High up
overhead
the snow settled among the tracery of the
cathedral towers.
cathedral towers.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v24 - Sta to Tal
»
"Well,” said Alan, with one of his droll looks, "I was rather
in hopes it would maybe get us that boat. ”
"If it were the other way about, it would be liker it,” said I.
“That's all that you ken, ye see,” said Alan. “I don't want
the lass to fall in love with ye, I want her to be sorry for
David; to which end, there is no manner of need that she should
take you for a beauty. Let me see” (looking me curiously over).
"I wish ye were a wee thing paler; but apart from that ye'll do
fine for my purpose - ye have a fine, hang-dog, rag-and-tatter,
clappermaclaw kind of a look to ye, as if ye had stolen the coat
from a potato-bogle. Come: right about, and back to the change-
house for that boat of ours. ”
I followed him laughing.
« David Balfour,” said he, "ye're a very funny gentleman by
your way of it, and this is a very funny employ for ye, no doubt.
For all that, if ye have any affection for my neck (to say noth-
ing of your own), ye will perhaps be kind enough to take this
matter responsibly. I am going to do a bit of play-acting, the
bottom ground of which is just exactly as serious as the gallows
for the pair of us. So bear it, if ye please, in mind, and conduct
yourself according. ”
« Well, well,” said I, have it as you will. ”
As we got near the clachan, he made me take his arm and
hang upon it like one almost helpless with weariness; and by
the time he pushed open the change-house door, he seemed to
be half carrying me. The maid appeared surprised (as well she
might be) at our speedy return: but Alan had no words to spare
for her in explanation, helped me to a chair, called for a tass of
brandy with which he fed me in little sips, and then breaking
up the bread and cheese helped me to eat it like a nursery-lass;
the whole with that grave, concerned, affectionate countenance,
that might have imposed upon a judge. It was small wonder if
the maid were taken with the picture we presented, of a poor,
sick, overwrought lad and his most tender comrade. She drew
quite near, and stood leaning with her back on the next table.
“What's like wrong with him ? ” said she at last.
Alan turned upon her, to my great wonder, with a kind of
fury. "Wrong? ” cries he. “He's walked more hundreds of
miles than he has hairs upon his chin, and slept oftener in wet
## p. 13950 (#136) ##########################################
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ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
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heather than dry sheets. Wrong, quo' she! Wrong enough, I
would think! Wrong, indeed! ” and he kept grumbling to him-
self, as he fed me, like a man ill pleased.
«He's young for the like of that,” said the maid.
“Ower young,” said Alan, with his back to her.
«He would be better riding,” says she.
"And where could I get a horse for him ? ” cried Alan, turn-
ing on her with the same appearance of fury. “Would ye have
me steal ? »
I thought this roughness would have sent her off in dudgeon,
as indeed it closed her mouth for the time. But my companion
knew very well what he was doing; and for as simple as he was
in some things of life, had a great fund of roguishness in such
affairs as these.
« Ye neednae tell me,” she said at last-"ye're gentry. ”
“Well,” said Alan, softened a little (I believe against his will)
by this artless comment, and suppose we were ? did ever you
hear that gentrice put money in folks' pockets ? ”
She sighed at this, as if she were herself some disinherited
great lady. "No," says she, “that's true indeed. ”
I was all this while chafing at the part I played, and sitting
tongue-tied between shame and merriment; but somehow at this
I could hold in no longer, and bade Alan let me be, for I was
better already. ' My voice stuck in my throat, for I ever hated
to take part in lies; but my very embarrassment helped on the
plot, for the lass no doubt set down my husky voice to sickness
and fatigue.
“ Has he nae friends? said she in a tearful voice.
“That has he so," cried Alan, “if we could but win to them,
— friends and rich friends, beds to lie in, food to eat, doctors to
see him,—and here he must tramp in the dubs and sleep in the
heather like a beggarman. ”
"And why that? ” says the lass.
My dear,” says Alan, "I cannae very safely say; but I'll tell
ye what I'll do instead,” says he: "I'll whistle ye a bit tune. ”
And with that he leaned pretty far over the table, and in a mere
breath of a whistle, but with a wonderful pretty sentiment, gave
her a few bars of “Charlie is my darling. ”
Wheesht,” says she, and looked over her shoulder to the
>>
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“That's it,” said Alan.
## p. 13951 (#137) ##########################################
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
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"And him so young! ” cried the lass.
"He's old enough to and Alan struck his forefinger on the
back part of his neck, meaning that I was old enough to lose my
head.
“It would be a black shame," she cried, flushing high.
It's what will be, though,” said Alan, «unless we manage
the better. ”
At this the lass turned and ran out of that part of the house,
leaving us alone together; Alan in high good-humor at the fur-
thering of his schemes, and I in bitter dudgeon at being called
a Jacobite and treated like a child.
“Alan,” I cried, “I can stand no more of this. ”
“Ye'll have to sit it then, Davie,” said he. For if ye upset
the pot now, ye may scrape your own life out of the fire, but
Alan Breck is a dead man.
This was so true that I could only groan; and even my groan
served Alan's purpose, for it was overheard by the lass as she
came flying in again with a dish of white puddings and a bottle
of strong ale.
“Poor lamb! ” says she; and had no sooner set the meat
before us, than she touched me on the shoulder with a little
friendly touch, as much as to bid me cheer up. Then she told
us to fall to, and there would be no more to pay; for the inn
was her own, or at least her father's, and he was gone for the
day to Pittencrieff. We waited for no second bidding, for bread
and cheese is but cold comfort, and the puddings smelt excel-
lently well; and while we sat and ate, she took up that same
place by the next table, looking on, and thinking, and frowning
to herself, and drawing the string of her apron through her hand.
"I'm thinking ye have rather a long tongue,” she said at last
to Alan.
“Ay,” said Alan; “but ye see I ken the folk I speak to. ”
"I would never betray ye,” said she, “if ye mean that. ”
“No,” said he, “ye're not that kind. But I'll tell ye what ye
would do,— ye would help. ”
"I couldnae,” said she, shaking her head. “Na, I couldnae. )
No,” said he, but if ye could ? »
She answered him nothing.
“Look here, my lass,” said Alan: “there are boats in the king-
dom of Fife, for I saw two (no less) upon the beach, as I came
in by your town's end. Now if we could have the use of a boat
»
## p. 13952 (#138) ##########################################
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ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
to pass under cloud of night into Lothian, and some secret,
decent kind of a man to bring that boat back again and keep
his counsel, there would be two souls saved: mine to all likeli-
hood — his to a dead surety. If we lack that boat, we have but
three shillings left in this wide world; and where to go, and
how to do, and what other place there is for us except the
chains of a gibbet - I give you my naked word, I kenna! Shall
we go wanting, lassie? Are ye to lie in your warm bed and
think upon us, when the wind gowls in the chimney and the
rain tirls on the roof? Are ye to eat your meat by the cheeks
of a red fire, and think upon this poor sick lad of mine, biting
his finger-ends on a blae muir for cauld and hunger ? Sick or
sound, he must aye be moving; with the death-grapple at his
throat, he must aye be trailing in the rain on the long roads;
and when he gants his last on a rickle of cauld stanes, there
will be nae friends near him but only me and God. ”
At this appeal, I could see the lass was in great trouble of
mind; being tempted to help us, and yet in some fear she might
be helping malefactors: and so now I determined to step in my-
self, and to allay her scruples with a portion of the truth.
“ Did you ever hear,” said I, “of Mr. Rankeillor of the Queens-
ferry ? ”
Rankeillor the writer ? ” said she. "I daursay that! ”
Well,” said I, “it's to his door that I am bound, so you may
judge by that if I am an ill-doer; and I will tell you more: that
though I am indeed, by a dreadful error, in some peril of my
life, King George has no truer friend in all Scotland than my-
self. ”
Her face cleared up mightily at this, although Alan's dark-
ened.
That's more than I would ask,” said she. “Mr. Rankeillor
is a kennt man. ” And she bade us finish our meat, get clear of
the clachan as soon as might be, and lie close in the bit wood on
the sea-beach. "And ye can trust me,” says she, “I'll find some
means to put you over. ”
At this we waited for no more, but shook hands with her
upon the bargain, made short work of the puddings, and set
forth again from Limekilns as far as to the wood. It was a small
piece of perhaps a score of elders and hawthorns, and a few
young ashes, not thick enough to veil us from passers-by upon
the road or beach. Here we must lie, however, making the best
(
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ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
13953
of the brave warm weather and the good hopes we now had of
a deliverance, and planning more particularly what remained for
us to do.
We had but one trouble all day: when a strolling piper came
and sat in the same wood with us; a red-nosed, blear-eyed,
drunken dog, with a great bottle of whisky in his pocket, and a
long story of wrongs that had been done him by all sorts of
persons, from the lord president of the court of session who
had denied him justice, down to the baillies of Inverkeithing who
had given him more of it than he desired. It was impossible
but he should conceive some suspicion of two men lying all day
concealed in a thicket and having no business to allege. As
long as he stayed there, he kept us in hot water with prying
questions; and after he was gone, as he was a man not very
likely to hold his tongue, we were in the greater impatience to
be gone ourselves.
