The next day, about nine in the morning, as Louis XI. was leaving his
chapel after hearing mass, he found Maitre Cornelius on his path.
“Good luck to you, crony,” he said, shoving up his cap in his hasty way.
“Sire, I would willingly pay a thousand gold crowns if I could have a
moment’s talk with you; I have found the thief who stole the rubies and
all the jewels of the Duke of--”
“Let us hear about that,” said Louis XI., going out into the courtyard
of Plessis, followed by his silversmith, Coyctier his physician, Olivier
de Daim, and the captain of his Scottish guard. “Tell me about it.
Another man to hang for you! Hola, Tristan!”
The grand provost, who was walking up and down the courtyard, came with
slow steps, like a dog who exhibits his fidelity. The group paused under
a tree. The king sat down on a bench and the courtiers made a circle
about him.
“Sire, a man who pretended to be a Fleming has got the better of me--”
began Cornelius.
“He must be crafty indeed, that fellow!” exclaimed Louis, wagging his
head.
“Oh, yes!” replied the silversmith, bitterly. “But methinks he’d have
snared you yourself. How could I distrust a beggar recommended to me
by Oosterlinck, one hundred thousand francs of whose money I hold in
my hands. I will wager the Jew’s letter and seal were forged! In short,
sire, I found myself this morning robbed of those jewels you admired so
much. They have been ravished from me, sire! To steal the jewels of the
Elector of Bavaria! those scoundrels respect nothing! they’ll steal your
kingdom if you don’t take care. As soon as I missed the jewels I went
up to the room of that apprentice, who is, assuredly, a past-master in
thieving. This time we don’t lack proof. He had forced the lock of
his door. But when he got back to his room, the moon was down and he
couldn’t find all the screws. Happily, I felt one under my feet when
I entered the room. He was sound asleep, the beggar, tired out. Just
fancy, gentlemen, he got down into my strong-room by the chimney.
To-morrow, or to-night, rather, I’ll roast him alive. He had a silk
ladder, and his clothes were covered with marks of his clambering over
the roof and down the chimney. He meant to stay with me, and ruin
me, night after night, the bold wretch! But where are the jewels? The
country-folks coming into town early saw him on the roof. He must have
had accomplices, who waited for him by that embankment you have been
making. Ah, sire, you are the accomplice of fellows who come in boats;
crack! they get off with everything, and leave no traces! But we hold
this fellow as a key, the bold scoundrel! ah! a fine morsel he’ll be
for the gallows. With a little bit of _questioning_ beforehand, we shall
know all. Why, the glory of your reign is concerned in it! there ought
not to be robbers in the land under so great a king.”
The king was not listening. He had fallen into one of those gloomy
meditations which became so frequent during the last years of his life.
A deep silence reigned.
“This is your business,” he said at length to Tristan; “take you hold of
it.”
He rose, walked a few steps away, and the courtiers left him alone.
Presently he saw Cornelius, mounted on his mule, riding away in company
with the grand provost.
“Where are those thousand gold crowns?” he called to him.
“Ah! sire, you are too great a king! there is no sum that can pay for
your justice.”
Louis XI. smiled. The courtiers envied the frank speech and privileges
of the old silversmith, who promptly disappeared down the avenue of
young mulberries which led from Tours to Plessis.
Exhausted with fatigue, the young seigneur had indeed fallen soundly
asleep. Returning from his gallant adventure, he no longer felt the same
ardor and courage to defend himself against distant or imaginary dangers
with which he had rushed into the perils of the night. He had even
postponed till the morrow the cleaning of his soiled garments; a great
blunder, in which all else conspired. It was true that, lacking the
moonlight, he had missed finding all the screws of that cursed lock; he
had no patience to look for them. With the “laisser-aller” of a tired
man, he trusted to his luck, which had so far served him well. He did,
however, make a sort of compact with himself to awake at daybreak, but
the events of the day and the agitations of the night did not allow him
to keep faith with himself. Happiness is forgetful. Cornelius no longer
seemed formidable to the young man when he threw himself on the
pallet where so many poor wretches had wakened to their doom; and this
light-hearted heedlessness proved his ruin. While the king’s silversmith
rode back from Plessis, accompanied by the grand provost and his
redoubtable archers. The false Goulenoire was being watched by the old
sister, seated on the corkscrew staircase oblivious of the cold, and
knitting socks for Cornelius.
