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There went about the Rue Saint Jacques a notable shaking of heads on the day that Catherine de Vaucelles was betrothed to Francois de Montcorbier. "Holy Virgin!" said the Rue Saint Jacques; "the girl is a fool. Why has she not taken Noel d'Arnaye, Noel the Handsome? I grant you Noel is an ass, but, then, look you, he is of the nobility. He has the Dauphin's favor.
It is in the name of that young Raymond I now appeal to you." "H'm!" said the Sieur d'Arnaye. "As I understand it, you appeal on the ground that you were coerced by the moonlight and led astray by the bird-nests in my poplar-trees; and you desire me to punish your accomplices rather than you." "Sir, " said Raoul. Sieur Raymond snarled.
To-day at cock-crow he set out for the coast to examine those Frenchmen who landed yesterday." At this he wheeled about. "Frenchmen!" "Only Norman fishermen, lord, whom the storm drove to seek shelter in England. But he feared they had come to rescue you." Fulke d'Arnaye shrugged his shoulders. "That was my thought, too," he admitted, with a laugh. "Always I dream of escape, mademoiselle.
Then, too, the appearance of a gray man now sat to the left of that which had been Tiburce d'Arnaye, and this newcomer was marked so that all might know who he was: and Florian's heart was troubled to note how handsome and how admirable was that desecrated face even now. "But I must go," said Florian, "lest they miss me at Storisende, and Adelaide be worried."
The Sieur d'Arnaye came, his head tied in a napkin. "Foh!" said she; "another swine fresh from the gutter? No, this is a bottle, a tun, a walking wine-barrel! Noel, I despise you. I will marry you if you like." He fell to mumbling her hand. An hour later Catherine told Jehan de Vaucelles she intended to marry Noel the Handsome when he should come back from Geneppe with the exiled Dauphin.
The stranger gesticulated, pleaded, swore, implored, summoned all inventions between the starry spheres and the mud of Cocytus to judge of the affair; but Fulke d'Arnaye was resolute. "Behold, mademoiselle," he said, at length, "how my poor Olivier excites himself over a little matter. Olivier is my brother, most beautiful lady, but he speaks no English, so that I cannot present him to you.
"Love one another, young people," said Sieur Raymond; "but do you, Matthiette, make ready to depart into Normandy as a true and faithful wife to Monsieur de Puysange." She stared into Raoul's laughing face; there was a kind of anguish in her swift comprehension. Quickly the two men who loved her glanced at each other, half in shame. But the Sieur d'Arnaye was not lightly dashed.
And it seemed to Florian unfair that all should prosper with him, and Tiburce lie there imprisoned in dirt which shut away the color and variousness of things and the drollness of things, wherein Tiburce d'Arnaye had taken such joy.
Even on his death-bed he found time to admonish his brother, John of Bedford, that four of these, Charles d'Orleans and Jehan de Bourbon and Arthur de Rougemont and Fulke d'Arnaye, should never be set at liberty. "Lest," as the King said, with a savor of prophecy, "more fire be kindled in one day than all your endeavors can quench in three."
The young man now stood silent, his eyes mutely questioning the Sieur d'Arnaye. "Oh, la, la, la!" chirped Sieur Raymond. "Captain, I think you are at liberty to retire." He sipped his wine meditatively, as the men filed out. "Monsieur de Frison," d'Arnaye resumed, when the arras had fallen, "believe me, I grieve to interrupt your very moving and most excellently phrased ballad in this fashion.
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