The day came to an end with the same brightness; the night
fell quiet and clear; lights came out in houses and hamlets, and
then, one after another, began to be put out: but it was past
eleven, and we were long since strangely tortured with anxieties,
before we heard the grinding of oars upon the rowing-pins. At
that, we looked out and saw the lass herself coming rowing to
us in a boat. She had trusted no one with our affairs — not even
her sweetheart, if she had one; but as soon as her father was
asleep, had left the house by a window, stolen a neighbor's boat,
and come to our assistance single-handed.
I was abashed how to find expression for my thanks: but she
was no less abashed at the thought of hearing them; begged
us to lose no time and to hold our peace, saying (very properly)
that the heart of our matter was in haste and silence: and so,
what with one thing and another, she had set us on the Lothian
shore not far from Carriden, had shaken hands with us, and was
out again at sea and rowing for Limekilns, before there was one
word said either of her service or our gratitude.
Even after she was gone we had nothing to say, as indeed
nothing was enough for such a kindness. Only Alan stood a
great while upon the shore shaking his head.
“It is a very fine lass,” he said at last. «David, it is a very
fine lass. ” And a matter of an hour later, as we were lying in
a den on the sea-shore and I had been already dozing, he broke
out again in commendations of her character. For my part I
XXIV—873
## p. 13954 (#140) ##########################################
13954
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
could say nothing; she was so simple a creature that my heart
smote me both with remorse and fear: remorse, because we had
traded upon her ignorance; and fear, lest we should have any-
way involved her in the dangers of our situation.
>
A NIGHT AMONG THE PINES
From "Travels with a Donkey. By permission of the authorized publishers,
Charles Scribner's Sons
F*
se-
>>
ROM Bleymard after dinner, although it was already late, I set
out to scale a portion of the Lozère. An ill-marked stony
drove road guided me forward; and I met nearly half a
dozen bullock carts descending from the woods, each laden with
a whole pine-tree for the winter's firing. At the top of the
woods, which do not climb very high upon this cold ridge, I
struck leftward by a path among the pines, until I hit on a dell
of green turf, where a streamlet made a little spout over some
stones to serve me for a water-tap. “In a more sacred or
questered bower. nor nymph, nor faunus, haunted. The
trees were not old, but they grew thickly round the glade: there
was no outlook, except northeastward upon distant hill-tops, or
straight upward to the sky; and the encampment felt secure and
private like a room. By the time I had made my arrangements
and fed Modestine, the day was already beginning to decline. I
buckled myself to the knees into my sack and made a hearty
meal; and as soon as the sun went down, I pulled my cap over
my eyes and fell asleep.
Night is a dead monotonous period under a roof; but in
the open world it passes lightly, with its stars and dews and
perfumes, and the hours are marked by changes in the face of
Nature. What seems a kind of temporal death to people choked
between walls and curtains, is only a light and living slumber to
the man who sleeps a-field. All night long he can hear Nature
breathing deeply and freely: even as she takes her rest, she turns
and smiles; and there is one stirring hour unknown to those who
dwell in houses, when a wakeful influence goes abroad over the
sleeping hemisphere, and all the outdoor world are on their feet.
It is then that the cock first crows,—not this time to announce
the dawn, but like a cheerful watchman speeding the course of
## p. 13955 (#141) ##########################################
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
13955
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night. Cattle awake on the meadows; sheep break their fast on
dewy hillsides, and change to a new lair among the ferns; and
houseless men who have lain down with the fowls, open their
dim eyes and behold the beauty of the night.
At what inaudible summons, at what gentle touch of Nature,
are all these sleepers thus recalled in the same hour to life ? Do
the stars rain down an influence, or do we share some thrill of
mother earth below our resting bodies ? Even shepherds and old
country-folk, who are the deepest read in these arcana, have not
a guess as to the means or purpose of this nightly resurrection.
Towards two in the morning they declare the thing takes place;
and neither know nor inquire further. And at least it is a pleas-
ant incident. We are disturbed in our slumber only, like the
luxurious Montaigne, “that we may the better and more sensibly
relish it. ” We have a moment to look upon the stars.
And
there is a special pleasure for some minds in the reflection that
we share the impulse with all outdoor creatures in our neigh-
borhood; that we have escaped out of the Bastille of civilization,
and are become, for the time being, a mere kindly animal and a
sheep of Nature's flock.
When that hour came to me among the pines, I awakened
thirsty. My tin was standing by me half full of water.
I emp-
tied it at a draught; and feeling broad awake after this internal
cold aspersion, sat upright to make a cigarette. The stars were
clear, colored, and jewel-like, but not frosty. A faint silvery
vapor stood for the Milky Way. All around me the black fir-
points stood upright and stock-still. By the whiteness of the
pack-saddle, I could see Modestine walking round and round at
the length of her tether; I could hear her steadily munching at
the sward: but there was not another sound, save the indescrib-
able quiet talk of the runnel over the stones. I lay lazily smok-
ing and studying the color of the sky, as we call the void of
space, from where it showed a reddish gray behind the pines to
where it showed a glossy blue-black between the stars. As if to
be more like a peddler, I wear a silver ring. This I could see
faintly shining as I raised or lowered the cigarette; and at each
whiff the inside of my hand was illuminated, and became for a
second the highest light in the landscape.
A faint wind, more like a moving coolness than a stream of
air, passed down the glade from time to time; so that even in
my great chamber the air was being renewed all night long. I
## p. 13956 (#142) ##########################################
13956
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
thought with horror of the inn at Chasserades and the congre-
gated nightcaps; with horror of the nocturnal prowesses of clerks
and students, of hot theatres and pass-keys and close rooms.
have not often enjoyed a more serene possession of myself, nor
felt more independent of material aids. The outer world, from
which we cower into our houses, seemed after all a gentle habit-
able place; and night after night a man's bed, it seemed, was
laid and waiting for him in the fields, where God keeps an open
house. I thought I had rediscovered one of those truths which
are revealed to savages and hid from political economists; at the
least, I had discovered a new pleasure for myself. And yet even
while I was exulting in my solitude I became aware of a strange
lack. I wished a companion to lie near me in the starlight, ,
silent and not moving, but ever within touch. For there is a
fellowship more quiet even than solitude, and which, rightly un-
derstood, is solitude made perfect. And to live out of doors with
the woman a man loves is of all lives the most complete and
free.
As I thus lay, between content and longing, a faint noise stole
towards me through the pines. I thought, at first, it was the
crowing of cocks or the barking of dogs at some very distant
farm; but steadily and gradually it took articulate shape in
my ears, until I became aware that a passenger was going by
upon the high-road in the valley, and singing loudly as he went.
There was more of good-will than grace in his performance:
but he trolled with ample lungs; and the sound of his voice took
hold upon the hillside and set the air shaking in the leafy glens.
I have heard people passing by night in sleeping cities: some
of them sang; one, I remember, played loudly on the bagpipes.
I have heard the rattle of a cart or carriage spring up suddenly
after hours of stillness, and pass, for some minutes, within the
range of my hearing as I lay abed. There is a romance about
all who are abroad in the black hours, and with something of a
thrill we try to guess their business. But here the romance was
double: first, this glad passenger, lit internally with wine, who
sent up his voice in music through the night; and then I, on the
other hand, buckled into my sack, and smoking alone in the
pine-woods between four and five thousand feet towards the
stars.
When I awoke again (Sunday, 29th September), many of the
stars had disappeared; only the stronger companions of the night
## p. 13957 (#143) ##########################################
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
13957
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still burned visibly overhead: and away towards the east I saw a
faint haze of light upon the horizon, such as had been the Milky
Way when I was last awake. Day was at hand. I lit my lan-
tern, and by its glow-worm light put on my boots and gaiters;
then I broke up some bread for Modestine, filled my can at the
water-tap, and lit my spirit-lamp to boil myself some chocolate.
The blue darkness lay long in the glade where I had so sweetly
slumbered; but soon there was a broad streak of orange melting
into gold along the mountain-tops of Vivarais. A solemn glee
possessed my mind at this gradual and lovely coming in of day.
I heard the runnel with delight; I looked round me for some-
thing beautiful and unexpected: but the still black pine-trees, the
hollow glade, the munching ass, remained unchanged in figure.
Nothing had altered but the light; and that indeed shed over
all a spirit of life and of breathing peace, and moved me to a
strange exhilaration.
I drank my water chocolate, which was hot if it was not rich,
and strolled here and there, and up and down about the glade.
