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It was too hot and wild and shy a thing, too passionately set in its course, too homesick for the white fulgurant heights of Heaven to negate itself at the behest of French society and conform to what the academicians declared to be "la vielle tradition française."
There were many guests for the Convent's hospitality that night, and as Hilarius entered the hall of the guest-house a brother had charged himself with the care of the Friar he heard the sound of the vielle, and a rich voice which sang in good round English against the fashion of the day. "Martin, Martin!" he cried. The vielle was instantly silent.
He struck his vielle lightly, and the two fell into a slower pace as the minstrel sang. Hilarius' eyes filled with tears, for he was still heart-sore, and Martin's voice rose and fell like the wind in the tossing tree-tops which had beckoned him over the Monastery wall. The song itself was sad of a lover torn from his mistress and borne away captive to alien service.
"We have a brother who is an archdeacon and a fool." "Corne de Dieu!" exclaimed Phoebus, "the worthy man!" "Let us go and drink," said Jehan. "Where shall we go?" said Phoebus; "'To Eve's Apple." "No, captain, to 'Ancient Science. An old woman sawing a basket handle*; 'tis a rebus, and I like that." * Une vielle qui scie une anse.
On the railway platform again, I found myself an object of attention to certain men in plain clothes, with keen searching eyes and, as I shall relate in the sequel, brought one of them down on me. Vexed that I was unable to pass the tedious time in the train with a tune on my vielle, and entertain my fellow travellers, I began to practise on it in my room at night.
Foreigners, however, were always welcome, and one of the "pets," a romantic looking young Frenchman, who was quite handsome and made a great sensation in fashionable society, avoided the Legation as representing a usurper, and therefore quite unworthy the attention of one like himself, of the "vielle roche."
"Hola, lad!" cried the Minstrel, springing to his feet; he caught Hilarius to him and embraced him heartily. "Why, lad, not back in thy monastery? Nay, but I made sure the Plague would send thee flying home, and instead I find thee strayed farther afield." Then seeing the injured faces round him for that the song was not ended, he drew Hilarius to the bench beside him and took up his vielle.
The old man and his wife came out last, and placing me betwixt them, sat down upon a sofa of turf by the door. The old man had some fifty years ago been no mean performer upon the vielle, and at the age he was then of, touch'd it well enough for the purpose.
When Martin hailed him he turned aside gladly, and his face lit up at the sight of the vielle. "Whence dost thou come, lad?" said Martin, eyeing him with interest. "Many days' journey from the Monastery of Prior Stephen," answered Hilarius. "But thou art no monk!" "Nay, a novice scarcely; but the Prior hath bidden me go forth to see the world. It is wondrous fair," he added sincerely.
Thus, immediately adjoining the park des Tournelles, between the Rue Saint-Antoine and the Vielle Rue du Temple, there stood Sainte-Catherine, with its immense cultivated lands, which were terminated only by the wall of Paris. Between the old and the new Rue du Temple, there was the Temple, a sinister group of towers, lofty, erect, and isolated in the middle of a vast, battlemented enclosure.
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