adeliberate robbery on his uncle the monk. As soon as he had properlystudied the ground, the others were to go over in force fromParis--picklocks and all--and away with my uncle's strongbox! Thisthrows a comical side-light on his own accusation against his relatives,that they had "forgotten natural duty" and disowned him because he waspoor. A poor relation is a distasteful circumstance at the best, but apoor relation who plans deliberate robberies against those of his blood,and trudges hundreds of weary leagues to put them into execution, issurely a little on the wrong side of toleration. The uncle at Angers mayhave been monstrously undutiful; but the nephew from Paris was upsideswith him.
On the 23rd April, that venerable and discreet person, Master PierreMarchand, Curate and Prior of Paray-le-Monial, in the diocese ofChartres, arrived in Paris and put up at the sign of the ThreeChandeliers, in the Rue de la Huchette. Next day, or the day after, ashe was breakfasting at the sign of the Armchair, he fell into talk withtwo customers, one of whom was a priest and the other our friend Tabary.The idiotic Tabary became mighty confidential as to his past life.Pierre Marchand, who was an acquaintance of Guillaume Coiffier's and hadsympathised with him over his loss, pricked up his ears at the mentionof picklocks, and led on the transcriber of improper romances from onething to another, until they were fast friends. For picklocks the Priorof Paray professed a keen curiosity; but Tabary, upon some late alarm,had thrown all his into the Seine. Let that be no difficulty, however,for was there not little Thibault, who could make them of all shapes andsizes, and to whom Tabary, smelling an accomplice, would be only tooglad to introduce his new acquaintance? On the morrow, accordingly, theymet; and Tabary, after having first wet his whistle at the Prior'sexpense, led him to Notre Dame and presented him to four or five "youngcompanions," who were keeping sanctuary in the church. They were allclerks, recently escaped, like Tabary himself, from the episcopalprisons. Among these we may notice Thibault, the operator, a littlefellow of twenty-six, wearing long hair behind. The Prior expressed,through Tabary, his anxiety to become their accomplice and altogethersuch as they were (_de leur sorte et de leurs complices_). Mighty politethey showed themselves, and made him many fine speeches in return. Butfor all that, perhaps because they had longer heads than Tabary, perhapsbecause it is less easy to wheedle men in a body, they kept obstinatelyto generalities and gave him no information as to their exploits, past,present, or to come. I suppose Tabary groaned under this reserve; for nosooner were he and the Prior out of the church than he fairly emptiedhis heart to him, gave him full details of many hanging matters in thepast, and explained the future intentions of the band. The scheme of thehour was to rob another Augustine monk, Robert de la Porte, and in thisthe Prior agreed to take a hand with simulated greed. Thus, in thecourse of two days, he had turned this wineskin of a Tabary inside out.For a while longer the farce was carried on; the Prior was introduced toPetit-Jehan, whom he describes as a little, very smart man of thirty,with a black beard and a short jacket; an appointment was made andbroken in the de la Porte affair; Tabary had some breakfast at thePrior's charge and leaked out more secrets under the influence of wineand friendship; and then all of a sudden, on the 17th of May, an alarmsprang up, the Prior picked up his skirts and walked quietly over to theChatelet to make a deposition, and the whole band took to their heelsand vanished out of Paris and the sight of the police.
Vanish as they like, they all go with a clog about their feet. Sooner orlater, here or there, they will be caught in the fact, and ignominiouslysent home. From our vantage of four centuries afterwards, it is odd andpitiful to watch the order in which the fugitives are captured anddragged in.