While I was thus delaying, a gush of steady wind, as long as a
heavy sigh, poured direct out of the quarter of the morning. It
was cold, and set me sneezing. The trees near at hand tossed
their black plumes in its passage; and I could see the thin dis-
tant spires of pine along the edge of the hill rock slightly to
and fro against the golden east. Ten minutes after, the sun.
light spread at a gallop along the hillside, scattering shadows and
sparkles, and the day had come completely.
I hastened to prepare my pack, and tackle a steep ascent that
lay before me; but I had something on my mind. It was only a
fancy; yet a fancy will sometimes be importunate. I had been
most hospitably received and punctually served in my green
caravanserai.
The room
was airy, the water excellent, and the
dawn had called me to a moment. I say nothing of the tap-
estries or the inimitable ceiling, nor yet of the view which I
commanded from the windows; but I felt I was in some one's
debt for all this liberal entertainment. And so it pleased me, in
a half-laughing way, to leave pieces of money on the turf as
I went along, until I had left enough for my night's lodging.
I trust they did not fall to some rich and churlish drover.
## p. 13958 (#144) ##########################################
13958
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
A LODGING FOR THE NIGHT
From New Arabian Nights. By permission of the authorized publishers,
Charles Scribner's Sons
" I ,
T was late in November 1456. And snow fell over Paris with
rigorous, relentless persistence; sometimes the wind made a
sally and scattered it in Aying vortices; sometimes there was
a lull, and flake after flake descended out of the black night air,
silent, circuitous, interminable. To poor people, looking up under
moist eyebrows, it seemed a wonder where it all came from.
Master Francis Villon had propounded an alternative that after-
noon, at a tavern window: was it only pagan Jupiter plucking
geese upon Olympus ? or were the holy angels moulting? He
was only a poor Master of Arts, he went on; and as the question
somewhat touched upon divinity, he durst not venture to con-
clude. A silly old priest from Montargis, who was among the
company, treated the young rascal to a bottle of wine in honor
of the jest and grimaces with which it was accompanied, and
swore on his own white beard that he had been just such another
irreverent dog when he was Villon's age.
The air was raw and pointed, but not far below freezing; and
the Aakes were large, damp, and adhesive. The whole city was
sheeted up. An army might have marched from end to end and
not a footfall given the alarm. If there were any belated birds
in heaven, they saw the island like a large white patch, and the
bridges like slim white spars, on the black ground of the river.
High up overhead the snow settled among the tracery of the
cathedral towers. Many a niche was drifted full; many a statue
wore a long white bonnet on its grotesque or sainted head. The
gargoyles had been transformed into great false noses, drooping
towards the point. The crockets were like upright pillows swollen
on one side. In the intervals of the wind, there was a dull sound
of dripping about the precincts of the church.
The cemetery of St. John had taken its own share of the snow.
All the graves were decently covered; tall white housetops stood
around in grave array; worthy burghers were long ago in bed,
be-nightcapped like their domiciles; there was no light in all the
neighborhood but a little peep from a lamp that hung swinging
in the church choir, and tossed the shadows to and fro in time
to its oscillations. The clock was hard on ten when the patrol
## p. 13959 (#145) ##########################################
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
13959
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went by with halberds and a lantern, beating their hands; and
they saw nothing suspicious about the cemetery of St. John.
Yet there was a small house, backed up against the cemetery
wall, which was still awake, and awake to evil purpose, in that
snoring district. There was not much to betray it from with-
out: only a stream of warm vapor from the chimney-top, a patch
where the snow melted on the roof, and a few half-obliterated
footprints at the door. But within, behind the shuttered windows,
Master Francis Villon the poet, and some of the thievish crew
with whom he consorted, were keeping the night alive and pass-
ing round the bottle.
A great pile of living embers diffused a strong and ruddy
glow from the arched chimney. Before this straddled Dom
Nicolas, the Picardy monk, with his skirts picked up and his fat
legs bared to the comfortable warmth. His dilated shadow cut
the room in half; and the firelight only escaped on either side of
his broad person, and in a little pool between his outspread feet.
His face had the beery, bruised appearance of a continual drink-
er's: it was covered with a network of congested veins, purple
in ordinary circumstances, but now pale violet; for even with his
back to the fire the cold pinched him on the other side. His
cowl had half fallen back, and made a strange excrescence on
either side of his bull neck. So he straddled, grumbling, and cut
the room in half with the shadow of his portly frame.
On the right, Villon and Guy Tabary were huddled together
over a scrap of parchment; Villon making a ballade which he
was to call the Ballade of Roast Fish,' and Tabary spluttering
admiration at his shoulder. The poet was a rag of a man,
dark, little, and lean, with hollow cheeks and thin black locks.
He carried his four-and-twenty years with feverish animation.
Greed had made folds about his eyes, evil smiles had puckered
his mouth. The wolf and pig struggled together in his face. It
was an eloquent, sharp, ugly, earthly countenance. His hands
were small and prehensile, with fingers knotted like a cord; and
they were continually flickering in front of him in violent and
expressive pantomine. As for Tabary, a broad, complacent, admir-
ing imbecility breathed from his squash nose and slobbering lips:
he had become a thief, just as he might have become the most
decent of burgesses, by the imperious chance that rules the lives
of human geese and human donkeys.
## p. 13960 (#146) ##########################################
139бо
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
((
>
»
At the monk's other hand, Montigny and Thevenin Pensete
played a game of chance. About the first there clung some flavor
of good birth and training, as about a fallen angel: something
long, lithe, and courtly in the person; something aquiline and
darkling in the face. Thevenin, poor soul, was in great feather:
he had done a good stroke of knavery that afternoon in the
Faubourg St. Jacques, and all night he had been gaining from
Montigny. A flat smile illuminated his face; his bald head shone
rosily in a garland of red curls; his little protuberant stomach
shook with silent chucklings as he swept in his gains.
"Doubles or quits ? ” said Thevenin.
Montigny nodded grimly.
"Some may prefer to dine in state,” wrote Villon, "On bread
and cheese on silver plate. Or, or — help me out, Guido! ”
Tabary giggled.
“ Or parsley on a golden dish,” scribbled the poet.
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.
dance, my gallants, you'll be none the warmer! Whew! what a
gust! Down went somebody just now! A medlar the fewer on
the three-legged medlar-tree! --I say, Dom Nicolas, it'll be cold
,
to-night on the St. Denis Road? ” he asked.
Dom Nicolas winked both his big eyes, and seemed to choke
upon his Adam's apple. Montfaucon, the great grisly Paris
gibbet, stood hard by the St. Denis Road, and the pleasantry
touched him on the raw. As for Tabary, he laughed immoder-
ately over the medlars; he had never heard anything more light-
hearted, and he held his sides and crowed. Villon fetched him a
fillip on the nose, which turned his mirth into an attack of cough-
ing
«Oh, stop that row,” said Villon, “and think of rhymes to
«
You may
'fish. ) »
« Doubles or quits,” said Montigny doggedly.
1
## p. 13961 (#147) ##########################################
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
13961
>
With all my heart," quoth Thevenin.
“Is there any more in that bottle ? ” asked the monk.
“Open another,” said Villon. “How do you ever hope to fill
that big hogshead, your body, with little things like bottles ? And
how do you expect to get to heaven? How many angels, do you
fancy, can be spared to carry up a single monk from Picardy?
Or do you think yourself another Elias — and they'll send the
coach for you? ”
"Hominibus impossibile," replied the monk as he filled his
glass.
Tabary was in ecstasies.
Villon filliped his nose again.
“Laugh at my jokes if you like,” he said.
" It was very good,” objected Tabary.
Villon made a face at him. « Think of rhymes to 'fish,) ► he
said. “What have you to do with Latin ? You'll wish you knew
none of it at the great assizes, when the Devil calls for Guido
Tabary, clericus — the Devil with the hump-back and red-hot
finger-nails. Talking of the Devil,” he added in a whisper, “look
at Montigny! ”
All three peered covertly at the gamester. He did not seem
to be enjoying his luck. His mouth was a little to a side; one
nostril nearly shut, and the other much inflated. The black dog
on his back, as people say in terrifying nursery metaphor;
and he breathed hard under the grewsome burden.
“He looks as if he could knife him," whispered Tabary, with
C
was
round eyes.
(
The monk shuddered, and turned his face and spread his open
hands to the red embers. It was the cold that thus affected Dom
Nicolas, and not any excess of moral sensibility.
«Come now,” said Villon — "about this ballade. How does it
run so far? ” And beating time with his hand, he read it aloud
to Tabary.
They were interrupted at the fourth rhyme by a brief and
fatal movement among the gamesters. The round was completed,
and Thevenin was just opening his mouth to claim another vic-
tory, when Montigny leaped up, swift as an adder, and stabbed
him to the heart. The blow took effect before he had time to
utter a cry, before he had time to move. A tremor or two con-
vulsed his frame; his hands opened and shut, his heels rattled on
## p. 13962 (#148) ##########################################
13962
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
the floor; then his head rolled backward over one shoulder with
the eyes wide open, and Thevenin Pensete's spirit had returned
to Him who made it.
