But with his trap and pitfall
style of writing, it is easy to make too sure. His sentiments are about
as 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 the
eye, 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 a
great show of sincerity for having helped him out of many scrapes, and
bequeaths him his portion of renown. But the portion of renown which
belonged to a young thief, distinguished (if, at the period when he
wrote this legacy, he was distinguished at all) for having written some
more or less obscene and scurrilous ballads, must have been little
fitted to gratify the self-respect or increase the reputation of a
benevolent ecclesiastic. The same remark applies to a subsequent legacy
of the poet's library, with specification of one work which was plainly
neither decent nor devout. We are thus left on the horns of a dilemma. If the chaplain was a godly, philanthropic personage, who had tried to
graft good principles and good behaviour on this wild slip of an adopted
son, these jesting legacies would obviously cut him to the heart. The
position of an adopted son towards his adoptive father is one full of
delicacy; 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 mere
fling of an unregenerate scapegrace who has wit enough to recognise in
his own shame the readiest weapon of offence against a prosy
benefactor's feelings. The gratitude of Master Francis figures, on this
reading, as a frightful _minus_ quantity. If, on the other hand, those
jests were given and taken in good humour, the whole relation between
the pair degenerates into the unedifying complicity of a debauched old
chaplain and a witty and dissolute young scholar. At this rate the house
with the red door may have rung with the most mundane minstrelsy; and it
may 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 have
inhabited the cloister of Saint Benoît. Three of the most remarkable
among his early acquaintances are Catherine de Vausselles, for whom he
entertained a short-lived affection and an enduring and most unmanly
resentment; Regnier de Montigny, a young blackguard of good birth; and
Colin de Cayeux, a fellow with a marked aptitude for picking locks. Now
we are on a foundation of mere conjecture, but it is at least curious to
find that two of the canons of Saint Benoît answered respectively to the
names of Pierre de Vaucel and Etienne de Montigny, and that there was a
householder called Nicolas de Cayeux in a street--the Rue des
Poirées--in the immediate neighbourhood of the cloister. M. Longnon is
almost ready to identify Catherine as the niece of Pierre; Regnier as
the nephew of Etienne, and Colin as the son of Nicolas. Without going so
far, it must be owned that the approximation of names is significant. As
we go on to see the part played by each of these persons in the sordid
melodrama of the poet's life, we shall come to regard it as even more
notable. Is it not Clough who has remarked that, after all, everything
lies in juxtaposition? Many a man's destiny has been settled by nothing
apparently more grave than a pretty face on the opposite side of the
street and a couple of bad companions round the corner. Catherine de Vausselles (or de Vaucel--the change is within the limits
of Villon's licence) had plainly delighted in the poet's conversation;
near neighbours or not, they were much together; and Villon made no
secret of his court, and suffered himself to believe that his feeling
was repaid in kind. This may have been an error from the first, or he
may have estranged her by subsequent misconduct or temerity. One can
easily imagine Villon an impatient wooer. One thing, at least, is sure:
that the affair terminated in a manner bitterly humiliating to Master
Francis. In presence of his lady-love, perhaps under her window, and
certainly with her connivance, he was unmercifully thrashed by one Noë
le Joly--beaten, as he says himself, like dirty linen on the
washing-board. It is characteristic that his malice had notably
increased between the time when he wrote the "Small Testament"
immediately on the back of the occurrence, and the time when he wrote
the "Large Testament" five years after. On the latter occasion nothing
is too bad for his "damsel with the twisted nose," as he calls her. She
is spared neither hint nor accusation, and he tells his messenger to
accost her with the vilest insults. Villon, it is thought, was out of
Paris when these amenities escaped his pen; or perhaps the strong arm of
Noë le Joly would have been again in requisition. So ends the
love-story, if love-story it may properly be called. Poets are not
necessarily fortunate in love; but they usually fall among more romantic
circumstances, and bear their disappointment with a better grace. The neighbourhood of Regnier de Montigny and Colin de Cayeux was
probably more influential on his after life than the contempt of
Catherine. For a man who is greedy of all pleasures, and provided with
little money and less dignity of character, we may prophesy a safe and
speedy voyage downward. Humble or even truckling virtue may walk
unspotted in this life. But only those who despise the pleasures can
afford to despise the opinion of the world. A man of a strong, heady
temperament, like Villon, is very differently tempted. His eyes lay hold
on all provocations greedily, and his heart flames up at a look into
imperious desire; he is snared and broached-to by anything and
everything, from a pretty face to a piece of pastry in a cookshop
window; he will drink the rinsing of the wine-cup, stay the latest at
the tavern party; tap at the lit windows, follow the sound of singing,
and beat the whole neighbourhood for another reveller, as he goes
reluctantly homeward; and grudge himself every hour of sleep as a black
empty period in which he cannot follow after pleasure. Such a person is
lost if he have not dignity, or, failing that, at least pride, which is
its shadow and in many ways its substitute. Master Francis, I fancy,
would follow his own eager instincts without much spiritual struggle.