And we soon find him fallen among thieves in sober, literal earnest, and
counting as acquaintances the most disreputable people he could lay his
hands on; fellows who stole ducks in Paris Moat; sergeants of the
criminal court, and archers of the watch; blackguards who slept at night
under the butchers' stalls, and for whom the aforesaid archers peered
about carefully with lanterns; Regnier de Montigny, Colin de Cayeux, and
their crew, all bound on a favouring breeze towards the gallows; the
disorderly abbess of Port Royal, who went about at fair-time with
soldiers and thieves, and conducted her abbey on the queerest
principles; and most likely Perette Mauger, the great Paris receiver of
stolen goods, not yet dreaming, poor woman! of the last scene of her
career 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 could
string off verses, which is always an agreeable talent; and he could
make himself useful in many other ways. The whole ragged army of
Bohemia, and whosoever loved good cheer without at all loving to work
and pay for it, are addressed in contemporary verses as the "Subjects of
François Villon." He was a good genius to all hungry and unscrupulous
persons; and became the hero of a whole legendary cycle of tavern tricks
and cheateries. At best, these were doubtful levities, rather too
thievish for a schoolboy, rather too gamesome for a thief. But he would
not linger long in this equivocal border-land. He must soon have
complied with his surroundings. He was one who would go where the
cannikin clinked, not caring who should pay; and from supping in the
wolves' den, there is but a step to hunting with the pack. And here, as
I am on the chapter of his degradation, I shall say all I mean to say
about its darkest expression, and be done with it for good. Some
charitable critics see no more than a _jeu d'esprit_, a graceful and
trifling exercise of the imagination, in the grimy ballad of Fat Peg
(_Grosse Margot_). I am not able to follow these gentlemen to this
polite extreme. Out of all Villon's works that ballad stands forth in
flaring reality, gross and ghastly, as a thing written in a contraction
of disgust. M. Longnon shows us more and more clearly at every page that
we are to read our poet literally, that his names are the names of real
persons, and the events he chronicles were actual events. But even if
the tendency of criticism had run the other way, this ballad would have
gone far to prove itself. I can well understand the reluctance of worthy
persons in this matter; for of course it is unpleasant to think of a man
of 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 case
springs from a highly virtuous ignorance of life. Paris now is not so
different from the Paris of then; and the whole of the doings of
Bohemia are not written in the sugar-candy pastorals of Mürger. It is
really not at all surprising that a young man of the fifteenth century,
with a knack of making verses, should accept his bread upon disgraceful
terms. The race of those who do so is not extinct; and some of them to
this day write the prettiest verses imaginable.... After this, it were
impossible for Master Francis to fall lower: to go and steal for himself
would 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 first
appearance before angry justice. On June 5, 1455, when he was about
twenty-four, and had been Master of Arts for a matter of three years, we
behold him for the first time quite definitely. Angry justice had, as it
were, photographed him in the act of his homicide; and M. Longnon,
rummaging among old deeds, has turned up the negative and printed it off
for our instruction. Villon had been supping--copiously we may
believe--and sat on a stone bench in front of the Church of St. Benoît,
in company with a priest called Gilles and a woman of the name of
Isabeau. It was nine o'clock, a mighty late hour for the period, and
evidently a fine summer's night. Master Francis carried a mantle, like a
prudent man, to keep him from the dews (_serain_), and had a sword below
it dangling from his girdle. So these three dallied in front of St.
Benoît, taking their pleasure (_pour soy esbatre_). Suddenly there
arrived upon the scene a priest, Philippe Chermoye or Sermaise, also
with sword and cloak, and accompanied by one Master Jehan le Mardi. Sermaise, according to Villon's account, which is all we have to go
upon, came up blustering and denying God; as Villon rose to make room
for him upon the bench, thrust him rudely back into his place; and
finally drew his sword and cut open his lower lip, by what I should
imagine was a very clumsy stroke. Up to this point, Villon professes to
have been a model of courtesy, even of feebleness: and the brawl, in his
version, reads like the fable of the wolf and the lamb. But now the
lamb 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 his
fate, went away to have his own lip doctored by a barber of the name of
Fouquet. In one version he says that Gilles, Isabeau, and Le Mardi ran
away 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's
sword from him: the reader may please himself. Sermaise was picked up,
lay all that night in the prison of Saint Benoît, where he was examined
by an official of the Châtelet and expressly pardoned Villon, and died
on the following Saturday in the Hôtel Dieu. This, as I have said, was in June. Not before January of the next year
could Villon extract a pardon from the King; but while his hand was in,
he got two. One is for "François des Loges, alias (_autrement dit_) de
Villon"; and the other runs in the name of François de Montcorbier. Nay,
it appears there was a further complication; for in the narrative of the
first of these documents it is mentioned that he passed himself off upon
Fouquet, the barber-surgeon, as one Michel Mouton. M. Longnon has a
theory that this unhappy accident with Sermaise was the cause of
Villon's subsequent irregularities; and that up to that moment he had
been the pink of good behaviour. But the matter has to my eyes a more
dubious air. A pardon necessary for Des Loges and another for
Montcorbier? and these two the same person? and one or both of them
known by the _alias_ of Villon, however honestly come by? and lastly, in
the heat of the moment, a fourth name thrown out with an assured
countenance? A ship is not to be trusted that sails under so many
colours. This is not the simple bearing of innocence.