Montigny was the first. In August of that same year he was laid by theheels on many grievous counts--sacrilegious robberies, frauds,incorrigibility, and that bad business about Thevenin Pensete in thehouse by the Cemetery of St. John. He was reclaimed by theecclesiastical authorities as a clerk; but the claim was rebutted on thescore of incorrigibility, and ultimately fell to the ground; and he wascondemned to death by the Provost of Paris. It was a very rude hour forMontigny, but hope was not yet over. He was a fellow of some birth; hisfather had been king's pantler; his sister, probably married to some oneabout the Court, was in the family way, and her health would beendangered if the execution was proceeded with. So down comes Charlesthe Seventh with letters of mercy, commuting the penalty to a year in adungeon on bread and water, and a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Jamesin Galicia. Alas! the document was incomplete; it did not contain thefull tale of Montigny's enormities; it did not recite that he had beendenied benefit of clergy, and it said nothing about Thevenin Pensete.Montigny's hour was at hand. Benefit of clergy, honourable descent fromking's pantler, sister in the family way, royal letters ofcommutation--all were of no avail. He had been in prison in Rouen, inTours, in Bordeaux, and four times already in Paris; and out of allthese he had come scatheless; but now he must make a little excursion asfar as Montfaucon with Henry Cousin, executor of high justice. There lethim swing among the carrion crows.
About a year later, in July 1458, the police laid hands on Tabary.Before the ecclesiastical commissary he was twice examined, and, on thelatter occasion, put to the question ordinary and extraordinary. What adismal change from pleasant suppers at the Mule, where he sat in triumphwith expert operators and great wits! He is at the lees of life, poorrogue; and those fingers which once transcribed improper romances arenow agonisingly stretched upon the rack. We have no sure knowledge, butwe may have a shrewd guess of the conclusion. Tabary, the admirer, wouldgo the same way as those w
hom he admired.
The last we hear of is Colin de Gayeux. He was caught in autumn 1460, inthe great Church of St. Leu d'Esserens, which makes so fine a figure inthe pleasant Oise valley between Creil and Beaumont. He was reclaimed byno less than two bishops; but the Procureur for the Provost held fast byincorrigible Colin. 1460 was an ill-starred year: for justice was makinga clean sweep of "poor and indigent persons, thieves, cheats, andlock-pickers," in the neighbourhood of Paris;[11] and Colin de Cayeux,with many others, was condemned to death and hanged.[12]
VILLON AND THE GALLOWS
Villon was still absent on the Angers expedition when the Prior of Paraysent such a bombshell among his accomplices; and the dates of his returnand arrest remain undiscoverable. M. Campaux plausibly enough opined forthe autumn of 1457, which would make him closely follow on Montigny, andthe first of those denounced by the Prior to fall into the toils. We maysuppose, at least, that it was not long thereafter; we may suppose himcompeted for between lay and clerical Courts; and we may suppose himalternately pert and impudent, humble and fawning, in his defence. Butat the end of all supposing, we come upon some nuggets of fact. Forfirst, he was put to the question by water. He who had tossed off somany cups of White Baigneux or red Beaune, now drank water through linenfolds, until his bowels were flooded and his heart stood still. After somuch raising of the elbow, so much outcry of fictitious thirst, here atlast was enough drinking for a lifetime. Truly, of our pleasant vices,the gods make whips to scourge us. And secondly he was condemned to behanged. A man may have been expecting a catastrophe for years, and yetfind himself unprepared when it arrives. Certainly, Villon found, inthis legitimate issue of his career, a very staggering and graveconsideration. Every beast, as he says, clings bitterly to a whole skin.If everything is lost, and even honour, life still remains; nay, and itbecomes, like the ewe lamb in Nathan's parable, as dear as all the rest."Do you fancy," he asks, in a lively ballad, "that I had not enoughphilosophy under my hood to cry out: 'I appeal'? If I had made any bonesabout the matter I should have been planted upright in the fields, bythe St. Denis Road"--Montfaucon being on the way to St. Denis. An appealto Parliament, as we saw in the case of Colin de Cayeux, did notnecessarily lead to an acquittal or a commutation; and while the matterwas pending, our poet had ample opportunity to reflect on his position.Hanging is a sharp argument, and to swing with many others on the gibbetadds a horrible corollary for the imagination. With the aspect ofMontfaucon he was well acquainted; indeed, as the neighbourhood appearsto have been sacred to junketing and nocturnal picnics of wild young menand women, he had probably studied it under all varieties of hour andweather. And now, as he lay in prison waiting the mortal push, thesedifferent aspects crowded back on his imagination with a new andstartling significance; and he wrote a ballad, by way of epitaph forhimself and his companions, which remains unique in the annals ofmankind. It is, in the highest sense, a piece of his biography:--
"La pluye nous a debuez et lavez, Et le soleil dessechez et noirciz; Pies, corbeaulx, nous ont les yeux cavez, Et arrachez la barbe et les sourcilz. Jamais, nul temps, nous ne sommes rassis; Puis ca, puis la, comme le vent varie, A son plaisir sans cesser nous charie, Plus becquetez d'oiseaulx que dez a couldre. Ne soyez donc de nostre confrairie, Mais priez Dieu que tous nous vueille absouldre."
