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

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.


CHAPTER IV. THE HIDDEN TREASURE

Louis XI. was fond of intervening in the affairs of his subjects, and he was always ready to mingle his royal majesty with the burgher life. This taste, severely blamed by some historians, was really only a passion for the "incognito," one of the greatest pleasures of princes,--a sort of momentary abdication, which enables them to put a little real life into their existence, made insipid by the lack of opposition. Louis XI., however, played the incognito openly. On these occasions he was always the good fellow, endeavoring to please the people of the middle classes, whom he made his allies against feudality. For some time past he had found no opportunity to "make himself populace" and espouse the domestic interests of some man "engarrie" (an old word still used in Tours, meaning engaged) in litigious affairs, so that he shouldered the anxieties of Maitre Cornelius eagerly, and also the secret sorrows of the Comtesse de Saint-Vallier. Several times during dinner he said to his daughter:--

"Who, think you, could have robbed my silversmith? The robberies now amount to over twelve hundred thousand crowns in eight years. Twelve hundred thousand crowns, messieurs!" he continued, looking at the seigneurs who were serving him. "Notre Dame! with a sum like that what absolutions could be bought in Rome! And I might, Pasques-Dieu! bank the Loire, or, better still, conquer Piedmont, a fine fortification ready-made for this kingdom."

When dinner was over, Louis XI. took his daughter, his doctor, and the grand provost, with an escort of soldiers, and rode to the hotel de Poitiers in Tours, where he found, as he expected, the Comte de Saint-Vallier awaiting his wife, perhaps to make away with her life.

"Monsieur," said the king, "I told you to start at once. Say farewell to your wife now, and go to the frontier; you will be accompanied by an escort of honor. As for your instructions and credentials, they will be in Venice before you get there."

Louis then gave the order--not without adding certain secret instructions--to a lieutenant of the Scottish guard to take a squad of men and accompany the ambassador to Venice. Saint-Vallier departed in haste, after giving his wife a cold kiss which he would fain have made deadly. Louis XI. then crossed over to the Malemaison, eager to begin the unravelling of the melancholy comedy, lasting now for eight years, in the house of his silversmith; flattering himself that, in his quality of king, he had enough penetration to discover the secret of the robberies. Cornelius did not see the arrival of the escort of his royal master without uneasiness.

"Are all those persons to take part in the inquiry?" he said to the king.

Louis XI. could not help smiling as he saw the fright of the miser and his sister.

"No, my old crony," he said; "don't worry yourself. They will sup at Plessis, and you and I alone will make the investigation. I am so good in detecting criminals, that I will wager you ten thousand crowns I shall do so now."

"Find him, sire, and make no wager."

They went at once into the strong room, where the Fleming kept his treasure. There Louis, who asked to see, in the first place, the casket from which the jewels of the Duke of Burgundy had been taken, then the chimney down which the robber was supposed to have descended, easily convinced his silversmith of the falsity of the latter supposition, inasmuch as there was no soot on the hearth,--where, in truth, a fire was seldom made,--and no sign that any one had passed down the flue; and moreover that the chimney issued at a part of the roof