Charles d'Orléans de Villon

“ And I find you up, wandering homeless, and picking farthings off dead women by the wayside! I fear no man and nothing; I have seen you tremble and lose countenance at a word. I wait God's summons contentedly in my own house, or, if it please the king to call me out again, upon the field of battle. You look for the gallows; a rough, swift death, without hope or honor. Is there no difference between these two?"
"As far as to the moon," Villon acquiesced. "But if I had been born lord of Brisetout, and you had been the poor scholar Francis, would the difference have been any the less? ”

“ He had him taught, he designed him for the University, he sheltered him in his vagaries, he gave him asylum. The young man took his name and called him "more than father." His anxious life led on to 1468, long after the poet had disappeared.
For it is in 1461, in his thirtieth year, that Villon last writes down a verse. It is in 1463 that his signature is last discovered. Then not by death or, if by death, then by some death unrecorded, he leaves history abruptly--a most astonishing exit!... You may pursue fantastic legends, you will not find the man himself again. ”

“ The garden began to fill with the picked men of the enterprise hurrying on the summons of the warning bell to follow their leader on his sortie. Villon's pages brought the armour of the Grand Constable and began to buckle it upon him. While this was being done, he turned and spoke to his brothers-in-arms:
"Comrades, let each man carry himself to-night as if the fate of France depended upon his heart, his arm, his courage. Strike for the mothers that bore you, the wives that comfort you, the children that Renéw you—the women that love you." ”

“ He kept on laughing a long time before going to the Council, and could not hinder himself. I have not been afraid to write this trifle, because it seems to me that it paints the man.
M. d’Orleans loved liberty, and as much for others as for himself. He extolled England to me one day on this account, as a country where there are no banishments, no lettres de cachet, and where the King may close the door of his palace to anybody, but can keep no one in prison; and thereupon related to me with enjoyment, that besides the Duchess of Portsmouth, Charles the Second had many subordinate mistresses ”

“ There is but one man who is certainly an origin, but he is not a master. You see an unique and single personality, distinct but without force, founding no school--the grave, abiding, kind but covert face of Charles of Orleans. He, linked to the French Renaissance, is like the figure of a gentle friend playing in some garden with a child whose manners are new and pleasing to him, but of whose great destiny he makes no guess. ”

“ The students made themselves jugglers, fakirs, and buffoons on the Pont-Neuf, then a favourite, shop-lined promenade. They sacked cook-shops and taverns, and levied tribute from belated pedestrians. The lawless exploits of François Villon, singer of villanelles to Guillemette, the tapissière, and Jehanneton, the chaperonnière, in the reigns of Charles VII. and Louis XI., have become legendary.
That other great François (Rabelais) has portrayed the democratic and turbulent temper of the students of a somewhat later period. ”

“ Apart from its piety and its exquisite tenderness, two qualities of Villon are to be specially found in this poem: his vivid phrase, such as:
"Emperiere des infernaux paluz,"
(a discovery of which he was so proud that he repeated it elsewhere) or:
"sa tres chiere jeunesse."
And secondly the curiously processional effect of the metre and of the construction of the stanzas--the extra line and the extra foot lend themselves to a chaunt in their balanced slow rhythm, as any one can find for himself by reading the lines to some church sing-song as he goes. ”

“ Besides this, the King had given me annually one thousand louis up to the year before the marriage of my son. That supported me, but as I would not consent to the marriage I was deprived of this sum, and it has never been restored to me. On my first journey to Fontainebleau, the King would have given me 2,000 pistoles, but that Monsieur begged him to keep half of them for Madame, afterwards the Queen of Spain.— [Marie-Louise d’Orleans, born in 1662, married, in 1679, to Charles IL, King of Spain.] ”

“ But the same gulf that separated Burns from his Edinburgh patrons would separate the singer of Bohemia from the rhyming duke. And it is hard to imagine that Villon’s training amongst thieves, loose women, and vagabond students had fitted him to move in a society of any dignity and courtliness. Ballades are very admirable things; and a poet is doubtless a most interesting visitor. But among the courtiers of Charles there would be considerable regard for the proprieties of etiquette; and even a duke will sometimes have an eye to his teaspoons. ”