Here is some genuine thieves' literature after so much that wasspurious; sharp as an etching, written with a shuddering soul. There isan intensity of consideration in the piece that shows it to be thetranscript of familiar thoughts. It is the quintessence of many adoleful nightmare on the straw, when he felt himself swing helpless inthe wind, and saw the birds turn about him, screaming and menacing hiseyes.
And, after all, the Parliament changed his sentence into one ofbanishment; and to Roussillon, in Dauphiny, our poet must carry his woeswithout delay. Travellers between Lyons and Marseilles may remember astation on the line, some way below Vienne, where the Rhone fleetsseaward between vine-clad hills. This was Villon's Siberia. It would bea little warm in summer perhaps, and a little cold in winter in thatdraughty valley between two great mountain fields; but what with thehills, and the racing river, and the fiery Rhone wines, he was little tobe pitied on the conditions of his exile. Villon, in a remarkably badballad, written in a breath, heartily thanked and fulsomely belauded theParliament; the _envoi_, like the proverbial postscript of a lady'sletter, containing the pith of his performance in a request for threedays' delay to settle his affairs and bid his friends farewell. He wasprobably not followed out of Paris, like Antoine Fradin, the popularpreacher, another exile of a few years later, by weeping multitudes;[13]but I daresay one or two rogues of his acquaintance would keep himcompany for a mile or so on the south road, and drink a bottle with himbefore they turned. For banished people, in those days, seem to have setout on their own responsibility, in their own guard, and at their ownexpense. It was no joke to make one's way from Paris to Roussillonalone and penniless in the fifteenth century. Villon says he left a ragof his tails on every bush. Indeed, he must have had many a weary tramp,many a slender meal, and many a to-do with blustering captains of theOrdonnance. But with one of his light fingers, we may fancy that he tookas good as he gave; for every rag of his tail he would manage toindemnify himself upon the population in the shape of food, or wine, orringing money; and his route would be traceable across France andBurgundy by housewives and inn-keepers lamenting over petty thefts, likethe track of a single human locust. A strange figure he must have cut inthe eyes of the good country people: this ragged, blackguard city poet,with a smack of the Paris student, and a smack of the Paris street arab,posting along the highways, in rain or sun, among the green fields andvineyards. For himself, he had no taste for rural loveliness; greenfields and vineyards would be mighty indifferent to Master Francis; buthe would often have his tongue in his cheek at the simplicity of rusticdupes, and often, at city gates, he might stop to contemplate the gibbetwith its swinging bodies, and hug himself on his escape.