Every one sprang to his feet; but the business was over in two
twos. The four living fellows looked at each other in rather a
ghastly fashion; the dead man contemplating a corner of the roof
with a singular and ugly leer.
My God! ” said Tabary; and he began to pray in Latin.
Villon broke out into hysterical laughter. He came a step
forward and ducked a ridiculous bow at Thevenin, and laughed
still louder. Then he sat down suddenly, all of a heap, upon a
stool, and continued laughing bitterly as though he would shake
himself to pieces.
Montigny recovered his composure first.
Let's see what he has about him,” he remarked; and he
picked the dead man's pockets with a practiced hand, and divided
the money into four equal portions on the table. « There's for
you,” he said.
The monk received his share with a deep sigh, and a single
stealthy glance at the dead Thevenin, who was beginning to sink
into himself and topple sideways off the chair.
“We're all in for it,” cried Villon, swallowing his mirth. “It's
a hanging job for every man jack of us that's here — not to
speak of those who aren't. ” He made a shocking gesture in the
air with his raised right hand, and put out his tongue and threw
his head on one side, so as to counterfeit the appearance of one
who has been hanged. Then he pocketed his share of the spoil,
and executed a shuffle with his feet as if to restore the circula-
tion.
Tabary was the last to help himself; he made a dash at the
money and retired to the other end of the apartment.
Montigny stuck Thevenin upright in the chair, and drew out
the dagger, which was followed by a jet of blood.
« You fellows had better be moving,” he said, as he wiped the
blade on his victim's doublet.
“I think we had,” returned Villon with a gulp. "Damn his
fat head! ” he broke out. «It sticks in my throat like phlegm.
What right has a man to have red hair when he is dead ? ) And
he fell all of a heap again upon the stool, and fairly covered his
face with his hands.
6
.
## p. 13963 (#149) ##########################################
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
13963
1
1
1
1
1
Montigny and Dom Nicolas laughed aloud, even Tabary feebly
chiming in.
"Cry-baby,” said the monk.
“I always said he was a woman,” added Montigny with a
sneer. “Sit up, can't you ? ” he went on, giving another shake to
the murdered body. «Tread out that fire, Nick! ”
But Nick was better employed: he was quietly taking Villon's
purse, as the poet sat, limp and trembling, on the stool where he
had been making a ballade not three minutes before. Montigny
and Tabary dumbly demanded a share of the booty, which the
monk silently promised as he passed the little bag into the bosom
of his gown.
In many ways an artistic nature unfits a man for
practical existence.
No sooner had the theft been accomplished than Villon shook
himself, jumped to his feet, and began helping to scatter and
extinguish the embers. Meanwhile Montigny opened the door and
cautiously peered into the street. The coast was clear; there was
no meddlesome patrol in sight. Still it was judged wiser to slip
out severally; and as Villon was himself in a hurry to escape
from the neighborhood of the dead Thevenin, and the rest were in
a still greater hurry to get rid of him before he should discover
the loss of his money, he was the first by general consent to
issue forth into the street.
The wind had triumphed and swept all the clouds from
heaven. Only a few vapors, as thin as moonlight, fleeted rapidly
across the stars. It was bitter cold; and by a common optical
effect, things seemed almost more definite than in the broadest
daylight. The sleeping city was absolutely still; a company of
white hoods, a field full of little alps, below the twinkling stars.
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 a 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.
Two things preoccupied him as he went: the aspect of the
gallows at Montfaucon in this bright, windy phase of the night's
existence, for one; and for another, the look of the dead man
## p. 13964 (#150) ##########################################
13964
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
with his bald head and garland of red curls. Both struck cold
upon his heart; and he kept quickening his pace as if he could
escape from unpleasant thoughts by mere fleetness of foot.
Sometimes he looked back over his shoulder with a sudden nerv-
ous jerk; but he was the only moving thing in the white streets,
except when the wind swooped round a corner and threw up the
snow, which was beginning to freeze, in spots of glittering dust.
Suddenly he saw, a long way before him, a black clump and
a couple of lanterns. The clump was in motion, and the lanterns
,
swung as though carried by men walking. It was a patrol. And
though it was merely crossing his line of march, he judged it
wiser to get out of eyeshot as speedily as he could. He was not
in the humor to be challenged, and he was conscious of making
a very conspicuous mark upon the snow. Just on his left hand
there stood a great hotel, with some turrets and a large porch
before the door: it was half ruinous, he remembered, and had
long stood empty; and so he made three steps of it, and jumped
into the shelter of the porch. It was pretty dark inside, after
the glimmer of the snowy streets; and he was groping forward
with outspread hands, when he stumbled over some substance
which offered an indescribable mixture of resistances, hard and
soft, firm and loose, His heart gave a leap, and he sprang two
steps back and stared dreadfully at the obstacle. Then he gave a
little laugh of relief. It was only a woman, and she dead.
He
knelt beside her to make sure upon this latter point. She was
freezing cold, and rigid like a stick. A little ragged finery flut-
tered in the wind about her hair, and her cheeks had been heav-
ily rouged that same afternoon. Her pockets were quite empty;
but in her stocking, underneath the garter, Villon found two of
the small coins that went by the name of whites. It was little
enough, but it was always something; and the poet was moved
with a deep sense of pathos that she should have died before she
had spent her money. That seemed to him a dark and pitiable
mystery; and he looked from the coins in his hand to the dead
woman, and back again to the coins, shaking his head over the
riddle of man's life. Henry V. of England, dying at Vincennes
just after he had conquered France, and this poor jade cut off by
a cold draught in a great man's doorway before she had time to
spend her couple of whites,- it seemed a cruel way to carry on
the world. Two whites would have taken such a little while to
squander; and yet it would have been one more good taste in the
## p. 13965 (#151) ##########################################
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
13965
mouth, one more smack of the lips, before the Devil got the soul
and the body was left to birds and vermin. He would like to
use all his tallow before the light was blown out and the lantern
broken.
While these thoughts were passing through his mind, he was
feeling, half mechanically, for his purse. Suddenly his heart
stopped beating; a feeling of cold scales passed up the back of
his legs, and a cold blow seemed to fall upon his scalp. He stood
petrified for a moment; then he felt again with one feverish
movement; and then his loss burst upon him, and he was cov-
ered at once with perspiration. To spendthrifts money is so liv-
ing and actual — it is such a thin veil between them and their
pleasures! There is only one limit to their fortune,- that of
time; and a spendthrift with only a few crowns is the Emperor of
Rome until they are spent. For such a person to lose his money
is to suffer the most shocking reverse, and fall from heaven to
hell, from all to nothing, in a breath. And all the more if
he has put his head in the halter for it; if he may be hanged
to-morrow for that same purse so dearly earned, so foolishly
departed! Villon stood and cursed; he threw the two whites
into the street; he shook his fist at heaven; he stamped, and was
not horrified to find himself trampling the poor corpse. Then
he began rapidly to retrace his steps towards the house beside
the cemetery. He had forgotten all fear of the patrol, which was
long gone by at any rate, and had no idea but that of his lost
purse. It was in vain that he looked right and left upon the
snow: nothing was to be seen. He had not dropped it in the
streets. Had it fallen in the house? He would have liked dearly
to go in and see; but the idea of the grisly occupant unmanned
him. And he saw besides, as he drew near, that their efforts
to put out the fire had been unsuccessful; on the contrary, it had
broken into a blaze, and a changeful light played in the chinks
of door and window, and revived his terror for the authorities and
Paris gibbet.
He returned to the hotel with the porch, and groped about
upon the snow for the money he had thrown away in his childish
passion. But he could only find one white: the other had prob-
ably struck sideways and sunk deeply in. With a single white
in his pocket, all his projects for a rousing night in some wild
tavern vanished utterly away. And it was not only pleasure that
fled laughing from his grasp: positive discomfort, positive pain,
## p. 13966 (#152) ##########################################
13966
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
1
7
2
31
no
answer.
A
C
attacked him as he stood ruefully before the porch. His per-
spiration had dried upon him; and although the wind had now
fallen, a binding frost was setting in stronger with every hour,
and he felt benumbed and sick at heart. What was to be done?
Late as was the hour, improbable as was success, he would try
the house of his adopted father, the chaplain of St. Benoît.
He ran there all the way, and knocked timidly.
There was
He knocked again and again, taking heart with
every stroke; and at last steps were heard approaching from
within. A barred wicket fell open in the iron-studded door, and
emitted a gush of yellow light.
«Hold up your face to the wicket,” said the chaplain from
within.
"It's only me,” whimpered Villon.
«Oh, it's only you, is it ? ” returned the chaplain; and he cursed
him with foul unpriestly oaths for disturbing him at such an
hour, and bade him be off to hell, where he came from.