The young man continued to dream of the secret delights of that charming
night, ignorant of the danger that was galloping towards him. He saw
himself on a cushion at the feet of the countess, his head on her knees
in the ardor of his love; he listened to the story of her persecutions
and the details of the count’s tyranny; he grew pitiful over the poor
lady, who was, in truth, the best-loved natural daughter of Louis XI. He
promised her to go on the morrow and reveal her wrongs to that terrible
father; everything, he assured her, should be settled as they wished,
the marriage broken off, the husband banished,--and all this within
reach of that husband’s sword, of which they might both be the victims
if the slightest noise awakened him. But in the young man’s dream the
gleam of the lamp, the flame of their eyes, the colors of the stuffs and
the tapestries were more vivid, more of love was in the air, more fire
about them, than there had been in the actual scene. The Marie of his
sleep resisted far less than the living Marie those adoring looks,
those tender entreaties, those adroit silences, those voluptuous
solicitations, those false generosities, which render the first moments
of a passion so completely ardent, and shed into the soul a fresh
delirium at each new step in love.
Following the amorous jurisprudence of the period, Marie de
Saint-Vallier granted to her lover all the superficial rights of the
tender passion. She willingly allowed him to kiss her foot, her robe,
her hands, her throat; she avowed her love, she accepted the devotion
and life of her lover; she permitted him to die for her; she yielded to
an intoxication which the sternness of her semi-chastity increased; but
farther than that she would not go; and she made her deliverance the
price of the highest rewards of his love. In those days, in order to
dissolve a marriage it was necessary to go to Rome; to obtain the help
of certain cardinals, and to appear before the sovereign pontiff
in person armed with the approval of the king. Marie was firm in
maintaining her liberty to love, that she might sacrifice it to
him later. Nearly every woman in those days had sufficient power to
establish her empire over the heart of a man in a way to make that
passion the history of his whole life, the spring and principle of his
highest resolutions. Women were a power in France; they were so many
sovereigns; they had forms of noble pride; their lovers belonged to them
far more than they gave themselves to their lovers; often their love
cost blood, and to be their lover it was necessary to incur great
dangers. But the Marie of his dream made small defence against the young
seigneur’s ardent entreaties. Which of the two was the reality? Did the
false apprentice in his dream see the true woman? Had he seen in the
hotel de Poitiers a lady masked in virtue? The question is difficult to
decide; and the honor of women demands that it be left, as it were, in
litigation.
At the moment when the Marie of the dream may have been about to forget
her high dignity as mistress, the lover felt himself seized by an iron
hand, and the sour voice of the grand provost said to him:--
“Come, midnight Christian, who seeks God on the roofs, wake up!”
The young man saw the black face of Tristan l’Hermite above him, and
recognized his sardonic smile; then, on the steps of the corkscrew
staircase, he saw Cornelius, his sister, and behind them the provost
guard. At that sight, and observing the diabolical faces expressing
either hatred or curiosity of persons whose business it was to hang
others, the so-called Philippe Goulenoire sat up on his pallet and
rubbed his eyes.
“Mort-Dieu!” he cried, seizing his dagger, which was under the pillow.
“Now is the time to play our knives.”
“Ho, ho!” cried Tristan, “that’s the speech of a noble. Methinks I see
Georges d’Estouteville, the nephew of the grand master of the archers.”
Hearing his real name uttered by Tristan, young d’Estouteville thought
less of himself than of the dangers his recognition would bring upon his
unfortunate mistress. To avert suspicion he cried out:--
“Ventre-Mahom! help, help to me, comrades!”
After that outcry, made by a man who was really in despair, the young
courtier gave a bound, dagger in hand, and reached the landing. But the
myrmidons of the grand provost were accustomed to such proceedings. When
Georges d’Estouteville reached the stairs they seized him dexterously,
not surprised by the vigorous thrust he made at them with his dagger,
the blade of which fortunately slipped on the corselet of a guard; then,
having disarmed him, they bound his hands, and threw him on the pallet
before their leader, who stood motionless and thoughtful.
Tristan looked silently at the prisoner’s hands, then he said to
Cornelius, pointing to them:--
“Those are not the hands of a beggar, nor of an apprentice. He is a
noble.”