How long he stayed at Roussillon, how far he became the _protege_ of theBourbons, to whom that town belonged, or when it was that he took part,under the auspices of Charles of Orleans, in a rhyming tournament to bereferred to once again in the pages of the present volume, are mattersthat still remain in darkness, in spite of M. Longnon's diligentrummaging among archives. When we next find him, in summer 1461, alas!he is once more in durance: this time at Meun-sur-Loire, in the prisonsof Thibault d'Aussigny, Bishop of Orleans. He had been lowered in abasket into a noisome pit, where he lay all summer, gnawing hard crustsand railing upon fate. His teeth, he says, were like the teeth of arake: a touch of haggard portraiture all the more real for beingexcessive and burlesque, and all the more proper to the man for being acaricature of his own misery. His eyes were "bandaged with thickwalls." It might blow hurricanes overhead; the lightning might leap inhigh heaven; but no word of all this reached him in his noisome pit."_Il n'entre, ou gist, n'escler ni tourbillon._" Above all, he waslevered with envy and anger at the freedom of others; and his heartflowed over into curses as he thought of Thibault d'Aussigny, walkingthe streets in God's sunlight, and blessing people with extendedfingers. So much we find sharply lined in his own poems. Why he was castagain into prison--how he had again managed to shave the gallows--thiswe know not, nor, from the destruction of authorities, are we everlikely to learn. But on October 2nd, 1461, or some day immediatelypreceding, the new King, Louis Eleventh, made his joyous entry intoMeun. Now it was a part of the formality on such occasions for the newKing to liberate certain prisoners; and so the basket was let down intoVillon's pit, and hastily did Master Francis scramble in, and was mostjoyfully hauled up, and shot out, blinking and tottering, but once morea free man, into the blessed sun and wind. Now or never is the time forverses! Such a happy revolution would turn the head of astocking-weaver, and set him jingling rhymes. And so--after a voyage toParis, where he finds Montigny and De Cayeux clattering their bones uponthe gibbet, and his three pupils roystering in Paris s
treets, "withtheir thumbs under their girdles,"--down sits Master Francis to writehis "Large Testament," and perpetuate his name in a sort of gloriousignominy.
THE "LARGE TESTAMENT"
Of this capital achievement and, with it, of Villon's style in general,it is here the place to speak. The "Large Testament" is a hurly-burly ofcynical and sentimental reflections about life, jesting legacies tofriends and enemies, and, interspersed among these, many admirableballades both serious and absurd. With so free a design, no thoughtthat occurred to him would need to be dismissed without expression; andhe could draw at full length the portrait of his own bedevilled soul,and of the bleak and blackguardly world which was the theatre of hisexploits and sufferings. If the reader can conceive something betweenthe slap-dash inconsequence of Byron's "Don Juan" and the racy humorousgravity and brief noble touches that distinguish the vernacular poems ofBurns, he will have formed some idea of Villon's style. To the latterwriter--except in the ballades, which are quite his own, and can beparalleled from no other language known to me--he bears a particularresemblance. In common with Burns he has a certain rugged compression, abrutal vivacity of epithet, a homely vigour, a delight in localpersonalities, and an interest in many sides of life, that are oftendespised and passed over by more effete and cultured poets. Both also,in their strong, easy colloquial way, tend to become difficult andobscure; the obscurity in the case of Villon passing at times into theabsolute darkness of cant language. They are perhaps the only two greatmasters of expression who keep sending their readers to a glossary.
"Shall we not dare to say of a thief," asks Montaigne, "that he has ahandsome leg?" It is a far more serious claim that we have to putforward in behalf of Villon. Beside that of his contemporaries, hiswriting, so full of colour, so eloquent, so picturesque, stands out inan almost miraculous isolation. If only one or two of the chroniclerscould have taken a leaf out of his book, history would have been apastime, and the fifteenth century as present to our minds as the age ofCharles Second. This gallows-bird was the one great writer of his ageand country, and initiated modern literature for France. Boileau, longago, in the period of perukes and snuff-boxes, recognised him as thefirst articulate poet in the language; and if we measure him, not bypriority of merit, but living duration of influence, not on a comparisonwith obscure forerunners, but with great and famous successors, weshall instal this ragged and disreputable figure in a far higher nichein glory's temple than was ever dreamed of by the critic. It is, initself, a memorable fact that before 1542, in the very dawn of printing,and while modern France was in the making, the works of Villon ranthrough seven different editions. Out of him flows much of Rabelais; andthrough Rabelais, directly and indirectly, a deep, permanent, andgrowing inspiration. Not only his style, but his callous pertinent wayof looking upon the sordid and ugly sides of life, becomes every day amore specific feature in the literature of France. And only the otheryear, a work of some power appeared in Paris, and appeared with infinitescandal, which owed its whole inner significance and much of its outwardform to the study of our rhyming thief.