"Well,” said Alan, with one of his droll looks, "I was rather
in hopes it would maybe get us that boat. ”
"If it were the other way about, it would be liker it,” said I.
“That's all that you ken, ye see,” said Alan. “I don't want
the lass to fall in love with ye, I want her to be sorry for
David; to which end, there is no manner of need that she should
take you for a beauty. Let me see” (looking me curiously over).
"I wish ye were a wee thing paler; but apart from that ye'll do
fine for my purpose - ye have a fine, hang-dog, rag-and-tatter,
clappermaclaw kind of a look to ye, as if ye had stolen the coat
from a potato-bogle. Come: right about, and back to the change-
house for that boat of ours. ”
I followed him laughing.
« David Balfour,” said he, "ye're a very funny gentleman by
your way of it, and this is a very funny employ for ye, no doubt.
For all that, if ye have any affection for my neck (to say noth-
ing of your own), ye will perhaps be kind enough to take this
matter responsibly. I am going to do a bit of play-acting, the
bottom ground of which is just exactly as serious as the gallows
for the pair of us. So bear it, if ye please, in mind, and conduct
yourself according. ”
« Well, well,” said I, have it as you will. ”
As we got near the clachan, he made me take his arm and
hang upon it like one almost helpless with weariness; and by
the time he pushed open the change-house door, he seemed to
be half carrying me. The maid appeared surprised (as well she
might be) at our speedy return: but Alan had no words to spare
for her in explanation, helped me to a chair, called for a tass of
brandy with which he fed me in little sips, and then breaking
up the bread and cheese helped me to eat it like a nursery-lass;
the whole with that grave, concerned, affectionate countenance,
that might have imposed upon a judge. It was small wonder if
the maid were taken with the picture we presented, of a poor,
sick, overwrought lad and his most tender comrade. She drew
quite near, and stood leaning with her back on the next table.
“What's like wrong with him ? ” said she at last.
Alan turned upon her, to my great wonder, with a kind of
fury. "Wrong? ” cries he. “He's walked more hundreds of
miles than he has hairs upon his chin, and slept oftener in wet
## p. 13950 (#136) ##########################################
13950
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
(
(
»
heather than dry sheets. Wrong, quo' she! Wrong enough, I
would think! Wrong, indeed! ” and he kept grumbling to him-
self, as he fed me, like a man ill pleased.
«He's young for the like of that,” said the maid.
“Ower young,” said Alan, with his back to her.
«He would be better riding,” says she.
"And where could I get a horse for him ? ” cried Alan, turn-
ing on her with the same appearance of fury. “Would ye have
me steal ? »
I thought this roughness would have sent her off in dudgeon,
as indeed it closed her mouth for the time. But my companion
knew very well what he was doing; and for as simple as he was
in some things of life, had a great fund of roguishness in such
affairs as these.
« Ye neednae tell me,” she said at last-"ye're gentry. ”
“Well,” said Alan, softened a little (I believe against his will)
by this artless comment, and suppose we were ? did ever you
hear that gentrice put money in folks' pockets ? ”
She sighed at this, as if she were herself some disinherited
great lady. "No," says she, “that's true indeed. ”
I was all this while chafing at the part I played, and sitting
tongue-tied between shame and merriment; but somehow at this
I could hold in no longer, and bade Alan let me be, for I was
better already. ' My voice stuck in my throat, for I ever hated
to take part in lies; but my very embarrassment helped on the
plot, for the lass no doubt set down my husky voice to sickness
and fatigue.
“ Has he nae friends? said she in a tearful voice.
“That has he so," cried Alan, “if we could but win to them,
— friends and rich friends, beds to lie in, food to eat, doctors to
see him,—and here he must tramp in the dubs and sleep in the
heather like a beggarman. ”
"And why that? ” says the lass.
My dear,” says Alan, "I cannae very safely say; but I'll tell
ye what I'll do instead,” says he: "I'll whistle ye a bit tune. ”
And with that he leaned pretty far over the table, and in a mere
breath of a whistle, but with a wonderful pretty sentiment, gave
her a few bars of “Charlie is my darling. ”
Wheesht,” says she, and looked over her shoulder to the
>>
door.
“That's it,” said Alan.
## p. 13951 (#137) ##########################################
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
13951
>>
»
.
1
(C
<<
1
"And him so young! ” cried the lass.
"He's old enough to and Alan struck his forefinger on the
back part of his neck, meaning that I was old enough to lose my
head.
“It would be a black shame," she cried, flushing high.
It's what will be, though,” said Alan, «unless we manage
the better. ”
At this the lass turned and ran out of that part of the house,
leaving us alone together; Alan in high good-humor at the fur-
thering of his schemes, and I in bitter dudgeon at being called
a Jacobite and treated like a child.
“Alan,” I cried, “I can stand no more of this. ”
“Ye'll have to sit it then, Davie,” said he. For if ye upset
the pot now, ye may scrape your own life out of the fire, but
Alan Breck is a dead man.
This was so true that I could only groan; and even my groan
served Alan's purpose, for it was overheard by the lass as she
came flying in again with a dish of white puddings and a bottle
of strong ale.
“Poor lamb! ” says she; and had no sooner set the meat
before us, than she touched me on the shoulder with a little
friendly touch, as much as to bid me cheer up. Then she told
us to fall to, and there would be no more to pay; for the inn
was her own, or at least her father's, and he was gone for the
day to Pittencrieff. We waited for no second bidding, for bread
and cheese is but cold comfort, and the puddings smelt excel-
lently well; and while we sat and ate, she took up that same
place by the next table, looking on, and thinking, and frowning
to herself, and drawing the string of her apron through her hand.
"I'm thinking ye have rather a long tongue,” she said at last
to Alan.
“Ay,” said Alan; “but ye see I ken the folk I speak to. ”
"I would never betray ye,” said she, “if ye mean that. ”
“No,” said he, “ye're not that kind. But I'll tell ye what ye
would do,— ye would help. ”
"I couldnae,” said she, shaking her head. “Na, I couldnae. )
No,” said he, but if ye could ? »
She answered him nothing.
“Look here, my lass,” said Alan: “there are boats in the king-
dom of Fife, for I saw two (no less) upon the beach, as I came
in by your town's end. Now if we could have the use of a boat
»
## p. 13952 (#138) ##########################################
13952
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
to pass under cloud of night into Lothian, and some secret,
decent kind of a man to bring that boat back again and keep
his counsel, there would be two souls saved: mine to all likeli-
hood — his to a dead surety. If we lack that boat, we have but
three shillings left in this wide world; and where to go, and
how to do, and what other place there is for us except the
chains of a gibbet - I give you my naked word, I kenna! Shall
we go wanting, lassie? Are ye to lie in your warm bed and
think upon us, when the wind gowls in the chimney and the
rain tirls on the roof? Are ye to eat your meat by the cheeks
of a red fire, and think upon this poor sick lad of mine, biting
his finger-ends on a blae muir for cauld and hunger ? Sick or
sound, he must aye be moving; with the death-grapple at his
throat, he must aye be trailing in the rain on the long roads;
and when he gants his last on a rickle of cauld stanes, there
will be nae friends near him but only me and God. ”
At this appeal, I could see the lass was in great trouble of
mind; being tempted to help us, and yet in some fear she might
be helping malefactors: and so now I determined to step in my-
self, and to allay her scruples with a portion of the truth.
“ Did you ever hear,” said I, “of Mr. Rankeillor of the Queens-
ferry ? ”
Rankeillor the writer ? ” said she. "I daursay that! ”
Well,” said I, “it's to his door that I am bound, so you may
judge by that if I am an ill-doer; and I will tell you more: that
though I am indeed, by a dreadful error, in some peril of my
life, King George has no truer friend in all Scotland than my-
self. ”
Her face cleared up mightily at this, although Alan's dark-
ened.
That's more than I would ask,” said she. “Mr. Rankeillor
is a kennt man. ” And she bade us finish our meat, get clear of
the clachan as soon as might be, and lie close in the bit wood on
the sea-beach. "And ye can trust me,” says she, “I'll find some
means to put you over. ”
At this we waited for no more, but shook hands with her
upon the bargain, made short work of the puddings, and set
forth again from Limekilns as far as to the wood. It was a small
piece of perhaps a score of elders and hawthorns, and a few
young ashes, not thick enough to veil us from passers-by upon
the road or beach. Here we must lie, however, making the best
(
>>
»
(
(
## p. 13953 (#139) ##########################################
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
13953
of the brave warm weather and the good hopes we now had of
a deliverance, and planning more particularly what remained for
us to do.
We had but one trouble all day: when a strolling piper came
and sat in the same wood with us; a red-nosed, blear-eyed,
drunken dog, with a great bottle of whisky in his pocket, and a
long story of wrongs that had been done him by all sorts of
persons, from the lord president of the court of session who
had denied him justice, down to the baillies of Inverkeithing who
had given him more of it than he desired. It was impossible
but he should conceive some suspicion of two men lying all day
concealed in a thicket and having no business to allege. As
long as he stayed there, he kept us in hot water with prying
questions; and after he was gone, as he was a man not very
likely to hold his tongue, we were in the greater impatience to
be gone ourselves.