“Say a thief!” cried the torconnier. “My good Tristan, noble or serf, he
has ruined me, the villain! I want to see his feet warmed in your pretty
boots. He is, I don’t doubt it, the leader of that gang of devils,
visible and invisible, who know all my secrets, open my locks, rob me,
murder me! They have grown rich out of me, Tristan. Ha! this time we
shall get back the treasure, for the fellow has the face of the king of
Egypt. I shall recover my dear rubies, and all the sums I have lost; and
our worthy king shall have his share in the harvest.”
“Oh, our hiding-places are much more secure than yours!” said Georges,
smiling.
“Ha! the damned thief, he confesses!” cried the miser.
The grand provost was engaged in attentively examining Georges
d’Estouteville’s clothes and the lock of the door.
“How did you get out those screws?”
Georges kept silence.
“Oh, very good, be silent if you choose. You will soon confess on the
holy rack,” said Tristan.
“That’s what I call business!” cried Cornelius.
“Take him off,” said the grand provost to the guards.
Georges d’Estouteville asked permission to dress himself. On a sign from
their chief, the men put on his clothing with the clever rapidity of a
nurse who profits by the momentary tranquillity of her nursling.
An immense crowd cumbered the rue du Murier. The growls of the populace
kept increasing, and seemed the precursors of a riot. From early morning
the news of the robbery had spread through the town. On all sides
the “apprentice,” said to be young and handsome, had awakened public
sympathy, and revived the hatred felt against Cornelius; so that there
was not a young man in the town, nor a young woman with a fresh face and
pretty feet to exhibit, who was not determined to see the victim. When
Georges issued from the house, led by one of the provost’s guard, who,
after he had mounted his horse, kept the strong leathern thong that
bound the prisoner tightly twisted round his arm, a horrible uproar
arose. Whether the populace merely wished to see this new victim, or
whether it intended to rescue him, certain it is that those behind
pressed those in front upon the little squad of cavalry posted around
the Malemaison. At this moment, Cornelius, aided by his sister, closed
the door, and slammed the iron shutters with the violence of panic
terror. Tristan, who was not accustomed to respect the populace of those
days (inasmuch as they were not yet the sovereign people), cared little
for a probable riot.
“Push on! push on!” he said to his men.
At the voice of their leader the archers spurred their horses towards
the end of the street. The crowd, seeing one or two of their number
knocked down by the horses and trampled on, and some others pressed
against the sides of the horses and nearly suffocated, took the wiser
course of retreating to their homes.
“Make room for the king’s justice!” cried Tristan. “What are you doing
here? Do you want to be hanged too? Go home, my friends, go home; your
dinner is getting burnt. Hey! my good woman, go and darn your husband’s
stockings; get back to your needles.”
Though such speeches showed that the grand provost was in good humor,
they made the most obstreperous fly as if he were flinging the plague
upon them.
At the moment when the first movement of the crowd took place, Georges
d’Estouteville was stupefied at seeing, at one of the windows of the
hotel de Poitiers, his dear Marie de Saint-Vallier, laughing with the
count. She was mocking at _him_, poor devoted lover, who was going to
his death for her. But perhaps she was only amused at seeing the caps
of the populace carried off on the spears of the archers. We must be
twenty-three years old, rich in illusions, able to believe in a woman’s
love, loving ourselves with all the forces of our being, risking
our life with delight on the faith of a kiss, and then betrayed, to
understand the fury of hatred and despair which took possession of
Georges d’Estouteville’s heart at the sight of his laughing mistress,
from whom he received a cold and indifferent glance. No doubt she had
been there some time; she was leaning from the window with her arms on
a cushion; she was at her ease, and her old man seemed content. He, too,
was laughing, the cursed hunchback! A few tears escaped the eyes of the
young man; but when Marie de Saint-Vallier saw them she turned hastily
away. Those tears were suddenly dried, however, when Georges beheld the
red and white plumes of the page who was devoted to his interests. The
count took no notice of this servitor, who advanced to his mistress on
tiptoe. After the page had said a few words in her ear, Marie returned
to the window. Escaping for a moment the perpetual watchfulness of her
tyrant, she cast one glance upon Georges that was brilliant with the
fires of love and hope, seeming to say:--
“I am watching over you.”
Had she cried the words aloud, she could not have expressed their
meaning more plainly than in that glance, full of a thousand thoughts,
in which terror, hope, pleasure, the dangers of their mutual situation
all took part. He had passed, in that one moment, from heaven to
martyrdom and from martyrdom back to heaven! So then, the brave young
seigneur, light-hearted and content, walked gaily to his doom; thinking
that the horrors of the “question” were not sufficient payment for the
delights of his love.