The world to which he introduces us is, as before said, blackguardly andbleak. Paris swarms before us, full of famine, shame, and death; monksand the servants of great lords hold high wassail upon cakes and pastry;the poor man licks his lips before the baker's window; people withpatched eyes sprawl all night under the stalls; chuckling Tabarytranscribes an improper romance; bare-bosomed lasses and rufflingstudents swagger in the streets; the drunkard goes stumbling homeward;the graveyard is full of bones; and away on Montfaucon, Colin de Cayeuxand Montigny hang draggled in the rain. Is there nothing better to beseen than sordid misery and worthless joys? Only where the poor oldmother of the poet kneels in church below painted windows, and makestremulous supplication to the Mother of God.
In our mixed world, full of green fields and happy lovers, where notlong before Joan of Arc had led one of the highest and noblest lives inthe whole story of mankind, this was all worth chronicling that our poetcould perceive. His eyes were indeed sealed with his own filth. He dweltall his life in a pit more noisome than the dungeon at Meun. In themoral world, also, there are large phenomena not cognisable out ofholes and corners. Loud winds blow, speeding home deep-laden ships andsweeping rubbish from the earth; the lightning leaps and cleans the faceof heaven; high purposes and brave passions shake and sublimate men'sspirits; and meanwhile, in the narrow dungeon of his soul, Villon ismumbling crusts and picking vermin.
Along with this deadly gloom of outlook, we must take anothercharacteristic of his work, its unrivalled insincerity. I can give nobetter similitude of this quality than I have given already: that hecomes up with a whine and runs away with a whoop and his finger to hisnose. His pathos is that of a professional mendicant who should happento be a man of genius; his levity that of a bitter street arab, full ofbread. On a first reading, the pathetic passages preoccupy the reader,and he is cheated out of an alms in the shape of sympathy. But when thething is studied the illusion fades away: in the transitions, above all,we can detect the evil, ironical temper of the man; and instead of aflighty work, where many crude but genuine feelings tumble together forthe mastery as in the lists of tournament, we are tempted to think ofthe "Large Testament" as of one long-drawn epical grimace, pulled by amerry-andrew, who has found a certain despicable eminence over humanrespect and human affections by perching himself astride upon thegallows. Between these two views, at best, all temperate judgments willbe found to fall; and rather, as I imagine, towards the last.
There were two things on which he felt with perfect and, in one case,even threatening sincerity.
The first of these was an undisguised envy of those richer than himself.He was for ever drawing a parallel, already exemplified from his ownwords, between the happy life of the well-to-do and the miseries of thepoor. Burns, too proud and honest not to work, continued through allreverses to sing of poverty with a light, defiant note. Beranger waitedtill he was himself beyond the reach of want before writing the "OldVagabond" or "Jacques." Samuel Johnson, although he was very sorry tobe poor, "was a great arguer for the advantages of poverty" in his illdays. Thus it is that brave men carry their crosses, and smile with thefox burrowing in their vitals. But Villon, who had not the courage to bepoor with honesty, now whiningly implores our sympathy, now shows histeeth upon the dung-heap with an ugly snarl. He envies bitterly, enviespassionately. Poverty, he protests, drives men to steal, as hunger makesthe wolf sally from the forest. The poor, he goes on, will always have acarping word to say, or, if that outlet be denied, nourish rebelliousthoughts. It is a calumny on the noble army of the poor. Thousands in asmall way of life, ay, and even in the smallest, go through life withtenfold as much honour and dignity and peace of mind as the richgluttons whose dainties and state-beds awakened Villon's covetoustemper. And every morning's sun sees thousands who pass whistling totheir toil. But Villon was the "_mauvais pauvre_" defined by VictorHugo, and, in its English expression, so admirably stereotyped byDickens. He was the first wicked _sans-culotte_. He is the man of geniuswith the moleskin cap. He is mighty pathetic and beseeching here in thestreet, but I would not go down a dark road with him for a largeconsideration.