“ Villon cursed his fortune. Would it were still snowing! Now, wherever he went, he left an indelible trail behind him on the glittering streets; wherever he went, he was still tethered to the house by the cemetery of St. John; wherever he went, he must weave, with his own plodding feet, the rope that bound him to the crime and would bind him to the gallows. The leer of the dead man came back to him with new significance. He snapped his fingers as if to pluck up his own spirits, and, choosing a street at random, stepped boldly forward in the snow. ”

“ His very name is not his own--or any other man's. His father, if it were his father, took his name from Mont-Corbier--half noble. Villon is but a little village over beyond the upper Yonne, near the division, within a day of the water-parting where the land falls southward to Burgundy and the sun in what they call "The Slope of Gold." From this village a priest, William, had come to Paris in 1423. They gave him a canonry in that little church called "St. Bennets Askew," which stood in the midst of the University, near Sorbonne, where the Rue des Écoles crosses the Rue St. ”

“ It is so lucid that its luminous profundity escapes one--so with Villon. Religion hangs there. Humility--fatally divorced from simplicity--pervades it. It laughs at itself. There are ardent passions of sincerity, repressed and reacting upon themselves. The virtues, little practised, are commonly comprehended, always appreciated, for the Faith is there permanent. All this you will find in Villon, but it is too great a matter for so short an essay as this.
THE DEAD LADIES It is difficult or impossible to compare the masterpieces of the world. ”

“ A mere man of the people would have been awed by the courtesy of the old seigneur, but Villon was hardened in that matter; he had made mirth for great lords before now, and found them as black rascals as himself. And so he devoted himself to the viands with a ravenous gusto, while the old man, leaning backward, watched him with steady, curious eyes. ”

“ Legitimist historians and others, professing to write in a more impartial spirit, have commented most adversely upon his conduct in this, the supreme crisis of his eventful life. It must, however, be admitted by everybody who studies the question with an open mind that France was irrevocably resolved to expel the Bourbons. It has, nevertheless, been contended that, had the Duc d’Orléans consented to undertake the regency, no serious objections would have been made to the enthronement of the Duc de Bordeaux, [7] in whose favour Charles and the Dauphin had abdicated [Pg 10] on August 2. ”

“ Pleased with the praise Villon turned to the king.
"Sire, I have blown it abroad that your majesty feasts to-night. While the Duke of Burgundy believes us to be carousing, we shall make a sortie from St. Anthony's gate. Our horses' hooves will be muffled, no spur shall jingle, and no bridle clink. We will steal through the night like shadows. At the cross road some few of us will make an attack upon the enemy's left and beat a retreat. ”

“ The chronology of these poems is not always clear, still less the identity of the persons to whom they are addressed, and it is certain that some, perhaps the greater part of them, belong to the later years of the poet’s life. But many are expressly stated in the manuscripts to have been “composed in prison,” others are obviously so composed, and, on the whole, there is in them a remarkable unity of literary flavour. Charles d’Orléans is not distinguished by any extraordinary strength of passion or originality of character ”

“ I have never learned to govern; I am not conversant with politics, nor with state affairs, and I am now too far advanced in years to learn things so difficult. My son, I thank God, has sense enough, and can direct these things without me; besides, I should excite too much the jealousy of his wife— [Marie-Francoise de Bourbon, the legitimate daughter of Louis XIV. and of Madame de Montespan, Duchesse d’Orleans.] —and his eldest daughter,— [Marie-Louise-Elizabeth d’Orleans, married on the 17th of July, 1710, to Charles of France, Duc de Berri.] —whom he loves better than me ”

“ Villon's voice swelled proudly as he answered:
"I want the Duke of Burgundy to believe that the king's favourite is a zany, and the king's court an orgy, where the king's honour melts like a pearl in a pot of vinegar. But our swords are tempered in wine and sharpened to dance music, and to-night we ride." ”