As Tristan was about leaving the rue du Murier, his people stopped him,
seeing an officer of the Scottish guard riding towards them at full
speed.
“What is it?” asked the provost.
“Nothing that concerns you,” replied the officer, disdainfully. “The
king has sent me to fetch the Comte and Comtesse de Saint-Vallier, whom
he invites to dinner.”
The grand provost had scarcely reached the embankment leading to
Plessis, when the count and his wife, both mounted, she on her white
mule, he on his horse, and followed by two pages, joined the archers,
in order to enter Plessis-lez-Tours in company. All were moving slowly.
Georges was on foot, between two guards on horseback, one of whom held
him still by the leathern thong. Tristan, the count, and his wife were
naturally in advance; the criminal followed them. Mingling with the
archers, the young page questioned them, speaking sometimes to the
prisoner, so that he adroitly managed to say to him in a low voice:--
“I jumped the garden wall and took a letter to Plessis from madame to
the king. She came near dying when she heard of the accusation against
you. Take courage. She is going now to speak to the king about you.”
Love had already given strength and wiliness to the countess. Her
laughter was part of the heroism which women display in the great crises
of life.
In spite of the singular fancy which possessed the author of “Quentin
Durward” to place the royal castle of Plessis-lez-Tours upon a height,
we must content ourselves by leaving it where it really was, namely on
low land, protected on either side by the Cher and the Loire; also by
the canal Sainte-Anne, so named by Louis XI. in honor of his beloved
daughter, Madame de Beaujeu. By uniting the two rivers between the
city of Tours and Plessis this canal not only served as a formidable
protection to the castle, but it offered a most precious road to
commerce. On the side towards Brehemont, a vast and fertile plain,
the park was defended by a moat, the remains of which still show its
enormous breadth and depth. At a period when the power of artillery was
still in embryo, the position of Plessis, long since chosen by Louis XI.
for his favorite retreat, might be considered impregnable. The castle,
built of brick and stone, had nothing remarkable about it; but it was
surrounded by noble trees, and from its windows could be seen, through
vistas cut in the park (plexitium), the finest points of view in the
world. No rival mansion rose near this solitary castle, standing in the
very centre of the little plain reserved for the king and guarded by
four streams of water.
If we may believe tradition, Louis XI. occupied the west wing, and
from his chamber he could see, at a glance the course of the Loire,
the opposite bank of the river, the pretty valley which the Croisille
waters, and part of the slopes of Saint-Cyr. Also, from the windows that
opened on the courtyard, he saw the entrance to his fortress and the
embankment by which he had connected his favorite residence with the
city of Tours. If Louis XI. had bestowed upon the building of his castle
the luxury of architecture which Francois I. displayed afterwards at
Chambord, the dwelling of the kings of France would ever have remained
in Touraine. It is enough to see this splendid position and its magical
effects to be convinced of its superiority over the sites of all other
royal residences.
Louis XI., now in the fifty-seventh year of his age, had scarcely more
than three years longer to live; already he felt the coming on of death
in the attacks of his mortal malady. Delivered from his enemies; on the
point of increasing the territory of France by the possessions of the
Dukes of Burgundy through the marriage of the Dauphin with Marguerite,
heiress of Burgundy (brought about by means of Desquerdes, commander of
his troops in Flanders); having established his authority everywhere,
and now meditating ameliorations in his kingdom of all kinds, he saw
time slipping past him rapidly with no further troubles than those
of old age. Deceived by every one, even by the minions about him,
experience had intensified his natural distrust. The desire to live
became in him the egotism of a king who has incarnated himself in his
people; he wished to prolong his life in order to carry out his vast
designs.