The day came to an end with the same brightness; the night
fell quiet and clear; lights came out in houses and hamlets, and
then, one after another, began to be put out: but it was past
eleven, and we were long since strangely tortured with anxieties,
before we heard the grinding of oars upon the rowing-pins. At
that, we looked out and saw the lass herself coming rowing to
us in a boat. She had trusted no one with our affairs — not even
her sweetheart, if she had one; but as soon as her father was
asleep, had left the house by a window, stolen a neighbor's boat,
and come to our assistance single-handed.
I was abashed how to find expression for my thanks: but she
was no less abashed at the thought of hearing them; begged
us to lose no time and to hold our peace, saying (very properly)
that the heart of our matter was in haste and silence: and so,
what with one thing and another, she had set us on the Lothian
shore not far from Carriden, had shaken hands with us, and was
out again at sea and rowing for Limekilns, before there was one
word said either of her service or our gratitude.
Even after she was gone we had nothing to say, as indeed
nothing was enough for such a kindness. Only Alan stood a
great while upon the shore shaking his head.
“It is a very fine lass,” he said at last. «David, it is a very
fine lass. ” And a matter of an hour later, as we were lying in
a den on the sea-shore and I had been already dozing, he broke
out again in commendations of her character. For my part I
XXIV—873
## p. 13954 (#140) ##########################################
13954
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
could say nothing; she was so simple a creature that my heart
smote me both with remorse and fear: remorse, because we had
traded upon her ignorance; and fear, lest we should have any-
way involved her in the dangers of our situation.
>
A NIGHT AMONG THE PINES
From "Travels with a Donkey. By permission of the authorized publishers,
Charles Scribner's Sons
F*
se-
>>
ROM Bleymard after dinner, although it was already late, I set
out to scale a portion of the Lozère. An ill-marked stony
drove road guided me forward; and I met nearly half a
dozen bullock carts descending from the woods, each laden with
a whole pine-tree for the winter's firing. At the top of the
woods, which do not climb very high upon this cold ridge, I
struck leftward by a path among the pines, until I hit on a dell
of green turf, where a streamlet made a little spout over some
stones to serve me for a water-tap. “In a more sacred or
questered bower. nor nymph, nor faunus, haunted. The
trees were not old, but they grew thickly round the glade: there
was no outlook, except northeastward upon distant hill-tops, or
straight upward to the sky; and the encampment felt secure and
private like a room. By the time I had made my arrangements
and fed Modestine, the day was already beginning to decline. I
buckled myself to the knees into my sack and made a hearty
meal; and as soon as the sun went down, I pulled my cap over
my eyes and fell asleep.
Night is a dead monotonous period under a roof; but in
the open world it passes lightly, with its stars and dews and
perfumes, and the hours are marked by changes in the face of
Nature. What seems a kind of temporal death to people choked
between walls and curtains, is only a light and living slumber to
the man who sleeps a-field. All night long he can hear Nature
breathing deeply and freely: even as she takes her rest, she turns
and smiles; and there is one stirring hour unknown to those who
dwell in houses, when a wakeful influence goes abroad over the
sleeping hemisphere, and all the outdoor world are on their feet.
It is then that the cock first crows,—not this time to announce
the dawn, but like a cheerful watchman speeding the course of
## p. 13955 (#141) ##########################################
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
13955
1
+
1
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1
night. Cattle awake on the meadows; sheep break their fast on
dewy hillsides, and change to a new lair among the ferns; and
houseless men who have lain down with the fowls, open their
dim eyes and behold the beauty of the night.
At what inaudible summons, at what gentle touch of Nature,
are all these sleepers thus recalled in the same hour to life ? Do
the stars rain down an influence, or do we share some thrill of
mother earth below our resting bodies ? Even shepherds and old
country-folk, who are the deepest read in these arcana, have not
a guess as to the means or purpose of this nightly resurrection.
Towards two in the morning they declare the thing takes place;
and neither know nor inquire further. And at least it is a pleas-
ant incident. We are disturbed in our slumber only, like the
luxurious Montaigne, “that we may the better and more sensibly
relish it. ” We have a moment to look upon the stars.
And
there is a special pleasure for some minds in the reflection that
we share the impulse with all outdoor creatures in our neigh-
borhood; that we have escaped out of the Bastille of civilization,
and are become, for the time being, a mere kindly animal and a
sheep of Nature's flock.
When that hour came to me among the pines, I awakened
thirsty. My tin was standing by me half full of water.
I emp-
tied it at a draught; and feeling broad awake after this internal
cold aspersion, sat upright to make a cigarette. The stars were
clear, colored, and jewel-like, but not frosty. A faint silvery
vapor stood for the Milky Way. All around me the black fir-
points stood upright and stock-still. By the whiteness of the
pack-saddle, I could see Modestine walking round and round at
the length of her tether; I could hear her steadily munching at
the sward: but there was not another sound, save the indescrib-
able quiet talk of the runnel over the stones. I lay lazily smok-
ing and studying the color of the sky, as we call the void of
space, from where it showed a reddish gray behind the pines to
where it showed a glossy blue-black between the stars. As if to
be more like a peddler, I wear a silver ring. This I could see
faintly shining as I raised or lowered the cigarette; and at each
whiff the inside of my hand was illuminated, and became for a
second the highest light in the landscape.
A faint wind, more like a moving coolness than a stream of
air, passed down the glade from time to time; so that even in
my great chamber the air was being renewed all night long. I
## p. 13956 (#142) ##########################################
13956
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
thought with horror of the inn at Chasserades and the congre-
gated nightcaps; with horror of the nocturnal prowesses of clerks
and students, of hot theatres and pass-keys and close rooms.
have not often enjoyed a more serene possession of myself, nor
felt more independent of material aids. The outer world, from
which we cower into our houses, seemed after all a gentle habit-
able place; and night after night a man's bed, it seemed, was
laid and waiting for him in the fields, where God keeps an open
house. I thought I had rediscovered one of those truths which
are revealed to savages and hid from political economists; at the
least, I had discovered a new pleasure for myself. And yet even
while I was exulting in my solitude I became aware of a strange
lack. I wished a companion to lie near me in the starlight, ,
silent and not moving, but ever within touch. For there is a
fellowship more quiet even than solitude, and which, rightly un-
derstood, is solitude made perfect. And to live out of doors with
the woman a man loves is of all lives the most complete and
free.
As I thus lay, between content and longing, a faint noise stole
towards me through the pines. I thought, at first, it was the
crowing of cocks or the barking of dogs at some very distant
farm; but steadily and gradually it took articulate shape in
my ears, until I became aware that a passenger was going by
upon the high-road in the valley, and singing loudly as he went.
There was more of good-will than grace in his performance:
but he trolled with ample lungs; and the sound of his voice took
hold upon the hillside and set the air shaking in the leafy glens.
I have heard people passing by night in sleeping cities: some
of them sang; one, I remember, played loudly on the bagpipes.
I have heard the rattle of a cart or carriage spring up suddenly
after hours of stillness, and pass, for some minutes, within the
range of my hearing as I lay abed. There is a romance about
all who are abroad in the black hours, and with something of a
thrill we try to guess their business. But here the romance was
double: first, this glad passenger, lit internally with wine, who
sent up his voice in music through the night; and then I, on the
other hand, buckled into my sack, and smoking alone in the
pine-woods between four and five thousand feet towards the
stars.
When I awoke again (Sunday, 29th September), many of the
stars had disappeared; only the stronger companions of the night
## p. 13957 (#143) ##########################################
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
13957
1
1
4
still burned visibly overhead: and away towards the east I saw a
faint haze of light upon the horizon, such as had been the Milky
Way when I was last awake. Day was at hand. I lit my lan-
tern, and by its glow-worm light put on my boots and gaiters;
then I broke up some bread for Modestine, filled my can at the
water-tap, and lit my spirit-lamp to boil myself some chocolate.
The blue darkness lay long in the glade where I had so sweetly
slumbered; but soon there was a broad streak of orange melting
into gold along the mountain-tops of Vivarais. A solemn glee
possessed my mind at this gradual and lovely coming in of day.
I heard the runnel with delight; I looked round me for some-
thing beautiful and unexpected: but the still black pine-trees, the
hollow glade, the munching ass, remained unchanged in figure.
Nothing had altered but the light; and that indeed shed over
all a spirit of life and of breathing peace, and moved me to a
strange exhilaration.
I drank my water chocolate, which was hot if it was not rich,
and strolled here and there, and up and down about the glade.
