Maitre Cornelius by Honoré de Balzac (i read book txt) 📖

The uneasy gleam of those eyes was turned on him so fixedly that, after receiving it for fully a minute, during which he examined the singular sight, he felt like a bird at which a setter points; a feverish tumult rose in his soul, but he quickly repressed it. The two faces, strained and suspicious, were doubtless those of Cornelius and his sister.

The young man feigned to be looking about him to see where he was, and whether this were the house named on a card which he drew from his pocket and pretended to read in the moonlight; then he walked straight to the door and struck three blows upon it, which echoed within the house as if it were the entrance to a cave. A faint light crept beneath the threshold, and an eye appeared at a small and very strong iron grating.

"Who is there?"

"A friend, sent by Oosterlinck, of Brussels."

"What do you want?"

"To enter."

"Your name?"

"Philippe Goulenoire."

"Have you brought credentials?"

"Here they are."

"Pass them through the box."

"Where is it?"

"To your left."

Philippe Goulenoire put the letter through the slit of an iron box above which was a loophole.

"The devil!" thought he, "plainly the king comes here, as they say he does; he couldn't take more precautions at Plessis."

He waited for more than a quarter of an hour in the street. After that lapse of time, he heard Cornelius saying to his sister, "Close the traps of the door."

A clinking of chains resounded from within. Philippe heard the bolts run, the locks creak, and presently a small low door, iron-bound, opened to the slightest distance through which a man could pass. At the risk of tearing off his clothing, Philippe squeezed himself rather than walked into La Malemaison. A toothless old woman with a hatchet face, the eyebrows projecting like the handles of a cauldron, the nose and chin so near together that a nut could scarcely pass between them,--a pallid, haggard creature, her hollow temples composed apparently of only bones and nerves,--guided the "soi-disant" foreigner silently into a lower room, while Cornelius followed prudently behind him.

"Sit there," she said to Philippe, showing him a three-legged stool placed at the corner of a carved stone fireplace, where there was no fire.

On the other side of the chimney-piece was a walnut table with twisted legs, on which was an egg in a plate and ten or a dozen little bread-sops, hard and dry and cut with studied parsimony. Two stools placed beside the table, on one of which the old woman sat down, showed that the miserly pair were eating their suppers. Cornelius went to the door and pushed two iron shutters into their place, closing, no doubt, the loopholes through which they had been gazing into the street; then he returned to his seat. Philippe Goulenoire (so called) next beheld the brother and sister dipping their sops into the egg in turn, and with the utmost gravity and the same precision with which soldiers dip their spoons in regular rotation into the mess-pot. This performance was done in silence. But as he ate, Cornelius examined the false apprentice with as much care and scrutiny as if he were weighing an old coin.

Philippe, feeling that an icy mantle had descended on his shoulders, was tempted to look about him; but, with the circumspection dictated by all amorous enterprises, he was careful not to glance, even furtively, at the walls; for he fully understood that if Cornelius detected him, he would not allow so inquisitive a person to remain in his house. He contented himself, therefore, by looking first at the egg and then at the old woman, occasionally contemplating his future master.

Louis XI.'s silversmith resembled that monarch. He had even acquired the same gestures, as often happens where persons dwell together in a sort of intimacy. The thick eyebrows of the Fleming almost covered his eyes; but by raising them a little he could flash out a lucid, penetrating, powerful glance, the glance of men habituated to silence, and to whom the phenomenon of the concentration of inward forces has become familiar. His thin lips, vertically wrinkled, gave him an air of indescribable craftiness. The lower part of his face bore a vague resemblance to the muzzle of a fox, but his lofty, projecting forehead, with many lines, showed great and splendid qualities and a nobility of soul, the springs of which had been lowered by experience until the cruel teachings of life had driven it back into the farthest recesses of this most singular human being. He was certainly not an ordinary miser; and his passion covered, no doubt, extreme enjoyments and secret conceptions.

"What is the present rate of Venetian sequins?" he said abruptly to his future apprentice.

"Three-quarters at Brussels; one in Ghent."

"What is the freight on the Scheldt?"

"Three sous parisis."

"Any news at Ghent?"

"The brother of Lieven d'Herde is ruined."

"Ah!"

After giving vent to that exclamation, the old man covered his knee with the skirt of his dalmatian, a species of robe made of black velvet, open in front, with large sleeves and no collar, the sumptuous material being defaced and shiny. These remains of a magnificent costume, formerly worn by him as president of the tribunal of the Parchons, functions which had won him the enmity of the Duke of Burgundy, was now a mere rag.

