France -- History -- Louis XI, 1461-1483 -- Fiction; Villon, François, 1431-1463 -- Fiction
As she spoke, the cup of her heart seemed to run over with red
tears, and the bitter waters trembled in her eyes. Her thoughts
wandered over the long white night and her sleepless sorrow, and her
vigil by the window, looking out into the rose garden, and her tired
eyes straining in vain through the dark for any sight, and her tired
ears straining in vain for any sound of the battle in which the lord
of her heart was risking his life. For she knew it now; she had
learned it through those age-long hours of agony, that he whom she
called her enemy was the lord of her heart, that in spite of all her
rage at the cheat that had been put upon her, she loved, not the
great noble who had done so much to save France--no, nor the ragged
poet who had lent her his sword-arm and his sword, but just the man,
by whatever name he might be called and in whatever way of life his
wheel of fortune might spin, whose hand had proved to be of the
right size to hold her heart in its hollow. The Katherine of
yesterday seemed to be dead and buried, to have died a fiery death
of fierce thoughts, fierce agonies, fierce exultations, and from
that travail a new Katherine had come into being with cleansed eyes
to see the world truly and with a cleansed soul to know a great
soul's truth.
Noel watched her silence but it meant nothing to him, and he tripped
into her high thoughts cheerfully.
"I am a brave gentleman," he said, patting himself approvingly upon
the breast. "I slew Thibaut d'Aussigny last night. The king has
taken me back into favour. If I played the fool's part yesterday, I
can play the wise man's part to-morrow. I was a bubble and a gull
and a dunce, if you like, but I meant no harm to the king, and the
king smiles on me. Cannot you do the like?"
Katherine came out of her dream and stood upon the earth again, and
disdained him.
"No, for you envy a great spirit and your envy makes you a base
thing."
Noel protested pettishly:
"He is no man-angel. He is made of Adam's clay like the rest of us."
Katherine's thoughts had wandered away from her escort; her mind's
eyes were busy with waving banners, the shock of meeting lances, the
glitter of steel coats and the beating of steel upon steel. Through
all the melley, her fancy spied one shining figure in bright armour
like, so it seemed to her, Archangel Michael or Archangel Gabriel,
riding in the pride of the fight with a smile on his lips, sorrow in
his heart, and a token of white ribbon between his breast-plate and
his breast.
She answered, not Noel's words, but her thoughts:
"My pride has the right to hate him, but I think he is still my
soul's man."
Noel was about to speak again, when he suddenly fell back and doffed
his bonnet. Perched on the steps of the church stood the stooped
sable figure of the king, just coming from his matinal devotions. In
the shadow behind him stood his shadows--Tristan and Olivier.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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