All that the common-sense of publicists and the genius of revolutions
has since introduced of change in the character of monarchy, Louis XI.
had thought of and devised. Unity of taxation, equality of subjects
before the law (the prince being then the law) were the objects of his
bold endeavors. On All-Saints’ eve he had gathered together the learned
goldsmiths of his kingdom for the purpose of establishing in France a
unity of weights and measures, as he had already established the unity
of power. Thus, his vast spirit hovered like an eagle over his empire,
joining in a singular manner the prudence of a king to the natural
idiosyncracies of a man of lofty aims. At no period in our history
has the great figure of Monarchy been finer or more poetic. Amazing
assemblages of contrasts! a great power in a feeble body; a spirit
unbelieving as to all things here below, devoutly believing in the
practices of religion; a man struggling with two powers greater than his
own--the present and the future; the future in which he feared eternal
punishment, a fear which led him to make so many sacrifices to the
Church; the present, namely his life itself, for the saving of which he
blindly obeyed Coyctier. This king, who crushed down all about him,
was himself crushed down by remorse, and by disease in the midst of the
great poem of defiant monarchy in which all power was concentrated. It
was once more the gigantic and ever magnificent combat of Man in the
highest manifestation of his forces tilting against Nature.
While awaiting his dinner, a repast which was taken in those days
between eleven o’clock and mid-day, Louis XI., returning from a short
promenade, sat down in a huge tapestried chair near the fireplace in his
chamber. Olivier de Daim, and his doctor, Coyctier, looked at each other
without a word, standing in the recess of a window and watching their
master, who presently seemed asleep. The only sound that was heard were
the steps of the two chamberlains on service, the Sire de Montresor,
and Jean Dufou, Sire de Montbazon, who were walking up and down the
adjoining hall. These two Tourainean seigneurs looked at the captain
of the Scottish guard, who was sleeping in his chair, according to
his usual custom. The king himself appeared to be dozing. His head had
drooped upon his breast; his cap, pulled forward on his forehead, hid
his eyes. Thus seated in his high chair, surmounted by the royal crown,
he seemed crouched together like a man who had fallen asleep in the
midst of some deep meditation.
At this moment Tristan and his cortege crossed the canal by the bridge
of Sainte-Anne, about two hundred feet from the entrance to Plessis.
“Who is that?” said the king.
The two courtiers questioned each other with a look of surprise.
“He is dreaming,” said Coyctier, in a low voice.
“Pasques-Dieu!” cried Louis XI., “do you think me mad? People are
crossing the bridge. It is true I am near the chimney, and I may hear
sounds more easily than you. That effect of nature might be utilized,”
he added thoughtfully.
“What a man!” said de Daim.
Louis XI. rose and went toward one of the windows that looked on the
town. He saw the grand provost, and exclaimed:--
“Ha, ha! here’s my crony and his thief. And here comes my little
Marie de Saint-Vallier; I’d forgotten all about it. Olivier,” he said,
addressing the barber, “go and tell Monsieur de Montbazon to serve some
good Bourgeuil wine at dinner, and see that the cook doesn’t forget
the lampreys; Madame le comtesse likes both those things. Can I eat
lampreys?” he added, after a pause, looking anxiously at Coyctier.
For all answer the physician began to examine his master’s face. The two
men were a picture in themselves.
History and romance-writers have consecrated the brown camlet coat, and
the breeches of the same stuff, worn by Louis XI. His cap, decorated
with leaden medallions, and his collar of the order of Saint-Michel, are
not less celebrated; but no writer, no painter has represented the face
of that terrible monarch in his last years,--a sickly, hollow, yellow
and brown face, all the features of which expressed a sour craftiness,
a cold sarcasm. In that mask was the forehead of a great man, a brow
furrowed with wrinkles, and weighty with high thoughts; but in his
cheeks and on his lips there was something indescribably vulgar and
common. Looking at certain details of that countenance you would have
thought him a debauched husbandman, or a miserly peddler; and yet, above
these vague resemblances and the decrepitude of a dying old man, the
king, the man of power, rose supreme. His eyes, of a light yellow,
seemed at first sight extinct; but a spark of courage and of anger
lurked there, and at the slightest touch it could burst into flames and
cast fire about him. The doctor was a stout burgher, with a florid face,
dressed in black, peremptory, greedy of gain, and self-important. These
two personages were framed, as it were, in that panelled chamber, hung
with high-warped tapestries of Flanders, the ceiling of which, made of
carved beams, was blackened by smoke. The furniture, the bed, all inlaid
with arabesques in pewter, would seem to-day more precious than they
were at that period when the arts were beginning to produce their
choicest masterpieces.
“Lampreys are not good for you,” replied the physician.
That title, recently substituted for the former term of “myrrh-master,”
is still applied to the faculty in England. The name was at this period
given to doctors everywhere.
“Then what may I eat?” asked the king, humbly.