Philippe was not cold; he perspired in his harness, dreading further questions. Until then the brief information obtained that morning from a Jew whose life he had formerly saved, had sufficed him, thanks to his good memory and the perfect knowledge the Jew possessed of the manners and habits of Maitre Cornelius. But the young man who, in the first flush of his enterprise, had feared nothing was beginning to perceive the difficulties it presented. The solemn gravity of the terrible Fleming reacted upon him. He felt himself under lock and key, and remembered how the grand provost Tristan and his rope were at the orders of Maitre Cornelius.

"Have you supped?" asked the silversmith, in a tone which signified, "You are not to sup."

The old maid trembled in spite of her brother's tone; she looked at the new inmate as if to gauge the capacity of the stomach she might have to fill, and said with a specious smile:--

"You have not stolen your name; your hair and moustache are as black as the devil's tail."

"I have supped," he said.

"Well then," replied the miser, "you can come back and see me to-morrow. I have done without an apprentice for some years. Besides, I wish to sleep upon the matter."

"Hey! by Saint-Bavon, monsieur, I am a Fleming; I don't know a soul in this place; the chains are up in the streets, and I shall be put in prison. However," he added, frightened at the eagerness he was showing in his words, "if it is your good pleasure, of course I will go."

The oath seemed to affect the old man singularly.

"Come, come, by Saint-Bavon indeed, you shall sleep here."

"But--" said his sister, alarmed.

"Silence," replied Cornelius. "In his letter Oosterlinck tells me he will answer for this young man. You know," he whispered in his sister's ear, "we have a hundred thousand francs belonging to Oosterlinck? That's a hostage, hey!"

"And suppose he steals those Bavarian jewels? Tiens, he looks more like a thief than a Fleming."

"Hush!" exclaimed the old man, listening attentively to some sound.

Both misers listened. A moment after the "Hush!" uttered by Cornelius, a noise produced by the steps of several men echoed in the distance on the other side of the moat of the town.

"It is the Plessis guard on their rounds," said the sister.

"Give me the key of the apprentice's room," said Cornelius.

The old woman made a gesture as if to take the lamp.

"Do you mean to leave us alone, without light?" cried Cornelius, in a meaning tone of voice. "At your age can't you see in the dark? It isn't difficult to find a key."

The sister understood the meaning hidden beneath these words and left the room. Looking at this singular creature as she walked towards the door, Philippe Goulenoire was able to hide from Cornelius the glance which he hastily cast about the room. It was wainscoted in oak to the chair-strip, and the walls above were hung with yellow leather stamped with black arabesques; but what struck the young man most was a match-lock pistol with its formidable trigger. This new and terrible weapon lay close to Cornelius.

"How do you expect to earn your living with me?" said the latter.

"I have but little money," replied Philippe, "but I know good tricks in business. If you will pay me a sou on every mark I earn for you, that will satisfy me."

"A sou! a sou!" echoed the miser; "why, that's a good deal!"

At this moment the old sibyl returned with the key.

"Come," said Cornelius to Philippe.

The pair went out beneath the portico and mounted a spiral stone staircase, the round well of which rose through a high turret, beside the hall in which they had been sitting. At the first floor up the young man paused.

"No, no," said Cornelius. "The devil! this nook is the place where the king takes his ease."

The architect had constructed the room given to the apprentice under the pointed roof of the tower in which the staircase wound. It was a little room, all of stone, cold and without ornament of any kind. The tower stood in the middle of the facade on the courtyard, which, like the courtyards of all provincial houses, was narrow and dark. At the farther end, through an iron railing, could be seen a wretched garden in which nothing grew but the mulberries which Cornelius had introduced. The young nobleman took note of all this through the loopholes on the spiral staircase, the moon casting, fortunately, a brilliant light. A cot, a stool, a mismatched pitcher and basin formed the entire furniture of the room. The light could enter only through square openings, placed at intervals in the outside wall of the tower, according, no doubt, to the exterior ornamentation.

"Here is your lodging," said Cornelius; "it is plain and solid and contains all that is needed for sleep. Good night! Do not leave this room as _the others_ did."

After giving his apprentice a last look full of many meanings, Cornelius double-locked the door, took away the key and descended the staircase, leaving the young nobleman as much befooled as a bell-founder when on opening his mould he finds nothing. Alone, without light, seated on a stool, in a little garret from which so many of his predecessors had gone to the scaffold, the young fellow felt like a wild beast caught in a trap. He jumped upon the stool and raised himself to his full height in order to reach one of the little openings through which a faint light shone. Thence he saw the Loire, the beautiful slopes of Saint-Cyr, the gloomy marvels of Plessis, where lights were gleaming in the deep recesses of a few windows. Far in the distance lay the beautiful meadows of Touraine and the silvery stream of her river. Every point of this lovely nature had, at that moment, a mysterious grace; the windows, the waters, the roofs of the houses shone like diamonds in the trembling light of the moon. The soul