François Villon

“ Villon shook his head.
"No, sire. Master François Villon played and Master François Villon pays."
As he spoke the angry people, swaying like a sea, shouted new shouts of rescue, clamoured new cries for pardon. Olivier, green-pale, whispered eagerly to the king:
"Sire, the rogues are in a damnable temper. Can you not gain time, postpone, promise?"
Louis answered imperturbably:
"Are the fools so fond of the fellow? I know a way to stop their shouting." ”

“ 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?" ”

“ Villon's voice rose to a yell.
"I will not get out of the way! How do I know you are an honest soldier? How do I know that you are a true man?"
As Villon's voice rose the altercation attracted the attention of the revellers. Montigny glided to Villon's side and whispered him.
"Let him alone, François; he's not what he seems."
"Seems! Who cares what he seems?" Villon shouted. "It's what he is I want to know. Perhaps he's not an honest soldier at all. Perhap's he's a damned Burgundian spy!"
Thibaut lifted his hand to crush Villon, but the poet's naked dagger menaced him and he paused. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The late M. Marcel Schwob discovered new documents relating to the poet, but died before he could complete his work, which was posthumously published in 1905. See also A. Campaux, F. Villon, sa vie et ses œuvres (1859) ; A. Longnon, Étude biographique (1877) ; and especially G. Paris, François Villon (1901) , a book of the first merit. A complete translation of Villon was written by Mr John Payne (1878) for the Villon Society. There are also translations of individual poems in Mr Andrew Lang's Ballads and Lyrics of Old France (1872) and in the works of D. G. Rossetti and Mr Swinburne. ”

“ One day I made a startling discovery, for I took at a venture from the library the black-letter first edition of the poems of François Villon. I was then fifteen years old. Never shall I forget the feeling, which Heine compares to the unexpected finding of a shaft of gold in a gloomy mine, which shot through me as I read for the first time these ballades. Now-a-days people are trained to them through second-hand sentiment. ”

“ Philippe de Comines, a celebrated French chronicler, was born at Comines, about 1445, and died at the Château of Argenton, October 17, 1510. His famous “Memoirs” won for him great fame.
I know everything except myself.
“Autre Ballade,” i,—François Villon.
François Villon, a renowned French poet, was born in 1431, and died 1460 (?) . He wrote: “The Greater Testament,” and the “Smaller Testament: Its Codicil”; a collection of poems and a volume of “Ballades.”
A heart which is void of the pains of love is not heart;
A body without heart woes is nothing but clay and water. ”

“ In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, that desire to think and act in common, which creates great nations, became very strong among us—at least in those families which furnished officers to the Crown—and it even spread among the lower orders of society. Rabelais introduces François Villon and the King of England into a tale so inflamed with military bravado that it might have been told over the camp fire in an almost identical manner by one of Napoleon's grenadiers. ”

“ For answer, Villon unmasked.
Huguette looked closely into his face, at first Without any sign of recognition, then suddenly the knowledge came to her and she caught him in her arms with a cry of joy.
"François, you dear devil, where have you been this thousand years? They said you were banished. How brave you are! Where did you steal so much splendour? Are you cutting purses? Are you plucking mantles?"
Villon tried to stay her questions.
"What are you doing here, Abbess?"
"The fair fool Noel has taken a week-long fancy to me, and I am making an age-long fool of him. ”

“ Villon, seeing that things had succeeded as he intended, said to his devils, You will act rarely, gentlemen devils, you will act rarely; I dare engage you'll top your parts. I defy the devils of Saumur, Douay, Montmorillon, Langez, St. Espain, Angers; nay, by gad, even those of Poictiers, for all their bragging and vapouring, to match you.
Thus, friends, said Basche, I foresee that hereafter you will act rarely this tragical farce, since the very first time you have so skilfully hampered, bethwacked, belammed, and bebumped the catchpole. ”

“ A scuffle ensued; daggers were drawn, and Sermaise, who is accused of having threatened and attacked Villon and drawn the first blood, not only received a dagger-thrust in return, but a blow from a stone which struck him down. Sermaise died of his wounds. Villon fled, and was sentenced to banishment—a sentence which was remitted in January 1456, the formal pardon being extant, strangely enough, in two different documents, in one of which the culprit is described as “François des Loges, autrement dit Villon,” in the other as “François de Montcorbier”. ”

“ The wind was freshening without; it drove the snow before it, and sometimes raised its voice in a victorious whoop, and made sepulchral grumblings in the chimney. The cold was growing sharper as the night went on. Villon, protruding his lips, imitated the gust with something between a whistle and a groan. It was an eerie, uncomfortable talent of the poet's, much detested by the Picardy monk.
"Can't you hear it rattle in the gibbet?" said Villon. "They are all dancing the devil's jig on nothing, up there. You may dance, my gallants, you'll be none the warmer! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 sound of his blows echoed through the house with thin, phantasmal reverberations, as though it were quite empty; but these had scarcely died away before a measured tread drew near, a couple of bolts were withdrawn, and one wing was opened broadly, as though no guile or fear of guile were known to those within. A tall figure of a man, muscular and spare, but a little bent, confronted Villon. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Villon's face lighted. He felt that it would be pleasanter for him to be alone while he was attempting to regain control of his faculties, more especially as he noted that the pages had placed their golden cups and flagons on the marble table and that his instinct assured him that these precious vessels sheltered no less precious wine.
"You may, you may," he assented, and then as the barber made to depart, Villon's mood changed and he caught him by the sleeve and drew him confidentially toward him.
"Stay one moment," he murmured. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Of very few French poets can it be said as of Villon that their charm is immediate and universal, and the reason of this is that his work is full of touches of nature which are universally perceived, as well as distinguished by consummate art of expression. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Villon, for this or some other crime, was sentenced to banishment, and he did not attempt to return to Paris. In fact for four years he was a wanderer; and he may have been, as each of his friends Regnier de Montigny and Colin des Cayeux certainly was, a member of a wandering thieves' gang. It is certain that at one time (in 1457) , and probable that at more times than one, he was in correspondence with Charles d'Orléans, and it is likely that he resided, at any rate for some period, at that prince's court at Blois. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Villon owed his release to a general gaol-delivery at the accession of Louis XI., and became a free man again on the 2nd of October.
It was now that he wrote the Grand testament, the work which has immortalized him. Although he was only thirty at the date (1461) of this composition (which is unmistakable, because given in the book itself) , there seems to be no kind of aspiration towards a new life, nor even any hankering after the old. Nothing appears to be left him but regret, his very spirit has been worn out by excesses or sufferings or both. ”

“ What really distinguishes Villon is the intenser quality of his poetical feeling and expression, and what is perhaps arrogantly called the modern character of his subjects and thought. Medieval poetry, with rare exceptions, and, with exceptions not quite so rare, classical poetry, are distinguished by their lack of what is now called the personal note. In Villon this note sounds, struck with singular force and skill. Again, the simple joy of living which distinguishes both periods—the medieval, despite a common opinion, scarcely less than the ancient—has disappeared. ”

“ En ceste foy je veuil vivre et mourir.
THE DEAD LORDS As I have not wished to mix up smaller things with greater I have put this ballade separate from that of "the Ladies," though it directly follows it as an after-thought in Villon's own book. For the former is one of the masterpieces of the world, and this, though very Villon, is not great. ”