“Salt mackerel. Otherwise, you have so much bile in motion that you may
die on All-Souls’ Day.”
“To-day!” cried the king in terror.
“Compose yourself, sire,” replied Coyctier. “I am here. Try not to fret
your mind; find some way to amuse yourself.”
“Ah!” said the king, “my daughter Marie used to succeed in that
difficult business.”
As he spoke, Imbert de Bastarnay, sire of Montresor and Bridore, rapped
softly on the royal door. On receiving the king’s permission he entered
and announced the Comte and Comtesse de Saint-Vallier. Louis XI. made
a sign. Marie appeared, followed by her old husband, who allowed her to
pass in first.
“Good-day, my children,” said the king.
“Sire,” replied his daughter in a low voice, as she embraced him, “I
want to speak to you in secret.”
Louis XI. appeared not to have heard her. He turned to the door and
called out in a hollow voice, “Hola, Dufou!”
Dufou, seigneur of Montbazon and grand cup-bearer of France, entered in
haste.
“Go to the maitre d’hotel, and tell him I must have salt mackerel for
dinner. And go to Madame de Beaujeu, and let her know that I wish to
dine alone to-day. Do you know, madame,” continued the king, pretending
to be slightly angry, “that you neglect me? It is almost three years
since I have seen you. Come, come here, my pretty,” he added, sitting
down and holding out his arms to her. “How thin you have grown! Why have
you let her grow so thin?” said the king, roughly, addressing the Comte
de Poitiers.
The jealous husband cast so frightened a look at his wife that she
almost pitied him.
“Happiness, sire!” he stammered.
“Ah! you love each other too much,--is that it?” said the king,
holding his daughter between his knees. “I did right to call you
Mary-full-of-grace. Coyctier, leave us! Now, then, what do you want
of me?” he said to his daughter the moment the doctor had gone. “After
sending me your--”
In this danger, Marie boldly put her hand on the king’s lips and said in
his ear,--
“I always thought you cautious and penetrating.”
“Saint-Vallier,” said the king, laughing, “I think that Bridore has
something to say to you.”
The count left the room; but he made a gesture with his shoulders well
known to his wife, who could guess the thoughts of the jealous man, and
knew she must forestall his cruel designs.
“Tell me, my child, how do you think I am,--hey? Do I seem changed to
you?”
“Sire, do you want me to tell you the real truth, or would you rather I
deceived you?”
“No,” he said, in a low voice, “I want to know truly what to expect.”
“In that case, I think you look very ill to-day; but you will not let my
truthfulness injure the success of my cause, will you?”
“What is your cause?” asked the king, frowning and passing a hand across
his forehead.
“Ah, sire,” she replied, “the young man you have had arrested for
robbing your silversmith Cornelius, and who is now in the hands of the
grand provost, is innocent of the robbery.”
“How do you know that?” asked the king. Marie lowered her head and
blushed.
“I need not ask if there is love in this business,” said the king,
raising his daughter’s head gently and stroking her chin. “If you don’t
confess every morning, my daughter, you will go to hell.”
“Cannot you oblige me without forcing me to tell my secret thoughts?”
“Where would be the pleasure?” cried the king, seeing only an amusement
in this affair.
“Ah! do you want your pleasure to cost me grief?”
“Oh! you sly little girl, haven’t you any confidence in me?”
“Then, sire, set the young nobleman at liberty.”
“So! he is a nobleman, is he?” cried the king. “Then he is not an
apprentice?”
“He is certainly innocent,” she said.
“I don’t see it so,” said the king, coldly. “I am the law and justice of
my kingdom, and I must punish evil-doers.”
“Come, don’t put on that solemn face of yours! Give me the life of that
young man.”
“Is it yours already?”
“Sire,” she said, “I am pure and virtuous. You are jesting at--”
“Then,” said Louis XI., interrupting her, “as I am not to know the
truth, I think Tristan had better clear it up.”
Marie turned pale, but she made a violent effort and cried out:--
“Sire, I assure you, you will regret all this. The so-called thief stole
nothing. If you will grant me his pardon, I will tell you everything,
even though you may punish me.”
“Ho, ho! this is getting serious,” cried the king, shoving up his cap.
“Speak out, my daughter.”
“Well,” she said, in a low voice, putting her lips to her father’s ear,
“he was in my room all night.”
“He could be there, and yet rob Cornelius. Two robberies!”
“I have your blood in my veins, and I was not born to love a scoundrel.
