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"Horrible!" said the Rue Saint Jacques, and drew a moral of suitably pious flavor. Guillemette Moreau had told Catherine of the affair before the day was aired. The girl's hurt vanity broke tether. "Sermaise!" said she. "Bah, what do I care for Sermaise! He killed him in fair fight.
It appears his health had suffered in the pit at Meun; he was thirty years of age and quite bald; with the notch in his under lip where Sermaise had struck him with the sword, and what wrinkles the reader may imagine. In default of portraits, this is all I have been able to piece together, and perhaps even the baldness should be taken as a figure of his destitution.
"The years!" said he. "You are modest. It was you who killed Francois de Montcorbier, as surely as Montcorbier killed Sermaise. Eh, Sovereign Virgin! that is scant cause for grief. You made Francois Villon. What do you think of him, lass?" She echoed the name. It was in many ways a seasoned name, but unaccustomed to mean nothing. Accordingly Francois sneered.
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, 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.
Then as Francois hurled back his sword to slash at the priest's shaven head Frenchmen had not yet learned to thrust with the point in the Italian manner Jehan le Merdi leapt from behind, nimble as a snake, and wrested away the boy's weapon. Sermaise closed with a glad shout. "Heart of God!" cried Sermaise. "Pray, bridegroom, pray!"
Down the Rue Saint Jacques came Philippe Sermaise, like a questing hound, with drunken Jehan le Merdi at his heels. "Holy Virgin!" thought Francois; "this is likely to be a nasty affair. I would give a deal for a glimpse of the patrol lanterns just now." He edged his way toward the cloister, to get a wall at his back. But Gilles Raguyer followed him, knife in hand. "O hideous Tarquin!
Francois, staring at the black featureless horror before him, began to choke. Standing thus, with outstretched arms, the priest first let fall his hands, so that they hung limp from the wrists; his finger-nails gleamed in the moonlight. His rapier tinkled on the flagstones with the sound of shattering glass, and Philippe Sermaise slid down, all a-jumble, crumpling like a broken toy.
But afterward Sermaise gnawed at his under lip like a madman as he went about seeking for Francois de Montcorbier. "Deux estions, et n'avions qu'ung Cueur" It verged upon nine in the evening a late hour in those days when Francois climbed the wall of Jehan de Vaucelles' garden. A wall! and what is a wall to your true lover?
It appears his health had suffered in the pit at Méun; he was thirty years of age and quite bald; with the notch in his under lip where Sermaise had struck him with the sword, and what wrinkles the reader may imagine. In default of portraits, that is all I have been able to piece together, and perhaps even the baldness should be taken as a figure of his destitution.
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