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Meanwhile Madame Ysabeau, slipping under the cloister gate, entered her Church. The pilgrims had driven her away, for she loved peace and solitude. The bird came forward cautiously, putting one foot slowly in front of the other, then stopped and craned her neck, casting a suspicious look to right and left.
But after a while, "Ysabeau de Montigny dwells in the Rue du Fouarre," said Catherine, in a crisp voice, "having served your purpose, however, I perceive that Ysabeau, too, is to be cast aside as though she were an old glove. Monsieur d'Arnaye, thrash for me this betrayer of women." Noel was a big, handsome man, like an obtuse demi-god, a foot taller than Francois.
Yet they were content, who, were young in the world's recaptured youth. Fate grinned and went on with her weaving. "Et Ysabeau, Qui Dit: Enne!" Somewhat later Francois came down the deserted street, treading on air. Francois was a poet, but a civic poet; then, as always, he pilfered his similes from shop-windows.
Mazzoti speaks of a third dentition, and Ysabeau writes of dentition of a molar at the age of ninety-two. There is a record of a physician of the name of Slave who retained all his second teeth until the age of eighty, when they fell out; after five years another set appeared, which he retained until his death at one hundred.
Rhymes are a thin diet for two lusty young folk like these. And who knows if Guillaume de Villon, his foster-father, has one sou to rub against another? He is canon at Saint Benoit-le-Betourne yonder, but canons are not Midases. The girl will have a hard life of it, neighbor, a hard life, I tell you, if but, yes! if Ysabeau de Montigny does not knife her some day.
The Limousin gentleman, who was a simple soul after all, went where he was led, and Florent Guillaume supped on the leg and wing of a goose, the bones whereof he put in his pocket as a present for Madame Ysabeau, his fellow lodger in the timbers of the steeple, to wit, Jean Magne the bell-ringer's magpie.
Yet because his heart was filled just now with loving-kindness, he forgave the girl. "Tantaene irae?" said Francois; and aloud, "Ysabeau, it is time you were abed." She wheeled upon him in apprehension; then, with recognition, her rage flamed. "Now, Gilles!" cried Ysabeau de Montigny; "now, coward! He is unarmed, Gilles. Look, Gilles! Kill for me this betrayer of women!"
It was on this day that Noel d'Arnaye blasphemed for a matter of a half-hour and then went to the Crowned Ox, where he drank himself into a contented insensibility; that Ysabeau de Montigny, having wept a little, sent for Gilles Raguyer, a priest and aforetime a rival of Francois de Montcorbier for her favors; and that Philippe Sermaise grinned and said nothing.
But the heart of Francois was pure magnanimity, the heels of Francois were mercury, as he tripped past the church of Saint Benoit-le-Betourne, stark snow and ink in the moonlight. Then with a jerk Francois paused. On a stone bench before the church sat Ysabeau de Montigny and Gilles Raguyer. The priest was fuddled, hiccuping in his amorous dithyrambics as he paddled with the girl's hand.
Perhaps he, he! perhaps Ysabeau de Montigny might inform us, you say? Doubtless Ysabeau knows more of him than she would care to confess, but I measure the lad by other standards. Francois is inoffensive enough, I dare assert, but what does Catherine see in him? He is a scholar? well, the College of Navarre has furnished food for the gallows before this. A poet? rhyming will not fill the pot.
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