That young seigneur is the nephew of the captain-general of your
archers.”
“Well, well!” cried the king; “you are hard to confess.”
With the words the king pushed his daughter from his knee, and hurried
to the door of the room, but softly on tiptoe, making no noise. For
the last moment or two, the light from a window in the adjoining hall,
shining through a space below the door, had shown him the shadow of a
listener’s foot projected on the floor of his chamber. He opened the
door abruptly, and surprised the Comte de Saint-Vallier eavesdropping.
“Pasques-Dieu!” he cried; “here’s an audacity that deserves the axe.”
“Sire,” replied Saint-Vallier, haughtily, “I would prefer an axe at my
throat to the ornament of marriage on my head.”
“You may have both,” said Louis XI. “None of you are safe from such
infirmities, messieurs. Go into the farther hall. Conyngham,” continued
the king, addressing the captain of the guard, “you are asleep! Where
is Monsieur de Bridore? Why do you let me be approached in this way?
Pasques-Dieu! the lowest burgher in Tours is better served than I am.”
After scolding thus, Louis re-entered his room; but he took care to
draw the tapestried curtain, which made a second door, intended more to
stifle the words of the king than the whistling of the harsh north wind.
“So, my daughter,” he said, liking to play with her as a cat plays with
a mouse, “Georges d’Estouteville was your lover last night?”
“Oh, no, sire!”
“No! Ah! by Saint-Carpion, he deserves to die. Did the scamp not think
my daughter beautiful?”
“Oh! that is not it,” she said. “He kissed my feet and hands with an
ardor that might have touched the most virtuous of women. He loves me
truly in all honor.”
“Do you take me for Saint-Louis, and suppose I should believe such
nonsense? A young fellow, made like him, to have risked his life just to
kiss your little slippers or your sleeves! Tell that to others.”
“But, sire, it is true. And he came for another purpose.”
Having said these words, Marie felt that she had risked the life of her
husband, for Louis instantly demanded:
“What purpose?”
The adventure amused him immensely. But he did not expect the strange
confidences his daughter now made to him after stipulating for the
pardon of her husband.
“Ho, ho, Monsieur de Saint-Vallier! So you dare to shed the royal
blood!” cried the king, his eyes lighting with anger.
At this moment the bell of Plessis sounded the hour of the king’s
dinner. Leaning on the arm of his daughter, Louis XI. appeared with
contracted brows on the threshold of his chamber, and found all
his servitors in waiting. He cast an ambiguous look on the Comte de
Saint-Vallier, thinking of the sentence he meant to pronounce upon him.
The deep silence which reigned was presently broken by the steps of
Tristan l’Hermite as he mounted the grand staircase. The grand provost
entered the hall, and, advancing toward the king, said:--
“Sire, the affair is settled.”
“What! is it all over?” said the king.
“Our man is in the hands of the monks. He confessed the theft after a
touch of the ‘question.’”
The countess gave a sign, and turned pale; she could not speak, but
looked at the king. That look was observed by Saint-Vallier, who
muttered in a low tone: “I am betrayed; that thief is an acquaintance of
my wife.”
“Silence!” cried the king. “Some one is here who will wear out my
patience. Go at once and put a stop to the execution,” he continued,
addressing the grand provost. “You will answer with your own body for
that of the criminal, my friend. This affair must be better sifted,
and I reserve to myself the doing of it. Set the prisoner at liberty
provisionally; I can always recover him; these robbers have retreats
they frequent, lairs where they lurk. Let Cornelius know that I shall
be at his house to-night to begin the inquiry myself. Monsieur de
Saint-Vallier,” said the king, looking fixedly at the count, “I know
about you. All your blood could not pay for one drop of mine; do
you hear me? By our Lady of Clery! you have committed crimes of
lese-majesty. Did I give you such a pretty wife to make her pale and
weakly? Go back to your own house, and make your preparations for a long
journey.”
The king stopped at these words from a habit of cruelty; then he
added:--
“You will leave to-night to attend to my affairs with the government
of Venice. You need be under no anxiety about your wife; I shall take
charge of her at Plessis; she will certainly be safe here. Henceforth I
shall watch over her with greater care than I have done since I married
her to you.”
Hearing these words, Marie silently pressed her father’s arm as if to
thank him for his mercy and goodness. As for Louis XI., he was laughing
to himself in his sleeve.