Villon looked at her as men must have looked at Joan of Arc when she bade them rise up and strike for France. "You are hard to please," he said, but his heart was full of joy at the thought of trying to please her. If he could do this thing! The girl answered his words and not his thoughts. "My hero must have every virtue for his wreath, every courage for his coronet. Farewell." By this time she had reached the terrace and she made to enter the palace. Villon called to her longingly: "Stay! I have a thousand things to say to you." The girl smiled denial. "I have but one," she said, "and I have said it long since. Farewell." Villon made a dash for audacity. "I will follow you," he said, and he moved to do so, but the girl's lifted finger stayed him. "You may not," she said peremptorily. "I go to the queen." And so with a swift salutation, gracious as the dip of a dancing wave, she entered the palace and left him standing there, dazed and ardent, as a man might be who had just been vouchsafed the vision of an angel. He murmured to himself her words as he slowly descended the steps to the ground, "Oh, that a man would come to court," and on that text he wove the hopeful commentary of his thoughts. "Why should I not deserve her? Last night I was only a poor devil with a rusty sword and a single suit. To-day all's different. I am the king's friend, it would seem, a court potentate, a man of mark. What may I not accomplish? This finery smiles like sunlight and the world will warm its hands at me." He was exquisitely pleased with himself, exquisitely pleased with the world that held him and Katherine. He forgot, as lovers always will forget, that there was any one else in the world save himself and his beloved, and he was so wrapped in his sweet contemplations that he did not hear the tower door gently open, did not hear the soft, creeping footsteps of the king as he came out of his hiding place and shuffled across the soft grass toward his plaything. CHAPTER VII THE ANSWER TO BURGUNDY A touch on the shoulder roused Villon from his honeyed meditations, and he turned with a start to find the sable figure of the king at his side and the sinister visage smiling upon him. "Good afternoon, Lord Constable," Louis said amiably, and as Villon dropped respectfully on his knee, he questioned: "Does power taste well?" "Nobly, sire. On my knees let me thank your majesty." "Nonsense, man; I'm pleasing myself. You sang yourself into splendour. 'If François were the king of France,' eh?" Villon rose with voice and gesture of apologetic entreaty. "Your majesty will understand--" Louis brushed his apologies aside blandly. "Perfectly. My good friend, you captivated me. With what a flashing eye, with what a radiant forehead, with what a lofty carriage you thundered your verses at me. 'There,' I said to myself, 'is a real man, a man with a mission, a man who may serve France.'" "Sire, that has been my hunger's dream of plenty."