The second of the points on which he was genuine and emphatic was commonto the middle ages; a deep and somewhat snivelling conviction of thetransitory nature of this life and the pity and horror of death. Old ageand the grave, with some dark and yet half-sceptical terror of anafter-world--these were ideas that clung about his bones like a disease.An old ape, as he says, may play all the tricks in its repertory, andnone of them will tickle an audience into good humour. "_Tousjours vieilsynge est desplaisant._" It is not the old jester who receives mostrecognition at a tavern party, but the young fellow, fresh and handsome,who knows the new slang, and carries off his vice with a certain air. Ofthis, as a tavern jester himself, he would be pointedly conscious. Asfor the women with whom he was best acquainted, his reflections on theirold age, in all their harrowing pathos, shall remain in
the original forme. Horace has disgraced himself to something the same tune; but whatHorace throws out with an ill-favoured laugh, Villon dwells on with analmost maudlin whimper.
It is in death that he finds his truest inspiration; in the swift andsorrowful change that overtakes beauty; in the strange revolution bywhich great fortunes and renowns are diminished to a handful ofchurchyard dust; and in the utter passing away of what was once lovableand mighty. It is in this that the mixed texture of his thought enableshim to reach such poignant and terrible effects, and to enhance pitywith ridicule, like a man cutting capers to a funeral march. It is inthis also that he rises out of himself into the higher spheres of art.So, in the ballade by which he is best known, he rings the changes onnames that once stood for beautiful and queenly women, and are now nomore than letters and a legend. "Where are the snows of yester year?"runs the burden. And so, in another not so famous, he passes in reviewthe different degrees of bygone men, from the holy Apostles and thegolden Emperor of the East, down to the heralds, pursuivants, andtrumpeters, who also bore their part in the world's pageantries and ategreedily at great folks' tables: all this to the refrain of "So muchcarry the winds away!" Probably, there was some melancholy in his mindfor a yet lower grade, and Montigny and Colin de Cayeux clattering theirbones on Paris gibbet. Alas, and with so pitiful an experience of life,Villon can offer us nothing but terror and lamentation about death! Noone has ever more skilfully communicated his own disenchantment; no oneever blown a more ear-piercing note of sadness. This unrepentant thiefcan attain neither to Christian confidence nor to the spirit of thebright Greek saying, that whom the gods love die early. It is a poorheart, and a poorer age, that cannot accept the conditions of life withsome heroic readiness.
* * * * *
The date of the "Large Testament" is the last date in the poet'sbiography. After having achieved that admirable and despicableperformance, he disappears into the night from whence he came. How orwhen he died, whether decently in bed or trussed up to a gallows,remains a riddle for foolhardy commentators. It appears his health hadsuffered in the pit at Meun; he was thirty years of age and quite bald;with the notch in his under lip where Sermaise had struck him with thesword, and what wrinkles the reader may imagine. In default ofportraits, that is all I have been able to piece together, and perhapseven the baldness should be taken as a figure of his destitution. Asinister dog, in all likelihood, but with a look in his eye, and theloose flexile mouth that goes with wit and an overweening sensualtemperament. Certainly the sorriest figure on the rolls of fame.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] "Etude Biographique sur Francois Villon." Paris: H. Menu.
[7] "Bourgeois de Paris," ed. Pantheon, pp. 688, 689.
[8] "Bourgeois," pp. 627, 636, and 725.
[9] "Chronique Scandaleuse," ed. Pantheon, p. 237.
[10] Monstrelet: "Pantheon Litteraire," p. 26.
[11] "Chron. Scand." _ut supra_.
[12] Here and there, principally in the order of events, this article differs from M. Longnon's own reading of his material. The ground on which he defers the execution of Montigny and De Cayeux beyond the date of their trials seems insufficient. There is a law of parsimony for the construction of historical documents; simplicity is the first duty of narration; and hanged they were.
[13] "Chron. Scand.," p. 338.