She gave a startled cry and came to him, her hands fluttering toward his breast. "François!" she breathed.
It would not be good to kill the love in her face.
"You loved François de Montcorbier. François de Montcorbier is dead. The Pharisees of the Rue Saint Jacques killed him seven years ago, and that day François Villon was born. That was the name I swore to drag through every muckheap in France. And I have done it, Catherine. The Companions of the Cockleshell--eh, well, the world knows us. We robbed Guillamme Coiffier, we robbed the College of Navarre, we robbed the Church of Saint Maturin,--I abridge the list of our gambols. Now we harvest. René de Montigny's bones swing in the wind yonder at Montfaucon. Colin de Cayeux they broke on the wheel. The rest--in effect, I am the only one that justice spared,--because I had diverting gifts at rhyming, they said. Pah! if they only knew! I am immortal, lass. Exegi monumentum. Villon's glory and Villon's shame will never die."
He flung back his bald head and laughed now, tittering over that calamitous, shabby secret between all-seeing God and François Villon. She had drawn a little away from him. This well-reared girl saw him exultant in infamy, steeped to the eyes in infamy. But still the nearness of her, the faint perfume of her, shook in his veins, and still he must play the miserable comedy to the end, since the prize he played for was to him peculiarly desirable.
"A thief--a common thief!" But again her hands fluttered back. "I drove you to it. Mine is the shame."
"Holy Macaire! what is a theft or two? Hunger that causes the wolf to sally from the wood, may well make a man do worse than steal. I could tell you--For example, you might ask in Hell of one Thevenin Pensete, who knifed him in the cemetery of Saint John."
He hinted a lie, for it was Montigny who killed Thevenin Pensete. Villon played without scruple now.
Catherine's face was white. "Stop," she pleaded; "no more, François,--ah, Holy Virgin! do not tell me any more."
But after a little she came to him, touching him almost as if with unwillingness. "Mine is the shame. It was my jealousy, my vanity, François, that thrust you back into temptation. And we are told by those in holy orders that the compassion of God is infinite. If you still care for me, I will be your wife."