But though I offend him shame him I never will.' Dear Margaret, with this knave' saying, 'your poor old dad,' it had gone to my heart like a knife.''Tis well,' said my master gloomily; 'I have made a bad bargain.' Presently he halts, and eyes a tree by the wayside.'Go spell me what is writ on yon tree.' So I went, and there was nought but a long square drawn in outline.I told him so.'So much for thy monkish lore,' quoth he.A little farther, and he sent me to read a wall.There was nought but a circle scratched on the stone with a point of nail or knife, and in the circle two dots.I said so Then said he, 'Bon Bec, that square was a warning.Some good Truand left it, that came through this village faring west; that means "dangerous." The circle with the two dots was writ by another of our brotherhood; and it signifies as how the writer, soit Rollin Trapu, soit Triboulet, soit Catin Cul de Bois, or what not, was becked for asking here, and lay two months in Starabin.' Then he broke forth.'Talk: of your little snivelling books that go in pouch.Three hooks have I, France, England, and Germany; and they are writ all over in one tongue, that my brethren of all countries understand; and that is what Icall learning.So sith here they whip sores, and imprison infirmities, I to my tiring room.' And he popped behind the hedge, and came back worshipful.We passed through the village, and I sat me down on the stocks, and even the barber's apprentice whets his razor on a block, so did I flesh my psaltery on this village, fearing great cities.I tuned it, and coursed up and down the wires nimbly with my two wooden strikers; and then chanted loud and clear, as I had heard the minstrels of the country, 'Qui veut ouir qui veut Savoir,'
some trash, I mind not what.And soon the villagers, male and female, thronged about me; thereat I left singing, and recited them to the psaltery a short but right merry tale out of 'the lives of the saints,' which it is my handbook of pleasant figments and this ended, instantly struck up and whistled one of Cul de Jatte's devil's ditties, and played it on the psaltery to boot.
Thou knowest Heaven hath bestowed on me a rare whistle, both for compass and tune.And with me whistling bright and full this sprightly air, and making the wires slow when the tune did gallop, and tripping when the tune did amble, or I did stop and shake on one note like a lark i' the air, they were like to eat me; but looking round, lo! my master had given way to his itch, and there was his hat on the ground, and copper pouring in.I deemed it cruel to whistle the bread out of poverty's pouch; so broke off and away; yet could not get clear so swift, but both men and women did slobber me sore, and smelled all of garlic.'There, master,'
said I, 'I call that cleaving the divell in twain and keeping his white half.' Said he, 'Bon Bec, I have made a good bargain.' Then he bade me stay where I was while he went to the Holy Land.Istayed, and he leaped the churchyard dike, and the sexton was digging a grave, and my master chaffered with him, and came back with a knuckle bone.But why he clept a churchyard Holy Land, that I learned not then, but after dinner.I was colouring the armories of a little inn; and he sat by me most peaceable, a cutting, and filing, and polishing bones, sedately; so I speered was not honest work sweet? 'As rain water,' said he, mocking.'What was he a making?' 'A pair of bones to play on with thee; and with the refuse a St.Anthony's thumb and a St.Martin's little finger, for the devout.' The vagabone! And now, sweet Margaret, thou seest our manner of life faring Rhineward.I with the two arts I had least prized or counted on for bread was welcome everywhere; too poor now to fear robbers, yet able to keep both master and man on the road.For at night I often made a portraiture of the innkeeper or his dame, and so went richer from an inn; the which it is the lot of few.But my master despised this even way of life.'I love ups and downs,' said he.And certes he lacked them not.One day he would gather more than I in three; another, to hear his tale, it had rained kicks all day in lieu of 'saltees,' and that is pennies.Yet even then at heart he despised me for a poor mechanical soul, and scorned my arts, extolling his own, the art of feigning.
"Natheless, at odd times was he ill at his ease.Going through the town of Aix, we came upon a beggar walking, fast by one hand to a cart-tail, and the hangman a lashing his bare bloody back.He, stout knave, so whipt, did not a jot relent; but I did wince at every stroke; and my master hung his head.
"'Soon or late, Bon Bec,' quoth he.'Soon or late.' I, seeing his haggard face, knew what he meaned.And at a town whose name hath slipped me, but 'twas on a fair river, as we came to the foot of the bridge he halted, and shuddered.'Why what is the coil?' said I.'Oh, blind,' said he, 'they are justifying there.' So nought would serve him but take a boat, and cross the river by water.But 'twas out of the frying-pan, as the word goeth.For the boatman had scarce told us the matter, and that it was a man and a woman for stealing glazed windows out of housen, and that the man was hanged at daybreak, and the quean to be drowned, when lo! they did fling her off the bridge, and fell in the water not far from us.
And oh! Margaret, the deadly splash! It ringeth in mine ears even now.But worse was coming; for, though tied, she came up.and cried 'Help! help!' and I, forgetting all, and hearing a woman's voice cry 'Help!' was for leaping in to save her; and had surely done it, but the boatman and Cul de Jatte clung round me, and in a moment the bourreau's man, that waited in a beat, came and entangled his hooked pole in her long hair, and so thrust her down and ended her.Oh! if the saints answered so our cries for help!
And poor Cul de Jatte groaned; and I sat sobbing, and beat my breast, and cried, 'Of what hath God made men's hearts?'"The reader stopped, and the tears trickled down her cheeks.Gerard crying in Lorraine, made her cry at Rotterdam.The leagues were no more to her heart than the breadth of a room.