“ A few copies of this were printed for family circulation by his fond grandfather, G. Polidori. Among French writers he had no modern favourites beyond Hugo, Musset, and Dumas. But like all the neo-romanticists, he was strongly attracted by François Villon, that strange Parisian poet, thief, and murderer of the fifteenth century. He made three translations from Villon, the best known of which is the famous "Ballad of Dead Ladies" with its felicitous rendering of the refrain—
"But where are the snows of yester year?" ”

“ CHAPTER VII THE ANSWER TO BURGUNDY A touch on the shoulder roused Villon from his honeyed meditations, and he turned with a start to find the sable figure of the king at his side and the sinister visage smiling upon him.
"Good afternoon, Lord Constable," Louis said amiably, and as Villon dropped respectfully on his knee, he questioned:
"Does power taste well?"
"Nobly, sire. On my knees let me thank your majesty."
"Nonsense, man; I'm pleasing myself. You sang yourself into splendour. 'If François were the king of France,' eh?"
Villon rose with voice and gesture of apologetic entreaty. ”

“ Villon stroked his chin thoughtfully. An idea seemed to take command of his confused mind. Here was a chance to learn something of the reality that lay at the core of all this mystery of roses and wine and fine raiment. He leaned forward curiously and almost whispered to the attendant barber,
"Tell me, is Master François Villon, Master of Arts, rhymer at his best, vagabond at his worst, ne'er-do-well at all seasons, and scapegrace in all moods, among them?"
Olivier smiled complacently as those in office are accustomed to smile at the humours of great men. ”

“ Are you not Grand Constable, chief of the king's army? There is an enemy at the gates of Paris, and none of the king's men can frighten him away." She pointed out where, in the distance, beyond the walls of Paris, the pitched tents of the enemy fluttered their hostile flags. Her bosom heaved with great desire. "Oh, that a man would come to court! For the man who shall trail the banners of Burgundy in the dust for the king of France to walk on, I may perhaps have favours."
Villon looked at her as men must have looked at Joan of Arc when she bade them rise up and strike for France. ”

“ But that this effeminacy was no natural or inevitable fault of the ballades and the rondeaux was fully proved by the most remarkable literary figure of the 15th century in France. To François Villon (1431-1463?) , Villon. as to other great single writers, no attempt can be made to do justice in this place. His remarkable life and character especially lie outside our subject. But he is universally recognized as the most important single figure of French literature before the Renaissance. ”

“ Should not I have been the soldier, and you the thief?"
"A thief!" cried the old man. "I a thief! If you understood your words, you would repent them."
Villon turned out his hands with a gesture of inimitable impudence. "If your lordship had done me the honor to follow my argument!" he said.
"I do you too much honor in submitting to your presence," said the knight. "Learn to curb your tongue when you speak with old and honorable men, or some one hastier than I may reprove you in a sharper fashion." And he rose and paced the lower end of the apartment, struggling with anger and antipathy. ”

“ Master Francis Villon, being banished France, fled to him, and got so far into his favour as to be privy to all his household affairs. One day the king, being on his close-stool, showed Villon the arms of France, and said to him, Dost thou see what respect I have for thy French kings? I have none of their arms anywhere but in this backside, near my close-stool. Ods-life, said the buffoon, how wise, prudent, and careful of your health your highness is! ”

“ This is a hard world in winter for wolves and wenches and poor rogues like me.”
“I,” said the old man, “am Enguerrand de la Feuillée, seigneur de Brisetout, bailly du Patatrac. Who and what may you be?”
Villon rose and made a suitable reverence. “I am called Francis Villon,” he said, “a poor Master of Arts of this university. I know some Latin, and a deal of vice. I can make chansons, ballades, lais, virelais, and roundels, and I am very fond of wine. I was born in a garret, and I shall not improbably die upon the gallows. ”