Оноре де Бальзак
Maitre Cornelius
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.
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 which was almost inaccessible. At last, after two hours of close investigation, marked with that sagacity which distinguished the suspicious mind of Louis XI., it was clear to him, beyond all doubt, that no one had forced an entrance into the strong-room of his silversmith. No marks of violence were on the locks, nor on the iron coffers which contained the gold, silver, and jewels deposited as securities by wealthy debtors.
“If the robber opened this box,” said the king, “why did he take nothing out of it but the jewels of the Duke of Bavaria? What reason had he for leaving that pearl necklace which lay beside them? A queer robber!”
At that remark the unhappy miser turned pale: he and the king looked at each other for a moment.
“Then, sire, what did that robber whom you have taken under your protection come to do here, and why did he prowl about at night?”
“If you have not guessed why, my crony, I order you to remain in ignorance. That is one of my secrets.”
“Then the devil is in my house!” cried the miser, piteously.
In any other circumstances the king would have laughed at his silversmith’s cry; but he had suddenly become thoughtful, and was casting on the Fleming those glances peculiar to men of talent and power which seem to penetrate the brain. Cornelius was frightened, thinking he had in some way offended his dangerous master.
“Devil or angel, I have him, the guilty man!” cried Louis XI. abruptly. “If you are robbed again to-night, I shall know to-morrow who did it. Make that old hag you call your sister come here,” he added.
Cornelius almost hesitated to leave the king alone in the room with his hoards; but the bitter smile on Louis’s withered lips determined him. Nevertheless he hurried back, followed by the old woman.
“Have you any flour?” demanded the king.
“Oh yes; we have laid in our stock for the winter,” she answered.
“Well, go and fetch some,” said the king.
“What do you want to do with our flour, sire?” she cried, not the least impressed by his royal majesty.
“Old fool!” said Cornelius, “go and execute the orders of our gracious master. Shall the king lack flour?”
“Our good flour!” she grumbled, as she went downstairs. “Ah! my flour!”
Then she returned, and said to the king: —
“Sire, is it only a royal notion to examine my flour?”
At last she reappeared, bearing one of those stout linen bags which, from time immemorial, have been used in Touraine to carry or bring, to and from market, nuts, fruits, or wheat. The bag was half full of flour. The housekeeper opened it and showed it to the king, on whom she cast the rapid, savage look with which old maids appear to squirt venom upon men.
“It costs six sous the ‘septeree,’” she said.
“What does that matter?” said the king. “Spread it on the floor; but be careful to make an even layer of it – as if it had fallen like snow.”
The old maid did not comprehend. This proposal astonished her as though the end of the world had come.
“My flour, sire! on the ground! But – ”
Maitre Cornelius, who was beginning to understand, though vaguely, the intentions of the king, seized the bag and gently poured its contents on the floor. The old woman quivered, but she held out her hand for the empty bag, and when her brother gave it back to her she disappeared with a heavy sigh.
Cornelius then took a feather broom and gently smoothed the flour till it looked like a fall of snow, retreating step by step as he did so, followed by the king, who seemed much amused by the operation. When they reached the door Louis XI. said to his silversmith, “Are there two keys to the lock?”
“No, sire.”
The king then examined the structure of the door, which was braced with large plates and bars of iron, all of which converged to a secret lock, the key of which was kept by Cornelius.
After examining everything, the king sent for Tristan, and ordered him to post several of his men for the night, and with the greatest secrecy, in the mulberry trees on the embankment and on the roofs of the adjoining houses, and to assemble at once the rest of his men and escort him back to Plessis, so as to give the idea in the town that he himself would not sup with Cornelius. Next, he told the miser to close his windows with the utmost care, that no single ray of light should escape from the house, and then he departed with much pomp for Plessis along the embankment; but there he secretly left his escort, and returned by a door in the ramparts to the house of the torconnier. All these precautions were so well taken that the people of Tours really thought the king had returned to Plessis, and would sup on the morrow with Cornelius.
Towards eight o’clock that evening, as the king was supping with his physician, Cornelius, and the captain of his guard, and holding much jovial converse, forgetting for the time being that he was ill and in danger of death, the deepest silence reigned without, and all passers, even the wariest robber, would have believed that the Malemaison was occupied as usual.
“I hope,” said the king, laughing, “that my silversmith shall be robbed to-night, so that my curiosity may be satisfied. Therefore, messieurs, no one is to leave his chamber to-morrow morning without my order, under pain of grievous punishment.”
Thereupon, all went to bed. The next morning, Louis XI. was the first to leave his apartment, and he went at once to the door of the strong-room. He was not a little astonished to see, as he went along, the marks of a large foot along the stairways and corridors of the house. Carefully avoiding those precious footprints, he followed them to the door of the treasure-room, which he found locked without a sign of fracture or defacement. Then he studied the direction of the steps; but as they grew gradually fainter, they finally left not the slightest trace, and it was impossible for him to discover where the robber had fled.
“Ho, crony!” called out the king, “you have been finely robbed this time.”
At these words the old Fleming hurried out of his chamber, visibly terrified. Louis XI. made him look at the foot-prints on the stairs and corridors, and while examining them himself for the second time, the king chanced to observe the miser’s slippers and recognized the type of sole that was printed in flour on the corridors. He said not a word, and checked his laughter, remembering the innocent men who had been hanged for the crime. The miser now hurried to his treasure. Once in the room the king ordered him to make a new mark with his foot beside those already existing, and easily convinced him that the robber of his treasure was no other than himself.