God know that naught has passed between us save a few kisses and a trinket or so. It is no knifing matter. Yet, for the sake of old time, come home, Ysabeau; your brother is my friend, and the hour is somewhat late for honest women to be abroad."
"Enné?" shrilled Ysabeau; "and yet, if I cannot strike a spark of courage from this lump here, there come those who may help me, François de Montcorbier. 'Ware Sermaise, Master François !"
François wheeled. Down the Rue St.-Jacques came Philippe Sermaise, like a questing hound, with drunken Jehan le Merdi at his heels. "Holy Virgin!" thought François, "this is likely to be a nasty affair. I would give a deal for a glimpse of the patrol lanterns just now."
He edged his way toward the cloister, to get a wall at his back. But Gilles Raguyer followed him, knife in hand.
"O hideous Tarquin! O Absolom!" growled Gilles; "have you no respect for churchmen?"
Then, with an oath, Sermaise ran up. "Heart of God!" he panted; "so I have found you at last! There is a certain crow needs picking between us two, Montcorbier."
Thus hemmed in by his enemies, François temporized. "Why do you accost me thus angrily, Master Philippe?" he babbled. "What harm have I done you? What is your will of me?" But his fingers tore feverishly at the strap by which his lute was swung over his shoulder, and presently it fell at his feet, leaving him unhampered and his sword-arm free.
This was fuel to the priest's wrath. "Sacred bones of Benoît!" he snarled, "I could make a near guess what window you have been caterwauling under." Then from beneath his gown he suddenly hauled out a rapier and struck at the boy while François was yet tugging at his sword.
Full in the mouth he struck him, splitting the lower lip through. François felt the piercing cold of the steel, the tingling of it against his teeth, then the warm, grateful spurt of blood; through a red mist he saw Gilles and Ysabeau run screaming down the Rue St.-Jacques.
He drew and made at Sermaise, forgetful of le Merdi. It was shrewd work. Presently they were fighting in the moonlight, hammer and tongs, as the saying is, and presently Sermaise was cursing like a madman, for François had wounded him in the groin. Window after window rattled open as the Rue St.-Jacques ran nightcapped to peer at the brawl.
Then, as François drew back his sword to slash at the other's shaven head—Frenchmen had not yet learned to thrust with the point in the Italian manner—Jehan le Merdi leaped from behind, swift as a snake, and wrested away his sword. Sermaise closed with a glad cry.
"Heart of God!" cried Sermaise. "Pray, bridegroom, pray!"
But François jumped backward, tumbling over le Merdi, and then with apish celerity caught up a great stone and flung it with all his strength full in the priest's face.
The rest was hideous. For a single heart-beat Sermaise stood swaying on his feet, his outspread arms making a tottering cross, his face a black, formless horror, featureless, void. François, staring at him, began to choke. Then the man's wrists fell, and in the silence his rapier tinkled on the flagstones with the sound of breaking glass, and Philippe Sermaise slid down, crumpling like a broken toy. Afterward you might have heard a long, awed sibilance go about the windows overhead as the Rue St.-Jacques, watching, caught its breath again.
His heart hammering at his ribs, François de Montcorbier turned and ran. He cried like a beaten child as he went through the moon-washed Rue St.-Jacques, making strange whistling noises. His split lip was a clammy dead thing that flapped against his chin as he ran.
"François!" a man cried, meeting him; "ah, name of God, François!"
It was René de Montigny, lurching from the Crowned Ox, half tipsy. He caught the boy by the shoulder and hurried him, still sobbing, to Fouquet the barber-surgeon's, where they sewed up his wound. But in accordance with the police regulations, they first demanded an account of how he had received it. René lied up-hill and down-dale, while in a