While I was thus delaying, a gush of steady wind, as long as a
heavy sigh, poured direct out of the quarter of the morning. It
was cold, and set me sneezing. The trees near at hand tossed
their black plumes in its passage; and I could see the thin dis-
tant spires of pine along the edge of the hill rock slightly to
and fro against the golden east. Ten minutes after, the sun.
light spread at a gallop along the hillside, scattering shadows and
sparkles, and the day had come completely.
I hastened to prepare my pack, and tackle a steep ascent that
lay before me; but I had something on my mind. It was only a
fancy; yet a fancy will sometimes be importunate. I had been
most hospitably received and punctually served in my green
caravanserai.
The room
was airy, the water excellent, and the
dawn had called me to a moment. I say nothing of the tap-
estries or the inimitable ceiling, nor yet of the view which I
commanded from the windows; but I felt I was in some one's
debt for all this liberal entertainment. And so it pleased me, in
a half-laughing way, to leave pieces of money on the turf as
I went along, until I had left enough for my night's lodging.
I trust they did not fall to some rich and churlish drover.
## p. 13958 (#144) ##########################################
13958
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
A LODGING FOR THE NIGHT
From New Arabian Nights. By permission of the authorized publishers,
Charles Scribner's Sons
" I ,
T was late in November 1456. And snow fell over Paris with
rigorous, relentless persistence; sometimes the wind made a
sally and scattered it in Aying vortices; sometimes there was
a lull, and flake after flake descended out of the black night air,
silent, circuitous, interminable. To poor people, looking up under
moist eyebrows, it seemed a wonder where it all came from.
Master Francis Villon had propounded an alternative that after-
noon, at a tavern window: was it only pagan Jupiter plucking
geese upon Olympus ? or were the holy angels moulting? He
was only a poor Master of Arts, he went on; and as the question
somewhat touched upon divinity, he durst not venture to con-
clude. A silly old priest from Montargis, who was among the
company, treated the young rascal to a bottle of wine in honor
of the jest and grimaces with which it was accompanied, and
swore on his own white beard that he had been just such another
irreverent dog when he was Villon's age.
The air was raw and pointed, but not far below freezing; and
the Aakes were large, damp, and adhesive. The whole city was
sheeted up. An army might have marched from end to end and
not a footfall given the alarm. If there were any belated birds
in heaven, they saw the island like a large white patch, and the
bridges like slim white spars, on the black ground of the river.
High up overhead the snow settled among the tracery of the
cathedral towers. Many a niche was drifted full; many a statue
wore a long white bonnet on its grotesque or sainted head. The
gargoyles had been transformed into great false noses, drooping
towards the point. The crockets were like upright pillows swollen
on one side. In the intervals of the wind, there was a dull sound
of dripping about the precincts of the church.
The cemetery of St. John had taken its own share of the snow.
All the graves were decently covered; tall white housetops stood
around in grave array; worthy burghers were long ago in bed,
be-nightcapped like their domiciles; there was no light in all the
neighborhood but a little peep from a lamp that hung swinging
in the church choir, and tossed the shadows to and fro in time
to its oscillations. The clock was hard on ten when the patrol
## p. 13959 (#145) ##########################################
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
13959
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1
量
went by with halberds and a lantern, beating their hands; and
they saw nothing suspicious about the cemetery of St. John.
Yet there was a small house, backed up against the cemetery
wall, which was still awake, and awake to evil purpose, in that
snoring district. There was not much to betray it from with-
out: only a stream of warm vapor from the chimney-top, a patch
where the snow melted on the roof, and a few half-obliterated
footprints at the door. But within, behind the shuttered windows,
Master Francis Villon the poet, and some of the thievish crew
with whom he consorted, were keeping the night alive and pass-
ing round the bottle.
A great pile of living embers diffused a strong and ruddy
glow from the arched chimney. Before this straddled Dom
Nicolas, the Picardy monk, with his skirts picked up and his fat
legs bared to the comfortable warmth. His dilated shadow cut
the room in half; and the firelight only escaped on either side of
his broad person, and in a little pool between his outspread feet.
His face had the beery, bruised appearance of a continual drink-
er's: it was covered with a network of congested veins, purple
in ordinary circumstances, but now pale violet; for even with his
back to the fire the cold pinched him on the other side. His
cowl had half fallen back, and made a strange excrescence on
either side of his bull neck. So he straddled, grumbling, and cut
the room in half with the shadow of his portly frame.
On the right, Villon and Guy Tabary were huddled together
over a scrap of parchment; Villon making a ballade which he
was to call the Ballade of Roast Fish,' and Tabary spluttering
admiration at his shoulder. The poet was a rag of a man,
dark, little, and lean, with hollow cheeks and thin black locks.
He carried his four-and-twenty years with feverish animation.
Greed had made folds about his eyes, evil smiles had puckered
his mouth. The wolf and pig struggled together in his face. It
was an eloquent, sharp, ugly, earthly countenance. His hands
were small and prehensile, with fingers knotted like a cord; and
they were continually flickering in front of him in violent and
expressive pantomine. As for Tabary, a broad, complacent, admir-
ing imbecility breathed from his squash nose and slobbering lips:
he had become a thief, just as he might have become the most
decent of burgesses, by the imperious chance that rules the lives
of human geese and human donkeys.
## p. 13960 (#146) ##########################################
139бо
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
((
>
»
At the monk's other hand, Montigny and Thevenin Pensete
played a game of chance. About the first there clung some flavor
of good birth and training, as about a fallen angel: something
long, lithe, and courtly in the person; something aquiline and
darkling in the face. Thevenin, poor soul, was in great feather:
he had done a good stroke of knavery that afternoon in the
Faubourg St. Jacques, and all night he had been gaining from
Montigny. A flat smile illuminated his face; his bald head shone
rosily in a garland of red curls; his little protuberant stomach
shook with silent chucklings as he swept in his gains.
"Doubles or quits ? ” said Thevenin.
Montigny nodded grimly.
"Some may prefer to dine in state,” wrote Villon, "On bread
and cheese on silver plate. Or, or — help me out, Guido! ”
Tabary giggled.
“ Or parsley on a golden dish,” scribbled the poet.
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.
dance, my gallants, you'll be none the warmer! Whew! what a
gust! Down went somebody just now! A medlar the fewer on
the three-legged medlar-tree! --I say, Dom Nicolas, it'll be cold
,
to-night on the St. Denis Road? ” he asked.
Dom Nicolas winked both his big eyes, and seemed to choke
upon his Adam's apple. Montfaucon, the great grisly Paris
gibbet, stood hard by the St. Denis Road, and the pleasantry
touched him on the raw. As for Tabary, he laughed immoder-
ately over the medlars; he had never heard anything more light-
hearted, and he held his sides and crowed. Villon fetched him a
fillip on the nose, which turned his mirth into an attack of cough-
ing
«Oh, stop that row,” said Villon, “and think of rhymes to
«
You may
'fish. ) »
« Doubles or quits,” said Montigny doggedly.
1
## p. 13961 (#147) ##########################################
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
13961
>
With all my heart," quoth Thevenin.
“Is there any more in that bottle ? ” asked the monk.
“Open another,” said Villon. “How do you ever hope to fill
that big hogshead, your body, with little things like bottles ? And
how do you expect to get to heaven? How many angels, do you
fancy, can be spared to carry up a single monk from Picardy?
Or do you think yourself another Elias — and they'll send the
coach for you? ”
"Hominibus impossibile," replied the monk as he filled his
glass.
Tabary was in ecstasies.
Villon filliped his nose again.
“Laugh at my jokes if you like,” he said.
" It was very good,” objected Tabary.
Villon made a face at him. « Think of rhymes to 'fish,) ► he
said. “What have you to do with Latin ? You'll wish you knew
none of it at the great assizes, when the Devil calls for Guido
Tabary, clericus — the Devil with the hump-back and red-hot
finger-nails. Talking of the Devil,” he added in a whisper, “look
at Montigny! ”
All three peered covertly at the gamester. He did not seem
to be enjoying his luck. His mouth was a little to a side; one
nostril nearly shut, and the other much inflated. The black dog
on his back, as people say in terrifying nursery metaphor;
and he breathed hard under the grewsome burden.
“He looks as if he could knife him," whispered Tabary, with
C
was
round eyes.
(
The monk shuddered, and turned his face and spread his open
hands to the red embers. It was the cold that thus affected Dom
Nicolas, and not any excess of moral sensibility.
«Come now,” said Villon — "about this ballade. How does it
run so far? ” And beating time with his hand, he read it aloud
to Tabary.
They were interrupted at the fourth rhyme by a brief and
fatal movement among the gamesters. The round was completed,
and Thevenin was just opening his mouth to claim another vic-
tory, when Montigny leaped up, swift as an adder, and stabbed
him to the heart. The blow took effect before he had time to
utter a cry, before he had time to move. A tremor or two con-
vulsed his frame; his hands opened and shut, his heels rattled on
## p. 13962 (#148) ##########################################
13962
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
the floor; then his head rolled backward over one shoulder with
the eyes wide open, and Thevenin Pensete's spirit had returned
to Him who made it.
Every one sprang to his feet; but the business was over in two
twos. The four living fellows looked at each other in rather a
ghastly fashion; the dead man contemplating a corner of the roof
with a singular and ugly leer.
My God! ” said Tabary; and he began to pray in Latin.
Villon broke out into hysterical laughter. He came a step
forward and ducked a ridiculous bow at Thevenin, and laughed
still louder. Then he sat down suddenly, all of a heap, upon a
stool, and continued laughing bitterly as though he would shake
himself to pieces.
Montigny recovered his composure first.
Let's see what he has about him,” he remarked; and he
picked the dead man's pockets with a practiced hand, and divided
the money into four equal portions on the table. « There's for
you,” he said.
The monk received his share with a deep sigh, and a single
stealthy glance at the dead Thevenin, who was beginning to sink
into himself and topple sideways off the chair.
“We're all in for it,” cried Villon, swallowing his mirth. “It's
a hanging job for every man jack of us that's here — not to
speak of those who aren't. ” He made a shocking gesture in the
air with his raised right hand, and put out his tongue and threw
his head on one side, so as to counterfeit the appearance of one
who has been hanged. Then he pocketed his share of the spoil,
and executed a shuffle with his feet as if to restore the circula-
tion.
Tabary was the last to help himself; he made a dash at the
money and retired to the other end of the apartment.
Montigny stuck Thevenin upright in the chair, and drew out
the dagger, which was followed by a jet of blood.
« You fellows had better be moving,” he said, as he wiped the
blade on his victim's doublet.
“I think we had,” returned Villon with a gulp. "Damn his
fat head! ” he broke out. «It sticks in my throat like phlegm.
What right has a man to have red hair when he is dead ? ) And
he fell all of a heap again upon the stool, and fairly covered his
face with his hands.
6
.
## p. 13963 (#149) ##########################################
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
13963
1
1
1
1
1
Montigny and Dom Nicolas laughed aloud, even Tabary feebly
chiming in.
"Cry-baby,” said the monk.
“I always said he was a woman,” added Montigny with a
sneer. “Sit up, can't you ? ” he went on, giving another shake to
the murdered body. «Tread out that fire, Nick! ”
But Nick was better employed: he was quietly taking Villon's
purse, as the poet sat, limp and trembling, on the stool where he
had been making a ballade not three minutes before. Montigny
and Tabary dumbly demanded a share of the booty, which the
monk silently promised as he passed the little bag into the bosom
of his gown.
In many ways an artistic nature unfits a man for
practical existence.
No sooner had the theft been accomplished than Villon shook
himself, jumped to his feet, and began helping to scatter and
extinguish the embers. Meanwhile Montigny opened the door and
cautiously peered into the street. The coast was clear; there was
no meddlesome patrol in sight. Still it was judged wiser to slip
out severally; and as Villon was himself in a hurry to escape
from the neighborhood of the dead Thevenin, and the rest were in
a still greater hurry to get rid of him before he should discover
the loss of his money, he was the first by general consent to
issue forth into the street.
The wind had triumphed and swept all the clouds from
heaven. Only a few vapors, as thin as moonlight, fleeted rapidly
across the stars. It was bitter cold; and by a common optical
effect, things seemed almost more definite than in the broadest
daylight. The sleeping city was absolutely still; a company of
white hoods, a field full of little alps, below the twinkling stars.
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 a 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.
Two things preoccupied him as he went: the aspect of the
gallows at Montfaucon in this bright, windy phase of the night's
existence, for one; and for another, the look of the dead man
## p. 13964 (#150) ##########################################
13964
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
with his bald head and garland of red curls. Both struck cold
upon his heart; and he kept quickening his pace as if he could
escape from unpleasant thoughts by mere fleetness of foot.
Sometimes he looked back over his shoulder with a sudden nerv-
ous jerk; but he was the only moving thing in the white streets,
except when the wind swooped round a corner and threw up the
snow, which was beginning to freeze, in spots of glittering dust.
Suddenly he saw, a long way before him, a black clump and
a couple of lanterns. The clump was in motion, and the lanterns
,
swung as though carried by men walking. It was a patrol. And
though it was merely crossing his line of march, he judged it
wiser to get out of eyeshot as speedily as he could. He was not
in the humor to be challenged, and he was conscious of making
a very conspicuous mark upon the snow. Just on his left hand
there stood a great hotel, with some turrets and a large porch
before the door: it was half ruinous, he remembered, and had
long stood empty; and so he made three steps of it, and jumped
into the shelter of the porch. It was pretty dark inside, after
the glimmer of the snowy streets; and he was groping forward
with outspread hands, when he stumbled over some substance
which offered an indescribable mixture of resistances, hard and
soft, firm and loose, His heart gave a leap, and he sprang two
steps back and stared dreadfully at the obstacle. Then he gave a
little laugh of relief. It was only a woman, and she dead.
He
knelt beside her to make sure upon this latter point. She was
freezing cold, and rigid like a stick. A little ragged finery flut-
tered in the wind about her hair, and her cheeks had been heav-
ily rouged that same afternoon. Her pockets were quite empty;
but in her stocking, underneath the garter, Villon found two of
the small coins that went by the name of whites. It was little
enough, but it was always something; and the poet was moved
with a deep sense of pathos that she should have died before she
had spent her money. That seemed to him a dark and pitiable
mystery; and he looked from the coins in his hand to the dead
woman, and back again to the coins, shaking his head over the
riddle of man's life. Henry V. of England, dying at Vincennes
just after he had conquered France, and this poor jade cut off by
a cold draught in a great man's doorway before she had time to
spend her couple of whites,- it seemed a cruel way to carry on
the world. Two whites would have taken such a little while to
squander; and yet it would have been one more good taste in the
## p. 13965 (#151) ##########################################
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
13965
mouth, one more smack of the lips, before the Devil got the soul
and the body was left to birds and vermin. He would like to
use all his tallow before the light was blown out and the lantern
broken.
While these thoughts were passing through his mind, he was
feeling, half mechanically, for his purse. Suddenly his heart
stopped beating; a feeling of cold scales passed up the back of
his legs, and a cold blow seemed to fall upon his scalp. He stood
petrified for a moment; then he felt again with one feverish
movement; and then his loss burst upon him, and he was cov-
ered at once with perspiration. To spendthrifts money is so liv-
ing and actual — it is such a thin veil between them and their
pleasures! There is only one limit to their fortune,- that of
time; and a spendthrift with only a few crowns is the Emperor of
Rome until they are spent. For such a person to lose his money
is to suffer the most shocking reverse, and fall from heaven to
hell, from all to nothing, in a breath. And all the more if
he has put his head in the halter for it; if he may be hanged
to-morrow for that same purse so dearly earned, so foolishly
departed! Villon stood and cursed; he threw the two whites
into the street; he shook his fist at heaven; he stamped, and was
not horrified to find himself trampling the poor corpse. Then
he began rapidly to retrace his steps towards the house beside
the cemetery. He had forgotten all fear of the patrol, which was
long gone by at any rate, and had no idea but that of his lost
purse. It was in vain that he looked right and left upon the
snow: nothing was to be seen. He had not dropped it in the
streets. Had it fallen in the house? He would have liked dearly
to go in and see; but the idea of the grisly occupant unmanned
him. And he saw besides, as he drew near, that their efforts
to put out the fire had been unsuccessful; on the contrary, it had
broken into a blaze, and a changeful light played in the chinks
of door and window, and revived his terror for the authorities and
Paris gibbet.
He returned to the hotel with the porch, and groped about
upon the snow for the money he had thrown away in his childish
passion. But he could only find one white: the other had prob-
ably struck sideways and sunk deeply in. With a single white
in his pocket, all his projects for a rousing night in some wild
tavern vanished utterly away. And it was not only pleasure that
fled laughing from his grasp: positive discomfort, positive pain,
## p. 13966 (#152) ##########################################
13966
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
1
7
2
31
no
answer.
A
C
attacked him as he stood ruefully before the porch. His per-
spiration had dried upon him; and although the wind had now
fallen, a binding frost was setting in stronger with every hour,
and he felt benumbed and sick at heart. What was to be done?
Late as was the hour, improbable as was success, he would try
the house of his adopted father, the chaplain of St. Benoît.
He ran there all the way, and knocked timidly.
There was
He knocked again and again, taking heart with
every stroke; and at last steps were heard approaching from
within. A barred wicket fell open in the iron-studded door, and
emitted a gush of yellow light.
«Hold up your face to the wicket,” said the chaplain from
within.
"It's only me,” whimpered Villon.
«Oh, it's only you, is it ? ” returned the chaplain; and he cursed
him with foul unpriestly oaths for disturbing him at such an
hour, and bade him be off to hell, where he came from.
